The Exiles and Other Stories Page 7

  “I’ll sell cheap to you . . . fifty pesos!”

  Candiyú shook his head, smiling alternately at the machine and its operator.

  “Lots of money! I haven’t got it.”

  “What have you got then?”

  The man smiled again, without answering.

  “Where you live?” Mr. Hall went on, obviously resolved to unload his gramophone.

  “At the port.”

  “Ah! I know you . . . Your name Candiyú?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you fish for logs?”

  “Now and then, some little log that nobody owns.”

  “I’ll sell for logs! . . . Three logs sawed into planks. I’ll send a wagon. All right?”

  Candiyú was laughing.

  “I haven’t got any now. And that . . . machinery, is it very tricky to work?”

  “No; a button here, and a button there . . . I show you. When you have lumber?”

  “Some rise of the river . . . One ought to be coming soon. And what kind of wood you wants?”

  “Rosewood. All right?”

  “Hum! . . . That kind almost never come down . . . Only when the river really swells. It’s nice wood! You likes fine wood, I see.”

  “And you’ll get a fine gramophone. All right?”

  The dealing went on to the sound of British tunes, with the native evading the straightaway course and the accountant corraling him in the little circle of precision. At bottom, and granting the heat and the whiskey, the subject of the Crown wasn’t making a bad bargain in trading a sorry gramophone for dozens of beautiful planks, while the log-fisherman, in turn, was putting up a few days of usual work against a wonderful little noise machine. So the deal went into effect, subject to an agreed deadline.

  Candiyú has been living on the banks of the Paraná for thirty years; and if, after his last attack of fever this past December, his liver can still pass whatever you please, he ought to live on for a few months more. Now he spends his days sitting on his stick-frame cot, with his hat on. Only his hands—livid paws streaked with green, hanging huge from his wrists, as though foregrounded in a photograph—keep moving endlessly, monotonously, trembling like a featherless parrot.

  But in those days Candiyú was a different person. Then he had the respectable job of tending someone else’s banana grove, and—not quite so legal—that of log-fishing. Ordinarily, and especially when the river rises, there are loose logs that come drifting down from the lumber camps, whether floating off from a pontoon being built, or because some clowning laborer severs a retaining rope with a slash of his machete. Candiyú owned a telescope, and spent his mornings peering at the water, till the whitish outline of a log, standing out against the cape of Itacurubí, sent him out to meet the prey in his rowboat. The task is nothing special if the log is seen in time, because the oar of a man of spirit—pushing or hauling a ten-by-forty timber1—is a match for any tugboat.

  Up in the Castelhum logging camp, above Puerto Felicidad, the rains had begun, after sixty-five days of total drought that ruined the tires on the hauling wagons. At that moment the company’s salable property consisted of seven thousand logs—a fortune and then some. But since a two-ton log doesn’t weigh two scruples2 at a cashier’s desk so long as it’s not in port, Castelhum and Company were a far piece away from being content.

  From Buenos Aires came orders for immediate mobilization; the manager of the camp asked for mules and wagons; they replied that with the money from the first pontoon to come down they could send him the mules, and the manager answered that he’d send them the first pontoon if he got the mules in advance.

  There was no way to come to terms. Castelhum went up to the logging site and saw the stock of lumber at the camp, on the bluff above the Ñacanguazú, to the north.

  “How much?” Castelhum asked his manager.

  “Thirty-five thousand pesos,” he answered.

  That was the amount needed to move the logs to the Paraná. And without allowing for the untimely season.

  Under the rain that joined his rubber cape to his horse in a single stream of water, Castelhum stared lengthily at the whirling river. Then, with a movement of the hooded cape toward the torrent, he asked his companion:

  “Will the water rise enough to cover the falls?”

  “Yes, if it rains a lot.”

  “Do you have all your men in camp?”

  “Till now I do; I was waiting for orders from you.”

  “Good,” said Castelhum. “I think we’re going to come out all right. Listen, Fernández; this afternoon, without delay, I want you to secure the boom at the mouth of the river and start bringing all the logs over here to the bluff. The stream is clean, if you told me right. Tomorrow morning I’m going down to Posadas, and after that, with the first storm that comes, throw the timbers in the stream. Understand? A good rain.”

  The manager looked at him, with his eyes wide open as could be.

  “The line’s going to give before a hundred logs come down.”

  “I know, it doesn’t matter. And it’ll cost us plenty of pesos. Let’s go back and we’ll talk it over some more.”

  Fernández shrugged his shoulders and whistled to the foremen.

  For the rest of the day, rainless but drenched in watery calm, the peones laid out the chain of logs from one bank to the other at the mouth of the stream, and the tumbling of timbers began at the camp. Castelhum went down to Posadas on flood waters running at seven knots, that had risen seven meters the night before, after coming out of the Guayra.

  After a big drought, big rains. At noon began the deluge, and for fifty-two hours straight the bush roared with rain. The stream, risen to a torrent, went on to become a howling avalanche of reddish water. The peones, soaked to the bone, their skinny frames revealed by the clothing clinging to their bodies, kept heaving logs down the bluff. Every effort provoked a unanimous cry of encouragement, and when a monstrous log came tumbling down and plunged with a cannon-boom into the water, every one of them let go his ¡a . . . hijú! of triumph. And then the wasted striving in the liquid mud, the pike-poles slipping loose, the falls and bruises under the torrential rain. And the fever.

  At last, abruptly, the deluge stopped. In the sudden silence roundabout you could hear the rain still drumming down on the woods nearby. More muffled and deeper-sounding was the rumbling of the Ñacanguazú. Only a few light drops, and far between, still fell from the depleted sky. But the weather continued sultry, without the slightest gust of wind. It was a time for breathing water, and the workers had barely rested an hour or two when the rain began again—that white, compact, and vertical rain that led to swelling rivers. The work was urgent—wages had gone up commendably—and as the storm went on the peones kept on shouting, falling, and tumbling under the icy waters.

  At the mouth of the Ñacanguazú the floating barrier held back the first timbers that came down, and, bowed and groaning, withstood many more, till under the irresistible thrust of the logs that struck the boom, like projectiles out of a catapult, the line gave way.

  II

  Candiyú watched the river through his telescope, judging that its present swell—which there in San Ignacio was two meters higher than the day before, and had carried off his rowboat in the bargain—was probably a huge flood below Posadas. The timbers had started to come down, cedars or the like, and prudently the fisherman conserved his strength.

  That night the water rose another meter, and the next afternoon Candiyú was surprised to see out of the end of his telescope a pack, a veritable throng of loose logs coming around the cape of Itacurubí. Wood that was perfectly dry and loomed up whitish above the water.

  That was his place to be. He jumped into his canoe and paddled out to hunt his game.

  Now on a swelling of the Upper Paraná a fisherman finds lots of things before getting to his chosen log. Whole trees, of course, ripped sheer from the earth and with their black roots waving in the air, like octopi. Dead cows and mules, along with
a good share of wild animals—drowned, shot, or with an arrow still stuck in the belly. Tall cones of ants piled up on a massive root. Maybe a jaguar; all the foam and floating lilies you like—to say nothing of the snakes, of course.

  Candiyú dodged, drifted, bumped, and tipped over many more times than necessary till he got to his prize. At last he won it; a blow of his machete laid bare the blood-red grain of the rosewood, and lying up against the log he managed to drift along obliquely with it for a ways. But the branches, the trees, came by ceaselessly, dragging him with them. He changed tactics: roped his prey and then began the mute and truceless struggle, silently throwing his heart into every stroke of the paddle.

  A log drifting down on a big swell has enough momentum to make three men hesitate before taking it on. But coupled with his great spirit Candiyú had the experience of twenty years of piracies at low river and high, and besides, he wanted to be the owner of a gramophone.

  Nightfall presented him with circumstances entirely to his liking. The river, almost at eye level, was flowing swiftly, with the sleekness of oil. On both sides dense shadows passed and passed again, incessantly. The body of a drowned man bumped into the canoe; Candiyú bent over and saw that his throat was slit. Then there were troublesome visitors, attacking snakes, the same kind that climb up the paddle-wheels of steamboats and on into the passengers’ cabins, when the river swells.

  The Herculean work went on; his paddle trembled under the water, but he was swept along in spite of everything. At last he gave in; he narrowed the landing angle and gathered the last of his strength in order to get to the edge of the channel, which grazed the towering rocks of the Teyucuaré. For ten minutes the log-fisherman, with his neck-tendons stiff and his chest like stone, did what nobody’s ever going to do again to get out of the channel in a swell, with a log in tow. The canoe finally crashed against the rocks and keeled over, just when Candiyú still had strength enough—but no more—to secure the rope and fall on his face on the shore.

  A month went by before Mr. Hall got his three dozen planks, but twenty seconds after that he was handing over the gramophone to Candiyú, along with twenty records.

  The firm of Castelhum and Company, despite its flotilla of steam-launches, sent out—and for well over thirty days—to retrieve the logs, lost a lot of them. And if some day Castelhum comes to San Ignacio and visits Mr. Hall, he’ll sincerely admire the said accountant’s dining-room suite, made out of rosewood planks.

  Notes

  1 About 33 feet long by 16 inches in diameter (10 meters by 40 centimeters).

  2 Two scruples: less than a tenth of an ounce.

  The Yaciyateré

  When you’ve seen a little boy with a raging fever laugh like crazy at two o’clock in the morning, while outside a yaciyateré is circling around, you suddenly get ideas about superstitions that go right to the core of your nerves.

  Down here it’s a superstition and nothing more. People from the south say the yaciyateré is a big gawky bird that sings at night. I’ve never seen him, but I’ve heard him a thousand times. His song is very pure and melancholy, and as repetitious and obsessive as any you’ll ever hear. But in the north the yaciyateré is another story.

  One afternoon, in Misiones, a friend and I went out to try a new sail on the Paraná, one of our own design. The canoe was also a creation of ours, built to the bizarre scale of one to eight. Not very stable, as you can see, but capable of skipping along like a torpedo boat.

  We left at five in the afternoon, in the summertime. Since the morning there had been no wind. A mighty storm was threatening, and the heat was unbearable. The river flowed like oil under a white sky. We couldn’t take off our sunglasses for an instant, since the double glare of sky and water was blinding. On top of that, a migraine starting to bother my comrade. And not the slightest breath of air.

  An afternoon like that in Misiones, with the air the way it is after five days of north wind, bodes nothing good for a person drifting down the Paraná in a racing canoe. On the other hand there’s nothing more demanding than to row in those conditions.

  We kept on drifting, intent on the southern horizon, till we got to the Teyucuaré. The storm was coming.

  The heights of this peninsula called the Teyucuaré, split straight down above the river into enormous cliffs of pink sandstone over which dangle vines from the woods, extend far into the Paraná, forming toward San Ignacio a deep inlet completely sheltered from the south wind. Huge blocks of stone broken loose from the cliffsides bristle on the shoreline, and against it the whole Paraná crashes, swirls, and finally escapes downstream, in rapidly funneling whirlpools. But from the last cape inward, and along the bank itself, the water backs up, gently lapping the Teyucuaré all the way to the end of the cove.

  On that cape, and in the shelter of an immense stone block, to avoid being surprised by the wind, we beached the canoe and sat down to wait. But the polished rocks were really burning hot, though there wasn’t any sun, and we went down to crouch at the water’s edge.

  The south, however, had changed its appearance. Above the distant woods a white tail of wind arose, pulling after it a blue canopy of rain. The river, suddenly opaque, had broken into ripples.

  All this happened quickly: We hoisted the sail, pushed off the canoe, and abruptly, behind the dark block of stone, the wind swept by, grazing the water. It was just a single five-second gust, and already there were waves. We rowed toward the head of the shoal, for not a leaf was moving yet behind the parapet of the cliff. All of a sudden we crossed the line—imaginary, if you like, but perfectly defined—and the wind took hold of us.

  Now consider this: the size of our sail was three square meters, which is far from big, and we headed into the wind at a thirty-five-degree angle. Well, the sail blew off, torn away like a mere handkerchief, and without any time for the canoe to feel the shock. Then instantly the wind dragged us off. It only caught our bodies, but that was enough to counteract the oars, the rudder, whatever we tried to do. And we weren’t even moving astern; it carried us sideways, gunwale down, like a capsized wreck.

  Wind and water, now. Over the crests of the waves the whole river was white with a mantle of rain that the wind swept from one wave to another, blew apart and then back together in abrupt, convulsive gusts. And add to this the explosive speed with which waves against the current rise, on a river still bottomless in that vicinity at a depth of sixty fathoms. In a single minute the Paraná had been transformed into a hurricane-harried sea, and we into a pair of castaways. We were still being blown sideways, tipping over, taking on two or three buckets of water with every slap of wave, blinded by rain, our faces aching from the lashes of the storm, and trembling with cold.

  In Misiones, under a summer storm, the temperature can easily drop from forty to fifteen centigrade, and in only a quarter-hour. Nobody gets sick, because it’s that kind of country, but you freeze to death.

  The high seas, in short. Our only hope was the beach of Blosset—fortunately a clay beach—which we were now approaching at headlong speed. Whether the canoe could have taken another slap of water and stayed afloat, I don’t know; but when a wave cast us five meters up the shore, we thought we were plenty lucky. Even so we had to rescue the canoe, which drifted back and then up into the reeds like a cork, while we sank in rotten clay and the rain came pelting down upon us like a shower of stones.

  We got out of there; but after about a quarter-mile were dead tired—this time from heat, not cold. Go on along the beach? Impossible. And cutting through the brush on an ink-black night, even with a Collins machete1 in your hand, is only for fools.

  Nevertheless, that’s what we did. All of a sudden something barked—or rather, howled, since dogs in the wild only howl—and we stumbled onto a hut. Inside, but not easy to see against the flame of the hearth, were a laborer, his wife, and three little kids. And also a gunnysack stretched out as a hammock, in which a child was dying of fever.

  “What’s he got?” we asked.

&nbs
p; “It’s a hurt,” answered the parents, after turning their heads toward the gunnysack for a moment.

  They were sitting down, apparently unconcerned. The kids, on the other hand, were all eyes, gaping outdoors. Right then, from far away, the yaciyateré began to sing. The youngsters instantly covered their heads and faces with their arms.

  “Ah, the yaciyateré,” we thought. “He’s come to get the kid. Or at least to drive him out of his mind.”

  The wind and rain had moved away, but the air was very cold. A while later, but from much closer, the yaciyateré sang again. The sick boy shuddered in the hammock. His parents kept looking at the fire, unconcerned. We told them about cold-water cloths to the head. They didn’t understand us, and it wasn’t worth the trouble anyway. What good could that do against the yaciyateré?

  Just as I had, I think my comrade had noticed the little boy’s agitation as the bird got nearer. Naked from the waist up, we kept on drinking mate, while our shirts were steaming as they dried by the fire. There was no talking now, but in a gloomy corner we could clearly see the terrified eyes of the children.

  Outside, the woods were still dripping. All of a sudden, barely half a block away, the yaciyateré sang again. The sick child reacted with a burst of laughter.

  That’s how it was. The boy had a soaring fever, because he had meningitis, and he answered the call of the yaciyateré with a burst of laughter.

  We were drinking mate, and our shirts were drying out. The child wasn’t moving now. He just snored every now and then, with a rough jerk of his head back against the gunnysack.

  Outside, this time in the banana grove, the yaciyateré sang out once more. The boy reacted instantly with another laugh. The children let out a yell and the flames of the hearth-fire went dead.

  As for us, a chill ran up and down our spines. There was someone singing outside, and moving closer, no doubt about that. All right, a bird, and we knew it. And this bird who’d come to abduct the child, or drive him crazy, was answered by the child himself, with a burst of laughter out of his now still higher fever.