To make his horror perfect, Caesar, hemmed about at the foot of a statue by his friends impatient knives, discovers among the faces and the blades the face of Marcus Junius Brutus, his ward, perhaps his very son- and so Caesar stops defending himself, and cries out Et Tu, Brute ? Shakespeare and Quevedo record that pathetic cry.
Fate is partial to repetitions, variations, symmetries. Nineteen centuries later, in the southern part of the province of Buenos Aires, a gaucho is set upon by other gauchos, as he falls he recognises a godson of his, and says to him in gentle remonstrance and slow surprise (these words must be heard, not read): Pero, Ische .He dies but he does not know that he has died so that a scene can be played out again.
The gaucho is set upon by other gauchos ,one of whom he recognizes as his godson. Pero Ische ? is a repeat of the et tu? of Caesar played out thousands of years earlier.
The irony is that he does not know that he has died so that a scene can be played out again.
