by Cesar Aira
“All your painting has come off,” she said.
It was true: his arms were clean.
“I’ll redo it later on, and better. On the bank I saw little black berries, the ones that have the best pigment.”
He was especially fond of black body paint, just as others preferred red or gold. He would quite frequently stain himself black from head to foot.
They unfolded a board and began to play dice. Chance, as always, revealed itself with a special intensity. It was as if each throw of the dice contained an enigma to be deciphered by the next throw, which contained an enigma in turn. It was a continuous, eternal game, the Indians’ favorite. They used about fifty dice, so small they could all be held in one hand, with unique figures on every face, which made a total of three hundred different miniatures. At first it seemed too complicated, but with a little practice it became so easy you could see why it was called “the daydreamer’s game.”
They had to keep an eye on Francisco, who like all children was irresistibly drawn to the dice. Mampucumapuro had a beautiful set, made of hard wood with enameled designs.
“My older daughter got hold of them one day,” he said, “and scattered them, but I was able to find them all, except for one, which I had to make again.”
He rummaged through them with a fingertip and picked one out. On its faces were a tree, a snail, a window, a martin, a cloth, and a crumpled pointy hat.
“Did you do the painting yourself?”
“Except for the cloth. A simple design is the hardest of all for the amateur miniaturist. One little careless mistake and it could be a picture of anything. The solution would be to turn it into something really difficult, but then it would be beyond me.”
They played for a few hours, until they felt hungry. Mampucumapuro picked up his bow and arrows and looked into the forest.
“I’ll be right back,” he said.
He went off stepping carefully on the snow and disappeared into the trees. Left alone, Ema stoked the fire with a ball of resin. The silence was complete. She wondered if he’d be able to find any game: the world seemed so mute and deserted. Francisco played, throwing handfuls of snow into the fire. Ema rubbed oil into his hands. An owl flew past very low, with watery movements. She heard Mampucumapuro’s steps; he was coming back. He had barely been gone a second, it seemed. Several fat birds and a bag of eggs were hanging from his belt. They plucked the birds, stuffed them with the eggs and some herbs, sprinkled them with cognac, and put them on to roast. Soon a delicious aroma was rising from the fire.
“Are they charatas?”
“Maybe. They were asleep, with their eyes open.”
With some of the feathers, Mampucumapuro made darts to amuse Francisco. He doused the charatas with liquor again, which made the fire hiss, and finally removed them from the spits. All three ate enthusiastically.
Mampucumapuro promised to make more of an effort with the evening meal (the little birds had lacked flavor, he felt) and fell asleep smoking a cigar that Ema held for him. Then she fell asleep as well, with Francisco curled up against her chest, and when they woke up, the light had changed; it was more civilized, and the sky was a deep, dark silver color. They stoked the fire, which was going out. They played dice again while drinking coffee, then talked. Mampucumapuro played his flute; they invented amusements for the child. That afternoon marked a high point in their romance. It seemed immensely long. But they could see its end approaching. Emma crushed the little paper teacups and tossed them into the water. Dusk declared itself with opulent colors. A violet ceiling of clouds that lasted and lasted. Francisco had fallen asleep, and the lovers, in each other’s arms, gazed into the strange, incomprehensible distances, waiting for something sublime that there was no need to wait for, since it was happening continually, without any kind of display.
In the last of the light, Mampucumapuro set off to get something for dinner. He returned with birds, freshly cut palm hearts, and a little peccary that he had found whimpering on a floating island of wisteria in the river, too scared to swim. Soon darkness fell.
Around midnight they heard noises. They were playing dice by the light of the fire. The moon had not yet risen, although, in its usual leisurely way, it was already spreading a glow from below the horizon. They couldn’t see anything — Mampucumapuro guessed that the noise was a deer — but they must have been clearly visible themselves. Finally, youthful voices called out:
“Hey! Hey, dice-players!”
A party on horseback approached the tower, and made a commotion at its base. Ema and Mampucumapuro watched the strangers climb the stone steps and appear in the golden circle of firelight: several young people of both sexes, from an unknown tribe, who greeted them with bows and asked permission to warm themselves.
“Of course,” said Mampucumapuro. “Come and sit with us. Where are you from?”
One pointed westward.
“Are you subjects of Caful?”
They didn’t even know who he was. They came from much further away.
When the strangers discovered that Mampucumapuro and Ema were from Pringles (and that Ema was white, a detail that wasn’t necessarily obvious at first glance), their interest grew. It struck her as odd that something as utterly mundane as the eastern edge of the Indian world could arouse curiosity. But perhaps it wasn’t odd, just another confirmation of the world’s enormous size, and the movement of time, which put humanity into perspective.
The newcomers settled down confidently by the fire, their body painting faded, barely visible, as if they had ridden in the rain. But enough of it remained to show that the designs had been extremely elaborate. They had brought a considerable amount to drink, and the first thing they did was propose a toast to the encounter. The women started rolling cigarettes. These were clearly not the sort of people who sleep at night. They seemed very alert. They were so aesthetic, or such aesthetes, that Ema felt they lent themselves too easily to parody. It must have been deliberate. They took out instruments: triangular harps the size of a hand, slide whistles that sounded like froglets, and little bark trumpets. To them, Mampucumapuro’s flute with its thirty-six keys must have seemed clunky and outmoded.
The Indian women admired Francisco. A few of them were pregnant like Ema, and joked with her. Everything related to childbearing made them laugh — in their abstracted and melancholic civilization, birth was hilarious.
Later they played dice, which provided another kind of music. The snow, with its unique acoustic qualities, gave a special resonance to the sharp little sound of the dice on the board, and the blocks of ice colliding, and the voices of the Indians asking over and over: Are you asleep?
A ritual question, posed in a special voice, as dry as the whispering of reeds. Repeated again and again, like birdsong in a thicket.
By dawn the snow had stopped falling. The Indians drank boiling hot coffee and roasted little turkey hens. The men wanted to go swimming to wash off all the body paint before decorating themselves again. So they dived in with pumice stones and rubbed themselves until they were blank. They swam, pushing aside shells of ice and frozen tuna. When they got out, the sun was already beginning to rise, as white and silent as the world it illuminated. The women had made coffee and tea, and the men huddled together by the fire with their cups, laughing uncontrollably.
Once they were dry, they went to gather berries with which to stain themselves, and since these were berries of the finest quality, they stocked up. They crushed and boiled them to make a thick ink, which was best applied when still warm. They painted themselves with their fingers, disdaining the conventional brushes and straws, with rapid gestures and absent gazes, as if the resulting patterns made no difference and all they wanted was to get the task done. They painted Mampucumapuro too, and Ema: a discreet circle around her navel, which had been effaced by the distension of her belly. They threw what was left of the paint into the water: soft
black arrows that trembled as they sank.
Wearied by the work, they smoked for a while, admiring each other.
“It’s time to go,” they said.
It seemed that they had important business somewhere, although they didn’t say what it was. They whistled up their horses, who were nibbling at mushrooms among the trees, and took their leave flamboyantly.
“We leave you these bottles as a memento, so you can drink to our health.”
“We will.”
“Goodbye. See you.”
Left alone, Mampucumapuro, Ema and the child suddenly felt exhausted. Their guests had worn them out with their superhuman refinement. They needed this silence. They drank and smoked for a while and, when they began to feel drowsy, rubbed themselves with resin in case it snowed. Soon they were asleep.
They woke up well into the afternoon. It had snowed, and the three of them were surrounded by the most immaculate white; the Indian’s outstretched body, painted and oiled, seemed a sleeping incarnation of all the savage splendors. For a moment after opening her eyes, Ema didn’t recognize him; she looked around at the white sky and the white crowns of the trees. The river was murmuring. She breathed deeply and felt the icy air rush into her lungs.
When Mampucumapuro woke up, he put a few armfuls of wood on the fire, picked up his bow and went hunting. He was back soon, as before, this time with an unbeatable catch: a ninety-pound duck, with red circles on its golden-brown plumage. He had shot an arrow through its neck.
They dined before the sunset’s barbaric spectacle. As always at those latitudes, dusk brought together unrelated cosmic phenomena. And even though it was snowing, half the sky was a dark blue. Great bolts of lightning reclined on the horizon, beneath a fantastic rainbow. The stars grew, and a snowy moon rose over the white trees.
“At this time of day,” said the Indian, “everything blends and is reconciled, as in a picture.”
Ema was cutting pieces from the duck’s breast for Francisco.
“A picture?”
“The world represents the brevity of life, the insignificance of humans.” He made a sweeping gesture with the wing he was holding. “The fleetingness of life is eternal.”
They tossed the bones into the river. In the distance they could hear the flamingos’ cry announcing nightfall. They set off back to Pringles.
.
“Will Espina’s peace last a thousand years?” Gombo asked himself one night.
A pink paper lamp was shining in the middle of the room, and each time a gust of wind got in and made the flame flicker, the darkness in the corners jumped around amusingly, or the glow rose to the ceiling and lit up a golden fiber in the straw.
Freshly bathed and naked in his cot, Francisco laughed with half-closed eyes each time Gombo offered him a rattle. His bursts of drowsy laughter faded gradually until he fell asleep. Ema asked Gombo to stay there for a while or the child would start crying again. His little eyelids were turning pale. Gombo covered him and waited without moving. He was dressed in the white baggy trousers that he wore around the house and a starched white shirt. The kitchen fire kept the hut warm inside, but they could hear the wind blowing, laden with sleet and snow. A wild storm had broken at dusk, so they would be spending the evening on their own.
Gombo went to the table and poured himself a glass of wine from an opened bottle. He listened to the sounds of the wind and the thunder:
“It’ll be worse for them up there,” he said, pointing in the direction of the fort.
“Do they mount a guard when there’s a storm?”
“In theory. But those towers are really flimsy, so the watchmen climb down and sleep at the base of them as soon as it begins to snow.”
They remained silent for a while. Ema was working over by the kitchen. Gombo offered to light another lamp for her. They had a shelf full of them, all made of paper, and all broken in some way; they used them for going out at night.
“There’s no need. I’ve nearly finished.”
“What’s that I can smell? A duck?”
“No, it’s a guinea fowl. I bought it this afternoon from a man who was going past on a tall horse, a hunter.”
“He must have been a trapper. Guinea fowl are easy game, easy money. Was he an Indian?”
“Yes, with black leaves tattooed on his chest.”
What a pleasure conversation is, thought Gombo. They spoke of other things. A brown moth fluttered down from the ceiling. It was midnight. Ema got up again to take the bird out of the oven. The guinea fowl crackled in its gravy and gave off a swirl of golden vapor that enveloped her. With the utmost care she transferred it to a serving dish and poured the gravy into a bowl. Her husband was watching her, as always, with inexhaustible surprise. Although she was now on the point of giving birth, she had a mysterious agility. Everything was mysterious, but no one ever spoke of that on the frontier. Besides, the guinea fowl was already on the table, and it looked delicious. Gombo had slept all day, so he hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. He made Ema sit down and went to get two clean glasses, then opened a bottle of champagne that he had won at dice, muffling the pop with a handkerchief so as not to wake Francisco. The lamplight had gradually weakened to a pleasant, dim yellow glow; the oven was still radiating warmth, although the fire was out; and, to accentuate the cosiness, the storm unleashed its full fury.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the wind swept up the hut and blew it to the other side of the forest,” said Gombo.
He fetched a long, narrow knife and carved the bird expertly. The flesh was very soft. He gave Ema a wing, chose a drumstick for himself, and poured a spoonful of gravy over each piece.
They ate in silence, hearing all the noises of the storm renew themselves. The wind seemed to come and go, and there were gusts that crashed into the walls of the hut with a sound like thunder.
Ema ate just one piece of the fowl and drank a glass of wine; then she got up from the table.
“Don’t you want any more? You should keep your strength up.”
She shook her head and sat down in the rocking chair, at the edge of the lamplight, half closing her eyes. She put her hands on her belly.
“So restless!”
Gombo went over to feel for himself. She showed him where to place his hands, and he waited; eventually there was a big thump and a tumble, so unexpected that they burst out laughing.
“He’s stretching as if he’d just woken up. Do you think he sleeps like we do?”
“He sleeps when you’re asleep.”
Gombo passed Ema an apple, which she nibbled halfheartedly, while he disposed of the rest of the guinea fowl and the bottle of wine. Then he leaned back in the chair and looked at her again. She had closed her eyes.
“Are you sleepy?”
“No, I don’t think so. I slept all day.”
Gombo produced a bottle of cognac and two glasses, which he warmed slightly over the candle before filling them. He took just a sip and got up again, to make the coffee.
“On a night like this,” he said, “there’s no rush to get to bed because you know that sooner or later you’ll fall asleep anyway.”
“Some people can’t get to sleep when there’s a storm.”
“But we’re not like that, are we? No one has trouble sleeping in Pringles. Sometimes I wonder . . . if sleep doesn’t form a part of the landscape and the society we live in. But how could we quantify it?”
For a while he pondered this question. Ema had begun to roll two little cigarettes, and as her husband watched, captivated by the sure movements of her fingers, his meditation took a turn.
“Why is it . . .” he said in a dreamy voice, leaving the question incomplete.
Ema looked up.
“Why is it,” he repeated, “that women roll men’s cigarettes?”
Ema was accustomed to these interrogative epiphan
ies. Her husband seemed to have a gift for coming up with the most unexpected questions, distilling them from any situation, even the most trivial.
“Why, indeed?” she said, but he was too absorbed to notice her mocking tone, and simply repeated:
“Why?”
Ema slipped a rolled mulberry leaf into the lamp and used it to light the cigarettes. They began to smoke.
Gombo hadn’t finished. After the first puff he went on talking.
“Just then, when I was looking at you, something occurred to me that actually has nothing to do with the cigarettes: why do pregnant women take up so much space? I don’t understand.”
“Space?”
“It’s incomprehensible. What I mean is, they become space,” said Gombo.
“They say that pregnant women are always seeing other pregnant women wherever they go. Does that answer your question?”
“No.”
“Anyhow, there’d be no way to test it here.”
“True. All the women are gestating. What else is there for them to do? At least it’s a way of passing the time. Besides, that’s why they’ve been sent to the desert. To populate it.”
These were old Liberal jokes, which Gombo repeated out of habit, but his mind was elsewhere.
“When I said space, I meant something else. Where do children come from? When will the world be totally populated?”
“There are answers to all these questions.”
“I know, my girl . . . But . . . sexual things are invisible. They don’t show.”
Gombo concluded with a vague gesture, wreathing himself in smoke. But the water was already boiling, so he slowly filtered the coffee. Its aroma made him chuckle: he had remembered something.
“My grandmother used to say: ‘Nothing smells more gossipy than coffee.’ ”
They filled the cups and drank in silence. Then they poured themselves more cognac. The cigarettes had gone out; Ema rolled another two. How distant the storm was beginning to seem! And yet how close! All they had to do was reach out and touch it . . . But they preferred not to.
