Ema, the Captive by César Aira

Author:César Aira
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Literary, Alternative History, Magical Realism, Fiction
ISBN: 9780811226035
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 1981-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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On his annual spring excursion to the island of Carhué, the prince took an enormous retinue, almost three times bigger than was normal for such a trip, including musicians, assistants, masseurs, hunters, bodyguards and a huge number of children, as well as the multitude of hangers-on whose sole functions at court were to sleep and display their splendid headdresses, adjusted to suit the time of day and the circumstances. Against his father’s advice, he had even insisted on bringing the white women given to him in recent weeks, with some of whom he hadn’t yet had an opportunity to spend a night. The old chief’s objections, set aside by his son with a disdainful smile, were rooted, if weakly, in traditional attitudes toward the island, a sacred refuge not to be sullied by the ambiguous presence of white people. It was understandable that Hual paid little heed to his father’s opinion, since the island had been losing its holy character for decades and becoming the desert’s most fashionable resort, the place where the richest chiefs gathered in summer, not in search of any kind of magical protection but merely to soak up the ambience of luxury and ease, and to indulge in more sensual pleasures. Nevertheless, all unawares, the prince was revealing remnants of the archaic disposition to nomadism by insisting on taking all the trappings of everyday life, however much it complicated the trip. He wanted to travel undiminished in body and soul. Watching him prepare to go on vacation with such a crowd, people predicted that he wouldn’t get much rest, but in the end these criticisms came to nothing more than a shrug of the shoulders. After all, if a wealthy minor chief wanted to travel in the company of all his minions, or transport every last one of his greyhounds and parrots hundreds of miles for a stay of a few weeks, just so he wouldn’t feel homesick, that was his prerogative.

A few days beforehand, a party of young men had set out with the portable dwellings which they would erect on the island. Hual gave them many instructions, and a mass of drawings and diagrams specifying his requirements: not just the dimensions and forms of the tents, but also their orientation, their distance from the coast, and a thousand other details.

“Dear Hual,” said one of his captains, without hiding his irony, “if we were to take all this rigmarole seriously, we would have to spend months setting up the shelters in which you want to sleep a week from now.”

“It doesn’t matter. There’ll be time.”

They would have preferred to be guided by the moment’s inspiration, as usual. But Hual was stubbornly opposed to chance; when he was seeing them off, it occurred to him that perhaps they wouldn’t be able to find the island, and he sent for something from his tent.

“Take this map,” he said.

It was a sheet of thick paper, folded into four and covered with inscriptions on both sides. Sighing, they put it away with the rest of the luggage, and said, “Much appreciated.

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