Original subtitles

Well.

Well,

that’s it.

Now comes "Une Partie de Campagne"

then the Captives...

and that’s it.

It’s over.

It’s over.

Oh, one thing. In episode five, the girls don’t appear.

They come back in the one with the Captives.

The truth is that it’s a bit strange,

but well,

at the time we thought it was interesting.

Well, I’m off now.

Well, it’s been a pleasure to have had you with us for...

Well, all those hours...

That.

Well,

see you around,

or as we say in Spanish,

"Chau".

... we spent a long while watching her.

She didn’t look like anything we had seen before.

The little mestizo girl breathes heavily,

as if she were looking at the devil.

The Girl’s mother looked at me in terror:

What was that? Where did that strange machine

resembling a giant metallic insect come from?

Never again, in all those years following this

adventure, did I come across anything like that.

Finally, the machine

seemed to move. Slowly,

some of the chimneys started

to release a dark, dense steam.

Then came a long, opaque buzz,

like that of a train engine.

In a few minutes,

the machine was covered in smoke,

until the chimneys, the rigging

and its complex hoist system disappeared.

When the smoke cleared,

the machine was no longer there.

My comrades and I stayed

for a long while in silence.

Finally, the creole one, as if she were a croag...

(illegible) encouraged us to continue.

Come on – she said – I don’t like these mountains.

I’d like to reach the river before sunset.

Around six in the evening, we stopped for lunch.

The mestizo girl and her mother said

it was a sacred place, a sort of sanctuary.

It reminded me of the megalithic monuments

I had seen in my childhood,

on the coast of Cornwall, in the south.

We decided to spend the night right there.

The mestizo girl’s mother kept a fretful face,

with concern and alarm. That night, I barely slept.

The girl’s mother didn’t either.

She kept that vigilant attitude during the whole night,

alert to the smallest whisper,

hearing things none of us could even perceive.

No doubt her ear had adapted to silence

in the countless nights spent in that solitude,

waiting, fearing the arrival of the savages.

Finally, while the other ones were sleeping, she told me in a whisper:

“I hear the water: the river is not far”.

At around midday, the river finally appeared.

A remarkable episode took place then:

As soon as we crossed,

as if it was a welcoming committee,

two, three, four horses appeared.

They came to receive us, friendly,

and we couldn’t help

but regard them as a good omen.

They walked alongside,

silent, for a long while.

– It’s over – told me the young creole – We have crossed. We are saved.

It’s over.

We walked for one or two hours.

A while later, we found a pond and we bathed.

The little creole didn’t want to, shy,

as if she feared being naked in front of us.

Finally, joy overcame fear,

and the four of us swam together, for a long while.

At sunset we reached the last hill.

In front of us appeared the immense flatland,

the first villages, the cultivated fields, the known world.

Behind us, the mountains, and behind them, the terrible Desert.

The time had come to say good-bye.

Mother and daughter continued eastward together,

towards the Headquarters.

I saw them walk away like two small white dots.

What may have become of them and their sad lives?

And those little ones in their wombs, daughters to the same father?

One of the many stories we’ll keep seeing for years

to come in these cruel lands.

The creole one seemed terrified.

She said she would try to reach the Pergamino,

where – according to her – she still had family left.

I heard that some years later she went back to the Desert,

this time out of her own will.

I stayed for a long while staring at the horizon.

A strange melancholy started to grow and,

though I tried to scare it away,

it remained there,

like a storm cloud, for months.

Ten years I had spent

in the Desert, among savages,

far from all the things

I loved and believed in.

"You never forget the Desert”,

one of the old ladies had told me,

back in the camp site,

during the first days of my captivity.

Today, so many years later, already old,

next to my friend the fire, I understand

that poor woman was right.

After a while, I also left.

Fragments from “Memoirs of an Englishwoman taken prisoner

in the South American flatlands” by Sarah S. Evans, rural teacher.

Thomas Stone & Co. Exter, United Kingdom, 1900.