Without ponchos to act as shields, they used their forearms to block each lunge of the knife. Their sleeves, soon hanging in shreds, grew black with blood. I thought that we had gone wrong in supposing that they knew nothing about this kind of fencing. I noticed right off that they handled themselves in different ways. Their weapons were unequal. Duncan, in order to make up for his disadvantage, tried to stay in close to the other man; Uriarte kept stepping back to be able to lunge out with long, low thrusts. The same voice that had called attention to the display cabinet shouted out now: “They’re killing each other! Stop them!”
But no one dared break it up. Uriarte had lost ground; Duncan charged him. They were almost body to body now. Uriarte’s weapon sought Duncan’s face. Suddenly the blade seemed shorter, for it was piercing the taller man’s chest. Duncan lay stretched out on the grass. It was at this point that he said, his voice very low, “How strange. All this is like a dream.”He did not shut his eyes, he did not move, and I had seen a man kill another man.
Maneco Uriarte bent over the body, sobbing openly, and begged to be forgiven. The thing he had just done was beyond him. I know now that he regretted less having committed a crime than having carried out a senseless act.
I did not want to look anymore. What I had wished for so much had happened, and it left me shaken. Lafinur told me later that they had had to struggle hard to pull out the weapon. A makeshift council was formed. They decided to lie as little as possible and to elevate this duel with knives to a duel with swords. Four of them volunteered as seconds, among them Acebal. In Buenos Aires anything can be fixed; someone always has a friend.
On top of the mahogany table where the men had been playing, a pack of English cards and a pile of bills lay in a jumble that nobody wanted to look at or to touch.
In the years that followed, I often considered revealing the story to some friend, but always I felt that there was a greater pleasure in being the keeper of a secret than in telling it. However, around 1929, a chance conversation suddenly moved me one day to break my long silence. The retired police captain, don José Olave, was recalling stories about men from the tough riverside neighborhood of the Retiro who had been handy with their knives; he remarked that when they were out to kill their man, scum of this kind had no use for the rules of the game, and that before all the fancy playing with daggers that you saw now on the stage, knife fights were few and far between. I said I had witnessed one, and gave him an account of what had happened nearly twenty years earlier.
He listened to me with professional attention, then said, “Are you sure Uriarte and What’s-His-Name never handled a knife before? Maybe they had picked up a thing or two around their fathers’ ranches.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Everybody there that night knew one another pretty well, and I can tell you they were all amazed at the way the two men fought.”
Olave went on in his quiet manner, as if thinking aloud, “One of the weapons had a U-shaped crosspiece in the handle. There were two daggers of that kind which becamequite famous—Moreira’s and Juan Almada’s. Almada was from down south, in Tapalquén.”
Something seemed to come awake in my memory. Olave continued. “You also mentioned a knife with a wooden handle, one with the Little Tree brand. There are thousands of them, but there was one—”
He broke off for a moment, then said, “Señor Acevedo had a big property up around Pergamino. There was another of these famous tough, from up that way—Juan Almanza was his name. This was along about the turn of the century. When he was fourteen, he killed his first man with one of these knives. From then on, for luck, he stuck to the same one. Juan Almanza and Juan Almada had it in for each other, jealous of the fact that many people confused the two. For a long time they searched high and low for one another, but they never met. Juan Almanza was killed by a stray bullet during some election brawl or other. The other man, I think, died a natural death in a hospital bed in Las Flores.”
Nothing more was said. Each of us was left with his own conclusions.
Nine or ten men, none of whom is any longer living, saw what my eyes saw—that sudden stab and the body under the night sky—but perhaps what we were really seeing was the end of another story, an older story. I began to wonder whether it was Maneco Uriarte who killed Duncan or whether in some uncanny way it could have been the weapons, not the men, which fought. I still remember how Uriarte’s hand shook when he first gripped his knife, and the same with Duncan, as though the knives were coming awake after a long sleep side by side in the cabinet. Even after their gauchos were dust, the knives—the knives, not their tools, the men—knew how to fight. And that night they fought well.
Things last longer than people; who knows whether these knives will meet again, who knows whether the story ends here.
Pedro Salvadores
To Juan Murchison
(1969)
I want to leave a written record (perhaps the first to be attempted) of one of the strangest and grimmest happenings in Argentine history. To meddle as little as possible in the telling, to abstain from picturesque details or personal conjectures is, it seems to me, the only way to do this.
A man, a woman, and the overpowering shadow of a dictator are the three characters. The man’s name was Pedro Salvadores; my grandfather Acevedo saw him days or weeks after the dictator’s downfall in the battle of Caseros. Pedro Salvadores may have been no different from anyone else, but the years and his fate set him apart. He was a gentleman like many other gentlemen of his day. He owned (let us suppose) a ranch in the country and, opposed to the tyranny, was on the Unitarian side. His wife’s family name was Planes; they lived together on Suipacha Street near the corner of Temple in what is now the heart of Buenos Aires. The house in which the event took place was much like any other, with its street door, long arched entranceway, inner grillwork gate, its rooms, its row of two or three patios. The dictator, of course, was Rosas.
One night, around 1842, Salvadores and his wife heard the growing, muffled sound of horses’ hooves out on the unpaved street and the riders shouting their drunken vivas and their threats. This time Rosas’ henchmen did not ride on. After the shouts came repeated knocks at the door; while the men began forcing it, Salvadores was able to pull the dining-room table aside, lift the rug, and hide himself down in the cellar. His wife dragged the table back in place. The mazorca broke into the house; they had come to take Salvadores. The woman said her husband had run away to Montevideo. The men did not believe her; they flogged her, they smashed all the blue chinaware (blue was the Unitarian color), they searched the whole house, but they never thought of lifting the rug. At midnight they rode away, swearing that they would soon be back.
Here is the true beginning of Pedro Salvadores’ story. He lived nine years in the cellar. For all we may tell ourselves that years are made of days and days of hours and that nine years is an abstract term and an impossible sum, the story is nonetheless gruesome. I suppose that in the darkness, which his eyes somehow learned to decipher, he had no particular thoughts, not even of his hatred or his danger. He was simply there—in the cellar—with echoes of the world he was cut off from sometimes reaching him from overhead: his wife’s footsteps, the bucket clanging against the lip of the well, a heavy rainfall in the patio. Every day of his imprisonment, for all he knew, could have been the last.
His wife let go all the servants, who could possibly have informed against them, and told her family that Salvadores was in Uruguay. Meanwhile, she earned a living for them both sewing uniforms for the army. In the course of time, she gave birth to two children; her family turned from her, thinking she had a lover. After the tyrant’s fall, they got down on their knees and begged to be forgiven.
What was Pedro Salvadores? Who was he? Was it his fear, his love, the unseen presence of Buenos Aires, or—in the long run—habit that held him prisoner? In order to keep him with her, his wife would make up news to tell him about whispered plots and rumored victories. Maybe he was a cowar
d and she loyally hid it from him that she knew. I picture him in his cellar perhaps without a candle, without a book. Darkness probably sank him into sleep. His dreams, at the outset, were probably of that sudden night when the blade sought his throat, of the streets he knew so well, of the open plains. As the years went on, he would have been unable to escape even in his sleep; whatever he dreamed would have taken place in the cellar. At first, he may have been a man hunted down, a man in danger of his life; later (we will never know for certain), an animal at peace in its burrow or a sort of dim god.
All this went on until that summer day of 1852 when Rosas fled the country. It was only then that the secret man came out into the light of day; my grandfather spoke with him. Flabby, overweight, Salvadores was the color of wax and could not speak above a low voice. He never got back his confiscated lands; I think he died in poverty.
As with so many things, the fate of Pedro Salvadores strikes us as a symbol of something we are about to understand, but never quite do.
Rosendo’s Tale
(1969)
It was about eleven o’clock at night; I had entered the old grocery store-bar (which today is just a plain bar) at the corner of Bolívar and Venezuela. From off on one side a man signaled me with a “psst.” There must have been something forceful in his manner because I heeded him at once. He was seated at one of the small tables in front of an empty glass, and I somehow felt he had been sitting there for a long time. Neither short nor tall, he had the appearance of a common working man or maybe an old farmhand. His thin moustache was graying. Fearful of his health, like most people in Buenos Aires, he had not taken off the scarf that draped his shoulders. He asked me to have a drink with him. I sat down and we chatted. All this took place sometime back in the early thirties. This is what the man told me.
You don’t know me except maybe by reputation, but I know who you are. I’m Rosendo Juárez. The late Paredes must have told you about me. The old man could pull the wool over people’s eyes and liked to stretch a point—not to cheat anybody, mind you, but just in fun. Well, seeing you and I have nothing better to do, I’m going to tell you exactly what happened that night. The night the Butcher got killed. You put all that down in a storybook, which I’m not equipped to pass judgment on, but I want you to know the truth about all that trumped-up stuff.
Things happen to you and it’s only years later you begin understanding them. What happened to me that night really had its start a long time back. I grew up in the neighborhood of the Maldonado, way out past Floresta. The Maldonado was just a ditch then, a kind of sewer, and it’s a good thing they’ve covered it over now. I’ve always been of the opinion that the march of progress can’t be held back—not by anybody. Anyway, a man’s born where he’s born. It never entered my head to find out who my father was. Clementina Juárez—that was my mother—was a decent woman who earned a living doing laundry. As far as I know, she was from Entre Ríos or Uruguay; anyhow, she always talked about her relatives from Concepción del Uruguay. I grew up like a weed. I first learned to handle a knife the way everyone else did, fencing with a charred stick. If you jabbed your man, it left a mark. Soccer hadn’t taken us over yet—it was still in the hands of the English.
One night at the corner bar a young guy named Garmendia began taunting me, trying to pick a fight. I played deaf, but this other guy, who’d had a few, kept it up. We stepped out. Then from the sidewalk he swung open the door and said back inside to the people, “Don’t anybody worry, I’ll be right back.”
I somehow got hold of a knife. We went off toward the brook, slow, our eyes on each other, He had a few years on me. We’d played at that fencing game a number of times together, and I had the feeling he was going to cut me up in ribbons. I went down the right-hand side of the road and he went down the left. He stumbled on some dry clods of mud. That moment was all I needed. I got the jump on him, almost without thinking, and opened a slice in his face. We got locked in a clinch, there was a minute when anything might have happened, and in the end I got my knife in and it was all over. Only later on did I find out I’d been cut up, too. But only a few scratches. That night I saw how easy it was to kill a man or to get killed. The water in the brook was pretty low; stalling for time, I half hid him behind one of the brick kilns. Fool that I was, I went and slipped off that fancy ring of his that he always wore with the nice stone in it. I put it on, I straightened my hat, and I went back to the bar. I walked in nonchalant, saying to them, “Looks like the one who came back was me.”
I asked for a shot of rum and, to tell the truth, I needed it bad. It was then somebody noticed the blood on my sleeve.
I spent that whole night tossing and turning on my cot, and it was almost light outside before I dropped off and slept. Late the next day two cops came looking for me. My mother (may she rest in peace) began shrieking. They herded me along just like I was some kind of criminal. Two nights and two days I had to wait there in the cooler. Nobody came to see me, either, outside of Luis Irala—a real friend—only they wouldn’t let him in. Then the third morning the police captain sent for me. He sat there in his chair, not even looking at me, and said, “So you’re the one who took care of Garmendia, are you?”
“If that’s what you say,” I answered.
“You call me sir. And don’t get funny or try beating around the bush. Here are the sworn statements of witnesses and the ring that was found in your house. Just sign this confession and get it over with.”
He dipped the pen in the inkwell and handed it to me. “Let me do some thinking, Captain sir,” I came out with. “I’ll give you twenty-four hours where you can do some hard thinking—in the cooler. I’m not going to rush you. If you don’t care to see reason, you can get used to the idea of a little vacation up on Las Heras—the penitentiary.”
As you can probably imagine, I didn’t understand.
“Look,” he said, “if you come around, all you’ll get is a few days. Then I’ll let you go, and don Nicolás Paredes has already given me his word he’ll straighten things out for you.”
Actually, it was ten days. Then at last they remembered me. I signed what they wanted, and one of the two cops took me around to Paredes’ house on Cabrera Street.
Horses were tied to the hitching post, and in the entranceway and inside the place there were more people than around a whorehouse. It looked to me like the party headquarters. Don Nicolás, who was sipping his maté, finally got around to me. Taking his good time, he told me he was sending me out to Morón, where they were getting ready for the elections. He was putting me in touch with Mr. Laferrer, who would try me out. He had the letter written by some kid all dressed in black, who, from what I heard, made up poems about tenements and filth—stuff that no refined public would dream of reading. I thanked Paredes for the favor and left. When I got to the corner, the cop wasn’t tailing me any more.
Providence knows what it’s up to; everything had turned out for the best. Garmendia’s death, which at first had caused me a lot of worry, now opened things up for me. Of course, the law had me in the palm of their hands. If I was no use to the party they’d clap me back inside, but I felt pretty good and was counting on myself.
Mr. Laferrer warned me I was going to have to walk the straight and narrow with him, and said if I did I might even become his bodyguard. I came through with what was expected of me. In Morón, and later on in my part of town, I earned the trust of my bosses. The cops and the party kept on building up my reputation as a tough guy. I turned out to be pretty good at organizing the vote around the polls here in the capital and out in the province. I won’t take up your time going into details about brawls and bloodletting, but let me tell you, in those days elections were lively affairs. I could never stand the Radicals, who down to this day are still hanging onto the beard of their chief Alem. There wasn’t a soul around who didn’t hold me in respect. I got hold of a woman, La Lujanera, and a finelooking sorrel. For years I tried to live up to the part of the outlaw Moreira, who, in his tim
e—the way I figure it—was probably trying to play the part of some other gaucho outlaw. I took to cards and absinthe.
An old man has a way of rambling on and on, but now I’m coming to the part I want you to hear. I wonder if I’ve already mentioned Luis Irala. The kind of friend you don’t find every day. Irala was a man already well along in years. He never was afraid of work, and he took a liking to me. In his whole life he never had anything to do with politics. He was a carpenter by trade. He never caused anyone trouble and never allowed anyone to cause him trouble. One morning he came to see me and he said, “Of course, you’ve heard by now that Casilda’s left me. Rufino Aguilera took her away from me.”
I’d known that customer around Morón. I answered, “Yes, I know all about him. Of all the Aguileras, he’s the least rotten.”
“Rotten or not, now he’ll have to reckon with me.”
I thought that over for a while and told him, “Nobody takes anything away from anybody. If Casilda left you, it’s because she cares for Rufino and you mean nothing to her.”
“And what are people going to say? That I’m a coward?”
“My advice is don’t get yourself mixed up in gossip about what people might say or about a woman who has no use for you.”
“It’s not her I’m worried about. A man who thinks five minutes straight about a woman is no man, he’s a queer. Casilda has no heart. The last night we spent together she told me I wasn’t as young as I used to be.”
“Maybe she was telling you the truth.”
“That’s what hurts. What matters to me now is Rufino.”
“Be careful there. I’ve seen Rufino in action around the polls in Merlo. He’s a flash with a knife.”
“You think I’m afraid of him?”
“I know you’re not afraid of him, but think it over. One of two things—if you kill him, you get put away; if he kills you, you go six feet under.”
Short Stories of Jorge Luis Borges - The Giovanni Translations Page 12
