Tierra del Fuego

by Francisco Coloane

  Schaeffer stopped snoring, and his breathing became heavy, his sleep deeper. Novak turned his head to try to see the old man’s face in the darkness, but all he could make out was his shadow beneath the rocks. The Onas had lain like that after the massacre, like heavy shadows cast across the tussock grasslands . . . He trembled again at the memory, but trembled even more when he realized he was still unconsciously looking sideways at Schaeffer’s shadow, and listening to his labored breathing . . . Was the old miser nothing more than the shadow of a man? Was he worth less than an Indian? Maybe, because the Indians were human beings, too . . . After the Indians, we were next in his evil plans, Schaeffer had said once. The scoundrel had rationed the gold just like a Popper! . . . The gold that was right here, right now, within reach of his hand . . . He could take it off Schaeffer. The old man was weaker than he was, and if he put up any resistance . . . What did it matter, if he was less than an Ona, barely a shadow breathing beneath the rocks? . . .

  Novak searched under the headboard for his knife, and unsheathed it . . . He didn’t have to look at his face—it was better than when he had cut off the Indian girl’s ears . . . For a moment, he was lost in thought, the handle of the knife in his hand . . . It wasn’t an easy thing, having to decide something like that in cold blood . . . He had heard that born criminals committed murder in a frenzied state . . . driven by a kind of vertigo . . . But not him, he was perfectly calm and composed—he wasn’t a born criminal. Slowly, he raised the knife . . .

  The wind again shook the seal skin over the whale ribs, making it thump like a broken drum, and whistled between the rocks . . . Novak held the knife in the air. He could not see the old man, but he could hear his occasionally labored breathing. No, he wasn’t a shadow, but a human being, sighing in his sleep, just as he had found him that night, stretched out on the pampa, after he’d left that villain Spiro to look after him . . . He had saved his life, carrying him on his own horse and bandaging his wound . . . And now he was going to take that same life because of the gold . . . He slowly lowered the handle of the knife in the darkness, until it touched his forehead. He struck himself with it two or three times, as if knocking on the lintel of a door, calling or searching for something he had lost . . . Then he rubbed his eyes in the dark, as if removing a cobweb to see the thing he had found, and took the knife away from his forehead, cutting disconsolately though the gloom.

  “What’s happening?” Schaeffer said suddenly, half asleep, raising himself on one elbow.

  Novak said nothing, and breathed as if asleep. The only response came from the thumping of the sealskin on the whale ribs. That was what had woken Schaeffer, along with the everlasting drone of the wind in the hollows of the rocks. The old man turned over, and started snoring again. After a while, his snore was joined by another, calm and prolonged, and the two snores rose and fell rhythmically like oars hitting a smooth surface.

  They both got up early the following day to saddle their horses. They amicably divided up the equipment and set off in the direction of the Carmen Sylva mountains.

  “I’m cutting through to the port,” Schaeffer said, when they were on the track leading south toward Río Grande.

  “I’m off to Río del Oro,” Novak said, making a broad gesture of his arm toward the northwest, and added, as they shook hands in farewell, “Look after the bag, it’s all you have in life!”

  “It is life . . .” Schaeffer said, coolly and calmly.

  They separated when their horses did. Defeat no longer rode with them.

  Just before vanishing into the first foothills of the Carmen Sylva, Novak let out a long, thin whistle of farewell. Schaeffer turned in the saddle and reluctantly raised his arm in response.

  At a slow canter, he continued along the track going south, which snakes between smooth low ridges. After a while, he stopped his horse and, like an old fox, turned only his head toward the mountains. He stayed like that for a while, then rode to the shelter of the low ridges, which would hide him if anyone were looking at him from the mountains, and there pulled on the reins and turned back the way he had come.

  As he approached the mound of rocks where they had taken shelter, he took another look at the distant mountains, then dismounted and scrabbled in a small hole left by a field mouse. He put first his hand, then his whole arm, into the gallery the rodent had excavated, and pulled out a bag of leather tied with straps of guanaco hide. He loosened the straps, and his eyes gleamed with delight as he contemplated the nuggets and flakes of gold inside.

  “The earth is always the best hiding place!” he murmured. He tied the bag again, and carefully put it in the pocket of his coat. Then from the other pocket he took out another leather bag, exactly like the one he had just unearthed, untied it, looked inside and, as he emptied the contents into the air, exclaimed, with a weary laugh, “Pure iron oxide!”

  And the wind took that shadow of gold, the mere presence of which indicates its proximity, and scattered it over the pampa.

  He looked at the empty bag—the bag in which he had made Novak think that he kept the gold—then got back on his horse and, taking a shorter route, set off at a canter toward the track leading to Río Grande.

  From the south, a flock of wild geese appeared, slicing through the sky with its thousands of gray-brown wings. As the birds flew over his head, one of them separated from the flock and fell to the tussock grass like an autumn leaf. At the same moment, four or five vultures appeared and started flying over the exhausted goose. Two or three of them swooped straight down on to the solitary old bird, which defended itself as best it could with its great gray wings and yellow bill. In spite of their numbers, the vultures moved back in fright, and stood at a distance looking at their victim with fierce red eyes. Then they all went back in for the kill and, in a flurry of wings and beaks, finished off the aged goose.

  Schaeffer, who had stopped to watch this unequal struggle, got down off his horse and walked toward the dead goose. He picked it up and strapped it by its feet to the saddle.

  “None of us ever know who we’re working for!” he said to the vultures, which were looking at him in helpless rage, waddling up and down and shaking their erect crests.

  He got back on his horse, and set off at a weary trot in a southerly direction, while the flock disappeared northward, like a piece of the Fuegian pampa fleeing the imminent ­cruelty of winter.

  ON THE HORSE OF DAWN

  To Professor Humberto Fuenzalida

  It passed like a meteor, something dark and formless swaying below its belly, and only stopped when it realized it was inside the corral.

  We left our lunch in the ranch’s small canteen and ran to see what was happening. Fortunately, all that the horse had beneath its belly were saddle pads and a few sheepskin blankets that had slipped down the animal’s flanks in its mad dash. The reins, too, had fallen beneath the hooves, and the foam-flecked sweat on the chestnut’s body indicated that it had galloped a long distance.

  “Who was riding this horse?” Clifton, the assistant manager, asked.

  “The bookkeeper went out on him this morning,” Charlie, the head stockman, replied.

  “Where?”

  “Puerto Consuelo on Ultima Esperanza Sound, I think he said.”

  “Isn’t this Cabeza Rota?” Clifton asked, looking closely at the steaming chestnut.

  “That’s right,” Charlie replied.

  “And why did you give the bookkeeper this horse?”

  “There wasn’t another one . . . The herd had already left for the field when he came looking for a horse . . . I wasn’t going to round them up again just for him.”

  “Why didn’t you pass him your duty horse and keep this one for yourself?”

  “We each have our herd . . . I don’t like just anyone to break up mine.”

  “Mr. Handler isn’t just anyone, he’s the bookkeeper. And besides, you shouldn’t have given him this horse, knowing what happened the last time you tried to break it . . . Anyway, let’s not waste
any more time. Go now! Find out what happened to the bookkeeper!”

  “No, I’ll go!” I cut in.

  I quickly went and ate a few chops, changed the chestnut for another horse provided by one of the foremen, plus a second horse tied to the first, and set off to find Alfredo Handler, the bookkeeper of the Las Charitas ranch at the southeast end of Lake Toro, in the Patagonian region of Ultima Esperanza.

  As I rode, I couldn’t help thinking how wrong it had been to give Handler, who wasn’t much of a rider, an animal like Cabeza Rota, a product of Charlie’s last horse-breaking session. He had been a good breaker once, but he was getting old, his fractured collarbones and legs had not set well, and he used the handle of the whip more than the leather to break horses now. That was how the chestnut had gotten its name—Cabeza Rota, Broken Head—its skull having been broken with the butt of Charlie’s whip when he couldn’t master it with his riding. But the worst of it was that the horse had acquired the dangerous habit of rearing up on its hind legs and throwing itself backwards to crush its rider.

  Charlie had turned nasty, not only toward the animals but also toward his fellow men. Every time someone was thrown by a horse, he smiled wickedly, and he made no secret of the satisfaction he felt in giving the worst animal to the most inexperienced stockman.

  That was why I’d volunteered to go look for the bookkeeper. I didn’t trust Charlie—he was quite capable of taking along the same horse and getting Handler to mount it, just for the pleasure of seeing him fall off again.

  Besides, I respected Handler. He was far too cultured and delicate for the rough environment of Patagonia. I had known him in his good days, when he had come to the Cerro Guido ranch to work as an assistant bookkeeper. I say “his good days,” because, just as water from the Patagonian lakes sparkles less the closer it gets to the sea, Handler’s mind also seemed to be undergoing a decline—thanks to his fondness for whiskey, according to some, or to the fact that he was always reading, his head buried in books for days and weeks on end. What couldn’t be denied was that, having been an excellent bookkeeper on some of the Company’s biggest ranches, he had ended up on the smallest, Las Charitas, which only had some fifty thousand sheep, and had gotten its name because of the abundance of ostriches in its pastures.

  As I forded a stream, I noticed fresh horse tracks, going in both directions. I was sure now that the bookkeeper had indeed been heading for Puerto Consuelo, on the southern shore of Ultima Esperanza Sound, where he sometimes had to deal with matters relating to shipments of hides and wool. Once I had checked the tracks, I spurred my horse and galloped off determinedly in that direction, the second horse following on.

  The long November afternoon was drawing to a close when the sparse oak woods that characterize the coastal region of Ultima Esperanza told me I was getting close to Puerto Consuelo.

  Gradually, the branches of the trees on either side of the track were becoming shrouded in shadow, and the leaves seemed filled with a kind of animation, as if the sap coursing through them were making them quiver. I was a little alarmed, not so much because of this movement in the dark as because I still had not found any real trace of Handler.

  I soon came to the mountain, nearly two thousand feet high, on whose slope the Milodón Cave is situated. This famous cave is about two hundred fifty feet across at its opening, a hundred feet high and six hundred fifty deep. There are other, smaller caves on the same southern slope and, some eighteen miles to the east, another one almost half the size of the Milodón.

  There was something quite strange about the area, possibly because fire had swept through the surrounding oak woods at some point, leaving only twisted black skeletons, at the feet of which the young trees were already emerging, dramatically embracing the specters of their forebears. Right opposite the wide mouth of the Milodón Cave was a wooded fringe, spared by the fire, which gave the place the mysterious appearance of a prehistoric garden.

  I stopped to inspect the surroundings and, not finding anything at first sight, decided to search the smaller caves, starting with the one farther to the east. It was a short gallop away. I dismounted and went in, calling Handler’s name. I lit a few matches, but the shadows were so thick that the flame dazzled my eyes but showed me nothing beyond itself. I went in as far as I could, but didn’t find anything. Nor did I have any luck in the other, smaller caves.

  So I went back to the Milodón Cave, ready to explore it more systematically. Seen from a distance, the oval entrance, with its projecting boulders, looked like the large mouth of a big black toad merging into the darkness of the night.

  I tied the horses to an oak, went in, and called out Handler’s name. Your own voice often gives you a sense of security when you’re in the dark, but in this case I’d have done better not to call out, because a distant, piercing cry answered me from deep inside the cave. My nerves went taut. I remembered the phenomenon some shepherds had told me about, which they’d experienced one day when the weather was bad and they’d taken shelter there. A person seen from a distance inside the cave seemed to be hundreds of yards away, when in fact they were only about thirty feet away. A similar distortion might be happening now, with the voice echoing in the age-old acoustics. The stalactites hanging from the roof probably had something to do with this strange effect.

  I overcame my fear and called out again, and the cry bounced back through that prehistoric cavity in a slightly less strange way. But this time, there was another cry beneath the echo, a cry that, although it made me shudder again, I was overjoyed to recognize as Handler’s voice.

  I found him at last right at the back of the cave, sitting by a small fire behind a low heap of boulders.

  “How goes it, Handler?” I cried, stumbling forward.

  “Hello!” he replied, and with a vague gesture invited me to sit down next to him, while continuing to pick up little pellets of dried dung from the ground and feed the fire with them.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” I said, adding anxiously, “Has something happened to you?”

  “I really don’t know,” he replied in a voice that seemed somehow detached from reality, with that harsh, metallic tone that people have in dreams.

  “We got worried when your horse came back to the ranch without you.”

  “It must have run away, I don’t know . . .” he said, in the same absent tone.

  I looked around, trying to find the most likely explanation for his curious state, but there was no sign of alcohol anywhere. Handler was something of a dipsomaniac, and sometimes whiskey dulled his senses to such an extent that on more than one occasion we had found him splashing about in the mud that formed with the thaw outside the small canteen. But this time it was clear he hadn’t touched a single drop.

  The little fire kept struggling weakly against the darkness of the cave, accentuating the outlines of Handler’s thin face and making his silhouette dance hazily on the rocky wall, from whose roof the stalactites hung like great ghostly tears. The bookkeeper was a tall, thin man of about fifty, with graying hair, and fine, noble features. There was a blue-gray gleam in his eyes, and the right-hand side of his thin lips was twisted in a grin that was half kindly, half sad.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said, taking him gently by the arm.

  “What for?” he replied. “Wait a bit, I have something to tell you!”

  I sat down next to him, cross-legged, as travelers do.

  He picked up a handful of droppings from the ground, and then a few more, and flung them into the fire. The dung was very dry, quite unlike guanaco dung or horse dung, more like gray-brown earth. The smoke smelled of burned earth.

  The fire suddenly flared up, and shadows danced fantastically between the nests of stalactites. But then a flock of small, dense shadows started whirling around us, emitting little guttural cries like vague words welling up from the very rock. I cowered, filled with terror, and I confess that I only stayed where I was when I saw how impassively Handler sat there, apparently delighted by th
e fluttering of these big black butterflies that screeched like broken little bellows.

  I calmed down when I saw one of these scraps of shadow come to rest on Handler’s shoulder. It was a bat. The animal looked at both of us with tiny eyes that were like two small black embers. It rubbed its little muzzle with the edge of its wing like a tiny condor cleaning its beak, and sat there on the bookkeeper’s shoulder, blinking in the light of the flames. The rest of the flock went back to their nests between the stalactites.

  Handler looked at the little animal as it sat there on his shoulder like a mouse without a tail, then at me, with his absent air, and his grin turned into a vague, sad smile. He let his hands fall to his knees in a skeptical gesture, and when he spoke it was in a voice that was equally distant and lost, staring into the fire, as if it were another tongue communicating something to him, half revealing remote shades of the past.

  “It was when the huge cold wave came,” he began, still in that sad voice. “We hadn’t yet learned to use words. Our language was like the guttural screeching of these bats. But we understood each other perfectly, and what our lips didn’t say we expressed with our hands, our eyes, our faces . . .

  “We knew nothing of fire, only what the volcanoes spewed out and what sometimes spread among us, sowing destruction. But we had no idea how to make it to warm ourselves and, when the cold wave came, it was impossible to continue living out on the grasslands, and we had to live on stalks or ­whatever sick or sleeping animals we could find. Otters and mice were our favorites, because we could kill them with stones or sticks, and gobble them down raw. Or else we followed the tracks of the great saber-toothed tiger and secretly picked up the carrion it had left uneaten . . .