He had always remembered the name.
'Papa?'
'Yes, my dear, perfectly fine.' Though he was not fine. He wanted a drink. He wanted to get his daughter away from Eliza Lynch. He wanted to go home, and scrape his boots, and see his wife.
Acknowledgments
I must acknowledge the work of Josefina Pia (The British in Paraguay in the 19th Century, Richmond, 1976) and of Helene Clastres (The Land-Without-Eviclass="underline" Tupi-Guarani Prophetism, University of Illinois Press, 1995). As for the rest: Eliza Lynch seems to provoke in her English-speaking biographers all kinds of sneering excess. Some facts seem to remain constant and it is around these facts that this (scarcely less fictional) account has been built. This is a novel, however. It is Not True.
Thanks are due to The Arts Council’An Comhairle Ealionn; to the ever-wonderful staff at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig; and to the library of Trinity College Dublin.
Special thanks to Mario Rosner of Buenos Aires for a likely picture of the Tacuari, to the friends who read the manuscript, and to Shane Enright for additional library work.
