Though, I must warn you, not unique in the literal sense. Anybody who’d had the same experiences as I’d had (all of them, that is, because it is impossible to determine a priori which are relevant) could also have done it. And they don’t even have to be literally the “same” experiences, because experiences can have equivalents.
So, I do not feel much like boasting. All the credit goes to the happenstance that placed me, precisely me, in the right place — at Las Quince Letras Hotel — one November afternoon with several hours and nothing to do (I had missed my connecting flight and had to wait until the next day). On my way there I wasn’t thinking about the Macuto Line, I hadn’t even remembered its existence. I was surprised to find it, a few steps away from the hotel, like a souvenir from my childhood love for books about pirates.
It just so happened, and in keeping with the rule of the law of explanations, another related enigma got solved, which was the discovery of how the rope (the “line,” in question) had withstood the elements intact for such a long time. Synthetic fibers could have, but there was nothing synthetic about the Macuto Line, as exhaustive laboratory analyses had shown, analyses conducted on miniscule strands extracted with diamond-pointed tweezers: the material consisted of nothing but pine and liana fibers around a hemp core.
The solution to the main problem did not occur to me immediately. For two or three hours I was not even aware that my brain was working on it while I was taking a walk, going up to my room to write for a while, watching the sea from my window, and going out again, all in the tedium of waiting. During that interlude I had time to observe the antics of some children who were diving off some rocks into the sea some sixty feet from shore. This already constitutes part of the “short story” and, as a matter of fact, holds interest only for me. But out of such ineffable and microscopic pieces the puzzle is made. Because there is, in fact, no such thing as “in the meantime.” For example, I was thinking absentmindedly about the children’s game as a humble artifact construed from natural elements, one of which was the recognition of the kinetic pleasure of the plunge, the muscular contractions, the swimming-respiration. . How did they avoid those rocky ridges scattered haphazardly among the waves? How did they manage to land only inches away from a rock that would have killed them with its rigid Medusa-like caress? Habit. They probably did the same thing every afternoon. Which gave the game the weight necessary to become a legend. Those children themselves were a habit of the Macuto coast, but a legend is also a habit. And that time of day, that precise hour, twilight in the tropics, which arrives so early and at the same time is so belated, so majestic in its harmonies, that hour was part of this habit. .
Suddenly, everything fell into place. I, who only understand anything through sheer exhaustion and resignation, suddenly understood everything. I thought I’d make a note for a short novel, but why not do it for once rather than write about it? I quickly went to the platform where the Line’s triangle had its vertex. . I just barely touched the bundle of knots with the tips of my fingers, turning it over without attempting to untie anything. . A humming could be heard for miles around, and the Line began to run over itself at a cosmic velocity. The mountain it was attached to seemed to shudder, surely an illusion created by the sliding of the cord, which soon spread to the section that sank into the sea. The onlookers who had been watching my actions and those who came to the windows of the nearby buildings were all looking out toward the high seas. .
And there, with a prodigious crack and a burst of foam, the treasure chest at the sunken end of the Line leapt so forcefully out of the sea that it rose about two hundred feet in the air, hung there for an instant, then shot down in a straight line, while the Line retracted, pulling back, until the treasure fell intact onto the stone platform, about three feet from where I was standing, waiting for it.
I won’t go into the whole explanation here, because it would take many pages, and I have imposed upon myself a strict length limit for this text (of which this is only a prologue) out of respect for the reader’s time.
What I would like to point out is that I did not limit myself to solving the enigma speculatively but also did so in practice. That is to say: after understanding what I had to do, I went and did it. And the object responded. The Line, a taut bow for centuries, finally shot its arrow, bringing to my feet the sunken treasure and instantaneously making me a wealthy man. Which was quite practical, because I have always been poor, lately more so than usual.
I had just spent a year in financial despair and, to tell the truth, had been wondering how I was going to get out of a situation that was deteriorating by the day. My literary activities, cloaked in terms of unassailable artistic purity, never rendered me much material gain. The same held true for my scientific labors, in large part due to the secrecy with which I have carried them out and about which I will speak more later. From an early age I have earned my living as a translator. With time I have perfected my professional skills and achieved a certain amount of prestige; during the last several years I enjoyed some stability though never abundance, which never bothered me as my lifestyle is quite austere. But now, the economic crisis has seriously affected the publishing business, which is paying for its previous years of euphoria. The euphoria led to oversupply, the bookstores were filled with locally produced books, and when the public needed to tighten its belt, the purchase of books was the first thing to go. Publishers, then, found themselves with huge inventories they couldn’t sell, their only remaining recourse being to cut production. They cut it so much that I spent the whole year unemployed, sorrowfully spending my savings and eyeing the future with increasing anxiety. One can, thus, see how opportune this incident was for me.
Here is an additional cause for astonishment: to wonder how wealth from four hundred years ago could have retained some value, and how this value could be so enormous. Above all taking into account the speed of currency devaluations in our countries, the changes in the denomination of our currencies, and economic policies of all kinds. But I’m not going to go into that subject. On the other hand, wealth always has something inexplicable about it, more so than poverty. As of that moment, I was wealthy, and that’s all there is to it. If I hadn’t had to leave the next day for Mérida to fulfill a commitment I couldn’t (and didn’t wish to) break, I would have gone to Paris or New York to show off my newly acquired opulence.
So it was that the next morning, with my pockets full and preceded by a clamor of fame that filled all the newspapers of the world, I boarded an airplane that carried me to the beautiful Andean city where the literary conference, the subject of this story, was being held.
Part II. The Conference
I
IN ORDER TO MAKE myself understood, the following will need to be very clear and very detailed, even at the expense of literary elegance. Though not too profuse with details, for such an accretion can obfuscate the comprehension of the whole; moreover, and as I previously stated, I must monitor the length. In part due to the requisites of clarity (poetic fog horrifies me), and in part to my natural preference for an orderly exposition of the material, I deem it most appropriate to begin at the beginning. Not, however, at the beginning of this story but rather at the beginning of the previous one, the beginning that made it possible for there to be a story at all. Which in turn requires me to switch levels and begin with the Fable that provides the tale’s logic. I will then have to do a “translation,” which, if carried out in full, would take more pages than I have assigned as the maximum number for this book; thus I will “translate” only when necessary; all other fragments of the Fable will remain in the original language; and though I am aware that this might affect its credibility, I believe it to be the preferred solution. By way of supplemental warning, I would like to add that the Fable in question takes its logic from a prior Fable, on yet another level of discourse; similarly on the other end, the story provides the immanent logic to another story, thus ad infinitum. And (in conclusion) I have filled these plots with contents that have between them a relationship of only approximate equivalencies, not meanings.