Postcript (1950): Among the commentaries inspired by the foregoing publication, the most curious (if not most urbane) is biblically titled A Coat of Many Colours (Manchester, 1948); it is the work of the supremely perseverant pen of Dr. Nahum Cordovero, and contains some hundred pages. It speaks of the Greek anthologies, of the anthologies of late Latin texts, of that Ben Johnson who defined his contemporaries with excerpts from Seneca, of Alexander Ross's Virgilius evangelizans, of the artifices of George Moore and Eliot, and, finally, of "the tale attributed to the rare-book dealer Joseph Cartaphilus." In the first chapter it points out brief interpolations from Pliny (Historianaturate, V:8); in the second, from Thomas de Quincey (Writings, III: 439); in the third, from a letter written by Descartes to the ambassador Pierre Chanut; in the fourth, from Bernard Shaw (Back to Methuselah, V). From those "intrusions" (or thefts) it infers that the entire document is apocryphal.
To my way of thinking, that conclusion is unacceptable. As the end approaches, wrote Cartaphilus, there are no longer any images from memory — there are only words. Words, words, words taken out of place and mutilated, words from other men—those were the alms left him by the hours and the centuries.
For Cecilia Ingenieros
[1] Part of the ms. is scratched out just here; the name of the port may have been erased.
[2] Ernesto Sabato suggests that the "Giambattista" who discussed the origins of the Iliad with the rare book dealer Cartaphilus is Giambattista Vico, the Italian who defended the argument that Homer is a symbolic character, like Pluto or Achilles.
The Dead Man
That a man from the outskirts of Buenos Aires, a sad sort of hoodlum whose only recommendation was his infatuation with courage, should go out into the wilderness of horse country along the Brazilian frontier and become a leader of a band of smugglers—such a thing would, on the face of it, seem impossible. For those who think so, I want to tell the story of the fate of Benjamín Otálora, whom no one may remember anymore in the neighborhood of Balvanera but who died as he lived, by a bullet, in the province of Rio Grande do Sul.* I do not know the full details of his adventure; when I am apprised of them, I will correct and expand these pages. For now, this summary may be instructive: In 1891, Benjamín Otálorais nineteen years old—a strapping young man with a miserly brow, earnest blue eyes, and the strength and stamina of a Basque. A lucky knife thrust has revealed to him that he is a man of courage; he is not distressed by the death of his opponent, or by the immediate need to flee the country. The ward boss of his parish gives him a letter of introduction to a man named Azevedo Bandeira, over in Uruguay. Otálora takes ship; the crossing is stormy, creaking; the next day finds him wandering aimlessly through the streets of Montevideo, with unconfessed and perhaps unrecognized sadness. He doesn't manage to come across Azevedo Bandeira. Toward midnight, in a general-store-and-bar in Paso del Molino,*he witnesses a fight between two cattle drovers. A knife gleams; Otálora doesn't know whose side he should be on, but he is attracted by the pure taste of danger, the way other men are attracted by gambling or music. In the confusion, he checks a low thrust meant for a man in a broad-brimmed black hat and a poncho. That man later turns out to be Azevedo Bandeira.(When Otálora discovers this, he tears up the letter of introduction, because he'd rather all the credit be his alone.) Though Azevedo Bandeira is a strong, well-built man, he gives the unjustifiable impression of being something of a fake, a forgery. In his face (which is always too close) there mingle the Jew, the Negro, and the Indian; in his air, the monkey and the tiger; the scar that crosses his face is just another piece of decoration, like the bristling black mustache.
Whether it's a projection or an error caused by drink, the fight stops as quickly as it started. Otálora drinks with the cattle drovers and then goes out carousing with them and then accompanies them to a big house in the Old City—by now the sun is high in the sky. Out in the back patio, the men lay out their bedrolls. Otálora vaguely compares that night with the previous one; now he is on terrafirma, among friends. He does, he has to admit, feel a small twinge of remorse at not missing Buenos Aires. He sleeps till orisons, when he is awakened by the same paisano who had drunkenly attacked Bandeira. (Otálora recalls that this man has been with the others, drunk with them, made the rounds of the city with them, that Bandeira sat him at his right hand and made him keep drinking.) The man tells him the boss wants to see him. In a kind of office that opens off the long entryway at the front of the house (Otálora has never seen an entryway with doors opening off it), Azevedo Bandeira is waiting for him, with a splendid, contemptuous red-haired woman. Bandeira heaps praise on Otálora, offers him a glass of harsh brandy, tells him again that he looks like a man of mettle, and asks him if he'd like to go up north with the boys to bring a herd back. Otálora takes the job; by dawn the next morning they are on their way to Tacuarembó.
That is the moment at which Otálora begins a new life, a life of vast sunrises and days that smell of horses.
This life is new to him, and sometimes terrible, and yet it is in his blood, for just as the men of other lands worship the sea and can feel it deep inside them, the men of ours (including the man who weaves these symbols) yearn for the inexhaustible plains that echo under the horses' hooves. Otálora has been brought up in neighborhoods full of cart drivers and leather braiders; within a year, he has become a gaucho. He learns to ride, to keep the horses together, to butcher the animals, to use the rope that lassos them and the bolas that bring them down, to bear up under weariness, storms, cold weather, and the sun, to herd the animals with whistles and shouts. Only once during this period of apprenticeship does he see Azevedo Bandeira, but he is always aware of his presence, because to be a "Bandeiraman" is to be taken seriously—in fact, to be feared—and because no matter the deed of manly strength or courage they see done, the gauchos say Bandeira does it better. One of them says he thinks Bandeira was born on the other side of the Cuareim, in Rio Grande do Sul; that fact, which ought to bring him down a notch or two in their estimation, lends his aura a vague new wealth of teeming forests, swamps, impenetrable and almost infinite distances.
Gradually, Otalora realizes that Bandeira has many irons in the fire, and that his main business is smuggling. Being a drover is being a servant; Otalora decides to rise higher—decides to become a smuggler. One night, two of his companions are to cross the border to bring back several loads of brandy; Otalora provokes one of them, wounds him, and takes his place. He is moved by ambition, but also by an obscure loyalty. Once and for all (he thinks) I want the boss to see that I'm a better man than all these Uruguayans of his put together.
Another year goes by before Otalora returns to Montevideo. They ride through the outskirts, and then through the city (which seems enormous to Otalora); they come to the boss's house; the men lay out their bedrolls in the back patio. Days go by, and Otalora hasn't seen Bandeira. They say, timorously, that he's sick; a black man takes the kettle and mate up to him in his room. One afternoon, Otalora is asked to carry the things up to Bandeira. He feels somehow humiliated by this, but derives some pride from it, too.