by Lily Tuck
Ella looked up and saw two Brazilian infantrymen with bayonets running toward them through the woods. From where he was sitting on his horse, Colonel von Wisner fired at one; in his haste, Colonel von Wisner fired too close to his horse’s head and the horse reared and bolted. Left alone, Ella picked up Lázaro’s sword, which lay next to him on the ground, and standing up, she faced the other infantryman. The man was black, a slave probably, and startled to see a woman, he did not fire right away. Ella saw him frown then open his mouth to say something but he was too late. Before the man could shut his mouth or move to defend himself, Ella pursued her next advantage, that of a left-handed fencer, and lunged forward with the sword. She cut him in the neck.
When she turned back to Lázaro, his face was drained of color and his body had gone rigid. He was trying to speak.
“Comment allez-vous, Madame?”
“I have killed a man,” Ella picked up her pen and wrote in her diary. “I have killed a black man,” she underlined the words. “A Brazilian. A man who no doubt had a wife and children….” Then, pausing, she looked out the window again at the village of Piribebuy. This time, she did not see the flowers that grew in such profusion in the tidy gardens or hear the birds that chirped and warbled in the branches of the orange trees; instead she saw the black man’s face and how surprised he had looked and how for perhaps a second their eyes had met before his blood, red blood like Lázaro’s, had spurted out of his neck and splashed her clothes and face.
Ella shut her diary.
The Brazilian forces occupied Asunción. They pillaged and looted the city. Every house was ransacked; furniture, books, papers were stolen, burned, torn apart. In Calle Liberdad, a dead mule lay rotting in the middle of the street. The American Legation on the Plaza Vieja had become the Gran Hotel de Cristo, a misleading name since it was a brothel. Franco’s unfinished palace stood in ruins, the doors and windows ripped out, the statuary broken. The seats, the velvet curtains, the piano, even the sets—everything that could be carried—were removed from the opera house modeled on La Scala. Inside Inocencia’s house, the aviary was destroyed, twisted bits of wire lay on the grounds with a few faded parrot feathers stuck to them; the silk curtains that had once belonged to Baron de Villa Maria were in tatters; only Inocencia’s large bed with the mahogany carved pineapples still stood in the bedroom, several Brazilian soldiers kept two or three young Guaraní girls at a time tied to it. (When one of the Brazilian soldiers slept in the bed, he complained of a recurring dream in which an old man with wings instead of arms, a sharp beak instead of a nose, flew over his head in a menacing way.) A fire had been set in the front hall and the marble statue of the woman bitten by a serpent was blackened by smoke, her head was split at the nose, her marble breasts hacked off. In the Plaza de la Catedral, the center of the town, starving dogs roamed the square, foraging for food and fighting one another for it. Outside the city, Ella’s house, Obispo Cue, was vandalized and gutted: a broken gilt-framed mirror lay shattered in the front hall; the hand-painted French wallpaper in the dining room hung down in torn strips; in Ella’s bedroom, a chaise longue covered in pink-and-white toile lay on its side, legless; a pile of human excrement had dried in a corner. The children’s rooms were a mess of broken toys, even Enrique’s velocipede had been completely dismantled and destroyed—only a single iron pedal remained. The flower and vegetable gardens were trampled and wrecked—the zinnias beheaded, the orange trees uprooted and felled.
Doña Dolores Carisimo de Jovellanos, Ella’s lady-in-waiting, had not seen Baron von Fischer-Truenfeld in several months—Baron von Fischer-Truenfeld either was building more telegraph posts or had gone back to Prussia—and she was pregnant. Naturally plump, no one noticed her thickening waist, her expanding bosom; no one noticed that she stood on her bed, then stood higher on the table and jumped to the floor several times a day, that she took scalding hot baths, that she drank salt water—the salt water only made her more nauseated. Every day too, Doña Dolores went and knelt on the hard red tiles of the Catedral de la Encarnación and prayed. All to no avail. At last, she went to seek the advice of Señora Juliana Echegaray de Martinez, who was kind and beautiful, but Señora Juliana was not home. Her husband, Colonel Martinez, along with his five hundred men, who were reduced to skin and bones by fatigue and lack of food, had surrendered at Humaitá and, as punishment, Señora Juliana had been taken prisoner. Next, not knowing who else to turn to, Doña Dolores confided in Doña Isidora Diaz, the third lady-in-waiting. Since the death of her husband, Doña Isidora Diaz had become more absentminded and confused.
“I was the wife of General Diaz,” she told Doña Dolores.
“I was speaking of a midwife.” Doña Dolores was nearly in tears.
“I was a good wife,” Doña Isidora said.
It took Doña Isidora some time before she understood what Doña Dolores was after and before she remembered the name of a midwife in La Trinidad.
Doña Dolores took an early morning train from Asunción. There were no passenger carriages and the wagons were open and piled high with sacks of maize and alfalfa. Two men had to give Doña Dolores a hand up—one from above, the other from behind. The man from behind stuck his finger up her ass. The train swayed and bumped and Doña Dolores was only faintly aware of the passing countryside, which was dotted with tussocky grass and spindly cotton plants that had gone to seed. She barely noticed when the train went through woods of fig, acacia and mimosa trees. Mostly she felt the hot sun beating down on her head making her sweat.
When Doña Dolores got off the train at La Trinidad, the back of her skirt was damp. At first, she thought she had sat on something wet—the sack of grain; also she thought of the man who had put his finger up her ass, but by the time she reached the midwife’s house, she knew the damp was blood and that she was miscarrying. The midwife gave her a glass of hot bitter tea to drink, which burned her mouth and tongue and made the bleeding worse, then she inserted something sharp into Doña Dolores’s womb and scraped inside with it while Doña Dolores screamed. Afterward the midwife made Doña Dolores lie down in a hammock wrapped in a blanket while she took her clothes and washed them out for her. When Doña Dolores was ready to leave, she tried to pay the midwife but the midwife would not accept her money.
“God’s will.” The midwife repeated, “God’s will.”
In the train going back to Asunción, Doña Dolores started to bleed again. This time the blood between her legs was dark and clotted. The train was nearly empty, an old man drinking maté was the only other passenger; occupied sucking on his straw, he never once looked over at Doña Dolores. There were no sacks of grain to sit on in the carriage and when the cramps got bad, Doña Dolores lay down on the wooden carriage floor and wept. Too late, she realized she wanted to keep the baby.
From San Fernando, where he saw Frederick Masterman, whose face he said was covered with blood, Alonzo Taylor was made to march over marshes and impenetrable woods. The marshes were filled with reeds and close-cut grasses whose rough edges were as sharp as knives and cut Alonzo’s bare feet; the woods were full of impassable thorny creepers and fallen palm tree branches covered with long sharp spines.
He counted more than two hundred other prisoners. Among the foreigners were Señor Cauturo, an Argentine; Señor Fülger, a German watchmaker, and Señor Harmann, another German; Lieutenant Romero, an Argentine; Captain Fidanza, an Italian; Señor Leite-Pereira, the Portuguese consul. Also there were four Paraguayan ladies: Señora Juliana Echegaray de Martinez, Doña Dolores Recaldè and the Señoritas Egusquiza, two aged spinsters.
Two bullock carts trailed behind the prisoners, they were said to contain Franco’s sisters, Inocencia and Rafaela.
During the march, Alonzo Taylor often walked next to Señora Juliana Martinez. Her body was covered with sores and cuts, her face was badly bruised, on the back of her neck she had a raw spot the size of an orange that oozed pus and blood. Despite his own weakened state, Alonzo tried to help Señora Juliana; he gave h
er what food he had, sometimes they talked.
“For years Mrs. Lynch was my dear friend. She was always very affectionate and warm,” Señora Juliana said.
“She was very fond of one of my daughters, my youngest, Elizabeth. She took her under her wing,” Alonzo answered.
“She gave me many gifts—dresses, French silks”—Señora Juliana fingered the tattered and soiled blue scarf she wore on her shoulders—“brocades, furniture for my house, a diamond bracelet on my birthday. She was always generous to me. If only I could see her, speak to her for a moment.”
Alonzo nodded. “She gave Elizabeth piano lessons. She told me Elizabeth was quite gifted.”
“Tell me the truth, Mr. Taylor. The ugly bruises on my face,” Señora Juliana turned to face Alonzo, “do you think they are permanent?”
“No, they will go away, I assure you.”
Señora Juliana, Alonzo Taylor knew, had been beautiful and she was only twenty-four years old.
Early one morning, an army officer rode up on a big bay horse who bucked and reared and would not stand still. Jerking at the reins with one hand to try and control the horse, the officer shouted out the following prisoners’ names from a piece of paper he held in his other hand: Señor Cauturo and Lieutenant Romero, the Argentines; Señors Fülger and Harmann, the Germans; Captain Fidanza; Señor Leite-Pereira; Señora Juliana, who was so weak and emaciated she could hardly stand; Doña Dolores Recaldè and Señorita Luisa Egusquiza, who was over sixty and whose sister had died along the way.
Each person answered when his or her name was called and walked forward until a line was formed. Then they were marched off by the guards, followed by three priests who carried chairs for the prisoners’ confessions. An hour or so later, Alonzo Taylor heard a volley of shots and a woman screaming. The woman continued to scream long after more shots were fired and Alonzo Taylor shut his eyes and prayed that it was not Señora Juliana Martinez. When the guards returned, one of them was wearing Captain Fidanza’s hat and another Señor Leite-Pereira’s green cape with the brass buttons; a priest had tied Señora Juliana’s blue silk scarf around his neck.
At the Hotel de la Paix in Buenos Ayres, where he was staying, Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson was having dinner with his brother. Eleven years since the brothers had seen each other and at first each did not recognize the other. Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson’s hair had turned white and he had lost nearly twenty pounds while his brother had gained as many and had gone bald. During the five-course meal, which began with a cream of pea soup, went on with poached sea bass, vanilla ice and finished with an assortment of local cheeses and a blancmange for dessert, they caught up on family news—births and deaths primarily: a sister drowned in a boating accident off the coast of Bournemouth, a niece both married and widowed in the same year, another relative had had identical twins, two boys whom even the parents could not distinguish, the family dog, a long-haired setter named Samson, whom Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson remembered with affection, had lived to the ripe old age of sixteen but then had had to be put down.
Toward the end of the meal, the hotel proprietor, Monsieur Maréchal, came over to their table to inquire if everything was satisfactory.
“Excellent, thank you,” Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson assured Monsieur Maréchal. “I haven’t had such a good meal in years. Eleven to be precise.”
Monsieur Maréchal bowed and smiled at the two men. For a moment, he looked as if he wanted to ask something more—news perhaps of Madame Lynch? Instead, he said, “Bon appétit, messieurs.”
After Monsieur Maréchal had left them, Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson offered his brother a cigar he had brought back from Paraguay—a pety-hobi which, despite its rough appearance, was mild. With the cigars, the two brothers drank a sweet Bolivian coffee and poured themselves a glass of brandy. It was only then that Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson began to describe to his brother how, after surrendering at Angostura, he had the good fortune to board the H.M.S. Cracker—although he also mentioned how, in his haste, he deeply regretted having to abandon a valuable ceremonial sword with a hilt of solid gold, a gift from Franco—and leave Paraguay.
The two bullock carts Alonzo Taylor had noticed were empty. Inocencia and Rafaela had been released and were on their way to Piribebuy.
In the carriage, Rafaela whined, “I have lost a button on my dress. Will you please have a look, Inocencia.” Rafaela was missing all the buttons on her dress, the dress was entirely open in the back and held shut by a piece of rope tied around Rafaela’s waist.
“My hair, Rafaela. Is it all in place?” Inocencia answered, patting her head.
“As soon as I get home I am going to sew new buttons on my dress,” Rafaela said.
“I wish I could find my comb,” Inocencia continued. “The tortoiseshell comb Vincente gave me.”
“Silk buttons, bone buttons, brass buttons,” Rafaela said in a singsong voice. “From now on I’ll have nothing but gold buttons!”
“You haven’t seen my comb, have you, Rafaela?” Inocencia was frowning. “If I didn’t know you better and if you were not my sister, I would say that you took the comb.”
“Don’t talk to me about your stupid comb, Inocencia, I am busy looking for my gold button.”
“Look for my comb while you are at it,” Inocencia answered. Then, all of a sudden, without any warning, she punched Rafaela as hard as she could in the stomach.
“Aiii,” Rafaela screamed and grabbed Inocencia by the hair.
The distance between Franco’s camp at Cerro León and Piribebuy was only a few miles as the crow flies but Franco had to cross the cordilleras, which made the journey much longer. Every two or three days, Franco rode his big sure-footed mule, Linda, first up then down the narrow zigzag path carved into the cliff that was as steep as a staircase to go and see Ella.
Franco looked pale and he had gained weight; he ate large amounts of food not from hunger but from frustration. Also at dinner, he drank too much.
“Open another bottle of champagne,” he ordered his servant.
Mañuel looked over at Ella.
“Did you not hear me?” Franco was quick to anger. “You good-for-nothing sneaky pederast!”
Franco listened to no one; occasionally he talked to the American minister, General MacMahon.
“Pass me the dish of meat!” he shouted.
Ella did. “But, chéri, you will get indigestion. This is your third helping.”
Franco glared at Ella. “Mind your own affairs. I have told you before that if you no longer wish to support me and want to leave, now is the time to go.”
“I was talking about the meat. The damn meat! Not the war.” Ella was close to tears.
Franco shrugged and continued eating.
Afterward, in bed, asleep, Franco held Ella’s hand and snored; he had bad dreams. He shouted out names: “Captain Fidanza!” “Saturnino!” “Lieutenant Romero!” “Señor Harmann!” “Doña Luisa Egusquiza!” “Señor Leite-Pereira!”
His shouting woke Ella up.
“Señora Juliana Martinez!”
Ella remembered how Señora Juliana had helped her dress, had helped fix her hair and clasp the aquamarines around her neck. She could still hear Señora Juliana calling out when she arrived in the morning: Señora, do you hear the birds singing this morning? They are singing just for you! Ella’s eyes filled with tears—not only was Señora Juliana sweet-natured, she had a lovely speaking voice.
Pancho always crossed the cordilleras with Franco. When he reached his mother’s house, right away he went to Enrique’s room. Squatting on the floor, Pancho played with Enrique’s set of lead soldiers. He and Enrique set up elaborate battles between the different regiments, the Lancers, the Household Cavalry, and the Light Dragoons. If Enrique’s regiment won, Pancho lost his temper and kicked the remaining soldiers away; one time he kicked Enrique as well.
“Tonto! Imbecil!”
Instead of complaining, Enrique laughed, which made Pancho angrier.
In the corner of the room he shared with Enrique, Federico sat reading—or pretending to read. Among his mother’s possessions, he had found The Last of the Mohicans. The book was translated into French and Federico could make out only a few words here and there; mostly, his eyes were drawn to the colorful illustrations. In one picture, an Indian whose face was painted red, white and yellow had a British soldier by the hair in one hand and a machete in the other; in a second picture, the hands and feet of a pretty fair-haired woman and a fair-haired child were bound by ropes to a post while a group of Indians building a fire with a caldron set on top of it could be seen in the background. Although fascinated, Federico could not help but shudder. The Indians in the book looked to him to be far crueler than the gauchos, far fiercer than the Brazilian macacos.
When it was time for Pancho to leave, he, formal, shook hands with his brothers and leaned over in the French manner to kiss his mother’s hand—Pancho’s lips barely touched Ella’s skin—then he mounted his horse and, with his back stiff and straight, rode back up and down the steep path to Cerro León with his father.
Riding through camp one day, Franco recognized Alonzo Taylor among the prisoners.
“In God’s name, what are you doing here?”
“Sir, I beg you, a mistake surely. I have committed no crime and my family—” Alonzo started to answer.
But Franco did not want to hear any more. “You are at liberty,” he shouted at him, then he whipped his mule and cantered off.
Starving and near death, Alonzo Taylor weighed ninety-eight pounds. He was too weak to go far. Right away, he was captured by Brazilian soldiers, who released him and helped him make his slow, painful way on horseback to Asunción. With no flesh on his bones, Alonzo could barely stay in the saddle, and by the time he reached the house with the fireplace and chimney he had built, he was too ill to speak or say that he was looking for his wife and two daughters. The last thing he remembered was crawling on the floor on his hands and knees to reach the bedroom and calling out for Dolores, the lively girl of mixed Spanish and Guaraní blood who used to sing songs in both languages to him. Afterward Alonzo had no recollection of who took care of him or how he got on board the H.M.S. Cracker, and it was also a few days before he could talk plainly or before he learned that his wife and two daughters were safe in Piribebuy.
