1000 figures of a sentry in his box, which he enters and leaves by means of a spring, the figures 3 inches tall.
600 little cannons 3 1/2 inches long, on gun carriages.
12000 rifles with barrels 12 1/2 inches long, painted in different colors.
100 bugles painted in different colors, 13 inches long.
20 figurines of women 6 1/2 inches tall, dressed in white and playing guitars, each standing on top of a box containing the spring.
20 strolling actors with their women partners, waltzing in a ring placed on a box with the spring inside, 5 inches tall.
20 figures of women sitting on chairs playing the piano, 9 inches tall, placed on top of boxes containing the spring.
40 young girls squatting on their heels on boxes 3 inches tall, each of them feeding two baby birds.
30 young girls 3 inches tall on boxes with a spring training their puppies.
30 young girls 3 inches tall on boxes with a spring, each one feeding one baby bird.
400 figures of women 4 inches tall, dressed in colors, with their children in their arms, standing on boxes containing the spring to make them walk.
50 young girls seated on bellows, with their little birds on their skirts, 2 1/2 inches tall.
120 women 6 inches tall holding their little ones by the hand with a spring.
200 women dressed as field hands 9 1/2 inches tall.
7 friars 3 1/2 inches tall, standing on bellows (barefooted).
4 old men measuring 3 1/2 inches, each one preceded by a she-mule loaded with fruit, on boxes with a spring.
80 children sitting in a hammock.
77 Guaikurús on horseback, each one with lances 3 1/2 inches high.
20 colored jaguars 3 1/2 inches high and 7 1/2 long, placed on bellows.
20 cats 2 1/2 inches tall on bellows.
20 baby rabbits on bellows.
20 foxes with a rooster on top of each of them, placed on boxes with springs 9 inches long.
60 wooden noisemakers 3 inches long, 1 1/2 wide.
*1 End of last verse of Horace’s Book III, Ode ii: “Punishment on limping feet.”
*2 Bastos: padding.
(In the private notebook)
I pick up the mummy-flower of amaranth once again from among the papers. I rub it on my chest. Once again the faint fetor arises from its depths; an odor, more like a sound than an odor. Magnetic irradiation that communicates its waves directly to the brain. Feeble current that has been there since BEFORE. Fossil-aroma in appearance only. Nebula outside of time, of space, propagating itself at a fantastic speed in several simultaneous, parallel times and spaces. Convergent-divergent ones. Objects do not possess the aspects that we find in them. I hear with my entire body what the waves are whispering electrically. Accumulated radiations vibrate in the amaranth-tympanum. The screen of memory turns around backwards, projecting infinite instants in reverse. Scenes, things, events, superimposed without dissolving one into the other. Projected sharply. Momentum. Luminous wave. Continuous. Constant. One need only take shelter behind a mirror to look without being destroyed. Although the shock of this infinitesimal ray of energy, more terrible than that of ten thousand suns, might shatter the world of the mirror to bits. The mirror of the world.
* * *
—
The sun’s rays beat down on the little two-master in which we are sailing toward Cordoba. The river flowing back to its sources. Not a breath of a breeze. The fore-and-aft sail hangs limp from the gaff. The water stinks of the slime of sun-baked banks. Gleaming amid the reflections. I can clearly make out each one of these reflections. I see what is going to happen in the next instant or a century later. The boat moves through a floating field of victoria-regias. The round black silk buttons suck in the light, breathing out a smell of funeral wreaths. I pick one of these buds. I open the warm ball. Inside the polished, ivorine sphere, I discover what I am looking for. Round mirror of cold bluish-gray dots, blinking in the center of silky lashes blacker than a raven’s wings. As darkness descends, the buds sink beneath the surface to sleep underwater. They float back to the top of the water at dawn, but even beneath the noon light, as at this moment, their plumage remains nocturnal. Complete innocence. I can catch hold of time, begin over again. I choose at random one of those instants of my childhood that unfold before my closed eyes. I am still deep within nature. After erasing the last word from the blackboard, my hand has not yet arrived at writing. My child’s mind takes the form of things. I seek my oracles in the signs of smoke, fire, water, wind. The swirls of dust blow their mathematical powder in my eyes. The baculus makes it way along alone, very slowly. The jaculus shoots through the air, swifter than an arrow. I go row-row-rowing in my boat. I consult here and there those natural nests where what-is-not is nesting. Prognostications. Prophecies. I make water on the muddy water. The trembling of the little waves is yet another source of predictions that have already come true. When events, the most trivial of occurrences, do not happen as one has seen that they will, it is not that the things-that-are-signs have been wrong. It is the reading that one makes of these prophecies that is mistaken. It is necessary to reread, to correct every last hair of error. Only thus, at long last, when one no longer even expects it, does the keen blade suddenly appear, and, gliding along it, behind the last drop of sweat, a first drop of truth. The only one who could say this without lying would be the last man. But who is to know who that final man is if humanity itself has no end? And if this is how it is, couldn’t it be that there is no humanity as yet? Will it ever exist? Will it never again exist? What an inhuman humanity our poor humanity is if it hasn’t even begun yet!
Why is it you want to hang up your drum, Efigenio Cristaldo? I’m old, Your Excellency. I don’t have the strength it takes to get the sound out of the hide that’s needed for a Proclamation, a Decree, an Order, an Edict. Especially in the escort of your Excellency. You know I no longer go out. Well, Supreme Sire, that may be why I can’t get the sound to come out either. I’m older than you are and I’ll go on beating the drum for the Government, whether or not the sound comes out. What’s most audible isn’t what’s heard the best, Efigenio. I’ll go on beating as long as there’s a pulse of life left in me. Your life will be a long one, without a second, Most Excellent Sire. No one can replace Your Grace, whereas I can be replaced by any of those young thumpers that I myself taught. I take the liberty of recommending most particularly the trumpeter Sixto Brítez, who comes from the Cerro Ñanduá in Jaguarón. He’s the best horn in the Escort Battalion, but his forte is the drum. He was born to be a drummer, Supreme Sire, and there’s nobody better. He knows how to fill his belly, his chest with wind, and beat out any drumroll you can think of. It can be heard for a league and more away, when there’s no wind. Above all after a big blowout in the mess hall when he’s gotten filled up on bean stew and eaten an entire calf’s head all by himself. I don’t need any recommendation from you, Efigenio, especially one for that notorious glutton, who has another vice as well: putting his hand in his trousers fly when he’s on parade so as to enjoy sniffing the sticky stink on his fingers as he marches along. What does he mean by stealthily whiffing his prepucial effluvia? What does he mean by doodling with his fife as he plays the trumpet? He’s already earned himself any number of whacks for that nasty habit. A special pair of trousers, with no fly, was made for him. It now has all the inside seams of the pockets ripped out. It’s lucky for him that he’s going to be a good second lieutenant in the war against the Triple Alliance. A future hero may be forgiven certain present vices.
Policarpo Patiño worked here among these papers till his last day, copying his own death sentence. Your father, a master mason, worked stone till the last day of his old age. It was his calling, Excellency, as yours is to be Supreme Governor. Everyone is born for a different calling, Sire. If that’s so, isn’t yours playing the drum? A person never kn
ows, Excellency. So you want to give up on the job now? Maybe you too think I’m the Defunct Supreme. I’ve never thought that and I never will, Excellency! I merely allowed myself to ask Your Grace to relieve me of the duty I can no longer fulfill, because I’m old and because the drum is getting farther and farther away from me. In our brief relations with existence everything depends upon our having more or less kept up the rhythm, Efigenio. Look at this, Supreme Sire. What is it? The callus the drum has formed on me as it rested on my chest. As big as the hump of a zebu, as hard as a rock. It takes lots of whacking, with very long sticks, Sire, and even so the sound that comes out is very weak. All the sound that didn’t come out must be buried in that bump. You’ve been humping along too long on the job, Efigenio. I see you’ve gotten hunchbacked. So you too have your stone to bear, eh? Well then, what occupation do you think would suit you now? What I’ve wanted very much to be ever since I was a little boy is a schoolmaster, Sire. And you’ve waited thirty years to tell me so? I would have waited even longer, Excellency, if I’d been able to go on serving as a drummer without the inconvenience of this hump that’s appeared on my chest, besides the one I’m carrying around on my back. In the petition that you’ve presented you say you want to go back to work as a farmer and grow giant water lilies in Lake Ypoá. That’s also true, Sire. But the office I was born for is that of schoolmaster. You didn’t ask for my good offices for that in your petition. I didn’t have the courage, Most Excellent Sire, to propose myself for a charge as high as that of schoolmaster, even though the two things to my mind are the one and only reason for which I was brought into the world. I say this without meaning to belittle in the slightest the honor of having served under the direct orders of your Excellency. I have taught the little Indian musicians here; but the only thing they need to learn are the strokes of the first letters. All the rest, which is the part that’s most important, they already know by the time they come here from the wilds where they were born. Enough! You are relieved of your post as drummer which you held on sufferance for thirty years. Sufficient unto the day the sufferance thereof. Go off to your aquatic flowers. Give my most affectionate best wishes to those buds that float back to the surface at the break of dawn with a very soft sound not to be found among the seven notes of the scale. Look at those flowers with my eyes, if you can. Touch them with my hands, if you can. You will see that the sieve of those velvety floating wheels gathers in many clouds. Moses would have liked to be born in one of those little baskets. Take that tricorne hanging on the hat rack with you. Put it on your head. Come on. Put it on! Pick up that petrified flower that’s on the table, there next to the skull. Put it underneath the tricorne. Higher. Right next to your scalp. There, there. Press down harder. Antenna the equal of that of blind insects. In it you will hear the voice that goes on and on. The bit of coal that one is oneself is a little live ember of the whole. Uuu, ah. What a long time has gone by, or else none at all! Where are you, Efigenio? Can you hear me? Not very well, Excellency! Your voice sounds as though it were coming from underground! Not from underground but from inside a can of noodles! Wheeeere aaaaare yoooouuuuu? Here in the lake, amid the green sieves with their black silk buds! You don’t seem to be in sound health either, Efigenio. Haven’t things been going well with you of late? Living my lot, fighting every step of the way, Sire! I can’t complain! Children soon grow old! Flowers too! There isn’t time for a body to notice anything. I so attest and go on my way!
Communication with the ex-drummer is interrupted. Tin is not a good conductor. You are old. I am Old. The Old Ones were. The Old Ones are. Sounds are not. The Old Ones will be. Not in the spaces or the time that we know but in the time, in the unknown spaces that circulate amid the known. Their hands grip the throats of the living. But they do not see them. They cannot see them. They cannot see them yet. (Unknown hand): You can only spy on them in the dark…(torn, burned).
…wait patiently because they will reign here again. They are the Old Ones because they are wise. You must not ask questions, the Voice-of-Before says to you. You must not ask questions because there is no answer. Do not try to get to the bottom of things. You will not find the truth that you betrayed. You have lost yourself after having caused the failure of the very Revolution that you sought to make. Do not try to purge your soul of lies. All this prattle is futile. Many other things you have not thought of will go up in smoke. Your power has no power over them. You are not you but others…(the following folio missing).
(Perpetual circular)
A sloop loaded with bales of maté, one of the many lying rotting in the sun of (since) the Revolution, was given permission to set sail, on condition that Pedro de Somellera, who had been expelled from the country, leave aboard it. He embarked with his entire family, his European furniture,*1 huge trunks. Immense cages full of hundreds of monkeys, animals of every kind, strange beasts, rare birds. Others as well: a number of Porteño agitators, lesser heads who had never ceased contriving plots to bring about the intervention of Buenos Aires against Paraguay, were also placed on board in shackles amid the bales of maté and the cages. Along with the Córdoban Gregorio de la Cerda.
The sloop departed so heavily laden that it wallowed in the water. A zoo, a botanical garden, an overstocked game preserve. On the cliffs above the port a great crowd of patrician ladies and others of mixed blood had gathered to bid farewell to the omni compadre, bringing with them an enormous flock of his godchildren. As the sloop cast off its moorings, the comadres burst into tears. Scenes of despair. Silk tunics were rent, hooped petticoats raised to wipe noses and to dry tears, the comadres’ cries and lamentations rivaling those of the female parrots and monkeys setting sail.
I expelled la Cerda at a somewhat later date, when I returned for the second time to the Junta. In the event, it is of little moment that we are shipping him out for the time being aboard the sloop together with Somellera and the rest of his annexionist associates.
This did not put an end, however, to the clandestine efforts to recover power through a counterrevolution. On the morning of September 29, 1811, a headquarters company under the command of Lieutenant Mariano Mallada came out of the barracks hauling two cannon behind them, beating drums and making the streets ring with cries of Long live the king! Long live our Governor Velazco! Death to revolutionary traitors! A trick contrived by the idiots of the Junta. A simulated restorationist uprising. Many Spaniards nibbled the bait; a number of them swallowed the hook. At that moment the reserve troops came out of the barracks and arrested the agitators.
Because of the stupid way in which the whole scheme was planned and executed, the insurrection came to nothing. Having received an urgent message, I left the farm and went down to the city. The performance in the plaza was just beginning. I arrived just as they were shooting and hanging one of Velazco’s servants, Díaz de Bivar, and a Catalan storekeeper by the name of Martiní Lexía. Cut down those corpses and enough of this bloodshed!, I thundered. The soldiery, excited by the smell of blood, calmed down. In the middle of the plaza, sitting tall in the saddle on my sweat-soaked horse, my presence commanded respect.*2 The inept farce came to an abrupt end. Later on, certain newsmongering scribblers dared to accuse me of directing it from behind the scenes. Had this been so, I would have staged things on a grand scale. As I did later. Not this ridiculous burlesque of unleashing an entire army to murder a grocer and one of the ex governor’s grooms.
They cut down the hanged men amid the general horror. Suddenly the crowd of Spaniards, armed with clubs and antique harquebuses, broke into an uproar once more, with enthusiasm this time. Delirious joy. Everyone dissolved into paeans of praise, and as one recognized me as their liberator. The women and the oldsters wept, blessed me. Some of them knelt and tried to kiss my boots. A splendid triumph for the a-cephali of the Junta! Mounting this grotesque farce in which I appeared as the savior and ally of the Spaniards! Wasn’t this what they had aimed at from the beginning?
In the end the parody
of restoration favored the cause of Revolution, enveloping it at the beginning in a cloud of smoke. For the time being it was advisable that I, its director and civil head, should appear to be the arbiter of the conciliation to be effected between the forces in contention for the institutionalization of the country. I will do so, I proclaimed, on the basis of minimal coincidences of views, so that none of the parties or factions will lose its identity and individuality. (In the margin: This was a half truth; as far as “minimal coincidences” were concerned, there were none at all; the entire truth would have been to speak of “minimal connivances.”) I was going to maneuver them on the game board in accordance with the deliberate and inflexible strategy that I had resolved to follow. Chance began to collaborate with me. I had gotten rid of Somellera the bishop, la Cerda the knight, and other Porteño pawns, who incidentally had cleaned out the State coffers. I wasn’t going to stop till checkmate, with or without a sipper. You of course are not familiar with the royal game of chess, but you are past masters of the plebeian game of truque. So pretend that I said: until I have the ace of swords in my hand and break the bank.
The majority of the wealthy Spaniards ended up rotting in jail. An orderly man, it was not I who had given this order for disorder. Ransom of the prisoners at least had the advantage of contributing a goodly sum of doubloons to the State treasury; not to mention other confiscations, expropriations, and fines that the circumstances demanded as just restitution.
While the friars rebuked the officials of the Junta and the general staff, as the plumifer Pedro de Peño concluded in his notes to the other felonscribe Molas, they blessed me roundly. I was the magnanimous Doctor who had been brought into the light of day and suckled by the brothers of the Pious University of Córdoba.
I the Supreme Page 26
