Cesar Aira - The Hare

A short while later, with the night still dark, the three travelers — of whom Gauna was the only one really awake — left the encampment accompanied by half a dozen silent Indians. The cold of dawn was intense. The lack of sun made itself felt. The stars shone in all their splendor, each of them in sharp outline against the black sky, like shimmering drops of liquid crystal. To anyone who could read them, every possible direction must have been clear in their twinkling. The earth was an ocean of shadow. A few strands of grass captured the dim astral reflections. Apart from that, everything was the purest black. The feeling of space dominated all, without being oppressive. It was a portable grandeur. Clarke, who suffered badly from the cold, had left his gloves in Buenos Aires, and stuffed his hands into a sort of improvised muff he had made. It was an ingeniously adapted piece of eiderdown, that kept him snug and warm. The increasing humidity made the cold seem even more biting. At last, they could hear a bird singing, and from that moment on the whole process of dawn unfolded, with exasperating slowness. A poppy-red sun appeared above the horizon, and soon the world was bathed in a warm glow. Everything had come to life again, that is, distances were defined once more — distances filled with nothing. An azure sky all around. The dark green of the land slowly took on its hallucinatory coloring. From time to time Clarke stared at the Indians, hermetic in their impenetrable silence. Then, when he was least expecting it, one of them spoke to him, to ask if he would care to have breakfast. He agreed, and they soon came to a halt. As if by magic they lit a fire, and in no time at all were drinking tea. Thinking it the least he could do, Clarke had added a handful of the fine Ceylon leaves he carried in his saddlebags. When they had drunk their fill, all the Indians stood up and urinated at great length in unison, starting and finishing together, as though this were their way of thanking him. To see them like that, in a line against the rising sun, was for the Englishman one of those picturesque and unforgettable experiences which give travel all its charm. The daytime part of their ride provided no more dialogue than the nighttime had, although at least there were things to look at. Clarke fell into a highly complicated reverie which took his mind off to the most distant parts, so that when the first partridge started up in front of him he was so shocked he almost had a heart attack. He almost fell off his horse as well, which caused Carlos Alzaga Prior to burst out laughing. Gauna was more sympathetic, perhaps because beneath his bitterly cynical shell he also was a dreamer. After this, Clarke tried to be more observant of his surroundings, but this also required an effort of concentration, so that the second partridge had the same effect as the first, or even worse, because he thought he was prepared for it.

It must have been seven or half past by the time they spied the outskirts of Carhué, the famous thermal spa. Some hills and valleys added spice to the landscape, as they rode down a route or track the Indians had made in their constant pilgrimages to the lake. There were no trees, but lots of agave plants, some of them huge. When they reached the seasonal tents the summer visitors put up, they separated. The Indians finally opened their mouths to wish them a good journey. Now the three of them had to rely on Gauna’s judgment. The night before, the tracker had claimed he knew the way from here to Coliqueo’s camp perfectly, and Clarke had no other option but to believe him. They said farewell and headed off to the left, while the Indians made for the tents.

The track climbed, and suddenly on their right they could see the lake, the color of tarnished silver, very still and endless. Far off in the middle stood an island. In spite of the early hour, or perhaps because of it, there were a lot of bathers on the lakeside or splashing about in the water. When they emerged, they dried off in the sun, and the salt caked on their bodies, leaving them looking as white as ghosts.

They could see that the Indians they had come with were trotting along the lakeshore. As the three of them continued to climb their high ground, they watched them head for a group of women further off. When the Indians reached the group, they dismounted and began to talk ceremoniously, puffing out their chests. As the three white men came level some distance away, Clarke paused out of curiosity. The Indians were talking in front of a woman whose companions had stayed a few paces behind. This was Juana Pitiley: Clarke was sure of it, even though he had never seen her before. She was naked, and was covered from head to foot in dried salt, which gleamed in the sun like diamond dust. Despite her years, which could not have been less than sixty, she was a beautiful, imposing woman, and so tall that the Indians opposite her looked like squinting dwarves. She was very still. She must have already heard the news, but said nothing. There was something tragic, or indifferent — but in either case, sublime — in the way she stood immobile. Clarke could not take his eyes off her, or continue on his way. An inexplicable fascination drew him to the sight. It seemed to him as though she raised her eyes, sparkling with salt crystals, to look in his direction. When they finally got going again, she had still not moved. In his confused state after seeing such a vision, Clarke was sorry he had been unable to talk to her about the famous Hare. Yet at the same time he realized it would have been useless to try to do so directly. She did not seem the kind of woman who responded to questions. In fact, she did not seem the kind who spoke at all to mere mortals.

The journey lasted a week, and took them along one of those straight lines that are so perfect as to be unrepeatable, though this was undoubtedly pure chance, because all Gauna did was calculate the equinoctial line and follow it. They had good weather: tranquil suns, breezes that did not ruffle the shade, a landscape accommodating all the shifting hours and minutes. It was like meeting beautiful women at every step — except that there were no women, in fact there was nobody, which meant they also managed to avoid all the pitfalls of reality. Even the relationship between the three of them remained reasonably unperturbed. Gauna was wrapped up in his own world, and paid no attention to anything or anybody, apart from his whistling, which was a monotonous but harmless accompaniment to their trip. “To think I didn’t bring the dog!” he exclaimed whenever a partridge appeared. He had a theory that a dog could hunt a partridge on its own, without help. And one of his dogs, called Concuerda, was an expert at this. The number of flocks of birds they startled was remarkable, and Clarke often practiced his marksmanship. Whenever he aimed at one partridge in flight and hit another, he invariably admitted it: so much so that his telling of the truth itself seemed suspicious. It was as if he had good but off-kilter marksmanship, something beyond mere skill. Gauna had made it a rule to fetch the game himself, which gave rise each time to a joke the Englishman muttered to himself: “To think I didn’t bring the dog!” Then once when Gauna was retrieving the bird, he quite tactfully let it be known he had heard the Englishman: “She’s called Concuerda, or rather that’s what she was called, because she was trampled by a bull, and I am sorry not to have brought her, truly sorry, and doubly so, because I could not have brought her since she’s dead.” Clarke felt ashamed, and never repeated the joke again. Like all English people, he put the love of animals above everything else.

“Mister Gauna,” he said to him some while later, “you perhaps consider it unjust that I should have made it a condition of your employment that you not carry a weapon. Especially since I brought my own shotgun. But elementary security reasons led me to impose that condition. I won’t be so hypocritical as to claim that if I had known you as I do now, I would have allowed you to come with your gun. It is a matter of principle, which knowledge, that is to say the before and after, does not affect in the slightest.”