Reasons of State

by Alejo Carpentier

  So the boy grew up on lesson books—he understood little mathematics but remembered some classics—and the Head of State was reminded of his adolescent escapades in the streets around the port, noisy with sailors, fishermen, hawkers, and tarts, with their lively taverns with such names as The Triumphs of the Venus de Milo, Wise Men Without Learning, The Staggering Monkeys, The Ship on Land, or My Workshop; with its trade in fish hooks, baskets, and nets, its rope makers, its trucks carrying oysters, octopuses, and jurels along pavements where the smell of tar, brine, and troughs full of anchovies mingled with the jasmine and tuberose scents worn by prostitutes.

  There at his feet lay the town of La Verónica, still so like the copperplate engraving made of it by an English artist a hundred years ago, with the figures of slaves and their masters on horseback in the foreground; there it was, with the massive bulk of its Palace of the Inquisition, on whose terrace some Indians and negroes accused of witchcraft had been flogged, mocked by the crowd, and covered with excrement and filth a long while ago.

  There was the town of La Verónica, with that big house and its three wings and two roofs—lightning conductor, sky-blue dovecote, and squeaking weathercock—where his children had been born while he was still leading the miserable existence of a provincial journalist and could provide them with only cane syrup one day and brown sugar the next, to sweeten the stew of bananas and crusts, which was their invariable supper dish. There, in that whitewashed patio, he and his family had taken the first jump in that game of hopscotch which, following in his father’s bold political footsteps, had taken them jump by jump, from square to square, from number to number, up the spiral path in the game of royal goose. From Surgidero they had gone to the capital, always ascending from the tiny area of our port life to the great world outside, the old world, for them the New World, although there was to be sadness among the pleasures and bright lights of that climax of good fortune. Ofelia was who she was—sum qui sum ever since a child—and would never be otherwise; she still had the character and appearance of the tempestuous, determined little girl, both stubborn and unstable, who had discovered the universe through blind man’s buff, “Frère Jacques,” ring-a-ring-of-roses, skittles, forfeits, and “Malbrough s’en va-t-en guerre.” Nothing could be said against Ariel: a born diplomat, he tricked the priests as a small boy, answered questions with other questions, lied when he wanted to, kept in with both parties, wore a row of decorations, and (when under pressure to explain some awkward incident) had instant recourse to a manual of ambiguities, just as Chateaubriand would have done with ministries in a similar predicament. Radames, amongst many successes, had been struck by cruel and sudden disaster and the evidence could still be seen in newspapers all over the world: having entered himself in a motor race against Ralph De Palma at Indianapolis, he shot to heaven from the burning hot asphalt of the sixth mile, as a result of adding too much ether to his petrol so as to make it lighter, more explosive and dynamic. He had tried to forget the blow of being ploughed in an exam at West Point Military Academy in the intoxication of speed …

  And there, limping among the hopscotch squares, he saw his youngest son, Marcus Antonius, in short pants, the most evasive and invisible of the clan, lost amongst the branches of trees that did not belong to this earth, but to some genealogical forest where he had taken refuge—perhaps because he was the least precocious of the family and the most exotic-looking, both as to profile and eyes. Much given to fantasizing—mad, we should say now—carried away by the impulse of the moment, he had experienced an adolescent mystical crisis on discovering one day, as he stood before the looking-glass on his cupboard, that his penis had become twisted into a corkscrew by the clap. Absurdly enough, he decided to go to Rome and kiss the Pope’s sandal, and cure himself with cardinal’s permanganate; but he had got no farther than the Cardinal’s antechambers, where, happening to run into a dealer in armorial bearings, he convinced himself that he was descended, by a rather crooked, collateral, indirect, and tangled line, from the Byzantine emperors, the last of whom, Palaeologus, died in Barbados, leaving descendants who came to our country. His mystical aspirations forgotten, he spent a great many pesos on acquiring the title of Limitrophe [sic: see Justinian’s Code], Count of Dalmatia, as it happened; he paraded his brand-new nobility throughout Europe, a Title among Titles, jealous of other Titles, expert in Titles, going to bed with women of Title, and many comments on his virility went the rounds among those who had experienced the virtues, well known amongst us, of a “stallion liana” often used by our ardent old men. With such talents, his life took him from Andalusian estates to the farms of Peñaranda, from antique Venetian palaces to Scottish grouse moors, from the hunting parties of Kolodje to the Alfonsine regattas of San Sebastian, travelling according to a map of somewhat tarnished nobility that had seen better days, among whom credit and prestige was given to the North American coats of arms of Armour and Swift, the ketchup aristocracy of Libby, who promoted their advance to grandeur by studying, learning, and annotating the Almanack de Gotha (the entry of their names was always postponed to the next edition) with the close attention of a rabbi interpreting the Talmud, or a Saint-Cyran translating the Bible three times, the better to master the subtleties of its vocabulary and the complications of its hermeneutics. Marcus Antonius was both brilliant and useless; excitable and ambitious like his father, whose anxieties, however, were unknown to him; flesh of a flesh to which he felt alien, he declared himself to be a luxury product, the herald of our culture, a necessary factor in our international prestige, a lunatic, dandy, collector of gloves and sticks, refusing to put on shirts that hadn’t been ironed in London, a harsh critic of famous artists, pursuer of Woolworth heiresses (he dreamed about Anna Gould, who had presented Boni de Castellane with a pink marble palace), five times divorced, occasional aviator, friend of Santos-Dumont, champion polo player, skier at Chamonix, critic of duelling along with Athos de San-Malato and the Cuban Laberdesque, brilliant rejoneador* in the making, believer in miracles at roulette and baccarat, although somewhat absent-minded and Hamlet-like at times and given to signing dud cheques, which found their way by way of legal proceedings to our discreet embassies.

  And there lay, at the feet of the Head of State, that same Surgidero de la Verónica where a plaque set up by one of the doors was engraved with the date of his birth, and where Doña Hermenegilda had groaned as she gave birth to her four children under a mosquito net as blue as the dovecote outside.

  And that was the town that fell into the hands of the government troops, intact and undamaged by shells, because almost all the disloyal officers surrendered, on a historic April 14.

  Finding himself abandoned by his most trusted men, and with no one owning a boat or schooner ready to take him on board, General Ataúlfo Galván shut himself into the old castle of San Lorenzo, built by order of Philip II on a pinnacle of rock that narrowed the entrance to the port. And there, in the middle of the afternoon of the day of surrender, the Head of State disembarked, followed by Colonel Hoffmann, Doctor Peralta, and a dozen soldiers. The defeated man was waiting in silence in the main courtyard. His lips moved strangely, without any accompaniment from his voice, as if wanting to emit words that refused to be uttered. He was trying, with a checked handkerchief, to mop the sweat coming from under his kepi so copiously that it was making dark drops on the cloth of his military tunic. The President stood still and gazed at him for a long time as if measuring his height. Then suddenly, in a sharp, cutting tone: “Shoot him!”

  Ataúlfo Galván fell on his knees: “No, no … Not that. Not a bullet … For your dear mother’s sake, no … For the sake of that sainted Doña Hermenegilda, who loved me so much … you can’t do that to me … you were like a father to me … More than a father … Let me explain … You’ll understand … I was misled … Listen to me … For the sake of your dear mother …”

  “Shoot him!” He was dragged, groaning, weeping, and imploring, towards the farther wall. Hoffmann arranged the firing s
quad. Unable to stand upright, the defeated man fell against the wall, his spine slipping slowly down the stonework till he was sitting with his boots in front of him, the toes turned in. The barrels of the rifles followed his descent and stopped at the correct angle.

  “Aim!” The order reaffirmed the position they had already taken up.

  “No … No … A priest … Confession. I’m a Christian …”

  “Fire!” Rifle butts on the ground. Coup de grâce, because that was the drill. Crying of seagulls. A very short silence.

  “Throw him into the sea,” said the Head of State. “The sharks will finish the job.”

  This business was finished and done with. But there was still another, perhaps more serious: Doctor Luis Leoncio Martínez, whose potential as a leader and fighter had been scorned and disregarded by us during the urgent emergency of military action, was free and active in Nueva Córdoba, from whose town hall he was sending out manifesto after manifesto attacking the government. He had built up a strong, a very strong position in the city, where he had gathered around him students, journalists, ex-politicians, provincial lawyers, those with socialist views, besides a few young officers, fresh from the School of Cavalry at Saumur, who constituted the army’s intelligentsia—an intelligentsia opposed to such men as Walter Hoffmann, but who, like him, had been formed by German instructors and were devotees of the pointed helmet. United there in permanent session, sleepless and with shirts undone, smoking cigarettes by the gross, drunk on black coffee and bad cigars, arguing, discussing, rounding on one another, cursing, their purity of aims worthy of a Committee of Public Safety, the rebels were drawing up a plan of reform that became ever more radical as the hours passed, and which having settled the matter of trials to investigate peculation and illicit gains, embarked on the risky project of reducing large estates and dividing them up as common land. The Head of State had learned from letters received that same morning that events which at first he had viewed with a certain irony were really happening: “Utopian vegetarian notions,” he had said. Yet now, in Nueva Córdoba—among meetings, rallies, proclamations, and factions—intensive military instruction for students and workers was going on, under the leadership of an obscure Captain Becerra—a spare-time entomologist—who had been named Military Chief of the town. And, observing that the movement was gaining strength, with signs of syndicalism inspired by foreign, anti-patriotic doctrines, inadmissible in our country, the United States Ambassador offered a speedy intervention by North American troops, to safeguard democratic institutions. Some battleships happened to be manoeuvring in the Caribbean.

  “It would be humiliating for our sovereignty,” observed the Head of State. “This operation won’t be difficult. And we must show these filthy gringos that we can manage our own problems by ourselves. Besides which, they are the sort who come for three weeks and stay two years, carrying out huge business deals. They arrive dressed in khaki and go away laden with gold. Look what General Wood did in Cuba.”

  Three days passed in inspecting and preparing the East Railway, and after a grand campaigning Mass, at which they begged the Divine Shepherdess to grant triumph to the national forces, several convoys set off towards the new front, with a great noise of cheering and laughter under their regimental flags. It was almost midnight when the last train left, with a whistle and hiss of escaping steam. On the roofs of wagons and trucks men in ponchos and women in rebozos were singing hymns and songs together, while bottles of white rum circulated by the light of lanterns, from the coal tender at the front to the rear lights on the guard’s van: “If Adelita sleeps with another, I’ll follow her by land and sea, by sea in a warship, by land in a troop train.”

  Night lay behind them, and frogs croaked in the black marshes of Surgidero, now restored to the peace of its slow provincial activities, with gatherings in the barbers’ shops, a huddle of old women in the doorways, and—for the young—lotteries and games of forfeit, after telling their beads among the family with their minds focused on the fifteen mysteries of the Virgin Mary.

  * A bullfighter on horseback with the rejón, a form of spear.

  5

  Sovereigns have the right to modify customs to some extent.

  —DESCARTES

  FOUNDED IN 1544 BY GOVERNOR SANCHO DE Almeyda, the city of Nueva Córdoba stood out against the surrounding wasteland—saffron-coloured deserts, anaemic patches of grass, cactuses, thorn bushes, and sponge trees smelling of the sweat of illness—as blindingly white as a Moroccan settlement, on the banks of a river (dry ten months of the year) whose sinuous course was hollowed out between stony tracts bristling with the bones, antlers, skulls, and claws of animals dead from thirst. Under the cloudless sky, from the rapid sunrise to crimson dusk, vultures and turkey buzzards flew over the hills at the mouths of mines, which were so divided up, and cut into steps with picks, shovels, and sledgehammers, that their original rotundities had been transformed into geometric shapes by the men who had for the last two centuries been extracting the slag hidden in their entrails. Like giants’ chairs and sofas, they were sculptures created by the rough, calloused, blackened hands of the peons of the Du Pont Mining Company, who had made of these euclidean shapes resulting from their labours a formless panorama of scree, ridges, and hills of rubbish, mineral waste, gravel, and pebbles, all adding their desolation to the sterility of the desert. And there, in the most barren region of the country, hedged around by prickly pears, stood the rebellious, tendentious, combative city of Nueva Córdoba, defying the Head of State’s troops, already victorious in the east. Thousands of enemies of the regime had surrounded a dry university professor and made themselves into a Sacred Legion. And to defend the immediate neighbourhood of the city, the troops of General Becerra (as he now was) had had more than enough time to organise a strong line of defence, with a whole network of trenches and blockhouses surrounded by walls and palisades made from wooden sleepers destined for railway lines. Studying these military preparations through his field glasses, the Head of State murmured in a joking tone that ill concealed his annoyance: “Just as I’ve always said. In these countries strategy is the only thing that works—either Julius Caesar’s or Buffalo Bill’s.” And in a Grand Meeting of the General Staff it was decided that the most adequate way of dealing with the present situation was to prepare for a classical siege, cutting off all lines of communication with the small towns of the north—also disaffected—which were providing them with food and ammunition: “Even their drinking water has to be brought from elsewhere! The climate is on our side here …”

  And, having pitched their tents at a reasonable distance from the defence lines, from which few shots were coming since the enemy couldn’t afford to waste ammunition on useless firing, they settled to wait. For lack of any other reading matter the Head of State had begun leafing through some of the classical works on military tactics that Colonel Hoffmann always carried in his luggage. And, to mortify the “Prussian with a black grandmother in the back yard,” as the wits of the opposition used to call him, he quoted the most glaring idiocies he came across with significant shouts of laughter.

  “Listen to this, listen!” he said. And in a portentously deep voice: “Victory resulted from the fact that the battle had been won” (Scharnhorst). “He who is on the defensive can pass to the offensive” (Lassau). “A battle is the only thing that can produce a result” (Lassau). “It’s essential for the head to be in command, because it controls the reason” (Clausewitz). “A leader must understand war and its hazards” (Von Moltke). “It is necessary for the leader to know what he wants and have a firm wish to conquer” (Von Schlieffen). “The general theatre of operations contains only three zones: one on the right; one on the left; one in the centre” (Jomini).

  “Where there is no centre there is neither left nor right,” observed the Head of State, exploding with laughter. “And was this rubbish what they taught you in the military school?”

  The days passed in an inactivity made exasperating by heat and f
lies, until one morning, dressed in an explorer’s pith helmet with a gauze veil over the neck, and shorts—in the style of Stanley in search of Livingstone—the United States Ambassador appeared in the camp. The news was serious. Several armed bands, under orders from agents of the so-called Caudillo of Nueva Córdoba, had violated the banana zone on the Pacific and taken possession of $200,000 kept in one of the offices of the United Fruit Company. All work at the Dupont Mining Company had been paralysed, with disastrous immobilisation of ships in Puerto Negro. It had become necessary to put an end to the socialist mysticism of Doctor Luis Leoncio Martínez. We couldn’t tolerate the encumbrance of a second Madero in South America. If the country didn’t quickly return to a regime of calm and respect for foreign property, North American intervention would be inevitable. Under this pressure, the Head of State gave a definite undertaking that decisive operations would begin within the next forty-eight hours. And next day, employing all desirable guarantees for a military parley, he invited young General Becerra to come to the camp, where, without any noise or action that might cast a slight on his honour, he bombarded him with 100,000 pesos, and a little something too—a bonus with several noughts—for the two lieutenants accompanying him. And, as dusk fell, white flags were hoisted over the trenches and blockhouses, to proclaim to the inhabitants of Nueva Córdoba that their capitulation had been accepted—in consideration of the superiority of government troops, with the humanitarian aim of avoiding unnecessary bloodshed.

  But at this moment there suddenly appeared the gigantic, frightening, vociferous figure of Miguel Estatua, so-called because he worked and moved impassively, was strong and enormously tall, with broad shoulders widening sharply above a waist so slender that he always had to make extra holes in his leather belts to ensure that the silver buckle decorated with initials—his sole piece of finery—should stay firmly fastened in the centre of his stomach. A master driller and borer, thoroughly understanding the use of dynamite, and nearly always carrying cartridges of it in his mouth when he was going to blow up part of a quarry, the negro had made a name for himself throughout the country by his discovery that he could carve animals out of stone. Yes. That was how it was. He knew, of course, that the mountain trees are living creatures to whom one can talk, and that when one says the appropriate words they answer by the creaking and movements of their branches. But one day, up there on that ridge, he came across a great stone that apparently had two eyes and indications of nostrils as well as the outline of a mouth.