As Osuna announced the Santa Rosa storm for the thirtieth, we all kept watch for the saving clouds, eager but skeptical, to see if they were approaching our assembly from the southeast, laden less with water than with hope. But not a single cloud appeared in the first days of waiting. As we watched, the empty sky changed color with the passing light and lost its aura of familiarity, a consequence of our certainty that it had always been there; it became strange, and with it the yellow earth and all that spanned the visible horizon, including ourselves. The burnt and sweaty faces, in which the eyes were almost shrunken, mouth always open and brows always furrowed, expressed a constant questioning. At times we spoke little, exchanging shy monosyllables, and at others, usually in an aside among two or three, we exchanged long, fragmentary monologues, hurried and confused, as if in the plain’s monotony we had lost the instinct or notion that separates the inner from the outer, as if the language provided in this world had also been uprooted from us and would have spoken for itself, doing without the thought and will with which we had learned to employ it on first entering this world.
At last, one afternoon, the clouds began to come. As it was still early, the first ones were large and very white, festooned with rippling edges, and when they passed too low, their own shadow would obscure their underside, as seen from the ground. We hoped before long to see them go black and part from the horizon in an endless slate-gray mass, to blot out all the sky and spill forth with rain. But for two days they paraded past in the sky, frayed and mute, coming from the southeast as I think I have said, and disappeared behind us to some point at our backs on an already-traveled horizon. They changed shape and color with the hours of the day and, above all, they floated at different speeds, as if the wind, whose absence we suffered on the ground, abounded there above. Sometimes they were yellow, orange, red, lilac, violet, but also green, gold, and even blue. Although they were all similar, there did not exist, nor had there ever existed since the origins of the world, nor would there exist either until the inconceivable end of time, two that were identical. With their varied forms and the recognizable shapes they portrayed, which dissolved little by little until they no longer looked like anything, or even assumed a shape contradictory to the one they had taken a moment before, they made me feel like a spirit of history, one that would persist through time to change along with the clouds, with the same strange similarity of such things that vanish, in the very instant they arise, to that place we call the past, where no one ever goes.
It will sound like fiction to my readers, but we awaited the water eagerly for days, and in place of water came fire. It was the twenty-ninth of August, 1804. If this precision awakens the suspicions of my potential reader, suggesting that I employ it to increase the illusion of truthfulness, I would like it to remain quite clear that this date is unforgettable for me, as it marks the most extraordinary day of my life.
For many hours, a strong smell of burning, which had grown stronger and more unmistakable, prompted comments in the caravan, but as no breeze was blowing and there were no visible signs of fire along the horizon, it proved difficult to identify the source of the smell. Osuna’s concern, and his secret meetings with Sergeant Lucero and with Sirirí, were the only tangible proof to me that the invisible yet pervasive fire was very real, so when Sirirí left to explore southward and Osuna suggested we alter the course to the east a bit, I realized that the situation appeared far more serious to our experts than I had imagined. Osuna explained to me that if there was a fire, it might be coming from the south, which was why Sirirí had ridden that way—to determine at what distance it was coming up against us—and that the caravan was going east because the fire had less chance of spreading on the wetlands near the river. According to Osuna, if there was a fire, which was all but certain, the origin was likely some thunderbolt in one of those dry storms that sometimes advance a few days before the torrential rains that sweep down on the region. With regard to the fire, and always according to Osuna, it could be a small matter or, to the contrary, form a front for many leagues; the heat and dry grass would help it spread slowly in the absence of wind, but if by chance the southeaster that came to accompany the Santa Rosa storms began to blow, the speed of propagation would multiply in no time. Thus, Osuna and Lucero had taken the precaution of altering our route toward the river.
Osuna, glancing frequently and nervously to the south, meant for us to hurry, but, if I haven’t said it before now, I believe that now is the time to point out that, though drawn by four horses and faster than ox-drawn freight wagons, even without considering the patients we were transporting, our carts moved quite slowly. Our trip had dragged on, not just because of the natural obstacles and incidents that delayed it, but also because of the slowness of the vehicles that made up the caravan, whose rhythm the horsemen escorting us had to adapt to. On the afternoon of the twenty-eighth, a few black clouds, thick and motionless, began to appear at our right, to the south, as we marched east. For a time, I thought it was the long-awaited storm brewing, but when Osuna and Lucero started badgering the cart-men to increase their pace, anxiously searching the black skeins that walled the horizon, I realized they were not clouds. As it darkened, the last ruddy gleam that always lingered on the plain after the sun disappeared kept burning through the night, taking up the entire southern horizon. In the very black, even darkness, the yellow points of distant stars seemed kindlier and more familiar than the fluctuating, reddened stripe that sketched the southeastern arc of the horizon with its broad strokes. For the first time since our departure, we did not halt that night save to change the spent horses. When dawn broke, sunlight blotted out the fire, but the masses of black smoke seemed taller and appeared to rise up like stones beyond the horizon, ominously close. The sergeant scrutinized them for a moment and said that if we continued east the fire would leave us no time to reach the river, and that we had to change direction again, retreating to the north. So we began to retrace our steps with the fire at our heels, and as I checked my horse from straying too far from my patients’ wagons, the memory came to me of that enigmatic saying of the oriental sages: He who draws near, is far. It could have meant, in effect, that in some way we too were approaching our goal, backtracking a good part of the journey.
For all our speed, the wall of smoke always seemed the same distance away, and even, at times, appeared to come closer, as though it traveled more lightly than we did. In broad daylight, we could see we were not the only ones who fled: Wild animals, whose presence we constantly sensed but who rarely showed themselves, forgot age-old cautions and fled northward—and often, faster than the fire and us. There was a cloud of birds in the air above our heads, ringing continually with cries, caws, screeches, et cetera, but when I observed them for a moment I could tell that though many flew in the same direction as us, some seemed to be going to meet the fire. I thought they erred, disoriented by the blaze, but when the fire reached us a few hours later, I realized, and Osuna later confirmed, that certain birds would fly above the blaze to feed on the insects it dispersed in all directions, especially those crisped in the heat, doing so with such insistence, recklessness, and gluttony, that many of them fell, trapped in the flames.
At dusk we arrived at a large lake, which was situated a bit farther northeast of the northwest-to-southeast trajectory we had been following and thus had not had the opportunity to see in the preceding days. We worked our way around it, bringing it between the fire and ourselves and, exhausted, stopped to rest. The lake was vaguely oval-shaped, some three hundred meters long, and it extended parallel to the line of dark smoke that blocked out most of the horizon. Toward the center, the distance between the two banks must have come to approximately half its length. Neither men nor horses were inclined to press on, and many wild animals seemed to have made the same decision. Lapwings, rhea birds, hares, herons, guanacos, partridges, and even a couple of pumas patrolled the area surrounding the water. Although our presence disturbed them, they did not dare leave the lake; they
kept their distance, and with what we might deem excellent logic (for I see no other way), they reasoned that we were less dangerous an enemy than the fire. The pumas upset the women, so two soldiers ran at them laughing, and though the pumas postured ferociously at first, when the soldiers came too close, waving their bolas, they ran off and stopped after a distance, spitting and shaking.
Rarely have I beheld a more beautiful evening, and on the plain such evenings abounded, with endless sunsets during which, without a single obstacle to interfere with the sight, even the faintest embers of light linger in the all-effacing darkness. When the sun’s enormous disc met the eastern horizon, the yellow grass began to shimmer, seeming all the brighter in contrast to the wall of smoke to the south, while the red plate of the lake, reflecting the shifting light and undisturbed by the slightest vibration, went blue and finally black, as if it were cooling along with the light and the air, the sky, and such; only the crimson line on the southeast horizon introduced a certain variety in the night’s uniform blackness.
If someone believes the travail we were undergoing could have left me time to admire the sunset, he would be wrong, for it was amid the general hustle and bustle, in which everyone, apart from the patients, had something to do, that such indifferent and superhuman twilit beauty took shape, reached perfection, and foundered in the night. Most judiciously, Osuna and the sergeant decided that since the men and animals were camped on the shore, the carts ought to be set up as far into the lake as possible, and this took a long while because we had to seek out the parts of the lake-bed where the weight would not bog down the wagons when the danger had passed and we wanted to remove them from the water. Indeed, a site far enough from the bank but not so deep that the water would penetrate the wagons was a contradictory goal, difficult to meet. It was pitch-dark when we finished. The smell of burning filled the air, and, at a distance difficult to gauge, beyond the sunken carts out near the center of the lake, the red band of the blaze shone, flickering and faint.
We remained camped on the shore trying to make out, in the pitch dark, possible signs that would alert us to the fire’s advance. As our eyes grew accustomed to the dark, we began to distinguish the weightier silhouettes of the things that populated the general blackness. The nurses and I had gathered our patients to better watch over them. After a period of darkness, several candles and lanterns were lit, but the sergeant advised they be extinguished to better scrutinize the horizon from a deeper darkness. He allowed me to leave a pair of candles lit so that we might better keep watch over our mad. In truth, the only ones from which I expected some unrest were the elder Verde and the little nun; Prudencio Parra remained as indifferent as ever to the vagaries of this world, and the only sign of aggravation he showed under the circumstances was the tightening of his fist, and while Troncoso made a few slight starts of agitation, it was clear that the gravest lay behind us and a new paroxysm was unlikely for the moment. Moreover, El Ñato would not be detached from him, so I was certain I could count on him if something urgent arose. The devoted servant protecting the disgraced master who in ordinary times would torture and humiliate him . . . It is an eternal paradox that provokes, and will provoke, the philosopher’s eternal puzzlement. And with regard to Verdecito, there was no danger of losing sight of him amidst the general disorder, for not only did he stay by my side, he even clung to my shirtsleeve and would not let me go. He manifested his growing excitement in the multiplicity of sounds that left his lips, and, with an increasingly faint and shaky voice, he questioned me continually, such that even I, busy with the situation and intent on the outer world, could not understand him and answered without stopping to listen, especially in the direst of moments, with any old thing, which, as was his custom, he would make me repeat several times. Despite the increasing gravity of the situation, the nurses laughed at our deaf-men’s dialogue. The brothers Verde, I must note, were the two most difficult problems to manage in those trying hours, for as the danger approached, so, too did the elder’s excitement grow, and in tense moments, it was his perennial morning, noon, and night, spoken with the thousand different modulations of a normal conversation and directed to no one in particular, which was all that could be heard. The greater the peril, the stronger his voice rang out, and the more rapid the rhythm and variety of his utterances. Sister Teresita, who sometimes enjoyed pestering the two brothers, left them in peace that night, though her reasons were hardly commendable, for she passed a good part of the wait whispering and joking in the dark with the soldiers in her personal guard and, mostly because I thought the soldiers would see to her and protect her, I prudently refrained from discovering where those schemes might lead, even up to the point when, surrounded by the fire, we took shelter in the lake in water up to our necks because, in the part of the lake where she was squeezed in among the soldiers, splashes, cries, and all-too eloquent moans could be heard—and it is already known that, for mysterious reasons, danger may stimulate hedonism.
We were shaken by an unexpected fright when, almost immediately, an equally unexpected satisfaction made up for our shock. As we watched events unfold in near-perfect silence, alert and anxious, clustered on the lakeshore, we noticed a murmur that, at least for me, proved difficult to identify at first. It gradually coalesced into the pounding of cattle hooves as they sounded against the earth, just as a tumult of terrified lowing, each one closer than the last, filled the night air. Our main fear was that the cattle, which were of course fleeing the blaze, and which had to be in a rather large herd given the din they made, would stampede out of the blind terror that made them take flight into the dark, trampling over us. We heard the beasts approaching in the blackness when the first hooves touched water at some point on the lake’s far edge, and the watery sounds of their legs, more than the terrified moos resounding in the night (I felt Verdecito’s hand grasp yet more tightly at my shirtsleeve) made us think we would not escape catastrophe, when we realized the beasts were gradually going off to the western edge of the lake where there was more beach, some by water and others near the shore, until we heard them come across the lake and make off behind us, to the north, striking the earth with their hooves as they did. The explanation for that abrupt change of route came immediately, with the trot of a horse that drew near without difficulty, and which, with his gift for sounding the invisible, Osuna recognized by the hoof-beats as Sirirí’s. Reining in sharply at a distance, the Indian identified himself in the darkness and joined us. By lantern-light and in the middle of a circle of anxious, weary faces, he told us with characteristic seriousness how he had gone half a league south of our camp when he heard the cattle rushing to the lake, and so racing flat-out on the diagonal, he intercepted the mob and diverted it to the western point of the lake. There were only a few cows, Sirirí said, and so perhaps they would not have caused much of a disaster apart from the carts, but they were so frightened that they made enough noise for many more than they were in reality. What follows should illustrate these men’s skill for life on the plain, like sailors on the sea: Sirirí had agreed with Osuna and the sergeant to meet on the bank of the Paraná river, well to the east, but, after estimating the time it would take the fire to reach them and calculating the distance to the river, he had arrived at the same conclusion as the other two experts, deciding that the only place in the surroundings where we might defend ourselves from the blaze was that lake where we found ourselves. An important detail ought to be noted: Alone, Sirirí had been able to escape the fire with ease, as a rider can move about ten times faster than a convoy of carts. In little time, he had been able to gain such a lead on the fire that the blaze preparing to devour us had not posed the slightest danger to him. And nevertheless, knowing he would face the same danger as all of us, he returned to camp. Apart from the purely professional respect that Osuna and the sergeant perhaps deserved, none of the other members of the caravan roused the least sympathy. Over the month of our journey, Sirirí had heard us joke about him, had seen us trample the few things sacred
to him in this world, the few truths in which, according to him, it was worth it to believe, and more than once, I had detected scorn, fury, and scandal written on his face when he judged some of our actions. And despite that, he endangered his life and came back to us. Likely, there was no doubt for him that the members of the caravan would burn for all eternity in the fires of hell; but in the face of the actual fire that approached, he had gone to our side.
The Clouds Page 16
