BOOK THREE
Chapter 1
In the city of Trinity and its port, Santa María de los Buenos Aires, there is a frontier zone where burg and wilderness meet in an agonistic embrace, like two giants locked in single combat. Saavedra is the name cartographers have assigned to that mysterious region, perhaps in order to hide its true name, which must not be uttered. “The world is preserved through secrecy,” affirms the Zohar. And it is not for all and sundry to know the true names of things.
The traveller who turns his back on the city and directs his gaze toward that landscape will soon be overcome by a vague sense of dread. There, from rough and chaotic ground, arise the last spurs of Buenos Aires, primitive mud huts and corrugated iron shacks teeming with tribes that hover on the frontier between city and country. There, bride of the horizon, the pampa shows her face and extends her boundless breadth westward beneath a sky bent on demonstrating its own infinity. During the day, sunlight and the happy buzz of the metropolis obscure the true face of the suburb. But at nightfall, when Saavedra is no more than a vast desolation, its feral profile is unveiled, and the traveller may suddenly find himself staring into the very face of mystery. In that hour, at ground level, you can hear the palpitations of a darkling life. Shrill hoots cut the air, voices hail one another in the distance; the silence, thus suddenly disturbed like the surface of a pond shattered by a stone, restores itself instantly, deeper than ever. The zone is dotted with bonfires; they greet one another across wide spaces, converse in their igneous idiom. And human faces blow on burning coals, silhouettes arrive and exchange greetings, hands turn great spoons in pots filled to the brim. The old folks of Saavedra say that when the moon is out and the sky turns ashen, it is not uncommon to see will-o’-the-wisps flickering around an abandoned shack, the parapet of a well, or the twisted roots of an ombú. They’re ghosts of the dead, still tied to the earth by some cursèd lasso. Errant flames darting senselessly to and fro as if buffeted by some implacable wind, they can be snuffed out in mid-air by the recitation of a short prayer. But on nights when the moon is new, the supernatural irrupts under another sign; the sleepless hobo, tossing on his bed of paper bags in his sad tin-can shelter, will hear a sudden distant roar that rapidly approaches, growing gigantic and thunderous. Soon he perceives the din of horses pounding on the drum of hard earth, their neighing chorus, the clash of lance upon lance, ferocious war whoops, a total pandemonium menacing as though a bloodthirsty squadron were galloping through the night. Hardly will he have drawn his knife and placed blade against sheath to make the sign of the cross, when the phantom malón flies over his roof with the force of a hurricane.
At ten o’clock on the night of Thursday, April 28, 192–, seven adventurers halted at the edge of the dread region we’ve just named. Their leader and guide, prudent but resolute, advanced a few steps, seemingly in search of a trail in the line of prickly-pear cactus that formed a border between street and badlands.
— Here’s the entrance, he muttered at last, turning to his squad at rest.
A mocking laugh rent the darkness.
— What about the dead man’s house? asked the laugh’s companion voice. We were heading for the house of a dead man.
The voice belonged to a strange-looking fellow, long of torso and short in the legs. His voice, laugh, and body language clearly announced that the atmosphere of mental asylums and the intensive use of straitjackets had played some part in his murky past. The guide, perhaps aware of this, let the question go by without reacting.
— The trail starts here, he said. We just follow it straight ahead until we get to the ditch and the teetery plank. From there, I’m sure we’ll be able to see the lights of the house.
— Hell’s bells! growled a voice, jesting and skeptical. I’ll eat my hat if this joker doesn’t get us up to our balls in mud.
— So what if he does? the short-legged fellow argued facetiously. It’s the mire of the suburbs. Sacred mire!
Ignoring the sarcasm, the man with the jesting, skeptical voice sketched a gesture of resignation in the air.
— All right, he said. If we must, then let’s get a move on. We’re not going to stand around here all bloody night.
He began to walk toward the prickly-pear hedge. But he immediately turned around and cast an inquisitive glance over his taciturn companions.
— By the belly of the whale! he exclaimed. Where have they got to now, that scurvy astrologer and that swine of a bard?
The two personages so grossly described were not far off, their shadowy profiles readily visible some twenty paces away. One of them stood out, for his form rose cyclopean in the night, his stature denoting not the insolent pride of the material world but his serene command of occult wisdom, key to the enigma of the Three Worlds. The other was skinny, unprepossessing, altogether nondescript, were it not for his slouched broad-brimmed hat, which looked like a funnel of the style that in days of yore had covered heads lousy with metaphors. What were they doing over there, standing face to face, far from their comrades-in-arms at the very moment when the code of solidarity most urgently beckoned them? The fact was that, shortly beforehand, the cyclopean man had scented in the dark the baleful odour of hemlock. He’d so informed the man in the funnel-shaped hat, whereupon both had set out in search of the plant, sniffing the air like bloodhounds. Once they’d found it, the began to chew on the deadly leaves, whereupon a swarm of classical reminiscences softened their hearts, the sudden upswelling of an ancient emotion bringing them close to tears, especially when the pathetic image of Socrates flashed up in memory. Generous souls! There they would have stayed all night long, savouring the bittersweet mystery of death, had not a chorus of strident voices called them back to the reality of this world.
— Schultz! Buenosayres! We’ve found the opening!
The astrologer Schultz and Adam Buenosayres — for these were the names of the hemlock-eaters — retraced the steps separating them from their friends. A kind of irrepressible nervousness came over the group as they were about to set off. Some scrutinized the blackness stonewalling them with its sphinx-like hermeticism. Others glanced back at the metropolis they were deserting and watched its lights winking at them from afar. To be sure, all those men, porteños by birth or by vocation, had bid a long and ceremonious farewell to the marvellous city. Every single dive on Colodrero Street between Triunvirato and Republiquetas, each and every one of the noisy pubs and welcoming cantinas that offer a zinc countertop to the thirst and fatigue of the traveller — all had received the adieu of those magnanimous heroes, whose religiosity forbade them to undertake any adventure without first beseeching the favour of the gods on high by means of an enthusiastic libation of aguardiente from Catamarca, guindado from Montevideo, caña from Paraguay, zingani from Bolivia, grappa from Cuyo, pisco from Chile, and other liquors suitable for so pious a liturgy. Now there was nothing for it but to leave. And leave they would, any minute now, albeit on legs not entirely steady, and with tongues a tad thick, but with a serene valour proof against any obstacle.
The signal to advance was given. The seven men marched toward the prickly pears. One by one, the adventurers slipped sideways through a narrow opening in the thorny tangle. Their leader was the first to embark on the path of danger, followed by the short-legged man and the jester. Hard on their heels came two heroes who had so far remained silent: one of them, robust, swayed like a wild boar gone blind; the other was not quite pint-sized. These five made up the group’s vanguard; the astrologer Schultz and Adam Buenosayres brought up the rear.