The Event by Juan Jose Saer

Author:Juan Jose Saer [Saer, Juan Jose]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-10-19T04:00:00+00:00

Around 1854, some twenty leagues south of the city, not far from the Carcarañá River, he found out that there was a man living on the pampas with his family, in a miserable cabin, near the only tree for many leagues around. The man was around forty-five years old at that time, and he had traveled a little, having even gotten as far as the gates of Buenos Aires, because two or three years before, he had been a soldier in the Grand Army and then a deserter, and even after deserting he had gone on wandering about the pampas for several months, roaming as far as the borders of Indian territory, before going back to his province. Since he was a deserter, he stopped by his hut only very occasionally; he spent most of his time in the open countryside, sleeping out of doors in every sort of weather with the saddle of his horse for a pillow, slaughtering other peoples cattle for food or dropping in at general stores to buy maté, tobacco and sugar, get drunk and disappear. He was a tall, silent, muscular halfbreed, who despite his vagabond life, paid a great deal of attention to his personal appearance, almost to the point of affectation, and among the knick-knacks that he carried about with him he always had a brush, a little mirror and a pair of scissors; the moment he reached the banks of the Carcarañá he took a dip, and had anybody passed by the desolate spots that he frequented and knew like the palm of his hand, it would not have been a rare sight to see him, without even having bothered to climb off his horse that was quietly grazing after he had deposited his sombrero between its ears, cutting his hair and his curly beard, using, carefully and slowly, the scissors with one hand and holding with the other the little mirror in which he meticulously observed, after each snip of his scissors, the result of his work. Even though he was rumored to have committed several murders and despite the fact that he wasn't very talkative, he was well received, because once he'd gotten fired up with his first gins he felt like singing, accompanying himself discreetly and not at all awkwardly on the guitar, and when he'd finished, he would look about for a moment without saying anything to his listeners and then give a timid, satisfied little laugh, still without having said a word, and hand the guitar back to the storekeeper. Then he would sit quietly in his corner and go on drinking till he turned rigid and a sort of grayish color, and picking up what he called his vices, that is to say, his maté, his tobacco, his sugar, which the storekeeper placed in a little sack for him, he would head straight for the patio, standing stiffly erect, mount his horse after a number of fruitless, dignified attempts, and disappear on the pampas.

The man

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