The Clouds (16 page)

The lapwings that came and went noisily on the shore of the lake, realizing perhaps that their screams were not going to scare me away, grew quiet and disappeared into the brush to stand guard at the nests they had built on the ground. For a few seconds, there was no living presence before me, although I knew that life was teeming in the water, on the banks, and in the surrounding countryside. The lake, some fifty meters in diameter, reflected the blue of the sky, lightening a little from mixing with the water's beige, acquiring a sallow, and, in stretches, slightly greenish tint. Light from the high sun flickered on the surface and when some movement, however small, came to disturb it, a fleeting sparkle, slightly more intense, flared and faded several times, and then, quieting, mingled once more with the constant and uniform vibrations rippling the water. There was nothing outside myself but the lake; the near horizon, so round it looked as if it had been drawn with a compass; the winter grasses, still gray, in which spring shoots could not be perceived at a distance; and above, the dome of the sky like a blue porcelain bell, supported at the base by a
circular rim that fit the horizon's circle to the millimeter, where the incandescent stain of the sun, which I was unable to see as I was facing west, where Osuna had disappeared at a gallop, was growing hot at my back and neck through my jacket. I was still mounted on my horse, which trembled, perhaps awaiting an order, motionless, hot and sweaty. I clapped a few times at its own damp neck and back, which it received with repeated head movements and, unsaddling, I took a few steps to the lakeshore, bringing it by the reins to quench its thirst. It lapped up water peacefully for a time, almost delicately, and then, seeming satisfied, straightened its neck again and looked into the distance, perhaps at the line of the horizon that curved smoothly beyond the lake. But, as I believe I've said above, the horse made it difficult for me to know exactly where it was looking and to infer thoughts (or however to call them) from such calm, visited periodically by the disturbance of nervous quivering, gentle and distracted as if the horse did not suppose it was living in its own body. I peered intently at its profile, and, as if warned, it did not turn its head toward me once, with such apparent stubbornness that it seemed to purposely treat me with indifference. For a second, I had the unmistakable impression that it was putting on and then, almost immediately, the total conviction that it knew more of the universe than I did, and therefore understood better than I the reason for the water, for the gray grasses, for the circular horizon and the flaming sun that glistened on its sweaty hide. With that conviction, I found myself all at once in a different world, stranger than the ordinary one, in which the outer world was unfamiliar to me, and so was I to myself. Everything had changed in a flash, and my horse, with its impenetrable calm, had wrested me from the center of the world and expelled me, without violence, to its edge. The world and I were separated and, for me, would never be quite the same again from that day forth; as my gaze strayed from the horse and alighted on the blue
water, on the gray grasses, seeing the enclosed capsule resting blue above the horizon with us inside, I realized in that new world, born before my eyes, it was my eyes that were unnecessary, and that the expanse of strange countryside, of water, grass, horizon, blue sky, flaming sun, was not meant for them. The silence was utter, and every sound heard against it, small as it might be, could be heard clearly in each of its disordered parts: an animal gliding among the grasses; my own breath; even the beating of my heart, a sound that a fire beetle seemed to suddenly mimic in the distance; the horse's muffled and curious snorts as it tossed its head, abstracted. An absurd notion came to me: I told myself that, exiled from my familiar world, and within that boundless silence, the only escape from terror was to disappear myself—that, if I concentrated hard, my very being would sweep that world along with it into nonexistence, that world wherein I was beginning to glimpse the nightmare. But my consciousness rebelled, persisted, whispering:
If this strange place does not drive a man mad, then he is no man, or he is mad already, for it is reason that engenders madness.
On that beautiful, sunny morning, panic began to set in when I saw a tiny dot begin to grow on the southwestern horizon, its movements hazy at first, then taking the shape of a man on horseback, until I saw the blaze of Osuna's red-and-green-striped poncho, and a few minutes later Osuna himself reined in his horse three meters from mine and told me that he had thought the better of it, and had decided to come back to find me so we might make a larger turn without having to pass by the places we had already explored along the way. (Months later I told Dr. Weiss of the impressions I had during the few minutes I was alone with my horse at the lake. The doctor's expression grew serious, and he reflected for a time before answering:
Between the madmen, the horses, and yourself, it's hard to know which are the truly mad. We lack a suitable perspective. As relates to the world you live in, whether strange or familiar, the same
problem of perspective presents itself. It's true, though, that madness and reason are inseparable. And to the extent you point out the impossibility of knowing the thoughts of a hummingbird or, if you like, of a horse, I want to note that the same is often true with our patients: They do without language, or distort it, or use one for which they alone hold the meaning. And so while we want to understand their performance, we find it's as inaccessible for us as that of a speechless animal.
)

As we speak of madmen, it seems to me I should proceed with the memoir and return to my own: They were my chief concern, and of course, with the obstacles standing in our path, placing them safe and sound into Dr. Weiss's hands was more complicated than I had imagined. Of the five, I knew there were three who, even if their illness were to worsen suddenly, would not cause further problems. Locked within the narrow cells of their madness, they seemed to have dispensed with the outside world altogether, and any aggravation to their state was not going to make the prison where they lived darker or more wretched, nor increase their indifference and passivity. The elder Verde's monologues, passionate as they were, were not meant, at heart, to convince anyone, and Verdecito's mouth-sounds were a sort of sonic wall that cut him off from the world—not to mention young Parra who, some mere months after he was admitted to Casa de Salud, allowed himself, without complaint, to be taken out of bed for the first time (and a year later, out of his room). As exasperating as he was, the elder Verde's only phrase—
morning, noon, and night
, as you will recall—with which he tried to address every theme of conversation, argument, and even fatherly edification of his interlocutors, was enacting the paroxysm of his madness, and a change of state could only reduce his fervor to the deepest gloom. With regard to Verdecito, it is true that hardship increased his anxiety, his mouth-concerts, and his deafness—I had to repeat the most trivial phrases several times before they reached him—but as far as what I speak
of, the main trouble was that he stuck to me like my shadow and seemed only to feel safe at my side, which on one hand allowed me to monitor him, but on the other would cause me to lose patience and, as a corollary, disturb his calm.

It was Sister Teresita and Troncoso, even prior to departure, who worried me. Unlike the others, they grew unruly because, as often happens with a certain class of the mad, rather than shutting themselves in, they fervently believed in the legitimacy of their delusions and wished to impose them on the world at all cost, militant in their madness. The little nun was convinced that Christ had ascended to divine love in heaven after the resurrection, separating himself from mankind, leaving only his sparks scattered among men. She, then, had as her mission to reunite these sparks through the carnal act, to merge divinity and humanity anew. Her
Manual for Love
is exceedingly explicit on this point, and though her thinking disintegrated in the final pages, giving way to a senseless list of profanities, there is a reasoned exposition of her doctrine in the first part of her treatise, which, if one briefly adopted her theology's point of view, is unassailable indeed. Given that theologians call purely speculative and rational theology “positive” and mystical theology “negative” (I believe), we can imagine that, drafting her
Manual
, Sister Teresita, like Saint Thomas, acquired her conviction to enact the recommendations received from Christ in Upper Peru, and if this hypothesis is true, it casts new light on the
raison d'etre
of her treatise's final section. In any case, Sister Teresita was without the slightest doubt a troublesome presence in our caravan, and the central dilemma she posed for me was trying to keep her apart from the soldiers without imprisoning her in the wagon; there was a contradiction between keeping her under lock and key during the trip and the fact that in Las Tres Acacias, the patients, with very rare exceptions, could move in total freedom throughout the establishment. Another problem was knowing to what extent the
members of the convoy—cart-men, soldiers, whores—were aware of the sort of madness that had taken hold of Sister Teresita. For the first two or three days I held the illusion, completely unjustified of course, that nobody knew of the little nun's erotic ravings until, one afternoon, I saw a group of soldiers in a circle near Basque's saloon, looking profoundly attentive and serious as they listened to somebody speaking inside. Intrigued, I approached to see what was being discussed, and over the shoulder of one of the soldiers I was able to confirm that Sister Teresita, slit-eyed with indignation and lowering her voice, as if disclosing a terrible secret, was revealing to the soldiers that,
If Christ was crucified, it was because he had such a huge . . .
and accompanied her words with a familiar gesture, raising her hands to chest height and, placing the palms facing each other some thirty centimeters apart, bobbing the two simultaneously to indicate an approximate size. When she saw my astonished face over a soldier's shoulder—he, like all the rest, was bewitched by Sister Teresita's words and failed to notice my presence—the nun began to laugh, and with an impudence that makes me smile to this day when I remember, stuck out her tongue, ran it with feigned delight across her narrow lips and, preempting my summons, left the circle of soldiers and accompanied me meekly to her wagon. We never discussed it, and it all happened casually, but what impressed me most deeply, and especially incited me to reflection, was the seriousness, even the gravity, with which the soldiers listened to her. It was clear they would not doubt for a single instant, for the rest of their lives, that the little nun had just revealed the true cause of the crucifixion.

Regarding Troncoso, the complications that brought about a change in his condition proved much more serious, even endangering the life and property of the members of our caravan, demonstrating once again, though such redundancy is needless, that delusion, whether the philosophers like it or not, is as qualified—if
not more so—as the will to direct the order of events according to one's whim. Even before departure I saw Troncoso's agitation grow, almost imperceptibly at first, manifesting in an unspoken grudge against me that drove him to compete with me, especially for the organization and command of the caravan, a responsibility which, as I believe I have said, I shared with Osuna and Sergeant Lucero. Ever since I had to display my authority before him and his men during our first encounter at Señor Parra's house, Troncoso's feelings toward me had vacillated between dread and spite, prudence and mockery, respect and resentment, forecasting the difficulties that often follow the aggravation of hostility, and which were to multiply on a journey like the one we were about to attempt. But despite his ill-concealed disdain, a disdain to which I doubt I dissuaded him from adding both sarcasm and slander, he was my patient, nothing more, and as I was his doctor, his health and his person were my responsibility, all of which would come to naught unless I could incite him to more moderate feelings. When we were still in the city, Troncoso always assumed, in a manner perhaps vaguely deliberate, an attitude that bordered on the limits of my tolerance, for I, as his doctor, instructed him in our daily conversations in what he was allowed to do as far as his comings and goings, his public conduct, his meals, hygiene, and daily routine, though, as I have already said, he was always on the verge of disobedience. The moment we began our journey, his fiery temperament grew rather more flammable, and I feared (and not without reason) an explosion at any moment. His remarkable animation, which lacked an object in the monotony of the plains, kept him from staying at rest in the wagon as the other patients did and, no matter the hour I went out into the morning after rising and getting dressed, he was already mounted on his blue roan, trotting about nearby, talking loudly with the soldiers or cart-men, who did not always seem to quite understand the
meaning of his sarcastic remarks, or his shouts and orders. He was a gifted rider who went about as though he had forgotten he was on horseback, but he never committed a single fault; the beast he rode seemed indifferent to its rider, as well, and all they did together—walk, trot, gallop, race, halt, reverse, or prance—seemed the result, not of an undetectable order given by man to beast, but of a spontaneous and almost magical coincidence that, by extended chance, externally harmonized the casual movements of two wills, each focused on itself and ignorant of the other. His expertise as a horseman overcame the soldiers' reservations, and, despite his eccentricity, they grudgingly respected him, which, along with El Ñato's obsequious loyalty, complicated my monitoring duties. A sure sign of his worsening state was that he not only engaged in frenetic activity without any practical purpose all day and night, since he barely slept and gave no sign of weariness, but also the fact that his external appearance—his clothing, beard, and mane of hair—was deteriorating, for he hardly changed clothes or shaved anymore, let alone bathe. As a result, his trousers and jacket were riddled with stains and even holes, and his flounced white shirt, so clean on his arrival in the city, was all wrinkled and of an uncertain color. There were always a few little bubbles of saliva foaming at the corner of his mouth; if anything contrasted with his body's restless fever, it was the steadiness of his gaze, shot through with veins that clouded and reddened his eyes. Sometimes at dusk, he got down from his horse and walked stiffly among the motionless coaches with great, energetic strides, chest puffed, head erect, hair disheveled and skin browned by the sun—a sun which burned a little brighter each day. He might have a book in his hand, poring over it without breaking his stride or, if he left off reading (or pretending to read), he did not deny his thoughts externalization with shouts, hoots of laughter, or condescending and garbled observations that he would direct to whatever member of the caravan he
encountered, not stopping as he passed. A few times, he visited me to demand I modify the trajectory which, according to him, would help speed the journey, but mostly he complained about the three prostitutes and the nun—whom he dubbed, with a caustic smirk,
the Strumpet Superior
—present in the convoy, claiming the contract his family signed to stipulate the conditions of his treatment would feature prominently within the clauses that the patient was not to mingle with persons of low estate or dubious morals. He sent El Ñato to me daily with a dispatch, which I, obviously, never answered. Sometimes his nonsensical proclamation went on for several pages and sometimes was limited to a single sentence that might have seemed to be gibberish at first glance, or to have many different meanings upon successive readings, or, if one remembered later and thought the better of it, a precise but enigmatic meaning which, though the reader had divined it himself, was impossible to unravel. Troncoso saw those continuous ravings as a grand political program destined to change the foundations not only of society, but of the universe. According to those proclamations, he was to depose the King, disown the Viceroyalty, guillotine the Roman authorities, and also—I transcribe this last claim word for word—
to abolish, once and for all, having no other basis beyond custom and the spiritual enslavement of the peoples, the hereditary and unwritten privileges of the Sun and the other stars in the sky
. The construction phase of his program consisted of federating the indigenous tribes on the continent and, to avoid giving offense, bestowing them with a ruler from outside their ranks and who was also to play the role of supreme representative of a new religion, a kind of king-priest to impose legislation on social and religious life, at once military commander and spiritual father of the new community. Needless to say, for anyone able to decipher his bulletins' tangled prose, the traits of this eminent personage had more than one point in common with the author,
borne increasingly along by his delirium to envision himself as the legitimate master of the universe. He was beside himself when I left his messages unanswered, but it would have been a mistake on my part to grant him the slightest sign that his ravings could be taken seriously. In his defense, I must admit that in my long life, in Europe just as in America, in recent years, I have seen the same insanity as Troncoso's succeed many times. Thanks to the reading of Tacitus or Suetonius in the painful centuries that came before, such insanity prospers now until it reaches its foolish objectives, which are none other than crushing, on pure whim and overweening pride, with bloodied heel, the hopes of the world.