Reasons of State (34 page)

“At least the bell ringer isn’t on strike,” observed the President.

“That’s because an electric machine has been installed,” explained Peralta, very quickly repenting of saying what might be interpreted as a joke. “We must wait.”

The Mayorala brought bottles of cognac and earthenware jugs of Hollands, and Romeo and Juliet Havanas and Henry Clays.

At least once every half hour the Head of State took out his watch to see whether an hour had passed. One o’clock.
Two. A coffin emerged from “Eternity” carried on the shoulders of black-clad men—obviously members of the family—who set off on foot towards the cemetery. And at three the same silence as before reigned throughout the capital. Only a few Cantonese traders had opened their shops selling fans, screens, and ivory goods, for fear of being sent back to China, which was now in the hands of the Kuomintang and the Warlords.

Suddenly the President broke the long wait by saying curtly and firmly to the Commander-in-Chief of the army: “Machine-gun the closed shops.” A click of the heels, and a salute.

A quarter of an hour later the first fusillade was heard, bullets against metal shutters, corrugated iron, signboards, and shop windows. Never had such a frivolous war been waged. Never had the infantry enjoyed themselves so much as on this moving shooting range, where without aiming, merely firing bullets in strips, they were bound to hit some target—a splendid battle with no danger of reply from enemy bullets. It was a massacre of wax people—wax brides with wax orange blossom; gentlemen in frock coats with wigs on their wax skulls; amazons playing golf and tennis, with very pale wax complexions; a maid, dressed in the French style and made of less pale wax; the footman, like our Sylvestre in Paris, but of darker wax than the maidservant; an acolyte, a mace bearer, a jockey, all represented by a shade of wax suitable to their occupations—and, of course, the Virgins and Saints, brought from the Saint Sulpice district, in their robes of polychrome plaster, with haloes and other attributes, offered for sale by traders in missals and articles of devotion. As well as the 30-30s, the army fired off their Mausers and even some old Lebel rifles, brought from the back regions of the Arsenal. And in this great battle-against-things, shop
windows disintegrated, dinner services set out as wedding presents were sent flying, bottles of scent, Dresden and Murano vases and porcelain were splintered to bits, earthenware casseroles, flagons, and pitchers broken, and bottles of sparkling wine liberated so much energy as they exploded that they broke the bottles next to them. For several hours the attack on toys went on, firing on babies’ bottles, fusillade of Buster Brown and Mutt and Jeff, defenestration of puppets, massacre of Swiss cuckoo clocks, and a second decapitation of Saint Dionysius, who saw the head he was already carrying in his hands fall to the ground, struck in the middle of the cheek by a large-bore bullet.

But in spite of all this activity and travail, night fell over the city without public illumination or spotlighting in parks, and with bulbs in the advertisements and streetlamps unlit—only a few gas jets still remained, and the lamps carried by watchmen in the poorer quarters—even the moon was waning and overcast with clouds. It was a long, interminable night, a night of gloom weighing on a paralysed, silent town, a town abandoned to senseless firing—a few intermittent bursts of which could still be heard here and there. During these hours of waiting, of not knowing what the morning would bring, people realised that certain silences, silences not leading to any sound of voice or meaningful phrase, could be more agonizing than the clamour of a prophet or the delirium of an inspired diviner.

However, there were many houses, silent houses with the blinds drawn, ministers’ or generals’ houses, houses belonging to those in power or wearing soutanes, there were attics, rooms beyond the patio, where someone would go by with a lantern or an oil lamp, or candles held high, to conceal things, take jewels out of trunks, lock boxes, dust suitcases, sew banknotes (especially dollars) inside the linings, lapels,
and skirts of suits, coats, and capes, in preparation for some possibly necessary flight. In the morning the children would be sent to the Atlantic beaches (
they were anaemic; medical prescription
); many families would disperse into the provinces or towns of the interior (
sick grandmother; grandfather of ninety-seven
) or had gone to their ancestral homes (
my sister had a miscarriage; the other is queer in the head
) while they waited to see what was going to happen. Meanwhile, in kitchens whose only light came from cigars outlining a face with every puff, the men of the family, smoking more as they felt more conscious of danger, gathered around bottles of rum and whisky, groping for them in the dark to refill their glasses gropingly, and discussing the situation. A dull, infectious, increasing panic filled all the shadows and was brooded over in a thousand different ways, until the sweat of fear broke out on temples and napes of necks …

The Great and Little Bears and other constellations were fading in the grey dawn, and still there was silence in the capital. The whole country was plunged in silence. The machine-gun fusillade had been useless. Slowly the sun invaded the streets, striking small flashes of light from the broken glass covering the pavements. And now, as a last straw, the Chief of Police found out that his men were panic-stricken. They hadn’t seemed so timid and surly-looking when called upon to fight their way up streets, or assault barricades, during some clash between infantry and horsemen, or when marching shoulder to shoulder against a mob armed with sticks, belaying pins, metal pipes, or even firearms (generally old pistols, sporting rifles, or antique muskets); what terrified them was this silence, the solitude all around them, the emptiness of streets leading to the lower slopes of the surrounding mountains, where there wasn’t a single passer-by as far as the eye could see. They would have been less afraid of an attack from an
angry crowd than of solitary, isolated shots; these separate, single, carefully considered shots, taking careful aim, from a roof or a terrace, might leave a man stretched on the asphalt with a hole bored through his temple or brow as cleanly and surely as if drilled by a saddler’s bit. The troops were in barracks; the infantry bivouacked on the patios and the sentries smoked in their sentry boxes. And there was nothing. Silence. A silence broken occasionally—very seldom—by the clamour of a motorcycle (they were always of the brand called Indian) accelerating as the terrified rider made his way to the palace with some disagreeable, laconic, and confidential message. There, some of them lying exhausted in armchairs or on divans, and those too soaked in liquor to drink more keeping awake with the help of tobacco and coffee, were the high officials and dignitaries of the nation, waxen-faced, their necks sweating, their coats off and braces dangling. In the middle of this general collapse, the Head of State was waiting, tense, motionless, dignified and frowning; he was waiting for the Mayorala Elmira, who had muffled herself in a lacy shawl and gone out to get some hot news, walking about in the streets, listening at doors, peering through shut windows, getting information from some unlikely passer-by—such as a drunk female crony and collector of gossip, tremulous with aguardiente. But now she came back, after having walked a long way and not heard anything of interest. Or rather, yes: one thing only. On all the walls and palings of the city, thousands of mysterious hands had written in pale chalk—white, blue, or pink—a single phrase, always the same: “Get out! Get out!”

After a brief pause the President rang a hand bell, as though in a parliamentary session. The others got up from where they were resting, straightening their ties, doing up buttons, and smoothing their hair in an attempt to regain a little composure.

“Excuse me—your fly,” said Elmira to the Minister of Communications, who had left it undone.

“Gentlemen,” said the Head of State. And there followed a good speech, dramatic but free of emotion or eloquence, a straightforward commentary on the Mayorala’s narrative. If his compatriots thought it necessary for him to resign, if his most faithful colleagues (and he begged them to answer simply, frankly, and with equanimity) shared this judgement, he was determined to hand over power immediately to whomever was thought best fitted to assume it. “I await your reply, gentlemen.” But the gentlemen did not reply. And after a few minutes of stupor and agonised consideration of the facts, they were left with the fear, overpowering fear, insuperable Blue Funk caused by the people’s war cry. Suddenly, looking at one another, they were all thinking that the permanence, the rigour, and above all the Full Acceptance of Responsibility, the Full Acceptance of Guilt, of the Man who was awaiting the sound of their voices with growing impatience, was the only thing that could save them from the menace now haunting them. If the anger of the populace were unloosed, if the masses rushed into the streets, they would look for an abscess to lance, an object on which to rain their blows, a scapegoat, a Head to raise aloft on the point of a pike, while the rest of them might perhaps take different escape routes and manage to get away somehow or other. Otherwise, the general fury would reach them all equally, and for lack of the Body now standing before them their bodies would end up, dragged along, quartered, unidentifiable in the city drains—unless they had been hung up on a telegraph post with infamous placards pinned to their chests.

At last the President of the Senate spoke up and said what they all wanted him to say: That after so many sacrifices for the good of the nation (here came a list of some of them), at
a time when our country was threatened by dissolving forces (here came imprecations against all socialists, Communists, international crooks, the Student and his paper, the professor of Nueva Córdoba and the party he created yesterday and gave the pedantic name of Alpha-Omega—“he’s the worst bugger of the lot” remarked Peralta, and was immediately silenced by a gesture of annoyance from his listener), in these critical hours they were asking a supreme proof of self-sacrifice, etc., etc., on the part of the Head of State, because if in so serious a moment of peril he abandoned us, and deprived us of the help of his lucidity and political sense (here came mention of his other qualities and virtues), our friendless country could only groan, like our Lord on the Cross: “
Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani
.”

The President, who had been listening to all this with bent head and chin on his breast, now flung his arms apart and straightened his whole body.

“Gentlemen, let us set to work. The Council is open.” There was long applause and each man took his place at the long table running down the middle of the room next door, which was hung with Gobelins.

At three o’clock that day a great many telephones began ringing. At first there were a few only, intermittent and at intervals. Then more numerous, with louder voices, impatiently shouting. A host of telephones. A vast chorus of telephones. A world of telephones. And calls from patio to patio, voices running along roofs and terraces, crossing gaps, flying from corner to corner. And windows began opening. And doors began opening. And someone leans out, gesticulating. And ten lean out, gesticulating. And people run out into the streets; and some embrace and others laugh, some run, meet, gather in groups, inflate their chests, form into a procession, and another procession, and more processions appear at the
entries to streets, come down from the hills and up from the depths of valleys, and coalesce into a crowd, an enormous crowd, shouting: “Long live Liberty!”

Now everyone knows and is telling his neighbour: the Head of State has just died. Of a heart attack say some. But no; he was assassinated by conspirators. No, not that either: he was shot by a sergeant affiliated with Alpha-Omega. No, that wasn’t right either: someone really in the know said that he was killed by the Student, with the same Belgian pistol the Man always had on his desk, and that he emptied the whole lot of bullets—some said it contained six, others eight—into his body. One of the palace servants had seen the whole thing, and he said … But he’s dead, all right. He’s dead. That is the great, beautiful, joyful, tremendous cause for jubilation. And it seems that they are taking the Corpse—the enormous Corpse—through the streets. The people living in the San José district saw it being dragged along by a lorry, with the skull bumping on the paving stones. Now everyone must go to the centre of the town, singing in chorus the National Anthem, the Liberator’s Anthem, the “Marseillaise” and the “Internationale,” which unexpectedly came to mind.

But at this moment the armoured cars of the 4th Motorised Division appear and open fire on the crowd. The men of the palace garrison fire all together from behind the cover given by the wide banisters of the upper terrace and sandbags brought days before. Grenades fall from the telephone tower, leaving screaming gaps in the crowds holding a meeting below. Dozens of machine guns poke out from corners. Closing the avenues, police and soldiers are now advancing at a slow, measured tread in close files, letting off their rifles at every three paces. The now-terrified people are running, fleeing, leaving bodies and more bodies and yet more bodies on the pavements, throwing down flags and placards, trying
to get inside houses by forcing shut doors, or jump into interior patios or lift the lids of sewers. And still the troops advance, slowly, very slowly, firing all the time, trampling on the wounded lying on the ground, or finishing off with bayonets or the butts of their rifles any who clutch at their boots and leggings. And at last, after the crowd has been reduced and dispersed, the streets are once again deserted. The fire brigades come out to put out a few fires. Here and there are heard the long, vicious, insistent sirens of ambulances. When night falls all the streets are patrolled by the army. And everyone—all those who had sung so many hymns and given cheers for this and that—had to face an appalling truth. The Head of State had assassinated himself; he had spread abroad the news of his death, so that crowds should throng the streets and be shot down with supreme ease.