by Cesar Aira
“The lady will come to see you in a few minutes, if she can.”
Raising a doubt in this way was typical of the Indians. Before he withdrew, the messenger asked the others to untie their prisoners:
“They were being overcautious. All they were asked to do was bring you here.”
“We come in peace,” Clarke said.
“I would never have doubted it,” the Indian said as he left.
The three white men were untied. The four Indians who had brought them did not comment on the situation beyond giving a few nervous laughs, then offering them a drink. Clarke refused, but when Gauna took one, he changed his mind. He felt relaxed, and even slightly amused at how nervous the gaucho was. He wondered what it would be like to meet a half-sister for the first time, and decided it must be even odder than meeting a full sister. In the latter case, the encounter would completely fill the gap, whereas if it were only half a relationship, the missing half would continue to cast its shadow . . . Clarke’s mind drifted off into these somewhat irrelevant speculations. The three of them were seated comfortably with their backs against a rock; Clarke in the middle, Gauna sweaty and agitated on his right, Carlos on his left. Clarke realized Carlos was nodding off.
“If you’re sleepy,” he said, “go ahead and sleep.”
“Not on your life. I wouldn’t miss Gauna’s meeting with his sister for anything in the world.”
Clarke felt himself obliged to turn to his companion on the right and say: “If you prefer to see her on your own . . .”
“No.”
The Indians had moved some distance away and were talking in whispers. The moon had passed through various changes, and was now high above the mountain, not because it had risen in the sky but because in the last stretch of their walk, when they had been tied up, they had traveled along the rim of an imaginary conical section, so they had almost gone right round the mountain. A vast landscape lay before them: a huge chamber of dark air, whose sides were mountain slopes gleaming brightly like silver, while above and below all was pitch black. But what was down below was in a kind of corridor which led the gaze back to the foreground, with moonlit slopes on both sides — none other than those they had seen in the first place. This nocturnal alternation of planes produced a pleasant sense of confusion.
The individual who had spoken to them earlier returned, together with a female figure; they realized it was not the Widow, although the half-light did not allow them to see her clearly. She was too tall, too formidable. The three men stood up respectfully. After exchanging a few words with the woman, the Indian hung back, and she came on toward them. When she was close to him, with the moon illuminating her fine, proud features, Clarke recognized her with the same leap of emotion as he had felt the first time he had caught sight of her. It was Juana Pitiley, Cafulcurá’s legendary wife. Their adventure was taking yet another unexpected turn. The three men thought she was going to come to a halt, but she kept advancing until she was only a few inches from Clarke, whom she was staring at intently. The Englishman was nervous, unable to move. He wondered if the woman was shortsighted. He thought that all her life she had been a queen, and so he should not be surprised that she behaved like one; he was an unusual object, and she saw no reason not to examine him closely. She was so near, he could not avoid studying her as well. There was something strangely familiar about her; she was too intense and beautiful, and he was compelled to lower his gaze. She gave a faint smile, and stepped back. Then she asked them to sit down again, and did the same herself. She sat opposite Clarke, whom she had not taken her eyes off. When she spoke, her voice was deep and soft:
“Mister Clarke, I believe?” Clarke nodded. “The son of Nehemias Clarke?” This was quite incredible, and presaged some fresh revelation. “I knew your father,” the woman said, “many years ago, in a place west of here. Is he still alive?”
“He died almost twenty years ago,” said Clarke.
“I’m sorry to hear it. We knew each other only for a few days, and in very special circumstances. But we were united by a gift I made him, and which I sincerely thought I would never regain. I suppose he never mentioned it.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“That was what he promised.”
His father had told him a lot about his adventures in the Americas, but Clarke had always had the impression that there was a blind spot in them, and this was what was being revealed now. Juana Pitiley sat in silence for a while, recalling those distant events. Then she raised her eyes and stared up at a point near the mountain summit. The Englishman kept his lips sealed; he knew it was not the moment to ask questions.
“It was many years ago, and right here.” She lowered her gaze, and stared once again at Clarke. “There’s even a legend, the legend of the Legibrerian Hare, which arose from what happened here thirty-five years ago. A month ago when I heard in Salinas Grandes that someone had come in search of the Hare, an Englishman who bore a supernatural resemblance to my eldest son, I could see it all, as if I had always been expecting it. The paths of fable are usually the most real ones.”
“And you,” Clarke said, with tremulous voice, “you conceived a child on the summit of this mountain. . . .”
“Ah, I see you’ve heard the old story. Yes, this is where my wedding night took place. It was here I rescued my husband from his captors, it was these mountain sides we scoured in search of a place of refuge, which we found in the gap pierced at the top. When we came down the next day I was already bearing my offspring in my womb. You will also have heard of the lengthy flight that followed, and of the gap that there is in the story, when I became separated from my husband before I gave birth. He arrived alone at Salinas Grandes, thinking me dead, and I appeared a couple of months later with a child in my arms: Namuncurá. And I suppose they couldn’t resist insinuating what has by now become a common belief: that Namuncurá is not in fact my child, and so on. Since I had no more children, the logical thing has been to assume that I was sterile, but that since I needed to be the mother of a legal heir to strengthen my political position, I dreamt up this hare-brained scheme so as to pass a foundling off as my own son. I preferred to let this inept lie circulate rather than have anyone suspect the truth, which nobody has guessed at . . . not even now.”
She fell silent for a long time. So long in fact, that it seemed as if her tale was over. Clarke did not dare move, speak, think, hardly even breathe. He held his breath for so long he almost passed out. A remote part of his brain, the most English part, was aware of the effect that Juana Pitiley’s words were having on the other two. Gauna seemed thunderstruck; Carlos Alzaga Prior was beside himself with excitement, and in anticipation of the great revelation was glancing first at Juana and then at Clarke, eyes shining.
“It was during that interval,” she said, “that I met the person who from that moment on became your father, Nehemias Clarke. I had just given birth, not entirely on my own as legend has it, but in quite primitive conditions. When I met him, I had already decided to give up one of the twins, and the possibility that he would be going somewhere far from me and all the Mapuches finally convinced me to give him the boy. He was a silent, modest, crazily romantic man. There was never anything between us of course (the fact that I was so recently a mother prevented all thought of that) but I could tell he had fallen in love with me, and without the slightest cynicism on my part (or at least so I believe), I understood that this love was a guarantee for my plans. I made him promise he would never tell the boy of his true identity, that he would bring him up in England, where his childless wife was waiting for him, and that he would never return to America. He left at once, and I can see he was as good as his word.”
The moonlight took on a fresh meaning for Clarke. He knew deep down that it was no longer a question of seeming ridiculous or not. He felt calm and collected again, in a way that left all confusion behind.
“So then,” he said, “ you are . . . my mother.”
“That’s right,” Juana Pitil
ey replied, “are you surprised?”
“Well, I had my suspicions,” Clarke lied.
“Son of a gun!” said Carlos, who had begun to weep for no reason except generosity of spirit.
“Son of the Piedra,” Gauna corrected him, also clearly affected by the scene. He was referring to Cafulcurá, the father, whom nobody had mentioned until now.
Clarke was trying to order his racing thoughts.
“So Namuncurá is my twin brother. He was the lookalike I met a few days ago.”
“You did?” Juana asked. “The poor man has been pursuing Rondeau’s Widow for years, but I think he’s finally accepted it’s hopeless.”
“Just a minute,” Clarke said. “In Salinas Grandes, when Cafulcurá, and Mallén, and all of them saw me . . . and Namuncurá’s wives, whose tent I stayed in . . . they must all have seen the likeness.”
“Of course!” said Juana.
“So why did they say nothing?”
“They were waiting for Cafulcurá to speak first. There are certain codes of honor which determine how things are done in these matters. . . .”
“Why didn’t he say anything then?”
“He had his reasons. He preferred to disappear.”
“You mean he decided to disappear? He wasn’t kidnapped?”
“Of course not.”
Clarke was beginning to glimpse the thread linking the complicated events his arrival had set in motion. But he understood that nothing could be explained without returning to the start of it all, to his life and its secret.
“What I don’t understand is why . . . why hide me, why send me to England?”
His mother paused for thought, and before she could reply, a man emerged from the shadows and whispered into her ear. She listened, nodded, and told them:
“You’ll have to forgive me, but little Yñuy’s time seems to have arrived. . . .”
“Yñuy!” exclaimed Carlos.
“Do you know her?”
“My friend here,” Clarke said, “ has been searching for her ever since we left Salinas Grandes.”
“Well, he’s found her, although perhaps at a rather inopportune moment for any great show of affection. I’m acting as her midwife, and the time has come to offer her my services. Excuse me, please . . .”
She left, leaving them so shocked they did not even think to stand up.
“We’ve found Yñuy!” Carlos purred. “I can’t believe it. But Clarke, your story is even harder to believe. You’re Cafulcurá’s first-born! You’ve found your mother and your father! I can imagine how you must be feeling.”
“I can’t think clearly about it yet. This kind of thing only happens in novels . . . but then, novels only happen in reality.”
“What do you make of it, Gauna?”
“I’m astounded. I congratulate you both.”
“And there we were thinking you were the one who’d be having a remarkable encounter!”
“I think he will,” Clarke said. “It’s very likely that the Widow is here as well. Do you remember we heard she was looking for a young girl, and that she had finally found one?”
“That’s true. Do you mean Yñuy?”
“That would explain her presence here.”
“Why don’t we go and find those Indians and ask them?” the boy proposed.
“Where can they have got to?” Gauna asked, peering into the shadows.
“Just a moment. Someone’s coming.”
It was Juana Pitiley. She sat down in the same spot as before.
“It was a false alarm,” she said, “she’s still got at least half an hour to go. She’s a very brave girl,” she added, then, glancing at Carlos, “I told her you were here, and she was overjoyed. Would you like to see her?”
“Can I?”
“I think it might be a good way to take her mind off things.” Don’t talk too much.
She signaled to one of the invisible men in the shadows. He got up and led Carlos away.
“One other small thing,” Clarke said. “My friend Gauna Alvear here is brother on his mother’s side of the woman known as Rondeau’s Widow, whom you spoke of earlier. In fact, it was her we came to the Sierra de la Ventana in search of, and just a moment ago we were wondering whether she might not be here as well.”
“She is indeed,” Juana Pitiley said, looking across at Gauna. “This is like a family reunion. Would you like to see her?”
“Yes, I would,” said Gauna.
Another gesture, another Indian stood up, and Gauna followed after him, stiff and ill at ease. Mother and son were left alone together.
“There was something I still had to explain to you,” she said. “We have a little while before those babies decide to come out into the world, so I’ll try to satisfy your curiosity. But don’t expect to understand.”
“A few difficult arguments have managed to penetrate my thick skull.”
“None of them as difficult as this one, I can assure you. In fact, it’s not that it’s so difficult, more that it is such a broad issue. It’s one of those things that the whole of life, with its infinite variety, is insufficient to contain, precisely because that is what it is all about: the variety of life in its entirety.” She fell silent, then after a while began again on what seemed to be a completely different subject: “The Widow is a good friend of mine; and if she is here it’s because I asked her to come. It so happens that this girl Yñuy had a brief romance with one of my husband’s sons, Alvarito Reymacurá, and she became pregnant. After a few months I began to suspect she might be having twins. Although I said nothing, and advised her to do the same, Alvarito must have got wind of something, and he put her under the strictest surveillance. So we planned her escape, just at the moment when you were arriving at Salinas Grandes. Alerted by me, the Widow set out to look for Yñuy, and after a string of adventures finally caught up with her. Alvarito had also set off after her, and we learned you three were on her trail, for reasons we could not possibly imagine. . . .”
“It was simply because Carlos thought he was in love with her. But what were your motives?”
“The Piedra royal line is said to be based on twins, twins nobody has ever seen, although my husband encourages the belief that he is the twin of a dead brother. This could be seen as simply another of those harmless fantasies our menfolk are so addicted to, if it were not for the fact that it seriously affects us women. If we really did show them the twins, we would be finished.”
“Why’s that?” asked Clarke. Juana had pronounced her last sentence with such finality he was afraid she would not give any further explanation.
“We can put up with polygyny, war, word games, hallucinogens, shamans . . . no one can say we aren’t broad-minded. But there comes a point where we have to draw the line, otherwise we would no longer be women, which would mean the disappearance of a function that is all-important for the Mapuche: the continuation of the species. And that line is the one that separates fiction from reality. On this point, and only this one, we are completely inflexible, and we are not afraid of taking things to their ultimate conclusions, as recent events will have shown you. For the real world to continue to exist, the multiplication of the identical, of repeated images, must remain part of the imaginary world.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I didn’t expect you to. You yourself are part of the system of separation. And yet our mechanism, which keeps this real world turning, must have had its effect on you too. Because the dividing line is the sum of all our lives, it offers the possibility of love, adventure, knowledge. It is reproduction. One day you will understand.”
She had pronounced these last words, so typical of a mother, in great haste when she saw another Indian approaching. He bent down and whispered something to her. She looked up at the position of the moon, and stood up.
“This time I’ll wager it’s for real,” she said. “I’m going to Yñuy.”
She went off, and Carlos appeared almost immediately afterward.
&nb
sp; “She’s about to give birth,” he said, both excitement and fear in his voice. “She’s having contractions all the time. Poor thing! She’s more beautiful than ever. Do you know she’s going to have twins?”
“Yes, my mother told me.”
“Your mother! Isn’t that incredible? Aren’t you all shaken up? Do something, say something, Clarke, forget your English stiffness for once in your life. You know it could do you harm, it could cause heart failure. If I were you . . .”
“What?”
“I don’t know . . . I would have thrown myself in her arms, I would have called her ‘mother! mother!’ ” Carlos’s face was streaming with tears again. He jumped about like a man possessed.
“Don’t be crazy. Let me be as I am.”
“All right. Don’t get me wrong. Of course you’re fine as you are. It’s not for nothing that you’re my best friend, Clarke.” He embraced him, fighting back another flood of tears. “It’s just that so many things have happened. . . .”
“Did Yñuy recognize you?”
Carlos stared at him, surprised and somewhat offended.
