His two final audiences that afternoon had been granted to an elderly black woman and to an Englishman. The black woman had come about a trifling matter, a crass personal tragedy, but Rosas made it a rule always to receive his beloved darkies and play Solomon for them — an attitude they welcomed with a gratitude bordering on adulation. Rosas had a theory that before long, Argentina would be a country of blacks. He might even see that day arrive, if he lived long enough. He therefore took pains to keep them in the foreground politically, as privileged subjects of the Law and Justice. This cost him little, while at the same time he could see the inevitability of misery and stupidity which made this black nation a fiction. Today’s black woman came accompanied by her two eldest daughters. She was a dreadful specimen, who although she must have been only forty years old, looked a worn-out sixty. She launched into her story with heartrending sobs and cries. The interview took place on the main porch of the house, which at that time of day afforded some shade. Foremost among the sadistic onlookers secretly rejoicing in the scene was Manuelita, all dressed up in scarlet ribbons and bows, feigning compassion. She was a hopeless actress, poor thing. Her complete lack of naturalness! The Restorer listened stony-faced, his gin glazing everything over as he sat in his sandalwood chair. Whichever way he looked at the problem, there was no answer: after thirty years of married life, the plaintiff’s husband had gone off with another woman. There was no solution. According to the black woman’s tearful account, once the man in question had committed incest with his elder and younger daughters, he felt there was nothing more to be gained from the marriage as far as sexual gratification was concerned. Anyone could understand that. From this point on, the abandoned wife’s argument degenerated into one long moan of complaint. The Man in the Marble Mask felt that when complaining reached such a pure, ecstatic state as this, it gave him a good opportunity to think. The reasoning did not move forward at all, and seemed as though it never would. What did she want him to do? Have the man castrated? That would be easy, all too easy. But she herself must have realized this would get her nowhere. Manuelita was shedding crocodile tears, the two daughters were busy studying her afternoon robe so they could copy it, while the black woman herself never took her eyes off the Solomon from Palermo, who meanwhile was lost in a reverie about how the female body deteriorates. This train of thought (which could be summed up by the question: what does a woman have to offer, once she has lost the obvious?) led him off down unexpected paths, until all at once an idea, as bright as the sun, came to him as to how the woman might keep her husband. An infallible, impeccable method that was simple to apply and yet was guaranteed success. It was odd she had not thought of it herself, but then if she had, it would have occurred to all women, including her rival, which meant it would no longer be effective. And it had occurred to him, precisely to the one person who by definition would never need to keep a man in his bed. Strangest of all was the fact that he could not tell the person involved of the solution he had found, but had to sit there silent and motionless. Not because he was afraid of seeming ridiculous (he was far beyond that) but because there was a kind of logical imperative of silence which came into play just when saying something might have been useful. He stared at the black woman, she stared back at him. . there was a momentary impasse, but once he had arranged a concession for her offal stall at the slaughterhouse, she calmed down completely. That was more than enough for her to leave contented. And her husband? He decided that was a lost cause. They had reached no conclusion about the matter. Or had they? He wondered whether the woman had been able to read his thoughts.
As for the Englishman, he appeared at the most agreeable moment of the afternoon. He was accompanied by his nation’s Consul, who was like one of the family. Rosas also received them on the porch, which had by now been cleared of all prying eyes and contained two extra seats. The newcomer looked to be aged around thirty-five, and was dark-skinned, with jet black hair. He did not look English, but Rosas had noticed that some Englishmen
could be like that, almost Indian-looking. Rosas himself looked more like the other kind of Englishman, fair-haired and ruddy-cheeked. At first he thought his guest was ugly, although he was fortunate enough to be small, like an oriental. But when he spoke, in a more than passable Spanish, he became almost attractive, in a serious, reserved kind of way. They exchanged small talk. Clarke, as the Englishman was called, was a brother-in-law of Darwin, who had sent the Restorer greetings. There followed more empty remarks about the weather, journeys, this and that. What Rosas sought to convey above all was the atmosphere of the place, the time of day, the domesticity of the scene, which he was sure made a strong political impact. By now, the homely circle was complete, and went spinning on above and beyond Manuela’s absurdities. Manuelita divided the whole of humanity into “cousins” and “gentlemen”; she could see no further than that. The Englishman spoke of his intention of traveling into the interior of Argentina once his preparations were completed. This information verged on the unnecessary, so they did not waste much time discussing it. Both of them considered they knew as much as they could about the other. The previous day, Rosas’s police had determined that Clarke was in fact the person he claimed to be, that the schooner he had landed in had sailed from Valparaiso, and that beneath the cloak of a naturalist and geographer in the service of the British empire there was nothing worthy of note. Of course, it would have been much more interesting if there had been, which meant there probably was. The police had their limits. Rosas deplored the fact that good manners prevented one from asking people straight out what they were really up to. A different sort of courtesy was needed, he thought.