It must have been seven or half past by the time they spied the outskirts of Carhué, the famous thermal spa. Some hills and valleys added spice to the landscape, as they rode down a route or track the Indians had made in their constant pilgrimages to the lake. There were no trees, but lots of agave plants, some of them huge. When they reached the seasonal tents the summer visitors put up, they separated. The Indians finally opened their mouths to wish them a good journey. Now the three of them had to rely on Gauna’s judgment. The night before, the tracker had claimed he knew the way from here to Coliqueo’s camp perfectly, and Clarke had no other option but to believe him. They said farewell and headed off to the left, while the Indians made for the tents.
The track climbed, and suddenly on their right they could see the lake, the color of tarnished silver, very still and endless. Far off in the middle stood an island. In spite of the early hour, or perhaps because of it, there were a lot of bathers on the lakeside or splashing about in the water. When they emerged, they dried off in the sun, and the salt caked on their bodies, leaving them looking as white as ghosts.
They could see that the Indians they had come with were trotting along the lakeshore. As the three of them continued to climb their high ground, they watched them head for a group of women further off. When the Indians reached the group, they dismounted and began to talk ceremoniously, puffing out their chests. As the three white men came level some distance away, Clarke paused out of curiosity. The Indians were talking in front of a woman whose companions had stayed a few paces behind. This was Juana Pitiley: Clarke was sure of it, even though he had never seen her before. She was naked, and was covered from head to foot in dried salt, which gleamed in the sun like diamond dust. Despite her years, which could not have been less than sixty, she was a beautiful, imposing woman, and so tall that the Indians opposite her looked like squinting dwarves. She was very still. She must have already heard the news, but said nothing. There was something tragic, or indifferent — but in either case, sublime — in the way she stood immobile. Clarke could not take his eyes off her, or continue on his way. An inexplicable fascination drew him to the sight. It seemed to him as though she raised her eyes, sparkling with salt crystals, to look in his direction. When they finally got going again, she had still not moved. In his confused state after seeing such a vision, Clarke was sorry he had been unable to talk to her about the famous Hare. Yet at the same time he realized it would have been useless to try to do so directly. She did not seem the kind of woman who responded to questions. In fact, she did not seem the kind who spoke at all to mere mortals.
5: Traveling South
The journey lasted a week, and took them along one of those straight lines that are so perfect as to be unrepeatable, though this was undoubtedly pure chance, because all Gauna did was calculate the equinoctial line and follow it. They had good weather: tranquil suns, breezes that did not ruffle the shade, a landscape accommodating all the shifting hours and minutes. It was like meeting beautiful women at every step — except that there were no women, in fact there was nobody, which meant they also managed to avoid all the pitfalls of reality. Even the relationship between the three of them remained reasonably unperturbed. Gauna was wrapped up in his own world, and paid no attention to anything or anybody, apart from his whistling, which was a monotonous but harmless accompaniment to their trip. “To think I didn’t bring the dog!” he exclaimed whenever a partridge appeared. He had a theory that a dog could hunt a partridge on its own, without help. And one of his dogs, called Concuerda, was an expert at this. The number of flocks of birds they startled was remarkable, and Clarke often practiced his marksmanship. Whenever he aimed at one partridge in flight and hit another, he invariably admitted it: so much so that his telling of the truth itself seemed suspicious. It was as if he had good but off-kilter marksmanship, something beyond mere skill. Gauna had made it a rule to fetch the game himself, which gave rise each time to a joke the Englishman muttered to himself: “To think I didn’t bring the dog!” Then once when Gauna was retrieving the bird, he quite tactfully let it be known he had heard the Englishman: “She’s called Concuerda, or rather that’s what she was called, because she was trampled by a bull, and I am sorry not to have brought her, truly sorry, and doubly so, because I could not have brought her since she’s dead.” Clarke felt ashamed, and never repeated the joke again. Like all English people, he put the love of animals above everything else.
“Mister Gauna,” he said to him some while later, “you perhaps consider it unjust that I should have made it a condition of your employment that you not carry a weapon. Especially since I brought my own shotgun. But elementary security reasons led me to impose that condition. I won’t be so hypocritical as to claim that if I had known you as I do now, I would have allowed you to come with your gun. It is a matter of principle, which knowledge, that is to say the before and after, does not affect in the slightest.”
The gaucho agreed as if it were so much water off a duck’s back.
There was also the possibility that they were heading in anything but the right direction. Every now and then they caught sight of Indians, but only in the distance, and were unable to exchange information. Once, a lone rider who remained in their sight for hours caught their attention. He was traveling along what was for them the skyline, and his trajectory seemed to be moving from one side to the other, not in the manner of a normal zigzag (in which case they would have noticed him moving closer then drawing further away) but rather as if the whole space between observers and observed were tilting. Things like that gave Clarke food for thought, and of late he had been thinking that in fact he was not cut out to be a naturalist but something else, for which he had no ready name. What was he? He did not know, but then everybody was in the same situation. The wanderer with his intriguing course was a reminder of all the varying positions of life.
The alarming thing was that they saw him again two days later, but this time at a completely different point, separate from the horizon. Since it was improbable that an Indian would be going round in circles for the fun of it, the only reasonable conclusion was that it was they who were going round in circles. Clarke became worried:
“That wanderer. .” he said to Gauna, drawing a diagram with a twig in the dust when they stopped to camp. He was trying to work out how the rider’s position had changed, but contradicted his own calculations when he tried to include the tilting in space he thought he had detected on both occasions.
“When are you going to stop pestering us with that blasted wanderer of yours?” Gauna eventually protested, and from then on Clarke kept his drawings to himself. After all, he could still put his trust in luck. Even if they ended up somewhere far from the Voroga encampment, it would still be a measurable distance from them. Perhaps the best thing would be to keep away from the Indians altogether. Except that, in addition to his curiosity, Clarke was one of those people who pride themselves on achieving what they have set out to do, even when they have no clear idea what that was.