In the fort of Buenos Aires, the new viceroy, Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros, readies cannons and boarding axes, no doubt believing himself still the vice-admiral of the Invincible Armada heading for the final disaster of Trafalgar. After the fort was bastilled…(pages missing).
Here in Asunción the royalist acolytes, the Porteños disguised as Bourbonarians, Spaniards, Porteñistas prowl round the deafness of Governor Velazco. Steal into his ear trumpet. Come out through the other ear prophesying disaster. The first English invasion of Buenos Aires and the flight of Sobremonte, the viceroy, bring on a leakage of the brain that half closes his left eye. The second one, with the naming of Liniers the Frenchy as interim viceroy, makes the corners of his mouth go rigid. The captain of militias said to be my father transports barrels of wasp honey, tons of royal jelly on gun carriages to the residence of the half-deaf and half-mute governor to lubricate his larynx. Then there’s the substance that the Indians of Xexuí extract from cedar, the resin of the Sacred-Tree-of-the-Word. But none of all this does any good. The aphonic governor keeps constantly chewing and swallowing these materials, which come winding out his mouth in fancy flounces and furbelows of every color as the servants watch.
The viceroy sending urgent dispatches from Buenos Aires. What’s going on there? Have you all been struck dumb? Or have the Comuneros come back? The scribes waiting in the governor’s study, trousers flies bulging, pens at the ready. Your father, one of those faithless-scribes, used to come to tell me the tangled plot of all the intrigues that were woven in this very place back in those days.
That morning Governor Bernardo de Velazco y Huidrobo, in an access of rage, threw out all the healers, friars, desempayenadores* that his nephew brought to the palace in a steady procession. He dashed out into the courtyard. He spent the entire morning there on all fours, eating grass, between the gray ass and the cow of the Manger, in the place where the governor traditionally had Nativities staged au naturel. Following alongside his master, the governor’s dog Hero also pulled up weeds, cropped the grass, snapped off flowers in the flowerbeds with his teeth, in that delirium which for both was a battle against the spirits of evil. The horde of relations, servants, functionaries cautiously stole back to watch the governor graze, their eyes brimming with tears. Gorged with grass, he finally rises to his feet. He goes over to the cistern. He leans over the rim. Hero abandons his florid battle. He leaps upon the governor and holds him back by the skirts of his heavy frock coat, finally tearing it off him altogether. He returns to the attack. He pulls on the seat of his breeches, baring Don Bernardo’s buttocks. He leans farther and farther over the rim. My father thought, Sire, that the governor was no doubt praying for help to the soul of the Theatine who had died in the tank, many long years before, when this was still the House of the Spiritual Exercises of the Jesuits. Your father was misinformed. It was not the Theatines who erected this building. It was Governor Morphi, known as The Earless. The barber had cut off one of his ears with his razor. I beg your pardon, your mercy, the barber is said to have said to the governor. You had a fly on your ear, Most Exc. Sire. It’s gone now.
The building as well was left without ears. Power of the flies. Through the hands of a barber they lop off the false handle of a governor’s head. They reduce an unfinished building to brand-new ruins. Hey, Patiño, remove that fly that’s fallen into the inkwell. Not with your fingers, you animal! With the tip of your pen. The way you do when you ream out your nasal fossae. Take it easy! Without spattering the papers. Done, Sire; although I take the liberty of telling you that there was no fly in the inkwell. Don’t argue about truths you aren’t able to see. There’s always one buzzing round my ear. And then it turns up drowned in the inkwell.
The construction of the building, the roof in place, the window and door frames, walls three varas above the ground, continued in the days of the governor Pedro Melo de Portugal, who inaugurated it by pompously naming it Melody Palace, like the other melodious towns founded under his governorship on the left bank of the river. Outposts against sneak attacks by the Indians of the Chaco.
As a little boy, I used to steal into the excavation sites where they were throwing up earthen embankments against the torrents of rain, against surprise raids. I didn’t yet know that I was going to enter this House and dwell in it forever. Orders and counterorders went round and round in my child’s mind. I would give the workers instructions. Even the construction foreman. Extend that ditch to the cliff edge. Raise that wall, bring that one a little farther in. Dig the foundations deeper. And how about filling the trenches with salt instead of sand? They appeared to pay heed to my advice, for they complied with the orders that silently issued forth from me. The tips of the picks, of the shovels, of the hoes brought to light vessels, utensils, coffers, pieces of armor, bits of bone. One morning the construction foreman, Cantalicio Cristaldo, the father of our drum major, unearthed a skull. Run off home, you son of a she-devil!, I kept insisting. Asking without asking. Mute presence. Arms crossed. Heedless of the flying dirt, the shovelfuls of earth of the diggers who were burying me little by little. Finally the skull sailed over the mounds. I caught it on the fly and put it under my altar boy’s hood. Patch of red taking off into the darkness. The skull, the one that’s right here. The whole earth inside of it. Impossible for there to have been room for it in the earth. A world within the world! I ran breathlessly, carrying it under my arm. Each heartbeat became two beats. Slow down a bit, don’t squeeze me so!, the skull complained. How did you come to be buried here? Against my will, my boy; you may be sure of that. Here in the trenches of Government House, I mean. One is always buried somewhere after one is dead. I assure you one isn’t even aware of it. What did the one who carried you on his shoulders die of? Of being born of his mother, my boy. What sort of death, I’m asking. A natural death; how else? Do you know of any other sort of death? They beheaded me because I tried to do the governor in with a shot from my blunderbuss. All because I didn’t follow my mother’s advice. Don’t cross the sea, my boy. Don’t go to the Conquest. Gold fever is dangerous. The day I left, with glassy eyes, she said to me: When you’re in bed and hear dogs barking in the countryside, hide under the coverlet. Don’t take what they’re doing lightly. Mother, I said to her as I kissed her goodbye, there are no dogs there and no coverlets. There will be, my son, there will be. Desire exists everywhere, it barks everywhere, covers everything. And so you are now taking me under your arm to resurrection after insurrection. No, to a cave, I said to it. We were crossing the Indian cemetery of the Cathedral. What, my altar lad, you’re going to bury me in sacred ground now after so many centuries? There’s no need for that; don’t play tricks on our Holy Mother the Church. Shhh. I muffled its voice beneath the hood. Two gravediggers were digging a grave. Is that hole for me?, he murmured again. Did you take me out of one just to put me in another? Don’t worry, it’s not for you; it’s for a very important personage they hanged at dawn this morning. You see, my son? The sad thing about it is that in this world the powerful have the ability to hang or be hanged as they choose. Let me have a peek at the work those rustics are doing. I stopped and opened my smock a little just to please him. They’re digging, he said. What’s certain is that there are no gentlemen of more ancient lineage than gardeners, ditchers, grave-makers; in other words, those who engage in Adam’s occupation. Was Adam a gentleman?, I asked jokingly. He was the first that ever bore arms, the skull answered in a clown’s voice. What do you mean? He was never armed. He neither inherited arms nor bought them! What’s that you’re saying? An altar boy and a heretic? Haven’t you read Holy Scripture? It says somewhere: Adam delved. How could he have delved if he didn’t have arms? I’m going to put another riddle to you: Who is it builds more solidly than the stonemason? The gallows-maker. For a kid like you, that’s not a bad answer. But if you’re ever asked the question again, say: a grave-maker. The houses that he makes last till Doomsday.
Aren’t you copying down what I’m dictating
to you? I’m enjoying so much hearing you tell this droll story of the talking skull, Sire. I’ve never heard a more amusing one in my life! I’ll copy the text about the gravediggers later, Sire; it’s almost the same, word for word, as what happened in the one Juan Robertson translated in his English classes. Don’t copy what’s told by others; copy what I tell myself through others. Facts can’t be recounted; much less twice over, and far less still by different persons. I’ve already drummed that thoroughly into your head. What happens is that your wretched memory remembers the words and forgets what’s behind them.
* * *
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For months I washed the oxiflowered skull in a cave by the river. The water turned redder still. It overflowed its banks in the flood of the year ’70 which nearly carried off the melodious palace of Don Melo. When I came to occupy this house on receiving the Perpetual Dictatorship, I did it over, completed it. Cleaned the vermin out of it. Reconstructed it, embellished it, dignified it, as befits the seat that is to house a head of government elected by the people for life. I enlarged its dependencies and had them arranged differently, so that the principal departments of the State would be located within Government House. I had the old forked beams of urundey wood replaced with squared stone pillars. The overhanging roofs of the porches extended, and carved wooden benches placed beneath them; a seat and place that since then has been filled each morning with the multitude of functionaries, officials, couriers, soldiers, musicians, sailors, stonemasons, carters, farm laborers, free peasants, craftsmen, smiths, tailors, silversmiths, cobblers, shipwrights, overseers of patrial ranches and farms, Indian corregidors of villages bearing their staffs of office, freed black slaves, chiefs of the twelve tribes, washerwomen, seamstresses. The hordes of people who come all the way here to have audience with me. Each one assumes his rightful place in the presence of The Supreme, who grants no one precedence or special privilege.
* * *
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The last time I had Government House redone was when I installed the meteor in my study. It refused to go through the door. One cannot expect good manners of a chance-stone from the moment it appears on the scene. It was necessary to knock out two pillars, one wall panel. Finally the aerolith took its place in the corner. Not willingly. Vanquished, a prisoner, chained to my chair. Year 1819. The great sedition was being hatched.
I filled in the cistern. If the Theatine father, the governor’s chaplain or whoever it was, really threw himself into it, this must have happened in the days when the Jesuits were being cleared out of the country in 1767, so as to escape the decree that struck the fathers of the Company like a bolt of lightning, not giving them time to say either Jesus or Amen.
The mistake regarding the origin of the House of Governors as a House of Spiritual Exercises arose from the fact that the edifice was constructed with materials that were listed in the general inventory of goods belonging to those expelled, under the rubric of Royal Confiscation. So as you see, Patiño, in those days it was kings who collected a ransom from their victims. Terrorists by Divine Right.
The governors Carlos Morphi, called the Irishman, the Infamous, and also the Earless on account of the fly; and then Agustín de Pinedo; and then Pedro Melo de Portugal; all of them occupied it in that belief, even though while they were in it they did not devote themselves exclusively to spiritual exercises for the salvation of their souls.
Cause of the misapprehension: the cistern. Cretins! Nobody throws himself into a cistern in order to come out on the other side of the earth. I ordered the rim to be transported to the bishop’s residence. Its iron ornament in the form of a miter, intended to hold up the pulley, delighted the bishop. But that morning Governor Velazco was still there. Leaning over the rim. His head stuck in the Mudejar arch, in place of the pulley. Lamentations, prayers of those contemplating the scene, hoping in the bottom of their hearts that the governor would throw himself to the bottom of the cistern and be done with it. Your father told me that he heard the adviser Pedro de Somellera y Alacántara mutter: Giddap there, Deaf Nell! Throw yourself into the well before it’s too late!
Clutching his belly, the governor made the sign of the cross with his head. Hero had his paws around him from behind. Don Bernardo opened his mouth, trying his best to come out with the shout that wouldn’t come out. What came was the big breakfast he’d eaten. The hoarse Aves, Salves, murmurs suddenly ceased. The curious vanished into the woodwork. Calmed at last, the governor returned to his study. He began to dictate a dispatch to the viceroy.
Certain malicious lies are circulating which cloud the minds of the stupid populace, so as to incline it to credulity and incite it to disobedience; rumors so absurd that they cannot make the slightest impression upon rational minds, whereas they fatally excite the bestial plebs, so that for the moment it is not possible to disabuse them. The patricians and my faithful vassals support me, are wholeheartedly behind our cause. Though I have been and shall be most zealous in my efforts to inquire into anything that may lead to the discovery of the instigator or instigators of such agitations—perhaps by turning up a letter or by virtue of some other expedient at which my aides are most expert, in particular my adviser, the Porteño Pedro de Somellera—as yet I have succeeded only in hearing stories that are widespread among the common folk, who are incapable of explaining where or how they have come by them.
Your father made a fair copy of this text that came close to braying or mooing, since that was all that Don Bernardo’s voice could come out with. That afternoon he summoned me. Once we were alone in his study, he put his ear trumpet to my ear. The cavernous murmur spoke to me of those absurd rumors going the rounds among the plebs. An immense, powerful beast which must be tamed at all costs, Velazco said, even if it proves necessary to give them a taste of the cattle prod. Your uncle, Brother Mariano, very rightly advises me that it is dangerous to tell the people that the laws are not just, because it obeys them in the belief that they are just. It is necessary to tell the people that they are to be obeyed as one obeys one’s superiors. Not only because they are just, but because they are superior. That is how all sedition may be averted. If it can be made to understand that, the bestial plebeity calms down, bows its head beneath the yoke. It does not matter that this is not just; it is the very definition of justice.
The power of those who govern, your uncle wisely assures me, is founded on ignorance, on the tameness and meekness of the people. Power has weakness as its foundation. This foundation is firm because its greatest security lies in the weakness of the people. Brother Mariano Ignacio, my esteemed Magistrate of the First Vote, is more than right. Consider an example, Your Grace, the governor-intendant went on trumpeting: the custom of seeing a government official accompanied by guards, drummers, officers, arms and other objects inspiring respect and fear causes his face, even if one sees it all alone, without any such escort, to inspire fear and respect in his subjects, because thought never separates his image from the cortege that ordinarily accompanies him. Our magistrates are thoroughly familiar with this mystery. All the pomp with which they surround themselves, the robes they wear, are most necessary to them; without them, their authority would be reduced to very nearly nothing. If doctors did not fill their satchels with potions and unguents, if priests did not wear cassocks, square bonnets, and long mantles, they would not have been able to delude everyone; in like manner, military officers with their dazzling uniforms, their gold braid, their dress swords, their spurs and gold buckles. Warriors shed their disguises only when they are really going off to war, bearing their arms. Fancy trappings are of no use on the battlefield. That is why our kings have not sought august adornments, but have instead surrounded themselves with guards and great ostentation. The phantom armies, the drummers who precede their cortgege, the legions that surround them make the most resolute cloaked-and-cowled conspirators tremble. It would take a very subtle mind to regard the Grand Turk guarded in his superb seraglio by forty thousand janiss
aries as a mere ordinary mortal. There is no doubt that when we see a barrister such as Yr. Grace in his biretta and gown, we immediately have a lofty idea of his person. Nonetheless, when I held the office of governor of Misiones, I went about all alone, without an escort, without guards. That is, I grant you, territory trod before me by the sons of Loyola, who in a hundred years managed to make of the natives a perfectly domesticated species. No José Gabriel Cóndor Kanki is going to emerge from among them. And if another Tupac Amaru were to rise up in rebellion in these lands, he would be overthrown and put to death once again, as happened in their own time to the rebel José de Antequera, the rebellious Inca, the rebels of all times and places.
Here in Asunción I took it as my rule of justice to follow tradition, with the greatest clemency possible. That is why they love and respect me. Indulgence is inherent in me. If I have not always found what is just, I at least slake my thirst in the fountain of a moderate justice. Don’t you believe so, Yr. Worship? The ear-trumpet took on the form of a question mark before my eyes. I remained silent. The ear-trumpet buzzed again in Don Bernardo’s mouth:
I the Supreme Page 12
