How’s it going in Misiones, Don Amado?, I asked him in a note. Prodigiously well, Excellency! Odd that he doesn’t come out with his little phrase in French. He is careful not to do so, because of what happened to Grandsire when the latter came, as he put it, to “rescue him from his captivity.” Return his impertinent message to this individual who has just arrived, I ordered the administrator of Itapúa, and tell him for me that his frivolous message, its ridiculously haughty style, and his jumbled handwriting and bad ink made it incomprehensible and beneath notice. Tell this supposed and undoubtedly false envoy of the Institut de France that we do not permit persons who may be suspected of disturbing the security, tranquillity, and independence of this Republic to cross our borders. What is this absurd story that the Frenchman is circulating as a cover for his real aims: that he’s coming to Paraguay to search for the juncture or the union of the Amazon and the Río de la Plata? Even if there were such a thing, which everybody here knows there isn’t, these naturalists or unnatural spies will not be allowed to enter our territory in the disguise of scientists to observe, examine, and engage in things other than what they declare, claim, or pretend, thereby concealing their real ends. In addition to all this, what is this ignorance of Spanish that the envoy from the Institut de France makes so much of? What business does he think ignorant people have here? If he doesn’t know our language, the Government by the same token is under no obligation to know his. So tell this Monsieur Grandsire that we don’t speak French here and that the Government of Paraguay is not prepared to pay an interpreter to attend to or contend with pretensions whose intention is to deceive. Therefore he will not only not be received, but will be invited forthwith to take a powder. That means, my dear administrator, that the new spy, or whatever he is, must leave immediately, not that we’re going to give him a good whiff of powder or shoot him dead on the spot as you’re in the habit of doing with interlopers from the other shore.
Compadre Amadeo knows I speak French, but those little phrases and interjections that pedants deliberately scatter about in their writings so as to appear that they know more than they do escape him only inadvertently. Do you think you’ll manage to collect some six hundred thousand plants, at the very least, here? Oh it seems to me that oui, oui, Monsieur le Dictateur, if God and Your Excellency are willing! I hear Don Amadeo’s fresh laugh. The earth of Paraguay, Excellency, is the heaven of plants; there are more of them here than there are stars in the firmament and grains of sand in the deserts. I have tirelessly interrogated the layers of our planet. I have opened them like the leaves of a book in which the three kingdoms of nature keep their archives. In each one of its pages each species, before it disappears, has left its trace, its memento. Man himself, the latest arrival, has left proofs of his former existence. Have you read all those pages, Don Amado? Impossible, Excellency! It would take millions of years and we’d still only be at the beginning! What do you think of the pages of the Book in Paraguay? Here I must dig deeper, Excellency. Poke about in layer after layer till I get to the very bottom. Read from right to left, from the right side, the wrong side, up, down. Not only that, Don Amadeo. Here you must read these pages with disinterested passion. Absolutely disinterested. The one who succeeds in doing that will be the beginning of a species unique on this planet. As long as we’re content to be what we are, we can’t know or even guess what it will be like. You are right, Excellency. I have collected nearly a hundred thousand plants and twelve thousand six hundred species, absolutely unknown, of the three kingdoms, which in this Republic are extremely prolific and varied. I should like to remain here, Monsieur le Dictateur, till the end of my days, if Yr. Exc.y gives me permission. As far as I’m concerned, Don Amado, you may stay as long as you like. Perpetuity is our business here. I in my line of work. You in yours. But he was caught in the toils of conspiracies, plots, clever ambushes of the enemies of the country. I don’t say that he was quite prepared to be used, but that machinating myrmidons were preparing to use him in any event.
It is a great error both in Paris and in London, Grandsire himself said, to think that the Dictator of Paraguay is holding Bonpland because of some personal enmity against him or out of caprice. No, indeed: that is not the case, and were it not for the extremely delicate position in which the Dictator finds himself vis-à-vis the turbulent republics that surround him; were it not for his eager desire to make his country respected and place it in free communication with the rest of the world, M. Bonpland would not be obliged to languish in the captivity that he shares with other Frenchmen, Italians, Englishmen, Germans, and Americans who have met with the same fate. At last someone understood! Those few individuals held captive, apart from traitors and conspirators, are being held as hostages for the freedom of the entire people. It is to be ill acquainted with the disposition and character of the Supreme Dictator to believe him likely to yield to fear or to a threat, Grandsire adds. Yes, indeed: it is to be ill acquainted with me. Or if you don’t believe it, Bolívar himself can tell you. I didn’t even answer his note, a confused mixture, part plea, part complaint, and part threat. Or Parish, the consul general of the British empire in Buenos Aires, and other petty adventurers who dared stick their noses in Paraguay, can say a word or two on the subject. Grandsire wrote things to Baron Humboldt that were true beyond question. With due respect for the truth, I am bound to say, the Frenchman says, that from everything I see here, the inhabitants of Paraguay have for twenty-two years enjoyed perfect peace, under a good administration. The contrast with the countries through which I have traveled heretofore is most surprising. One journeys through Paraguay without arms; people scarcely bother to close their doors since the punishment for theft is death, and what is more, the owners of the house or the commune where a theft is committed are obligated to make restitution. There are no beggars to be seen; everyone works. The children are educated at State expense. Almost all the inhabitants know how to read and write. (I omit his judgment concerning my person, since even though it may be quite sincere, the praise of individuals makes me uncomfortable.) This country may one day come to be of the greatest importance for European commerce. The Dictator is extremely irritated by the insulting stories that the government of Buenos Aires spreads about him in European periodicals. Yesterday I had occasion to see a farmer, a neighbor of Bonpland’s, who meets him every day. He says that Bonpland is getting along very well, that he possesses land the Dictator has given him, that he is practicing medicine, that he is actively engaged in distilling alcohol from honey, and that he is still receiving and describing plants for his collections, which grow vaster with each passing day, with the same passionate enthusiasm as ever. Bonpland the “prisoner” wrote to his colleague, the botanist Delille: I am as happy and vigorous as when you knew me in Navarre and at Malmaison. Though I do not have as much money, I am loved and esteemed by everyone, which to me represents true wealth.
I allowed him to take with him everything he possessed, cattle, money, collections, papers and books, his distillery for making cordials and brandy, his carpentry shop and sawmill, the equipment and beds of his hospital and maternity clinic. Paraguayan peasants accompanied the Frenchman to the border. They bade him farewell with songs, lamentations, and cheers. The Itapúa battalion escorted the traveler’s flotilla across the Paraná. The tumult did not cease until the multitude lost sight of him. On their return the men in the escort reported that they had barely set foot on the other side when four horses were stolen from him. It’s plain to see we aren’t in Paraguay anymore!, they said that Don Amadeo said, turning his eyes brimming with tears toward our shores. A moment of inattention that the Correntinos took advantage of to steal the remainder of his drove of horses and baggage.
* * *
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Bonpland left Paraguay reluctantly, early in February 1831, at precisely the same place where he had arrived ten years before. Ortellado, the district commissioner, who had had him under his protection during all this time, tells how, as they embr
aced each other and shed tears together when the time came to part, Bonpland said to him: Look, Don Norberto, they brought me here under duress. I am leaving here under duress. Don’t say that, Don Amadeo! Your Worship knows very well that if he wishes to stay our Supreme will not refuse him permission to remain here. That poor Ortellado was always a mawkishly sentimental imbecile. Bonpland taught him a lesson: No, Don Norberto. I am most grateful for your words, but I know very well that The Supreme is as inexorable in his rigor as he is implacable in his goodness. When he did not want me to leave, there was no power in the world that could drag me out of here. And now He believes that I ought to leave, and there is no power in the world that is going to change his mind. That was indeed how it was, Don Amadeo. The pages of this earth taught you something.
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For the past ten years I have had only vague news of his person and his labors. He left Paraguay shortly after the death of Bolívar, the proud liberator. Bonpland went off into exile amid the blessings and tears of a people who were not his own, but whom he had made his. Bolívar fled into exile amid portraits of himself torn in half by crowds of a people who were his, a people he liberated, a people who then drove him out. Dead too, forgotten, despised: Dean Gregorio Funes, Bolívar’s agent and spy in the Plata. When Grimorio the Funereal kept pressing Bolívar to invade Paraguay, I said to him of this chimerical project: Leave off your hocus-pocus, Father Grimorio. Either a thing is possible or it is not. You know that what you want is not possible. In any event, if your Bolívar comes here, be forewarned that many men are going to die, and it is a pity that so eminent and worthy a man should remain here to shine my shoes and saddle my horses. Come instead and set up a funeral parlor, your paternity. It would do honor to your illustrious surname and sepulchral intentions. There is excellent wood for coffins here and the best craftsmen in the world, who will make you first-rate ones. They’ll cost you almost nothing and you can sell them wholesale to the Porteño kinsmen of those who set foot on this sacred land, do you hear me? Sacred! If the business is a success, you could enlarge it and also engage in contraband traffic with the Disunited Provinces. The sales tax, the fructuary, usuary, and tributary contributions, the anata, demora, and gabelle, the galley and anchorage fees, plus the export tariff would not add up to more than 50% on each unit shipped off. The coffins could be transported by tying them together in floats or rafts, which would also save you the dead freight charges, reverend dean. And not only that. The flotillas of coffins, turned into boats, except for the ones already occupied by those who have died with honor on the battlefield, could carry, as duty-free belongings of military personnel, almost any sort of merchandise of the size and weight of a man. I don’t know if I am making myself clear, reverend dean, but what I’m saying is what I mean: this latter expedient would permit the funeral director to reimburse himself for the freight charges collected for feretral transport…What’s that? No, Father Grimorio, you didn’t hear me rightly. I didn’t say federal. I said feretral. From the Latin feretrum, a coffin. Ah, this blasted habit of mine of inventing or deriving words! Though today, as far as the Disunited Provinces are concerned, feretral is a true synonym of federal, and not a barbarous neologism designating an imaginary reality. Become still more barbarous, funereal, and unreal through the works and grace of men such as yourself, Reverend Grimorio Funes.
Poor Simón Bolívar died in exile. They buried the conniving dean, his agent and spy in the Plata. They consigned to the worms, those neutral and neuter readers of upright men and downright scoundrels, the old, torn book of his ugly person.
(Written at midnight)
Only old Bonpland miraculously survives. I say miraculously, though my intention thereby is not to render any sort of praise to ill-named divine providence, but simply to recognize the secret law of chance. Almost the moment he left Paraguay, Don Amadeo fell into the vortex of anarchy. From vicissitude to vicissitude, from misfortune to misfortune, from disgrace to disgrace he no doubt missed the peaceful years of his retreat in Santa María. I have learned that not long ago, at the time of the bloody battle of Pago Largo between Rivera’s troops and Rosas’ (my idiotic, ignorant informants are incapable of reporting even the general disposition of the contending forces), Bonpland, along with a few others, escaped by a hair from being beheaded along with the thousand three hundred prisoners who fell into General Echagüe’s hands. They tell me that he is again wandering about San Borja, on the shores of the Uruguay River, in Santa Ana de Misiones, or in the Yapeyú. Don Amadeo was always the sort of man to be in several different places at once. A way of having several lives. Some have seen him journeying to the East; others to the West. Someone swears he’s seen him in the north; someone else in the south. They appear to be numerous, distant and distinct, but they are all just one man alone. If only my scouts could locate him and the courier bring back the passionflower bulbs and the fine powder of the magic tisane. But news of him above all. I imagine him as being the same as ever, even amid the din of pounding hoofs, forests of lances, rivers of blood, absorbed in leafing through layer after layer of the Great Book. I see his bright little sky-blue eyes interrogating traces and mementos of past existences. Secret archives: those hiding-places where nature sits by the fire in the depths of its laboratory. Where it waits patiently for millions of years, working on the scale of the minimum. Manufacturing its saps, its sparks, its stones. Strange beings. Presences now past. Presences not yet come. Invisible creatures in transit from age to age. Eh, Don Amadeo! What do you see in those pages? After a long wait, his faint voice. Very little, Grand Seigneur. Much dust in this salmagundi. Whirlwinds of dust. Entire deserts ten times greater than the Sahara, torn up by the roots, occupy the place of the clouds. Galaxies of sand hide the sky, blot out the sun. What a tremendous weight! Thousands and thousands of lancers gallop over the dunes, each one bearing a beheaded man at lance-rest amid the simoon of whinnies. It is necessary to wait for all that to die down, to settle down, to clear up a little, so that a person can go back to reading it again. Lights, I mean fires, do you see fires? Don’t your sharp eyes see bonfires glowing? Mais oui, Monsieur Grand Seigneur!*1 Fire, yes. I see fires everywhere. Campfires, would you say? Them too, them too, the embers of combat. Ignes fatui zigzagging across the mountains, across the battlefields. They wink on, wink off. But the flame of life is there. Oh, yes! Fixed forever in its one place and in all places. Burning, burning. I sometimes read by the light of that fire. I do not sleep. I seek. I see. I shed light on dark enigmas that can only be read rightly wrong side to….What, the Frenchy’s starting to copy Gracián*2 now? Well in that case, Don Amadeo, there’s nothing lost. Except that….Wait! Listen, listen carefully to what I’m going to tell you. I’m all ears, Grand Seigneur. Except that this fire, are you listening, Don Amadeo, except that that fire is probably the fire of hell, isn’t that so? I hear Bonpland’s fresh laughter again, coming to me from the four points of the compass. Mais non, mon pauvre sire! If there is a hell, as we’ve fallen into the habit of thinking, it can be nothing other than the eternal absence of fire. That old Frenchy, more candid than Candide, prince of universal optimism, wants to console me, comfort me, revive me. Though he may perhaps be right. He is right reason itself. If there is a hell, it is this absolute nothingness of absolute solitude. Alone. Alone. Alone, in the black, in the white, in the gray, in the indistinct, in the uncreated. The iron hand, dead-still on the point of the dial; that point where beginning and end are joined at last. That old peasant, sitting beneath the eaves of his hut, in Tobatí, is smoking his cigar, completely motionless amid the chalk-white cloud of powder-dust of the earth. His non-life has lasted a hundred years. But he is more alive than I am. He hasn’t been born yet. There is nothing he is waiting for, nothing he desires. He is more alive than I. Hey there, Don Amadeo! Hey! It’s you now who are allowing me to leave. You’re allowing me to leave, freed of the excessive superlove of one’s own person, which is our way of mortally hating all men in a s
ingle one. If you happen, by any chance, to come across the footprint of the species to which I belong, rub it out. Hide the trail. If you should find this noxious weed in some remote cranny, pull it out by the root. You won’t mistake it. It must resemble the root of a little plant in the form of a lizard, toothed back and tail, scales and icy eyes. Animal-plant of a species so cold that it puts fire out merely by touching it. I won’t mistake it, my good Sire. I know it very well. It turns up everywhere. One roots it out and it springs up again. Keeps growing and growing. Turns into an immense tree. The gigantic tree of Absolute Power. Somebody comes with an ax. Chops it down. Leaves branches strewn all over. Out of this great leveling there grows another one. This evil species of the Single-Person will not die out until the Multitude-Person arises by its own right to impose the full power of its right on what is twisted and poisonous in the human species. Hey there, Don Amadeo! Are you using my words now? Are you copying me? Or are you my corrector and commentator, coming back once again to interrupt our talk? Hey, Don Amadeo! Hey? He doesn’t answer. He’s playing deaf and dumb. He’s playing dead. Can he too be dead? Hey, Frenchy, answer me! Ah? Il n’y a pas de mais qui tienne!*3 I’m getting in my little phrase too. Trying out a bit of my terrible French again. I don’t know if that’s the right way to write it, but I don’t have the dictionary at hand any longer. Hey, Frenchy! If you haven’t died, if they haven’t put your head in a cage yet, speak to me! Ah! Shutting up now, now of all times, when in this sepulchral silence I need to hear a voice, any voice, even though it’s nothing more than the croaking of a miserable batracian!
I the Supreme Page 37
