“Come here, Peralta.”
And for the next two hours, always finding striking adjectives and illuminating images—although this time his style was not too ornate—he dictated articles for his country’s newspapers, sketching the broad outline of the campaign as he believed it would develop before his arrival.
“Hurry along and take all this to Western Union.”
And now, his energies spent, perhaps tired by so much dictation, and with a delayed feeling of sadness, he gazed around the room at the friendly furniture, pictures, sculptures. Within a few hours he would have to leave this peaceful maternal lap, this period of repose among silks, satins, and velvets, and plunge his horse’s hooves for days, weeks, months maybe, in the mire of the southern Torrid Zone—lianas, mangrove swamps with their stagnant waters, murky streams, and tendrils lashing one’s face—far from everything that made him happy. He thought about his country over there, and felt in advance the boredom of returning to the point of departure after constantly moving forwards with passing years. It would soon be November—our November with All Saints’ Day, when the cemeteries were transformed into fairgrounds, with lanterns strung from tomb to tomb, barrel organs making a deafening din, guitars playing among the graves, maracas and clarinets close to the chapels of the dead, and girls being deflowered amongst the faded wreaths of a recent burial. Skulls made of sugar candy or pink icing, skulls made of toffee, marzipan, sesame-flavoured paste, amongst the sextons’ spades and straps, coffins, urns, a fine show of bronzes and portraits of grandfathers, soldiers, and children in their Sunday best seen through oval glass dimmed by dew and rain. And then would come the vendors of little skeletons wearing crowns, mitres, top hats, kepis, dancing their Dance of Death from cenotaph to cross, with their cries of “A skeleton for your little boy,” which on this day of all days was a summons to gaiety, aguardiente, and molasses. And what conversations were embarked on, what jokes and what quarrels flew between cross and cross, angel and angel, epitaph and epitaph!
“Ah, my friend! You’re happy with your little dead son!”
“Ah, my friend, and what a bastard and rogue yours was!”
“So they say, my friend! Yours wasn’t such a saint either!”
“That’s because he took after his grandmother, my friend!”
“Come now, my friend, how can one say who takes after whom?”
Remembering all this, the Head of State saw himself as someone who had been enclosed in a magic circle made by the sword of the Prince of Darkness. History, which was his because he played a part in it, was something that repeated itself, swallowed its own tail, and never moved forwards—it made very little difference whether the pages of the calendar were printed with 185(?), 189(?), 190(?) or 190(6?): it was the same procession of uniforms and frock coats, high English top hats alternating with plumed Bolivian helmets, as one saw in second-rate theatres, where triumphal marches of thirty men passed and re-passed in front of the same drop curtain, running when they were behind it, so as to be in time to reenter the stage, shouting for the fifth time: “Victory! Victory! Long live the Regime! Long live Liberty!” It was the classic example of the knife given a new handle when the old one wears out, and a new blade when that wears out in its turn, so that after many years it is still the same knife—immobilised in time—although handle and blade have so often been changed that their mutations can’t be counted. Time at a standstill, curfew, suspension of constitutional guarantees, restoration of normality, and words, words, words, to be or not to be, to go up or not to go up, stand up or not stand up, fall or not fall, just as a watch returns to the time it indicated yesterday when yesterday it told today’s time …
He looked at the silks, satins, and velvets, the defeated gladiator, the sleeping nymph, the Wolf of Gubbio, Saint Radegonde. He longed to stay here, to get out of the magic circle, but just as if it really enclosed him, he could not. His willpower was held firm by the roots of instinct, of what he perceived and understood when he opened his eyes onto the world. He knew there were many over there who detested him; he knew there were many, very many, too many who were hoping that someone, sometime would be brave enough to assassinate him (if his death could be caused by pressing the mythical button of the Mandarin in the story, thousands of men and women would press that button). All the same, he would go back. To show that even though he stood on the threshold of old age, although his body’s architecture was in decline, he was still tough, strong, and energetic, full of masculinity, very much a man. He would go on destroying his enemies while strength remained to him. He wouldn’t copy the sad end of the tyrant Rosas, who died in obscurity at Swaythling, forgotten by everyone—even his daughter Manuelita. Nor did he want to be like Porfirio Díaz in Mexico, pursuing a living death, promenading his corpse in frock coat, gloves, and solemn hat through the avenues of the Bois de Boulogne, sitting sunk in the mournful black leather seats of a phaeton drawn by horses whose slow ambling pace already heralded his funeral …
And now he remembered a certain Holy Week when the people of his home town had organised a great display of the Mystery of the Passion, from a seventeenth-century manuscript preserved in the archives of the parish church. For months and months women and children had saved the silver paper from their sweets and toffees to cover the helmets and shields of centurions, and collected hair from horses, mules, and donkeys to make them into crests. A purple velvet curtain had served for the Redeemer’s tunic; his belt was a sisal cord soaked in an infusion of acacia flowers; his crown of thorns came from the branch of a shrub known as “snakebite,” which grew on a hill nearby. The Judgement scene had taken place on the patio of the Town Hall, where the Head of State (he was Chief of Police at the time) had consented to take the part of Pilate, sitting in a red armchair in the Chapter House. He had handed the Son of God over to the Pharisees and washed his hands in a Japanese basin lent by the Suárez brothers’ china shop. And the ascent to Calvary had begun amidst the tears and lamentations of the crowd. A young and simple-minded beggar woman, who believed she was witnessing the real events she had seen in twenty altarpieces in village churches, had gone up to Miguel the shoemaker, who was playing the Son of God, and tried to take on her own shoulders the heavy wooden cross he was carrying, stumbling as he went, staggering, falling, and getting up again, covered in sweat, half dead, and uttering desperate groans—an amazingly theatrical martyr—as he advanced towards the hill where he was to pretend to be crucified. Pushing away the intruder who was threatening to spoil his splendid performance, Christ pointed his left hand at her and said:
“And if you take this from me, what shall I be? What will remain to me?” And then went on his way up the hill by the Way of the Cross, while the crowd sang an old tune, whose origins had been forgotten, with the slow inflexions of plainsong:
And if I have to die to tomorrow
Let them kill me outright.
Just at this moment Peralta returned from the Western Union office, and finding me still up and somewhat pensive, asked me:
“Why not let all this go to the devil, and stay here, enjoying what you’ve got? You’re not short of cash. What a lot of bottles we could drink! What a lot of women we could fuck!”
“And suppose I did get rid of all that, what should I be? What would remain to me?” I said. Yes, I remember saying it and thinking about the people who had turned against me because of that business at Nueva Córdoba, so that my personality had dwindled and become too small and helpless to play a part in this apocalyptic world. I was taking on the Crusade for Latinity in order to reinstate my image. And if it pleased the Ineffable One to whom my requests were addressed to grant me victory within the next few weeks, I pledged myself, yes, I promised that immediately after my triumph I would bow my head and go as a pilgrim to her Sanctuary as Divine Shepherdess, mixing with the people (but also with those pretending to belong to “the people”), as an act of gratitude and rejoicing for favours received, and sorrow for many sins committed. I would go with those who d
ragged along their wounded legs, or wept in the night with eyes rolled upwards or with noses eaten away and the stumps of their arms joined in an impossible attitude of prayer; amongst women with closed wombs and breasts of gravel; amongst those long past adolescence, who could only cry like babies and sidle rather than walk, with withered arms and twisted hands; amongst those whose voices were forever dead inside their deformed throats; with the purulent and the paralysed. I would cross the wide tiled floor on my knees and, rejecting the red carpet laid down for the priests, I would drag myself over the stones to the feet of the Mother of God, to express my gratitude in the prose of the liturgy—I don’t remember whether I learnt it from Renan or the Marist Brothers: Mystical Rose, Ivory Tower, Golden Mansion, Morning Star, Ave Maris Stella.
I look at my watch. Now I must rest a little. I’ll have to leave early tomorrow. Already in my nightshirt, for a joke, I put on my English cap with earflaps, and the checked Inverness cape I have bought for the journey.
“I look like Sherlock Holmes,” I say, admiring myself in the Empire looking-glass mounted on gilt sphinxes.
“You only need a magnifying glass,” says Peralta, slipping into my pocket one of the brandy flasks encased in pigskin … and the alarm already. Quarter past ten. It’s impossible. Quarter past nine. More likely. Quarter past eight. This alarm clock would be a marvel of Swiss watchmaking, but its hands are so slim that one can hardly see them. Quarter past seven. My spectacles. Quarter past six. That’s it. Daylight is beginning to show clearly through the yellow curtains. My foot can’t find the other slipper, which always gets lost among the colours of the Persian carpet. And in comes Sylvestre in his striped jacket carrying aloft the silver tray—made of silver from my mines:
“Le Café de Monsieur. Bien fort comme il l’aime. Monsieur a bien dormi?”
“Mal, très mal,” I reply. “J’ai bien de soucis, mon bon Sylvestre.”
“Les revers attristent / les grands de ce monde,” he murmurs, in an alexandrine whose classical scansion brings an echo of the Comédie Française into this house where, in an atmosphere of confusion, far from the scenes to which destiny was taking me, a new chapter in my history was opening early this morning.
FOUR
What do I see from this window except hats and coats that might be worn by spectres or well-made imitations of men, moving by means of springs?
—DESCARTES
9
IT WASN’T NECESSARY TO SHOOT WALTER HOFFMANN. Every conflict has a way of developing in unforeseen ways, and the treacherous general came to an end that could be seen as having a certain Wagnerian dramatic power: like the death throes of Fafner in a considerably more dangerous forest than Siegfried’s, which was almost municipal, a Tiergarten or Unter-den-Linden compared with the terrifying forest covering the region of Las Tembladeras—the Quagmires. We had pursued the rebel into a region of quicksand, where he was forced to withdraw, all the time being deserted by his men, who were so oppressed by defeat that they ignored all speeches and admonitions, proclamations and brandy rations, and admitted—with anxiety that increased from day to day—that they had played a rotten card, and that we were the ones who held the royal flush. It was useless for General Hoffmann, having discovered the remains of an Indian pyramid in the densest part of a thicket, to shout to his men:
“Soldiers … fifty centuries are looking down at you from the top of this pyramid” (adding ten to the Napoleonic speech, out of patriotism).
“It could be seventy-five for all I care,” thought the soldiers, whose “old women”—the rebel camp followers—declared that a lot of stones piled up like that, and full of holes, were useless for anything except a breeding ground for the most deadly snakes in the world, centipedes, tarantulas, spiders, and scorpions “about as long as this” (not bothering to illustrate how long) … And after the “Little Fredericks” had fled in the direction of the southern frontier, mass desertion and fraternisations began, to an occasional shout of “they deceived us, they made us believe, we were sent,” until the general and his few remaining faithful followers decided to cross one of the dreaded plains—the only means of reaching the sea—which by the abundance of its quaking bogs had given the region its name. As their advance grew more and more difficult and dangerous, and men kept deserting (first two artillerymen and a lieutenant, then fifteen private soldiers and a corporal, and sixty or so men with a captain), the rebel at last found himself practically alone with his few remaining supporters—and it’s easy to imagine what was going on in their minds—on the brink of a yellowish waste, streaked with creeping plants, and dotted with ponds—or rather large potholes—of viscid slush, perhaps clay, looking like a thin coating of stagnant mud on top of firmer ground. General Hoffmann landed in one of these holes, as a result of inopportunely urging on his horse with a sharp tug on the reins, so as to avoid a thorny branch that crossed his path. And without warning the horse, feeling its feet sink more and more deeply into the deceptive clay, as if drawn in by some implacable suction from the entrails of the earth, began to neigh desperately for help, exhausting itself in useless rearing, while its frantic struggles and plunges did nothing to free it from slow but inevitable submergence. With the terrible mud now up to his knees, trying to get out of his boots, which were becoming heavy as lead, tugging again and again on the reins without response, and seeing that the floundering movements of his horse only hastened his inevitable submersion, the general shouted:
“A rope … a strap … a belt … Get me out of here … Quickly … A rope … a strap.”
But the men standing around the pool in frowning silence calmly watched their leader slowly, terribly slowly, drowning.
“Die, you bastard!” muttered a corporal whom Hoffmann had struck, years before, to punish him for a disrespectful reply.
“Die, you bastard!” said in a louder voice a sergeant whom Hoffmann had refused to promote some time back.
“Die, you bastard!” said a lieutenant, fortissimo, who had begged without success for the Silver Star.
“No, God damn you, no! You can’t let me die like this!” yelled their leader, clutching the ears of his horse, whose teeth were now just above the quagmire.
“Die, you bastard!” replied the Greek chorus.
The quicksand had risen to the general’s neck, chin, and mouth, though he still emitted confused cries from a throat choking with mud—bubbling death rattles, inaudible shouts, last efforts at agonizing cries …
When only his kepi remained floating, one of the spectators threw a small crucifix onto it, but it was soon sucked in by the quagmire, now once more green and placid.
Delivered of his enemy, the Head of State returned to the capital, entered it under triumphal arches put up the day before and decorated with flags and garlands, and received the titles of “Peacemaker” and “National Hero” from both chambers, the representatives of Industry and Commerce, the Metropolitan Bishop in his pulpit, lesser dignitaries in lower pulpits, and the Press, whose pages described the details of a military campaign conducted in a masterly manner, illustrated with maps covered in black arrows showing the phases of offence and defence, penetration, encirclement, and breaking of the enemy lines in the decisive Battle of Four Roads—a drawn-out, bloody, difficult battle, finally won for the government forces by tactical judgement and occasional improvisation. This diagrammatic technique had been popularised by L’Illustration to explain the action of the Battle of the Marne.
In a speech full of elevated ideas, the President modestly declared that he didn’t deserve the praise so generously heaped on him by his compatriots, since God himself, so great in mercy but terrible in anger, had been responsible for punishing the traitor. Properly considered, Hoffmann’s death had been a sort of trial by ordeal, wherein a superior will whose designs were beyond our understanding had spared the victor the pain of shedding the blood of an old companion in arms, blinded by senseless ambition.
This was no time for Shakespeare’s cry of “My kingdom for
a horse,” seeing that the guilty man, perhaps burdened by his own remorse and pursued by the Furies of our arms, actually entered the Kingdom of Shadows on his galloping steed. But the important thing was not that the Enemy of Order had been swallowed up in the quagmire of Las Tembladeras. The important thing was that by so doing he had fortified our Consciousness of Latinity in the face of the conflict now terrifying the world; because we were Latin, profoundly Latin, intimately Latin, trustees of the great tradition of the Roman pandects, foundation of our law, and of Virgil, Dante, Don Quixote, Michelangelo, Copernicus, etc., etc. (a long paragraph, ended by a long ovation). Aunt Jemima, who had exchanged her usual checked cotton handkerchief for a black one in token of mourning, climbed painfully up to the platform to give the Head of State a message of regret from the Hoffmann family, whispering in his ear at the same time that the general’s wife deplored her husband’s misdeeds and begged the favour of receiving the pension due to her as the widow of a soldier with more than twenty years’ service, in accordance with the Law of June 18, 1901.
Tired out by a war that had taken him to the most unhealthy jungles in the country, the President went for a holiday to his house at Marbella. There was a beautiful long beach, although its black sands were too often invaded by an abundance of bladdery dead jellyfish lying amongst patches of tar and oil washed up from the port close by. The sharks and giant rays were kept at bay by a quadruple barbed-wire fence, festooned with ragged seaweed. And if there were still a few morays in the hollows of a little rocky promontory, it was a great many years since a man had been emasculated by a barracuda in this resort. When the winds blew from the north—“yelitos” they were called—the sea darkened to shades of deep blue while gentle waves moved in slow, majestic rhythm to cast their foam at the very feet of the coconut and soursop trees. But there were mornings, too—in summer—when the water appeared singularly smooth and transparent, without any of its usual light turbulence; a bather diving into it at once had the strange sensation of falling into a lake of gelatine. And then he would find that he wasn’t swimming, but gliding in a mass of transparent and almost invisible molluscs, as big and as round as coins, which had arrived on the beach during the night at the end of some long and mysterious migration. To make the resort more attractive, the municipality had constructed a cement pier with a casino at the end supported on piles, the whole affair copied from Nice—metal framework, orange tiles, iron dome, green with saltpetre. Roulette, baccarat, and chemin-de-fer were played there, and the few croupiers in dinner jackets, counting in louis and centens—out-of-date gamblers’ coins—had given up saying “Don’t be afraid to stake” and “Not another cent,” as at Creole gaming tables, and taken to “Faites vos jeux” and “Rien ne va plus,” carefully if always peculiarly pronounced.
Reasons of State Page 14
