Cesar Aira - The Hare

“Are you all right?”

“Never better,” said the gaucho, wheezing like a duck.

“What a disaster,” Clarke exclaimed, gazing at the camp of Agramante that the Indian village had become. Everywhere, bodies had become fountains of blood, which darkened the darkness. Some of the bodies had fallen on to fires, and the stench of charred flesh added another dimension of horror to the scene.

Unfortunately for them, the battle flowed back toward them. A fierce combat was going on behind them. Clarke raised his shotgun and downed two Indians. He ran with Gauna until they were protected by tents. Then they were dragged by a mob of wailing, crazy women toward the very center of the fighting. The most dangerous thing were the bullets which, as usual with the Indians, were fired off at random. More than once they felt them buzz too close to their heads for comfort, like tiny nocturnal bees. All of a sudden, the two men became separated. It seemed as if successive moments of time were all being thrown together: there were women bending over wounded Indians to give them water, while a few steps away, another Indian was climbing on to a bloodstained horse and loosening his bolas. . Clarke wondered how on earth he had started out on the outside of the camp, and finished in the center, right where the fighting was at its height. The dust raised by the charging horses had mixed with the smoke from the burning tents to create a thick, impenetrable fog. Everywhere, people trod on dead bodies. Clarke had no time to worry about anything but himself; he tried to avoid any dangerous encounter, and ran first in one direction and then another, until he was completely disoriented. Even so, to his amazement, he still found himself in the thick of the combat, but his dodging kept him out of the way of the hand-to-hand fighting, and he did not have to fire any more shots, despite often being on the point of doing so. Horribly overexpressive horseheads kept looming through the walls of dust and smoke. The Indians’ war-cries constantly echoed through the confusion. Suddenly a rush of people carried him away with them. They plunged through the ruins of several tents, and just as he was trying to jump over the bodies of some wounded Indians, Clarke was astonished to hear. . laughter. There was something very familiar about it, and from the mist in front of him he soon saw emerge the figure of Carlos Alzaga Prior, together with a group of young Indians of both sexes.

“Clarke, I was so worried about you!”

“Throw that cigarette away!”

The Englishman’s indignation exploded like a storm within a storm. He went up to the youth, seized his arm with his left hand (he was still clutching his shotgun in the other) and shook him, all the while dragging him away from the others. Carlos had a lighted cigarette between his fingers.

“How irresponsible, how thoughtless of you!” Clarke was choking with fury, and had to shout at the top of his lungs to make himself heard.

Carlos shook himself free. He wasn’t very lucid. The bleary smile did not leave his face even when it was his turn to shout:

“Leave me in peace! You can’t tell me what to do!”

“Come here!” Beside himself, Clarke raised the gun as though he were about to shoot.

Then something extraordinary happened: a horse that may or may not have had a rider (they didn’t see one) galloped between them. Clarke was stunned, but Carlos carried on as if nothing had happened.

“Have a puff,” he said, holding the cigarette out to Clarke between his thumb and his middle finger.

“No thanks,” Clarke shouted, his voice shrill with nerves. He snatched the cigarette, threw it onto the ground, and stubbed it out with the toe of his boot in a rough, vengeful way. Carlos chose to give a dismissive laugh, as if to say: “who cares, I’ve smoked enough anyway.” Clarke was on the point of slapping his face, when something else happened that prevented him doing so: a rush of air only inches from the back of his head as a stone bola crashed by. Clarke threw himself down just in time: the second bola cleaved the air where his head had been. “I would have slapped his face with my gray matter if I hadn’t ducked,” he thought. For the past few minutes, his adrenalin had been pumping. He was thirsty for blood. And more than the scandalous behavior of his young companion, it was something else, something unknown that was awakening in him. He raised his eyes and the shotgun at the same time. An Indian who, with his hair streaming out and his arms waving, looked like a woman, was bending from his horse to finish him off. Clarke fired without taking aim. The bullet struck the Indian full in the belly and lifted him into the air; they saw him do a somersault and land in a sitting position, his tongue lolling out. He was dead. Carlos had already set off running; Clarke followed him.

They came to a halt in a relatively dark spot from which they could look down on most of the battle. They decided to sit on the ground, in order to offer less of a target to any stray bullet.

“It’s incredible!”

“It’s barbaric!”

“They’re Indians from Salinas Grandes,” Carlos said. “I suppose you recognized them?”

So this was their everlasting peace as the fury that had gripped him subsided. Clarke was slowly returning to his normal self.

“I don’t know how I could have shot that poor unfortunate. .”

“But it was in self-defense!”

“You’re right. At least we escaped.”

“Don’t be too sure. . ”

“By the way. . what happened to Gauna?”

“I saw him go by on a horse a while ago. A horse he must have stolen from a dead man.”

Clarke sighed, slightly ashamed of himself and the irresponsible adolescent by his side.

“I’m sure by now he’s rounding up our horses. I hope he finds Repetido, or Rosas will give me hell. Gauna’s a sensible person.”

“He’s a pillar of strength.”

“Don’t mock. I need to have a serious talk with you.”

“Just look at that! Have they gone mad?”

Clarke looked — not very far, because the clouds of dust added to the darkness of the night and the way his pupils had contracted during his dangerous foray among the fires meant that he could see nothing beyond about twelve yards. Even so, he could make out a line of Indians riding past at walking pace, heading for the center of the camp, obviously on a mission of peace. Although at first it seemed like a hallucination, when Indians from the village came to a halt and stared at the newcomers, they realized it wasn’t. The two of them also went to see what it was all about. When the peace ambassadors reached the center of the encampment, a remarkable scene took place: another procession, just as formal and orderly as theirs, with Coliqueo at its head, came to greet them. Fighting was going on all around, but they were at the center of a zone of quiet. Even the dust settled, so that the bonfires began to throw a fantastic half-light on the meeting. The effect was the same as Clarke had noticed earlier, that of disconnected fragments of time being superimposed on each other, as though war disrupted the normal chain of events. Carlos, who was an expert at recognizing people, whispered to Clarke that some of the chief shamans from Salinas Grandes were among the new arrivals. Apparently there were to be peace talks there and then. The two of them pushed their way to the front row of onlookers, from where they could hear the speeches. A Huilliche who had crossed his eyes elaborately was the first to speak. Without dismounting, of course. With no sign of urgency, he embarked upon a complicated explanation of the state of mind of thirty-one of Cafulcurá’s thirty-two wives. Summing up a speech which lasted a good three-quarters of an hour, it boiled down to the following: these desperate wives had financed a punitive expedition, which was bitterly opposed by the ruling council, who had ordered the dispatch of a simultaneous embassy, comprising the speaker and his companions, to beg forgiveness in order to restore the peace so heedlessly put at risk, etcetera. If the two groups had not arrived at their destination at the same time, this was due to the fact that the second one was distracted by the sighting of a lone rider in the distance. . then followed a highly complicated geometric-topographical argument, incomprehensible from the outset without a diagram, but in which Clarke discovered certain similarities to ideas he himself had formulated concerning the “wanderer,” whom he had no doubt was one and the same person. Coliqueo listened to all this impassively. After the speaker fell silent, there was a short pause, in which more shots and cries could be heard in the distance, then in what seemed like a prepared speech, Coliqueo declared his acceptance of their apologies. The acceptance of this acceptance would doubtless give rise to yet another speech, but Clarke was in no mood to stay and hear it. He gestured to Carlos, and they pushed their way back through the enthralled throng.