Reasons of State (9 page)

The army commanders had ordered a number of tents to be set up. The President’s was in the middle, its ropes attached to posts supporting a tall canvas pediment crowned by the republican flag. After supper of sardines, corned beef, baked bananas,
dulce de leche
, and Rhine wine, the victor of the day’s expedition, thinking his officers might be exhausted after this fierce battle, invited them to take a well-deserved rest until the meeting of the General Staff next day. Colonel Hoffmann, Doctor Peralta, and the Head of State were left alone, playing a half-hearted game of dominoes by the yellow kerosene glow of the street lamps. But at that point five, ten, twenty streaks of lightning plunged into the forest, followed by thunderclaps, each echoing for so long that they were blended one with another, bringing in their train the wind that heralded the downpour—the “
gira-gira
” as the locals called it—which in the twinkling of an eye had carried away the whole encampment. While the soldiers did their best to deal with the situation, Colonel Hoffmann and the Head of State, guided by Doctor Peralta, made for a hill, where they had that morning glimpsed the dark opening of a cave. And there they arrived, slipping, stumbling, soaked, shivering with cold, by the light of lanterns. There was a fluttering of terrified bats,
which quickly subsided, and then the solid shelter of damp walls, beneath an argillaceous vault festooned with stalactites, under which the rain only made its presence felt like the sound of a distant waterfall. But it was cold; the cold of clay in shadow, onto which water from the deep fissures of the mountain was ceaselessly dripping. The Head of State, sitting on his military cloak, had an unappeasable craving for a drink. (A need that clutched his stomach and his entrails, that made his body seem empty, without viscera, contracted by an urgent obsession which rose towards his throat and his mouth, which concentrated memory in his lips and sense of smell …) Doctor Peralta understood what was happening, and with a sly expression produced the Hermès case, and announced that as a precaution against possible chills during the campaign he had loaded it with brandy, to which—why deny it?—he was a confirmed addict.

“Everyone knows you were the Prior of Santa Inés,” said Colonel Hoffmann, suddenly cheering up and unbuttoning his overcoat. And joining his entreaties to the secretary’s, he persuaded the Head of State to take some alcohol to preserve his health—more vital now than ever before—from harm from the stormy weather.

“Just this once,” said the Head of State, raising the first flask, the smell of whose thick and porous pigskin cover at once brought back the Parisian shop where Ofelia used to buy picador’s saddles, reins, bits, and bridles.

“Don’t hesitate, Señor President; go right ahead; this is a special occasion. A glorious day, too.”

“A glorious day, indeed,” echoed Doctor Peralta. They were answered by a peal of thunder, which increased their pleasant sense of safety here within. The sweet yet vegetable aroma of the strong liquor drunk in the cave harmonised with the moisture of mud and mosses to call up a remote image of
the classical vintners’ bodegas where new wine sleeps under deep vaults. His spirits revived, the Head of State remembered a text he had humorously quoted in the Cabinet Council—where he often boastfully referred to books read, quoted poems, appropriate phrases, and proverbs suiting the case—during some passing political squabble wrapped up in military jargon. “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks … And you thought-executing fires, vaunt couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts, singe my white head …” To which Doctor Peralta, who was more of a Zorrillean than a Shakespearean, replied with some sparks from
Puñal del Godo
, so often launched in our National Theatre by the Spanish tragedian Ricardo Calvo, whose too-pure diction he imitated in a comic manner:

Once more the case of flasks was opened, to celebrate the “terrible voice” of the poem, and the owner of the “terrible voice” that was roaring. And now that they were sufficiently warmed up, with their uniform tunics somewhat unbuttoned, Colonel Hoffmann began to describe the campaign: until yesterday there had only been slight armed clashes, skirmishes, sharpshooting by guerrillas, collision between patrols; on our side the worst had been the blowing up of a train at the exit of the Roquero tunnel, with a loss of horses and equipment, seventeen men killed and fifty-two put out of action with more or less serious wounds. But the enemy—and he directed the light of his lantern onto a map spread on the undulant surface
of bats’ guano covering the ground—had steadily retreated towards the Rio Verde, without ever taking the initiative. Today, on the other hand, we had met them in a pitched battle, such as had not been seen since the Wars of Independence. Of course, thorough preparations had been necessary. The enemy had got too much help from the partisans, mounts, cattle, sacks of maize, information passed from village to village with incredible speed by these filthy mountaineers, always sympathetic with rioters and pronunciamentos. It was not a modern battle. Half a century ago these Andeans had come, driving us all crazy with their marches on the capital and their caudillos, and (on arriving at the Presidential Palace) had been amazed to find kitchens worked by gas, sanitation, taps running hot water, and telephones from room to room. This was why it had been necessary to carry out a huge “mopping-up” operation before the battle: burning of houses and villages, summary execution of all suspects, shooting at random into groups of dancers, birthday or baptism parties, which were merely pretexts for whispered propaganda, passing on of information and revolutionary plotting—not to mention certain wakes when, strange to say, there was no corpse in the coffin.

“But in Santo Tomás del Ancón you had no choice,” said the Head of State. Sad, very sad, of course, but one couldn’t make war with kid gloves on. You had always to follow Von Moltke’s two incontrovertible principles: “The best thing that can happen in a war is a quick ending … But to end it quickly all means are good, not excepting the most iniquitous.” A text of basic importance published by the German General Staff in 1902 stated: “If a war is waged energetically it cannot be directed solely against the combatant enemy; it must also aim at destroying his material and moral resources. Humanitarian considerations can be taken into account only if they do not
affect the result of the war itself.” Besides which, Von Schlieffen had said …

“Stop buggering about with your German classics,” said the Head of State. Von Schlieffen wanted battles to be fought on the chessboards of maps, from a distance, with communications by telephone, cars and motorcycles. But in this damned country without proper roads, and with so many forests, swamps, and mountain ranges, communications had to be maintained on the back of a mule or donkey—even horses were no use in some densely wooded mountains—or by messengers who could run till they dropped like the Indians of Atahualpa. Those theoretical battles fought by telescopes and field glasses, with squared maps and precision instruments, made one think at once of certain generals with moustaches like the Kaiser and a bottle of cognac within reach, not at all disposed—although there were a few exceptions—to rely on shooting and hanging. Our battles, on the other hand, had to be fought with our guts—like today’s—forgetting all the theories taught in military academies. And here the old gunners with their “three hands higher and two to the right, and a finger and a half of rectification,” who could wedge a gun with a millstone, were much more use than these raw lieutenants, stuffed with algebraic and ballistic gibberish that their subordinates didn’t understand, and who had to make calculations in an exercise book before letting off a shell, which in the end generally missed the target on one side or another. “In Latin America,” went on the Head of State, “in spite of artillery, machine guns, and all modern ironmongery bought from the Yankees, nature makes us go on fighting as in the times of the Punic Wars. If we had elephants, we’d make them cross the Andes.”

“All the same, Von Schlieffen …”

“Your Von Schlieffen based his entire strategy of war on
the battle of Cannae, won by Hannibal.” And the President, who had directed the day’s operations, surprised the others by revealing—or perhaps wanting to make them believe—that he had been guided in his conduct of the action by Julius Caesar’s Commentaries. Three ranks of infantry in the centre; two to attack, the third entrenched as reserve. Two troops of cavalry: on the right, under Hoffmann; on the left, his own. Objective: to break up the enemy’s wings, agglomerating and concentrating him in such a way that his rearguard was useless, and to cut off his retreat to the river. Realizing that he was practically surrounded, Ataúlfo Calván had taken refuge on the farther bank, leaving on this side his two sleeping companions, Misia Olalla and Jacinta the Negress, who by this time must have submitted to the lust of half a battalion of the nation’s Hussars, taking turns between their thighs, one after another. The battle had in fact been like Caesar’s against Ariovistus, beginning by the infantry harassing the ill-armed Indians and negroes who had joined the revolutionaries—in Caesar’s case they were Veneti, Marcomani, Heruli; to us they are Guahibos, Guachinangos, and Mandingos—until the leader, finding his men virtually surrounded, put the Rio Verde between them. So Ataúlfo Galván became our Ariovistus, who fled abandoning his two camp followers, the Suevian and the Norican. And don’t let us forget that Caesar, too, had to fight against certain
Andes
, who seem to me, I don’t know why, rather like our damned Andeans.

“Bravo, my President!” exclaimed Doctor Peralta, full of admiration for his knowledge of the wars of antiquity.

“What I do know is that we gave Ariovistus Galván a thorough thrashing today,” said Hoffmann, somewhat pained by the Head of State’s lack of admiration for Von Moltke and Von Schlieffen.

They began passing the flasks around again. Now and
again, the flash from a streak of lightning came in at the mouth of the cave. The President thought of that boring opera they had seen in New York, where one scene had taken place in a mysterious underground grotto, with its vaulted roof covered in a greenish phosphorescence. Colonel Hoffmann, who had a powerful voice and considered himself something of a
Heldentenor
, was reminded of the caverns of Mime and Alberich, and tried to sing a few bars from Wagner, emphasizing the libretto in hoarse German, without finding the exact words that in fact accompany Siegfried’s leitmotiv. Vexed by this failure of memory, which he put down to drink, he picked up a large stone and threw it into the depths of the cave. But the response he received was not the sound of stone on stone, nor yet of a stone falling into mud or water, but the breaking of a large earthen jar, struck in the belly and shattered to pieces. The soldier raised his lantern. On top of fragments of clay a horrible piece of human architecture was sitting erect—yet it was barely human now, consisting of bones wrapped in torn pieces of stuff, of dried worm-eaten skin full of holes, supporting a skull bound by an embroidered fillet; a skull whose hollow eyes were endowed with a terrifying expression, whose hollow nose looked angry in spite of its absence, and with an enormous mouth battlemented with yellow teeth, as if immobilised for ever in a silent howl, at the pain in its dislocated joints and crossed shinbones, to which there still adhered fragments of rope-soled shoes a thousand years old—yet seeming new because of the permanence of their red, black, and yellow threads. It was like some gigantic fleshless foetus that had gone through all the stages of growth, maturity, decrepitude, and death—and returned to its foetal state in the course of time—sitting there, beyond and yet closer to its own death, a thing that hardly was a thing, a ruined skeleton looking out through two hollow sockets beneath a
repulsive mass of dark hair that fell in dusty locks on either side of the dried-up cheeks. And this king, judge, priest, or general was gazing angrily from across countless centuries at the men who had broken his former earthenware covering. On the right, on the left, stood six more great jars, close to the walls, glistening with water that had filtered through the mountain. Snatching up several large stones, Hoffmann broke them, one by one. And now six mummies came into view, squatting with crossed arms—more or less flayed, their femurs and joints more or less shattered, with more or less accusing expressions in their blackened faces—making up a terrifying conclave of violation, a Tribunal of Desecration.

“The devil! The devil! Keep away!” all three shouted, disturbing a cloud of bats that went whirling overhead. And still pursued by the vision they had left behind them, they went out into the night, into the rain, making for the camp, where the ruined canvas of their tents was floating in muddy water. Wrapping themselves in these, sodden as they were, they sat down at the foot of a large tree to await the first light of dawn. And as it grew colder, the last flasks in the Hermès case were emptied. Regaining the surprising serenity that heavy drinking gave him, the Head of State told his secretary to draw up a report to the National College of Science describing the discovery of the mummies, with indications of the position of the cave and the orientation of its entrance in relation to the rising sun, exact arrangement of the funeral jars, etc., as archaeologists do nowadays. Besides which, the chief mummy in the centre was to be presented to the Museum of the Trocadero Palace in Paris, where it would make a splendid show in a glass case, on a wooden plinth, with a brass plate:
Pre-columbian Civilisation. Culture of the Rio Verde
, etc., etc. As for dating it, their experts could see to that—they were more cautious in this respect than ours, but eager to prove, every
time they came across the handle of some ancient pitcher or clay amulet, that this was an earlier example of the techniques of pottery than the oldest Egyptian or Sumerian specimens.