The Clouds. Juan José Saer
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for me, for which, as will be addressed later on, I am also in debt to Dr. Weiss, and I hope that my instructor, forgiving the egoism in supposing to present myself as the protagonist of my tale, will be good enough to consider that I relate what was for me the most singular adventure of my life.)
The patients we had to transfer from the city of Santa Fé, located on the banks of the great river across from my birthplace and some hundred leagues north of Las Tres Acacias, were people disturbed in their innermost selves by the ravages of insanity and required special care; the voyage across the desert plain was an aggravation to their conditions, but their derangement was at the same time itself disruptive, and, by its singular presence, helped break the balance of the old, unwritten laws of the desert. Patients, Indians, women of ill repute, gauchos, soldiers, and even animals, domestic and otherwise—we had to live together for many days in the desert which, though already hostile by definition, saw its hostility increase as unforeseen calamities amassed.
But it is better to start from the beginning. For the most part in the time of the Viceroyalty, when a family wished to place one of its members in Casa de Salud, the transfer of the patient took place independently, and the necessary agreements were carried out by messenger: Over a couple of months, all the details were arranged, and the patient was delivered to us, so to speak, at the door of our establishment, which, once crossed, left him in our hands and as our full responsibility. Such was the unbending rule that governed their hospitalization. Early in 1804, however, four simultaneous requests for admission came to us from different regions, and after laborious negotiations, less of a financial than a practical nature, we consented to gather the patients in the city where I, as Dr. Weiss had decided, would go to fetch them, as said city lay approximately halfway between the places those patients came from and Las Tres Acacias. No expense was too great and no effort was spared when one sought to rid oneself of a madman, as it is difficult to find anything in the world that can be more of a bother, and so with the combined forces of the four families, one of which was in fact a religious community, it was possible to organize a mobile hospital of which I would be a sort of director for the duration of the trip through the desert. (A relative “desert,” moreover, for a series of outposts was placed every ten to fifteen leagues or so, and though miserable at best, they alleviated the distance somewhat. Unfortunately, circumstances would deprive us of them.)
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