The Exiles and Other Stories Page 11

  The Horqueta could still be crossed when Subercasaux decided to go out; but in his state he didn’t dare cover such a distance on horseback. And after all, what was he likely to find in the direction of Cazador Creek?

  Then he remembered a young fellow he’d employed at one time, bright and hard-working as few are, who had told him laughing—the very day he arrived, as he scrubbed a frying pan in the dirt—that he’d stay for a month, because his boss needed him, but not one day more, because that was no work for a man. The fellow lived at the mouth of the Yabebirí, across from Toro Island, and that meant a strenuous trip; for if the Yabebirí plays its game of dropping and rising up again, the eight-hour stretch of rowing will crush the fingers of anyone who’s not already used to it.

  Subercasaux made his decision, however. And despite the threatening weather went down to the river with his children, with the cheerful air of one who finally sees the open sky. The youngsters repeatedly kissed their father’s hand, as they usually did when they were full of joy. Despite his feet and all the rest, Subercasaux kept up all his courage for his children—but for them it was something very different to take a hike with their daddy through the woods aswarm with surprises, and then run barefoot along the shore, over the warm and springy mud of the Yabebirí.

  There what they expected awaited them: the canoe full of water, which had to be bailed out with the usual scoop and the gourds for keeping bugs that the children always slung over their shoulders when they went into the woods.

  Subercasaux was so hopeful that he wasn’t disturbed enough by the dubious look of the muddied waters—of a river where you can usually see the bottom as far as two meters down.

  “The rains,” he thought, “still aren’t coming down hard with the southeaster . . . It’ll be a day or two before it rises.”

  They kept on working. Standing in the water on both sides of the canoe, they bailed away as best they could. Subercasaux, at the start, hadn’t dared to take off his boots, which kept sticking in the deep mud, so badly that it caused him great pains to pull out his foot. Finally he took them off, and with his feet free and sunk like wedges in the stinking mud, he finished bailing out the canoe, turned it over, and cleaned off the bottom, all in two hours of feverish activity.

  Ready at last, they left. For an hour the canoe glided along more rapidly than the rower would have liked. He was rowing badly, braced by a single foot, his naked heel scarred by the edge of the support-beam. And even so he was moving fast, because the Yabebirí was racing now. Finally, the sticks swollen with bubbles starting to fringe the backwaters, and the moustache of straw caught up against a big root, led Subercasaux to realize what was going to happen if he waited another second to veer the prow toward his port.

  Servant girl, young man . . . , a rest at last! . . . , and more hopes gone. So he rowed without losing a stroke. The four hours he spent, tortured by worry and fatigue, going back up a river he’d gone down in an hour, in air so rarefied that his lungs gasped in vain—only he could thoroughly appreciate. When he got to his port the warm and frothy water had already risen two meters above the beach. And down the channel came dead branches, half submerged, their tips bobbing up and sinking in the sway.

  The travelers reached the bungalow when it was already close to dark, though barely four o’clock, and just as the sky, with a single flash from its zenith to the river, at last disgorged its huge supply of water. They had supper at once and went to bed exhausted, under the clamor on the metal roof, which was hammered all night by the deluge with unrelenting violence.

  IV

  At daybreak, a chill to the bone awoke the master of the house. Till then he had slept like a block of lead. Contrary to what was usual since he’d had the infected toe, his foot hardly hurt at all, despite the exertions of the day before. He took the raincoat tossed on the bedstead and pulled it on top of him, and tried to go back to sleep.

  Impossible. The cold went straight through him. The frost inside spread outward to all his pores, now turned into needles of bristling ice, a sensation he got from the slightest rub against his clothes. Curled up in a ball, assailed all up and down his spinal cord by intense and rhythmic waves of cold, the ailing man watched the hours go by with no success at getting warm. Luckily, the children were still asleep.

  “In the state I’m in you don’t do dumb things like yesterday’s,” he kept telling himself. “These are the consequences . . .”

  As a distant dream, a pricelessly rare bliss he once possessed, he fancied he could spend all day in bed, warm and rested at last, while at the table he heard the noise of the cups of café con leche that the servant—that first great servant woman—was setting before the children . . .

  Stay in bed till ten, at least! . . . In four hours the fever would pass, and even his lower back wouldn’t hurt so much . . . What did he need, after all, to get well? A little rest, nothing more. He’d said that himself ten times . . .

  The day was moving on, and the sick man thought he heard the happy noise of the cups, amid the heavy throbbing of his leaden temples. What a delight to hear that noise! . . . He would rest a little, finally . . .

  “Daddy!”

  “My dear boy . . . ”

  “Good morning, sweet little daddy! You’re not up yet? It’s late, daddy.”

  “Yes, my love, I was just getting up . . .”

  And Subercasaux got dressed in a hurry, reproaching himself for his laziness, which had made him forget his children’s coffee.

  The rain had finally stopped, but without the slightest breath of wind being left to sweep away the prevailing humidity. And at noon it started again—a warm, tranquil, monotonous rain, which dissolved the valley of the Horqueta, the sown fields and the grasslands, in a misty and extremely dreary film of water.

  After lunch the kids entertained themselves by renewing their stock of paper boats, which they had used up the afternoon before. They made hundreds of them, fitting them inside each other like ice-cream cones, ready to be tossed into the wake of the canoe, when they went out on the river again. Subercasaux took advantage of the chance to go to bed for a while, where he at once resumed his curled-up posture, lying motionless with his knees against his chest.

  Again, on his temple, he could feel the enormous weight that held it to the pillow, so firmly that the pillow seemed to form an integral part of his head. How good he felt that way! Oh, to stay one, ten, a hundred days without moving! The monotonous drumming of the water on the metal roof lulled him toward sleep, and in its murmur he could hear distinctly, so well as to extract a smile, the tinkling of the cutlery being handled swiftly by the servant in the kitchen. What a servant he had! . . . And he heard the noise of the dishes, dozens of plates, cups, and pots that the servants—there were ten of them now!—scraped and scrubbed with dizzying speed. What a joy to be nice and warm at last, in bed, without a single, not a single worry! . . . When, at what previous time had he dreamed of being sick, with an awful problem? . . . How foolish he’d been! . . . And how nice it is like this, listening to the noise of hundreds of spotless cups . . .

  “Daddy!”

  “Darling girl . . .”

  “I’m getting hungry, daddy!”

  “Yes, sweetheart, right away . . .”

  And the sick man went out in the rain to fix coffee for his children.

  Without being quite sure what he had done that afternoon, Subercasaux watched the night come on with intense delight. He did remember that the delivery-boy hadn’t brought milk that afternoon, and that he’d looked at his wound a long while, without noting anything special about it.

  He fell into bed without even undressing, and in no time the fever laid him low again. The boy that hadn’t come with the milk . . . Crazy! . . . Now he was fine, perfectly fine, resting.

  With only a few days more of rest, even a few hours more, he’d get well. Right! Right! . . . There’s justice in spite of everything . . . And also a little compensation . . . for someone who’d loved his children as he
had . . . But he’d get up healthy. A man can get sick sometimes . . . and need to rest a little. And what a rest he was having now, to the lull of the rain on the metal roof! . . . But hadn’t a month gone by already? . . . He ought to get up.

  The sick man opened his eyes. He saw nothing but darkness, pierced by flashing specks that shrank and expanded by turns, approaching his eyes moving swiftly to and fro.

  “I must have a very high fever,” said the sick man to himself.

  And he lit the wind-lantern on the night-table. The humid wick sputtered on for some time while Subercasaux kept his eyes on the roof. From far away, very far away, came the memory of a night like this when he was very, very sick . . . How silly can you get? . . . He was healthy, because when a man who’s only tired is lucky enough to hear from his bed the furious clinking of the kitchen service, it’s because the mother is watching over her children . . .

  He woke up again. From the corner of his eye he saw the lighted lantern, and after a hard effort to focus his attention, recovered his self-awareness.

  In his right arm, from his elbow to the tips of his fingers, he now felt intense pain. He tried to bring up his arm but couldn’t do it. He pushed away the raincoat, and saw his livid hand, traced in streaks of violet; frozen, dead. Without closing his eyes, he thought a while about what that meant, along with his chills and having rubbed the open vessels of

  his wound against the foul mud of the Yabebirí, and then he came to the clear, absolute and conclusive understanding that his whole being was dying too, that he was passing into death.

  A great silence fell within him, as if the rain, the noise, and the very rhythm of things had abruptly fallen back toward the infinite. And as though he were already detached from himself, he saw far off in a landscape a bungalow totally cut off from all human aid, where two small children, with no milk and all alone, were left abandoned by God and men, in a most iniquitous and dreadful state of helplessness.

  His little children . . .

  With a supreme effort he sought to wrest himself out of that torment which made him grapple, hour after hour and day after day, with the fate of his beloved children. In vain he would think: Life has higher forces that escape us . . . God provides . . .

  “But they won’t have anything to eat!” his heart would cry out tumultuously. And he would be dead, lying right where he was and witnessing that unprecedented horror . . .

  But, in spite of the livid daylight reflected from the wall, darkness began to engulf him again, with its dizzying white dots, which receded and came back again to pulsate in his very eyes . . . Yes! Of course! He’d had a dream! It shouldn’t be allowed to dream such things . . . Now he was going to get up, rested.

  “Daddy! . . . Daddy . . . My dear little daddy! . . .”

  “My son . . .”

  “Aren’t you going to get up today, daddy? It’s very late. We’re really hungry, daddy!”

  “My little boy . . . I’m not going to get up just yet . . . You kids get up and eat some crackers . . . There’s still two left in the can . . . And come back afterward.”

  “Can we come in now, daddy?”

  “No sweetheart . . . Later I’ll make the coffee . . . I’ll be calling you.”

  He still got to hear the laughing and chatter of his children as they got up, and then a crescendo reverberation, a dizzy jingling that radiated from the core of his brain and went on to throb in rhythmic waves against his dreadfully aching skull. And that was all he heard.

  He opened his eyes again, and as he did so felt his head falling toward the left, so freely that it surprised him. He no longer felt any reverberation at all. Only a growing but painless trouble with judging the distance of objects . . . And his mouth held wide-open to breathe.

  “Kids . . . Come here right away . . .”

  In no time the children appeared at the half-opened door, but viewing the lighted lantern and their father’s countenance, came forward silently with their eyes opened wide.

  The ailing man was still brave enough to smile, and as he made that awful face the children opened their eyes still wider.

  “Kids,” said Subercasaux when he had them at his side. “Pay attention, sweethearts, because you’re big now and can understand everything . . . I’m going to die, kids . . . But don’t be distressed . . . Soon you’ll be grown-ups, and you’ll be good and honest . . . And then you’ll remember your daddy . . . Be sure you understand, my dear children . . . In a while I’ll die, and you won’t have a father anymore . . . You’ll be alone in the house . . . But don’t be alarmed or afraid . . . And now good-bye, my children . . . You’re going to give me a kiss now . . . One kiss each . . . But quickly, kids . . . A kiss . . . for your daddy . . .”

  The children left without touching the half-opened door, and went to linger in their room, looking out on the drizzle in the patio. They didn’t stir from there. The girl alone, glimpsing the import of what had just come to pass, would pout from time to time with her arm at her face, while the boy distractedly scratched the window frame, uncomprehending.

  Neither one nor the other dared to make any noise.

  But at the same time there wasn’t the slightest noise from the next room, where for three hours their father, with his shoes and clothes on under his raincoat, had been lying dead in the light of the lantern.

  A Workingman

  One afternoon, in Misiones, I had just finished my midday meal when the bell rang at the front gate. I went outside and saw a young man standing there, with his hat in one hand and a suitcase in the other. The temperature was easily forty degrees centigrade, and on the curly head of my visitor it seemed more like sixty. He didn’t appear to be the least bit troubled, however. I had him come in, and the man moved ahead smiling and looking curiously at the five-meter-wide crowns of my mandarin orange trees, which are, by the way, the pride of the region—and mine.

  I asked him what he wanted, and he answered that he was looking for work. Then I looked at him more carefully.

  For a laborer, he was dressed absurdly. The suitcase was of tanned leather, of course, and with plenty of straps. Then his suit, of brown lambskin without a single stain. Finally, his boots; and not logger’s boots, but goods of the finest workmanship. And above all the elegant, smiling, and self-assured manner of my visitor. He was a laborer?

  “For all work,” he answered happily. “I know how to swing the axe and the hoe . . . I worked before this in Foz-do-Iguaçu, and planted a field of potatoes.”

  The fellow was a Brazilian, and spoke a frontier tongue, a mixture of Portuguese, Spanish, and Guaraní, and very rich in piquancy.

  “Potatoes? And the sun?” I remarked. “How did you manage that?”

  “Oh!” he answered shrugging his shoulders. “The sun’s no trouble . . . You be sure to turn the earth a lot with the hoe . . . And come down hard on the weeds! Weeds are the worst enemy by the potato.”

  That’s how I learned how to grow potatoes in a land where the sun—besides killing vegetables by simply burning them as though pressed by a flatiron—shrivels up red ants in three seconds and coral snakes in twenty.

  The man looked at me and at everything around him, visibly pleased with me and my surroundings.

  “All right . . . ,” I told him. “Let’s try a few days . . . I don’t have much work right now.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” he answered. “I like this house. It’s a very nice place.”

  And turning toward the Paraná, which was flowing sleepily at the foot of the valley, he added with satisfaction:

  “Oh, you devil of a Paraná! . . . If the boss he like to go fishing, I’ll go along with you . . . I had a great time at the Foz with the catfish.”

  On that I could agree; for amusing himself the man seemed adept as few are. But the fact is that he amused me too, and I burdened my conscience with the pesos he’d eventually cost me.

  As a consequence, he left his suitcase on the table on the veranda, and said to me:

  “Today I
don’t work . . . I’m going to look over the town. I’ll start tomorrow.”

  Out of ten peones who go to Misiones in search of work, only one starts right away—the one who’s really satisfied with the stipulated conditions. Those who put off the job till the next day never come back, no matter how grand their promises.

  But my man was made of stuff too rare to be included in the usual roster of wage-earners, so I had my hopes. Sure enough, the next day—as dawn was still breaking—he made his appearance, rubbing his hands all the way from the gate.

  “Now I am ready to work . . . What has to be done?”

  I gave him the job of going on with a well through sandy stone I’d begun that was barely three meters deep. He went down in the hole, very satisfied with the task, and for a long while I heard the muffled blow of the pick and the well-digger’s whistling.

  At noon it rained, and the water swept a little earth to the bottom. A bit later I could hear my man whistling again, but the pick wasn’t active enough. I went over to see what was going on, and I saw Olivera—that was his name—conscientiously studying the trajectory of every pick-stroke, so the mud wouldn’t spatter on his pants.

  “What’s this, Olivera?” I said to him. “We’re not going to get far that way . . .”

  The fellow raised his head and looked at me a moment carefully, as though he wanted to make sure of my appearance. And right after that he started to laugh, bending over the pick again.

  “It’s all right!” he muttered. “Fica bon!”

  I moved off so as not to break with that absurd laborer, like none other I’d ever seen; but when I was barely ten steps away, I heard his voice coming up from below:

  “Ha, ha! . . . This sure is all right, boss! . . . So I’m going to dirty my clothes to dig this damned well?”

  And the matter kept on delighting his sense of humor. A few hours later Olivera was on his way into the house—and without even coughing at the door to call attention to his presence, something unheard-of in a laborer from the region. He seemed more cheerful than ever.