Part 26 (1/2)

I had finally taught myself not to count the days when, after a day much like all the others, don Alejandro surprised us.

”We're turning in now,” he informed us. ”Tomorrow morning we'll be leaving at first light.”

Once I was downriver I began to feel so happy that I could actually think about La Caledonia with some affection.

We began to hold our Sat.u.r.day sessions again. At the first meeting, Twirl asked for the floor. He said (with his usual flowery turn of phrase) that the library of the Congress of the World must not be limited to refer- ence books alone-the cla.s.sics of every land and language were a treasure we overlooked, he declared, only at our peril. His motion was pa.s.sed imme- diately;FernandezIrala and Dr. Cruz, a professor of Latin, undertook to choose the necessary texts. Twirl had already spoken withNierensteinabout the matter.

At that time there was not an Argentine alive whose Utopia was not Paris. Of us all, the man who champed at the bit the most was perhapsFer- minEguren; next wasFernandezIrala, for quite different reasons. For the poet ofLos marmoles,Paris wasVerlaineand LecontedeLisle; for Eguren, an improved extension ofCalle Junin.He had come to an understanding, I presume, with Twirl. At another meeting, Twirl brought up the language that would be used by the delegates to the Congress, and he suggested that two delegates be sent immediately to London and Paris to do research. Feign- ing impartiality, he first proposed my name; then, after a slight pause, the name of his friend Eguren. Don Alejandro, as always, went along.

I believe I mentioned that Wren, in exchange for a few lessons in Italian, had initiated me into the study of that infinite language English. He pa.s.sed over grammar and those manufactured ”cla.s.sroom” sentences (insofar as possible) and we plunged straight into poetry, whose forms demand brevity. My first contact with the language that would fill my life was Stevenson's courageous ”Requiem”; after that came the ballads that Percy unveiled to the decorous eighteenth century. A short while before my departure for London, I was introduced to the dazzling verse of Swinburne, which led me (though it felt like sin) todoubt the preeminence of Irala's alexandrines.

I arrived in London in early January of 1902.1 recall the caress of the snow, which I had never seen before, and which I must say I liked. Happily, I had not had to travel with Eguren. I stayed at a modest inn behind the British Museum, to whose library I would repair morning and afternoon, in search of a language worthy of the Congress of the World. I did not neglect the universal languages; I looked into Esperanto (which Lugones'Lunariosentimental*calls ”reasonable, simple, and economical”) andVolapuk,which attempts to explore all the possibilities of language, declining verbs and conjugating nouns. I weighed the arguments for and against reviving Latin (for which one still finds some nostalgia, even after so many centuries). Ialso devoted some time to a study of the a.n.a.lytical language of John Wilkins, in which the definition of each word is contained in the letters that const.i.tute it. It was under the high dome of the reading room that I met Beatrice.

This is the general history of the Congress of the World, not the history of AlexanderFerri-emphatically not my own-and yet the first includes the second, as it includes all others. Beatrice was tall and slender, her fea- tures pure and her hair bright red; it might have reminded me of the devi- ous Twirl's, but it never did. She was not yet twenty. She had left one of the northern counties to come and study literature at the university. Her ori- gins, like mine, were humble. In the Buenos Airesofthattime, being of Ital- ian extraction was a questionable social recommendation; in London I discovered that for many people it was romantic. It took us but a few after- noons to become lovers; I asked her to marry me, but Beatrice Frost, like Nora Erfjord, was a votary of the religion of Ibsen and would not join her- self to any man. From her lips came the word I dared not speak. Oh nights, oh shared warm darkness, oh love that flows in shadow like a secret river, oh that moment of joy in which two are one, oh innocence and openness of delight, oh the union into which we entered, only to lose ourselves after- ward in sleep, oh the first soft lights of day, and myself contemplating her.

On that harsh border with Brazil I had been prey to homesickness; not so in the red maze of London, which gave me so many things. But in spite of the pretexts I invented to put off my departure, at the end of the year I had to return; we would celebrate Christmas together. I promised her that don Alejandro would ask her to join the Congress; she replied, vaguely, that she'd like to visit the Southern Hemisphere -a cousin of hers, she said, a dentist, had settled in Tasmania. Beatrice had no wish to see the boat off; farewells, in her view, were an emphasis, a senseless celebration of misfor- tune, and she hated emphases.

We parted at the library where we had met the previous winter. I am a coward; to avoid the anguish of waiting for her letters, I did not give her my address.

I have noticed that return voyages are shorter than voyages out, but that particular crossing of the Atlantic, wallowing in memories and heavy seas, seemed inordinately long to me. Nothing pained me so much as thinking that Beatrice's life, parallel with my own, was continuing onward, minute by minute and night by night. I wrote a letter many pages long, and tore it up when we anch.o.r.ed in Montevideo. I arrived in my own country on a Thurs- day; Irala was at the dock to greet me. I returned to my old lodgings inCalleChile. That day and the next we spent talking and walking; I wanted to recapture Buenos Aires. It was a relief to know thatFermin Egurenwas still in Paris; the fact that I'd returned before him might somehow mitigate my long absence.

Irala was discouraged.Ferminwas spending vast sums of money in Eu- rope and more than once had disobeyed instructions to return immedi- ately. That was all predictable enough. It was other news that I found more disturbing: despite the objections of Irala and Cruz, Twirl had invoked Pliny the Younger- who had affirmed that there was no book so bad that it didn't contain some good-to suggest that the Congress indiscriminatelyVipurchase collections ofLa Prensa,thirty-four hundred copies (in various '<>

formats) ofDonQuijote,Balmes'Letters,and random collections of univer- sity dissertations, short stories, bulletins, and theater programs. ”All things are testaments,” he had said.Nierensteinhad seconded him; don Alejandro, ”after three thunderous Sat.u.r.days,” had agreed to the motion. Nora Erfjord had resigned her post as secretary; she was replaced by a new member, Kar-linski, who was a tool of Twirl's. The enormous packages now began piling up, uncataloged and without card files, in the back rooms and wine cellar of don Alejandro's mansion. In early July, Irala had spent a week in La Caledo- nia. The carpenters were not working. The foreman, questioned about this, explained that don Alejandro hadordered the work halted, and the workers were feeling the time on their hands.

In London I had drafted a report (which need not concern us here); on Friday, I went to pay my respects to don Alejandro and deliver the manu- script to him.FernandezIrala went with me. It was that hour of the evening when the pampas wind begins to blow; the house was filled with breezes. Before the iron gate onCalleAlsina there stood a wagon with three horses. I recall men, bent under the weight of their loads, carrying large bundles into the rear patio; Twirl was imperiously ordering them about. There too, as though they'd had a foreboding, were Nora Erfjord andNierensteinand Cruz and Donald Wren and one or two others. Nora put her arms around me and kissed me, and that embrace, that kiss, reminded me of others. The Negro, high-spirited and gay, kissed my hand.

In one of the bedrooms the square trap-door to the cellar was lying open; crude cement steps led down into the dimness.

Suddenly we heard footsteps. Even before I saw him, I knew it was don Alejandro arriving home. He was almost running when he came into the room.

His voice was changed. It was not the voice of the thoughtful, deliberate gentleman who presided over our Sat.u.r.day meetings, nor was it the voice ofthefeudalseigneur who stopped a knife fight and read the word of G.o.d to hisgauchos,though it did resemble this latter one. He did not look at any- one when he spoke.

”Start bringing up everything that's piled down there,” he commanded. ”I don't want a book left in that cellar.”

The job took almost an hour. In the earthen-floored patio we made a pile of books taller than the tallest among us. We all worked, going back and forth until every book had been brought up; the only person that did not move was don Alejandro.

Then came the next order: ”Now set that mound afire.”

Twirl was pallid.Nierensteinmanaged to murmur: ”The Congress of the World cannot do without these precious aids that I have chosen with such love.”

”The Congress of the World?” said don Alejandro, laughing scorn- fully-and I had never heard him laugh.

There is a mysterious pleasure in destruction; the flames crackled brightly while we cowered against the walls or huddled into the bedrooms. Night, ashes, and the smell of burning lingered in the patio. I recall a few lost pages that were saved, lying white upon the packed earth. Nora Erfjord, who pro- fessed for don Alejandro that sort of love that young women sometimes harbor for old men, finally, uncomprehending, spoke: ”Don Alejandro knows what he's doing.”

Irala, one of literature's faithful, essayed a phrase: ”Every few centuries the Library at Alexandria must be burned.”

It was then that we were given the explanation for all this.

”It has taken me four years to grasp what I am about to tell you. The task we have undertaken is so vast that it embraces-as I now recognize- the entire world. It is not a handful of prattling men and women muddying issues in the barracks of some remote cattle ranch. The Congress of the World began the instant the world itself began, and it will go on when we are dust. There is no place it is not. The Congress is the books we have burned. It is the Caledonians who defeated the Ca.s.sars' legions. It is Job on the dunghill and Christ on the Cross. The Congress is even that worthless young man who is squandering my fortune on wh.o.r.es.”

I could not restrain myself, and I interrupted.

”Don Alejandro, I am guilty too. I had finished my report, which I have here with me, but I stayed on in England, squandering your money, for the love of a woman.”

”I supposed as much,Ferri,” hesaid, and then continued: ”The Con- gress is my bulls. It is the bulls I have sold and the leagues of countryside that do not belong to me.”

An anguished voice was raised; it was Twirl's.

”You're not telling us you've sold La Caledonia?”Don Alejandro answered serenely: ”I have. Not an inch of land remains of what was mine, but my ruin can- not be said to pain me because now I understand. We may never see each other again, because we no longer need the Congress, but this last night we shall all go out to contemplate the Congress.”

He was drunk with victory; his firmness and his faith washed over us. No one thought, even for a second, that he had gone insane.

In the square we took an open carriage. I climbed into the coachman's seat, beside the coachman.

”Maestro,” ordered don Alejandro, ”we wish to tour the city. Take us where you will.”

The Negro, standing on a footboard and clinging to the coach, never ceased smiling. I will never know whether he understood anything of what was happening.

Words are symbols that posit a shared memory. The memory I wish to set down for posterity now is mine alone; those who shared it have all died. Mystics invoke a rose, a kiss, a bird that is all birds, a sun that is the sun and yet all stars, a goatskin filled with wine, a garden, or the s.e.xual act. None of these metaphors will serve for that long night of celebration that took us, exhausted but happy, to the very verge of day. We hardly spoke, while the wheels and horseshoes clattered over the paving stones. Just before dawn, near a dark and humble stream-perhaps the Maldonado, or perhaps theRiachuelo- Nora Erfjord's high soprano sang out the ballad of Sir Patrick Spens, and don Alejandro's ba.s.s joined in for a verse or two-out of tune. The English words did not bring back to me the image of Beatrice.

Twirl, behind me, murmured: ”I have tried to do evil yet I have done good.”

Something of what we glimpsed that night remains-the reddish wall of theRecoleta,the yellow wall of the prison, two men on a street corner dancing the tango the way the tango was danced in the old days, a checker- board entryway and a wrought-iron fence, the railings of the railroad sta- tion, my house, a market, the damp and unfathomable night-but none of these fleeting things (which may well have been others) matters. What mat- ters is having felt that that inst.i.tution of ours, which more than once we hadmade jests about, truly and secretly existed, and that it was the universe and ourselves. With no great hope, through all these years I have sought the sa- vorofthatnight; once in a great while I have thought I caught a s.n.a.t.c.h of it in a song, in lovemaking, in uncertain memory, but it has never fully come back to me save once, one early morning, in a dream. By the time we'd sworn we would tell none of this to anyone, it was Sat.u.r.day morning.

I never saw any of those people again, with the exception of Irala, and he and I never spoke about our adventure; any word would have been a profanation. In 1914, don Alejandro Glencoe died and was buried in Monte- video. Irala had died the year before.

I b.u.mped intoNierensteinonce onCalleLima, but we pretended we didn't see each other.

There Are More Things

To the memory of H. P. Lovecraft

Just as I was about to take my last examination at the University of Texas, in Austin, I learned that my uncle Edwin Arnett had died of an aneurysm on the remote frontier of South America. I felt what we always feel when some- one dies-the sad awareness, now futile, of how little it would have cost us to have been more loving. One forgets that one is a dead man conversing with dead men. The subject I was studying was philosophy; I recalled that there in the Red House nearLomas,my uncle, without employing a single proper noun, had revealed to me the lovely perplexities of the discipline. One of the dessert oranges was the tool he employed for initiating me into Berkeleyan idealism; he used the chessboard to explain the Eleatic para- doxes. Years later, he lent me Hinton's treatises, which attempt to prove the reality of a fourth dimension in s.p.a.ce, a dimension the reader is encouraged to intuit by means of complicated exercises with colored cubes. I shall never forget the prisms and pyramids we erected onthe floor of his study.

My uncle was an engineer. Before retiring from his job at the railway, he made the decision to move to t.u.r.dera,* which offered him the combined advantages of a virtual wilderness of solitude and the proximity of Buenos Aires. There was nothing more natural than that the architect of his home there should be his close friend AlexanderMuir.This strict man professed the strict doctrine of Knox; my uncle, in the manner of almost all the gentlemen of his time, was a freethinker-or an agnostic, rather-yet at the same time he was interested in theology, the way he was interested in Hin- ton's fallacious cubes and the well-thought-out nightmares of the young Wells. He liked dogs; he had a big sheepdog he called Samuel Johnson, in memory of Lichfield, the distant town he had been born in.

The Red House stood on a hill, hemmed in to the west by swampy land.

The Norfolkpines along the outside of the fence could not temper its air of oppressiveness. Instead of flat roofs where one might take the air on a sultry night, the house had a peaked roof of slate tiles and a square tower with a clock; these structures seemed to weigh down the walls and stingy windows of the house. As a boy, I accepted those facts of ugliness as one accepts all those incompatible things that only by reason of their coexistence are called ”the universe.”

I returned to my native country in 1921. To stave off lawsuits, the house had been auctioned off; it had been bought by a foreigner, a man named Max Preetorius, who paid double the amount bid by the next highest bid- der. After the bill of sale was signed, he arrived one evening with two a.s.sis- tants and they threw all the furniture, all the books, and all the household goods in the house into a dump not far from the Military Highway. (I recall with sadness the diagrams in the volumes of Hinton and the great terraque - ous globe.) The next day, he went toMuirand suggested certain changes to the house, whichMuirindignantly refused to carry out. Subsequently, a firm from Buenos Aires undertook the work.