That Strange Gaucho Who Fancied Himself as a Writer

Oh, do tell us about that strange gaucho who fancied himself as a writer! The one who ran away, Liz launched straight in over breakfast, right after the formal good mornings, which were becoming less and less formal, to my delight and alarm: even before the first rays of sun came into the bedroom I’d woken up practically drowning with Liz’s cunt in my mouth and her rubbing herself against my face, my breathing syncopated with her secretions, she made me breathe in and out to her rhythm as if she were breaking me in. That was what she was doing whether I realised it or not, how better to tame an animal than by forcing it to breathe when you choose? Now she was kissing the Colonel on the cheek. He always looked grey in the mornings but nevertheless he was up and about at the crack of dawn. Hernández was a tamer too, a tamer of hangovers who could even muster a smile when she looked at him or addressed him in any way. Do you see, darling? There are sparks of genius here in the countryside, as I always say when people ask me what the folk on the pampas are like. A semi-illiterate gaucho learnt something here with Miss Daisy, and now he says I stole his songs. Oh, yes, quite an odd fellow, by the sound of it? Yes, yes, though he does have a point: I didn’t steal them, but when I heard him sing I relieved him of his ploughing duties so that he could entertain the men while they worked. What a generous man you are, Colonel! If you say so, my little Gringa, then I must be. The truth is, I realised that it made them happier, and a leader, a Colonel like myself, a landowner, has to know how to handle his troops and keep them happy. It has to be carrot and stick, especially when there are a thousand of them and only twenty-one of us military men, me and my officers; if I count the gauchos who believe in progress, there are two hundred of us. I’d rather not be put in the position of having to test their loyalty, just in case I’ve backed the wrong horse and they decide to bolt. I have to stable them, do you see? I have to make them feel they belong here, that it’s their home territory. And it is partly theirs: the land a man works is always partly his. Not always. I said partly, my dear, don’t worry, I haven’t been bitten by the communist bug, the plague that all these starving peasants are trying to bring over from Europe like a swarm of locusts, just as our grandfathers flattened us with their smallpox; I have to laugh, Gringa, everything is so flat here, they paved the way. Just imagine, darling, one day the gauchos will realise that they far outnumber us, and although they know – because they do know, they’re not completely daft and some of them have been around a fair bit – that the Argentine Army is behind us, and therefore also partly behind them but mainly behind us – here we’re all in it together but not to the same extent, some of us are completely in it and others only partly, perhaps I’m not being clear – as I say, one day they’ll realise, and then before the first battalion can arrive, they’ll already have slit our throats, as they are so fond of doing when they get the chance – you should hear them sing along while a dying man pirouettes in a pool of his own blood! So the long and short of it is, I gave the gaucho writer a job as a performer and sometimes I’d listen to that brute singing and you should have heard the lines he came up with. That ruffian was actually, how shall I put it, a real poet of the people. I did stick a few lines of his poetry into my first book; he wasn’t totally wrong about that. I also put his name in the title, Martín Fierro is the name of that peasant poet, who’s capable of churning out rhymes all day long, it’s practically a kind of vice with him, though he’s good at it. He never appreciated what I did for him by taking some of his songs and putting them in my book. I took his voice, the voice of the voiceless, do you see, to the whole country, to the big smoke Buenos Aires which is always ripping us off. The city sponges off us, charging us huge amounts for exporting grain and cattle through its port. And not letting us build another big port anywhere else.

Hernández carried on with his monologue about the port, taxes, theft, and ‘us’ – by which he meant ranch owners and gauchos all lumped together because they shared the same soil and the same pressure from Buenos Aires and the war against the Indians. ‘We can’t be us without others’, he said at one point, and I was tempted to get my notebook out and jot it down. The Colonel was no fool; I felt I was learning like I had in the wagon with Liz, as though bandages were being lifted from my eyes. I felt I had as many layers over my eyes as an Egyptian mummy, those bodies wrapped in strips of cloth and laid in pyramids, gigantic tombs made thousands of years ago in the sands of the north of Africa, that continent of giraffes and elephants. I was also itching to whack him on the head with a stick and run away somewhere, anywhere. I recognised the lines of poetry; it was my husband who’d written them and if they were his property, then Hernández had also stolen from me. And from my children. That morning, sitting beside the landowner, although I was dressed as Liz’s brother Joseph Scott, I was actually a wife who’d been cheated; I realised the Colonel had robbed me of something that was mine and should rightfully belong to my children. For the first time in my life I felt that I was the owner of something; on the estancia I could see how nice it was to own things, and I felt indignant. I decided then and there that I wouldn’t leave the fort empty-handed: justice would be done. And also knowing that Fierro was near, that I was following his path, made me worry about coming across him and being sent back to where I’d come from, back beside him in our shack. Surely it wouldn’t come to that? The brute had run away, he was a deserter now, he couldn’t come back to the estancia, but what if he tried to drag me away? Hearing his name had made me determined to keep dressing as a man and never let my shotgun out of my sight. Suddenly it all became clear to me: the books containing Fierro’s poetry were selling like hot cakes, and it was my money, but there was no way I was going back to our old shack. And certainly not with Fierro. The old Colonel was still going on about port tariffs and the common good and the great dilemma facing Argentina. How can a country grow if those who make it prosper are robbed and penalised? Hernández went on. I found my own thoughts wandering back and forth. Who makes Argentina grow? I wondered. What are taxes and what’s the point of them? The old man still hadn’t shut up; he went back to the subject of Fierro, recounting that they called him the Cock for a time until (and Hernández chuckled at this point) they discovered his vices and had to change his nickname pronto. Liz, do you know what they started calling him? Excuse me for saying it, I don’t want to be rude, but it’s the truth and no amount of pussyfooting around will change it. The truth is neither pretty nor ugly, good or bad, fat or thin, federal or unitarian, country or city: it’s just the truth, wouldn’t you agree? Well, so, the truth is that the Cock turned out to be more of a Hen and that’s what they started calling him round here. Not because he was a coward, he always had his knife at the ready, if he could, the gaucho singer would have spent his whole time fighting people, but because he was a, how should I put it, the word here is bufarrón, would it be poof in English? He was spotted canoodling with another gaucho. I had both of them staked out in Campo Malo but I wasn’t born yesterday: no amount of staking out will straighten something so bent.

Liz and the Colonel had me totally in their sway: first I had to breathe to the rhythm of her passion, as she alternately filled and emptied my mouth in her undulating dance. Then, depending on what Hernández was saying, I was either heading back to the old shack or towards a bag of money. I wasn’t sure if what the Colonel said was true, I’d had Fierro on top of me enough times to know that he wasn’t as bent as all that. When you stopped to think, he’d had it off with me and, only a matter of hours ago, I’d been under a cunt that, if it felt so inclined, could have suffocated me. These new inclinations that the father of my children and I had each developed put a huge distance between myself and the shack. I must have breathed a big sigh of relief because Hernández looked at me and laughed. Don’t worry, my boy, it’s not catching, you’ll soon see a bit more of the world and nothing people do in bed will surprise you. Excuse me Madam for putting it so bluntly, you’re a married woman, you’re not easily shocked, are you? Liz blushed and the Colonel, who was adding neat caña to the mate the chinas had brought him, started apologising; but before he could finish, Liz stormed out. He remained silent for a while, sucking at his mate, with a vacant expression. Just look at her, my little gringo friend. Sorry, I know she’s your sister, but she goes around showing me her udders all day long and then runs off blushing at the slightest bit of fun! Women are like horses, my lad: you have to whip them till they realise they like being dominated, do you see? You’ll soon get the hang of it. You can start right here if you haven’t already, I’ve got a few little chinas who are as tasty as a freshly baked bun, young things. I don’t break them all in, just a few; I’m getting on a bit now and have to be a bit more picky about which ones I go for. He went on in this vein for hours without my having to say anything except to mutter in agreement from time to time, just to reassure him that he wasn’t talking to himself.