RadioProfile | Silences of the Apostadero

With spirits up, with a certain need for optimism, let’s say that time, or age, also gives us an effective and depersonalized capacity for observation. “See things as they are”, the grandparents used to say.

From my travels I obtain the setting and the characters. As always happens to me, I comply with the catharsis of describing them, as soon as any definition occurs to me. The mere fact of authenticity, on the other hand, exempts me from theories and qualifications.

The hunting ground that I visited is a part of the antechamber of the desert; because in the south, beyond the Colorado River, our desert continues to have the authenticity of cataclysms. The Andean geosyncline occurred; it raised the mountain range crest but also some ocean floor. Geologists know it, and in my case I am only exposing it. But from that monstrosity there was a monotonous plain to the point of exasperation, a continuity that can lead the mind to dreams and mirages of all kinds. During the day, or rather at night in the full moon, I myself was able to observe all the characters from Salamanca dancing very close to me, like those of Ricardo Rojas, in the days of the national school.

Said then, that beyond the Colorado River the desert reigns, it is understood that it is within the reach of anyone who wants to drive, for example, for stretches of five or more hours without another vision than some stray gang, or a tip of those camelids without hump that are the guanacos. Dust, wind and long road. That is the law of Patagonia.

It was in that place that I met Olga and Rubén. Good-looking and in a lush maturity, going through that enviable moment of life in which man and woman meet and simply enjoy a loving, placid and complete correspondence. What was inexplicable, in a way, was that the couple chose the least kind or romantic scenario that anyone can imagine. Although some surprising and even unreal chromaticism is not absent, let’s say that in those regions, aridity covers all things with monotonous ocher, even anger.

Stalking hours are completely antisocial. The hunters take up their respective niches at sunset, and return, barely defined by dawn, sleepy, hungry and very sleepy. Then they drain the pain of coffee with milk, the unanimous cookie and go to bed. During the day they have some time after a late lunch. Then, to prepare the equipment again and agree with the guide the maneuver to follow; to try, fleetingly and on horseback, a route of traces, to orient themselves towards a new gouache, a new nocturnal ceremony.

Let’s just say that spring has barely begun, in those latitudes the cold is a sharp blade, which throughout the night and inexorably, comes to cross us and make us shrink until we shiver, without any shelter that is worth or a tent that can reach. Then there is the amount of cold, sleep and the inability of even a brief candle. Thus, we arrive at a restlessness, a vacillation about ourselves and our own limits of resistance. The appearance of the expected boar can vary everything, but that is only the exception. The rest is loneliness, isolation, and the suspicion of having given us a test apparently without reason.

Hunting shifts, with their variations and unforeseen events, are fast processing. Only on the eve of our return departure, I was able to speak for a few minutes with that couple. First with the woman: alert and agile, with a figure of Rubenian influence that did not take away an iota of harmony; her firm chin and her hearty laugh, with perceptible flashes of determination in her gaze. He, tall and elegantly gangly, much more thoughtful and with fewer words, with the calm eyes of someone who does not despair.

I keep the result of that conversation, the corollary that Olga outlined when she told me:

– “We come here on a pilgrimage. We share loneliness without anyone’s intervention. Hours go by in the feeder and we put ourselves to the test. All the questions, all the answers, for boredom, loneliness, guilt and the lack of certainties. In that silence there is no way to pretend, and after seven days we returned home. Friends say that we are The Pilgrims of Love… and so are we.”

Text by Rodolfo Perri.

by Juan Ferrari