Cesar Aira - The Hare

The gaucho agreed as if it were so much water off a duck’s back.

There was also the possibility that they were heading in anything but the right direction. Every now and then they caught sight of Indians, but only in the distance, and were unable to exchange information. Once, a lone rider who remained in their sight for hours caught their attention. He was traveling along what was for them the skyline, and his trajectory seemed to be moving from one side to the other, not in the manner of a normal zigzag (in which case they would have noticed him moving closer then drawing further away) but rather as if the whole space between observers and observed were tilting. Things like that gave Clarke food for thought, and of late he had been thinking that in fact he was not cut out to be a naturalist but something else, for which he had no ready name. What was he? He did not know, but then everybody was in the same situation. The wanderer with his intriguing course was a reminder of all the varying positions of life.

The alarming thing was that they saw him again two days later, but this time at a completely different point, separate from the horizon. Since it was improbable that an Indian would be going round in circles for the fun of it, the only reasonable conclusion was that it was they who were going round in circles. Clarke became worried:

“That wanderer. .” he said to Gauna, drawing a diagram with a twig in the dust when they stopped to camp. He was trying to work out how the rider’s position had changed, but contradicted his own calculations when he tried to include the tilting in space he thought he had detected on both occasions.

“When are you going to stop pestering us with that blasted wanderer of yours?” Gauna eventually protested, and from then on Clarke kept his drawings to himself. After all, he could still put his trust in luck. Even if they ended up somewhere far from the Voroga encampment, it would still be a measurable distance from them. Perhaps the best thing would be to keep away from the Indians altogether. Except that, in addition to his curiosity, Clarke was one of those people who pride themselves on achieving what they have set out to do, even when they have no clear idea what that was.

Besides, all these and many other details of their journey were of minor importance compared to what turned out to be its main attraction: Carlos Alzaga Prior’s loquacity, which reached unsuspected extremes. He was an extroverted, self-assured, expressive type; all that was needed was to pluck the string which would set him resonating indefinitely, and this apparently was what Clarke, or life itself, had done on this occasion. The strange thing was that the Englishman shared this same peculiarity, in spite of the difference in their ages; he felt as though he were looking at himself in a mirror, but twenty years younger. And as his traveling companion’s conversation came to life, so did his own, with the result that there was a perpetual dialogue between them. Gauna seemed happy to take the opportunity to chew over his own thoughts. The glances the other two shot in his direction, inviting him to join in, fell wide of their mark. He whistled, and amused himself staring at the clouds, the grass, or simply into the transparent air.

One morning, the second or third, they set off with the sun already high in the sky, because they did not like to get up early. Or rather they did, but only when there was a pressing need to do so. They had dined and breakfasted on fish, the result of Gauna’s efforts with a rod in an attractive stream they had crossed, and Carlos, no doubt because of the morning cold, felt ill and eventually was sick. Immediately afterward, he felt fine again, better than before the incident: his cheeks were rosy, his eyes shining, his smile as white as milk in his chubby, pleasant face. He brought his horse up into step with Clarke’s.

“Love,” he declared, “is a wonderful thing.”

“So you’ve already told me.”

“But what happened is that I thought it again. I believe you can always think more, with greater intensity, when. .”

“I’m sorry to interrupt you, but something has occurred to me, and if I don’t tell you now I’m sure I’ll forget it. As you know, I was brought up in the countryside, in Kent; but in a countryside very different from this one, almost the opposite in fact; the kind of countryside to go for a walk in, inhabited by lots of people. But I’ve also lived in London, and what this desert we are going through reminded me of was in fact London, the greatest city in the world. Strange, isn’t it? They would seem to have nothing in common, and yet the effects are the same, even down to details. If you head in any direction, either along its streets or out into this endless wilderness, the sense of being in a labyrinth where there’s no labyrinth, of everything being on view, of homogeneity, is exactly the same.”

“To me, as someone who hasn’t traveled, Buenos Aires is the greatest city in the world.”

“Well, for me there is a complete reversal: Buenos Aires is like Kent, and the pampa is like London.”

“So you are in the position of the hero in that book of Swift’s, who goes from this world to an upside-down world.”

“Have you read Swift?”

“In a Spanish translation adapted for children. I’m afraid all the sexual references were left out.”

“There aren’t all that many of them, believe me.”

“Books should never be adapted. As a reader, you start thinking of all the changes they must have made, and you don’t enjoy the book.”

“I completely agree. It’s a crime. But a translation is already an adaptation. That’s why it’s necessary to learn languages.”

“Despite that, in my opinion what matters in Swift is the general idea, which comes across in any language, because it’s so strong.”

“I’ll say it is.”

“How can he have got the idea?”

“What one should ask oneself is how the idea didn’t occur to any writer before him.”

“It may be that something prevented them from conceiving it. My governess told me that Swift was inspired by a scientific theory which proposes the coexistence of infinitely small and infinitely large worlds.”

“Your governess must have taught you some English. The Argentines are such anglophiles. . ”

“Very little. Words rather than sentences.”

“But that’s ridiculous!”

“Surely. She was an old maid, a virgin. But words, even random ones, have their meaning, and allow you to form some idea of the psychology of different nations.”

“How splendid that such a young man should have reached that conclusion. Can you give me an example?”

“There’s the English word ‘game,’ which means ‘pastime, spell of play.’ But at the same time it means ‘a hunted animal,’ doesn’t it?”

“Yes, like the French ‘gibier.’”

“But in French you don’t say, ‘I’m going to play a gibier of chess!’”

“No, of course not. And what national characteristic do you deduce from this double usage?”

“A transfer from cause to effect. For you, hunting is a ‘spell of play,’ because it involves ‘fair play.’ Fine. But the word also signifies the dead animal, which has been killed not according to the rules of sport, but thanks to a sure shot.”

“Are you trying to say we English are hypocrites?”

“It’s not the moral judgment which matters, Mister Clarke, but the form. And in this case, the form that I can see is the continuum created between the reality and the result.”

“Everything you have just said is complete nonsense, but what’s striking is that you’ve ended up agreeing exactly with something Cafulcurá said to me the other day.”

“Oh, by the way, what happened to that crazy old fellow? Has he disappeared?”