“An approach,” repeated Baltasar in English, holding the English girl’s cold hand. Was this, given the fact that she was English, a good sign—the colder, the more full of life? It wasn’t; she died a few hours later in Baltasar’s arms, begging him to repeat the word approach. Approach to what? To death, to her lost home, to the unknown love of the poor foreign courtesan? He never found out. He stayed with her, holding her for a long while. Even after he was asked to leave her, he clung to the fair, pale body with its thin, matchstick limbs. It was hard for him to let go. A voice had told him: “Take charge of her. Until the end. She has no one else in the world. The day she’s buried, there will be no one to accompany the body. Only you will know for certain that she died.” He remembered the funeral and the nameless grave of Eusebio, the black son of the dark-skinned old general in Tabay, and did not want the English girl’s tombstone to be without a name. Since he invented names, what name would he give to this woman, who had no identification papers? In the face of death, his imagination flagged. Perhaps, simply, the Duchess. The Duchess of Malfi. A literary homage. Webster. Elizabeth Webster. By naming her, he created her. But he was only obeying the voice that exhorted: “Take care of her.”
He was afraid that if he listened to that voice he would cease to be master of his own destiny. The experiences of a short life told him, however—as he wandered through the hospital’s long gallery, where the sick, mostly soldiers, were laid out on their cots—that his destiny was a chorus of voices, his own and others. Nothing more.
Every night, the Spanish officers would noisily burst into Lutecia’s brothel—she herself had begun to use the name—and Baltasar would listen from afar to their shouts, confidences, and explosions of camaraderie. He never went out to them. They disgusted him and had nothing to do with his happy, free dealings with the madam from Lima. He would visit the girls in the afternoon, when all of them, without exception, were still virgins. They would talk a great deal about the officers, sometimes making observations that would otherwise pass unnoticed. The French logician, who had seen action even before Waterloo, insisted that women were a mere pretext, something to excite these handsome men who had degrees from European academies, for whom machismo was an essential part of their military calling and their national identity. But class identifications were even more important. They were the peacocks and, at times, the stud horses of the Maracaibo whores, but she, the French tart, noticed how they looked at each other, how they liked to catch each other in the women’s beds, how their desire was stronger for each other than it was for the women. Bah, she didn’t rule out the possibility that in Spain they would prefer the women of their own class to the men of the same class, but in this port of fevers and pubic lice, allez-y. Men and women all agreed: they wanted Spanish pricks.
One of the officers, so thin he was almost invisible from the front, because he was all profile—long nose, languid eyes, mustache combed upward, hair as highly polished as the leather of his cavalry boots, used his entire body to sniff around. He was like a greyhound. His nose would turn red, and he would cease being pure profile because of an unusual, exotic smell. His regiment was constantly in and out of Maracaibo, deeply engaged in a war to the death with Páez and Bolívar, but he always put up at Harlequin House. He prided himself on having gone to bed with all the girls except the English whore. He was afraid of “perfidious Albion,” especially between the sheets, and was paralyzed with terror when he learned she’d died. He was sure, he said, that if she’d died on him in bed, she would have dragged him to the bottom of the sea, the paradise of the English.
One night he smelled something unusual. Feigning joviality, he approached, talking about August nights in Madrid, when wearing a uniform was a foretaste of hell, and suddenly pulled back the curtain of the lavatory where Baltasar Bustos, in turn, was pretending to wash his face in a basin, although in fact he was spying on the Spanish officers.
Their eyes met, and Baltasar wondered where he’d seen those eyes before, in what skirmish, viceregal salon, or crossroad between La Paz and Lake Titicaca. Where? The same question was as obvious in the royalist officer’s eyes. Each knew that he would probably never recall their first meeting, or even if it had actually taken place.
Páez’s plainsmen, advancing from the south, besieged Maracaibo. Food began to run out. The hospitals were filled with the wounded. War to the death desolated Venezuela. Black fugitives would arrive, thinking they could blend into the anonymity of the port, but irrevocably assumed to be rebels, they were caught and executed by the royalists as quickly as by the insurgents. No one knew who was going to be hanged or why: for being a royalist, for being rich, for being black, for being a rebel …
Baltasar Bustos would accompany the girls who became ill with typhus or appendicitis, or who just had ticks, to the Maracaibo hospital. Many never returned. Others returned because of the calomel cure. But after a while Baltasar needed no pretext to walk into the sanatorium. He suffered and was horrified by the suffering of all. Nothing was more terrible than watching amputations in which the only anesthetic given the soldiers was a glass of brandy and a napkin to bite. Baltasar would stand at their side, holding their hands, knowing they needed something warmer than a piece of cloth or a glass. And he felt how hard they held on to him, as if holding on to life. He immersed himself in the hospital world. He felt his place was there, not despite the fact that the wounded were his eternal enemies, but precisely because of it: the Spaniards, the murderers of Francisco Arias and Juan Echagüe, those who had corrupted (who could doubt it?) Ofelia Salamanca.
Among all the cases, one moved him deeply. A man whose face had been blown off. There was a hole of raw flesh between his eyebrows and his mouth. And he still lived. His brain wasn’t gone. He had a life somewhere beyond the hideous wound, in a marvelous and melancholy corner of his head. He would move his hands, which were as thin as the rest of his body. A pair of cavalry boots stood upright, beautifully polished, at the foot of his cot.
Baltasar held that officer’s hands. He was as sure that he recognized him now as he had been unsure in Harlequin House. No, he didn’t remember where they’d first seen each other. The war had been waged for eight years and it ranged through an area three times larger than the lands in which Caesar or Napoleon had fought their campaigns. But he did remember where they’d last seen each other: when a curtain was pulled back in a bordello a few weeks before.
This had to be the same man. And even if he wasn’t, the remote possibility that he was the same man of narrow profile, shiny pomade, and sniffing nose, flirtatious, self-satisfied, so remote from the mere idea of being disfigured as he strolled around the house, recalling Madrid summers and sniffing with his nervous nose, now gone forever—that was enough for Baltasar to say to himself and to him: “I know who you are. I recognize you. Don’t worry. You won’t die without anyone’s knowing who you are. Trust me. I’ll be near you. I won’t abandon you. I’ll put a name on your tombstone.”
When the Spanish officer died, Baltasar returned to Harlequin House weeping and told Lutecia what had happened. She caressed his head of copper-colored curls and said: “I was waiting for this moment, or for one like it, to free you from this place.”
“I am free. I love you. You are my best friend. I don’t want to lose you, I’ve already lost…”
“Take this note. It’s from Ofelia Salamanca. She wants you to join her in Mexico. She’s waiting with Father Quintana in Veracruz. Here are the directions and a map. Hurry, Baltasar. Oh yes, I bought you a pair of glasses. Start using them again. You have to read this letter carefully. Don’t start hallucinating. You have to see things clearly.”
8
Veracruz
[1]
The Virgin of Guadalupe had no time to spread her arms in imitation of her son on the cross before receiving the blast.
She stood there with her hands clasped in prayer, with her eyes lowered and sweet, until the bullets pierced her eyes and mouth, and then her blue mantle
and her warm, maternal feet.
The stars were reduced to dust, the horns of the moon shattered into a thousand pieces, the scandalized cherubs fled.
The commander of the fort of San Juan de Ulúa repeated the order, take aim, fire, as if a single barrage wasn’t sufficient for the independentist Virgin, as if the effigy venerated by the poor and the agitators who carried her image in their scapularies and on their insurgent flags deserved to be executed twice a day.
The priest Hidalgo in Guanajuato, the priest Morelos in Michoacán, and now the priest Quintana here in Veracruz had all thrown themselves into the revolt with the banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe raised on high. And though they were ultimately captured and beheaded—except for that damned Quintana, who was still running around loose—she, the Virgin, could be shot at will, whenever there was no rebel leader to take her place.
Baltasar Bustos watched this ceremony of the shooting of the Virgin when he reached Veracruz from Maracaibo, and he concluded that he’d reached the strangest land in the Americas.
The revolutionary decade was coming to a close, and if in South America San Martín, Bolívar, Sucre, and O’Higgins had beaten the Spaniards and there had been no chance for retaliation, in Mexico the sacrifice of the poor parish priests, who led the only uprising of the Indians and the peasants armed with clubs and picks, had left independence to the dubious outcome of an agreement among warriors. On the one side, there were the weary professional soldiers of the Spanish Army, representatives of the reactionaries restored after the Congress of Vienna and the return to the throne of Ferdinand VII, more stupid and ultramontane than ever. On the other were the nervous (and enervated) creole officers, led by Agustín de Iturbide, who could no longer pretend (not even to fool themselves) to support Ferdinand or Carlota. All the same, the creole military men promised to protect the interests of the upper classes and keep the damned races—Indians, blacks, mestizos, zambos, cambujos, quadroons, and other racial mixtures—from taking over the government.
So the Virgin of Guadalupe was shot to death once more on the morning of Baltasar Bustos’s arrival at Veracruz, and through the perforated eyes of the Mother of God passed the rays of a tropical, leaden sun. Baltasar Bustos was entering Mexico: it was the final phase of his campaign of love and war. It had now been ten years since he’d kidnapped the white baby and put the black one in its place in Buenos Aires; but only two months had gone by since the quondam Luz María, Lutecia, the madam of Harlequin House, had handed him that ever so simple and direct note written in Veracruz:
Come instantly.
Ofelia.
Baltasar had brought something more than this note with him from Maracaibo: he was entering Mexico with the documents of a Spanish officer, as thin and nervous as a greyhound, whose face had been blown off and who had died in Baltasar’s arms.
He was entering Veracruz in search, first, as Lutecia had instructed him, of the priest Quintana. And entering Veracruz was like walking into a blazing oven.
Barely had Baltasar presented his papers to the port commander, Captain Carlos Saura, Fifth Grenadier Regiment of the Virgin of Covadonga, than he took off his royalist officer’s coat and used it to cover a wretched dead man in Customs House Street, an indigent, the other wretched creatures around him said, for whom there was no money for a funeral.
“No one wants to bury them free, neither the priests nor the government.”
[2]
“You’re looking for Father Quintana? Well, let’s see you find him!” the toothless man in Orizaba said, laughing, when Baltasar Bustos came within sight of that rainy city close to the volcano, a city occupied by the insurgent forces of the priest Anselmo Quintana for no other reason—according to the malicious gossips of Veracruz—than to destroy the Spaniards’ tobacco supplies, or—according to the kindhearted gossips of the same port—to dress his troops in the excellent fabric produced in Orizaba, or—according to the cynics—because the rich Spaniards had hidden their property in the convents and this priest, they knew for a fact, had no respect for nuns; he’d certainly had, with one nun or another, one or another of his many bastards. After all, the principal purpose of this campaign was to frighten the Spaniards and then enter the richest and most devout city to sack it before running off with the loot and mounting the next campaign.
“My God, when will there be peace!” said the creole ladies, fanning themselves before the parish church of Veracruz.
“We’ve put all our faith in Iturbide and the royalist creole officers,” said another lady to Baltasar Bustos.
“Let the war be over, even if the Spaniards go. But, for God’s sake, don’t let the Indians and the blacks take over everything, like that excommunicated, heretical priest Quintana, who’s taken the city of Orizaba. All the decent people have come to the port, fleeing from the outrages perpetrated by that damned priest,” said a coffee grower from Cempoala, standing at the entrance to the License Office. This man, named Menchaca, had come to investigate tax exemptions, so he could export his sacks of coffee. “Around here, they say the Indians did the work of the conquest, because without them the Aztecs would have dined on Cortez and his five hundred Spaniards. Now it’s up to us creoles to bring about independence, just so the Indians don’t take their revenge.”
“Are you asking who this parish priest Quintana is?” the gentlemen playing billiards and smoking in the bars near the docks and the lethargic sea asked Baltasar rhetorically. “A dangerous man. A womanizer. He’s got a ton of kids. He laughs out loud at the edicts of the Inquisition, which excommunicate him. He used to be a parish priest right here near La Antigua. Of course we know him. He liked to bathe naked in the Chachalacas River with his flock. He’s immoral. He would bet on fighting cocks. Do you know why he became a rebel, Captain Saura? Because in 1804 the consolidation law legislated by the Bourbons took away his privileges as a member of the lesser clergy. He lost those privileges, especially the exemption from civil justice. That’s the reason. And now they’ve assumed the privilege of sacking every hacienda they find in their path. Just like Hidalgo, Morelos, and Matamoros. This is a land of rebel priests, who take advantage of religion to fool the asses and behave like pirates.”
“He’s a show-off. He wears fancy cassocks. He covers his head with a red cap, as if he were a cardinal.”
“He’s the heir of Hidalgo and Morelos,” said a young lawyer, slapping Baltasar’s face with a glove as the tiles of an interrupted domino game poured over the floor of the entrance. “He’s our last hope to keep criminals and scoundrels like you, Captain, from exploiting Mexico one second longer. Death to Iturbide! Death to the creoles! Hurrah for Father Quintana and the equality of the races!”
Baltasar Bustos had to agree to a duel with the petty lawyer from Veracruz at six o’clock the next morning on the road to Boca del Río, but that same evening he left on horseback for Orizaba, traveling uphill all the way. Two dawns later, in sight of the misty town where the tropics have hung the veils of an eternal Lent, he had no difficulty entering the town occupied by the famous priest Quintana, the last defender, or so everyone said, of an egalitarian revolution in North America. A few added that it would not be long before this revolution was betrayed by Iturbide and the creole military men.
In any case, this revolution could hardly be expected to triumph, and it would quite properly be the last, Baltasar wrote to us, his friends in Buenos Aires, if it was so careless as to allow anyone at all to ride into the camp of General Quintana and ask for him without being stopped by a single guard or even asked for a password. Why?
“Because Father Quintana says that if someone’s out to get him not even the Pope himself could protect him.” The toothless man from Orizaba who said that to him stared at Baltasar—blue flannel trousers, linen shirt, calico jacket, Panama hat, and the horse that Menchaca the coffee grower had given him just because he liked him—as if to imply that a rich little creole like him, turned out in such clothes and with gold-rimmed glasses, posed no threat to the
priest Quintana. And once in the wolf’s mouth, how long would this little gentleman with a straight nose, tangled sideburns, and honey-colored curls last if he tried any mischief?
“Just as night and the mountains, which are our real safeguard, protect our army, the priest Quintana says, ‘He who seeks me will find me.’ Try it, young fellow,” the boy encouraged Baltasar. “Find Anselmo Quintana on your own; there are standing orders never to point him out.”
Veracruz roads are impassable in summer. The rain never ends, but all that water seems to originate in Orizaba and then flow back to it. Baltasar forded the rivers when the roads disappeared under mudslides. Before starting out for the day, he breakfasted on pineapple and mangoes still warm from the sun. But in Orizaba everything smelled of damp earth, and the fruits—oranges, strawberries, quinces, and sloes—boiled in immense caldrons to be made into preserves.
The rebels’ weapons, compared with what he’d seen of José de San Martín’s in Valparaíso and to the arms shipments that passed through Maracaibo, were not impressive. A few rifles, many lances, and even primitive slings. As if to make up for the paucity of artillery, there was an overabundance of archives. Mountains of paper at the entrance to the old tobacco warehouses, where military headquarters had been established. Sheets upon sheets, until they competed with the jealous mountain, the Orizaba peak the Indians called Citlaltepetl, Mountain of the Star. And running like mice around these huge parchment cheeses were secretaries and lawyers, scribes busily writing proclamations, agents and propagandists of all kinds. In greater numbers than the soldiers of the rebel army itself.
Baltasar Bustos had seen enough of the revolution in Spanish America to be able to tell who these people were without anyone’s having to point them out. They were there to offer testimony about deeds, convince the incredulous, give the lie to the malicious, draw up laws, and elucidate constitutions. The star of this legal mountain was eloquence—easy, abundant, solemn, and seductive all at the same time: a rhetorical volcano. And while they were ambitious, these independence lawyers were not cynical. Dorrego and I, Varela, endlessly fixing our clocks in Buenos Aires, often said that in the case of the revolution for independence Pascal’s bet about the existence of God was absolutely pointless: believing in God is a bet you cannot lose. If God exists, I win. If He doesn’t, it doesn’t matter.
The Campaign Page 20
