Cesar Aira - The Hare

The Vorogas got up very late, and Coliqueo did not appear until one o’clock. Clarke and his companions were given some sticky cakes for breakfast, washed down with a bitter boiled maté. Clarke and Carlos spent a long while staring at Indian men and women, who were busy doing nothing. There was no one for them to exchange a word with. The white men in whose company Gauna had spent the night did not seem much more promising. Gauna introduced them to his former friend, a half-caste by the name of Aristídes Ordóñez.

“What do you know about Cafulcurá?” Clarke asked him point-blank.

“Who?”

Clarke turned to Gauna: “Can he really not know who Cafulcurá is?”

“Don’t you know who Cafulcurá is?”

“No,” said Ordóñez.

“Have you never heard of him?”

“I don’t get involved in Indian matters, boss.”

“What do you do, then?”

“I write.”

This was enough to awaken Clarke’s dormant interest.

“You’re the chieftain’s scribe?”

“That’s right, by your leave.”

“And who on earth does that madman have to write to?”

“He dictates endless memorandums, all of them addressed to Rosas.”

“Since when could you write?” Gauna asked him, with his habitual suspiciousness.

“A priest taught me.”

“Which one?”

“The one who used to stay in the houses. . the one with the pigs, you remember?”

“Ah, that one,” said Gauna.

“What happened to the pigs?” Clarke asked. Gauna did not even deign to reply, but stared into the distance. Ordóñez answered on his behalf: “He bought four pigs, and they all died of the evil eye.”

“That priest,” Gauna condescended to comment, “was the dumbest person who ever drew breath.”

“By the way,” Clarke said to Ordóñez, “what’s the matter with Coliqueo? Is he smoking too much?”

“No more than normal.”

“How about drink?”

“Yes, of course. He likes a bit of everything.”

“He says things that are hard to interpret.”

“You’re right, he is a bit odd. But he’s not a bad sort.”

Clarke kept his thoughts to himself. Aristídes Ordóñez did not appear to him to be a particularly good sort. Who could say what he was escaping from among the savages? And if Gauna succeeded in getting any useful information out of him, he would not tell Clarke — the two of them appeared to have come from the same mold, but at least Clarke was used to Gauna by now.

Soon afterward, Coliqueo sent for Clarke to come to his tent, and so the unbearable interview began. Clarke went alone, sending Carlos off to have a dip in the river.

“I gather,” the chieftain started by saying, focusing his eyes normally after the briefest of squints, “that your honor has come from Salinas Grandes.”

“That’s right. Last night I didn’t have the chance to mention it, because in fact it seemed rather a mouthful.”

“Because your mouth was full of half a cow at least!”

Clarke sighed: his intended joke had fallen flat in Voroga. The Indian went on:

“So my distant cousin Cafulcurá — the more distant the better — has vanished into thin air?”

“You knew about that?”

“I heard about it the other day, by chance.”

“And what did you make of it?”

“I split my sides laughing.”

“Don’t you think he might be in danger?”

“What kind of danger?” Up to this point, Coliqueo had tried to be reasonable, but this was too much for him. Before the Englishman could reply, he raised his arms in protest: “I had nothing to do with it! I knew they’d try to pin it on me! I’m sick to death of those charlatans!”

“If it’s any reassurance, I can promise you that nobody in Salinas Grandes suspected you of having anything to do with it.”

“I should think not! To get me mixed up in their fantasies!”

“But this isn’t a fantasy. The man has vanished.”

“And what do I care?”

“Aren’t the Vorogas enemies of the Huilliches?”

“We have signed a treaty of everlasting peace. It’s a dead letter, but I’m happy enough with it. My concern is my people: production, development, foreign affairs. Within my modest domain, I aim to be a model statesman. They on the other hand live from stealing, from lazing about, from extortion. They’re empty-headed and envious. That madman Cafulcurá has raised the new generation in such an atmosphere of fantastic beliefs, I wouldn’t be surprised if one day he ended up dead thanks to some prophecy or spell or other. Serve him right.”

“You’re not mistaken, Mister Coliqueo, at least as far as I am able to judge. I saw some of it in the few hours I spent in their court. But the picture you paint is too gloomy: the Huilliches seem happy enough, superstition or no superstition.”

“Good for them.”

“They have a particular devotion to personal hygiene.”

“To me, politics comes first. Hygiene is secondary.”

“Well, it all depends on what your definition of politics is. For example, I interpreted your earlier words as denigrating the weight that the politics of magic has for them.”

“That’s not politics, it’s hocus-pocus!”

“What if it works?”

“Don’t make me laugh! Do you think it means it’s effective, if their chieftain disappears into thin air in front of his subjects’ noses? They’re condemned to live in a system which is constantly feeding his lunacy. I’m sure for example that this latest episode has given rise to a whole series of laughable exorcisms by his shamans. They’ll climb yet another rung of the ridiculous. It’s effective in a kind of way, I agree, but it’s absurd. But tell me, who is it they suspect?”

“They weren’t blaming ghosts, I can assure you. They presumed — I have no idea with what degree of accuracy or truth — that it had been a woman. .”

“Rondeau’s Widow! I don’t believe it! They really can’t see beyond their own mad ideas, can they?”

“Is it such a remote possibility?”

“There is no possibility at all. To accuse the Widow is no more than hot air. It’s like saying that a story can become real just like that, because they say so. That’s a good example of their ‘effectiveness’ for you. They’re so far gone they take their own fantasies seriously.”

“What makes you so sure in this case?”

“Because the Widow came through here about a week ago, and she is concerned with other things; if her body — and I can swear to it — never came within a hundred leagues of Cafulcurá, her mind has been a thousand leagues away of late. She was going to join her daughter to celebrate her fifteenth birthday. And it’s not that I’m trying to excuse that viper, much less be her accomplice. On the contrary, I’d be more than pleased if they accused her, pursued her, and wiped her out. It would be one less problem. If I ever get my hands on her. .”

Clarke thought Coliqueo was contradicting himself, because he had just asserted that the Widow had paid him a visit only a few days earlier. He made no comment. Coliqueo had started up again, this time with one of his leading questions:

“Do you want to know what happened to Cafulcurá?”

“Of course.”

“One of his sons killed him: Namuncurá or Alvarito Reymacurá.”

“Well. . Namuncurá was not in Salinas Grandes.”

“Where else could he have been? He must have been hidden. They spend the whole time saying the same thing: that the ‘princes of peace’ chase women, that they pursue shimmering illusions like migratory storks. . It’s all lies. That farce about twins. The duck’s egg. The hare. The blue gallstone. Pure bunkum! That poor old man is probably paying for his sins buried somewhere on the outskirts of their camp. And his sons are about to gouge each other’s eyes out. What an edifying spectacle that will be!”