Encounter

People flick through the day's papers in the morning, either to escape the pestering of onlookers or to find something to talk about during the day. So, not surprisingly, no one remembers now - not even in their dreams - the incident that once got people talking about Uriarte and Duncan. We've experienced and forgotten a lot since that year. Both legends are now dead, and the bystanders who witnessed the events have sworn to keep their mouths shut. I, too, raised my hand and swore not to mention a single detail of the incident for nine to ten years. But word got out, and the more it spread, the worse it got.

What happened was this: That night, my cousin Rafina invited me to a bar in a country house owned by some friends of his. It was a long train ride, and it was like an endless time for me because everyone knows that children always feel that time passes very slowly. It was already dark when we walked through the gate of the villa. I thought the place was full of old, rough things: the smell of browned meat, the trees, the dogs, the wood for the fire, and the fires for people to sit around.

There were about a dozen visitors, all adults. I later learned that the oldest of them was only 30 years old. I soon found that they were talking about some things with great interest, such as all kinds of horses, good tailors, and motorcycles. ...... No one came to soothe my embarrassment, and no one paid any attention to me. A hired waiter was preparing the lamb slowly and carefully, which kept us in the big restaurant for a long time. The topic of good wine was debated back and forth again. My cousin sang two folk songs and recited a few poems. Coffee and Havana cigars were brought in and no one thought to go home. To hide my childish loneliness among the adults, I poured down two glasses of wine. Uliat loudly invited Duncan to play two-player poker. Someone objected, saying that that kind of play was too boring, and suggested a game for four people. Duncan agreed, but Uliat was tough and insisted that two people play. Why he was so stubborn, I didn't understand and didn't want to understand.

I slipped out, without anyone noticing. An old and cluttered house, both strange and dark (only the light was on in the large dining room), was as magical to a child as a foreign country is to a traveler. Step by step, I peered into those rooms. I remember a bullet room with a long corridor fitted with rectangular and diamond-shaped glass windows, a pair of rickety armchairs, and a window that, at a glance, told me that it was a summer house. I got lost in the darkness, and at some point, the owner of the villa, Acevedo, came up to me. I don't know if it was out of kindness or out of collector's vanity, but he led me to a display case. By the light, I could see that there was steelwork glittering. Here is a collection of swords used by warriors and warriors. He showed me a short sword with a U-shaped guard on the hilt. Suddenly, an angry shout interrupted him, and he hurriedly closed the display case and turned around to leave. I followed him.

The client was shouting that his opponent was trying to cheat him. The others were standing around watching. I remember that the tallest man in the group was Duncan, whose shoulders were a little droopy, but his physique was stout, his face was expressive, and his hair was so pale that it looked almost white. Uriarte is a cranky, irritable man with a dark complexion, a messy mustache, and a capricious look. Everyone was drunk. Uriarte's insults kept coming, at first harsh, then nastier and nastier. Duncan seemed to be tired of hearing it, he stood up and aimed a punch at Uliat. Uriarte fell to the ground, snarling that he could not stand such insults and wanted to fight with Duncan.

Duncan said no, and said as if to explain, "What a pity, I'm a little afraid of you."

Everyone laughed wildly.

Uriarte climbed to his feet and replied, "I'll fight you to the death, right now."

Someone - and this person deserves forgiveness for this - said that the weapons for the duel were readily available.

The man opened the glass display case. The client picked the most eye-catching short sword, the one with the U-shaped guard; Duncan, seemingly distracted, took a wooden-handled belt knife with a small tree carved into the back. Someone also said that Uliat could not have chosen a more appropriate short sword to make. His hand began to tremble, but no one was surprised; what was surprising was Duncan, whose hand began to tremble as well as Uliat's.

It was customary for duelists to duel in places they were not familiar with, so they went out. We, half for indulgence, half out of seriousness, also all walked out into the damp night fog. I did not drink strong wine, but I was also full of energy. I wished with all my heart that someone had been killed so that I could talk about it with others and never forget it. Perhaps the others who were there didn't think about it any more than I did. I also had the feeling that an overwhelming torrent was crashing down on us, overwhelming us. No one believed that Uriarte was in the least bit at fault; everyone was in a drunken rage and saw the event as a traditional rodeo.

We bustled through a grove of trees, leaving the cottage behind us. Uriarte and Duncan walked ahead, keeping an eye on each other. The others gathered around the edge of an open meadow. When they got there, Duncan stood still in the moonlight and said in a gentle but commanding tone, "This place seems quite suitable."

The two men stood in the middle of the meadow and forgot to do anything for a moment. A voice came: "Throw down your weapons and fight with your hands!"

But the two men were already fighting. They fought clumsily at first, almost as if they were afraid of hurting each other. They looked only at the backs of their swords at first, but then the two men locked eyes. Uliat's anger had disappeared; Duncan, too, no longer had that look of disbelief. The threat of danger had changed them somewhat, and now they were engaged in a duel between two men, not a boy's child's play. I can imagine that this duel will be a real sword melee. Nevertheless, I could watch it, or as long as I could, although it was no different from playing a game of chess. What I saw at the time is, of course, a bit different and fuzzy now that I recall it after so many years. I don't know how long the duel went on, some things can't be measured by ordinary time scales.

They were not wearing cloaks, which could have been used as shields if they had been wearing them, and they were using their elbows to parry each of the other's hard slashes. Their sleeves quickly turned into strips and were stained red with blood. I think everyone must have thought wrong at first and thought they didn't know how to defend themselves at all. I noticed at once that they each had their way of doing things. They had different weapons, and to overcome their shortcomings in weapons, Duncan tried to close in on each other; Uriarte stepped back to keep his distance, and then give each other a blow from below. At this point, the man who had asked everyone to open the display case shouted again: "They're going to kill each other! Stop them!"

However, no one dared to come forward to stop them. Uriarte had lost his composure, and Duncan was pressing on. Now, they were almost in a close fight. Uliat's short sword was aimed at Duncan's face. Suddenly, the sword seemed to be shortened, and the sword had already pierced the tall man's chest. Duncan collapsed on the grass, and at the same time, he muttered under his breath, "How strange, almost like in a dream."

He didn't close his eyes, but he didn't move either, and I had seen it, one man killing another.

Uliat bent over the corpse, sobbing loudly and begging for forgiveness. What he had just done was not his intention. I realized then that he did not admit his guilt, but only that he was uncontrollably missing the mark.

I didn't want to see any more. Everything I had hoped to see, now that it had all happened, made me tremble. Rafina told me later that it took them a lot of effort to pull out the short sword. The people also set up a temporary council. They decided to lie as little as possible and only proclaimed the duel with the saber as having been fought with a longsword. Four people also volunteered to act as second-hand material hearers.

At the table where the two duelists had played, a deck of English cards and a pile of bills lay in disarray, and no one wanted to look at it or touch it.

By the next year, I often wanted to disclose the story to a friend, but I always felt that it was better to keep it a secret than to tell it. However, one day, around 1929, during a chance conversation, I suddenly changed my mind and broke the long-standing silence. Retired Sheriff Don José Oliver was telling someone about the people in the wilderness area along the river near Retiro. He said that those people are very good at making waist knives. He added that if they came out to kill their people, the remnants of these primitive tribes have no respect for the rules of the tournament. He also said that the short sword show that people see on stage now is all imaginary because short sword fighting has long been extinct. I said, "I have seen it once with my own eyes. So I told him everything that had happened almost 20 years ago.

He listened to me with that professional attention and then asked, "Are you sure that Uliat and what's-his-name never touched a weapon like a belt knife or a short sword in the past? Maybe they had picked up such things near their respective fathers' ranches."

"I don't think so." I replied, "Those who were there that night knew each other very well, and I can say to you that everyone was stunned when they saw the various actions of the two of them dueling."

Olafur maintained his unmasked look and seemed to be thinking hard: "A weapon with a U-shaped handguard above the hilt. This type of weapon is very well known - the kind Juan Almánd used."

Something seemed to have awakened in my memory. Olafur continued, "You talked again about the kind of wooden-handled belt knife with the little tree markings on it. There are thousands of these weapons, but there is one ......"

He was silent for a moment, then said, "Mr. Acevedo had property around the province of Pugmino, and another famous bad guy had property there - his name was Juan Almanza. This was about 100 years ago. He was 14 years old at the time, and he used one of these belt knives when he killed his first man. After that, it was a godsend that he kept using that belt knife. Amanda and Ahmad hated each other because people tended to mistake them for each other, so the two men were cynical of each other. They both ran around and looked for each other for a long time, but never met. Amanda was later assassinated with a pistol at a tournament, I don't know which one, taking advantage of the chaos. Allard, I think, probably died in a hospital bed in Las Flores."

He said no more. We both parted with our conclusions.

There were about nine, or maybe ten, people present at that duel. All of those people are now dead except me, and those swift stabs and that corpse lying under the night sky are what I saw with my own eyes. Yet most likely, what we witnessed then was the end of another story, a much older story. I wondered, was this Uriarte killing Duncan, or were those two weapons fighting each other through some uncanny pathway that had nothing to do with people? I remembered that as soon as Uriarte held the short sword, his hand trembled badly, and Duncan's hand trembled just as much. It seems that the knife and sword suddenly awakened after years of slumbering side by side in the display case. The two prairie shepherds who had used them had been reduced to ashes, but the knife and sword - the knife and sword, not the man, the man is only the tool of the sword - but still know how to fight. What a fight they had that night!

People go and things stay. Who knows, whether the swords will meet again; who knows, whether the story ends here?