So it all turned out for the best. Providence knows what it's doing. Garmendia's killing, which at first had got me in such hot water, was now starting to open doors for me. Of course the cops had me over a barrel—if I didn't work out, if I didn't toe the line for the party, I'd be hauled in again. But I'd got some heart back, and I had faith in myself.
Laferrer warned me right off that I was going to have to walk the straight and narrow with him, but if I did, he said, he might make me his bodyguard. The work I did for 'em was all anyone could ask.
In Morón, and later on in the neighborhood too, I gradually won my bosses' trust. The police and the party gradually spread the word that I was a man to be reckoned with; I was an important cog in the wheels of the elections in Buenos Aires, and out in the province too. Elections were fierce back then; I won't bore you, señor, with stories about the blood that would be shed. I did all I could to make life hard on the radicals, though to this day they're still riding on Alem's coattails. But as I say, there was no man that didn't show me respect. I got myself a woman, La Lujanera we called her, and a handsome copper sorrel. For years I pretended to be some kind of Moreira*—who in his day was probably imitating some other stage show gaucho. I played a lot of cards and drank a lot of absinthe....
We old folks talk and talk and talk, I know, but I'm coming to what I wanted to tell you. I don't know if I mentioned Luis Irala. A true friend, the likes of which you'll not often find.... He was getting on in years when I knew him, and he'd never been afraid of hard work; for some reason he took a liking to me.
He'd never set foot in a committee room—he earned his living carpentering. He didn't stick his nose in anybody else's business, and he didn't let anybody stick their nose in his. One morning he came to see me.
"I guess you've heard Casilda left me," he said."Rufino Aguilera is the man that took her away from me."
I'd had dealings with that particular individual in Morón.
"I know Rufino," I told him. "I'd have to say that of all the Aguileras, * he's the least disgusting."
"Disgusting or not, I've got a bone to pick with him."
I thought for a minute.
"Listen," I finally told him, "nobody takes anything away from anybody. If Casilda left you, it's because it's Rufinoshe wants, and she's not interested in you."
"But what'll people say? That I'm yellow? That I don't stand up to a man that wrongs me?"
"My advice to you is not to go looking for trouble because of what people might say, let alone because of a woman that doesn't love you anymore."
"I couldn't care less about her," he said. "A man that thinks longer than five minutes running about a woman is no man, he's a pansy. And Casilda's heartless, anyway. The last night we spent together she told me I was getting old."
"She was telling you the truth."
"And it hurts, but it's beside the point—Rufino's the one I'm after now."
"You want to be careful there," I told him. "I've seen Rufino in action, in the Merlo elections. He's like greased lightning."
"You think I'm afraid of Rufino Aguilera?"
" I know you're not afraid of him, but think about it—one of two things will happen: either you kill him and you get sent off to stir, or he kills you and you get sent off to Chacarita."*
"One of two things. So tell me, what would you do in my place?"
"I don't know, but then I'm not exactly the best example to follow. I'm a guy that to get his backside out of jail has turned into a gorilla for the party."
"I'm not planning to turn into a gorilla for the party, I'm planning to collect a debt a man owes me."
"You mean you're going to stake your peace of mind on a stranger you've never met and a woman you don't even love anymore?"
But Luis Irala wasn't interested in hearing what I had to say, so he left. The next day we heard that he'd picked a fight with Rufinoin some bar over in Morón and that Rufino had killed him.
He went off to get killed, and he got himself killed right honorably, too—man to man. I'd done the best I could, I'd given him a friend's advice, but I still felt guilty.
A few days after the wake, I went to the cockfights. I'd never been all that keen on cockfights, but that Sunday, I'll tell you the truth, they made me sick. What in the world's wrong with those animals, I thought, that they tear each other to pieces this way, for no good reason?
The night of this story I'm telling you, the night of the end of the story, the boys and I had all gone to a dance over at the place that a black woman we called La Pardaran. Funny—all these years, and I still remember the flowered dress La Lujanera was wearing that night.... The party was out in the patio.
There was the usual drunk trying to pick a fight, but I made sure things went the way they were supposed to go. It was early, couldn't have been midnight yet, when the strangers showed up. One of them—they called him the Yardmaster, and he was stabbed in the back and killed that very night, just the way you wrote it, sir—anyway, this one fellow bought a round of drinks for the house. By coincidence this Yardmaster and I were dead ringers for each other. He had something up his sleeve that night: he came up to me and started laying it on pretty thick—he was from up north, he said, and he'd been hearing about me. He couldn't say enough about my reputation. I let him talk, but I was beginning to suspect what was coming, He was hitting the gin hard, too, and I figured it was to get his courage up—and sure enough, pretty soon he challenged me to a fight. That was when it happened—what nobody wants to understand. I looked at that swaggering drunk just spoiling for a fight, and it was like I was looking at myself in a mirror, and all of a sudden I was ashamed of myself. I wasn't afraid of him; if I had been, I might've gone outside and fought him. I just stood there. This other guy, this Yardmaster, who by now had his face about this far from mine, raised his voice so everybody could hear him:
"You know what's wrong with you? You're yellow, that's what's wrong with you!"
"That may be," I said. "I can live with being called yellow. You can tell people you called me a son of a whore, too, and say I let you spit in my face. Now then, does that make you feel better?"
La Lujanera slipped her hand up my sleeve and pulled out the knife I always carried there and slipped it into my hand. And to make sure I got the message, she also said," Rosendo, I think you're needing this."
Her eyes were blazing.
I dropped the knife and walked out—taking my time about it. People stepped back to make way for me. They couldn't believe their eyes. What did I care what they thought.
To get out of that life, I moved over to Uruguay and became an oxcart driver. Since I came back, I've made my place here. San Telmo* has always been a peaceful place to live.
The Encounter
For Susana Bombai
Those who read the news each morning do so simply to forget it again, or for the sake of the evening's conversation, and so it should surprise no one that people no longer remember, or remember as though in a dream, the once-famous and much-discussed case of Maneco Uriarte and a man named Duncan.
Of course the event took place in 1910, the year of the comet and the Centennial, and we have had and lost so many things since then-----The protagonists are dead now; those who were witness to the event swore an oath of solemn silence. I too raised my hand to swear, and I felt, with all the romantic seriousness of my nine or ten years, the gravity of that rite. I can't say whether the others noticed that I gave my word; I can't say whether they kept their own. However that may be, this is the story—with the inevitable changes that time, and good (or bad) literature, occasion.