by Lily Tuck
The officers amused themselves with occasional shots at birds or beasts on the shore. In one instance a most extraordinary transformation was wrought by the rather questionable rifle practice of a gallant captain, who fired at a white crane on the shore and was astonished to behold the strange bird suddenly assume the shape and proportions of a native of the country, who had been stooping in the bushes by the waterside, and disappear with great rapidity toward the interior.
Pancho was sitting on the ground at Ella’s feet, he was eating a slice of manioc cake. Thirteen, Pancho was always hungry and he was big for his age. Already there was the shadow of a moustache on his upper lip.
“Is Paris as beautiful as Asunción?” he asked his mother.
“Yes, Paris is as beautiful.” Ella smiled.
“A river, like the Paraguay, flows through the city,” Pancho continued, his mouth full.
“That’s right, the River Seine. Why do you ask?” Ella answered.
Pancho shrugged. “I’m just curious, I read about it in a book. What about Ireland? Is Ireland beautiful?”
“Yes, Ireland is very beautiful. Don’t talk with your mouth full of food,” Ella added.
“Will you take me there one day?”
“Of course, I will.” Ella leaned down and patted Pancho’s hand. “I promise.”
Instead of siege and pitched battles, the Paraguayan Army waged a war of entrenchments, but, in view of the vastly superior Allied forces led by the Duke de Caxias, which totaled 30,000 men, Franco was gradually forced to retreat northward—all the while fighting for every inch of ground with amazing tenacity. This time he went upriver to a hill town called Pikysyry. His army was divided into five divisions. Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson—he had been promoted from lieutenant-major and Franco had given him a handsome ceremonial sword with a gold hilt—commanded the Angostura batteries and again he had his men dig a long trench next to the river. This was not an easy task: the mud was slimy and the rope and tackle were as slippery as soap. Major Hermosa commanded the right, Colonel Gonzales the center and Colonel Moniel and Colonel Rivarola commanded the remaining two batteries. The army numbered about 5,000 men, most of whom were boys. The armament consisted of about 100 guns, including the big 150-pound gun brought down from Asunción and the Whitworth Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson had admired. Much of the ammunition had been lost and many of the guns had only twenty or thirty rounds left. The soldiers, too, had to make do with fifty to sixty rounds.
Fulgencio had fewer than forty rounds of ammunition and his musket often jammed or misfired. He was sitting with a dozen men in a small redoubt—earlier they had dug a trench around it and placed chains on posts to keep the horses of the enemy from jumping the trench—and he was sipping cold maté. Since his brother, Gaspar, had died, Fulgencio no longer cared much whether he himself lived or died; he no longer felt pain or discomfort—the rain, the mud, thirst, hunger—so acutely. He hardly noticed the host of buffalo gnats that as soon as the sun set swarmed and bit every exposed surface of his body—what little flesh was left on his bones—and his skin was the consistency of leather. And he rarely spoke—everyone he had ever known was dead and what was there left to say? Very occasionally, he thought about his wife but it had been three years since he had last seen her and he could barely recall her face (he remembered that she sometimes wore her hair in thick braids on top of her head and that she put a flower in her hair) and he certainly could not imagine the feel of her body underneath him or how it felt to make love to her. Anyway, he no longer thought about sex although there was a time—it seemed like a lifetime ago—when he and Gaspar used to masturbate before they went to sleep, but he could not imagine doing it now. It would take too much effort. It took all the effort he could muster to sit, to stand, to eat the bit of beef and chipa, to drink maté, to piss and crap, to raise his gun, aim, fire it. The week before—or was it a month ago?, another thing that had happened was that he had lost track of time—as he was crossing a swamp, his shoe had fallen off in the water. His shoe was not a real shoe but pieces of hides strapped to his feet, and now he was waiting for a man to die so that he could take his shoe but even that did not concern him overly. Instead, he wiggled his bare toes in the mud, and settled himself to sleep a little.
During the night, the Brazilians overran the Pikysyry trenches, stopping short of where Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson was at Angostura, and killed seven hundred Paraguayan soldiers and took nearly half as many prisoners. Fulgencio survived the attack, although the way he was stretched out in the mud he must have appeared dead to the enemy. Most of the soldiers who had been in the redoubt with him were dead—one man was half lying on top of Fulgencio, his arm resting companionably on Fulgencio’s shoulder—and the rest had fled. The irony was that in the confusion of the attack, someone, a fellow Paraguayan soldier probably—the Brazilian soldiers lacked nothing in the way of clothes and arms—had gone off with Fulgencio’s shoe, his one remaining shoe.
“Mimosa, acacia, a red-leaved hibiscus, and, look, over there’s a fuchsia.” Ella was pointing out the plants to General MacMahon, who had borrowed one of Franco’s horses and was riding next to her—surrounded by the enemy, they could not ride far. “I remember how in front of our house in Cork there was the tallest fuchsia hedge I have ever seen.” Ella paused to tighten her reins a little. “Even here in Paraguay, I have never seen a plant like it.”
“I remember those fuchsia hedges—purple bells, I called them. They grew along the roads,” General MacMahon answered. Tough and unspoiled, General MacMahon had fought in the Union army during the American Civil War. Franco had taken an instant liking to him—as instant as was his dislike of Charles Washburn—and so had Ella. Also, General MacMahon was a good horseman and he was Irish.
“Our house was on an inlet, and one of my first memories is of the tide coming in and out,” Ella continued. “As a child, it always amazed me that the mudflats I looked at in the morning—I could cross to the other shore in twenty minutes on foot in my boots—could, by the afternoon, be transformed into glittering deep blue water. With boats sailing on the water! I know, I know, General,” Ella said, smiling, “tides have to do with the pull of the moon on the ocean but still I could not help thinking about it as miraculous.”
“When I was a boy in Ireland—I was Federico’s age—I had a pony,” General MacMahon told Ella. “The pony’s name was Bibo—don’t ask me why—and Bibo was more like a dog, he followed me everywhere, if I had let him he would have come inside the house with me when it was time for my supper. I thought the world of that pony. Then one day my mother asked me to go pick some cress for her from a stream that was perhaps a mile or two from our cottage, so I rode Bibo to the stream, but when I got there the stream had dried up. The stream had turned into a bog, and not knowing any better, I rode Bibo into it—” General MacMahon paused and shook his head. “The bog was quicksand and Bibo got stuck in it. He could not move his feet at all. Also, he was sinking fast. I stood up on his back—in those days I rode bareback—and jumped as far as I could on to dry land, thinking that once I had gotten off him, he would be able to move, but he couldn’t. Poor Bibo was up past his knees in the quicksand and he was neighing and shaking his head and getting more and more agitated, which of course made him sink even faster. It was pitiful to watch and from where I was I couldn’t reach him or reach the reins to try to pull him out so I decided to run home and get help which is what I did. I ran as fast as my legs could carry me and when I reached home, I got my father and my brothers to go back down with me to the bog—my father brought along a rope and my brothers carried a ladder—and although it had taken me perhaps thirty minutes to do this, by the time we got back to where I had left Bibo, Bibo was gone. There was no trace of him. Nothing. The pony had been swallowed up by the mud.”
“Oh,” Ella said. “How dreadful.”
General MacMahon did not answer right away, then he said, “I swear, in my whole life, that was the worst thing I ever did see or, perhaps I
should say the worst thing I never did see.”
The Allies kept up their fire for a week. Major Hermosa was crushed to death when his horse was shot and fell on top of him; Colonel Gonzales was killed when the ammunition cart he was standing next to exploded; Colonel Moniel was taken prisoner and Colonel Rivarola bled to death in the field from his wounds. Franco’s army was in complete disarray, the number of dead and wounded was huge, still the few obedient and brave Paraguayan soldiers left refused to give up. On December 23, the Allied generals sent a messenger asking Franco to surrender, but that same morning, Dr. Stewart, Franco’s personal physician, had pulled out Franco’s abscessed tooth, also taking out the tooth next to it for good measure, and Franco had a terrible headache—to make matters worse he had a hangover from the bottle of brandy he had drunk to kill the pain—and he was in no mood to negotiate. Franco cursed the messenger, he threatened him with his sword and, frightened, the messenger rode away without waiting for an official answer.
Christmas Eve a cannonball ripped through Franco’s living quarters and missed hitting him and Brigida Chaves by only a few feet. In bed, Franco was on top of Brigida Chaves when the force of the blast knocked them both—surprisingly, Franco did not lose his erection and stayed inside her—to the floor. When the smoke and debris cleared and Brigida Chaves had left, although it was the middle of the night, Franco sent for General McMahon. The time had come to make out his will:
GENERAL MACMAHON, MINISTER OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PIKYSYRY
24 December 1868
SIR,—As representative of a friendly nation, and to provide against all that may happen, allow me to entrust to your care the subjoined document, by which I transfer to Doña Ella Lynch all my private effects of whatever description.
Concerned about his children, Franco wrote General MacMahon a second letter:
SIR,—As you have the extreme goodness to offer to take charge of my children, I now recommend them to your protection should anything happen to me.
I authorize you to adopt any means in their favor you may consider best for the welfare of those poor little creatures, more particularly Leopoldo, whose tender age fills me with anxiety.
You will thus gain my eternal gratitude, since the fate of those children is what will most trouble me in the terrible period I dedicate to the fortunes of my country. They will be safe under the protection of a gentleman whose qualities I have been able to appreciate, not, indeed, during a long acquaintance, but to me a happy one.
It is thus, General, I venture to trouble you, with motives which make no other call than in that gentlemanly feeling I congratulate myself in having found in Your Excellency, to whom I now offer my friendly acknowledgments.
Francisco S. Lopez
The Paraguayan line gave way three days later. In the chaos of the battle, Franco could not find Ella. Paying no attention to the bursting shells and rockets falling all around him, he spurred his horse and wheeled past the burning buildings, looking for her and shouting her name. He grew hoarse from both the smoke and the shouting, while his son Pancho, with tears streaming down his face, desperately tried to keep up with his father, until Franco had to abandon the search and retreat. Galloping through the woods a few minutes later, Franco, out of the corner of his eye, caught sight of Brigida Chaves falling off her horse—either she could not ride or she had been shot—but it was too late and Franco did not stop for her. He could hear the Allied infantry right behind him; fortunately, they were firing too high. General Francisco Fernandez and his lancers were covering Franco and although they were vastly outnumbered they bravely stood their ground until Franco was safely out of harm’s way and General Fernandez was shot through the heart.
On Christmas Day, two large carriages drawn by horses and several carts drawn by oxen, accompanied by a small detachment of cavalry, made up the convoy that included General MacMahon, the Lopez children—conscientious, General MacMahon was fulfilling Franco’s instructions, and paying special attention to Leopoldo, the youngest—Rosaria, Doña Iñes and a number of servants. They were making their slow and arduous way to the new provisional capital at Piribebuy. The carts contained all of Franco and Ella’s furniture, silver and china, their clothes and papers; one cart contained Ella’s Bechstein piano. The road was a bumpy track, lined with wounded men—more than six thousand of them. Some were walking but most were being pulled in slow-moving carts that the carriages overtook.
“Don’t look,” Rosaria advised the children.
The children looked anyway. “Did you see him?” Federico whispered to Enrique, nodding to a man lying in a cart. “I don’t think he had legs.”
“Where? Show me.” Curious, Carlos Honorio craned his neck.
“I didn’t see him.” Excluded, Leopoldo began to cry; also, he remembered he had forgotten his humming top in Pikyrysy. “I want Mamma,” he whined.
“Don’t cry, Leopoldo. Your mamma will be here soon,” Rosaria lied.
Several times they nearly had to turn back. Swollen by the rains, the rivers were difficult to cross. Each time, the horses and oxen were made to swim and the carriages and carts were run into the water until each axle rested inside a canoe; then, wading and swimming, the soldiers pushed the canoes with the carriages to the opposite shore. Midriver, where the current was strongest, they had a hard time keeping the carriages upright and from upsetting into the water. At one crossing, afraid to get into a canoe, Doña Iñes stood hesitating on the bank of the river until, without a word, one of the soldiers picked her up in his arms and, despite her protests, set her down next to Enrique and Federico.
Hot and tired, the two boys were arguing again in the canoe.
“He had one leg, I tell you,” Enrique said.
“He had no legs,” Federico insisted. “You did not see him.”
“I did see him. One leg, I said.”
“You must be blind.”
“You’re the one who is blind!” Enrique half stood up in the canoe and hit Federico in the chest, making the canoe rock.
Federico kicked back at Enrique and made the canoe rock harder.
“Aiii!” Doña Iñes cried as the canoe tipped over.
Enrique and Federico were able to grab the overturned canoe and hang on to it as they were swept to the shore but Doña Iñes disappeared under the water. The same soldier who had picked her up in his arms plunged in the river after her—Doña Iñes could not swim and the shoe with the heavy wooden sole dragged her under—and he got her out.
Next, to the sound of church bells ringing from a nearby village, they had to climb the cordilleras. The pass over the mountains was cut out of the rock and as steep as a staircase; also it was slippery with water that trickled down from streams. Everyone, including little Leopoldo—General MacMahon put Leopoldo on his shoulders and carried him—had to get out of the carriages and walk; the soldiers had to dismount and lead their horses. Barely had they started when the cart carrying Ella’s Bechstein piano broke an axle. With no means to repair it, the cart and piano had to be abandoned (later, that same village with the ringing church bells was renamed Piano). Less than halfway up the mountain pass, the soldier who had picked up Doña Iñes in his arms and put her in the canoe and then rescued her from drowning—his name was Cantalicio (Doña Iñes understood him to say Jesú Cristo)—again picked her up in his arms and carried her up the steep road. This time, Doña Iñes shut her eyes and did not protest.
At about the same time that Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson had to surrender at Angostura, in Croydon, England, where she lived, Mrs. Masterman received a disturbing letter from her son:
12 September 1868
My Dear Mother:
In my letter to you of the eighth, sent through Mr. Washburn, I mentioned the terrible conspiracy to destroy the government of Paraguay and its President, who by his skill and bravery in this war had defied the power of Brazil and gained a reputation unexampled in America. The conspiracy was suggested and chiefly arranged by Mr. Washburn, who was in leag
ue with the enemy. As I was living in his house, I could not help hearing about it; and I am sorry I did not denounce him to the government, but I have done all I could to make up for the neglect. I have candidly confessed all I know of this terrible business; and I hope I will be pardoned by the President. I hope my life may be spared, so I may see you again.
Your affectionate son,
Frederick Masterman
Sixteen
PIRIBEBUY
The orange trees that lined the streets of Piribebuy were in bloom and birds chirped and warbled in the branches. All the tidy thatch-roofed houses in the village had pretty flower gardens and the bell in the quaint old church tower in the plaza chimed the hours on time. Looking out at the peaceful scene from her bedroom window and listening to Carlos Honorio, in the next room, naming his animals as he put them inside Noah’s ark, it was difficult for Ella to imagine that a war was still being fought and that a few days ago she had nearly been killed.
Colonel von Wisner, Ella and her young equerry, Lázaro Alcántara, left Pikysyry a few minutes before Franco and Pancho. They just missed one another—one time Ella thought she heard a voice call out “Mamma,” but she could not see through the cannon smoke. Riding through the woods, they heard several shots, and when Ella turned she saw Lázaro, who was a few paces behind her, fall from his horse. Riderless, the horse galloped past Ella.
“Leave him,” Colonel von Wisner called out but Ella had yanked her horse around and was riding back to where Lázaro lay on the ground.
A bullet had severed an artery and a stream of blood gushed like a fountain from his arm. He was trying to stop the flow with one hand, but blood was pouring through his fingers like water. Dismounting, Ella knelt on the ground next to Lázaro and tore off the sleeve of her blouse. She tried to make a tourniquet but the wound was on his shoulder and she could find no place to tie it. Behind her, more shots were fired and she heard Colonel von Wisner, who had ridden back, shout, “We must go at once, or we too shall be killed.”
