The-Miss-Addie

She’d started riding when she was two, pronounced dressage “prissy” at three, owned her first horse—horse, not pony—at six, was showing at eight in Jumper and Equitation, and suffered her first heartbreak at fourteen. Buttermilk had contracted skin cancer, rare in horses and enough to make her mother, who was Argentine, take alarm that the time was here.

Addie refused to allow Buttermilk to be put down even when her favorite veterinarian explained that the horse could be ridden no longer and that its condition would gradually worsen. She made a list of Buttermilk’s favorite pasturage, foods, and people and handed it solemnly to her father, who did not waste his time in fruitless argument but saw that the “requests” were effected.

Nor would Addie be distracted from her grief by the promise of an Akhal-Teké from Kazakhstan despite the fact that her favorite bedtime story when she was younger was Mr. Aaronson-Turek’s account of how, in 1935, several Akhal-Tekés, with almost no water and feed, had journeyed through difficult terrain, including great stretches of desert, from Ashkhabad, in Turkmenistan, to Moscow in eighty-four days.

Knowing the attempt fruitless, Mr. Aaronson-Turek nonetheless tempted Addie with a Lipizzaner. Her next favorite bedtime story had been of his involvement with the American troops in World War II who evacuated the Lipizzaners from their stables to save them from the advancing Soviet Army. By the time she was two, Addie had recited with him:

Lipizzaners are named for the town of Lipizza. Lipizza was once upon a time in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and is now in Slovenia. Archduke Charles II once upon a time imported nine Spanish Andalusian stallions and twenty-four mares. He wanted to have horses fine enough for royalty. Once upon a time, Archduke Charles VI established the Spanish Riding School for the nobility. The Spanish Riding School used only Lipizzaners. It had the Spanish in its name to remember their Andalusian bloodlines. Once upon a time, Lipizzaners were horses for royalty until the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell at the end of World War I.

Addie herself added most of the “once-upon-a-time’s.”

Mr. Aaronson-Turek did try to argue with his wife. Nonetheless, he knew that, as the case turned on the perceived welfare of their daughter, he would lose. Besides, he was a man divided. He wanted his daughter distracted from the stricken Buttermilk, but he had known for the sixteen years of his marriage that some form of this moment would come and that he would ultimately be forced to accede to its demands. He was unprepared for its relating primarily to his only child.

Mrs. Aaronson-Turek’s parents had sent their only child abruptly from Buenos Aires when she was sixteen. “The Beautiful Eleana,” as she was known, had come to understand, through the teachings of her Brazilian nurse-companion, an old Candomblé woman, that a war was being waged for her soul between the good magic Umabamba and the evil magic Qimbamba. The Beautiful Eleana was very bright and had made promises to both sides that kept them deadlocked in the struggle for her soul. But her nurse, who was more inclined to Qimbamba, had tired of trying to sway The Beautiful Eleana and revealed to the competing parties the stubbornness and guile of the girl. Apparently, the spirits had parleyed, and the upshot was a declaration of intent to visit their intentions upon “the only child of ‘The Beautiful Eleana.’” Upon hearing their decision, delivered by her nurse in a lengthy trance, The Beautiful Eleana had laid the whole matter before her parents, in her accustomed reasonable way. They had seen the truth of the situation by their daughter’s very reasonableness; quietly pensioned off the regrettable, but fated, nurse; and sent their daughter to Wellesley College west of Boston. There, though younger than her classmates, The Beautiful Eleana, as they thought of her, without knowing why or being urged to, was first in her class and its leader in every way. Even the President and Dean of the College, who were accustomed to exceptional young women made more exceptional under the tutelage of Dear Wellesley, were astounded by the poise and general comportment of The Beautiful Eleana.

When The Beautiful Eleana married the first son of an exotically wealthy Boston family with distant Middle Eastern connections, the ceremony was held on campus, and the parents of The Beautiful Eleana gave Wellesley a collection of textiles, some pre-Colombian, in her honor. It was reputed to contain some feather designs that had convinced the Conquistadors of Incan spell-casting and led to their prohibition against feather artwork.

The Beautiful Eleana and Mr. Aaronson-Turek held a calm, reasoned session with their daughter, who responded in kind. Afterwards, The Beautiful Eleana removed her wedding rings and then the small, plain silver band that she had always worn in front of them. She returned the former to her ring finger, then placed the band, which fit perfectly, on Addie’s ring finger, saying, “I herewith pass to my daughter, Augustina Adelia Adiago Aaronson-Turek, this argent ring from my Argent Land, Argentina, with full faith that she will know how to use it.”

Following the giving-over of the ring, Mr. Aaronson-Turek unlocked, with a key on his watch chain, a silver chest and passed it to his wife. The Beautiful Eleana gently put back the lid, removed a very old hand-scripted book in a wooden cover inlaid with gemstones, and intoned, as she held it suspended toward Addie’s outreaching hands: “I herewith pass to my daughter, Augustina Adelia Adiago Aaronson-Turek, this book with the history of our family in the Argent Land, Argentina, with full faith that she will use it to offset maldición eterna.”

Mr. Aaronson-Turek quietly pulled forth a small table and indicated that Addie was to place the book upon it. The Beautiful Eleana had Addie remove her silver band and pass it, held flat in her fingers, over the cover of the book. A large ruby began to glow, and, obeying The Beautiful Eleana’s pantomimed instructions, Addie pressed it. The cover of the book released.

It was Mr. Aaronson-Turek who waded against the silence in the room. “We leave you now, my child, to read, knowing that you will cease to be the same. Upon your reading, you must decide if you will be your mother’s daughter in a guise beyond that now.” He kissed both cheeks and attended as The Beautiful Eleana pressed her forehead to her daughter’s. Then the parents, both still regal, rounded and left Augustina Adelia Adiago Aaronson-Turek to her reading.

When Addie entered the dining room that evening, Mr. and Mrs. Aaronson-Turek saw in the instant that, as they had expected, their daughter would go. The conversation sparkled brightly of other matters, but, for the first time, wine glasses appeared at Addie’s place, and she drank with her parents through every course. For the first time in the Aaronson-Turek household, all the wines at dinner were Argentine.

. . .

I knew her instantly when she appeared at Estancia Santa Alejandra, this young “Miss Addie Adler from America,” darting and chirping like a little bird. Here to learn Argentine Spanish, Argentine ways, and Argentine horses. She claimed an Argentine great-grandfather in her line. She thought it strange that we did not all say che for every other word. I knew her instantly, and she had some sense of me. She did not say this. She did not raise one thick black eyebrow at my lowered state. Yet I saw her bright birds’ eyes go brighter.

We were meant to remember the old gauchos. Our costumes had coin belts, great knives, and spurs. All the things gaucho. And still the ginebra and modern chicha and tobacco on our own. She told me later that we were like the “dude ranches” “back home.” I saw she was pained for me in particular. Me—El Gordito, “The Fat One,” to everyone else, but meant nicely by almost everyone. She called me by my name, Cerrito. To the others, she was a rich Anglo’s spoiled daughter. Sent to be amused and “baby-sitted.” I couldn't tell if El Caudillo knew who she really was. He had always suspected me, for I was devoted to Señorita Alejandra and had moved with her to this place. El Caudillo surely knew that such a one would come, if not the form that would be taken.

It fell my lot to be her guide, but “The Miss Addie,” as I called her and the others took up, knew horses, I saw quick enough. She pretended not to. I saw the reaction of the bell horses. She said they were what Americans called “bell-wethers” for the sheeps. We have many sheeps in Argentina but do not use “bell-wethers” for them. Only dogs. The Miss Addie was very pleased that all the “bell-horses” were mares. “Just the way it should be,” she said. But she did not like our practice of bunching all the horses of one color together with a leader the same color. “Much too structured.”

What most struck me was the way every bell horse went quiet when The Miss Addie was close. (All the horses pricked up their ears when she was coming.) Not a bell could be heard. I could see the bell horses restraining themselves so as not to let out a single small jingle. All the gauchos soon understood. If they wanted their bell horses to work, it must be when The Miss Addie was not around. Or The Miss Addie had to give the bell horses their signal to ring their bells for the rest of the horses in their string to react to. I dreaded the moment when El Caudillo saw what was going on.

Miss Addie had the enthusiasm of youth. She made me tell her stories of how the gauchos had come to be from mixing Indians and Spanish. Over and over I must speak of how the Indians and then the gauchos had been destroyed. She said that the estancieros enclosing the pasturelands of the pampa húmeda, the pampas, was like the big ranchers with their barbed wire in her American West. She told me that Argentina was this big “melting pot” like the United States. That America had a condor, too. That I would get to see these things “in the fullness of time.” I liked her phrase “in the fullness of time.” But it did not seem the phrase of one so young. I did not tell her that Señor Franco in Spain had also called himself “El Caudillo.” I let it pass as the title of our great leaders on horseback. She had seen many of their statues in Buenos Aires. I did not tell her that many gauchos in my country had ridden for the Dictator Rosas. That man had a dwarf. He tried to make us a country of dwarves. Instead, I spoke at some length of our Jews, los gauchos judíos.

El Caudillo had been away on one of his many “business” trips when she came to us. The morning he met her, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck riffle as the great feathered Cape of the Condor stirred and lifted in its cave high in the Andes. I saw myself outside the cave on a ledge beside a condor’s nest. I understood that the struggle would be more than I had thought.

El Caudillo suddenly appeared in the back kitchen where the hands were eating breakfast. The Miss Addie ate with us. She did not have to, for her position as a paying student could be what she chose it to be. The Miss Addie chose to be as much like the rest of us as possible.

As usual, El Caudillo stood in the doorway and waited until the men were aware of him. The women stopped serving and stood stiffly in place with their eyes lowered. We eaters, no longer talking, rose together. The Miss Addie was talking to Lazy Pedras, on her other side, and was unaware of what was happening until we rose up from our chairs. She cocked her head like a smart bird, saw El Caudillo, and stood, but slowly. She backed her chair away, stepped out, and went toward El Caudillo, hand extended. Not birdlike now. I think we all gaped.

El Caudillo smiled bigly and stepped across the threshold to go and meet her. “Ah, this would be the young lady from the United States. Miss…Adler.”

We could hear the emphasis on young.

“Call me Addie,” she said simply as they joined hands.

I thought the handshake must mirror a struggle of wills, but it passed for regular.

El Caudillo nodded, but his smile was a scratch on granite.

“Come and have a talk with me” was all he said. “I’m sure you’ll do well here.” He turned and left her where she stood. We were all relieved. Except Medrano.

The talk resumed. Faster, louder. The Miss Addie gave me a questioning look as she came back into her place beside me.

Medrano was El Caudillo’s man. He started up at once. “El Caudillo having his eye on ‘The Miss Addie.’ She will see when Young Jorge comes home.”

As usual, she went in directly. “Who’s ‘Young Jorge,’ and what does he have to do with me?”

Medrano was very happy to oblige her. “El Caudillo’s son. He will need a wife.”

“Not me,” she said.

Medrano said nothing more. She ignored the snickering.

I liked Young Jorge. Medrano told us his father believed he lacked los cojones necessary to be the son of El Caudillo. Young Jorge was mad for the tango. His one passion. His idols were Gardel, Saborido, and Piazzolla. He sang endlessly “Caminito” and “Mi Buenos Aires Querido” to annoy his father. El Caudillo wanted his thoughts on the pampas and not “The City.” Wanted him to perform gaucho folksongs and folk dances for the tourists at the estancia. (It was Dictator Rosas who had forced the wearing of ponchos and was against progress.) El Caudillo would not listen when his son tried to explain that the Buenos Aires Ballet performed danzasfolklórlcos. Young Jorge talked of little but the Café Tortoni and the National Tango Academy. He described himself as a “hanger-on” at the Casa Blanca. Said he was “tolerated” because of his family connections and wealth. He could tango and was sometimes allowed to perform when one of the regulars was ill or had to be away. He wore his hair slicked down in the old way with Brilliantine. But when he knew that he would see El Caudillo, he made of it great spikes in the latest fashion. El Caudillo did not approve of that either, however. He wanted his son to talk of polo and football. I admired the boy. He made a poor living giving tango lessons to tourists and dancing for coins on Sundays at the Plaza Dorrego flea markets. His father refused to support him unless he came home and prepared to take over the running of the family business. El Caudillo had been about to force him to come home. He changed his mind when that American movie star, Señor Robert Duval, took up tango. The Señor Duval hired Young Jorge to give him lessons and praised him in the book he wrote about the tango.

Still, Medrano was right. I saw that, if El Caudillo could take her, The Miss Addie would be what was required for his son. I knew that I would help her not be taken. Though he might marry her off to his son for her money, he meant to have her first. El Caudillo was El Cerdo, The Pig, to me!

. . .

The Yankees we had did not stick very long to a work schedule. Seldom stayed their agreed-upon time. The Miss Addie was different. She wanted to learn everything about us. Even Medrano was impressed.

I “trained” her for the regular ranch work. Lazy Pedras taught her about the tourist shows. All of our regular horses were “tourist-broke.” They were no longer much as horses go. The Miss Addie learned to cluck them on from the side of either jaw. This was very strange. I could never make the noise from my left jaw. Everybody else I knew was one-jawed for the horses. The horses smartened up when she was about. She would not let me call them spavined and rachity. I used such as terms of endearment. They loved her. She was not afraid to demand that Medrano feed them better. The sulky horses, which were younger and friskier, loved her also. The others assumed The Miss Addie would be a sulky driver along with Lazy Pedras. She refused to drive “dude tourists thirty yards in a sulky and stop every six yards for a picture. No insult intended, Pedras.”

It worked this way. Busloads of tourists drove out from the capital. An hour and a half to two hours away depending on the traffic. First, we gave them a tour of the “Old Casa.” The public parts of the whole estate were set with palms, jacarandas, some coihues, paradise trees, orange trees, acacia, borrachos, casuarinas, magnolias, eucalypti, and beautiful flowers set by my Señorita Alejandra, like ciruelillos and lapachos and what The Miss Addie calls the “bottle brush” with great red blossoms. “The Family built the central casa as soon as we were on our feet. We are Tanos, Italians, who came over with the waves of European immigrants invited by President Bartolome Mitre.” I could say the spiel as well as El Caudillo. I was the one who made sure the touristas wiped their feet on the door mat and then led them the proper route. A pretty photographer lady did the talking if El Caudillo was away, though. I knew what I knew. The “Old Casa” was far older than the family of El Caudillo.

The Old Casa was of thick-walled rose adobe. Colonial with wrought iron on the balconies and the lower windows. There were courtyards and interior patios. All the doors were great, thick, arched carved things, with brass knockers. Meant to keep out Indians, wild gauchos, any porteños coming out into the pampas to escape yellow fever and other epidemics. El Caudillo liked to hint that the “Casa Rosada,” as we call the Presidential Building, the Casa de Gobierno, in Buenos Aires, was modeled on the Old Casa. The touristas were impressed. They were always taken to stand in the square before the Pink House where “Evita” roused the descamisados, the “shirtless ones,” from the balcony.

To make sure they knew his family was from the porteños of “B.A., as we call it,” El Caudillo told them that his “dear wife” was in the “ancestral mausoleum near the Duarte crypt in La Recoleta.” Which is where Señora Eva Peron was buried over nine feet down so that the bad could not do bad things to her body. (My mistress did not like Señorita Evita’s husband so much. He made the great literary, Señor Borges, into an inspector of the poultry.) El Caudillo said that he had a special person place orchids every day for my mistress and see that her candelabra were polished and altar cloth starched. I could have told them other things. My Señorita Alejandra had not “died in childbirth in the first year of our happiness,” as he indicated. She died within a year, true. But she went mad first and ran away to freeze herself to death on the steppes of Patagonia. El Caudillo had frozen her heart first. I count her among the Madres de Mayo. Only she does not mourn for her “disappeared.” She is a “disappeared one.” Member thirty-thousand-and-one of the lost, our desaparecidos. Victim of El Caudillo’s private “dirty war.” When she was gone, the purple mark of El Caudillo spread its talons until it almost covered the left side of his face.

El Caudillo lived in the new mansion on a far side of the estancia. Hidden in a grove of ombús. It was commonly said that he had used the dowry of Señorita Alejandra to build it. He took pride in his art collection. Which Señorita Alejandra had also brought with us to this place. She had purchased more of the work of Señor Benito Quinquela Martín than is found in his own home, which is now a museum on Avenida Pedro de Mendoza in B.A. Devoted to Argentine artists and the figureheads of Italian ships. Señorita Alejandra collected family clocks, too. For the immigrants to our land, she said, no matter how few items they brought with them, included these. After the death of Señorita Alejandra, I was not permitted in the new casa. But when The Miss Addie came to us, I remembered the painting that I had liked most among the collection of Señorita Alejandra. The one of Señor Chagal with the great confusion of bird-man and woman, all red and floating in the blue sky. I wished to speak of it with The Miss Addie, only the woman was naked.

I wished to speak to her, too, of the painting Señorita Alejandra had purchased from the Uruguayan artist, Pedro Figari. But it was of a Candomblé woman. I did not feel right to do so.

Medrano hinted of secret galleries in the casa of El Caudillo. Señorita Alejandra had helped our country collect and purchase “indigenous art.” Mummy bundles older than the great mummies of Egypt. “Pre-Colombian” hand-painted “geometrics.” Incan woven wall hangings with such matters as tongues turned great serpents. Nazca pieces with starfish formed of feathers. She did not keep for herself what the world should see. El Caudillo had argued with her about the Moche items. I imagined his secret cache of Moche “erotics.”

I would get images floating through my mind on slow, heavy clouds. El Caudillo dressed as the Lord of Sipán drinking like the cerdo he was from blood-filled goblets. He smiled at mountains of ears and other parts of the poor Indians that the three hundred families of the oligarchy had paid their bounties for. That the Desert Campaign of General Roca had amassed. Who would have had the grace to burn or bury them? As my thoughts would begin to grate upon these images, a williwaw wind would blow in and disappear them. I would shrug and think to myself that my poor dead young mistress had sent the wind from far across Patagonia to clear the mind of her old servant of disturbing thoughts.

The Old House was now a museum, and the touristas were expected to take thirty minutes to an hour going through it. The longer the better. Then they went out to the “paddock” to ride horses or be driven a short distance in a sulky. (El Caudillo was too cheap to collect old victorias.) Primarily to have their photographs made. We had six photographers working among the crowd. Three young and beautiful girls. Three handsome young men. The photographs were a money-maker.

When they first arrived, our “guests” were marched by the giant pit where the meats (al asador) cooked slowly on a wire frame over coals. They did not get the full parillada. Not the mollejas (sweetbreads), chinchulines (braided tripe), liver, or corazón (heart). When they sat down, the bread and chimichurri would be waiting. And the gringos would sop that good steak sauce with their bread! We would serve them first the six salads, followed by the blood and white sausages. Then came what they waited for. They knew that we are the beef-eaters of the world record. The great slabs of beef would come. We would have to replenish the chimichurri and instruct them to use it. We gauchos served the touristas and danced with them during the folkloric show that followed their meal. When they should have been having the siesta and letting us have the siesta. El Caudillo would not let the performers tango at the Estancia Santa Alejandra. Not though Young Jorge might then have come home…. After the steaks came the grilled chicken. Then the dessert. Alfajores filled with dulce de leche. Cream cakes. All better suited for a confitería, a tea house, but the Anglos generally did not know. Especially after so much good Argentine wine. Or Coca-Cola for a few silly ones.

Suddenly at lunch, between the first and second courses, the six photographers would hand the subjects a white envelope with their pictures. The front of the envelope had a map of Estancia Santa Alejandra, a brief history, snail and e-mail addresses, phone, FAX, and the name of our “Agent in B.A.” El Caudillo insisted that we have “state-of-the-art technology.” The Anglos had to be impressed. The prices were on the back of the envelope, small and in the bottom right-hand corner. The pictures were always good and usually were purchased—for $10 American apiece.

We called all touristas “gringos,” a term first applied to Italians alone. They were as mixed as Argentina herself. Holland America’s Rotterdam was more mestizaje than in Brazil, we laughed among ourselves. We would divide these visitors in the dining room by the ships they traveled on. (They came to Buenos Aires, which is not on the ocean, through the great estuary of the Rió de la Plata.) Others came to join tours and had flown to B.A. We could have sections of Japanese, Germans, Americans…. El Caudillo seemed to favor the Japanese. There were rumors that they came here to arrange hunting expeditions with him in the Andes and the thorny Chaco. I thought it more likely he was using them to get a Komodo dragon. He collected “rare things,” Medrano bragged, animals included. (The only living thing my poor mistress had “collected” was a coati from the jungle near Iguazú Falls. It was a gift from a childhood friend. She named it Pedrorina.)

But I, El Gordito, have run ahead for once. Not many of our “guests” rode horses. But they must wait to watch before they were treated to empanadas and white wine or juice. No, not yerba maté, once our national drink. I always thought that curious about El Caudillo because of this folk culture emphasis of his. We gauchos mingled with them while they were refreshed. Then we led them off to a canopied grandstand area where they could sit on cowhide-covered benches and watch us perform.

We had twelve horse troops, each led by a bell horse. The gaucho ran his bell horse’s lead rope through a ring attached to the right side of his saddle. He had that rope in his hand all the time to direct the bell horse. The bell horse in turn directed her followers. The twelve groups paraded around the field. We had four specially trained “rogue” horses that gave their leaders a rough time for the benefit of the tourists and had to be “reined in.”

The first time The Miss Addie was allowed to lead a group, she brought them right up in front of the viewing stand. She dropped her lead rope, which we never did, and performed American rodeo tricks. Like hanging on to the saddle and holding herself out full-length first on one side of the horse and then the other. She had renamed her horse “Clabber.” Her bell horse lined up perfectly behind her facing the grandstand. The remaining ten horses grouped in fives after the bell horse. The show came to a standstill while the rest of us watched The Miss Addie right along with the tourists. Fortunately, El Caudillo was still away at the time. Somebody told him. I am sure it was Medrano. El Caudillo must have been impressed with how impressed the tourists were because he let her keep doing it. In fact, she told me he had encouraged her.

I do not know if they ever discussed her refusing to throw the boleadoras at the horses’ legs. It came to be that only he did so. As if to show that only El Caudillo could trip up the horses without harming them. Which was not always the case.

The main part of our presentation was the rings. I taught her these but tried to caution her. All action would stop while Medrano made a big show of moving, on horseback, down a bar suspended on poles and perpendicular to the spectators. He attached six small (a half-inch across) silver-colored wire rings. The best of the horsemen would spur their mounts full-tilt towards a ring. We gripped a slender wooden stick, about six inches long, between our teeth. At the last possible minute, we transferred it to a hand to drive through the suspended ring. When we were on target, the rings would come loose and remain on our sticks. Once past the targets, we would slow our horses. We turned them smartly around, trotted over to the grandstand, selected a mamacita from among the Anglos, gave her the ring, and demanded a kiss in tribute. Six of us were the stars of this part of the show. When El Caudillo was away, we never missed. When El Caudillo was present, he always participated in this event. All of us missed the target at least twice then. He was the clear champion. I explained all this carefully to The Miss Addie. She was as sharp-tongued on this subject as any mamacita in the movies. I suspected what was to happen.

That day, when the six of us and El Caudillo lined up before the spectators prior to the rings, The Miss Addie took up a place beside me. If El Caudillo noticed, he gave no indication. Eventually, everyone failed to hit the ring and dropped out but The Miss Addie and El Caudillo. They went at the rings six times. Six times each was successful. Finally, at a nod from El Caudillo, Medrano announced a tie. Both presented a single ring to a tourist. Only, The Miss Addie took out a pretty white lace handkerchief from her back pocket. She slid her ring through it. She dropped nicely from Clabber onto the spectators’ side of the fence and presented the ring-laced handkerchief to an old man in a wheelchair. She curtsied as she did so. The crowd clapped and yelled. El Caudillo’s own presentation was lost in the hubbub. I thought The Miss Addie had been very pretty. And very foolish.

. . .

The Miss Addie had the inquisitive nature of healthy youth. And she was driven by what her own Pachamama, The Beautiful Eleana, had told her. The Miss Addie was here on a mission. She was prodded to get on with it when Clabber contracted a disease completely unknown to El Caudillo’s veterinarian. The Miss Addie knew it immediately as skin cancer.

I was entirely trusted but only partially in her trust. For whatever reasons, The Miss Addie did not tell me all. I believe she knew I could close my eyes and learn some of her learnings.

I woke abruptly in the night to an image. The Miss Addie was sharing a maté gourd with the guard Medrano had posted at the casa of El Caudillo for the night. Though they drank from the same straw, my next image was of the guard slumped before the great door.
The Miss Addie was slipping through the rooms of El Caudillo’s house to the small beam of a penlight. We paused in the big room with the Martín collection of Señorita Alejandra. I wanted us to go faster. She seemed to feel my message of anxiety. Went quickly through the remaining rooms. Where could a secret room be?

We returned again to the massive game room. The Miss Addie did not look at the heads that looked at us but walked directly to the huge fireplace. Suddenly, I felt the feathered Cape of the Condor stir again in its icy cave on Mount Aconcagua. She felt it, too.

The andirons were three feet tall. Each was a condor’s head on an iron neck. With ruffs of alabaster, diamond eyes, rubied heads. The male, on the right, had a comb of rubies. The one on the left was female. The Miss Addie grasped the comb. A small door in the fireplace opened. She passed through. We were in a smaller game room. This one devoted-to the condor. “The shame” was what she said. And “Nunca más! Never again!” She passed back through the fireplace. She turned the comb. The entrance closed noiselessly.

But a noise started. A noise I had heard only in my dreams. It was the rage of the mighty condor. The Miss Addie heard. Had to hear it. But she went along unhesitatingly to the other andiron. When she had twisted its condor head by the ruff of its neck, the hearth rolled forward. There were steps down into a giant cellar.

It contained El Caudillo's hunting gear. The smell would not be masked by a thousand spices, orange petals, and toiletries of the elegantes in Buenos Aires. This was where the trophies of the Condor Room were prepared. Like they say the odor of the Saladero was. The huge slaughtering grounds outside B.A. where they prepared the beef for the frigoríficos, the meat freezing plants set up, like the railroads and the tannin industry in La Forestal, by the British. Where they made the charque, the sun-dried beef shipped to Brazil. A place of carrion upon carrion.

The sound came from a pair of condors in the middle of the cellar room in twin cages. Mighty cages they were, yet not large enough to permit the birds their wingspread. In her fast going to them, The Miss Addie knocked over—or did she push over?—an iron rack of blood-tipped taunting spears. She unlatched the cage of the first bird, a female, who waited until her mate was free before stepping through.

Then it seemed to me that the great condors sang together one long holding note of triumph. There fell complete silence, followed by the sounds of the end of the world. As the old Jesuits and our Catholic Fathers have described it. Iron grillwork melted from windows, though I knew there were no windows. The condors were flying for our sacred cave in the Andes. And The Miss Addie, in a white flowing dress, stood upon the back of the male condor. The Miss Addie, where she stood, laughed like the young girl she was into the cold, clean air.

They were in the cave, and the Miss Addie walked down from the condor’s giant back and dressed in the sacred Cape of the Condor. The condors used their beaks to pull its great head into place on her head. She was ready.

He came then. El Caudillo appeared suddenly. The mist drew back from him. Oh, he was angry. He lunged for the girl. She stepped away as if he were a bull unworthy. El Caudillo looked stunned. He opened his huge mouth and roared. But whether his roaring was for the release of his hatred and anger or for his own agony, I could not say. But twin serpents curled from the corners of his mouth. He could not close it. They came and came and came until it seemed that they would fill the cave and smother the condor pair and The Miss Addie. But those three watched. Let the serpent bodies pile gently about them. And when it was time, the male condor lifted a talon and placed it on the ring of serpents. And the serpents disappeared. El Caudillo stood there with his mouth frozen in a rictus grin.

The condors took him from the cave between them. Head in her beak. One leg in his. The Miss Addie stepped out onto the condors’ nesting ledge and looked into the sacred nest. The condors and their prey were not to be seen. She took off her robe and placed it over the single egg in the nest. And the egg came live again.

Did El Caudillo forget that the condor was not only a sacred bird, a creature of the greatest power, but a vulture, the largest bird of prey, cleaning the world of carrion?

We did not find the body of El Caudillo. Instead, every bell horse brought bones in her mouth until we had them all. The Miss Addie had me fetch a curandero from Buenos Aires. We took him first to the collection rooms of El Caudillo’s house and then to the cellar. He did what must be done for them all and then burned the bones of El Caudillo. While they were still smoldering, I helped The Miss Addie scatter them to the four winds.

When we returned, the bell horses, their charges behind them, came to greet us. It had been a long time since they had whinnied so innocently. Had let their ears ride in the wind or turn backwards.
Then we went into the barn, and Clabber was all healed. The Miss Addie was a child again in her delight. She told Clabber that Buttermilk would be healed, too, and that he would go with her to see Buttermilk all healed.

She looked at me then, standing nearby. She said that I would go with Clabber and her to see the healed Buttermilk as well. In the fullness of time, I, El Gordito, was to do this thing. I was very glad. I thought how I would love America. But I also thought how the eyes of The Young Miss Addie would be old forever.