Our Lives Are the Rivers

by Jaime Manrique

  Jonotás and I were with Manuela during the ceremony, which basically amounted to Bolívar’s coronation. Manuela had to content herself with watching the ceremony from the balcony of a government building overlooking the Plaza Mayor, in front of the cathedral. She took care to hide her face from the populace. Both those who loved the general and those who hated him showed up. I know Manuela would have given anything to be next to him on the dais when he addressed the people of Bogotá. I could not help but think—and the memory was bittersweet—of all that had happened since the time when, from the balcony of her house in Quito, and when they first laid eyes on each other, she had hit him with a laurel wreath.

  After Colonel Herrán welcomed Bolívar to Bogotá, and thanked him effusively for once more helping to preserve order in Gran Colombia, the Liberator addressed the members of the Council of Government, who accompanied him on the dais. Bolívar had returned from the convention looking wan, but that afternoon, in full military dress, he looked splendid. He delivered his speech with a conviction I had not glimpsed since his victorious entrance into Quito. Manuela’s eyes brimmed with the adoration she felt for him. I was happy for her, for this moment of triumph.

  “The Republic of Colombia,” the Liberator cried out, extending an arm in the direction of the stone-faced members of the Council sitting on the dais, “which was left in your charge for several months, has preserved, thanks to you, its glory, its freedom, and its happiness in a way that seemed inconceivable to those who lack nobility of thought.” He went on to say that when dangerous storms threatened our lives, the wisdom of the Council had helped to protect our freedom. Then he turned around and faced the crowd and praised its collective wisdom, and thanked them, too, for preserving our freedom. Future generations would be grateful to them, and would forever sing their praises, he said, for the wisdom they had shown, to ensure the safety of the nation. “The will of the nation is the supreme law that all rulers must obey,” he proclaimed. “To submit to this supreme law is the first duty of every citizen, and I, as one of them, submit myself to it.”

  This was the finest performance I ever saw Bolívar give. It was the only one in which he recognized the masses, realizing perhaps for the first time that, if he wanted to govern, his wisdom alone was not enough, that he needed their loyalty, their support, and their love.

  “It is the will of the nation that is our true ruler, the only ruler whom I serve,” he went on. “Whenever the people stop giving me their support, whenever they feel the time has come to deny me the powers they’ve entrusted to me, I want you to tell me so, and I will gladly submit to the popular will and sacrifice to you my sword, my blood, even my own head. That is the oath I make in front of this cathedral, in front of the members of the Council, and, more important, in front of the people of Colombia.”

  The earnestness of Bolívar’s appeal for their support, stirred bogotanos from their usual torpor, and they cheered the Liberator at the moment he became their dictator.

  24

  It was to be expected, immediately after he became dictator, that the general’s enemies would accuse him of establishing himself as the South American Napoleon. These shortsighted mediocrities failed to see that the only way to prevent an imminent civil war was to have a strong central figure in charge of the deteriorating situation. Bolívar alone had the moral authority and foresight to do that. I was sure of it.

  To help repair the ill will that had been created against him by becoming dictator, the Liberator took many steps to win the support of the masses. He needed the complete support of the military to stay in power. So his first act was to pay their back wages, to pension off the soldiers who had fought in the battles of independence, and to raise the salaries of all members of the armed forces. Next, to appease the rabid Catholics who called him an apostate, Bolívar decreed his support for the role of the Catholic Church in government. I wasn’t happy with this decree, but I kept quiet because I understood how important it was to have the Church on his side if he wanted to remain in power. Colombians did not mind going hungry as long as the Catholic Church was prospering and could continue to promise them justice in the next life.

  I WAS HAPPY for this moment of triumph, when it looked like the general had defeated his enemies, but I was sad we lived in separate homes. La Quinta without Bolívar no longer felt to me like an idyllic refuge. I had to content myself with visiting him at the palace after nightfall, though never staying until morning. I had become a woman in the shadows.

  Bolívar had returned from Ocaña looking frail, his nerves raw, exhibiting the excitability of the tubercular. The three months on the road had inflicted further damage on his body. He would never learn how to rest. When he was not on the battlefield, anxiety would overcome him. Without me to make sure that he ate well and rested, it fell to Palacios to take care of him, but Palacios always deferred to his master. He did not dare tell him what to do. Only I could do that, and now we were living in separate domiciles.

  In my worst moments I pondered whether this physical distance was temporary or would become permanent. In any case, I had to make my role clear to the people of Bogotá, to let everyone know that I had in no way been demoted. I was still the only woman in his life, and I had his full protection. One night at the palace I broached the subject of his approaching forty-fifth birthday and asked his permission to celebrate it at La Quinta.

  “Absolutely not,” he said. “I’m not well enough for public celebrations. What I need is rest.”

  He said this with a finality that indicated the discussion was closed. I, however, was not ready to concede. I needed to be selfish, even if I risked his displeasure.

  “Forgive me, my general, but just this once I need you to think of me,” I began. He raised an eyebrow, irritated, but I was determined to be heard. I got up from the table where we had been dining and began pacing about, an uncontrollable excitement overtaking me. “You must admit that as a lover, I don’t ask much from you,” I said. “If you say, ‘Manuelita, go,’ I go; if you say, ‘Manuelita, come to me,’ I come to you; if you say, ‘Manuelita, stay,’ I stay, and stay, and stay. I do all that happily, because I’m honored to be your mistress. But just this once, I ask you to indulge me.”

  I paused, hoping for a response. Bolívar remained silent. “Since you came back,” I continued, “I have had to live with the rumors that you’re planning to make an alliance with a European royal house and marry one of its princesses; and I do detect, in the people around me, a kind of pity for me, as if you had already left me for another woman. Don’t you see? If I give a birthday party for you in La Quinta, it will signal to everyone that I’m still in your favor. I think you forget, sir, that I, too, have enemies in Bogotá, and there are many people who would love to get rid of me—and would if they found me in a weak position.” My voice was shaking, so I said no more. I got up to leave the room.

  “Manuelita, where are you going?” he said. “Come here, please.”

  I stood still, tears flowing. Bolívar got up from the table and took me in his arms. “Stop crying, my sweetness,” he said, stroking my neck. “Of course, you’re right. Go ahead, plan the birthday celebration, just make sure that it stays small.”

  The next day, I started making plans for the celebration. I designed an invitation, had them printed and sent to all the important personages in the city who were friends of the general. I tried to keep the guest list as small as possible, as he requested, but even with the elimination of many names it still meant that almost a hundred invitations were sent.

  I became consumed with the preparations for the birthday celebration. The day of the party, I was overseeing the final touches when I received a message from Bolívar: he was too ill to attend his birthday party. I did not hesitate or wait for an escort. I got on my horse and rode to the palace. I found Bolívar in bed with a high fever, coughing blood, almost delirious. “Señor,” I told him, “I’m canceling the celebration.”

  “If you want to make me happy,
Manuelita,” he said, “have your party tonight. It will give me pleasure knowing you’re enjoying yourself. I know how much you love to entertain.”

  “I would not think of hosting a party while you are so ill, my general,” I said. It was true, without his presence at La Quinta I wanted no part of the celebration. “You need me here, by your side, to care for you.”

  “Manuelita, this is an order. I am not talking to you as your lover, but as your general. Go ahead with the celebration. Just make sure you save me a piece of the cake. And I expect a full report tomorrow morning. To make sure people understand you are doing this with my sanction,” he added, “I have arranged to have a battalion conduct military drills in front of La Quinta as a welcome for the guests.”

  25

  Natán

  I helped Manuela dress in the black and gold velvet gown which her seamstress had made especially for the occasion. When she added the necklace, bracelets, and earrings made of the finest Muzo emeralds, she looked absolutely regal.

  Manuela had always been aware of the effect her physical attributes had on men. Now she knew how to use them to her advantage. As a young woman she had been very pretty; as a woman of thirty-one, she had gained an allure. The aura of power made her irresistible. As I helped her adjust her bodice so that her breasts were revealed just enough to tantalize men, Manuela said, “Natán, I’d give anything to have the general by my side tonight. Knowing he’s ill…it’s hard to hide my sadness.”

  Everyone who was invited—members of the general’s Council, as well as the highest authorities of the Church, even Monsignor Cuervo, who had publicly vilified Manuela—came to La Quinta that night. No one dared slight the general, because they knew that the following day Manuela would give him a report on who attended. Despite the absence of the Liberator, the birthday celebration was a joyous event, and it would have been Manuela’s greatest triumph in Bogotá, had it not been for an unfortunate late-night party prank.

  Manuela would be the first to admit that she loved her sherry. When people remarked on how much she could drink, she laughed, saying that she drank like a man. A few glasses of sherry had the effect of making her more fiery than usual; and sometimes her behavior could become reckless. On the day of the party, she had started sipping early. Once the guests arrived she led toast after toast to the general’s health and the future of Gran Colombia.

  The celebration went on for hours. The crowing of roosters was starting to be heard nearby, but a score of stragglers and Manuela were still drinking under the tent set up in the garden; by then she was quite inebriated. At her table someone brought up the name of Vice-president Santander. Loud hissing was followed by toasts to his appointment as Ambassador to the United States, which we all applauded as his exile from Colombia. It was then that another reveler cried, “He doesn’t deserve to become ambassador. What that traitor deserves is the firing squad.”

  There was a moment of stunned silence, until I heard Manuela loudly announce, “This will be our birthday present to President Bolívar. We’ll give him Santander’s corpse.”

  Everyone laughed and cheered. Manuela asked Jonotás and me to get an empty potato sack from the kitchen and stuff it with rags and newspapers. In the kitchen I said to Jonotás, “She’s taking this too far. She’s asking for trouble.” Jonotás, who could never find fault with Manuela, and who loved to play her own pranks, replied, “Natán, why are you always so serious? We’re just having a good time. It’s a fiesta. Have a drink and try to enjoy yourself for a change.”

  When we brought out the stuffed sack Manuela asked one of the officers to loan her his military jacket and asked another one for his two-cornered hat, similar to the one favored by Santander. While she was dressing the figure, she asked Jonotás to fetch a piece of charcoal from the kitchen and give it to Muñoz, an officer who enjoyed sketching caricatures.

  Manuela was delighted with her scarecrow, which had the face of Santander. She asked the men to stand him against the wall. Now I got the idea—Santander the scarecrow was going to be shot by a firing squad. Someone in the crowd suggested that Santander should be given a chance to repent for his sins. It didn’t take much persuasion to get a drunken priest to administer the last rites to the scarecrow. As the priest went through the motions, we knelt and assumed prayer positions. An intoxicated guest slurring his words suggested that Manuela should be the one to pull the trigger. Even in her condition, she had enough sense to refuse the offer. But events had taken on a life of their own. Seeing Manuela’s bewilderment, Colonel Croftson took over. He ordered a makeshift firing squad of half a dozen soldiers to assume ready positions. For a moment, there was a tense silence, broken by Croftson’s stern command to “Fire!” The salvo rang thunderously in the still night. A chorus of dogs barked and howled in the distance. The scarecrow, in flames, collapsed in a heap. The guests clapped and hooted and offered many toasts celebrating the Liberator’s triumph and Santander’s demise. I knew this prank could have grave consequences for Manuela.

  26

  By the time I rose from bed with an excruciating hangover late the morning following the party, General Córdoba had already been to the palace to see Bolívar and had given him a full report of our joke. My palace spies reported overhearing Córdoba saying, “My general, I know the high regard you have for Manuela Sáenz. Regardless, it’s my duty, as a loyal soldier and friend, to point out to you that she’s become an embarrassment to you, and a liability to your government. She’s a woman out of control, sir. And it’s in your best interest that you sever all ties to her.” I was relieved to hear that Bolívar had replied that he could not control me, and that he would not send me away. Nonetheless, later that day the general sent me a note declaring that under no circumstances should I set foot in the palace—until he asked me to.

  A week later, his secretary, Santana, hand-delivered another letter with Bolívar’s order to move out of La Quinta as soon as possible. No explanation was offered, and none was necessary. This was the price of my mocking Santander. I rented a house on Calle de la Carrera, a block away from the Presidential Palace. I furnished it in a manner that was befitting if not to the First Lady of Colombia, then to Bolívar’s mistress. I billed it all to the national treasury. I expected to come under criticism for this, but I was determined not to appear in the eyes of the world as if I were no longer a personage of high rank. It was painful for me to accept the precarious nature of my position. I was sure Bolívar would give me another chance. I would just have to be more thoughtful from that moment on.

  A chilly distance grew between the general and me. My only consolation was my fervid belief that this impasse was temporary. My enemies among Bolívar’s followers, especially General Córdoba, made it known that I would be tolerated and allowed to remain in Bogotá only on the condition that I never appeared in public with the general again. If this was the only way I could remain close to Bolívar, I was willing to accept this situation.

  Weeks passed before I saw him. During that time, I did not entertain and kept a low profile. When I was finally summoned to the palace, I was allowed to go only late at night, a shawl wrapped around my head so people would not recognize me. I nurtured the hope that someday soon our former, more public, relationship, rather than this covert one, would be resumed. I knew that despite the political damage I had caused, Bolívar was not ready to part with me. Perhaps he no longer loved me with the physical passion of our first years, but I was still his best friend, the only person in whom he could trust completely, and I could still be of value to him.

  My house on Calle de la Carrera became a salon where my friends from among Bolívar’s intimates came to visit me. At that point, the most I could do for the general was to use Jonatás and Natán and their friends to continue gathering rumors in the cesspool of Bogotá. More and more stories were circulating about plans to assassinate the general. As the rumors multiplied, the plots became more ominous. Santander, that fetid excrescence of humanity, claiming that he needed more
time to get his affairs in order, delayed his departure for the United States. Bolívar knew, I knew, we all knew that Santander was plotting against the general, but the cunning rat was very clever at leading a double life. I remained alert; sooner or later we would catch him in the act of conspiracy. Then he would not go to the United States—but straight to hell, where he belonged.

  ON AUGUST 10, to celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of Boyacá, the battle in which Colombia had achieved its independence from Spain after Bolívar had defeated General Morillo, a masked ball would be held at the Coliseo, across from the Presidential Palace. Bolívar would attend, which meant that I could not.

  The prospect of being captive in my house while the ball was taking place at the Coliseo, so close by, was unacceptable. The night before the ball, after a pleasant supper together, taking advantage of Bolívar’s jovial mood, I said, in a tone of supplication, “My general, since it is a masked ball, and nobody can see me, please, please, give me permission to attend.”

  He smiled. “Manuelita, you look so enchanting tonight, I could not deny you anything. You have to give me your word of honor that you will attend alone, without Natán and Jonotás, so you won’t be recognized. What’s more, you have to promise me you will not talk to anyone.”

  Leaping from my chair, I put my arms around his neck and kissed him. “I give you my word of honor, my sweet general.”

  “Palacios will personally deliver an invitation to your house tomorrow. This will remain our secret, understood?”