Read Online an Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter by César Aira - Free Book Online

room ... but no, there he was, using a hat to cover his face, still as a tree. He gave a violent start when Krause took him by the arm. Asked if he had heard the news, he mumbled indistinctly in reply ... No, he had clearly neither heard nor understood what was happening. Krause decided immediately to put him back to bed and stay to help with the defense of the house, if it came to that. He could not help feeling a twinge of regret: they had cherished the dream of seeing the Indians in action, and now their chance had come, but they would have to miss it. While the ranch owner and his men made a noisy exit through the gates, Krause took his friend's arm and started leading him back to the house. To stop him falling in the other direction, he had to guide him from behind, gripping both arms and holding him up. Rugendas walked stiffly but all the parts of his body seemed to be working loose. He went on mumbling, and since Krause was ignoring him, raised his voice to a shout. They were already back in the gallery. Krause came around to face him, and, rather embarrassed, asked what he was saying. It was something about a mantilla. Krause opened the door of the room and Rugendas darted in, went straight to his painting kit, and pointed to his friend's. Krause could not believe his eyes, but he had to bow to the evidence: in spite of the state he was in, the great Rugendas wanted to go and sketch the Indian raid. Krause sat down on the bed disconsolately. It's impossible, impossible, he said. Rugendas paid no attention. He had realized he was barefoot and begun the laborious business of putting on his boots. He looked up at Krause: The horses, he said. Krause tried a dissuasive argument that had just occurred to him: they could sleep for a couple of hours and leave around midday. The action was bound to continue into the afternoon. But Rugendas was not listening; he was in another dimension. His movements had transformed the room into a mad scientist's laboratory where some transformation of the world was being hatched. The nocturnal half-light gave the interior a Flemish touch. Like a purple-faced lion he fumbled with his boots, on all fours. Krause rushed out, heading for the stables, pursued by the stammering of his half-shod friend: Man! Manti! Mantilla! They would take only Flash and the bay horse, Dash. It would not have to be more than an outing, after all, a painters picnic; and perhaps the ride and the activity would help to clear Rugendas's mind. He had probably overexerted himself during the previous days, because of the abundance of beauty they had encountered. The raid had come at a bad time, and yet it could still serve a purpose: to exhaust the painter's energy, or rather, to complete that process; given his current state the only hope of improvement lay in plumbing the depths.
    Rugendas was waiting for him in the yard with his little box of charcoal sticks and his hat pulled down over his face. He kept talking about a mantilla, and Krause finally understood what he meant. It was a good idea; he should have thought of it himself, but he could hardly be blamed, what with everything else he had to think of. I'll go and see, he said, and tell our hostess what we are planning to do. Rugendas went with him, and when they found the lady of the house, in the kitchen, it was the invalid who summoned all his ebbing strength to make the unusual request for a lace mantilla, of the kind worn at mass, black, naturally, it went without saying. South American ladies were well supplied with such Catholic accessories. He did not explain in detail why he needed it, and she must have supposed it was to hide the hideous disfigurement of his face and his ghastly nervous tics. In which case, she can only have been surprised that he had taken so long to equip himself with that charitable disguise. For inhabitants of Mendoza (as for Chileans), the idea of a man wearing a mantilla was not so strange, because there was a long and venerable