A Conversation between Dead Men

The man arrived from the south of England early one morning in the winter of 1877. Ruddy, athletic, corpulent, he was inevitably taken by almost everyone for an Englishman, and it is true that he bore a close resemblance to the archetypal John Bull. He wore a tall-crowned felt hat and a curious woollen cape with a slit in the middle. A group of men, women, and children nervously awaited him; the throats of many of them were scarred by a red slash, others were headless and groped about, fearful and hesitant, like people blundering in the dark. They moved towards the newcomer, and one or two at the rear shouted curses, but an old dread held them back and they dared go no farther. Out from the throng stepped a soldier with sallow skin and eyes like firebrands; his unkempt hair and lowering beard seemed to eat away at his face. A dozen or so mortal wounds furrowed his body like the stripes on the skin of a tiger. Upon seeing him, the newcomer blenched, but then he advanced and extended a hand.

'How it saddens me to see so illustrious a warrior cut down by the hand of treachery!' he said in a ringing tone. 'Yet how great is my satisfaction at having sent the assassins to purge their misdeeds on the scaffold in the Plaza de la Victoria!'

'If you mean Santos Pérez and the Reinafé brothers, know that I have already thanked them,' the bloodied man said gravely.

The other man looked at him as if suspecting mockery or a threat, but Quiroga went on.

'You never understood me, Rosas,' he said. 'How could you have when our destinies were so different? Yours was to rule a city that looks to Europe and that will one day be among the most famous in the world; mine, to fight in the backlands of America, in a poor country of poor gauchos. My empire was of lances and war cries, of sandy wastes and barely known victories in remote parts. What claims are these on history? I live and shall go on living in people's memory for years to come because I was murdered in a stagecoach, in a place called Barranca Yaco, by mounted men wielding sabres. I owe this gift of a bizarre death to you. At the time, I could not appreciate it, but succeeding generations have never forgotten. Of course, you know all about the garish lithographs and the interesting book by a certain worthy young man from San Juan.'

Recovering his aplomb, Rosas gazed with scorn at the other man. 'You are a romantic,' he announced. 'The flattery of succeeding generations is worth no more than that of one's contemporaries, which is worth nothing and can be bought for a handful of ribbons.'

'I know how you think,' replied Quiroga. 'In 1852, fate, which is generous and wanted to plumb you to the depths, offered you a man's death in combat. You showed yourself unworthy of that gift, for battle and bloodshed filled you with fear.'

'Fear?' echoed Rosas. 'I who tamed horses in the south and later a whole country?'

For the first time, Quiroga smiled and, with slow deliberation, he said, 'I know that, according to the impartial testimony of your foremen and hands, you achieved great feats of horsemanship; but during those same years, all over this continent, other great feats of horsemanship were achieved - at Chacabuco and Junín, at Palma Redonda and Caseros.'

Rosas heard him out, unblinking, and then answered, 'I had no need for courage. One of my feats, as you put it, was to see that men with more courage than I fought and died for me. Santos Pérez, for example, who dealt with you. Courage is all a question of endurance; some endure more, others less, but sooner or later everyone loses heart.'

'That may be so,' Quiroga said, 'but I have lived and died and even now I don't know what fear is. I am about to be obliterated, to be given another face and another destiny, for history has wearied of men of violence. I don't know who this other person will be, or what will become of me, but I know the new man will be fearless.'

'I am satisfied with who I am,' said Rosas. 'I don't want to be anyone else.'

'Stones, too, want to be stones for ever,' said Quiroga, 'and for centuries they are - until they crumble to dust. I thought as you did when I entered death, but I've learned many things here. Take heed, the two of us are already changing.'

But Rosas took no notice and said, as if thinking aloud, 'Perhaps I was not made to be dead; this place and this conversation seem to me a dream, and not a dream dreamed by me but by another, one yet to be born.'

The pair spoke no more, for just then Someone beckoned.

[1957]