Collected Fictions

The Night of the Gifts

It was in the old Café Águila, on Calle Florida near the intersection of Piedad,* that we heard the story.

We were debating the problem of knowledge. Someone invoked the Platonic idea that we have already seen all things in some former world, so that "knowing" is in fact "recognizing"; my father, I think it was, said that Bacon had written that if learning was remembering, then not knowing a thing was in fact having forgotten it. Another member of the group, an elderly gentleman, who was no doubt a bit lost in all that metaphysics, decided to put in his two cents' worth. He spoke with slow assurance.

I've never been able to understand that business about Platonic archetypes. Nobody remembers the first time they saw yellow or black, or the first time they tasted some fruit—most likely because they were little and had no way of knowing they were at the beginning of a long, long series. There are other first times, of course, that nobody forgets. I could tell you fellows the memory of a certain night I often cast my mind back to—April 30, of '74.

Summers were longer in the old days, but I don't know why we'd stayed till such a late date at the place that some cousins of ours owned a few leagues from Lobos—Dorna, their name was. That was the summer that one of the laborers, a fellow named Rufino, initiated me into the customs of the country life. I was about to turn thirteen; he was a good bit older, and he had a reputation for being hot-tempered. He was quite a hand with a knife; when they practiced with burned sticks, the one that invariably wound up with a black smear across his face was the other fellow. One Friday he suggested that he and I might go to town on Saturday night for some fun. I jumped at the chance, of course, though I had no very clear idea of what fun he might be referring to. I warned him I didn't know how to dance; he said dancing was easy to learn. After dinner, must have been about seven-thirty, we headed out. Rufino had spruced himself up like a fellow on his way to a party, and he was (porting a knife with a silver handle; I left my little hatpin of a knife at home, for fear of being joshed some about it. It didn't take us long to come in sight of the first houses. Have any of you fellows ever been to Lobos? Just as well; there's not a town in the provinces that's not just like all the others—even to the point of thinking it's different. The same dirt streets with the same holes ¡n them, the same squat houses—as though to make a man on horseback feel all the taller. We pulled up at this one corner in front of a house painted light blue or pink, with the name La Estrella painted on it. There were horses tied to the hitching post, with nice saddles, all of them.

The front door was open a bit, and I could see a crack of light. Off the back of the vestibule there was a long room with plank benches all along the walls and between one bench and another all these dark doorways that led who knew where. An ugly little yellow dog scurried out yapping to make us feel welcome. There were quite a few people; half a dozen women wearing flowered housecoats were wandering around. A respectable-looking woman, dressed in black from head to toe, looked to me to be the owner of the house. Rufino walked up and said hello to her, then gestured toward me.

"I've brought you a new friend," he said, "but he's not much of a rider yet."

"He'll learn, don't worry your head about it," the lady replied.

That abashed me, of course. To cover my embarrassment, or maybe to make them see I was just a boy, I sat down on the end of a bench and started playing with the dog. On the kitchen table they had lit some tallow candles stuck in bottles, and I also remember the little wood stove in one corner of the room, at the back. On the whitewashed wall in front of me was a figure of the Virgen de la Merced.

There was a good bit of joking, and somebody was strumming at a guitar—not that it did him much good. Out of sheer timidity, I didn't say no to the gin somebody offered me, which burned my mouth like red-hot coals. Among the women there was one that seemed different to me from the others. They called her the Captive. There was something kind of Indian-featured about her, but she was as pretty as a picture—that sad-eyed look, you know. Her hair was in a braid that reached all the way to her waist. Rufino saw that I was looking at her.

"Tell us that story about the Indian raid again, to freshen up our memories some," he said to her.

The way the girl talked, there mightn't have been another soul in the room, and somehow I got the feeling there was nothing else she could think about, that this was the only thing that had happened to her in her whole life. She told the story this way—

"When they brought me from Catamarca I was just a little girl. What could I know about Indian raids?

On the ranch they were so afraid of them they wouldn't even mention them. Gradually I learned about the raids, almost like they were a secret that nobody was supposed to tell—how Indians might swarm down like a thundercloud and kill people and steal the animals. Women, they carried off to the interior, and did terrible things to them. I tried as hard as I could not to believe it. Lucas, my brother, who later got speared, swore it was all lies, but when something's true, you know it the first time you hear it. The government sends them things—tobacco, mate, liquor, hierba—to keep them quiet, but they have crafty leaders—spirit men—that warn them off it. If a chief of theirs orders it, they think nothing of storming down on a fort. The forts are scattered.... From thinking about it so much, I almost wished they'd come, and I would sit and look out in the direction where the sun goes down. I never learned about keeping track of time, but I do know there came frosts and summers and branding seasons and the death of the foreman's son, and then they did come. It was like the very wind off the pampas brought them. I saw a thistle flower in a ravine and I dreamed of the Indians. The next morning it happened. Like in an earthquake, the animals knew it before we did. The whole herd was skittish, and birds were flying through the air every which way. We ran to look out in the direction I always looked in ..."

"Who brought you the warning?" somebody asked.

The girl still seemed far away. She just repeated her last words.

"We ran to look out in the direction I always looked in. It was like the whole desert had up and started moving. Through those thick rods of the wrought-iron fence we saw the dust clouds before we saw the Indians. They were on a raid. They were slapping their mouths with their hands and yelping. There were rifles in Santa Irene, but all they were good for was stunning them and making them all the madder."

The Captive's way of speaking was like a person saying a prayer, from memory; but out in the street I could hear the Indians coming across the plain, and their yelping. Then a door banged open, and they were in the room—you'd have thought they'd ridden their horses inside, into the rooms of a dream. It was a bunch of drunken brawlers from the docks. Now, in my memory's eye, they look very tall. The one in the lead gave Rufino, who was by the door, an elbow for his trouble. Rufino turned pale, said not a word, and stepped off to one side. The lady, who'd not moved from her place, stood up.

"It's Juan Moreira,*" she announced.

Here, tonight, after so many years, I'm not sure anymore whether I remember the man that was actually there that night or whether it's the man I was to see so many times afterward around the slaughterhouses.

I think about Podestá's long hair and black beard,* but there's also a blondish sort of face there somewhere, with smallpox scars. Anyway, that ugly dog skittered out yapping to greet the newcomers.

With one crack of his bullwhip, Moreira laid it out dead on the floor. It fell over on its back and died waving its paws in the air....

Now then, this is where the story really starts—

Without making a sound I crept over to one of the doors, which opened into a narrow hallway and a flight of stairs. Upstairs, I hid in a dark bedroom. Except for the bed, which was a low, squat affair, I couldn't say what sort of furniture there might have been. I was shaking all over. Downstairs there was yelling and shrieking, and then the sound of breaking glass. I heard a woman's footsteps coming up the stairs, and then I saw a slice of light. Then the voice of the Captive called me, almost in a whisper.

"I'm here to be of service, but only to peaceable folk. Come over here, I won't hurt you."

She had taken off her housecoat. I lay down beside her and took her face in my hands. I don't know how much time passed. There was not a word or a kiss between us. I undid her braid and played with her hair, which was long and straight, and then with her. We never saw each other again, and I never learned her name.

A gunshot stunned us.

"You can get out by the other staircase," the Captive told me.

Which is what I did, and I found myself out in the dirt street. There was a big moon that night. A police sergeant, carrying a rifle with fixed bayonet, was watching that side of the house. He laughed when he saw me.

"From all appearances," he said to me, "you like to get an early start in the morning."

I must have said something in return, but he paid me no further mind. A man was letting himself down the wall. In one movement, the sergeant ran him through with the bayonet. The man fell to the ground, where he lay on his back, whimpering and bleeding. That dog came to my mind. The sergeant stabbed the man good with the bayonet again, to finish him off once and for all.

With a happy kind of grin he said to the man,"Moreira, this time you might as well have saved your powder."

The uniformed men who'd been surrounding the house appeared from everywhere, and then came the neighbors. Andrés Chirino had to wrestle the gun out of his hand. Everybody wanted to congratulate him.

Laughing, Rufino said, "I guess that'll be this hoodlum's last dance!"

I went from group to group, telling people what I had seen. Suddenly I was very tired; it may be I had a fever. I slipped away, found Rufino, and we started back home. From the horse we could see the white light of the dawn. More than tired, I felt dazed—as though I'd been caught up in a rapids.

"In the river of the events of that night," mused my father.

The other man nodded.

"That's it exactly. Within the space of a few hours I'd learned how to make love and I'd seen death at first hand. To all men all things are revealed—or at least all those things that a man's fated to know; but from sundown of one day to sunup of the next, those two central things were revealed to me. The years go by, and I've told the story so many times that I'm not sure anymore whether I actually remember it or whether I just remember the words I tell it with. Maybe that's how it was with the Captive, with her Indian raid. At this point what difference does it make whether it was me or some other man that saw Moreira killed."