When we left for the garden, not a breeze was stirring in the sultry night, but a feeling of coolness, probably imagined, came over me. Dickson asked that we accompany him to the harbor, where Señora Mercedes’s slave awaited us with a message from her lady. We traversed the deserted streets, feeling our way through the dark city amid clouds of buzzing mosquitoes. In a lighted window, behind the grillwork, a man stripped to the waist was eating a piece of watermelon shaped like a half moon. Looking up, he recognized us and, with a sarcasm both gentle and familiar, asked: Out to see the whores, Doctor? Whereupon, with his venerable bonhomie, my dear teacher stopped and burst into laughter, which seemed to perturb Dickson, and launched back this unforgettable response: Not necessarily. The man shook his head as he took a bite of the watermelon, as if we had lost his interest, and when we resumed our march, despite the gravity of the situation, the doctor’s suppressed chuckling echoed in the darkness, irresistibly contagious, so when we arrived at the harbor, our top hats shook against the faint evening light that seemed to diffuse the great open space of the river, whose unmistakable odor, rhythmic splashing on the banks, and genuine coolness in the air betrayed its proximity. Dickson, who retained his seriousness in spite of our certainly unjustified good mood, ordered us to wait and remain silent, and once we obeyed, he began to whistle to notify someone of our presence. Shortly, some thirty meters out, a light signaled and we walked in its direction. When we arrived, six or seven men began to converse in whispered English with Dickson; we were all crammed together around the lantern, studying one another with suspicion and curiosity until the consul, signaling to the doctor and me, moved a few steps away and withdrew into the night. Suddenly, utter darkness overwhelmed me; it took barely a fraction of a second to realize that a cloth had been thrown over my head — a sack, perhaps — and that two or three men had tied my hands. The muffled protests and gasps from the doctor indicated to me, in that total darkness in which I was plunged, that exactly the same thing had happened to him. I tried to struggle, but it was useless. Two powerful arms — Scottish, I discovered later — lifted me up, and it was in that precise moment that my feet ceased to tread the soil of my fatherland forever, or in any case, to this day.
In the letter he sent me from Amsterdam some time later, the doctor offered several additional explanations, since we had already been given the primary ones on the high seas, about what had happened, clarifying the exact motives of the English consul’s intervention: From the outcome of our adventure, one can judge, dear Dr. Real, Señora Mercedes’ subtlety and discretion, two attributes we must add to the undeniable charms she possesses and that you, I believe, have had some occasion to admire de visu. The explanation for the conduct of Dickson, to whom we were always so unkind, is the following: Some time after we parted, Mercedes, trying vainly, according to her, to forget me, began to visit the English consul, who, without elaborating on what she affirms in her letter, was of course never aware of our relations. Mercedes convinced Dickson that her husband, believing himself cuckolded, had the wrong target, and was going to avenge himself on us, believing I was his wife’s lover. Dickson then found himself obliged to intervene. So that’s how they saved our lives, the diplomatic service, secret agents, and naval forces of the great island nation that holds the undisputed mastery of the seas, propagating freedom of commerce, as others do the Black Death, wherever they go.
Hooded by sacks and suffocating, arms bound to our chests by ropes, we were placed on a vessel; the regular sound of its oars accompanied us for some twenty minutes, and then we were hoisted like bundles onto a ship’s deck; finally, they removed the sacks, but returned to bind us at the wrists and ankles with our arms behind us — a humiliating treatment that, I recognize, was effected firmly but not roughly — and left us alone in a silent cabin enveloped in the deepest darkness. Distant voices and sounds reached us, and at last we realized that the ship where we lay sequestered had weighed anchor and was sailing at a steady clip to destinations unknown. In the hours of our imprisonment, the doctor, who had not lost the habit or capacity of reasoning with methodical patience, elaborated a series of hypotheses about the remarkable events that had transpired, and when we heard the door open and a man’s calm, educated voice began to apologize in English for how they had been obliged to treat us, the doctor (a revealing detail if one takes into account that he had been tied hand and foot and hurled into darkness) responded with perfect tranquility in perfect English that we understood (also perfectly) what had happened, and that we were grateful how quickly the English government had acted to save our lives. When the lights came on we realized we were in the elegant guest cabin of an English frigate, whose captain, a tanned and affable Scotsman, was waiting for the two sailors who accompanied him to untie our bonds and help us to our feet before giving us a jovial welcome. A month later, penniless and still a little shaken, more by recent events than by the volatility of the rough, gray ocean, and the captain having conceded to Dr. Weiss every game of chess they played during the voyage, we disembarked one sad and rainy morning in Liverpool.
I have dwelt on the establishment of Casa de Salud and, in brief, I have noted the treatment methods of Dr. Weiss, his character and philosophy, as well as the ravages of the barbarity that in a few hours left the work not even of years, but of my teacher’s entire life, in ruins. It was a calling to build that institution from nothing, especially in a time of unrest, and my sole, original contribution to it was that month-long trip through the plains, in such demanding conditions, which constitutes the principal theme of this memoir. (In any case, that trip was a unique experience for me, for which, as will be addressed later on, I am also in debt to Dr. Weiss, and I hope that my instructor, forgiving the egoism in supposing to present myself as the protagonist of my tale, will be good enough to consider that I relate what was for me the most singular adventure of my life.)
The patients we had to transfer from the city of Santa Fé, located on the banks of the great river across from my birthplace and some hundred leagues north of Las Tres Acacias, were people disturbed in their innermost selves by the ravages of insanity and required special care; the voyage across the desert plain was an aggravation to their conditions, but their derangement was at the same time itself disruptive, and, by its singular presence, helped break the balance of the old, unwritten laws of the desert. Patients, Indians, women of ill repute, gauchos, soldiers, and even animals, domestic and otherwise — we had to live together for many days in the desert which, though already hostile by definition, saw its hostility increase as unforeseen calamities amassed.