Decidedly, the worst of all as far as pretexts go: dates. This one of October 12, the Day of the Race, one of them. In the square boxes of calendars they appear to be immortal. They rule the illusion of reality. Luckily time, on paper at least, can be compressed, saved, done away with.
1804
The queen’s favorite, Manuel Godoy, Prince of Peace, has accepted the honorary office of Perpetual Councilor of the city. Asunción is the first Capital in the kingdom of the Indies to merit such a distinction. The symbolic reception of the Prince of Peace in the City Hall is the occasion for the aforementioned festivities. The most sumptuous within memory. They begin with a great seventy-four-cover banquet, on silver plates, offered by the detested governor Lázaro de Ribera y Espinoza de los Monteros.*4 At the head of the table, propped up by a tall gold goblet, the favorite Manuel Godoy; that is to say, his portrait draped with garlands. Beneath an immense wax seal the royal letter-patent that consecrated him as Grand Conjoiner. From the portrait he greets us with slow gestures, his fingers weighed down with rings. After the banquet, which lasts six hours, the Prince of Peace is borne off in a carriage drawn by eight black stallions and eight white mares, to the sound of the band of musicians. A corps of young soldiers escorts the galley. Behind it come the governor and the bishop in another galleon. On foot, the officers on the staffs of the regiments, the editors on the mastheads of the daily papers, the holders of the title of corregidor, the leading aristocracy. A very large contingent of regular and irregular clergy. How dignified an era that was!
On the Campo de Marte four triumphal arches have been erected. On one of them, that of Immortality, the portrait adorned with flowers and memorial wreaths of palm and laurel has been solemnly placed. The entire square and the neighboring cluster of houses bedecked with banners and streamers. The balconies of adjacent buildings occupied by ladies of highest rank and gentlemen of the second and third. Fustian rascals proudly posing in their fustian capes and doublets.
At night the streets, the public buildings, the residences of leading citizens are illuminated. Sprays of fireworks sparkle overhead. The sky a garden of fleeting andromedas and aldebarans.
From the triclinium he occupies on the platform in the plaza, Lázaro de Ribera waves the baton of his office and directs all the movements, continually stroking the curls of his powdered wig, like an orchestra leader irritated by the raggedness of the horns. The Prince of Peace on the other hand looks very pleased with himself in the portrait, lightly touching, nonchalantly caressing the horns of a royal stag.
From the mansion of the municipal councilor Juan Bautista de Hachar there appears a barouche, to the accompaniment of violins, tambourines, and flageolets. On arriving in front of the portrait, the occupants, costumed for the stage, descend and play Tancrède. María Gregoria Castelví and Juan José Loizaga [grandfather of the traitorous triumvir who will store my skull away in the attic of his house] shine in the roles of the Crusader and Clorinda. Ten thousand people attend the performance.
The novenary of festivities goes on without interruption. Bullfights. Gala mounted maskers, with choruses of musicians, tilt the lance in dances and contradances, as in the tourneys of antiquity. Fifty horsemen, disguised as Saracens and Indians on steeds with resplendent trappings, vie in riding at the ring. Threaded on the silver barb by the winner of the round, the ring is offered on his lance, with a gallant bow, to his fiancée, to the damsel he is courting, or to his loftily proud spouse. They catch it up by the loop of ribbon and drop it down the cleft of their low-cut gowns. With a childish gesture, without realizing it, they are miming the ceremony of Restoration. Not of the monarchy, not if we are in the period when the monarchy reigns supreme, certainly! Restoration of that-which-is-lost-once-and-only-once. Royalty. Virginity. Nobility. Dignity. Even though there are those who, losing them once, regain them twice over.
With haughty nonchalance Lázaro de Ribera says to the bishop: Resurrection is a completely natural idea, don’t you believe so, Your Reverence? The bishop nods with a self-satisfied smile. Quite so, Your Excellency. It is no more extraordinary to come back to life once than it is to create the same thing twice.
Lázaro de Ribera’s dazzlingly beautiful daughter leans over to him without taking her eyes off the tourney: What was it Your Worship said, if I may ask? Nothing, daughter. Nothing that might interest you at this moment when the fiesta is so splendid it suspends the senses. Look at that native rejoneador*5 galloping this way at full tilt! In fact, standing atop a chestnut mount stripped completely bare and gleaming with sweat, the horseman, plumed and tattooed in the manner of the ka’aiguá or people of the wilds, is coming toward the governor’s box. Slender-waisted, giant-tall, completely drenched with sweat. Tail of a comet sweeping the mount along in its dizzying course. The aboriginal horseman’s nakedness is covered with nothing except a sort of cache-sexe or loincloth of a fabric that gives off opaque reflections. He is carrying at arm’s length, threaded onto an extremely long coconut spine, the ring that leaves the trace of its red edging suspended in the air. The chestnut steed, without bit or bridle, slows down, advancing now with dancing steps. Its hoofs do not follow the beat of the musicians, but echo other sounds audible only to the horse and its rider. Its nostrils breathe out a rose-colored breath that expands at enormous pressure. The two jets of breath hit its flanks with their compact mass. They levitate the comet-tail, project it backwards, giving it the awesome appearance of a fabulous animal. Head of a horse and a jaguar. The funalia or destrarii of the Romans would have appeared to be insects by comparison with this Indian hippocentaur!, the erudite bishop raves deliriously. The ancients called such steeds desultorii equi; of their horsemen united as one with them they said…But now Lázaro de Ribera is rising to his feet, beet-red with anger, shouting to the guards and whetting his baton-sword on the air: In the name of Beelzebub! Who is this insolent infidel who dares to be so bold! Guards! Constables! Harquebusiers! The hippocentaur with the double head of a man and a jaguar abruptly reins in before the platform. Rearing. Hoofs pared down to claws pawing the air. The human part of the fabulous animal bows and drops the ring in the lap of the governor’s daughter. Shoot, shoot, you louts!, the governor’s voice, breaking with wrath and terror, orders. In the sudden silence he has lost all control of himself. Shoot, you monstrous miscarried musketeers!, his voice cries out. The shots finally rang out. The keen whistle of the bullets could be heard. The native’s teeth gleam amid the smoke and dust. His tattoos give off a phosphorescent glow in the dusk that is beginning to fall. With the same coconut spine he rakes his coppery skin from throat to crotch. He pulls the wax casque from his head, baring his hair tonsured in a spiral-crown. Amid the flurry of feathers, adornments, scales, insignia, he has the appearance of an Adam-Christ of the wilds. Almost albino, so pure white is he. Snow-white skin. Snow-white eyes. Nazarene beard of the jaguar-Christ. The mysterious chief of the most warlike, the fiercest mountain tribes of the Upper Paraná is come! Chieftain, sorcerer-prophet of the Ka’aiguá-Gualachí.*6 Neither the conquistadors nor the missionaries were able to subjugate them. Beneath him his mount too has now been transformed, into a pure-blue jaguar. Tongue, jaws blood-red and dripping, ivory fangs. The spots of its coat shine with a metallic gleam in the sunlight. This growing legend is there in the middle of the plaza, in front of the governor’s box. His daughter contemplates in ecstasy what to her is little less than an Archangel. A real, true apparition.
The bishop has knelt down, pointing his pectoral across at the dazzling apparition. Vade retro Satanas! The governor screams orders, cries that seem like rat squeals amid the jaguar’s roars. As another shot rings out, the legendary aborigine snaps his fingers. With one bound the jaguar leaps above the heads of the terrified crowd. Turned into a real meteor, a real comet now. It crosses the river and is lost from sight in the sky as it heads for the Cordilleras to the East.
The ring in the form of a serpent biting its tail grew larger and larger in the
lap of the governor’s daughter.*7 It soon enclosed the girl, her crazed father, the bishop, the municipal councilmen, and members of the clergy within its circle. The virgo-viper continued to grow larger and larger. It covered the plaza, the buildings and their balconies crowded with women of the aristocracy. At the same time the metal of the ring, resembling ytterbium, the hard metal of virgin land, grew softer and softer, turning into a squamous-viscous material. The scales flew off and remained suspended in the air, lighter than fleece-of-the-virgin. Suddenly the huge serpent burst into iridescent particles. There was a great commotion in the official box. The governor’s daughter lay on the carpets covering the platform, bleeding profusely. Her white hoop skirts had taken on the color of the crimson edging of the ring. The crowd broke into a cry of superstitious terror: God’s Punishment! God’s Punishment! Amid the uproar, the governor and the bishop had a heated argument as to whether the doctor or the viaticum should be sent for.
The Prince of Peace and Great Conjoiner stepped out of the Portrait, crossed through the arch of Immortality, and embraced the dazed Lázaro de Ribera. Very good, very good, my dear governor! A real fairy tale! Allow me to congratulate your daughter for her marvelous performance in the role of the swan. It takes one’s breath away! The swan-killer is something that has always sent me into sheer delirium! That strange assassin who murders swans in order to hear their last song! Ah ah ah! Unutterable, immeasurable, imponderable marvel! The queen’s favorite bent over the serpent’s head. Look, just look at this! An animal retains in its eyes the image of the person who has killed it, until decomposition sets in! And now, my dear Lázaro, I shall return to the portrait, the Great Conjoiner said. Let the performance go on.
The festivities went on until the tenth day and one more.
The official account of the Municipal Council regarding these festivities states: “This province will never be able to point to a more brilliant era than the present. Until very recently its power was illusory and precarious; its commerce, full of obstacles and hindrances, stagnant; its treasury, without solidity; its defenseless frontiers, violated; its resources, though fecund, existent in name only; and the festivities staged in homage to the Prince of Peace, when he accorded this Cabildo the high honor of accepting appointment as its Councilman and Perpetual Conjoiner of Greatest Preeminence and Authority, its Zealous Defender and Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret, are a striking testimony to this brilliant present of power, prosperity, and grandeur.”
The Annals and Chronicles of Memorable Occasions of the Province of Paraguay, which record down to the very last detail the events of a monotonous and monotonal era—nuptials, baptisms, demises, last rites, first communions, obsequies, funerals, novenas, illnesses, kitchen recipes and even herbalist formulas to increase or neutralize the generative vigor of couples—likewise describe the aforementioned festivities with a wealth of details. They say nothing, however, concerning the strange episode played out between the daughter of the governor and the winged Axé-Guayakí horseman, which is the name ethnologists today give to the tribe of those once known as Ceratos, Ka’aiguás, Barbudos, Gualachís, and various other names.
Nor does the Diary of Memorable Events, maniacally and minutely detailed, contain the slightest allusion to the event related by El Supremo. It is necessary to go back to the hoariest chronicles of the Colony to find any suggestive traces. Du Toict, 1651, speaks of the Gualachís: “Savage people whose ferocity surpasses that of the barbarians of the Guayrá. Probably anthropophagous, they live by hunting and eat every manner of vermin, though the staple of their diet is honey from wild bees, for which they have a real passion. They were never subjugated by the conquistadors, much less subjected by the Missionaries to the advantages of our holy religion so as to inseminate them with Christian humanity. Nor do I believe they ever will be. A common characteristic of this tribe is the light color of their skin, which has given rise to the absurd myth of their European descendance. On the contrary, they are the wildest of the savages that people these wild regions. They have been ruled since time immemorial by a famous cacique, a sorcerer and a terrible tyrant whose subjects attribute to him the gift of immortality. They have spread abroad the no less absurd legend that he is not only immune to the arms of the Europeans, but can also change appearance at will thanks to the strangest metamorphoses imaginable, and even make himself invisible. They say he travels about his domains by land or by air mounted on a blue jaguar, one of the zoomorphic myths of their cosmogony.” (Account of the Caaiguá People, passim.)
I have endlessly checked not only the correspondence of Lázaro de Ribera (the governor who ordered the one copy of the Social Contract that existed in Paraguay to be burned), but also his genealogical and biographical references. These documents all agree that the incendiary governor had two daughters: one by his legitimate spouse and the other by one of his Indian mistresses. One of these daughters died at a very early age; the other reached puberty, and if the Prester John is not lying, it would appear that she even reached old age. I have not been able, however, to determine with certainty which one of them it was. In the oral tradition, on the other hand, there exists the myth of the swift horseman who stole the daughter of a Karaí-Ruvichá-Guasú, a Great-White-Chief. (Compiler’s Note.)
On the eleventh day, encouraged by the visible signs of confidence and support on the part of the Prince of Peace, Lázaro de Ribera signed decrees confining the Indians to encomiendas and abolishing the exemption from military service granted tobacconists: his two obsessive aspirations. He had finally been able to realize them, thereby thwarting the royal will.
1840
Congresses. Military parades. Processions. Theatrical performances. Equestrian tourneys. Parades. Masquerades of blacks and Indians. Feasts of patron saints. Double burial rites. Triple funerals. Conspiracies, many. Executions, very few. Apotheoses. Resurrections. Lapidations. Multitudinarious jubilations. Collective grief (only after my disappearance). Festivities of every order. Yes, all taking place in perfect order. And yet there are pasquinaders who dare to present the Perpetual Dictatorship as a dark, despotic, oppressive era! For them, yes. For the people, no. The First Republic of the South turned into a Reign of Terror! Archvillain archliars! Is it not obvious to them that on the contrary it was the most just, the most peaceful, the most noble era, that of most perfect well-being and felicity, the period of greatest splendor enjoyed by the Paraguayan people, as a whole and in its totality, in all of its wretched history? Did it not deserve it after so many sufferings, hardships, and misfortunes? Is it this that plunges my old enemies into such darkness and gloom? Is it this that fills them with hatred and treachery? Is it this that they accuse me of? Is it this that they do not forgive me and never shall? I’d be really done for if I needed their absolution! For the moment, the memory of the people-multitude, the five or six commonest senses, testify, bear witness in my favor. Don’t you have eyes to see, ears to hear, you consignatories of calumnies and stupidities?
For the moment, the first testimony. Don’t you hear the martial sounds that dizzy even the deafest ears? I am proud of having made Asunción the capital with the greatest number of bands of musicians in the entire world. There are exactly a hundred of them thundering in the city right this minute, almost in unison. With only an infinitesimal difference of tone, rhythm, key, adjusted with mathematical precision. Endless rehearsals. Infinite patience of maestros and players until they achieve the production of sounds, syncopations, and silences in relief. Stereophonic volumes (not stercophonic ones, as with the buzzing of the swarms of pasquinaders) make of the vault of heaven their resonance box and of the earth and the air their natural media of propagation. As if the elements themselves were the bands of musicians. The instruments fall silent and the conic sections of silence continue to vibrate, full of martial music. Parabola of sound that survives itself circularly, like light, at that point where the circle opens and closes at the same time. Listen. The fanfare of the same, so
le, and only parade that I offered the mob of imperial, directorial, provincial, conspiratorial envoys. To compensate the country. Years 1811, 1813, 1823.
* * *
—
The plenipotentiary envoys of Buenos Aires, Herrera and Coso, and of the Empire of Brazil, Correia, superposed. Transposed to the dimension upon which I oblige them to gaze. Sitting on each other’s knees. In the same place though not at the same time. Look, observe: I am unfolding before you the parade that covers the first two decades of the Republic, including the last decade of the Colony. Distinguish the illegitimate from the legitimate. The pure from the impure. Ugly is beautiful, the beautiful ugly. Be stupefied, you stupid fools. See the limits. The lines dividing the waters. This side and the other side of the real. Royalty of reality emitting sparks in the haze of the paper between the lines of ink. Thorn pen, enter their eyes and ears. And you, distinguished guests, fix in your retinas, in your souls, if you have such a thing, these ugly/beautiful visions. The earth has bubbles just as water does, Echevarría says airily. But they’ve disappeared. No, my dear doctor. The bubbles are still there. If you don’t see them breathe them. Invisible respiration is also corporeal. If you stop breathing you die, isn’t that so? Nunca he visto una manhá mais hermosa!,*8 Correia exclaims. Do those beings we’re seeing really exist?, the Brazilian asks. Herrera, who once shook hands with Napoleon, answers him, humiliated, full of rancor: Don’t you see they’re phantoms? They must have given us some harmful root to eat, of the sort that makes one’s reason a prisoner. Correia shudders. Don’t worry, my esteemed guests. A real fear is less to be feared than an imaginary one. To think of a crime is still an imaginary thing. To commit it is already a very natural thing. Didn’t you know, gentlemen, that the only thing that exists is what does not yet exist? Echevarría’s squint eyes blink in Correia’s farsighted ones. Coso’s cat whiskers twitch on the toad face of Herrera, who has swallowed his old skin. I beg your pardon, noble sirs. Your role in events has been noted down in a register whose pages I shall read all the days of my life. Whatever happens, time and circumstances will help sort out the difficulties. For now, let us not miss the parade.
I the Supreme Page 34
