The Hare

11: The War of the Hare

The entire war lasted no more than a week, and ended with a sweeping victory for the Huilliches. Yet another triumph in the career of the legendary Cafulcurá, this time undeserved, one that fell into his lap gratuitously, but proof of his genius anyway: he had after all been the motive, the reason, the excuse for the war, and everyone knows that in war the be-all and end-all of strategy is to become invisible. According to rough estimates, subject of course to immense variations, one hundred thousand warriors took part in the struggle. Nobody even thought of counting the dead, but there must have been a great many of them, as the whole point of the war was to kill each other. From start to finish, the weather was atrocious, truly English: rain, fog, not so much as a glimpse of the sun, cold winds which heralded or mimicked winter in the midst of autumn. It seemed as though everyone was in a hurry to get the whole thing over with, just so that the weather could return to normal. Haste became the chief characteristic of what came to be known in the collective memory as the War of the Hare. The reason for the name was soon lost in more or less bewildered suppositions by everyone except Clarke, for whom it had a very precise meaning: he in turn was dumbfounded as to how this meaning had somehow transferred itself from his subjective consciousness to a general acceptance. In fact, this was the least of the mysteries that went unanswered. Clarke got used to this being the case. He came to think he was up against the apotheosis of the simultaneity of nonsense. He was the center and driving force of everything that happened, but since the outcome inevitably took him by surprise, he ended up washing his hands of it all. He gave in to the tumult of the instant so naturally that it seemed he had been doing so throughout his life. From the outset, he rejected the classic position of the general who hovers high above the entire battlefield: he was no eagle, and anyway the pampa, with its complete lack of topographical features, did not lend itself to such a perspective. In itself it was pure terrain, a geometry: it would have been superfluous to deliberately treat it as such. Indeed, it would have been counterproductive, a waste. The armies maneuvered in a space whose gradients they themselves produced and instantly inverted. Everything was a question of creating lines, as quickly as possible; lines of arrival and departure, which magically intersected each other at every point rather than at any especially privileged one. It was like having to deal with the most eternal aspect of war, as a natural epiphenomenon of thought; to hasten life until it merged with death, and to keep this action concealed from the adversary. The key was to imagine the grandeur of destiny infinitely compressed until it was the size and shape of a rock crystal; the large and the small, the distant and the near, necessity and freedom. Quite how Clarke succeeded in doing this, to see clearly where anybody else would have got lost a thousand times, could only be called a miracle. But not for him. He constructed his own system, adhered to the lines, the horizontals and verticals, to the poetry of destiny, and with cheerful insistence let things happen.

The first issue was the deployment of troops. Since no one wanted to take the initiative, Clarke called a war council. The different armies were drawn up a certain distance away. For them to deploy, it was necessary to actually move, rather than rely on the customary toing-and-froing of messages. Clarke’s colleagues on the war council did not like this idea: in their view, it was tempting fate for bodies, the physical matter of human beings, to take the place of immaterial messages. They were afraid of seeming ridiculous. The Englishman would hear nothing of this, and so of course they yielded to him. One of their good qualities was that once they decided on something, or had it decided for them, they launched into instant, tumultuous action. So it was that in the twinkling of an eye the huge mass of some ten thousand Indians and an equal number of cattle got on the move. And at a gallop. The rain also helped drive them on. There was something slippery about the whole affair: no one could avoid tumbling into it. They went too far in their use of grease, which helped keep off the wet. It was amazing how much fat they could get out of even the leanest cow they slaughtered. They stored it, with a touch of unconscious humor, in big tins of English tea: every Indian had one to keep his supply in. Adept at practical matters, it took them only two minutes and two hands to renew their covering from head to toe. Then they shone like the outside of a window on a rainy afternoon. They invited the white men to do the same for practical reasons. Carlos Alzaga Prior had no qualms about stripping off and smearing himself all over. Clarke flatly refused at first, but the sensation of his wet, heavy clothing on his body the whole time, and the sight on the second day of Gauna anointed and glistening like a savage, finally persuaded him to try. It suited him. With his dark coloring, his black hair that had grown out of all recognition during the expedition, and his stocky build, he looked like any other Indian once he was smothered in grease and sat naked on his horse. He even rather liked the idea: it lent an air of carnival or masked ball to the whole affair; like every commander-in-chief, he was keen to make things seem a little less serious than they were, just in case. He borrowed the grease, and kept his clothing folded and dry in his own tea chest, ready to resume his identity as an English naturalist at any moment. Carlos even began to take lessons in how to throw bolas, the Huilliches’ main weapon.

Their first march took them to the spot where Coliqueo’s seasonal camp had been pitched. Coliqueo’s men were no longer there (a fact which the allies already knew: according to their information, his army had withdrawn some fifty leagues to the north) but they soon ran into a large raiding party which was hastening to cut off their advance. The first battle was fought under a blanket of dense white clouds and drizzle. The combat itself lasted barely three or four minutes. There were no more than a thousand enemy troops, but in the general confusion their own superior numbers seemed unimportant. The two forces became completely entangled: as soon as they saw each other on their respective horizons, they charged straight at one another. Both sides went clean through the enemy lines, and then scattered in every direction, fleeing but also fighting, caught up in extravagant chases that eventually formed one huge circle. The combat as such was over. The allies went to round up the cattle that had been scared off, then lit fires for dinner. A short while later, the Vorogas came to carry off their dead. The Huilliches buried their own in funeral ceremonies that same night. They committed the atrocity of skinning live horses to wrap the dead bodies in. Clarke was sure he would go on hearing the cries of those poor animals until Judgment Day. Everyone got stupendously drunk. The chiefs and the Englishman spent the night issuing and receiving messages. As baptisms of fire go, it had been passable. Gauna had stayed neutral, Carlos was unhurt and full of himself. Clarke had fired barely a dozen shots.

From that point on, Clarke began to understand something which reassured him completely with regard to simultaneity: it was subordinate to the narrative. It was this which gave it a structure, a perspective, made it comprehensible, and at the same time removed the terror of the moment from it. It confirmed the fact that it was unrepeatable, but made this acceptable. Deep down, it meant always contributing to the narrative, which became one long repetition. Although it seemed as if the Indians were caught up in the overwhelming present, they in fact relied on the goodwill of a narrator for their activity to exist in reality. The spectacle of the ducks convinced Clarke he was right. In order to see them, the idea had first to take shape in space, and this suddenly led the whole army to travel an incredible distance, without greatly changing the thoughtful calm that the movement emerged from. This was the Great Sine Curve of the Mapuche armies, a line that would have exploded the maps if anyone had tried to trace it. In his youth, Clarke had been an enthusiastic student of the campaigns led by Charles XII of Sweden, Frederick the Great of Prussia, and of course Napoleon, which he knew by heart. He attempted to put what he had learned into practice, knowing full well that things would turn out differently on the pampas. And so it proved. Not even ten Europes laid side by side would have been sufficient to contain the Great Sine Curve. It was a movement that embraced all other movements, past and future. Without even catching sight of the enemy, they struck terror into them, they surrounded them a thousand times, they cut off all their lines of retreat, even ones they would never have dreamt of using. Finally there came a moment when their army touched the absolute tangent, the sea. This was such a novelty that they halted there for a full day. For many of the Indians, this was the first time they had seen the sea, and they were left awestruck, fascinated, even though the thick mists robbed the sight of much of its grandeur. If it had not been raining, they would have gone for a swim. They did so anyway. Several of them drowned, carried away unsuspecting by the pull of the waves. As night was falling, a party of Indians who had been exploring the shore appeared at the generals’ bonfire and told them excitedly that something extraordinary was taking place on some nearby rocks. Clarke climbed on to Repetido and sent for Carlos, whom he felt obliged to show anything of interest. The youngster did not appear, but when Clarke arrived at the spot, he found him already among the crowd of spectators. They were all gathered at the top of some high cliffs, from the edge of which a small, inaccessible beach could be seen. On it were about a hundred grotesquely large ducks. Even allowing for the distance, they must have been at least five feet tall, like overgrown children. They were plump to the point of bursting, with snowy white down, huge blue eyes, and broad webbed feet that they planted firmly (they must have weighed at least one hundred and seventy-five pounds) into the wet sand. The first impression they gave was that they must be dwarves in disguise. But how on earth could a hundred dwarves be got together like that? And Clarke had never heard mention of any pygmy races on American soil.

“They’re not ducks,” said Maciel, who had ridden with him. “They’re seagulls, which are quite similar.”

“What about their bills then?”

“Well, they’re spoonbill gulls.”

Colqán, the aristocratic Tehuelche, burst out laughing. According to him, they were ducks all right, and not even particularly large ones; it was certain substances that the Indians had taken which made them see everything out of proportion. Clarke said nothing in reply, but he was convinced this was not the case. At any rate, even leaving aside the question of their size, the ducks were behaving in the most extraordinary fashion. They were walking very erect, like geese, with long, determined strides; even though there was no apparent pattern to their progress, there must have been a secret one. It was a shame it was so misty, because this meant he missed important details. The ducks were walking round and round. All of a sudden the onlookers could see an enormous white egg about the size of a feather bolster. It was obvious now that some kind of ritual was taking place. Although animals do of course perform rituals, and even highly complicated ones, this only increased the impression of artificiality. As soon as they saw the egg, the Indians stopped laughing and commenting. It was as if this colossal egg bewitched them even more than the sea had done. Clarke remembered some of the things Coliqueo had told him: the exact content of his ramblings was of little importance, it was enough to know that a duck’s egg had been part of his grand scheme of things. Coliqueo, who like every emperor overdid the medicinal herbs, had made it seem like a hallucination; but it was in fact real, and Colqán was wrong.

The mysterious palmipeds, surrounded not only by mist but by the encroaching dark gray of a rainy dusk, gave little ceremonial kicks to the egg until it reached the sea, then dived in after it one by one. Defying the high waves, the sinister rumble of the tide, and the wind and rain, they performed stately circles around the egg, which floated in the center.

“It must be rotten, if it floats,” Maciel said.

“What do you know about it?” another chief responded.

They left the scene lost in thought. They could have shot duck after duck (or at least the Englishman could have done so, and the few Indians who were good shots but never killed anyone because they never normally bothered to take aim, firing at random) but they would never have been able to recover their catch.

The second battle took place out of sight and sound for the naturalist and makeshift general, who learned about it only afterward, and elsewhere. The Great Sine Curve had disconcerted everyone, friend and foe alike. Half of their troops, previously grouped at Salinas Grandes, joined the Figure at an odd angle, and immediately ran into the Voroga forces. No one was killed, something so unusual that it led Clarke to think it had been nothing more than a skirmish. The person who described the action was a show-off from the Court who had become a messenger to see a bit of the world. He made a great show of standing on ceremony to utter complete banalities, lent himself airs, and prolonged his sentences interminably. In the end, he gave the impression he had no idea of what he was talking about, and that he was talking about nothing. And yet he said it with complete assurance, was totally convinced and convincing. Clarke’s mind wandered as he listened to this babble. Something had occurred to him, and he preferred to follow the thread of his own thought than the Indian’s grandiloquence, to which however the other chiefs in the war council were listening with rapt attention.

Clarke recalled one of the first explanations Cafulcurá had given him. The continuum, he had told him, was the key to everything for the Indians. Clarke could accept that, but where was this continuum? It was everywhere, including in Cafulcurá’s affirmation: that was precisely what it was all about. It was a perfect passe-partout, an impalpable thread running through everything. Of course it was easy to say and even to understand, what was much more difficult was to find a practical example. Over the past few weeks, Clarke had often felt he was on the point of finding one, but he always shied away at the decisive moment, preferring to relegate the idea once more to the realm of abstract intuitions, which seemed not only correct but the only alternative when in fact it was the worst possible betrayal of the continuum. It was to completely negate it. The thought that had struck him while he was listening to the messenger was that war was the perfect opportunity to attain the continuum. Clarke felt he was ready to do so, and courageous enough. It was nothing more than a thought, like one of the hundred that flit through anyone’s mind every day: he only had to cling onto it, and the continuum would start up. He could begin anywhere: at some random point in all the rubbish that the Indian opposite him was spouting, for example. But he did not even need to make that effort; he could begin at any point in the tendrils of all that had happened. For example, the Hare, in any of the intriguing or fantastic forms it had appeared in. The Hare was a good emblem for a strategic battle plan, because of its unexpected leaps, its elusive speed, its flexibility, the way it stared in fascination at the rising or setting sun (its indifference to whether it was sunrise or sunset mirrored the indifference as to victory or defeat that characterizes a true fascination with war). Then from the hare, he could and should move on to another element. The line. The horizon. The wanderer. The inversions of perspective. Everything else. And so on. But he had no intention of making a catalog of the universe. He had to force himself to make a break in the chain. It is always the same, there is nothing so true as the saying “it’s the thought that counts.” The break, which immediately became incorporated into the continuum, took the form (a form which also became part of the continuum) of a strategic plan which Clarke began to put into practice the very next day: the strategy of the Hare. As soon as he did so, the Huilliches’ victory was assured. It was as simple as that. His only regret was not having anyone to tell all this to, but on second thought he had no need to regret it, because in this way the form passed wholesale into the content.

The next morning, using as his excuse the courtier’s vague information, Clarke ordered a general mobilization in a straight line toward the shifting Voroga encampments. Enthusiasm ran like an electric current through the Indians, who were convinced, with that erratic fanaticism of theirs, that they were being led by a visionary. Everyone sped off. In mid-afternoon, whom should they meet if not Equimoxis. They were in such a hurry they would have butchered him on the spot had Clarke not got wind of it, and been inspired with yet another idea. What a splendid trap it would be, he thought, what an elegant way to go beyond the strategy of the Hare itself, if they used an underground passage from one horizon to another. When all was said and done, that was what this was about. The only thing the Hare provided was the idea. In reality, it was impossible. But in the narrative, the possibility arose, almost as a joke. Clarke recalled being told underground that the caverns had distant outlets on the surface: that was enough for him. After a brief conversation with Equimoxis, he decided to go underground with him and summon Pillán’s help. No sooner said than done, and that night the twenty thousand Indians, plus all their horses and cattle, descended into the bowels of the earth.

On the other side, they emerged free from everything they could have wished to have left behind, except for the rain, which went on falling with relentless monotony. They joined up with the contingents from Salinas Grandes, and prepared to fall on the rear of the Voroga army, which had not the slightest suspicion of where they were. Since their usual routines had been upset, they slept, marched, drank and made plans in one huge confused jumble. The final battle lasted two whole days and nights, but could also have been said not to have taken place at all. It was more like a big deterrent maneuver. Clarke and his “team” camped by the side of a stream where messengers began to come and go with the most contradictory reports. There was fighting, or there was not. The foul weather got even worse. The second night reverberated with thunder and lightning. At nightfall, worried by a number of reports that led him to fear his plans might be going awry, Clarke set off with the ever-present Maciel and four aides to the spot where the nearest camp was meant to be. There were only a few Indians there, changing horses before they sped off into the darkness again, but they assured him that Mallén was only a short distance away with the main army, so they headed in the direction indicated. Instead of the old shaman they ran into a group of drunken Indians sitting on a termite hill, with no fire or shelter. Clarke dispatched two in one direction and two in another with the task of getting some reliable information and bringing it to him at his original starting-point, where he headed back to with Maciel. The rain and the electric storm increased in fury. Because he was so preoccupied, had not slept for several nights, and had so many things to worry about, Clarke had not stopped to consider that Maciel was even more drunk than usual. So drunk in fact that something happened which they say never occurs to an Indian: he fell off his horse. The darkness they were galloping through was so impenetrable that Clarke would not even have noticed had it not been for the fact that with the continual rain the grease the Indians used to keep dry took on a slight phosphorescence. So what he saw was a kind of fetal ghost shooting over his head in a sleeping position. He was traveling so quickly that it took him about a hundred yards to rein in Repetido, and by the time he turned back to look for the Indian, Maciel’s riderless horse, which had slowed and turned in the same way as Clarke had, led him off in the wrong direction, so that he could find no trace of Maciel. Clarke did not stay looking for long; he thought the Indian was bound to be all right wherever he was, because nothing happens to drunks in accidents; the worst he could suffer would be a bad thirst, that is, if he had not managed to cling onto his bottle during his feats of gliding. So Clarke galloped off; it was a miracle after all that had taken place that he did not get lost, but he eventually succeeded in finding his way back to the creek. A fire was lit under the trees; a couple of Indians were dozing beside it. He sent them to rescue Maciel, roughly indicating the direction where they should look. He decided to sleep until dawn, unless he was woken beforehand. It seemed strange to him that this series of chance encounters should represent the greatest battle ever fought between the Indian nations, but he was in no mood for speculation. His accumulated tiredness had reached crisis point. The thunder made him tremble, the lightning made him blink, and he needed a fresh layer of grease on his shoulders and back. For the past two days he had been living in a rectangular tent, built among the low branches of the trees by the stream; as he approached it now, he noticed the glimmer of a fire inside, the promise of a comfortable sleep. He drew back the flap that served as a door, took two steps inside, with his head spinning from exhaustion, his limbs quivering. . and it was only then that he realized there was someone sitting by the fire. He could scarcely help recognizing him, and the shock sent his battered nervous system into a paroxysm of confusion.

There the man sat, and lifted his gaze to look at him. . it was he himself, his perfect double, more like Clarke than Clarke himself, because he was wearing his clothes and smoking his pipe. An English traveler, a gentleman, whereas he stood there naked and dripping wet, looking like the most wretched of savages. He stammered out:

“What are you doing here?” What he would really have liked to ask was: “Who are you?”

“So you’re the Englishman?” the man identical to Clarke said. The latter nodded agreement, more with his gaping mouth than with his head. “I must excuse myself for taking your clothes, but I couldn’t find anything else to keep me warm. I’ll give them back straight away.”

“There’s no need.”

“. . But I’m warm now.” So saying, he took off the clothes.

“I can see you’re out on your feet. I’d heard you looked like me, but I didn’t imagine you were identical. We can talk tomorrow.” He stood up. The small fire on the ground threw up shadows on the tent walls flapping from the rain.

“You’re leaving?”

“There’s a battle going on out there! I’ve already lost enough time as it is.”

The other Clarke came up to the first; his voice was deep, worried, almost inaudible in the thunderstorm.

“The Widow can’t stand me.”

Clarke collapsed on to the floor, so groggy that it was worse than if he had already been asleep. The other man went out. Clarke fell into a deep sleep.

By the time he woke up, it was all over. As he later learned, the everlasting peace had been reestablished, on terms detrimental to the honor and finances of Coliqueo, who fled to seek refuge among his white allies. Every chieftain left taking his tribe with him, without even bothering to attend the celebrations organized in Salinas Grandes. Clarke woke up thirty hours after he had fallen asleep, all alone, on a splendid morning with a clear sky and with the sun shining at last over the wet plain. In fact, it was the sun that woke him, because his companions had dismantled the tent when they left. He could see no trace of Maciel, but was not surprised: hastily made friendships were the first to dissolve. He woke up slowly, thoughts drifting through his mind. He was not upset about having been forgotten, quite the contrary. Apart from feeling slightly hungry, he was fine; Repetido and his other ponies were grazing nearby. He supposed that everything was over; he could well imagine the outcome, and all he had to do now was to decide which direction to head in. The most logical thing would be to make for Salinas Grandes, but the idea of seeing more Indians was wearisome. Well, he would see. For now, he went to bathe in the stream, scraped the remaining grease off his skin, dried himself while smoking a pipe in the sun, then got dressed. His clothes were scattered on the ground, which meant that some at least of the confused memory he had of the stranger who was also himself had not been a dream. Yet it still might be. A second pipe. The birds were singing in the trees. Idly, he picked up a stone and threw it at a tree trunk. A mouse scuttled off, terrified. Clarke allowed his mind to roam aimlessly. His main feeling was a vague sense of shame, not so much for having charged about naked and smeared with grease at the head of crazy hordes of savages, but for all the rest, all the improbable things he had witnessed and accepted: ducks as big as people, impromptu throat-slittings, a drunk flying over his head, a column of warriors riding through underground tunnels, his double rising to meet him at midnight. . man, he philosophized, can get used to anything. . because he starts by getting used to taking reality for real. What if he tried fishing? In the shady waters of the stream he could see the moving outlines of some fat, long-toothed fish. He had some hooks in his saddlebags, but he would wager that the Indians had stolen them by now. It would be easier to shoot a brace of coots, but then he would have to pluck them. . but of course, he would have to scale the fish in any case. . sometimes at least there was something to be said for polygyny, having thirty-two, or at least seventeen wives.

Clarke was mulling over his choices when he heard the sound of galloping close by. He got up to see who it was. A skinny Indian with a troop of magnificent ponies behind him. As he drew closer, Clarke could see he was wearing clothes. Closer still, and it was Carlos Alzaga Prior, with a smile from ear to ear, and one of those ears bandaged. They each raised a hand in greeting at the same moment, and laughed nervously together. It was a pleasure to see the boy, despite all his craziness and his endless chatter, especially because the pleasure was mutual, and sincere. Carlos leapt to the ground and gave him an extravagant embrace, even though they had seen each other barely three days before.

“Vale, vale, salutis, Clarkenius!”

“Hello there, madcap.”

“Don’t pretend to be so cool! You’re a hero! You’re being talked about everywhere! You’re the new Hannibal!”

“Come off it. I’ve been asleep for I don’t know how many. .”

“You deserve it. And you haven’t got a scratch, as far as I can see. Have you been hiding in a gopher hole? Hahaha.”

“What about your ear? Did someone chop it off?”

“No, don’t worry. They overdid the bandaging, that’s all.”

“But what was it? A lance? If it was, it just missed your ideas.”

“No, no such luck. I’m ashamed to tell you. What happened was that I wanted to have my ear pierced so I could wear a ring, and the brute who stuck the needle in made a mess of it. You can’t imagine how it bled!”

Clarke lifted his eyes to the heavens. The two of them sat down on a bank strewn with violets which, after a week’s constant watering, gave off a strong perfume. It was then that the Englishman learned of the Vorogas’ surrender, of the armies going their different ways, of the celebrations that must by now be going on in Salinas Grandes, even though Cafulcurá had still not reappeared. Carlos had heard that Namuncurá had turned up though, and had taken control.

“So they don’t need me any more,” Clarke said.

“They’ll always need you, those blockheads.”

“Where did you get so many splendid horses from?”

“There was an amazing share-out! I made sure I laid my hands on a few, because I reckoned that a bohemian like you would be on his uppers by now.”

Clarke observed that Carlos was more grown-up, more self-confident, that he considered himself an adult, his equal, as he launched into his overwhelming stream of anecdotes.

“By the way, aren’t you the slightest bit hungry?”

“Ravenous. When you appeared I was just thinking of hunting or fishing something.”

“Don’t be so primitive! Do you take this for the Stone Age? I brought some roast birds, and I don’t know how I managed not to eat them on the way.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“Some Indians told me. Just as well I believed them, even though I’d seen you head off in the opposite direction.”

When he came back with the food, he asked curiously:

“Am I mistaken, or did you say you spent the whole of yesterday asleep?”

“That’s right.”

“How’s that possible, when I saw you yesterday in that spectacular charge among the deer?”

“The deer?” Clarke was momentarily puzzled.

“I saw you clear as day!”

“Really? Do you know something? I think I have a double.”

Carlos accepted the idea immediately, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He described that particular combat, when a crescent of Tehuelche horsemen had unwittingly trapped a huge number of deer in front of them. The Vorogas of course had taken them to be demonic reinforcements, and had fled.

“It was there I met up with Mallén, who must also have thought it was you, because he said: ‘That Englishman knows every trick in the book.’ So you have a double. . where did you/he come from?”

“How should I know? He turned up here, when I was about to go to sleep. I thought it must have been a dream, but now with what you’re telling me. .”

“He’s entirely real, I can assure you. And even though I only saw him from a distance, I was sure it was you. The same face, the same bearing, that dandified look you have, but at the same time like a wise man, as if you’re constantly thinking about Newton’s binomial theorem.”

Carlos fell about laughing. They carried on in a similar vein for some time. The birds were delicious. They made tea, then Carlos fell asleep. He said he needed to catch up. Clarke, who was if anything ahead on sleep, lay back smoking his pipe and staring at the sky through the foliage. He did not feel like thinking, but preferred the voluptuousness of an empty mind, which was where thinking led anyway. He took up his daydreaming where he had left off when Carlos arrived. . Where was he? He was trying to decide between fish and game. . and there had been no need to decide: he had eaten anyway. He meditated at length without a single thought entering his mind, and this was a happy moment in his life, even though it left no trace. It did however allow him to make a slight adjustment: until that moment he had considered thought to be the true representation of the continuum; now he realized that happiness fit the bill more precisely. Happiness was the real continuum, the one that brought satisfaction.