Reasons of State

by Alejo Carpentier

  “Everyone knows you were the Prior of Santa Inés,” said Colonel Hoffmann, suddenly cheering up and unbuttoning his overcoat. And joining his entreaties to the secretary’s, he persuaded the Head of State to take some alcohol to preserve his health—more vital now than ever before—from harm from the stormy weather.

  “Just this once,” said the Head of State, raising the first flask, the smell of whose thick and porous pigskin cover at once brought back the Parisian shop where Ofelia used to buy picador’s saddles, reins, bits, and bridles.

  “Don’t hesitate, Señor President; go right ahead; this is a special occasion. A glorious day, too.”

  “A glorious day, indeed,” echoed Doctor Peralta. They were answered by a peal of thunder, which increased their pleasant sense of safety here within. The sweet yet vegetable aroma of the strong liquor drunk in the cave harmonised with the moisture of mud and mosses to call up a remote image of the classical vintners’ bodegas where new wine sleeps under deep vaults. His spirits revived, the Head of State remembered a text he had humorously quoted in the Cabinet Council—where he often boastfully referred to books read, quoted poems, appropriate phrases, and proverbs suiting the case—during some passing political squabble wrapped up in military jargon. “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks … And you thought-executing fires, vaunt couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts, singe my white head …” To which Doctor Peralta, who was more of a Zorrillean than a Shakespearean, replied with some sparks from Puñal del Godo, so often launched in our National Theatre by the Spanish tragedian Ricardo Calvo, whose too-pure diction he imitated in a comic manner:

  Oh what a threatening storm!

  What a night; may heaven preserve us!

  Is the terrible voice blind,

  and the light that flashes

  when the wind blows and rages

  and lightning strikes the zenith?

  Once more the case of flasks was opened, to celebrate the “terrible voice” of the poem, and the owner of the “terrible voice” that was roaring. And now that they were sufficiently warmed up, with their uniform tunics somewhat unbuttoned, Colonel Hoffmann began to describe the campaign: until yesterday there had only been slight armed clashes, skirmishes, sharpshooting by guerrillas, collision between patrols; on our side the worst had been the blowing up of a train at the exit of the Roquero tunnel, with a loss of horses and equipment, seventeen men killed and fifty-two put out of action with more or less serious wounds. But the enemy—and he directed the light of his lantern onto a map spread on the undulant surface of bats’ guano covering the ground—had steadily retreated towards the Rio Verde, without ever taking the initiative. Today, on the other hand, we had met them in a pitched battle, such as had not been seen since the Wars of Independence. Of course, thorough preparations had been necessary. The enemy had got too much help from the partisans, mounts, cattle, sacks of maize, information passed from village to village with incredible speed by these filthy mountaineers, always sympathetic with rioters and pronunciamentos. It was not a modern battle. Half a century ago these Andeans had come, driving us all crazy with their marches on the capital and their caudillos, and (on arriving at the Presidential Palace) had been amazed to find kitchens worked by gas, sanitation, taps running hot water, and telephones from room to room. This was why it had been necessary to carry out a huge “mopping-up” operation before the battle: burning of houses and villages, summary execution of all suspects, shooting at random into groups of dancers, birthday or baptism parties, which were merely pretexts for whispered propaganda, passing on of information and revolutionary plotting—not to mention certain wakes when, strange to say, there was no corpse in the coffin.

  “But in Santo Tomás del Ancón you had no choice,” said the Head of State. Sad, very sad, of course, but one couldn’t make war with kid gloves on. You had always to follow Von Moltke’s two incontrovertible principles: “The best thing that can happen in a war is a quick ending … But to end it quickly all means are good, not excepting the most iniquitous.” A text of basic importance published by the German General Staff in 1902 stated: “If a war is waged energetically it cannot be directed solely against the combatant enemy; it must also aim at destroying his material and moral resources. Humanitarian considerations can be taken into account only if they do not affect the result of the war itself.” Besides which, Von Schlieffen had said …

  “Stop buggering about with your German classics,” said the Head of State. Von Schlieffen wanted battles to be fought on the chessboards of maps, from a distance, with communications by telephone, cars and motorcycles. But in this damned country without proper roads, and with so many forests, swamps, and mountain ranges, communications had to be maintained on the back of a mule or donkey—even horses were no use in some densely wooded mountains—or by messengers who could run till they dropped like the Indians of Atahualpa. Those theoretical battles fought by telescopes and field glasses, with squared maps and precision instruments, made one think at once of certain generals with moustaches like the Kaiser and a bottle of cognac within reach, not at all disposed—although there were a few exceptions—to rely on shooting and hanging. Our battles, on the other hand, had to be fought with our guts—like today’s—forgetting all the theories taught in military academies. And here the old gunners with their “three hands higher and two to the right, and a finger and a half of rectification,” who could wedge a gun with a millstone, were much more use than these raw lieutenants, stuffed with algebraic and ballistic gibberish that their subordinates didn’t understand, and who had to make calculations in an exercise book before letting off a shell, which in the end generally missed the target on one side or another. “In Latin America,” went on the Head of State, “in spite of artillery, machine guns, and all modern ironmongery bought from the Yankees, nature makes us go on fighting as in the times of the Punic Wars. If we had elephants, we’d make them cross the Andes.”

  “All the same, Von Schlieffen …”

  “Your Von Schlieffen based his entire strategy of war on the battle of Cannae, won by Hannibal.” And the President, who had directed the day’s operations, surprised the others by revealing—or perhaps wanting to make them believe—that he had been guided in his conduct of the action by Julius Caesar’s Commentaries. Three ranks of infantry in the centre; two to attack, the third entrenched as reserve. Two troops of cavalry: on the right, under Hoffmann; on the left, his own. Objective: to break up the enemy’s wings, agglomerating and concentrating him in such a way that his rearguard was useless, and to cut off his retreat to the river. Realizing that he was practically surrounded, Ataúlfo Calván had taken refuge on the farther bank, leaving on this side his two sleeping companions, Misia Olalla and Jacinta the Negress, who by this time must have submitted to the lust of half a battalion of the nation’s Hussars, taking turns between their thighs, one after another. The battle had in fact been like Caesar’s against Ariovistus, beginning by the infantry harassing the ill-armed Indians and negroes who had joined the revolutionaries—in Caesar’s case they were Veneti, Marcomani, Heruli; to us they are Guahibos, Guachinangos, and Mandingos—until the leader, finding his men virtually surrounded, put the Rio Verde between them. So Ataúlfo Galván became our Ariovistus, who fled abandoning his two camp followers, the Suevian and the Norican. And don’t let us forget that Caesar, too, had to fight against certain Andes, who seem to me, I don’t know why, rather like our damned Andeans.

  “Bravo, my President!” exclaimed Doctor Peralta, full of admiration for his knowledge of the wars of antiquity.

  “What I do know is that we gave Ariovistus Galván a thorough thrashing today,” said Hoffmann, somewhat pained by the Head of State’s lack of admiration for Von Moltke and Von Schlieffen.

  They began passing the flasks around again. Now and again, the flash from a streak of lightning came in at the mouth of the cave. The President thought of that boring opera they had seen in New York, where one scene had taken place in a mysterious underground grotto
, with its vaulted roof covered in a greenish phosphorescence. Colonel Hoffmann, who had a powerful voice and considered himself something of a Heldentenor, was reminded of the caverns of Mime and Alberich, and tried to sing a few bars from Wagner, emphasizing the libretto in hoarse German, without finding the exact words that in fact accompany Siegfried’s leitmotiv. Vexed by this failure of memory, which he put down to drink, he picked up a large stone and threw it into the depths of the cave. But the response he received was not the sound of stone on stone, nor yet of a stone falling into mud or water, but the breaking of a large earthen jar, struck in the belly and shattered to pieces. The soldier raised his lantern. On top of fragments of clay a horrible piece of human architecture was sitting erect—yet it was barely human now, consisting of bones wrapped in torn pieces of stuff, of dried worm-eaten skin full of holes, supporting a skull bound by an embroidered fillet; a skull whose hollow eyes were endowed with a terrifying expression, whose hollow nose looked angry in spite of its absence, and with an enormous mouth battlemented with yellow teeth, as if immobilised for ever in a silent howl, at the pain in its dislocated joints and crossed shinbones, to which there still adhered fragments of rope-soled shoes a thousand years old—yet seeming new because of the permanence of their red, black, and yellow threads. It was like some gigantic fleshless foetus that had gone through all the stages of growth, maturity, decrepitude, and death—and returned to its foetal state in the course of time—sitting there, beyond and yet closer to its own death, a thing that hardly was a thing, a ruined skeleton looking out through two hollow sockets beneath a repulsive mass of dark hair that fell in dusty locks on either side of the dried-up cheeks. And this king, judge, priest, or general was gazing angrily from across countless centuries at the men who had broken his former earthenware covering. On the right, on the left, stood six more great jars, close to the walls, glistening with water that had filtered through the mountain. Snatching up several large stones, Hoffmann broke them, one by one. And now six mummies came into view, squatting with crossed arms—more or less flayed, their femurs and joints more or less shattered, with more or less accusing expressions in their blackened faces—making up a terrifying conclave of violation, a Tribunal of Desecration.

  “The devil! The devil! Keep away!” all three shouted, disturbing a cloud of bats that went whirling overhead. And still pursued by the vision they had left behind them, they went out into the night, into the rain, making for the camp, where the ruined canvas of their tents was floating in muddy water. Wrapping themselves in these, sodden as they were, they sat down at the foot of a large tree to await the first light of dawn. And as it grew colder, the last flasks in the Hermès case were emptied. Regaining the surprising serenity that heavy drinking gave him, the Head of State told his secretary to draw up a report to the National College of Science describing the discovery of the mummies, with indications of the position of the cave and the orientation of its entrance in relation to the rising sun, exact arrangement of the funeral jars, etc., as archaeologists do nowadays. Besides which, the chief mummy in the centre was to be presented to the Museum of the Trocadero Palace in Paris, where it would make a splendid show in a glass case, on a wooden plinth, with a brass plate: Pre-columbian Civilisation. Culture of the Rio Verde, etc., etc. As for dating it, their experts could see to that—they were more cautious in this respect than ours, but eager to prove, every time they came across the handle of some ancient pitcher or clay amulet, that this was an earlier example of the techniques of pottery than the oldest Egyptian or Sumerian specimens.

  In any case, the more centuries ago the brass plate was dated, the greater the prestige of his country, which would thus possess remains comparable in antiquity to finds in Mexico and Peru, whose pyramids, temples, and necropolises represented as it were the heraldry of our civilisations and proved that we were in no sense a new world, nor the New World, since our emperors wore magnificent gold crowns, jewels, and quetzal feathers when Colonel Hoffmann’s presumed ancestors were wandering in dark jungles dressed in bearskins with cows’ horns on their heads, and when the Gateway of the Sun of Tihuanaco was already old, the French had not got any further than erecting a few menhirs—piles of stones without art or charm—on the coast of Brittany.

  4

  By a body I understand everything that can fill a space, in such a way that any other body is excluded from it.

  —DESCARTES

  ALTHOUGH, AFTER THE VICTORY, THE HEAD OF STATE would have liked to give the troops a rest, proceeding meanwhile to evacuate the many casualties wounded by bullets, bayonets, machetes, or peasants’ knives, he realised that the Rio Verde must be crossed today, because last night’s rain—and it was still falling—was raising its level hour by hour. It was still possible for the cavalry to take advantage of a ford nearby; but the infantry had to use barges, scows, and any boats available, such as a mould-covered ferry boat, abandoned among the rushes, which was speedily repaired and used to take across impedimenta—some Krupp cannon, six pieces of light artillery, the artillery park, blacksmith’s equipment, tinned foods and cases of gin and brandy for the officers, as well as pots and pans and portable stoves for the troops—to which, to the great joy of the Head of State, General Hoffmann gave the pompous inclusive name of “logistics,” when according to Doctor Peralta it deserved only the title of “swill, kettles, and aguardiente.”

  But now operations were going ahead with speed, though there was no enemy to fight, because the rebel forces were retreating towards the sea with the obvious intention of entrenching themselves among the low hills surrounding Surgidero de la Verónica, base of the Atlantic Fleet, with its two small cruisers of old-fashioned design and cannons of limited range, as well as several coastguard vessels of a more modern type now laid up for careening behind the Naval Arsenal. Although all villages and hamlets had been despoiled in their retreat by Ataúlfo Galván’s men, the sutlers and camp followers always managed to find pigs, young bulls, and hens hidden in caves, cellars, and even the vaults of cemeteries, or bottles of rum, flasks and earthenware jars of strong cane liquor and plum spirit buried in domestic patios, sacristy gardens, and even in the dust of graveyards. And so there followed carousing, uproar, and revelry throughout the night watch, quarrels and music from guitars, gourd rattles, drums, and maracas, while mulattos and half-breeds of all descriptions stamped their feet with a will to the rhythm of the bamba, jarabe, and marinera, before leaving the campfire and going with their men into some thicket nearby to give them bodily pleasure.

  In April the first attacks were made on the advance positions of Surgidero de la Verónica, obliging the enemy forces to dig themselves in, in the city suburbs.

  “Foch’s wise remark is relevant now,” said the Head of State, quoting a French authority in order to pique Hoffmann: “When one of two adversaries gives up an offensive, he digs trenches and buries himself underground.” And from the summit of one of the three hills dominating the town, he studied its domes and cupolas, its baroque bell towers, its old walls built in the colonial period, with tender emotion. There he had been born and given his first lessons by the Marist Brothers (in that two-storey building with ogival windows between cement pilasters), from charming illustrated books that told him about the Nile floods, the breaking-in of Bucephalus, Androcles’ lion, the invention of printing, how Fray Bartolomé de las Casas was lawyer to the Indians, how the Eskimoes made igloos out of ice, and how the monk Alcuin, creator of Carlovingian colleges, used to prefer studious boys, even of humble birth, to the lazy and careless sons of the nobility. Later on he had received an intelligent education in history and French combined, using texts in which more space was occupied—naturally enough—by the Soissons Vase than the Battle of Ayacucho, and by Cardinal Balue’s cage than the Conquest of Peru, and which necessarily laid more stress on Saint Louis of the Crusades than on Simón Bolivar of Carabobo—although they informed us of the interesting fact that his name had been used to designate a tall hat favoured by Parisian dandie
s of the last century …