Night was drawing in. They met up with some Indians. Those Indians met others. . to cut a long story short: by the next day, Gauna was back with them, and they had completely changed direction. Now they were headed south-west once more, as their guide wished. Such a rapid turn around demanded an explanation.
“Why did you listen to him?” Carlos asked Clarke (they had resumed the order they rode in before the war, with the two of them in the rear, and Gauna fifty yards ahead so he did not have to listen to them).
Clarke did not reply.
“Don’t you see you’re completely underhanded? You tell me, your friend, one thing, then he comes along and. .”
“I say the same to everyone: yes. What are we losing by going with him? In three or four days he’ll be satisfied, we’ll have had an another outing, and got to know. . then the three of us can go back to Buenos Aires, as right as rain.”
“No, Clarke. You’re hiding something from me.”
“All right, if you want me to be frank with you, there are two things: first, I’d like to see that famous Cerro de la Ventana; and second, perhaps the Widow really does have something to do with Gauna’s story, in which case we’ll be able to get to know her.”
“But who wants to?”
“I do, for one. Just think if she really is his half-sister.”
“Come off it.”
“Everything is possible, Carlos.”
“Why does that make her so special anyway? What if they are similar? What if she’s got the same rotten nature as him, and has us all slaughtered?”
Clarke shrugged. Then he counterattacked:
“All Gauna told me was that he had learned that the Widow had finally found a girl she could pass off as her daughter, and that she was on a forced march to get to the Ventana to celebrate the birthday. There, from the hands of the unknown Mapuche who has been keeping it all these years, she is supposed to receive a jewel that will release the inheritance that is going to make Gauna a Rothschild, if only he can get there in time. OK, so it’s the most unlikely fantasy in the whole wide world. But he is going to go anyway, with me (which he says would help him, because of Repetido, our four-legged safe-conduct) or without me. Now tell me, with your hand on your heart, if you had been told a story like that, however far-fetched, and it was all the same to you whether you went or not, wouldn’t you at least have been curious? Tell the truth.”
Carlos laughed his fresh, childlike laugh:
“You’re a genius, Clarke. You always manage to convince me.”
“Oh, Good God, it can’t be. .”
“What?”
“Do you see what I see?”
“You’re right, it’s your friend the Wanderer. Is he coming or going?”
Clarke, raised his voice: “Can you see him, Gauna?”
“Yes.”
The rider seemed not to move on the horizon, to be a fixed point. The Englishman told himself he would not take his eyes off him, because he wanted to know how he always succeeded in vanishing. He regretted it was not dark enough yet for him to carry out a triangulation by the stars. There was no point doing it with the sun, because that moved. Over the previous days, the warriors he had commanded in battle were always telling him they had seen the strange horseman, but for one reason or other had never seen him anywhere but on the horizon. Clarke continued to stare at him until all at once he disappeared. It was only a moment, and suddenly he was gone. But in that instant, whether due to a visual trick or a mental fantasy, Clarke could have sworn he had seen the most subtle overlapping; it was not as though the horizon were coming nearer, which would have been the normal thing, but instead as though the whole vast expanse of the plain had been exchanged for another, which was absurd. Clarke became lost in thought.
Gauna had brought another ten horses with him, so the troop they were leading was huge. They also had enough provisions for weeks, so they would not have to go to the trouble of hunting. In their first day of riding they did not meet up with anyone, but on the second they ate at midday with a noisy bunch of Indians out hunting, and they almost found themselves obliged to dine with others. They got out of it by arguing great haste, and camped for the night in what seemed to Clarke to be one of the most enchanting spots he had ever seen: a creek, usually quite narrow but swollen now after all the rain, framed by an exquisite variety of scenic views. By the dying evening light and the first light of the next morning, they collected agate and jasper pebbles, admired thousands of yellow lilies, listened to the birdsong, took long walks along the riverbanks, and bathed not once but twice, before dinner and before breakfast. Frogs lulled them to a restoring sleep.
The next day the weather was clear and fine. Gauna rode on ahead as usual. They had scarcely traveled half an hour when Carlos looked up and said:
“What are those. . accumulations of earth?”
He did not dare say “mountains,” because the very idea seemed so out of place in these surroundings.
“They’re mountains,” Clarke replied; “and I think. .” He raised his voice: “Gauna, are they the Sierra de la Ventana?”
“Yes,” said the gaucho without even turning round.
“They are.”
“So we’ve arrived.”
“Not quite. They’re still a long way off.”
They were barely visible on the horizon, an unbroken line of the brightest blue. The three carried on riding for a while in silence, their eyes sometimes fixed on the mountains, sometimes staring out emptily.
“While I remember, Clarke,” Carlos said, “you have to finish the story you started the other day.”
“What story?”
“Well, ‘story’ is just a way of putting it. You were telling me about your great love.”
“. .?”
“Don’t you remember? About Rossanna. .”
“I told you about that?” Clarke asked, genuinely startled.
“Of course you did. It was before the war.”
“I don’t recall.”
“And you left off in the middle.”
“I must have had some reason for doing so.”
“It wasn’t my fault, I assure you. There was some interruption, I can’t remember what. You can’t say there haven’t been interruptions over the past few days.”
“You’re right, more than enough. But are you sure. .? It’s completely slipped my mind. But when you say her name. . it’s not that I always think you’re making things up, but I thought that fragment from my past was one of my best-kept secrets. Sometimes it seems to me it’s the key to my entire life. In a way I’m glad I confided in you, even though I don’t remember doing so.”
“Sometimes I just don’t understand you, Clarke.”
Clarke had submerged himself in a deep well of memories, a darkly veiled expression on his face. Carlos did not insist, but after riding on for a while in silence, he asked again:
“So, are you going to tell me or not?”
“Eh, what?”
“Your story about Rossanna. .”
“Rossanna died.”
“I’m very sorry. But I must say I was expecting it, from the way you began your story.”
“You’ll end up convincing me I really did tell you. Perhaps I was talking in my sleep?”
“Look, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to tell me anything.”
“No, I’m sorry. Where had I got to?”
“After all this build-up, you’ll think it’s ridiculous if I say I can’t remember, but so much has happened I reckon I do have some excuse. I can recall there was a black man: what was his name? Mandango?”
“Callango. Did I tell you about him too?”
“Stop it, for heaven’s sake! You told me everything, in the classic style. Let me think.” He stroked his smooth, youthful chin. “You’d been attacked by the Indians, Rossanna had disappeared, you and her father, Professor. .”