As he watched the metropolis grow and grow, the Head of State was sometimes worried by the changes in the view from the palace windows. He was himself involved in a real-estate business managed by Doctor Peralta, whose buildings were destroying the panorama for so long part of his life, so that when his attention was suddenly drawn to some alteration in it by the Mayorala Elmira—“just look at that,” “look at that”—he started as if at some evil omen. The factory chimneys he had had erected broke up and destroyed a natural scene until recently innocent of the ugly cross-trees of telegraph poles. The Volcano, the Grandfather Volcano, the Tutelary Volcano, abode of the Ancient Gods, symbol and emblem, whose cone figured on the National Coat of Arms, was less a volcano—less even the abode of the Ancient Gods—when on misty mornings its majestic presence seemed to insinuate itself, with the modesty of a humiliated king, a monarch without a court, above the dense clouds of smoke sent up by four tall chimneys from the recently inaugurated Central Electricity Company. By becoming more vertical and geometric, and by dividing up the verdant background of mountains, hills, and distant valleys, the city was shutting the President in. The population was being augmented by an ever-increasing influx of peasants, labourers, day workers, artisans from the provinces, attracted by the wealth of the metropolis, all bringing their dependants with them: grandfathers with bilharzia or weak from years of malaria, scrofulous children, sufferers from amoebic dysentery—easy preys to the periodical epidemics of virulent influenza coming from no one knew where—and it was a common sight to see a funeral procession tightening its circle of black clothes and coffins around the Presidential Palace.
“Here comes the Whore!” the Mayorala Elmira would exclaim when a hearse appeared in the Plaza Mayor on its way to the cemetery.
“Be off!” replied the Head of State, joining the first and little fingers of both hands to ward off the Evil Eye.
“Even Napoleon couldn’t lick you,” concluded the Mayorala, giving actual existence to someone whose name she took to represent the greatest power God had ever given to a human being, because coming from nothing, born in the manger as one might say, he had finally conquered the whole world—while still remaining a good son and brother, a good friend (even of his laundress, it was said when he became a great man!), and always the lover of fine women, like that one from the Caribbean, who had got hold of him you know where, because mulattos and cholas are born with the Devil between their legs … (There were some men who would throw up everything, disappear and leave home at the summons of Women of Great Power, who held their lamps in the doorway, repeating as often as there are beads on a rosary: “Let him come after me like a mad dog. Amen.”)
After a great deal of thought the Head of State devoted himself with renewed energy—energy that was diminishing with age in some directions—to the project of a great building, the material symbol in stone of his government: he would give the country a national capitol.
Once the decision was made, he planned to promote a great international concourse, open to all architects, so that they could compare ideas, projects, and plans. But hardly was the news spread around than the nation’s own architects, who had recently formed themselves into a college, protested that there were quite enough of them for such an undertaking. And then began a tiresome process of criticisms, changes, arguments, producing a succession of metamorphoses in the appearance, style, and proportions of the future building. First it was a Greek Temple with Doric columns without bases, thirty metres high—a copy of Paestum with the dimensions of the Vatican. But the Head of State thought he remembered that Kaiser Wilhelm, incarnation of Prussian barbarism, was addicted to such Hellenisms, going so far as to possess an Achilleion, reminiscent of the Parthenon, in Corfu. Besides, the Greeks had no domes, and a capitol without a dome is no capitol at all. Better to look towards eternal Rome, mother of our culture. Therefore, our architects quickly substituted Corinthian for Doric (without passing through the Ionic) with a dome rather like that of the Palais de Justice at Brussels. However, the two hemicycles—Chamber and Senate—were too reminiscent of the theatres at Delphi and Epidaurus, and looked rather austere, cold, and false when it came to adding the rostrums, whose existence in such a place were a vital democratic necessity. A new national architect, succeeding two national architects who were already discredited and fallen into disgrace as a result of the intrigues of a great many other national architects, took his inspiration from an English illustration of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and drew a plan of a hemicycle in the Roman style with columns above, which was for a while approved by the Council of Ministers. But then they remembered that the country was a great producer of mahogany, and that our mahogany, a deep warm red in colour, ought to be copiously used in a work of such size, to face the walls and make panelling, rostrums, benches, doors, presidential throne, etc., in both hemicycles. And since the Romans never used wood in this fashion, a fifth project for the Capitol arose, based on the neo-Gothic style of the Budapest Parliament. But as the Austro-Hungarian empire was at war with Latinity, these plans too were rejected, and someone remembered the genius Herrera and the imposing bulk of the Escorial.
“Not to be thought of,” put in the Head of State. “When you say Escorial you say Philip the Second. And anyone saying Philip the Second here says: burned Indians, negroes in chains, heroic chiefs tortured, princes on the gridiron, tribunals of the Inquisition …”
Project 15 was rejected because, in its eagerness to use some national marble recently discovered near Nueva Córdoba, the architect had conceived something too like Milan Cathedral, and such an ecclesiastical flavour would have disgusted the masons and freethinkers and other people whose criticisms carried weight. Project 17 was no more nor less than a pretty outrageous copy of the Parisian Opéra.
“Parliament is not a theatre,” said the Head of State, throwing the plans down on the Council table.
“Sometimes …” murmured Doctor Peralta behind him.
At last, after a great deal of cavilling, discussing, considering, and reconsidering, Project 31 was accepted as offering the simplest solution: a replica of the Washington Capitol, using national woods and national marbles for the inside—but if the latter should not prove as good as they were thought to be, marbles bought from Carrara would be put in their place, while for the public they would remain “national marbles.”
The work began on the day of the Centenary of Independence, with the laying of the First Stone and the obligatory speeches, using all suitable rhetoric fortissimo. But one problem remained: under the dome there ought to be a statue of the Republic. All the nation’s sculptors offered to make one. But the Head of State knew that none of them could measure up to such a task.
“What a pity Gérome is dead!” he said, thinking of his gladiators and his retiarius. “There was a man for you!”
“Rodin is alive,” observed Doctor Peralta.
“No. Rodin, no … A great sculptor—who could doubt it?—when he sticks to reality. But if he fires off a second Balzac, we’re completely buggered. If we reject him they’ll make fun of us over there; and if we accept him we shall have to leave the country.”
“You could always ban press comments.”
“That would be against my principles. You know that. Bullets and machetes for bastards. But complete liberty of criticism, polemics, discussion, and controversy concerning art, literature, schools of poetry, classical philosophy, the enigma of the universe, the secret of the pyramids, the origin of American Man, the concept of Beauty, and everything else in that line … that’s culture.”
“In Guatemala, our friend Estrada Cabrera founded a cult of Minerva, with a temple and everything.”
“A fine enterprise by a great ruler …”
“… who has already been in power for eighteen years …”
“… for that very reason. But it seems that his statue of Pallas Athena is nothing very wonderful.”
In his perplexity the Head of State wrote to Ofelia, who had no
w returned to Paris before spending several months on Andalusian ranches, as she had now suddenly become as enthusiastic about bulls, cloaks, and cante jondo as she had formerly been about Bayreuth or Stratford-on-Avon. Not very fond of writing letters, which revealed her fantastic ideas of spelling, the Infanta simply replied with a cable: ANTOINE BOURDELLE.
“Never heard of him,” said Doctor Peralta.
“Nor have I,” said the Head of State. “He must be one of her bohemian friends.”
His doubts led him to write to the Distinguished Academician for more information. And he received by return of post some photos of reliefs carried out by this artist at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in 1913. One was an allegory of music and displeased Peralta outright by two false, confused, distorted figures, who seemed to have been forcibly crushed into a rectangular space: a nymph doubled over her violin in an impossible attempt to use her bow with an arm that passed above her head, and a bestial, twisted satyr, more entomological than Hellene, playing on an enormous pipe, far from suggestive of rustic melody, and much more like part of a 30-30 machine gun. And with the photos came a number of the Gazette des Beaux Arts, where an article by the famous critic Paul Jamot, underlined in red pencil, said that the sculptor didn’t treat his figures in the archaic style, but with a coarseness evocative of Germanic taste [sic].
“Germanic! Germanic! So this is what Ofelia recommends us at this moment! It seems to me she’s becoming imbecilic from going to so many bullfights. She hasn’t a trace of political sense.” Then, suddenly thinking of the phonetic aspect of the problem: “Besides, he’s impossible because of his surname. Bourdelle. Just think what that sounds like in Spanish.”
“I should say so!” said Peralta. “First they’d call him Booouuurdeye. Until they were told the correct pronunciation!”
“And then, what jokes from my friends. They would simply be handed them on a plate: the Capitol is a …; the Republic is a …; my government is a … Unthinkable!”
“The best thing we can do is trust ourselves to Fellino,” suggested Peralta.
And the Italian marble worker, provider of innumerable angels, crosses, and family vaults for cemeteries, and of very satisfactory eponymous statues for many of our towns, whether heroic or religious, warmly recommended a Milanese artist whose works had won prizes in Florence and Rome, and who was especially famous for his ideas for monuments, municipal fountains, civic sanctuaries, equestrian figures, and (in general) every form of official, serious and solemn art, with historically exact uniforms when necessary, and who treated nudes with dignity where nudity was needed for some allegory expressed in a form intelligible to all, neither antiquated nor too modern in artistic style—for the question of modernism in the plastic arts was much discussed at that time. Aldo Nardini—that was the sculptor’s name—sent a model, which was immediately approved by the Council of Ministers: in it the Republic was represented by a huge woman, her stalwart body dressed in the Greek style, leaning on a spear—symbol of vigilance—with a noble, earnest face, bearing a resemblance to the famous Juno in the Vatican, and two enormous breasts, one covered, the other bare—symbols of fecundity and abundance.
“Not a work of genius, but it will please everyone,” concluded the Head of State. “Have it carried out.”
Several months passed by in executing and casting the statue, with paragraphs in the press about the progress of the work, until one morning a ship from Genoa entered the bay of Puerto Araguato with the Immense Woman on board. An expectant crowd collected on the quay to witness her arrival. But there was some disappointment on learning that the statue would not emerge complete, already upright, as she would be seen in the Capitol, but would have to be carried out in pieces and put together in her eventual position. However, the sight was well worth watching. The cranes and grappling irons were raised up, the cables descended into the hold, and all at once in the midst of applause the Head appeared from the shadows and was transported through the air, followed by different pieces of her anatomy. Left Foot, with its corresponding piece of Leg and Drapery—Right Arm, with a piece of the shaft of the spear in her hand; Fertile Belly, with the vital axis well grooved in the bronze; Covered Breast, followed by Right Foot and Left Arm, before the ascent of the gigantic Phrygian Cap, which was to crown the Republic. But at this moment the twelve o’clock sirens went, the cranes stopped work, and the dockers went to have their dinner, though the crowds didn’t disperse. And there was no doubt that something big must still remain in the profundities of the ship. At two o’clock the men returned to the job, and amidst applause and exclamations the Bare Breast of the Great Figure rose out of the hold and descended to earth with solemn slowness. Then all the pieces were removed in lorries to a goods train on whose planks and wagons the Giantess was laid, one piece on each wagon, presenting a disconcerting vision of a form which, although already that of a human body, had its parts displayed in a horizontal series and never achieved a significant totality. First wagon: Phyrgian Cap; second: Shoulder and Covered Breast; third: Head; fourth: Shoulder and Bare Breast; fifth: Fertile Belly … And now, in anarchic file, came the thighs, arms, feet shod in sandals something between the Hellenic and the Creole, three pieces of spear, with a locomotive in front and a locomotive behind, because the weight was great and the mechanics were afraid this enormous load of bronze might get stuck on its way up Las Cumbres, where the recent rains had already caused some landslips on the line.
But the Republic finally arrived at her Capitol, and this was how, instead of possessing a monument by Bourdelle, the nation saw a statue by the Milanese Nardini erected, whose serene and serious face vanished forever from public view, because owing to the excessive height of the figure her head was lost in the upper part of a dome whose circular colonnade was visited only when it was cleaned twice a year by workmen—acrobats of scaffolding, too concerned with keeping the balance needed for their vertiginous task to be able to stop and appreciate the merits of a work of art.
11
THE CAPITOL WAS GROWING. ITS STILL SHAPELESS white mass, caged in scaffolding, was rising above the city roofs, sending up columns, spreading its wings, although its construction was suddenly delayed by contingencies of wages and cash. Of course, this was not due to the country’s economy, for it had never known better days, but to the fact that the cost of materials increased from month to month, the price of tools and machinery, of freight and transport, constantly breaking the limits of an ever-rising initial estimate—sufficiently encumbered, what was more, by the rake-offs promised to many ministers and high officials of the Commission for the Promotion of Public Decoration, not to mention two cheques, one considerable and the other more modest, more than once handed to Doctor Peralta secretly by the Office of Public Works. All at once work stopped, an arcade remained without any arches, a porch without a pediment, the chisels of the engravers of acanthus leaves and astragals were silent, and a new assignment of credits became necessary, an increase on the duty on Swedish matches, foreign liquor, or profits on horseraces, to finance the work. And then it happened that in periods of inactivity the central zone of the capital was transformed into a sort of Roman forum, an esplanade from Baalbek, a terrace from Persepolis, while the moon shone down on this strange, chaotic landscape of marbles, half-finished metopes, truncated pillars, blocks of stone between cement and sand—the ruins, the dead remains, of what had never been. And as—though roofless still—the two hemicycles of Chamber and Senate were already rising by stages within this area of expectant building, its empty space was made use of during the pauses in the work by the University’s Faculty of Humanities and by the promoter of a skating rink. Thus, there were nights when one could hear the laments of Ajax, the cries of Oedipus the incestuous parricide in the north hemicycle, used by students as the Theatre of Antique Drama, while, on an echoing wooden floor in the southern hemicycle, young women could be seen circling to the strains of Waldteufel’s most famous waltz, who rather than renounce fashion for sport had succeeded
in fastening their Louis XV heels onto roller skates. In some intermediate spaces, a travelling Dupuytren Museum might be installed, or Great Panopticon of the Discovery of America and the Torture of the Indians, an exhibition of animals, the pillar of someone fasting, while up above, on wires fixed to columns without cornices, several tightrope walkers with pink tights and balancing poles, floodlit as they travelled from capital to capital, passed obliviously over the circulating skaters and the tragedies of Sophocles below, hourly expecting to be expelled by the army of workmen who periodically returned to their abandoned task to continue the almost liturgical elevation of the Civic Temple towards the lantern at the top.
Reasons of State Page 16
