In the history of rivers there had never been anything like it, water flowing eternally and suddenly it flows no more, like a tap abruptly turned off, as when someone is washing his hands in a basin after shutting off the tap, he pulls the plug, the water drains away, goes down the pipe, disappears, what has remained in the enameled basin will soon evaporate. To put it more aptly, the waters of the Irati retreated like waves that ebb from the shore and vanish, leaving the riverbed exposed, nothing but pebbles, mud, slime, fishes that gasp as they leap and die, then sudden silence.
The engineers were not on the spot when this incredible event took place, but they noticed that something abnormal had occurred, the dials on the observation panels indicated that the river had stopped feeding the great aquatic basin. Three technicians set off in a jeep to investigate the intriguing development, they made their way along the edge of the weir, considered the different possible hypotheses, they had plenty of time to do so for they traveled almost five kilometers, and one of those hypotheses was that a subsidence or landslide on the mountain might have diverted the river's course, another was that it might be the work of the French, typical Gallic perfidy, notwithstanding the bilateral agreement about fluvial waters and their hydroelectric uses, yet another hypothesis, and the most radical of all, was that the source, the fountainhead, the spring, had dried up, the eternity that appeared to exist but did not exist after all. On this point, opinions were divided. One of the engineers, a quiet man, the thoughtful type, and someone who enjoyed life in Orbaiceta, feared that they might send him to some remote place, the others rubbed their hands with glee, perhaps they might be transferred to one of the dams on the Tagus, or closer to Madrid and the Gran Via. Debating these personal worries they reached the far end of the reservoir, where they found a drainage ditch but no river, nothing but a thin trickle of water still seeping from the soft earth, a muddy swirl that would not have enough power to turn a toy waterwheel. Where the devil can the river have got to, exclaimed the driver of the jeep, and he couldn't have been more forthright and explicit. Puzzled, amazed, uneasy and concerned, the engineers once more began discussing among themselves the various hypotheses mentioned earlier, and when they saw that there was nothing to be gained from this discussion, they returned to the offices attached to the dam, then went on to Orbaiceta where the administrators awaited them, having already been informed of the river's mysterious disappearance. There were recriminations, exclamations of disbelief, telephone calls to Pamplona and Madrid, and the final outcome of these exhausting discussions was expressed in an order of the utmost simplicity, broken down into three successive and complementary stages, follow the course of the river upstream, find out what happened, and say nothing to the French.
Next morning before sunrise, the expedition set out for the frontier, keeping alongside or in sight of the parched river, and when the inspectors arrived, weary, they realized that there would be no more Irati. Through a crack that could not have been more than three meters wide, the waters rushed into the earth, roaring like a tiny Niagara. On the other side, the French had already started to gather, it would have been sublimely naive to think that their neighbors, astute and Cartesian, would have failed to notice the phenomenon, but at least they showed themselves to be as amazed and dumbfounded as the Spaniards on this side, and all brothers in ignorance. The two sides got around to speaking, but the conversation was neither wide-ranging nor profitable, little more than exclamations of justified alarm, a tentative airing of new hypotheses on the part of the Spaniards, in short, a general atmosphere of irritation that could find no obvious target, the French were soon smiling, after all they continued to be masters of the river down to the frontier, they would not need to modify their maps.
That afternoon, helicopters from both countries flew over the area, took photographs, observers were lowered with windlasses and suspended over the cataract, they looked and saw nothing, only the black gaping hole and the curving line and the shining surface of the water. In order to make some useful progress, the municipal authorities of Orbaiceta on the Spanish side, and of Larrau on the French side, met near the river under a tent set up for the occasion and dominated by the three flags, the Spanish bicolor and the French tricolor alongside the flag of Navarre, with the intention of examining the tourist potential of a natural phenomenon that must certainly be unique in the world, and how it might be exploited to their mutual advantage. Having considered the inadequacy and undoubtedly makeshift nature of the methods of analysis at their disposal, the gathering failed to draw up any document defining the obligations and rights of each party, so a joint commission was nominated and entrusted with preparing an agenda for another formal meeting, with all possible haste. At the last minute, however, a complication arose that upset the relative consensus they had reached, this being the almost simultaneous interventions, in Madrid and Paris, of the two States' delegates to the permanent commission charged with settling boundary disputes. These gentlemen expressed grave misgivings. The first thing to do was to see where the hole was opening up, whether toward the Spanish side or toward the French side. It seemed a trivial detail, but once the essentials had been explained, the delicacy of the matter became clear. It was clearly beyond question that from now on the Irati belonged entirely to France, under the jurisdiction of the district authorities in the Lower Pyrenees, but if the crack was entirely on the Spanish side, in the province of Navarre, further negotiations would be needed, since both countries, in a sense, would bear an equal share. If, on the other hand, the crack extended to the French side as well, then the problem was entirely French, just as the respective primary resources, the river and the gaping hole, belonged to them. Faced with this new situation, the two authorities, concealing any mental reservations, agreed to keep in touch until some solution could be found to this crucial problem. In their turn, with a joint declaration that had been laboriously drafted, the two nations' Ministries for Foreign Affairs announced their intention of pursuing urgent talks within the scope of the aforesaid permanent commission for boundary matters, to be advised, as one would expect, by their respective teams of geodetic experts.
It was about this time that vast numbers of geologists from all over the world began to appear on the scene. Between Orbaiceta and Larrau there were already a considerable number of foreign geologists, if not quite as many as suggested earlier. But now all the wise men of this and other lands began to arrive in force, the inspectors of landslides and natural disasters, erratic strata and blocks, each carrying a tiny hammer in one hand, tapping on everything that so much as looked like stone. A French journalist called Michel, something of a wit, quipped to a Spanish colleague, a serious fellow named Miguel, who had already reported to Madrid that the crack was de-fi-nite-ly Spanish, or, to speak in geographical and nationalist terms, Navarrese, Why don't you people just keep it, was what the insolent Frenchman said, if the crack gives you so much pleasure and you need it so badly, after all, in the Cirque de Gavarnie alone we have a waterfall four hundred and twenty meters high, we don't need any inverted artesian wells. Miguel could have replied that on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees there are also plenty of waterfalls, and some of them very fine and high, but the problem was different here, a waterfall open to the sky presents no mystery, always looks the same, in full view of everyone, while in the case of the Irati, you can see where the crack originates, but no one knows where it ends, just like life itself. But it was another journalist, a Galician, moreover, who was passing through, as often happens with Galicians, who came up with the question that had yet to be asked, Where does this water go. This was at a time when geologists in both camps were engaged in scientific discussions, and the question, like that of a timid child, was barely heard by the person who is now putting it on record. Since the accent was Galician, therefore discreet and cautious, it was drowned out by Gallic rapture and Castilian bluster, but then others arrived to repeat the question, proudly claiming to have thought of it first, but then no one pays any heed to tiny nations, this is not a persecution mania, but a historical fact. The debate among the wise men had become almost incomprehensible for the layman, yet two basic theories emerged nonetheless from their discussions, that of the monoglaciologists and that of the polyglaciologists, both inflexible, and soon in opposition, like two conflicting religions, the one monotheist, the other polytheist. Certain statements even sounded interesting, such as the one about deformations, certain deformations that might be due either to a tectonic elevation or to an isotonic compensation for erosion. All the more so, they added, since our examination of the actual forms of the cordillera allows us to conclude that it is not old, that is to say, not old in geological terms. All this, probably, had something to do with the crack. After all, when a mountain is subjected to such play of traction, it is not surprising that there comes a day when it finds itself obliged to give way, to splinter, to collapse, or, as in this instance, to crack open. This was not the case with the great slab lying inert on the mountains of Alberes, but the geologists had not seen it, the slab was far away, in a remote spot, no one came near it, the dog Ardent chased after the rabbit and did not return.