Ricardo Piglia - Target in the Night

There was another silence. Renzi, thinking that he liked Hilario’s use of the plural, felt as if he was going to fall asleep again, but strangely the extended silence woke him up.

“What year was that?” he asked, just to say something.

“1970. That was the San Isidro Stakes of 1970.”

Renzi wrote the date in his small notebook, trying to shake the feeling of being under water. He thought he had fallen asleep and that in his sleep he had murmured something and that, in his dream, he had sleepwalked to the car so he could lie down in the backseat. But no, he was still there.

“The difference between a good jockey and a great one is courage. A jockey has to decide if he and his horse can squeeze through an opening of a certain size, without knowing before entering if it will be big enough. El Chino tried to slide between the posts and got caught. It happened at the bend by the hill, they were coming around in a group, he tried to pass on the inside but got pressed into the fence and the horse broke its leg. El Chino didn’t get killed by sheer luck, he was laid out on the track. The other horses ran over him but he survived, unscathed.” Renzi liked that the man used that word, unscathed. “El Chino’s horse was on the ground, breathing heavily from the pain, foaming, its eyes wide with fear. El Chino petted him and spoke to him and didn’t leave his side until the ambulance arrived. It was his fault, he tried to pass on the inside when there wasn’t enough space, he rushed it, apparently the horse hesitated but of course it pushed through anyway when el Chino urged him on. He was very noble, that horse. They took him to the stables and laid him down on the grass and the veterinarian said that he had to be sacrificed, but Chino went crazy and wouldn’t allow it. Those hours when they went back and forth trying to decide if they were going to finish off the horse were so intense that el Chino’s life and character were altered. He stayed by his horse and convinced the doctors that he’d take care of him, and they cured him. He stayed with his horse the entire time, by the time they took him back to the farm el Chino was a changed man, by the time they took him back he was already the man you see lying there now: resolved, hobbled by a fixed idea, the only thing he wanted was for the animal to run again, and he did it. It was a metamorphosis, a metempsychosis between man and horse,” Renzi heard, and he thought that he had fallen asleep again and that he dreamed that a gaucho was using these words. “That’s what I mean when I say that it wasn’t that anyone convinced him to buy the horse. He simply believed that he had to. Neither the buyer nor the seller, the animal itself seemed to tell him, and el Chino believed it with such determination it was impossible for anyone to argue with him, even less to refuse him.” Renzi thought he was still dreaming. “And that,” Hilario said, “is not because he was an exceptional jockey, as he could have been if he’d kept racing on the best racetracks, he already had terrific statistics that first season. No. It was because an affinity of the heart developed between man and animal, to such an extent that if el Chino wasn’t there the horse wouldn’t budge, it would just stand still and not let anyone else come close or feed him, much less ride him. First, he managed to save him, then he managed to get him to start walking again, then he started riding him, and slowly he taught him to race again, on three legs just about, because it can barely set its front left leg down. It’s lame in one leg, but it runs so fast you can’t even tell how bad off it is. Soon el Chino started pushing him to do short distances and finally he raced him again, not in the big racetracks of course, but in the country races, with the illusion of seeing him remain undefeated, even if its step was uneven and it ran with a gangly style, it was still always faster than any other horse. He’d win and bet and save his winnings, he wanted to save enough money to buy him, but he never could because the Englishman, the rancher from Luján, set such an impossible price, it was like one of those English jokes no one understands. At least six times its value, and he’d threaten to have him sent to the stud farm for breeding, to take him out of action, so el Chino did what he did to get the money and buy the animal. By the time you found out about him, Inspector, he was already lost. He came to see me, he asked me to take care of the horse because he knows me and he knows that I know how to treat the horse, and he left him with me. That night I had gone to town to have a drink and when I got back he’d already done it. He knew I’d take care of the horse, that’s why he left him to me, and that’s why he came to my house to kill himself. Someone offered him the money, someone who knew his story, and he went and did it. I know there’s no excuse for killing another man, but I’m explaining it to you, Inspector, so you’ll understand his actions — even if that doesn’t justify them.” Hilario paused for a longer time, and stared out into the countryside. “He disappeared for a few days and when he came back, he had the horse with him. I didn’t see how, he told me he’d won some bets and had gotten the money that way. He didn’t tell me how he did it. As if once he’d done it, it didn’t matter anymore how he’d done it. He left him to me, and now I’m not sure what I’m going to do with him. Because the animal is very intelligent, he understands that something’s happened, he hasn’t moved in over twenty-four hours.”

They remained quiet, looking at the horse, grazing out in the field. Near a spring, off to the side, an evil light appeared between the bushes, a bright phosphorescence that seemed to burn like a white flame in the plains. It was a lost soul, the sad presence of a spirit dragging its livid brightness along. The men watched in respectful silence.

“Must be him,” Hilario said.

“The skeleton of a gaucho,” the officer said in a low voice, from a distance.

“Just the bones of some animal,” Croce said.

They said their goodbyes and got back in the car. Renzi learned years later that the countryman Hilario Huergo, the horse tamer, had ended up in the twilight of his life working with el Chino’s horse, Tácito , in the Rivero Brothers Circus. Huergo the Gaucho, as he would then be known, came up with an extraordinary number, which they performed as the circus toured around the countryside. He’d mount the sorrel and they’d raise them up to the heights of the tent with a system of pulleys and harnesses, to make it look as if they were floating in the air. The animal’s legs rested on four iron discs covering only the rings of its hooves, and since the wires and the sheaves were painted black, it seemed as if the man was riding up to the sky on the back of the sorrel. When they got to the very top, everyone would look on in silence, and Huergo the Gaucho would whisper to the horse and look down into the darkness and the clear circle of sand on the ground below, small as a coin. Then they’d set off a round of colorful fireworks and up in the heights, dressed all in black, with a tall-brimmed hat and a pointed beard, Huergo would look like Lucifer himself riding on the majestic horse. They always did the same fantastic number, the same man who’d been a great broncobuster, motionless now on the sorrel, up above everything, with the wind flapping in the canvas of the tent — until one night some sparks from the fireworks hit the horse in the eye and the frightened animal reared up on its hind legs, and Huergo held on to the reins, knowing he wouldn’t be able to set the horse back down on the iron rings. Then, as if it were all part of the number, Huergo took off his hat and waved his arm up high, and he came flying down and crashed into the ring below. But this happened — rather: Renzi was told about it — many years later. That night, when they got back to town, Renzi noticed that Croce looked grief-stricken, as if he blamed himself for el Chino’s death. He’d made a number of decisions that had led to a series of events, which he hadn’t been able to predict. Croce was pensive on the way back, he spent the entire drive moving his lips, as if he were talking to himself, or arguing with someone, until finally they reached town, and Renzi said goodnight and got out at the hotel.