Collected Fictions (57 page)

And perhaps in hell the damned are not always happy.

Two or three years later the First International Congress of Latin American Art took place in the city of Cartagena. Each Latin American republic sent one representative. The theme of the congress was (if we may be pardoned the cliché) of burning interest: Can the artist put aside, ignore, fail to include the autochthonous elements of culture—can the artist leave out the fauna and flora, be insensitive to social issues, not join his or her voice to those who are struggling against U. S. and British imperialism, etcetera, etcetera? Before being ambassador to Canada, Dr. Figueroa had held a diplomatic post in Cartagena; Clara, made more than a little vain by the award that had been granted her, would have liked to return to that city, now as a recognized artist in her own right. But that hope was dashed—
the government appointed Marta Pizarrato be the country's representative. Her performance, according to the impartial testimony of the Buenos Aires correspondents, was often brilliant, though not always persuasive.

Life must have its consuming passion. The two women found that passion in painting—or rather, in the relationship that painting forced them into. Clara Glencairn painted against, and in some sense for, Marta Pizarro;each was her rival's judge and solitary audience. In their canvases, which no one any longer looked at, I believe I see (as there inevitably had to be) a reciprocal influence. And we must not forget that the two women loved each other, that in the course of that private duel they acted with perfect loyalty to one another.

It was around this same time that Marta, now no longer so young as before, rejected an offer of marriage; only her battle interested her.

On February 2, 1964, Clara Figueroa suffered a stroke and died. The newspapers printed long obituaries of the sort that are still
de rigueur
in Argentina, wherein the woman is a representative of the species, not an individual. With the exception of an occasional brief mention of her enthusiasm for art and her refined taste, it was her faith, her goodness, her constant and virtually anonymous philanthropy, her patrician lineage (her father, General Glencairn, had fought in the Brazil campaign), and her distinguished place in the highest social circles that were praised. Marta realized that her own life now had no meaning. She had never felt so useless. She recalled the first tentative paintings she had done, now so long ago, and she exhibited in the National Gallery a somber portrait of Clara in the style of the English masters they had both so much admired. Someone said it was her best work. She never painted again.

In that delicate duel (perceived only by those few of us who were intimate friends) there were no defeats or victories, nor even so much as an open clash—no visible circumstances at all, save those I have attempted to record with my respectful pen. Only God (whose œsthetic preferences are unknown to us) can bestow the final palm. The story that moved in darkness ends in darkness.

One summer evening in Adrogué* many years ago, this story was told to me by Carlos Reyles, the son of the Uruguayan novelist. In my memory this chronicle of a long-held hatred and its tragic end still calls up the medicinal fragrance of the eucalyptus trees and the singing of the birds.

We were talking, as we always did, about the interwoven history of our two countries. At one point he said I'd surely heard of Juan Patricio Nolan, who had earned a reputation as a brave man, a teller of tall tales, and a practical joker. Lying myself, I said I had. Nolan had died in '90 or thereabout, but people still thought of him as a friend. He had his detractors, too, of course, as we all do. Carlos told me one of the many little pranks that Nolan was said to have played. The incident had taken place a short while before the Battle of Manantiales*; its protagonists were Manuel Cardoso and Carmen Silveira, two gauchos from Cerro Largo.*

How and why had the hatred between those two men begun? How, a century or more later, can we recover the shadowy story of those two men whose only fame was earned in their final duel? There was a man named Laderecha—an overseer at Reyles' father's ranch, "with a mustache like a tiger's"—who had gleaned from "oral tradition" certain details that I shall recount; I set them down here for what they are worth and with no further assurances as to their veracity, since both forgetfulness and recollection are creative.

Manuel Cardoso's and Carmen Silveira's small ranches bordered one another. As with the origins of other passions, the origins of a hatred are always obscure, but there was talk of a dispute over some unmarked animals, or, alternately, of a bareback horse race during which Silveira, who was the stronger, had bumped Cardoso's horse off the track. Months later, in the town's general store, there had been a long game of two-handed
truco;
Silveira congratulated his opponent on his play to virtually every trick, but he left him at the end without a penny. As he was raking the money into his purse, he thanked Cardoso for the lesson he had given him. It was then, I think, that they almost came to blows. The game had been hard fought; the onlookers (there had been many) had to separate them. On that frontier and at that time, man stood up to man and blade to blade; an unusual feature of this story is, as we will see, that Manuel Cardoso and Carmen Silveira crossed paths up in the mountains twice a day, morning and evening, though they never actually fought until the end. Perhaps their only possession in their coarse primitive lives was their hatred, and therefore they saved it and stored it up. Without suspecting, each of the two became the other's slave.

I have no way of knowing whether the events I am about to narrate are effects or causes.

Cardoso, less out of love than for something to do, took a fancy to a girl who lived nearby, a girl everyone called La Serviliana, and he began to court her; no sooner had Silveira discovered this than he began to court the girl in his own way, and carried her off to his ranch. After a few months he threw her out; she got on his nerves. Indignant, the woman sought refuge at Cardoso's place; Cardoso spent one night with her and sent her off at noon. He didn't want the other man's leftovers.

It was at about the same time — a little before or after La Serviliana — that the incident with the sheepdog took place. Silveira was very fond of the dog, and had named it Thirty-three.* It was found dead in a ditch; Silveira always thought he knew who'd poisoned the dog.

In the winter of '70, Aparicio's revolution* caught Cardoso and Silveira drinking in that same general-store-and-bar where they'd played their game of
truco.
A Brazilian soldier with mulatto features, heading up a small band of
montoneros*
came through the door. He gave the men gathered there a rousing speech; their country needed them, he said — the government's oppression was intolerable. He passed out white badges* to pin on, and at the end of that exordium which they had not understood, he and his platoon impressed them into service — they were not even allowed to say goodbye to their families. Manuel Cardoso and Carmen Silveira accepted their fate; a soldier's life was no harder than a gaucho's. They were used to sleeping in the open with a horse blanket as a mattress and a saddle as a pillow, and for the hand accustomed to killing animals, killing a man was not a great deal different. Their lack of imagination freed them from fear and pity alike, though fear did touch them sometimes, just as the cavalry charged them.

(The rattle of stirrups and weapons is one of the things you can always hear when the cavalry rides into the action.) But if a man isn't wounded right away, he thinks himself invulnerable. They did not miss the places they'd been born and raised in. The concept of patriotism was foreign to them; in spite of the insignia worn on the hats, one side was much the same as the other to them. They learned what can be done with the lance. In the course of advances and retreats, they at last came to feel that being comrades allowed them to go on being rivals. They fought shoulder to shoulder yet they never, so far as is known, exchanged a single word.

In the fall of '71, which was a hard time, the end came to the two men.

The engagement, which lasted less than an hour, occurred at a place whose name they never learned—
historians assign the names later. On the eve of the battle, Cardoso crawled into the captain's tent and asked him, in a whisper, to save one of the Reds for him if they won the next day—he had never cut anybody's throat,* he said, and he wanted to know what it was like. The captain promised that if he conducted himself like a man, he'd grant him that favor.

The Whites outnumbered the Reds, but the Reds had better weaponry. From the top of a hill they commanded, they rained devastation on the Whites. After two charges that failed to reach the peak, the White captain, gravely wounded, surrendered. There on the field, at his request, his men ended his life.

Then they laid down their arms. Captain Juan Patricio Nolan, commander of the Reds, gave a long-winded and flowery order that all the captives' throats be cut. But he was from Cerro Largo, and not unfamiliar with Silveira and Cardoso's long-standing grudge, so he had them brought to him.

"I know you two can't bear the sight of each other," he said, "and that you've been waiting a long time for the chance to settle scores. So I've got good news for you. Before the sun goes down, you're going to get the chance to show which one of you is the toughest. I'm going to have your throats cut, and then you're going to run a race. Like they say—may the best man win."

The soldier who had brought them took them away.

The news spread quickly through the camp. Nolan had wanted the race to crown that evening's performance, but the prisoners sent a committee to ask him if they couldn't watch it, too, and make bets on the winner. Nolan, a reasonable man, let himself be convinced. The men bet money, riding gear, knives, and horses; their winnings would be turned over to their widows and next of kin when the time came. The day was hot; so everyone could have a siesta, the event was put off till four. (They had a hard time waking Silveira up.) Nolan, typically, kept them all waiting for an hour. He had no doubt been reliving the victory with the other officers; the orderly made the rounds with the
mate.

On each side of the dusty road, against the tents, the ranks of prisoners sat on the ground and waited, hands tied behind their backs so they'd give nobody any trouble. One would occasionally unburden himself with an oath, another murmur the beginning of the Lord's Prayer; almost all were in a state verging on stupefaction. Naturally, they couldn't smoke. They no longer cared about the race, but they all watched.

"When they slit my throat, they're going to grab me by the hair and pull my head back, too," said one man, as though to ally himself with the centers of attention.

"Yeah, but you'll be along with the herd," replied another.

"Along with you," the first man spit.

A sergeant drew the line across the road with a saber. Silveira's and Cardoso's hands had been untied so they wouldn't have to run off-balance. They stood more than five yards apart. They put their toes against the line; some of the officers called out for them not to let them down—they were counting on them. A great deal of money was riding on each man.

Silveira drew Nigger Nolan, whose grandparents had doubtlessly been slaves of the captain's family, and so bore his name; Cardoso drew the regular executioner, an older man from Corrientes who always patted the condemned man on the back and told him: "Buck up, friend; women suffer more than this when they have a baby."

Their torsos straining forward, the two anxious men did not look at each other.

Nolan gave the signal.

The part Nigger Nolan had been given to play went to his head, and he overacted—he slashed Silveira's throat from ear to ear. The man from Corrientes made do with a neat slice. The blood gushed, though, from both men's throats; they stumbled a few steps and then fell headlong. As he fell, Cardoso stretched out his arms. He had won, but he likely never knew that.

Now I shall never see the peak of Higuereta mirrored in the waters of the Golfo Plácido, never make my journey to the Western State, never visit that library (which I, here in Buenos Aires, picture in so many different ways, though it must have its own precise existence, contain its own lengthening shadows) where I was to unriddle the handwriting of Bolivar.

As I reread the foregoing paragraph in order to compose the next one, I am surprised by its tone at once melancholy and pompous. It may be that one cannot speak about that Caribbean republic without echoing, however remotely, the monumental style of its most famous historiographer, Capt. Józef Korzeniowski; but in my case there is another reason—that first paragraph was dictated by the intention, deep within me, to imbue a mildly painful and altogether trivial incident with a tone of pathos. But I will relate what happened with absolute honesty; that, perhaps, will help me understand it.

After all, when one confesses to an act, one ceases to be an actor in it and becomes its witness, becomes a man that observes and narrates it and no longer the man that performed it.

The incident happened to me last Friday in this same room I am writing in now, at this same hour of the afternoon (though today is somewhat cooler). I know that we tend to forget unpleasant things; I want to record my conversation with Dr. Eduardo Zimmermann (of our sister university to the south) before it is blurred by forgetfulness. My memory of it now is still quite vivid.

The story can be better understood, perhaps, with a brief recounting of the curious drama surrounding certain letters written by Simón Bolívar, "the Liberator of the Americas." These letters were recently exhumed from the files of the distinguished historian don José Avellanos, whose
Historiade cincuenta
años de desgobierno
["A History of Fifty Years of Misrule"] was itself initially believed lost (under circumstances which no one can fail to be familiar with), then discovered and published in 1939 by his grandson, Dr. Ricardo Avellanos. To judge by references I have gathered from various publications, most of these letters are of no great interest, but there is one, dated from Cartagena on August 13,1822, in which Bolivar is said to give the details of his famous meeting in Guayaquil with Gen. José de San Martín.*One cannot overstress the value of a document in which Bolivar reveals, even if only partially, what took place at that encounter. Ricardo Avellanos, a staunch opponent of his country's current government, refused to surrender the correspondence to the Academy of History; he offered it, instead, to several Latin American republics. Thanks to the admirable zeal of our ambassador, Dr. Melaza, the government of the Argentine was the first to accept Avellanos' disinterested offer. It was decided that a delegate would be sent to Sulaco, the capital of our neighbor country, to make copies of the letters and publish them here. The chancellor of our university, where I am professor of Latin American history, was so kind as to recommend my name to the minister of education as the person to carry out that mission; I also obtained the more or less unanimous support of the National Academy of History, of which I am a member. Just as the date was set for my interview with the minister, we learned that the University of the South (which I prefer to think was unaware of these decisions) had proposed the name of Dr. Zimmermann.