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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780822371106 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Duke University Press |
| Publication date: | 04/13/2018 |
| Edition description: | New Edition |
| Pages: | 240 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
John Charles Chasteen is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and is the author and translator of numerous books.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
BEFORE I FELL FOR ANY WOMAN, I lost my heart to a sensation. Call it Intensity. No fainting sensitivities, no tender looks and confidences for me. More than a lover, I was always the subjugator. My lips did not know how to plead. And yet, I still believed in the ideal of love, still wanted the divine gift of spiritual fire to spread over my body like flames over tinder.
When Alicia's eyes worked their unfortunate magic on me, I had almost given up hope. My arms, grown tired of liberty, had reached out to many women — seeking to be enchained — but no one guessed my secret dreams, nor disturbed the silence in my heart.
Alicia required little effort. She gave herself without hesitation, all for the love she hoped to find in me. She was not thinking about marriage, even after her family conspired to fix everything, with the help of the priest, by force if need be. She revealed their plans to me, saying that she would never marry, that she would not stand in the way of my future happiness.
Then, when her family cast her out and the judge informed my lawyer that I would be going to jail for ravishment, I went to Alicia's hiding place and declared my resolve not to abandon her.
"My future is yours. Promise me your love, and we'll escape together to somewhere far from Bogotá."
And we were off to the Casanare territory.
* * *
That night, the first in Casanare, my confidant was Insomnia.
Through the mosquito netting, in the limitless heavens, I watched the winking stars. The palms under which we camped stopped their rustling, and an infinite silence floated in the air, making it thicker and bluer. Beside my string hammock, Alicia slept, breathing heavily, in her narrow cot.
"What have you done?" I thought. "What of your future, your dreams of glory, and the beginnings of your literary success? And what about this young woman, whom you sacrifice to your desire? Idiot! Once your desire is satisfied, what good is the body that you have acquired at such a high price? Because Alicia's spirit has never really belonged to you. Even now, when you can feel the heat and murmur of her breathing at your shoulder, you remain as far away from her spiritually as from that constellation sliding toward the horizon over there."
I felt less emboldened now, not because I feared to confront the consequences of my actions, but rather because after the intensity of love and possession comes something else. I was already bored with Alicia.
The hair-raising stories about Casanare did not frighten me. My instincts impelled me to defy the dangers of the wild frontier. I was certain that I would survive to tell the tale and later, amid the civilized comforts of some city as yet unknown to me, look back on the dangers of Casanare with nostalgia. Alicia, on the other hand, weighed on me like an iron shackle around my ankle. She had left Bogotá in a great upset and demonstrated her complete uselessness the first day on the road. Why couldn't she be a little tougher and more capable? She had never ridden a horse and could not even stand to be in the direct sun very long. She kept dismounting and saying that she preferred to walk, obliging me to do the same.
I was amazingly patient with her. There we were, supposedly fugitives, ambling along at a snail's pace, leading our mounts as if on a Sunday stroll, unable to get off the road to avoid meeting the occasional travelers coming in the other direction. Most were simple country people who stopped to ask me, with concerned expressions and hat in hand, why the young lady was crying.
Several times I tried with a rope to pull down the telegraph wire that ran along the road, but I gave up the attempt, possibly because of a vague desire to be captured. At least that way I would be free of Alicia and would recover the liberty of spirit that physical detention cannot take away. Arriving in sight of the town of Cáqueza, which lay squarely in our path, we stopped to await the cover of darkness. The authorities there might have been informed of our flight. Skirting the town, we slipped into the sugarcane fields that flanked the river, our nags munching noisily on the cane without pausing in their stride. It was harvest time, and we approached a sugar mill that was working all night. Taking shelter under a makeshift canopy of palm fronds, we listened to the groaning of the wooden grinders crushing cane. Shadows passed across the flickering glow of the fire that reduced the sap to cane syrup: first, the large shadow of the oxen that walked a circular path to drive the machinery, then, the small shadow of the little boy who followed behind, prodding the oxen with a pointed stick to keep them moving. Some women were preparing a meal, and they gave Alicia an infusion of herbs with medicinal properties.
We stayed with them for a week.
* * *
Meanwhile, I paid one of the sugar workers to bring me news from Bogotá, and the news was disturbing. My flight with Alicia had created a great scandal, and the story was on everyone's lips. The whisperings of my personal enemies fanned the flames, and the newspapers took advantage of the public's prurient interest. I had sent a letter to a friend requesting his help, and his reply was discouraging indeed. It concluded: "If you return, you'll surely be arrested. Casanare is now your only refuge, I'm afraid. Who will look for a man like you in a place like that?"
That same afternoon, Alicia warned me that the owner of the mill considered us suspicious. His wife had asked Alicia whether we were brother and sister, man and wife, or perhaps merely friends, and she said that if we happened to be counterfeiters, "there being nothing wrong with that, in view of the present regime," she would like to see a sample. So we left the next day before dawn.
"Don't you think, Alicia, that we may really have no reason to flee? Wouldn't it be better to return to Bogotá?"
"Now I'm sure you're tired of me!" she wailed. "Why did you bring me, then? It was your idea! Get out of here! Go to Casanare by yourself, and leave me alone!"
She started sobbing again.
And again I felt sorry for her. By now she had revealed to me the whole sad story. While still quite young, she had fallen in love with her cousin, an inconsequential boy not much older than herself, and they secretly swore to be married one day. Her mother and father had other ideas, however. They intended to marry her to a rich old landowner who was not to Alicia's taste in the slightest. Then I appeared on the scene, and the aging suitor, fearing the new competition, redoubled his suit. The value and frequency of his gifts increased and, with the help of Alicia's enraptured family, he seemed about to attain the prize. That is when Alicia, seeking to escape at all cost, hurled herself into my arms. But the danger had not passed, because the old landowner still wanted to marry her, it seemed, in spite of everything.
"I won't go back," she insisted, jumping off her horse. "Leave me! I don't want anything from you. I'll walk along this road and ask everyone for charity before I accept anything from you. Bastard!"
And she sat down in the grass. Having lived long enough, I knew better than to reason with a woman in that state, so I remained firmly mute while she sat pulling grass up convulsively by the fistful.
"Alicia, this only proves that you never loved me."
"Never!"
She looked away as she complained bitterly about my shameless deceptions.
"Do you think I didn't see you looking at that girl back there? Oh, you're the sly one! And telling me that we had to stay there for days because I wasn't well. If that's now, what will later be like? Get out of here! I won't go anywhere at all with you, much less to Casanare!"
Her reproaches made me blush, tongue-tied, but her jealousy was agreeable to my pride, and it set me free. I had the impulse to jump off my horse to give her a farewell embrace. It couldn't be my fault, after all, if she sent me away.
As I was dismounting to improvise a good-bye, we saw a man come galloping down the hill toward us. Alicia clutched my arm in fright.
The man dismounted a short distance away and approached, hat in hand.
"Permit me a word, sir."
"Me?" I answered with an energetic voice.
"Yes, if you please," and throwing a corner of his poncho over his shoulder, he extended a hand holding a piece of paper. "My godfather sends you this notification."
"Who is your godfather?"
"The judge and mayor of Cáqueza."
"This isn't for me," I said, returning the document to him without having read it.
"You aren't the ones who were at the sugar mill, then?"
"Absolutely not. I'm the new intendant of Villavicencio, which is where I'm headed now, with my wife."
The man hesitated, unsure of what to say.
"I thought that you were counterfeiters," he managed. "They sent word about you from the sugar mill, but my godfather is at his ranch, because he only comes to the town hall on market days, and keeps the office locked up other days. There were a couple of telegrams, too, and since I'm the main deputy now ..."
Without allowing him further time for explanations, I ordered him to hold my wife's horse so that she could mount. Alicia concealed her face so that the stranger would not notice her pallor. He watched us ride away without uttering a word, but he then climbed on his worthless mare to follow us. Soon he was alongside of us, smiling.
"If you please, sir, sign the notification so that my godfather will see that it was served and I did what I'm supposed to do. You can sign as intendant of Villavicencio."
"Do you have a pen?"
"No, but we'll get one up ahead. It's that ... if you don't sign, I'll end up in jail."
"How so?" I inquired, without slowing down.
"God willing you'll help me, sir, if you're really an authority. I've had the misfortune that I'm accused of stealing a cow, and I was brought to Cáqueza to face charges, but my godfather let me be on house arrest, and since I had no house, that meant anywhere in town, and then he needed a deputy, so he honored me with the position. My name is Pepe Morillo Nieto, but they call me Pipa."
The talkative fellow offered to carry some of my baggage on his nag and, when I obliged him, continued to ride beside me, relating his tale of woe.
"I don't have money for a decent poncho and haven't worn shoes for a while. And the hat on my head is more than two years old. It's from Casanare."
Alicia fixed her startled eyes on the man.
"Have you lived in Casanare?"
"Yes ma'am, I have. I know the llanos and I know the rubber fields of Amazonia, as well. Plenty of tigers and snakes I've killed, too, with God's help."
Just then we met some muleteers with their train of mules, and Pipa spoke to them.
"Do you have a pencil to lend, there? It's for a signature."
"We don't carry pencils," said the men.
As we rode on, I addressed Pipa under my breath.
"Don't mention Casanare in front of my wife." And, in a normal voice: "Come with us, then, and later you can inform me of matters relating to the Intendencia."
Pipa was overjoyed. He became Alicia's personal attendant for the rest of the day, ingratiating himself with his loquacity, and camped with us not far from Villavicencio. But that night he sneaked away with my horse and saddle.
* * *
A reddish glow interrupted my remembrance. It was old Rafo, don Rafael, blowing on the embers of the fire. In Casanare, travelers let a fire burn all night near their hammocks to fend off tigers and other nocturnal threats. Old Rafo knelt before the fire and bowed down, as if before a divinity, to enliven it with his breath. Silence still reigned in the melancholy solitude of the llanos, and a sense of the infinite descended on my spirit from the wide and starry skies.
Memories filled my mind again, the enigma of my relationship with Alicia, my decision to begin a new life so different from the old, a life that would surely consume what remained of my youth and dreams. Alicia must have those same thoughts, I reflected, which gave me reason for both remorse and comfort. Like me, she was a seed borne by the wind, ignorant and fearful of where she might come to ground.
She was so passionate and mercurial in her reactions. Sometimes the fatality of her situation triumphed over timidity, and she acted decisively. Most other times, however, she'd rather have swallowed poison to escape the position in which her family, her rich old suitor, and I had placed her. Still in Bogotá, she had reproached me for demanding her love. She may not love me the way I wanted, but what of it? Wasn't I the man who had rescued her from inexperience only to leave her in disgrace? How could she learn to forgive me and not fear abandonment? How could I earn her trust? It wouldn't be by making love to the country girls at each stop on our journey, if that's what I had in mind. In her opinion, everything depended on me.
"You know that I have no money, right?"
"Oh, my family told me that often enough when you came courting," she laughed bitterly. "It's not the protection of your money I'm asking for, but of your heart."
"Alicia, you are asking for no more than I offered you, spontaneously, long ago. I've given up everything for you, and I've no idea if you'll have the courage to face hardship and believe in me."
"Didn't I give everything up for you, too?"
"But you are afraid of Casanare."
"It's you who makes me afraid."
"We'll face everything together."
That was the dialogue that we had one night in a poor house in Villavicencio, as we waited for the chief of the local constabulary, a short, round, little man dressed in khaki with an alcoholic countenance and a scruffy salt-and-pepper mustache.
"Good evening, sir," I said to him in an unfriendly tone when he rested the scabbard of his saber in the doorway.
"My dear poet," he exclaimed, ogling Alicia and then puffing his alcoholic breath in my face, "this girl is a worthy sister of the muses, indeed! You must share with your friends!"
He sat on the bench beside her, rubbing his fat body against hers and grabbing her wrists.
"What a doll," he puffed. "Don't you remember me, doll? I'm Gámez y Roca, General Gámez y Roca. When you were little, I used to dandle you on my knee."
He tried to pull her into his lap, but Alicia cried out and pushed him away.
"What is it that you want?" I growled, closing the door and spitting on him for good measure.
"My dear poet, how you behave! Is this the way you repay someone who's had the courtesy not to arrest you? Leave the girl with me! I'm a friend of the family, you see, and besides, in Casanare she'll just die on you. Leave her with me, and I'll keep all your secrets. She's the evidence of your crime, right? So just leave her, and you're a free man!"
Before he could finish, I grabbed one of Alicia's shoes with a reflexive jerk, slammed the man against the boards, and began to hammer his head and face with the heel of it. The blubbering drunkard collapsed on the bags of rice that occupied a corner of the room.
He was still there, snoring, half an hour later, when Alicia, old Rafo, and I set out, at last, onto the endless plains.
* * *
"Here's coffee," said don Rafo, standing in front of the mosquito netting. "Rise and shine, children! This is Casanare!"
Alicia awoke and greeted us with a clean spirit and a heartfelt tone:
"Is the sun really about to rise?"
"Not just yet," said Rafo, and he pointed at the moon descending to the Andes on the western horizon. "Say good-bye to the mountains, because we won't see anything from now on but plains, plains, and more plains."
As we gulped our coffee, the predawn breeze brought us the fresh scent of grass, green firewood, newly turned earth, and also faint whispers to insinuate themselves among the fans of the moriche palms. Occasionally, under the transparent starlight, one of them shook its fronds and bowed toward the east. An unexpected thrill pulsed in our veins, our spirits flowed out across the wide, open spaces and rose in gladness at life and creation.
"Casanare is beautiful," murmured Alicia several times. "I'm not sure why, but as soon as we set foot in the llanos, the place started to seem less frightening."
"This country pulls you in," said don Rafo. "It gives you what you need to withstand it and thrive on it. It's a wilderness where nobody feels alone, where the sun, wind, and storms are our brothers. Nobody fears them or curses them."
Don Rafo then asked me whether I rode as well as my father, and whether I was as brave in the face of danger.
"The fruit never falls far from the tree!" I responded brashly, while Alicia, her face illuminated by the glow of the fire, smiled with confidence.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Vortex"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Duke University Press.
Excerpted by permission of Duke University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Introduction: A Player in the Rainforest ixPrologue 1
Part One 3
Part Two 81
Part Three 147
Epilogue 219
What People are Saying About This
“When in 1928 José Eustasio Rivera died in New York, he was intent on finding an American publisher to bring out his environmentalist novel The Vortex in English. Ironically, the environmentalist concerns he addressed are as timely as ever.”
"With John Charles Chasteen's translation of The Vortex, José Eustasio Rivera's seminal novel about the geographical vastness and mystical power of the Amazonian jungle and the heartless exploitation of its riches and its inhabitants should garner new fans in the English-speaking world. Chasteen's restrained yet evocative lyricism succeeds in breathing vibrant new life into Rivera's depiction of the clash of two civilizations, the tragedy that ensued, and the repercussions that are felt to this day. This absorbing translation makes clear why The Vortex is as relevant today as it was when the novel was first published almost one hundred years ago."