Part 23 (1/2)

And here I am in the New World, in your lovely home, with you....”

He spoke the language fluently, but not without error; a noticeable Ger- man accent coexisted with the lisping s's of the Spanish peninsula.

We had taken a seat by now, and I seized upon those last words in order to get down to our business.

”Here, history is kinder,” I said. ”I expect to die in this house, where I was born. It was to this house that my great-grandfather, who had been all over the continent, returned when he brought home that sword; it is in this house that I have sat to contemplate the past and write my books. I might almost say that I have never left this library-but now, at last, I am to leave it, to journey across the landscape I have only traveled on maps.”

I softened my possible rhetorical excess with a smile.

”Are you referring to a certain Caribbean republic?”Zimmermannasked.”Quite right,” I replied. ”I believe that it is to that imminent journey that I owe the honor of your visit.”

Trinidad brought in coffee.

”You are surely aware,” I went on with slow a.s.surance, ”that the minis- ter has entrusted me with the mission of transcribing and writing an intro- duction to the letters of Bolivar that chance has disinterred from the files of Dr.Avellanos.This mission, with a sort of fortunate fatality, crowns my life's labor, the labor that is somehow in my blood.”

It was a relief to me to have said what I had to say.Zimmermannseemed not to have heard me; his eyes were on not my face but the books behind me. He nodded vaguely, and then more emphatically.

”In your blood. You are the true historian. Your family roamed the lands of the Americas and fought great battles, while mine, obscure, was barely emerging from the ghetto. History flows in your veins, as you your- self so eloquently say; all you have to do is listen, attentively, to that occult voice. I, on the other hand, must travel to Sulaco and attempt to decipher stacks and stacks of papers-papers which may finally turn out to be apoc- ryphal. Believe me, professor, when I say I envy you.”

I could sense no trace of mockery in those words; they were simply the expression of a will that made the future as irrevocable as the past. Zimmer-mann's arguments were the least of it, however; the power lay in the man, not in the dialectic. He continued with a pedagogue's deliberateness: ”In all things regarding Bolivar-San Martin, I mean, of course-your own position, my dear professor, is universally acknowledged.Votre siege est fait, lhave not yet read the letter in question, but it is inevitable, or certainly reasonable, to hypothesize that Bolivar wrote it as self-justification. At any rate, the much-talked-about epistle will reveal to us only what we might call the Bolivar-not San Martin- side of the matter. Once it is published, it will have to be weighed, examined, pa.s.sed through the critical sieve, as it were, and, if necessary, refuted. There is no one more qualified to hand down that ultimate verdict than yourself, with your magnifying gla.s.s. And scalpel! if scientific rigor so requires! Allow me furthermore to add that the name of the person who presents the letter to the world will always remain linked to the letter. There is no way, professor, that such a yoking can be in your interest. The common reader does not readily perceive nuances.”

I now realize that our subsequent debate was essentially pointless. Per- haps I even sensed as much then; in order not to face that possibility, I grasped at one thing he had said and asked Zimmermann whether he really believed the letters were apocryphal.

”Even if they were written by Bolivar himself,” he replied, ”-that does not mean they contain the whole truth. Bolivar may have wished to delude his correspondent, or may simply have been deluding himself.

You, a histo- rian, a contemplative, know better than I that the mystery lies within our- selves, and not in words.”

The man's grandiloquent generalities irritated me, so I curtly observed that within the Great Enigma that surrounds us, the meeting in Guayaquil, in which Gen. San Martin renounced mere ambition and left the fate of the continent in the hands of Bolivar, is also an enigma worth studying.

”There are so many explanations ...” Zimmermann replied. ”There are those who speculate that San Martin fell into a trap. Others, such a.s.sarmiento,contend that he was in essence a European soldier, lost on a con- tinent he never understood; others still-Argentines, generally-maintain that he acted out of abnegation; yet others, out of weariness. There are even those who speak of a secret order from some Masonic lodge.”

I remarked that be all that as it might, it would be interesting to recover the precise words spoken between the Protector of Peru and the Liberator of the Americas.

”It is possible,”Zimmermannpontificated, ”that the words they ex- changed were trivial. Two men met in Guayaquil; if one prevailed, it was be- cause he possessed the stronger will, not because of dialectical games. As you see, I have not forgotten my Schopenhauer.”

Then, with a smile he added: ”Words, words, words.Shakespeare, the unparalleled master of words, held them in contempt. In Guayaquil or in Buenos Aires, or in Prague, they always count for less than people do.”

At that moment I felt that something was happening-or rather, that something had already happened.

Somehow, we were now different. Twi- light was stealing upon the room and I had not lighted the lamps.A little aimlessly I asked: ”You are from Prague, professor?”

”I was from Prague,” he answered.

In order to avoid the central subject, I remarked: ”It must be a strange city. I am not familiar with it, but the first book I ever read in German wasThe Golem, by Meyrink.”

”That is the only book byGustavMeyrink that deserves to be remem- bered,”Zimmermannreplied. ”The others, which are concoctions of bad literature and worse theosophy, one is best not to like.

Nevertheless, there is something of Prague's strangeness to be found in that book of dreams dis- solving into further dreams. Everything is strange in Prague-or, if you prefer, nothing is strange. Anything can happen. In London one afternoon, I had the same sensation.”

”You mentioned will,” I replied. ”In theMabinogion, you may recall, two kings are playing chess on the summit of a hill, while on the plain be- low, their armies clash in battle. One of the kings wins the game; at that in- stant, a horseman rides up with the news that the other king's army has been defeated. The battle of men on the battlefield below was the reflection of the battle on the chessboard.”

”Ah, a magical operation,”Zimmermannsaid.

”Or the manifestation,” I said, ”of one will acting upon two distinctbattlegrounds. Another Celtic legend tells of the duel of two famous bards. One, accompanying himself on the harp, sang from the coming of day to the coming of twilight. Then, when the stars or the moon came out, the first bard handed the harp to the second, who laid the instrument aside and rose to his feet. The first singer admitted defeat.”

”What erudition! What power of synthesis!” exclaimedZimmermann.Then, in a calmer voice, he added: ”I must confess my ignorance, my la- mentable ignorance, ofla matiere de Bretaigne.You, like the day, embrace both East and West, while I hold down my small Carthaginian corner, which I now expand a bit with a tentative step into New World history. But I am a mere plodder.”

The servility of the Jew and the servility of the German were in his voice, though I sensed that it cost him nothing to defer to me, even flatter me, given that the victory was his.

He begged me not to concern myself about the arrangements for his trip. (”Negotiatives” was the horrendous word he used.) Then in one mo- tion he extracted from his briefcase a letter addressed to the minister, in which I explained the reasons for my withdrawal and listed the acknowl- edged virtues of Dr.Zimmermann,and he laid in my hand his fountain pen so that I might sign it. When he put the letter away, I could not help seeing in his briefcase his stamped ticket for the Ezeiza-Sulaco flight.

As he was leaving, he paused again before the shelf of Schopenhauer.

”Our teacher, our master-our common master-surmised that no act is unintentional. If you remain in this house, in this elegant patrician house, it is because deep inside, you wish to. I respect your wish, and am grateful.”

I received these final alms fromZimmermannwithout a word.

I went with him to the door.

”Excellent coffee,” he said, as we were saying our good-byes.

I reread these disordered pages, which I will soon be consigning to the fire. Our interview had been short.

I sense that now I will write no more.Mon siege est fait.

The Gospel According to Mark

The incident took place on the Los Alamos ranch, south of the small town of Junin, in late March of 1928. Its protagonist was a medical student namedBaltasar Espinosa.*We might define him for the moment as a Buenos Aires youth much like many others, with no traits worthier of note than the gift for public speaking that had won him more than one prize at the English school in Ramos Mejia* and a.n.a.lmost unlimited goodness. He didn't like to argue; he preferred that his interlocutor rather than he himself be right. And though he found the chance twists and turns of gambling interesting, he was a poor gambler, because he didn't like to win. He was intelligent and open to learning, but he was lazy; at thirty-three he had not yet completed the last requirements for his degree. (The work he still owed, incidentally, was for his favorite cla.s.s.) His father, like all the gentlemen of his day a free- thinker, had instructedEspinosain the doctrines of Herbert Spencer, but once, before he set off on a trip to Montevideo, his mother had asked him to say the Lord's Prayer every night and make the sign of the cross, and never in all the years that followed did he break that promise. He did not lack courage; one morning, with more indifference than wrath, he had traded two or three blows with some of his cla.s.smates that were trying to force him to join a strike at the university. He abounded in debatable habits and opinions, out of a spirit of acquiescence: his country mattered less to him than the danger that people in other countries might think the Argen- tines still wore feathers; he venerated France but had contempt for the French; he had little respect for Americans but took pride in the fact that there were skysc.r.a.pers in Buenos Aires; he thought that thegauchosof the plains were better hors.e.m.e.n than thegauchosof the mountains. When his cousin Daniel invited him to spend the summer at Los Alamos, he immediately accepted-not because he liked the country but out of a natu- ral desire to please, and because he could find no good reason for saying no.

The main house at the ranch was large and a bit run-down; the quarters for the foreman, a man named Gutre, stood nearby. There were three mem- bers of the Gutre family: the father, the son (who was singularly rough and unpolished), and a girl of uncertain paternity. They were tall, strong, and bony, with reddish hair and Indian features. They rarely spoke. The fore- man's wife had died years before.

In the country,Espinosacame to learn things he hadn't known, had never even suspected; for example, that when you're approaching a house there's no reason to gallop and that n.o.body goes out on a horse unless there's a job to be done. As the summer wore on, he learned to distinguish birds by their call.

Within a few days, Daniel had to go to Buenos Aires to close a deal on some livestock. At the most, he said, the trip would take a week.Espinosa,who was already a little tired of his cousin'sbonnes fortunes and his indefati- gable interest in the vagaries of men's tailoring, stayed behind on the ranch with his textbooks. The heat was oppressive, and not even nightfall brought relief. Then one morning toward dawn, he was awakened by thunder. Wind lashed the casuarina trees.Espinosaheard the first drops of rain and gave thanks to G.o.d. Suddenly the wind blew cold. That afternoon, theSaladooverflowed.

The next morning, as he stood on the porch looking out over the flooded plains,Baltasar Espinosarealized that the metaphor equating the pampas with the sea was not, at least that morning, an altogether false one, though Hudson had noted that the sea seems the grander of the two be- cause we view it not from horseback or our own height, but from the deck of a s.h.i.+p. The rain did not let up; the Gutres, helped (or hindered) by the city dweller, saved a good part of the livestock, though many animals were drowned. There were four roads leading to the ranch; all were under water. On the third day, when a leaking roof threatened the foreman's house,Es- pinosagave the Gutres a room at the back of the main house, alongside the toolshed. The move broughtEspinosaand the Gutres closer, and they began to eat together in the large dining room.

Conversation was not easy; the Gutres, who knew so much about things in the country, did not know how to explain them. One nightEspinosaasked them if people still remembered anything about the Indian raids, back when the military command for the frontier had been in Junin. They told him they did, but they would have given the same answer if he had asked them about the day Charles I had been beheaded.Espinosarecalled that his father used to say that all the cases of longevity that occur in the country are the result of either poor memory or a vague notion of dates-gauchosquite often know neither the year they were born in nor the name of the man that fathered them.

In the entire house, the only reading material to be found were several copies of a farming magazine, a manual of veterinary medicine, a deluxe edition of the romantic verse dramaTabare,a copy ofThe History of the Shorthorn in Argentina, several erotic and detective stories, and a recent novel thatEspinosahad not read-DonSegundo Sombra,byRicardo Guiraldes. In order to put some life into the inevitable after-dinner attempt at conversation,Espinosaread a couple of chapters of the novel* totheCutres,who did not know how to read or write. Unfortunately, the foreman had been a cattle drover himself, and he could not be interested in the ad- ventures of another such a one. It was easy work, he said; they always car- ried along a pack mule with everything they might need. If he had not been a cattle drover, he announced, he'd never have seen Lake Gomez, or the Bra-gadoRiver, or even the Nunez ranch, in Chacabuco....