The Insufferable Gaucho (2 page)

Of course, you’re right, Mister Judge, said Severo Infante, but I feel
like celebrating anyway. Bouncing like a kangaroo, the station employee
disappeared into the ticket office, then came out with a bottle and a glass.
Your health, he said, handing Pereda the glass, which he half filled with a
clear liquid that seemed to be pure alcohol. Pereda took a sip—it tasted of
scorched earth and stones—and left the glass on the bench. He said he had given
up drinking. Then he got up and asked the way to his ranch. They went out the
back door. Capitán Jourdan is over there, said Severo, just beyond the dry pond.
Alamo Negro is the other way, a bit further, but you can’t get lost in the
daylight. You look after yourself, said Pereda, and set off in the direction of
his ranch.

The main house was almost in ruins. That night it was cold, and Pereda
tried to gather some sticks and light a campfire, but he couldn’t find anything
to burn, and in the end he wrapped himself up in his overcoat, rested his head
on his suitcase, and told himself, as he fell asleep, that tomorrow would be
another day. He woke with the first light of dawn. There was still water in the
well, although the bucket had disappeared and the rope was rotten. I need to buy
a rope and a bucket, he thought. For breakfast he ate what was left of a packet
of peanuts he had bought on the train. He inspected the multitudinous
low-ceilinged rooms of the ranch house. Then he set off for Capitán Jourdan, and
was surprised to see rabbits but no cattle on the way. He observed them
uneasily. Occasionally they would hop toward him, but he only had to wave his
arms to make them disappear. Although he had never been particularly keen on
guns, he would have been glad of one then. Apart from that, the walk was
pleasant: the air was fresh, the sky was clear; it was neither hot nor cold.
From time to time he spotted a tree all alone out on the plain, and the vision
struck him as poetic, as if the tree and the austere scenery of the deserted
countryside had been arranged just for him, and had been awaiting his arrival
with an imperturbable patience.

None of the roads in Capitán Jourdan were paved and the housefronts
were thickly coated with dust. As he entered the town, he saw a man asleep
beside some flowerpots containing plastic flowers. My god, it’s so shabby! he
thought. The main square was broad, and the town hall, built of brick, gave the
collection of squat, derelict buildings a vague air of civilization. He asked a
gardener who was sitting in the square smoking a cigarette where he could find a
hardware store. The gardener looked at him curiously, then accompanied him to
the door of the only hardware store in town. The owner, an Indian, sold him all
the rope he had in stock: forty yards of braided hemp, which Pereda examined at
length, as if looking for loose threads. Put it on my account, he said when he
had decided what to buy. The Indian looked at him nonplussed. Whose account? he
asked. Manuel Pereda’s, said Pereda, as he piled up his new possessions in a
corner of the store. Then he asked the Indian where he could buy a horse. There
are no horses left here, he said, only rabbits. Pereda thought it was a joke and
responded with a quick, dry laugh. The gardener, who was looking in from the
threshold, said there might be a strawberry roan to be had at Don Dulce’s ranch.
Pereda asked him how he could get there, and the gardener walked a couple of
blocks with him, to a vacant lot full of rubble. Beyond lay open country.

The ranch was called Mi Paraíso and it didn’t seem to be as run down
as Alamo Negro. A few chickens were pecking around in the yard. The door to the
shed had been pulled off its hinges and someone had propped it against a wall
nearby. Some Indian-looking kids were playing with bolas. A woman came out of
the main house and said good afternoon. Pereda asked her for a glass of water.
Between mouthfuls he asked if there was a horse for sale. You’ll have to wait
for the boss, said the woman, and went back into the house. Pereda sat down
beside the well and kept himself busy brushing away the flies that were buzzing
around everywhere, as if the yard were used for pickling meat, thought Pereda,
although the only pickles he knew were the ones he used to buy many years ago at
a store that imported them directly from England. After an hour, he heard the
sound of a jeep and stood up.

Don Dulce was a little pink-faced guy, with blue eyes, wearing a
short-sleeved shirt, even though, by the time he arrived, it was starting to get
cold. From the jeep emerged an even shorter guy: a gaucho attired in baggy
bombachas
and a diaper-like
chiripá
, who threw Pereda a
sidelong glance and started carrying rabbit skins into the shed. Pereda
introduced himself. He said he was the owner of Alamo Negro and that he was
planning to do some work on the ranch and needed to buy a horse. Don Dulce
invited him to dinner. Around the table sat the host, the woman who had appeared
earlier, the children, the gaucho, and Pereda. There was a fire in the hearth,
not to heat the room but for grilling meat. The bread was hard and unleavened,
the way the Jews make it, thought Pereda, remembering his Jewish wife with a
twinge of nostalgia. But no one at Mi Paraíso seemed to be Jewish. Don Dulce
spoke like a local, although Pereda did notice a few expressions that were
typical of the Buenos Aires loud mouth, as if his host had grown up in Villa
Luro and hadn’t been living on the pampas all that long.

When it came to buying the horse, everything went smoothly. Choosing
was not a problem, because there was only one horse for sale. When Pereda said
he might need a month to pay, Don Dulce didn’t object, although the gaucho, who
hadn’t said a word all through the meal, stared at the newcomer warily. They
saddled the horse, showed the guest his way home, and said goodbye.

How long has it been since I rode a horse? Pereda wondered. For a few
seconds he worried that his bones, accustomed to the comfort of Buenos Aires and
its armchairs, might break under the strain. The night was dark as pitch or
coal. Stupid expressions, thought Pereda. European nights might be pitch-dark or
coal-black, but not American nights, which are dark like a void, where there’s
nothing to hold on to, no shelter from the elements, just empty, storm-whipped
space, above and below. May the rain fall soft on you, he heard Don Dulce shout.
God willing, he replied from the darkness.

On the way back to his ranch, he dozed off a couple of times. The
first time he saw armchairs raining down over a city, which he eventually
recognized as Buenos Aires. Suddenly the armchairs burst into flames, lighting
up the city sky as they burned. The other time he saw himself on horseback, with
his father, riding away from Alamo Negro. His father seemed to be sad. When will
we come back? asked the young Pereda. Never again, Manuelito, said his father.
He woke up from this second nap in one of the streets of Capitán Jourdan. He saw
a corner store that was open. He heard voices, and someone strumming a guitar,
tuning it but never settling on a particular song to play, just as he had read
in Borges. For a moment he thought that his destiny, his screwed-up American
destiny, would be to meet his death like Dahlman in “The South,” and it seemed
wrong, partly because he now had debts to repay, and partly because he wasn’t
ready to die, although Pereda was aware that no one is ever ready for death.
Seized by a sudden inspiration, he entered the store on horseback. Inside he
found an old gaucho strumming the guitar, the barman, and three younger guys
sitting at a table, who started when they saw the horse come in. Pereda was
inwardly satisfied by the thought that the scene was like something from a story
by di Benedetto. Nevertheless, he set his face and approached the zinc-topped
bar. He ordered a glass of eau-de-vie, which he drank with one hand, while in
the other he held his riding crop discreetly out of view, since he hadn’t yet
acquired the traditional sheath knife. He asked the barman to put the drink on
his account, and on his way out, as he passed the young gauchos, he told them to
move aside because he was going to spit. It was meant as a reaffirmation of
authority, but before the gauchos could grasp what was happening, the virulent
gob of phlegm had flown from his lips; they barely had time to jump. May the
rain fall soft on you, he said, before disappearing into the darkness of Capitán
Jourdan.

From then on, Pereda went into town each day on his horse, which he
named José Bianco. He often went to buy tools with which to repair the ranch
house, but he also passed the time of day chatting with the gardener, or with
the keepers of the general store and the hardware store, whose livelihoods he
diminished day by day, as he added to the accounts he had with each of them.
Other gauchos and storekeepers soon joined in these conversations, and sometimes
even children came to hear the stories Pereda told. The stories, of course,
portrayed the teller in a favorable light, although they weren’t exactly
cheerful. For example he told them how he had once owned a horse very like José
Bianco, which had been killed in a confrontation with the police. Luckily I was
a judge, he said, and when the police come up against a judge or an ex-judge,
they usually back off.

Police work’s about order, he said, while judges defend justice. Do
you see the difference, boys? The gauchos would usually nod, although not all of
them were sure just what he was talking about.

Sometimes he went to the station, where his friend Severo would
reminisce at length about their childhood pranks. Although Pereda was privately
convinced that he couldn’t have been as silly as he came across in those
stories, he let Severo talk until he was tired or fell asleep, then walked out
onto the platform to wait for the train and the letter it should have been
bringing.

Finally the letter arrived. In it, his cook explained that life was
hard in Buenos Aires, but that he shouldn’t worry, because both she and the maid
were going to the house every two days, and it was in perfect order. With the
crisis, some apartments in the neighborhood suddenly seemed to have given way to
entropy, but his was as clean, as stately and as comfortable as ever, perhaps
even more so, since the usual wear and tear had slowed down to a standstill.
Then she went on to relate various pieces of news about the neighbors, gossip
tinged with fatalism, since they all felt cheated and no one could see a light
at the end of the tunnel. The cook said it was all down to the Peronists, that
pack of thieves, while the maid was more sweeping: she blamed all the
politicians, and the Argentine people in general; they’d been as docile as
sheep, and now they were getting what they deserved. As to sending him money,
both of them were looking into it, she assured him; the problem was, they still
hadn’t figured out how to make sure it wouldn’t be filched by some racketeer on
the way.

In the evening, as he was returning to Alamo Negro at a gallop, the
lawyer could sometimes see a far-off village in ruins that didn’t seem to have
been there before. Sometimes a slender column of smoke rose from the village and
dissipated in the vast sky over the plains. Occasionally he encountered the
vehicle in which Don Dulce and his gaucho got around. They would stop to talk
and smoke for a while, Don Dulce and the gaucho sitting in their jeep, the
lawyer still mounted on José Bianco. Don Dulce was out after rabbits. Pereda
once asked him how he hunted them, and Don Dulce told his gaucho to show the
lawyer one of the traps, which was half-way between a bird cage and a rat trap.
In any case, Pereda never saw a single rabbit in the jeep, only the skins,
because the gaucho skinned them on the spot, beside the traps. After those
chats, Pereda always felt that Don Dulce was somehow debasing the nation. Rabbit
hunting! What sort of job is that for a gaucho? he asked himself. Then he would
give his horse an affectionate pat, Come on,
che
, José Bianco, let’s
go, he’d say, and head back to the ranch.

One day the cook turned up. She had brought money for him. She rode
behind him on José Bianco half way from the station to the ranch, then they
walked the rest of the way, in silence, contemplating the plains. By this stage
the ranch house was more comfortable than it had been when Pereda arrived; they
ate rabbit stew, and then, by the light of an oil lamp, the cook handed over the
money she had brought, and explained where it had come from, which objects from
the house she had been forced to sell off at fraction of their value. Pereda
didn’t even bother to count the bills. The next morning, when he woke up, he saw
that the cook had worked all night cleaning up some of the rooms. He reproached
her gently. Don Manuel, she said, it’s like a pigsty here.

Two days later, in spite of the lawyer’s entreaties, she took the
train back to Buenos Aires. When I’m away from Buenos Aires I feel like another
person, she explained to him as they waited on the platform, just the two of
them. And I’m too old to become someone else. Women, they’re all the same,
thought Pereda. Everything is changing, the cook explained to him. The city was
full of beggars, and respectable people were organizing neighborhood soup
kitchens just to have something to put in their stomachs. There must have been
ten different kinds of currency, not counting the official money. No one was
bored. People were desperate, but not bored. As she spoke, Pereda was watching
the rabbits that had appeared on the other side of the tracks. The rabbits
looked at them, then bounded away across the plain. Sometimes it’s as if the
country round here were crawling with lice or fleas, thought the lawyer. With
the money the cook had brought, he paid his debts and hired a pair of gauchos to
repair the roof of the ranch house, which was falling in. The problem was that
he knew next to nothing about carpentry, and the gauchos knew even less.

One was called José and must have been around seventy. He didn’t have
a horse. The other was called Campodónico and was probably younger, though maybe
not. Both wore the traditional baggy
bombachas
, but their headgear
consisted of caps they had made themselves from rabbit skins. Neither had a
family, so after a while they both came to live at Alamo Negro. At night, by the
light of a fire out in the open, Pereda whiled away the time recounting
adventures that had taken place exclusively in his imagination. He spoke to them
of Argentina, Buenos Aires, and the pampas, and he asked them which one of the
three they would choose. Argentina’s like a novel, he said, a lie, or
make-believe at best. Buenos Aires is full of crooks and loudmouths, a hellish
place, with nothing to recommend it except the women, and some of the writers,
but only a few. Ah, but the pampas—the pampas are eternal. A limitless cemetery,
that’s what they’re like. Can you imagine that, boys, a limitless cemetery? The
gauchos smiled and confessed that it was pretty hard to imagine something like
that, since cemeteries are for humans, and although the number of humans is big,
there’s a limit to it. Ah, but the cemetery I’m talking about, said Pereda, is
an exact copy of eternity.