Land of Smoke Read online

  But it wasn’t possible to forget everything. Through heavy shovelling we kept open the excavation that had led it to our door. I felt as if I’d die of fatigue. And the white immensity outside made me feel as if I’d die of sorrow. Not to ask about the miracle that had opened that gap was almost, almost suicide.

  I made a comment about the good luck that had brought that ‘melting’. It produced a ferocious, attentive stare. Leaning over my shovel, I seemed innocent. My wretched condition as a man of the plains could explain away most things.

  Did I say that curiosity is common to many? Yes it is. Even to monsters.

  My man had made something like rackets for his feet. He managed to go outside without going far, so that a great snowfall wouldn’t cut him off from the cave. Which meant I went back to spending my hours alone. Such relief.

  I was alone, polishing my axe, when I felt I was being observed. Slowly my hairs stood up on end, but I continued my task. I thought maybe the Basque, in a twist of his madness, had resolved to kill me. Or maybe…

  Under the pretence of adding fuel to the fire, I approached the door and glanced out. Something on the other side of the rocks was peeking inside. Something that covered more cracks of light than a man would, even with furs, even with a turban. A huge shadow.

  I brought the torches. I brought a musket with a bayonet that was near the Basque’s bed. I brought a shovel and filled it with embers. I surrounded myself with stones.

  Then the shadow disappeared. The sad light from outside came back in through the cracks.

  I decided: let’s end this rat’s life. Let’s fight; let’s fight.

  And I started to think. Thought, as it does for so many, made me a sceptic. Even if I did kill the monster, and if I killed my benefactor, what could I do in that place in winter? I would have to wait for the thaw before making a move.

  Very well, I would wait.

  Now comes the night the monster got in. A blast of cold woke me. I saw a furry silhouette make its way towards the Basque’s corner.

  I woke up. On hearing the sound of a voice, my companion’s, I stifled what had almost been a cry of alarm. He whispered a curt command. Then… may God forgive me… those grunts, what can I say about them? What can I say of the moon that illuminated the giant being as it withdrew, breasts drooping over its swollen, yes, pregnant, belly? It was a female.

  As far as life starting from that night goes, I will say: weapon in hand, back to the wall, we ate without speaking, without gestures. The secret was stronger than any alliance. I developed a sympathy for that one who did not want to return to the world of the word, the great exile, who to his shame had succumbed to compassion for someone like him. That’s how things were.

  That’s how things were until the thaw.

  Until the sound of cavalry, of a bugle in a gorge below.

  I jumped up, frantic. I moved my arms. Then I saw the flag, red and gold. The king’s flag.

  Something grabbed me by the shoulders. It wasn’t the monster, although it seemed so from its strength. My companion, his tiny eyes glassy under the sun, tucked a slip of paper into my hand: his registration document. Then he pushed me over the cliff, same as my mule.

  So I fell unconscious among the king’s troops, maggots of liberty, and I, a maggot of empire. I transformed into Miguel Cayetano Echeverrigoitía, native of Biscay, dressed in furs and mute for reasons of prudence, though not deaf, as my companions noticed and commented upon.

  Tied to the back of a mule, my leg in a splint, exhausted, I knew the precipices, ravines, caverns and rock faces were being left behind. That was all I asked for.

  Then a cry was heard. The strangest, the most terrible. It echoed up there. It hit the abyss, bounced and rebounded.

  My Andalusian companions looked at one another, trembling. An Aragonese artilleryman murmured:

  ‘The Irrintzi…’

  I had heard about that. It was the cry of the Basques.

  The suspicions began afterwards. For the moment they remained silent.

  ‘What is it celebrating?’ a young man next to me asked.

  Silent, I said to myself, ‘A new race.’

  I let out a hideous laugh.

  But all of them thought I was mad anyway.

  A NEW SCIENCE

  IWILL TELL YOU what I was able to discover.

  It was 1942. The year Silvina Ocampo published her Epitaphs for Twelve Chinese Clouds. A tall melancholy man wanted to talk with her. A linotypist. By chance he had seen the galley proofs of the poems on a table. The man had a cough, as many typesetters do; soon he gave up his attempt. It was a fantasy, but understandable if you consider the task to which he had dedicated his life.

  The man who told me these things in a basement room near the river was his successor.

  The task looked like a bunch of papers, some of them yellowing. Arturo Manteiga, the linotypist, and Claudio Sánchez, the one talking to me, had been the third and fourth ones to inherit it.

  The yellowest part began with a title page that featured decorations of the finest calligraphy. They were in the author’s own hand. Surrounded by the decorations, the name, date and title of the work could be seen.

  Giacomo Pizzinelli. 1852. The Influence of Clouds on History.

  Pizzinelli had made observations for thirty-seven years. Day after day he had described the shapes of the clouds and their progress, and day after day from 1852 to 1889 he had noted the variations of politics and the changes of mood in the elite and the people, as far as possible.

  In the beginning he limited himself to his city, Verona. Turin was the second step. He followed the events. He could draw the clouds floating on 24 May 1856, when the Austrians withdrew from Tuscany, and those on 17 March 1861, during the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy.

  Thanks to a recommendation, he came here in 1889 as a railway engineer. Within a month, he died in Concordia. In bed, in between bouts of fever, he managed to win a disciple.

  Very pale, making notes in the light of the kerosene lamp, José Manteiga decided to do him justice. He was a young Spanish apothecary. It took him some time to complete the sale of his business. He arrived in Buenos Aires on 1 January 1890. He drew the clouds above the Park during the shoot-out between troops and revolutionaries. With great trembling he confirmed that their shapes coincided with the ones recorded by Pizzinelli in Paris in April 1871, the days of the Commune.

  He decided to devote himself to a point that had worried Pizzinelli. The shape of the clouds depends on distance from the sea, humidity, wind, temperature and hemisphere. But to what degree was the action of the clouds not merely a product of atmospheric conditions, of which clouds constituted only the visible sign?

  To study this problem he appealed to correspondents, contacted two meteorologists in Italy, made the acquaintance of a friend in Spain and an expert working for the army in Buenos Aires. In addition he completed the basic morphology established by Pizzinelli. The Catalogue of Cloud Shapes, with Possible Historical, Political and Economic Consequences was composed of four hundred analytic sketches.

  José Manteiga continued his work until 1920. Then a burst blood vessel immobilised him for a long period. He died without recovering his speech.

  At that point the new science had sixty-eight years of uninterrupted studies. In its archive: 1,267 watercolours, charcoal drawings and pencil sketches by Pizzinelli; 4,305 pencil drawings, gouaches and photos by José Manteiga. In addition there were notes taken by both of them, in different handwriting, illustrated reports from Manteiga’s correspondents and folders of journalistic clippings with comments, ranging from 1852 to 1920. If one analysed them, astonishing coincidences could be noticed.

  Arturo Manteiga had been his adopted father’s assistant since childhood. In his final years, his photographer. Pizzinelli had already discovered in 1852 that history always changes during the night, although luckily or unluckily citizens only notice those changes when they wake up. Arturo learned to photograph nocturnal clouds. />
  Manteiga, Arturo, renounced marriage. He renounced everything so as to continue with his task. But the yields of typesetting are few, the cost of photography high.

  Here the new science records the entrance of a woman: Nora. The new science has not recorded her surname. She was the manager of a fashion house, a bit fat and good-natured, according to a photo snapped with Arturo in Lezama Park. For nine years she and Arturo loved one other. Afterwards she married the owner of a pasta factory. This was no betrayal of the cloud science. The pasta man never knew about the part of his dividends that went to support Arturo’s research. Arturo could rely on Nora’s help, her car, her capacity for observation.

  In those outstandingly tidy folders, the clouds that determined the 1943 coup were recorded. When examined, they turned out to be near twins of the ones from 6 September 1930, when the cadets from the Military Academy advanced towards the capital. Afterwards Arturo could record and analyse the coincidence between the clouds presiding over the popular movements of 1916 and 1945.

  Determined, I said. Presided over, I said. Yes.

  Pizzinelli’s and José Manteiga’s great concern had been resolved by Arturo.

  It’s clouds themselves, not the mere factors that form them, that act on the collective events of humanity. They combine them, decide them, precipitate them.

  This was made clear. Established.

  How?

  I must appeal here to my lack of knowledge. In the basement near the river, Claudio Sánchez, the last disciple, showed me pages covered in numbers. I don’t understand anything about numbers. But if I can trust my memory, I would say the explanation was more or less like this: it’s true that clouds result from a combination of factors. At the same time, clouds are more than those factors. They possess an essential energy, they make history.

  I was twenty-three years old the day of the interview. It was in July 1954. It was cold and humid. That young man in front of me was explaining these things. He was fat, studious and poor. The archive spilled across the table seemed the quintessence of innumerable lives.

  The man was Nora’s godson. He had visited her every Sunday as a child, then orphanhood had made him a regular of her house. And loved by her. He inherited her anxieties. Later he would inherit the noodle factory.

  Claudio Sánchez. The studies of Pizzinelli and the Manteigas, José and Arturo, acquired the appearance of novelty with him. That afternoon I could see two notebooks. Historical conjectures, they were titled. They described, on strictly scientific bases, the clouds on the day of Caesar’s assassination, the clouds of Napoleon’s coronation, the clouds of Maipú, of Caseros.

  It was in that basement, in that cold, in that July 1954, that I came to learn what I am telling.

  Like art, science doesn’t often concern itself with means.

  Claudio had a project.

  A century and two years of continuous studies. Conclusive proofs. No publication. This is how Claudio Sánchez summarised the state of the new science. He became indignant. Was the unconscious worth more than the sky? Was capital worth more than the sky? An impressive anger overcame him.

  And since science doesn’t concern itself with means, and since a dignified publication was urgently needed, Claudio did not hesitate. He would resort to the government.

  His girlfriend knew a Franciscan whose political sermons made people talk. The Franciscan, sincerely comparing those in power with saints, had found a path towards those in power. And just as they say, love awakens love.

  That Franciscan responded to Claudio Sánchez with an extraordinary enthusiasm. The ideas of the treatise on celestial science in politics mirrored those of a ruling political government that compared itself with the saints. The order would take care of the publication. Ten tomes. Photographs in colour, biographies of the founders of the new science. Everything. Guaranteed.

  I must say I did nothing to dissuade Claudio Sánchez. Anyway, it was time for the world to know of that discovery. In any case, my interview was casual on that cold day in July 1954.

  I didn’t learn much about Claudio Sánchez then. I mean, I learned two things.

  The following year, in July 1955, when some youths sent by the government set fire to churches, a man rushed to rescue something from the bonfire of the church of San Francisco. As we know, nothing was saved from San Francisco. The police pulled out the man, and put him in jail. When the government changed, they wanted to honour him as a hero.

  In 1975 a television programme presented an obese, asthmatic man, owner of a chain of pasta factories. He explained what took up most of his free time, of which he had a great deal. For a while this appearance fed the sense of humour of the country. The man photographed and classified clouds. It was Claudio Sánchez.

  GEORGETTE AND THE GENERAL

  THIS STORY TELLS how a good thought transformed an Eden into a desert.

  The desert can be seen by anyone who sticks his head out the train window a few stations after Chajáes.

  I saw the Eden in my childhood. The white house, the garden. Plane trees with mottled trunks reaching down to the water. Its balcony, now missing, and its doors, no longer there. That care and attention made one think less of a country establishment than of the sewing box of a tidy owner. Someone asked whom it belonged to. Someone replied.

  Georgette was a young girl General Narváez brought back from France. All things French were the rage. From a trip one had to bring back soaps, clothes, books, cooks, shoes, perfumes, pianos, cheeses, hats, sheets, governesses, gloves, wines, and if you could afford it, a girl. Nowadays you can get most of that here rather easily.

  She was especially charming, not only because of her dimples but also because everything seemed well to her. She must have smiled at the thought of setting up in the countryside. The inevitable can also be accepted without smiling.

  The general spent most of the year making the estate, now famous, into something magnificent. The avenues are now so beautiful that seeing them makes you want to cry. Even the birds there look down on the others without anybody contesting that right. To be frank, that estate is the best monument to the general’s glory. Because of the bronze statues and the blue enamel signs bearing his name in streets throughout the country, I won’t mention it. In any case, the estate would play a small role in this story, were it not that Georgette’s house was three leagues away from there. Just over an hour at a gallop.

  She settled in with a flurry of trunks. What she thought of such a big plain, we don’t know. She knew the beefsteaks and the monuments to the national heroes. She must have understood.

  The general was the most civilised of men. He would have considered the slightest error in his French an unforgivable defeat. They made him suffer. Laughing, she would correct him. Nothing serious, subtleties. They had such a good time together, as if they had never left Paris.

  Georgette’s little house trailed beside the big ranch like a feather left behind by a swan while swimming. Seen from above, as the storks saw them every day, they made one think of a white foal following its mother. Seen from the ground, they looked less related to each other. An enormous colourful whale sleeping in the sun, and a rowboat. A continent populated with different races, and an island.

  Once idle, Georgette became active. The first yield of eggs gave origin to a certain omelette surprise that inspired risqué jokes. She invented flower arrangements for the house. If anyone, in summer, serves cherries mixed with jasmine, it should be known that she did too.

  Watching her work, the general called her ma petite abeille. When he came from the train he brought her gifts; she was happy. When he came from the ranch, he talked to her about maples, poplars and alders; it bored her. But no one hid boredom better. Chin on her hand, eyes bright, she thought about other things. Later he recounted memories of standard-bearer grandparents in the Andes, and of the general himself devastating the Indians. She remembered: he was a hero. Her face lit up.

  Were it not for Obarrio, it would have been paradis
e. Obarrio had served under the general and stood to attention when he spoke to him. His hair hung down to his shoulders, and he wore a headband and chiripá trousers. He was Georgette’s overseer. Although she had trusted men since childhood, she couldn’t look at him without fright. The general had told her how, when the battle of Los Pasos had ended, he had stayed on to observe the plain from horseback: the dead, the horses without owners, noises. He had seen a man on foot among the remains and thought it must be a thief. The man leaned over the fallen, pulled up their heads by the hair, slit their throats. Once the task was accomplished he mounted his horse and left. It was Obarrio.

  It was useless for the general to explain to Georgette what a gaucho was. It was useless for her to ask for another overseer. Obarrio often scratched his arm. She had no doubt it was the spilled blood that stung him. She never managed to understand that the throats her overseer had slashed had not deserved any further thoughts from him.

  The six o’clock train often brought her boxes with bows. Blouses appeared, petticoats with ribbons, a shawl. The wind filled the house with the smell of sheep. She smiled in front of the mirror.

  The first challenge to her reign happened one summer. The general’s family settled at the ranch. She spent days and nights alone. Sometimes she was able to see him still. He came at sunset smelling of eau de cologne.

  When he was a minister she didn’t see him for months. When he started the presidential campaign she didn’t see him any more. The faithful, allies, flatterers arrived at the station by the dozen. One night, a group drunk on champagne spun its cart onto the track leading to her house, and offered her the most unpleasant serenade. Obarrio turned the carthorses back, and chased them away with his riding crop. Georgette didn’t go out for days.

  The general’s presidency was brilliant. But Georgette was not interested in politics.