Reasons of State (21 page)

“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 now 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.

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.

These alternations between building and stoppage were still going on when one morning, with a jubilant air, Doctor Peralta entered the Head of State’s private apartments, where the Mayorala Elmira was still in her underclothes:

“A miracle, Señor! A miracle! German submarines have just sunk a North American ship, the
Vigilentia
! All the gringos in the crew went to the bottom! Not one was saved!” (He was laughing.) “Not one, my President! Not one! They were
all done for. And although the news isn’t official, it’s known that this will bring the United States into the war. Yes, really: they’ll come into the war!”

And they were both so pleased that without waiting for anything more they took the Hermès case and filled their glasses with Santa Inés. (“So I’m to be treated like dirt, am I?” said the Mayorala, hastily bringing up a tooth glass.) It was some time since the Head of State had been so delighted, because the European war had become a stationary war of trenches, positions, resistance, and slow struggles to win a height, a copse, the ruins of a fort already ten times ruined, a war of minimal advances and retreats, but with countless dead, and therefore monotonous—in fact: boring. For anyone looking at it from here it lacked interest as a spectacle. People no longer moved little flags over maps of distant lands to mark victories or defeats, because there were no dramatic victories or defeats, and whenever a real battle took place it was always in the same area of the Argonne or Verdun, between places with unknown names, barely a centimetre apart on the 1:1000 maps that were still on display, dusty and ignored, in newspaper offices. Certainly the country was enjoying astonishing prosperity. But the increasing cost of living kept the poor in the same misery as before—breakfast of baked banana, yams at midday, crusts and tapioca after the day’s work, with some dried goat’s meat or cow dead of foot-and-mouth disease on Sundays and birthdays—in spite of wages appearing to be good. As a result of this state of things, students, intellectuals, and professional agitators—that filthy intelligentsia who always destroy one’s patience—had gradually combined together to make an opposition movement. And just when he was counting on peace and quiet, the Head of State was surprised by a proliferation of hostile forces invading the city, manifested here, there, where least expected,
to trouble his mind and interrupt his sleep. When he thought he had been quite forgotten, the hand of Doctor Luis Leoncio Martínez reappeared in proclamations arriving in envelopes with different postmarks, and denouncing events—this was the serious part of it—known only to a few people connected with the intimate life of the Presidential Palace. It had been discovered too late (that cretin the Chief of Police we waste money on never knew!) that a professor of modern history at the University had given lectures on the Mexican Revolution, speaking about the strength of its proletariat, peasants’ leagues, the Syndicate of Tenant Farmers of Vera Cruz, agrarianism, the socialist government of Carrillo Puerto in Yucatán, and the articles written by the gringo adventurer John Reed—about everything, in fact, that had ruined, sunk, and impoverished the magnificent estates of Don Porfirio, humanist and civiliser, who instead of reposing in a huge national pantheon was buried, a victim of ingratitude, in a sad corner of the cemetery at Montparnasse. And as a last straw our Secret Service had failed to catch some anarchists, probably from Barcelona, who came out at night like elusive ghosts and chalked the letters R.A.S. on the walls, which appeared to stand for
Revolution of Anarchists and Syndicalists
, sometimes accompanied by phrases like “Property is theft” and other well-worn formulae taken seriously only in our imitative and backward America.