Ema the Captive

by Cesar Aira

  And so it was. The next day the cart returned, transformed into a huge wicker cage, divided into various levels and compartments that contained a hundred plump and colorful pheasants. The whole village came to see them being taken into the fort, where the officers and their cocottes would dispose of them in a couple of dinners.

  .

  A few weeks passed, and the payment failed to produce an instant transformation, which is to say that it produced no effect at all, since on the frontier the slightest delay suppressed any change in favor of eternal repetition. Apparently other deliveries were made, to other tribes, under cover of darkness; but no one could really be sure, not even the soldiers on guard. When night fell, everyone thought they could see carts loaded with money stealing away toward the forest. Discretion and mystery created an atmosphere of historical significance, to which no one was immune.

  Just as a void can attract everything within its range, thought Espina, a space that is overly full can expel everything of value, or value itself, in the direction of a certain person or anyone at all.

  The void is nature.

  But how could the world be overly full? Fullness, by definition, is never excessive.

  Money was Espina’s answer, quantities of money. True, nothing can be overly full, but this applies only to concrete things. Excess is an epiphenomenon of monetary systems, and could hardly exist without immense and incommensurable quantities of money.

  Such was the reasoning of this enigmatic printer of notes. The results of his operation were subjective. Suddenly, those remote and almost mythical Indians, the subjects of Catriel and Cafulcurá, the tributaries of the emperor Pincén, entered the sphere of daily imaginings, since they were all linked (or so it was supposed) by the bills that were circulating out there. And when the hototogisu sang at night, the settlers felt, for the first time, that its song, redolent of dealing and finance, mantled the one dream, shared by all. Espina was claiming Pringles’s place in the sun (or on the moon). The marvelous dawn set the crammed space turning, and pressed it, secreting a drop of gold in the brain of its inventions. The vast Indian empire became homologous with an art of interpretation. Even for the least poetic of souls, the vision of immensity was transformed by the idea of humankind burning incense before colored papers covered with numbers, because the numbers had a meaning that exceeded the realm of the human.

  The village was flooded with money. The wages of the soldiers had been multiplied by a hundred. Espina backed his currency with his stocks of Indian cash; the Indians, venturing into the absolute, issued their bills without any backing.

  Could it have been true that the colonel was sending millions and millions in his new currency to England? It was not impossible. If his idea, from the start, had been to consider the savage empire as a limitless territory (savagery itself had no limit, as his own behavior showed), there was no reason why it shouldn’t include an archipelago as distant as Great Britain. In any case, on the pound notes, he printed a portrait of the queen alongside his own.

  Meanwhile, in the fort and the village, life went on as before. The days were long strips of leisure and distraction, and people were treated as a part of each day and its atmospheric beauty. The timbó trees went on producing their effect on the fish, as arrows did on the ducks; the sound of dice on the gaming board continued to resonate as before, and in the evenings the water kept the bodies of the swimmers afloat.

  The Indians kept sending parties of emissaries. It seemed that they had much to discuss with the colonel.

  Although the common people barely glimpsed the diplomats passing by on their way to the fort, where the talks were held, they could not fail to be impressed by their splendor and magnificence. They had assumed that when it came to frivolity, they had seen it all. But now they realized their mistake. They were seeing things of which they had never even dreamed. The colonels’ bills had reached their far-flung addressees; now the replies were beginning to arrive, and being replies to money, they were necessarily sumptuous: infinite possibilities, reality entire, the treasure of the poor.

  As time went by, the diplomatic visits became more numerous. The members of the entourage generally preferred not to enter the fort; they would wait for their masters in the fields, beside a stream that ran into the river, underneath the trees. All the inhabitants of the village and the local Indians came to see them, and the contact with the strangers would sometimes last for days on end. The time they spent drinking and smoking together felt like pure magic. These were moments of learning, of watching and imitating. At first it all seemed so artificial, the hosts didn’t think they would ever dare to repeat what they had seen. But the novelty overcame them like an irresistible wave.

  Two or three parties or more, from different places, were often present at the same time. In which case veritable tournaments of elegance would unfold before the astonished eyes of the villagers. They were coming to realize how much importance they had granted to the inner life. The Indians could give them lessons in asceticism, obliterating everything beyond appearances.

  The men in particular, painted from head to foot, were so powerfully present, so solid and heavy, that their bodies left a deep impression long after they had gone. Their eyes were tiny and generally half closed. An observer at very close range would have seen their irises shining like polished black boot leather, and their pupils, by contrast, glinting like diamonds. Their eyebrows and lashes were plucked. They wore broad, malleable gold bracelets, to concentrate energy. Their arms and legs were tightly bound with strips of cotton. On their fingers, dozens of rings, which they would remove, as if they were gloves, for a specially effective throw of the dice. Later they would pick the rings up without looking and slip them back onto their oiled fingers, one by one.

  But their finest jewels — as they said themselves — were their gestures. Sleepily, darkly, slowly, with a fine awkwardness, they would extend an immaculate arm, like the wing of a swan, to lift a cup, and open their mouths unhurriedly, at irregular intervals, to draw on the cigarettes held by the women, and stretch their thick cylindrical legs on the grass in search of a more comfortable position. Their movements were the supreme crown of elegance: each time they lifted a cup to their lips, the choir of angels burst into song. The tensing or relaxing of a muscle, the transient line of a vein, the superslow wave that rocked a powerful back and shoulders . . . These were so many signs of wealth.

  As for the body painting, it defied all explanation; it was external to painting itself. Perfunctoriness had been a key aesthetic value among the Indians for centuries. Now they imitated the effect of a moth’s wing randomly scattering its dust, or the squirts of a sponge soaked in black ink and squeezed against the chest; a flimsy grid on a herculean body; a warrior with blue arms; another hastily daubed with a paint that cracked as it dried . . .

  There were many shaved and painted heads; the silver scalp was in fashion. The rest had slicked their horse-like manes with precious oils.

  They were aware of the dazzling effect their performances had on the white women. They used the marvelous gambits of etiquette to keep them in suspense. Of course, they were only minor courtiers; the VIPs met with the colonel in his salon. And their behavior, rumor had it, was utterly different, incomparably more refined.

  At dawn (in general, although it could happen at any other time), the doors of the fort, made of banana trunks, would swing open, and the chiefs would come out on their chubby colts, as if they were riding in their sleep. Everyone would try to catch a glimpse of them in the hazy light, although they were not at their best, with their paint all smeared and their shoulders drooping with fatigue. The orgy had drained them of all vitality, and it was time for them to leave.

  Abruptly abandoning their glamor, the warriors would leap onto their horses, the chiefs being in no mood to wait. There was not even time to say goodbye. Sometimes they would leave rings behind, or a die.

  The Indians al
ways seemed to be in the calm state that follows a storm of thought. That was why they were worth observing: to learn how a human being can recover from an upheaval that has not taken place. In a civilization like theirs, wisdom was everything. Imitating them was like returning to the source. Ele­gance is a religious, perhaps even a mystical, quality. The aesthetics of polite society: an imperative departure from the human. Sex and love were everything. According to Espina, love began with banking. But the Indians kept still; their sole occupation was hanging from the blue air like bats.

  Winter was approaching. Each night was a little longer than the last. The social life of the savages intensified. The cold made them sleepy, and they liked to fall asleep in the middle of their favorite activities. They practically lived by night, under the clear, icy autumn skies, shining with familiar constellations, which they could reproduce with threads when they played cat’s cradle. It was the season of love. The Indian women set the tone, looking beautiful with their bead necklaces looped as many as a hundred times, their well-brushed hair, black lacy masks painted onto the skin around their eyes, and their lips impregnated with gloss. Seduction was everywhere: a uniform field of passion and concentration. It became difficult to distinguish anything precise.

  The big lizards that had populated summer with their siestas began to emigrate, after covering the mossy stones with their eggs. The lightest of them spread their wings and flew away. But the rest were heavy, as big as iguanas and drenched with green sweat; they headed off briskly for the north of the province, to sun themselves on the backroads. They would not return.

  One day, the song and the untidy flight of some gray birds heralded the first snowfall. The next morning, the fields and the domes of the forest were white, the sky looked like wet paper, and a marvelous silence stretched away in all directions. Carts left black tracks in the street. The children built snowmen and ran around yelling, crazy with joy. The character of the landscape changed entirely. The white accentuated the women’s dark luminosity. The hunters, painted red and black, stood out in the still panoramas. And the blue of the soldiers’ uniforms blinked in the snow, as if hesitating between obtrusiveness and invisibility.

  The contemplation of the snows, of course, expanded leisure time. In the depths of the woods, fires were lit to warm groups of young people playing dice, or listening to the birds, or cuddling. The song of the cardinal passed into the languages of the whetted wind and journeyed all the way to the horizon. By night, the furtive call of the otter could be heard; and rabbits held the horses’ totalizing gaze with their superquick capering.

  .

  A calandra lark launched itself from the frosty hedge and flew effortfully to the eaves. The leaves crackled and broke, brittle as glass, under its claws as it walked. The cold had hardened all that was normally soft, including the lark’s tongue. The bird produced two long, inarticulate sounds, and then tried a trill that came out as a few staccato notes and a sneeze. Its throat was frozen. This was no climate for a singer. The hut was giving off an aura unlike that of the trees. The lark needed complications to survive. It shook the ice crystals out of its wing feathers.

  Ema heard the notes and slid back one of the white paper shutters to look. She had slept on a mat, covered with blankets. Gombo had left at dawn, and after breakfast she had lain down again. Pregnancy made her drowsy; she often slept for much of the day. Francisco was asleep in his crib, under a down quilt. From where she lay, Ema could see the sky through the open window. A uniform, shining gray.

  It must have been early. It would snow again, no doubt. Perhaps the lark would decide to come in.

  She was half asleep when she heard the child cry. A slight breeze, most unusual on a day of snow, shook the window papers, and then it was calm again.

  After a while, since Francisco had woken up and was crawling all around the room, looking for his marbles, Ema got up to make him breakfast. She gave him a bronze spoon with which to play the xylophone. She heated up some milk and poured it into a cup, which he knocked over. In a sudden fit of frustration with his own clumsiness, he threw the marbles out the window and laughed. Then he drank his milk enthusiastically. His mother wiped his face and combed his hair. She folded the mats, washed the dishes, and looked out the window. The glass marbles seemed to be floating on the snow. The anemones were still flowering, in spite of the cold, preserved by the supernatural calm of the previous days.

  The whiteness was excessive, perfect. It radiated even from the colors. The snow shone.

  She turned around suddenly, feeling that someone was watching her. Dazzled by the brightness, all she could see were shadows, but there was someone in the doorway. The silhouette of an Indian stood out against the background of the snowy street. Francisco stopped playing and watched him silently. There was something in his hand: a flute.

  He stepped inside and into the light from the window. He was a very slim young man, with small, almond-shaped eyes, barely open, like slits over his prominent cheekbones, and indistinct black painting on his arms. He looked at her blankly.

  Ema turned toward the stove and asked him if he wanted coffee.

  “Sure,” he said.

  He sat down and cradled Francisco in his arms. The child could not stop playing with the man’s superb black hair. All that brushing with oil gave the Indians’ hair a consistency unlike anything except the most diaphanous water.

  “I didn’t think you’d come today,” said Ema, bringing two coffee cups to the table.

  “Why not? It’s a perfect day to go to the forest and see the snow. You can’t stay shut up in here.”

  Ema shrugged.

  “I’m so sleepy all the time.”

  “You can sleep in the forest. We can spend the day there . . . When is your husband getting back?”

  “The day after tomorrow.”

  “Then we can go to a place far away, where you’ve never been, and fish, and stay for two nights. There’s bound to be a lot of snow; you’ll be surprised.”

  “Is it very far?”

  He gestured vaguely in the direction of the Pillahuinco, and since Ema had rolled him a cigarette, he put Francisco on the ground and took a couple of puffs. Then he went to get the horses, and they agreed to meet at the edge of the village.

  Ema dressed the child warmly and picked him up. Carrying a few things in a wicker box slung over her shoulder, she walked through the snow, in the midst of an absolute stillness, to the hill. Not a single birdcall: the fine leaves of the baccharis emerged from the mass of snow, the surface of which was broken here and there by the tracks of a horse or a chicken. She encountered no one on the way. On the hill she saw Mampucumapuro riding a little white mare and leading a big gray horse. A month earlier, in spite of her advanced pregnancy, Ema had begun a relationship with this young Indian, whom she had met on one of her excursions to the forest. When her husband was on guard duty, they would spend whole days and nights by the river. All they did was let the time go by. Winter was a very calm spell.

  He helped her to mount the horse and hung a little canvas seat from one side of the saddle for the child. They set off at walking pace, the hooves of the animals crunching in the snow. Instead of entering the forest immediately, they set off across a field beside it. Finally Mampucumapuro pointed to a barely visible path, and they headed in that direction.

  “I’ve never come this way,” said Ema, and the sound of her own voice startled her.

  “I know.”

  “It’s absolutely quiet.”

  He took out his flute and played a melody. It seemed to be the only sound emanating from the world. Ema was nodding, letting her eyes close, when she was startled by the sudden flight of a bird.

  “A water pheasant,” said the Indian.

  “I would have liked to see it.”

  A while later there was a noise among the branches.

  “It’s the mice.”

 
“I thought they spent winter down under the roots.”

  “There’s a species that prefers the cold.”

  When they reached the river, they saw a stone bridge. On the other side, they crossed an area of open ground. Trees appeared before them like ghosts.

  “The snow makes everything seem different,” said Ema.

  “It’s different,” said Mampucumapuro, laughing, “because we’re so far away.”

  “I’ve never come this far.”

  Mampucumapuro pointed toward the west.

  “There’s a village ten leagues in that direction. But we won’t have to go that far. We’re going to camp in a clearing I know.”

  When they reached the clearing, a precinct of snow surrounded by cypresses, Ema sensed a crystallized distance. The space was circular, and its silence preserved everything from disintegration, even randomly spoken words. Something on the ground caught her eye: a crushed parrot, wafer-thin, as if an enormous weight had pressed down on it. Those clean and brilliant colors against the snow made it one of the strangest things she had ever seen.

  A natural tower of rock rose above the river, with a spiral of worn steps and a terrace at the top, from which there was a splendid view: scattered blocks of ice in the water, and beyond that a plain stretching away further than the eye could see. When they swept away the snow, the original slabs of rock appeared, with paintings, and the traces of innumerable fires. Mampucumapuro had brought a bunch of dry branches, which he lit; later, he said, he’d go looking for firewood. But first, he was going for a swim.

  Watched by Ema, who was worried about the sharp blocks of ice in the water, he went down to an overhanging rock and dived in. A few seconds later he reappeared, a little further out, clasping a trunk of transparent ice. He swam vigorously against the current up to the bend, let himself drift back, and repeated the exercise several times before getting out of the water. He came back blue with cold and dripped on Ema and Francisco. He sat very close to the fire, as if he wanted to embrace the flames, and the water began to evaporate from his skin. Ema wrung his hair dry, down to the last drop, then plaited it.