by Cesar Aira
“None of this,” he explained, “involved any complicated reasoning. On the contrary, they were all children’s stories, they could be followed with a minimum of attention. The hare has big ears, which allow it to hear what is normally inaudible, even what is very far off. But the hare is also the emblem of speed. It is so fast that it makes one think of that other world in miniature in which time is all squashed together. And in the process, we move unconsciously from the ‘real’ hare to its opposite pole. . . .”
“But there has to be some element of reality,” Clarke butted in.
“Always, always!” the Indian responded emphatically. “You should know that better than any of us, if, as I have heard, you are a naturalist.”
Clarke nodded.
“We Indians are very ignorant, very stupid; we cannot grasp either the very tiny or the very large, and we don’t know much about what’s in between. At best, we only occasionally pay attention to what we are told, then we have the effrontery to forget it. . . . The hare may be a character in a tale, and that tale may fly over disconnected territories, and always reach the other side of the earth. . . . As you know, my father has based his government on fables; there is no need for me to tell you any, because you might misinterpret them; he even sets himself up as the hero of a fabulous tale for his subjects. . . .”
At that moment two elderly shamans came into the tent, bowing and whispering into Alvarito’s ear. Such was his interest in what they were telling him that he immediately uncrossed his eyes.
“Show him in,” he finally said to them, and to his two guests: “I must beg you to wait outside for me while I deal with a most important and pressing matter which has arisen. It will only take a minute, then I’ll be all yours . . . to continue with our most interesting talk.”
Without ceasing for a moment to offer his apologies, he led them to the tent’s back entrance, where he gave instructions for them to be attended to. Several women were sitting in the shade of awnings; they at once laid out mats for them and offered them tea. As they then immediately returned to their entertaining conversation, Clarke and Gauna were left with nothing else to do than to stare out into the distance. From time to time, groups of horsemen sped by, without any obvious destination. The salt flats gave off a blinding dry white glare. One of the groups of riders had the effect of silencing the women, who all stared after them. The two men did not notice anything special about the riders, but from the comments that followed they learned that it had been Juana Pitiley, Cafulcurá’s favorite wife, who was setting off for Carhué to undergo a water treatment for her old bones. Alvarito’s wives were young (as he was also, since he could be no more than thirty), they had viper’s tongues, and there on the back porch of the tent they had an enchanting, ungroomed look: they looked far prettier when they were not smeared with their ceremonial grease.
After about an hour an Indian came out of the tent and said that Reymacurá begged them to excuse him, as his timetable had become terribly complicated, but he would come and see them that evening if he could find a free moment, etc., etc. Resignedly, Clarke walked round to the front of the spacious dwelling with Gauna, and the pair of them mounted and rode off.
They set off along the avenue containing the chieftains’ tents, until Clarke shook off the torpor that all the tea and the waiting had induced in him and asked himself in a sudden panic where they might be heading. He had no desire whatsoever to get into conversation with Cafulcurá again, or with anyone else for that matter. His head began to ache at the mere thought of it. He looked round him. Gauna was lost in his own thoughts, with a black look on his face, though there was nothing unusual about that. Clarke asked him what had happened to the young watercolorist, whom he had not seen since that morning.
“I think he went to bathe in the creek,” the gaucho replied.
“We could also go and cool off a bit, don’t you think?”
Gauna shrugged. He raised his arm and pointed to the far side of the encampment. “It’s over there.”
They sped off at a gallop. Repetido was marvelously docile. Because of the way the tents were lined up, and because Clarke felt he had no right as a guest to cut between them as the Indians did, they had to travel in a circle until they reached the perimeter of the capital, then turned sharply to the left. The plain dipped gently in front of them, and although the slope was almost imperceptible, they felt as though they were constantly pitching forward. Their mounts were happy. The clear air showed signs that the afternoon was drawing to a close. The sun was no longer as blinding as it had been throughout the day. From dawn to dusk, it gave the sensation that tiny prismatic crystals were floating above Salinas Grandes, reducing everything to a white sheen.
The river ran narrow and cool through beds of osiers. A large number of bathers had spent the day in its streams and on its banks. About two hundred horses were standing loose near an open, treeless beach which seemed to be the official bathing place. Indians were sleeping, sunbathing, or playing cards, while children scampered noisily in and out of the water. The two new arrivals dismounted and walked for a while. As they went upstream, they came upon groups of youngsters who were enjoying themselves in more secluded recesses. One of them was Carlos Alzaga Prior, who approached them, his hair dripping. They sat together on a grassy high bank overlooking a calm backwater.
“Have you been having a good time?” Clarke asked Prior, treating him familiarly because he was so young.
“First class. What about you two?”
There was a silence. Gauna was still wrapped in his own thoughts. Finally, Clarke said: “Not so good. These Indians are always talking to themselves.”
The youth burst out laughing, but they did not feel like joining in. The Englishman had come to think he had acted hastily when he had agreed to take Prior along. In fact, it had been very irresponsible of the young man’s parents to give him permission to undertake the journey to the perilous desert as though it were a trip round the family estate. Parents like that, Clarke surmised, were the sort who would most readily accuse him of being responsible if anything happened to their son, in a classic defense mechanism of laying the blame elsewhere. As for his artistic apprenticeship, that had obviously been an excuse, because Clarke had not even seen him pick up a brush. Prior gave them a detailed account of his prowess at swimming, diving, and so on. His chatter eventually wearied Clarke, who suggested he return to his friends. Prior did so at once, a broad smile on his face.
“What a child,” Gauna muttered when he was out of earshot.
“Señor Gauna, you were fifteen once,” Clarke chided him.
“But he’s been smoking something. Didn’t you see how dilated his pupils were?”
“The truth is, I didn’t notice.”
They sat in silence for a while. They gazed idly at people swimming by them in the river. Birds were singing in the trees. In front of them, the sun dipped toward the horizon.
“Tell me frankly, Señor Gauna, is something bothering you?”
“Lots of things.”
“Such as what?”
“For example, the fact that the Indians are such great liars.”
This interested Clarke. Not because he needed confirmation that they were caught up in a web of lies, but because it might be useful for him to know what reasons his tracker had for saying so.
“Take that story of the ‘hare’ which ‘took off,’” Gauna said, a sarcastic emphasis in his voice. “Did you believe that?”
“There wasn’t much to believe, that’s for sure.”
“But it’s as if they were making fun of us!”
Hearing this remark, the Englishman’s curiosity took on a defensive edge. There was no doubt Gauna was treating him as stupid, because it was to him that almost all the comments had been addressed. He asked Gauna for an explanation. Gauna had one ready, and Clarke could not deny it was both ingenious and surprising.
“They say: the hare ‘took off.’ In Mapuche, that verb can also mean ‘was stolen,�
� ‘was made to vanish.’ We have no reason to know of these double meanings, so we understand it in its first sense, and they go on with the joke at our expense; even when you ask them if what happened is real or an interpretation, they can permit themselves to lie with the truth, as they always do. And between you and me, I reckon that ‘hare’ is the name they give to some valuable object. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed their habit of giving very valuable objects names. OK, so there’s a robbery. When we reach the spot where they’ve caught the thief, or an accomplice, who knows, they put on this horse ballet for us, stare up at the sky, play the fool, like that idiot Mallén. Meanwhile under our very noses, they are dealing with the culprit. . . .”
“You mean that poor man who fell from his horse? But that was an accident!”
“Yes, an ‘accident’ . . . And on top of it all, that hypocrite Reymacurá starts to give you a metaphysics lesson! But he couldn’t help letting a few of the most obvious sarcasms escape, like that story about the father who lost his son. Can you tell me what on earth a tale like that had to do with anything?”
“I took it as another example, and a very appropriate one. He was saying that a stolen child reappears as an adult somewhere else, and so establishes a continuity between different places and times.”
Gauna did not even bother to contradict him. Clarke had in fact taken this example (though he did not say this to Gauna) as a delicate touch by their Indian friend, because Clarke himself had been a foundling adopted and raised by a well-to-do middle-class family in Kent. It was hardly surprising that the Indians knew this, thanks to Rosas’s secret police, who were bound to have discovered it.
“And another thing,” Gauna went on. “An hour later, Cafulcurá’s wife sets out on a journey. Some coincidence, don’t you think?”
“But that fellow has thirty wives or more! There must always be one setting off on a journey somewhere.”
“But precisely that one, Juana Pitiley, the only one who is rich and powerful?”
He had really gone too far with his suspicions. The Englishman thought it better to change tack, and offered a kind of abstract summing up of their discussion.
“Words in Mapuche seem to have pretty unstable meanings.”
“No more so than in other languages.”
“I can assure you that’s not true of English.”
“I don’t know English, but if I look at Spanish, it’s just as ambiguous. For example, you can give your own name to anything you like: that tree, for instance — look at those low branches, don’t they look like a chair? If I came to have my siesta here every day, I’d end up calling that tree ‘chair.’ . . .”
“Good God!”
Gauna closed his mouth. After a while, he opened it again:
“And anyway, you can’t deny there’s a contradiction in the very fact of their speeches. We all know that savages show ‘an invincible repugnance toward speaking, except when it is absolutely necessary.’ Yet you yourself said a while ago that your head was spinning from all the chitchat you had to put up with. So that these people’s game consists in finding ‘absolute necessity’ where we see nothing but smoke rings.”
“And that seems suspicious to you too?”
“Yes, sir! Very suspicious!”
“Tell me something, Gauna, you don’t talk like a gaucho. Did you go to school as a boy?”
At that, Gauna lapsed back into being a gaucho again, mute and introspective. He gazed down at the tracks the busy ants were making on the ground. Tearing off a blade of grass, he chewed on it, then finally seemed to make up his mind:
“Of course I went to school. I . . .”
That was as far as he got, because the reappearance of Carlos Alzaga Prior made him fall more silent than ever. The boy came to tell them he was going back to the tents with his new-found friends.
“But who are they?” Clarke wanted to know.
Carlos offered to show him, beaming like an idiot all the while. He led Clarke up a nearby bank and pointed out a group of young men and women. Most of the women had bulging stomachs in various stages of pregnancy.
“Come on, I’ll introduce you!”
“No, thanks.”
A lot of people were diving into the water.
“Did you have a swim?” Carlos asked him.
“The truth is, I’d love a dip.”
Carlos encouraged him to have one. The sun was still high enough for him to dry off afterward. They agreed to meet at dinner time. Clarke undressed and dived into the water, which turned out to be freezing. He was quite a good swimmer, and the exercise relaxed him; what with being on horseback and having to squat for all the conversations, he was very stiff. By the time he got out, Gauna had gone. He threw himself down on the grass and dozed. The sky had turned pink, the birdsong became more evocative, haunting. He saw some huge wild cattle lumber down for their evening drink. Through the leaves of the trees, in his drowsy state, he watched as the sky became a dark blue, and the tree trunks slowly turned black.
When he returned to the beach, there were only a few Indians left. They all greeted him with elaborate courtesy. His horse stood waiting. He set off at a walk in the dusk.
At night, everything was fire. In the universal classification, the Mapuches were a fire culture. They lit them on any excuse, and enjoyed them immensely. At every step, near and far, fires, torches, bonfires shone out, creating marvelous reflections on the bodies of the Indians, whose nightly pleasure was to daub themselves in grease from head to foot. Neither Cafulcurá, nor Alvarito, nor any of the main chieftains appeared, busy as they seemed to be with their political conversations. Gauna and Clarke ate grilled meat with some tight-lipped ministers: Carlos Alzaga Prior came by for a minute to say he would be spending the night with friends. Gauna, who had not managed to take a siesta, retired early. Clarke sat for a while outside the tent, smoking a pipe, watching the fires and the Indians passing by. He was about to go and lie down when Mallén appeared.
“How are you, Mister Clarke, have you eaten?”
“Scrumptiously.”
“I’m glad. I’m sorry we haven’t been able to look after you properly, but something urgent cropped up . . . you know how it is.”
“Oh, yes? Something urgent? A war? I suppose you couldn’t tell me anyway?”
“No, no. Nothing that serious, trifles really, the same as usual.”
“But you yourself told me yesterday that it wasn’t usual for you to be so busy.”
“That’s true, but you will admit that sometimes, the usual can pile up.”
“True enough.”
“By the way, tomorrow there is a gap in the protocol, and Cafulcurá asked me to convey his invitation to you. For my part, I should also like to offer you a rather fuller apology for our lack of courtesy.”
“I’m all ears.”
Mallén had not sat down. The two men were standing talking next to the entrance to the tent, and the shaman darted a glance inside. He seemed unwilling to speak there, as if afraid Gauna might be listening. This was a groundless fear, as they could both clearly hear the gaucho’s snores.
“Let’s walk a little, if you’re not tired.”
They set off in the direction of the nearest bonfire.
“I trust your tent is comfortable.”
“Fine, thank you. Are you expecting Namuncurá soon?”
“Not at all. He could be away weeks if he feels like it.”
Clarke had been surprised at being lodged in the tent of the chieftain’s son and heir, who was away on a trip. Especially since all the man’s wives were still in occupation.
When they had walked some distance, Mallén began to stammer, in the typically ceremonious manner which meant he was about to say something he had previously thought over.
“In the first place, I’d like to say how sorry I am that your visit has coincided with these . . . shall we say, special circumstances. All this surveillance, all these security measures . . . they must have been a burden to you.�
�
Although Clarke had been unaware of anything of the sort, he thought it wiser to keep quiet.
“But how were you to know that Cafulcurá is to celebrate his seventieth birthday soon, and that he is cautious enough to take some old-standing prophecies seriously? Cautious isn’t the word! . . . Well, with him, one never knows. I also wanted to talk to you about that. I don’t think I’d be wrong in saying that certain of our chieftain’s characteristics must have seemed to you, at the very least, surprising. I don’t intend to make excuses for him, but some of them do have their explanation. I’ve known him for countless years now, and I think I understand him better than anyone. So I beg you to take what I am going to say as a corrective to your impressions, but one that in no way implies any disrespect for your perspicacity. Bear in mind that this incoherent old man, high on grass, who gave you all the rigmarole about the continuum, has for the past fifty years borne on his shoulders all the responsibility of governing an empire made up of a million souls scattered throughout the south of the continent, and has done, and will continue to do, a pretty good job. From his youth onward, Cafulcurá has worshipped simplicity and spontaneity. But one can’t help thinking, and as soon as one does, all simplicity goes to the devil. And also, to be truly spontaneous, one would have to say ‘spontaniety,’ wouldn’t one?”
