Ema the Captive Read online

  also by césar aira from new directions

  * * *

  Conversations

  Dinner

  An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter

  Ghosts

  The Hare

  How I Became a Nun

  The Literary Conference

  The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira

  The Musical Brain

  The Seamstress and the Wind

  Shantytown

  Varamo

  Contents

  EMA, THE CAPTIVE

  Author’s note

  EMA, THE CAPTIVE

  .

  A wagon train was traveling slowly at daybreak; the soldiers leading the way swayed in the saddle half asleep, their mouths full of rancid saliva. With the change of season, they had been made to get up a few minutes earlier each day, so they went on sleeping as they rode, league after league, until the sun came up. The horses were spellbound or terrified by the mournful sound their hooves made on the plain, and by the contrast between the shadowy earth and the diaphanous depths of the air. The illumination of the sky seemed to be proceeding too quickly, without allowing night sufficient time to dissolve.

  Unsheathed swords hung from the soldiers’ belts. The cloth of their uniforms had been cut by clumsy hands, and the oversize kepis on their shaved heads made them look like boys. Those who were smoking were no more awake than the rest: lifting the cigarette and inhaling deeply were dream gestures. The smoke dissipated in the icy breeze. Birds scattered into the gray radiance, without making a sound. The prevailing silence was accentuated now and then by the distant cry of a lapwing, or the anxious, very high-pitched puffing of the horses; if not for the somnolence of their riders, they would have gone tearing off to their ruin, they were so spooked by the earth. But nothing emerged from those shadows, except, now and then, a weary hare running away through the grass, or a moth with six pairs of wings.

  The oxen, by contrast — stumpy-legged creatures, which looked, in the halfslight, like caterpillars wriggling in a swamp — were completely mute; no one had ever heard them come out with so much as a murmur. There was only the sound of the water inside them, because they drank dozens of gallons a day; they were full, drunk on water. Four pairs pulled each of the wagons, which were as big as buildings. Their progress was so slow, and the amount of force required to move them so great, that they glided along with an imperturbable ease. The evenness of the terrain helped too, and above all the enormous diameter of the wheels, made of red wood, with a hollow metal globe at the hub, which was filled twice a day with honey-colored grease. The first wagons were covered and full of boxes, the rest were open and crowded with a motley throng, dozing or wearily shifting their chained limbs the better to stare at a blank and distant horizon.

  But the sepia and bister light did not continue to brighten progressively. There came a moment when it began to fade, as if the day were yielding to an eternally impatient night; and soon, to complete the picture, it was raining darkly. The soldiers took the ponchos rolled up on their saddles and put them on, moving as listlessly as the indecisive rain that moistened their hands and released a penetrating odor from the horses’ coats. The men and the women in the wagons did not move, except for one or two who raised their faces corpse-like to let the floating drizzle rinse them. Not one of them spoke. Some had not opened their eyes. Little by little the light returned and the clouds turned white. The lack of wind made the scene unreal.

  After three or four hours, the rain stopped as it had begun, leaving the ground covered with reflections, transformed into another sky, no less terrifying for the fainthearted horses. At the tail end of the wagon train, a herd of two hundred grays straggled along: the reserves. They were very thin, with big expressive faces and heavy eyes. It had already been necessary to sacrifice many of the horses that had been ridden, and this would continue, so that all those in the rear guard would eventually be used. Dazed and barely able to see, the slightest stumble or the harmless bite of a toad was enough to put them out of action. In which case, of course, they were eaten: it was a kind of poetic justice.

  So regular was the pampa’s surface that, in the course of the whole morning, they encountered only one unevenness, which obliged them to deviate by no more than a few hundred yards from the straight line indicated by the guides: a set of deep ravines produced by some ancient geological disturbance, with walls of white and brown limestone, recently washed by the rain, in which the burrows of viscachas shone like onyx. Quivering bunches of dry jonquils hung over the edges, and a large rufous-collared sparrow shook the water from its feathers with vigorous wing-beats. Coming to the gullies, the soldiers seemed to emerge from their somnolence. One of them, a hirsute and scruffy man, went to the lieutenant and asked for permission to hunt viscachas for lunch. The officer merely shrugged his shoulders, making no effort to conceal how little he cared what they did or didn’t do.

  There were shouts, and ten soldiers broke away from the troop, heading for the ravines. The unexpectedness of the galloping threw the horses into a state of absolute terror; they flung their legs about randomly in a parody of a race, with their heads flailing and their vision obscured by bloody tears. Luckily for them, although they didn’t know it, this kind of hunt was conducted on foot.

  It was a lively and even colorful operation, given the relentless monotony of the background against which it unfolded. A man would put his face to the mouth of a burrow and yell out sharply. The viscachas, fast asleep at that time of day, would come rushing out without thinking, to be decapitated immediately. The men had to work with both hands (using a saber and a dagger that they called a facón) so abundant were the animals that sprang from the depths. They were harder to catch once they got out into the open or when two emerged at once; but in that case they were stabbed as they tried to climb up the cliffs, pinned against the soft limestone. The soldiers sweated as they ran around slashing at the big white rodents, many of which came out carrying their young, which remained beside the decapitated bodies of their mothers, lapping up the blood. The men were pleased to see that they were plump, in fine condition. The biggest were three feet long, and when one slipped away and ran among the legs of the horses, which were unnerved already by the powerful stench of blood, havoc broke loose. The countless dogs that were following the wagons ran to the gully, barking like demons. They dared to bite only the wounded viscachas, and more than one was accidentally slashed by a saber or deliberately beaten to a pulp if it tried to steal from the catch. It was miraculous that the dogs had survived, since they were never fed, and even more miraculous that they had persisted in the journey. Once the last viscacha was laid out between the stream and the puddles of blood, the men tied them into bunches by their tails; but before getting back onto their horses, they went looking for the young, no bigger than a fist at that time of year. They used the tips of their knives to open a hole in the stomach of the live animal, to which they applied their lips. With a single suck they ingested the soft, warm insides, all blood and milk. They threw the little empty bags that were left to the dogs, who had to make do with that, and the odd severed head.

  Meanwhile, the wagon train had moved on, and was now a couple of leagues ahead. After midday it began to drizzle again, and the lieutenant gave the order to halt for lunch.

  Beside the wagons, the soldiers constructed hemispheres of tarred paper to protect the fires. Under the disdainful gaze of the convicts, they busied themselves skinning the viscachas with fabulous skill, then skewering them on iron spits and scorching them over the fire for a few minutes; their flesh was pure white, like that of a sole, but tasted sour.

  On this journey, prisoners and soldiers lived on the same
diet of jerky and biscuits, except that the prisoners were given half rations. They had no reason to lament this, since they expended no energy at all, and passed the time sleeping, propped against one another in the wagons. As for the officers, they regularly accompanied (or replaced) this standard fare with brandy. Their alimentary routine was modified only when they came across a flock of rheas or partridges, or flushed out a quail or a hare, whose flight the lieutenant would take pleasure in stopping with a well-aimed shot.

  While the maté water was coming to the boil, three adjutants cut the jerky into strips and proceeded to hand it out, working their way along the train. The effort of eating was repugnant to the prisoners, such was their state of weakness and torpor; some of them had to be punched to make them reach out and take the biscuit and the mug, into which another soldier aimed a boiling jet of the green liquid.

  The four officers sat down on the high-backed saddles that they had carelessly flung to the ground. Indifferent to the rain, they stared off into the void, their gazes hovering somewhere between stupidity and malice. For months now they had been ignoring the silent multitude in their charge; they felt like free planets spinning at random in a limbo of alcohol and vacant time. There were ten corporals, but they were often stripped of their rank, sometimes for no apparent reason, and in any case they blended into the rank and file, among whom there was nothing remotely resembling military discipline. Except in the lieutenant’s presence, no one respected the conventions, and even he considered them frivolous and archaic. These were savage men, becoming more savage as they marched southward. In the desert, a space outside the rule of law in nineteenth-century Argentina, reason was deserting them as well.

  The lieutenant, supreme and sole authority over the wagon train, was a young man — he looked about thirty-five — who had been living on the frontier for at least ten years. He had undertaken a number of these journeys, transporting human cargo from Buenos Aires, each of which had taken almost a year, there and back. He had white, soft hands (he removed his gloves only at night), black, oiled hair, and when he walked he wobbled in an awkward, ungainly fashion because of the width of his hips, which were out of proportion with his skinny arms and legs. By contrast, he was an excellent horseman, the only one who used an English saddle with a pommel.

  The major under his command was an old man with long gray hair and a tattered uniform; the other two officers were taciturn sergeants with Indian features. The lieutenant unscrewed the cap of his canteen and took a swig of brandy. The others imitated him mechanically. Drinking was second nature to them. The rain continued, imperceptibly fine. Thunderclaps resounded from the dark horizon. The lieutenant took his watch from his pocket and stared at it as if in a stupor: two o’clock.

  Finally the adjutant brought them the roasted viscacha and a bag of biscuits. They didn’t eat as much as they drank, and throughout the whole lunch not a word was spoken. The lieutenant didn’t taste the food; he failed to react when they offered him a piece, and went on smoking. Carelessly, he let the rain extinguish and ruin his cigarette. He threw it away and rolled another, but took no more care to protect it. He drank continually, emptying his canteen, which had been refilled twice in the course of the morning. Now he ordered one of the sergeants to fill it up again, and when it was returned to him he took a long swig. His attitude was coherent, at least.

  “And the Frenchman?” he suddenly asked in a murky voice. The words stood out beautifully against the ambient strangeness. The men were slow to take in the question; first they had to look at the wet grass and the blue bones of the viscacha; one fixed his gaze on the lieutenant’s muddy boots. Then they looked around. The line of still wagons stretched away for hundreds of yards, and everything was silent and mired movement.

  “He’ll be over there,” ventured the major pointing with his beard at the sleeping huddle of horses. He too was surprised by the sound of his own voice.

  He sent for the Frenchman, although it seemed a waste of time. They found him beside one of the horses, trying to make a saddle blanket with viscacha skins. Since they hadn’t been tanned, within a few days they would start to give off an unbearable stench, and permanently foul the saddle, and infect the horse, but he didn’t know that.

  He tried to explain to the sergeant that he wasn’t hungry, but followed him after hesitating briefly, supposing that the lieutenant might have something to say to him. He didn’t want to slight the others, although the idea of having to join them was abhorrent. He found the lunch stops unspeakably dreary, and the rain made today’s almost unbearable.

  All the lieutenant did was invite him to taste the game. The Frenchman repressed a sigh of discontent. With two fingers he picked up a snow-white thigh, wet with rain, and took a bite. It wasn’t as bad as he had expected. The taste was reminiscent of deer and of pheasant. Trying to ignore the lifeless gazes fixed on him, he went on eating and, with an occasional swig of brandy, got through a whole quarter.

  But before ten minutes had gone by, he threw it all up spectacularly, seized by the most dreadful dizziness. He had gone completely white. When there was nothing left in his stomach, he walked for a while with his eyes shut and then tried to eat a hard biscuit, also wet with rain, chewing conscientiously. But even that made him feel nauseous, so he gave up.

  He was an engineer who had been hired by the central government to undertake special projects on the frontier. A few days after getting off the ship, he had attached himself to a contingent of convicts that happened to be leaving for his destination. Given his sudden transplantation, he was bound to be disconcerted by the unreal conditions of the desert. He didn’t speak the language or understand it. To him, the men were animals and their company inhuman. He was small and delicate, about thirty-five years old, with an overly voluminous head and a large Assyrian beard in the style of the day. He had a blue suit and a gray one, which he wore on alternate days, always with the jacket buttoned up to the neck. Exposure to the elements had turned his face and hands red, and the visions afforded by the journey had left a puzzled gleam in his blue eyes. He used spectacles of green glass against the barbaric glare of the plains, in spite of which his eyes watered constantly. The cape he had put on that morning to protect him from rain was so heavy it made him sweat; he kept having to mop his face with a handkerchief and discreetly wring out his beard.

  When he felt that he had recovered sufficient self-control to speak, he addressed the lieutenant.

  “I suppose it was a mistake, trying to eat that animal.”

  “I suppose so,” replied the lieutenant sarcastically.

  “It didn’t agree with me at all.”

  “I noticed. The soldiers eat the young raw.”

  Duval could not help grimacing in disgust, which drew a contemptuous laugh from his interlocutor.

  “You’ll have to make do with partridges and aguapampa.”

  The mention of partridges depressed the engineer. Of all the foods provided by the pampa and the army supplies, those little birds were the only thing his stomach could tolerate, as long as they were properly roasted, but since he completely lacked the skills required to catch them, he had to depend on the whims of the gauchos, who would sometimes let a big flock go by indifferently, regarding them as inferior fare; they were even less excited by the work of plucking them, of course. So Duval often had to subsist for a week or more on biscuits (the mere smell of the dried meat disgusted him) and the awful boiled maté that gave him stomach cramps and provoked a constant, unbearable need to urinate.

  He had sat down next to the lieutenant, whom he disliked intensely; but there was no one else with whom he could speak French, and he was still a long way from being able to keep up a conversation in Spanish. Indeed, he was less and less confident that he would be able to master the language, with so few opportunities to learn it, surrounded as he was by brutes who spoke in grunts; he knew that on the frontier a half-Indian dialect was used, so he would have
to start all over again.

  After a moment, however, the lieutenant smiled somewhat less maliciously and, with calculated indifference, startled Duval with this disclosure:

  “We’ll be reaching Azul tonight. You’ll be able to feast yourself.”

  “What? Tonight?” stammered the Frenchman, painfully aware once again of his ignorance concerning the length and duration of the journey. The fort at Azul was the last stopping-place on the way, and although he’d been looking forward to getting there for weeks, he hadn’t realized how close it was. He tried to control his excitement by rubbing his hands. The other officers were still daydreaming, as if words spoken in another language were inaudible to them. Duval waited for further information, but none was forthcoming.

  “What time will we arrive?”

  The lieutenant merely shrugged and spat. He produced a case containing slender cigars and invited the Frenchman to take one, without looking him in the eye (he never did). Peering through the smoke as it dispersed in the drizzle, Duval observed him with a genuine curiosity. Before the beginning of the journey, he had been told that Lieutenant Lavalle came from a very wealthy landed family, and had been educated in French and English schools. That information had not prepared him for a man who had given himself with such ardor to savagery in all its countless forms — quite the opposite. Lavalle’s clear delight in barbarity exceeded that of the most primitive soldiers, and perhaps even the prisoners, who were no longer human. From the start, Duval had noticed a morbid disorder of the soul in his total indifference to nature: he couldn’t tell one bird from another, or a mouse from a hare, or clover from verbena. It was a blindness seasoned with insanity, a kind of obsession in reverse, which sometimes filled his unwilling companion with horror. Although it was also possible that his erroneous answers were simply another manifestation of his twisted sense of humour.