The Autumn of the Patriarch (21 page)

the narrowest slits, the communities of poor nuns in accordance with his confidential order that they disembark silently in secret coves, they were paid enormous indemnities, their expropriated holdings were restored with interest and the recent laws concerning civil marriage, divorce, lay education were repealed, everything he had decreed aloud during his rage at the comic carnival of the process
of the declaration of sainthood for his mother Bendición Alvarado may God keep her in His holy kingdom, God damn it, but Leticia Nazareno was not satisfied with all that but asked for more, she asked him to put your ear to the lower part of my stomach so that you can hear the singing of the creature growing inside, because she had awakened in the middle of the night startled by that deep voice
that was describing the aquatic paradise of your insides furrowed by mallow-soft sundowns and winds of pitch, that interior voice that spoke to her of the polyps on your kidneys, the soft steel of your intestines, the warm amber of your urine sleeping in its springs, and to her stomach he put the ear that was buzzing less for him and he heard the secret bubbling of the living creature of his mortal
sin, a child of our obscene bellies who would be named Emanuel, which is the name by which other gods know God, and on his forehead he will have the white star of his illustrious origins and he will inherit his mother’s spirit of sacrifice and his father’s greatness and his own destiny of an invisible conductor, but he was to be the shame of heaven and the stigma of the nation because of his illicit
nature as long as he refused to consecrate at the altar what he had vilified in bed for so many years of sacrilegious
concubinage, and then he opened a way through the foam of the ancient bridal mosquito netting with that snort of a ship’s boiler coming from the depths of his terrible repressed rage shouting never in a million years, better dead than wed, dragging his great feet of a secret bridegroom
through the salons of an alien house whose splendor of a different age had been restored after the long period of the shadows of official mourning, the crumbling holy-week crepe had been pulled from the cornices, there was sea light in the bedrooms, flowers on the balconies, martial music, and all of it in fulfillment of an order that he had not given but which had been an order of his without
the slightest doubt general sir because it had the tranquil decision of his voice and the unappealable style of his authority, and he approved, agreed, and the shuttered churches opened again, and the cloisters and cemeteries were returned to their former congregations by another order of his which he had not given either but he approved, agreed, the old holy days of obligation had been restored
as well as the practices of lent and in through the open balconies came the crowd’s hymns of jubilation that had previously been sung to exalt his glory as they knelt under the burning sun to celebrate the good news that God had been brought in on a ship general sir, really, they had brought Him on your orders, Leticia, by means of a bedroom law which she had promulgated in secret without consulting
anybody and which he approved in public so that it would not appear to anyone’s eyes that he had lost the oracles of his authority, for you were the hidden power behind those endless processions which he watched in amazement through the windows of his bedroom as they reached a distance beyond that of the fanatical hordes of his mother Bendición Alvarado whose memory had been erased from the
time of men, the tatters of her bridal dress and the starch of her bones had been scattered to the winds and in the crypt the stone with the upside-down letters had been turned over so that even the mention of her name as a birdwoman painter of orioles in repose would not endure till the end of time, and all of that by your orders, because
you were the one who had ordered it so that no other woman’s
memory would cast a shadow on your memory, Leticia Nazareno of my misfortune, bitch-daughter. She had changed it into an age in which no one changed unless it was to die, she had managed with bedroom wiles to do away with his puerile resistance of never in a million years, better dead than wed, she had made him put on his new truss listen to the way it sounds like the bell of a stray sheep
in the dark, she made him put on your patent leather boots from the time he had danced the first waltz with the queen, the gold spur on his left heel which had been given him by the admiral of the ocean sea so that he would wear it unto death as a sign of the highest authority, your tunic with gold braid and tasseled ribbons and the statue epaulets which he had not worn since the times when his sad
eyes could still be glimpsed, his pensive chin, the taciturn hand with the velvet glove behind the peepholes in the presidential coach, she made him put on his military saber, your man’s perfume, your medals with the sash of the order of the knights of the Holy Sepulcher which the Supreme Pontiff sent you for having given back the church its expropriated possessions, you dressed me like a feast-day
altar and you took me at early dawn on my own feet to the somber audience room which smelled of dead men’s candles from the boughs of orange blossoms hung by the windows and the symbols of the nation hanging on the walls, without any witnesses, harnessed to the yoke of the novice who was stuccoed with a linen petticoat under the light breeze of muslin in order to smother the seven-month shame
of hidden unrestraint, they were sweating in the lethargy of the invisible sea which sniffed restlessly about the gloomy ballroom to which access had been forbidden by his orders, the windows had been walled up, all trace of life in the building had been exterminated so that the world would not get even the slightest rumor of the monstrous hidden wedding, you could barely breathe in the heat because
of the urgent pressure of the premature male who was swimming among the shadowy lichens on the dunes of your insides, for he had resolved that it would be a boy, and it was, he sang in
the subsoil of your being with the same voice of an invisible spring with which the archbishop primate wearing pontificals sang glory to God on high so that the dozing sentries would not hear him, with the same
terror of a lost diver with which the archbishop primate commended his soul to the Lord to ask the inscrutable old man what no one until then or ever after until the end of time had dared ask him do you take Leticia Mercedes Maria Nazareno as your wife, and he only blinked, agreed, on his chest the military medals gave a slight tinkle from the hidden pressure of his heart, but there was so much authority
in his voice that the terrible creature in your insides rolled over completely in his equinox of thick waters, corrected his compass and found the direction of the light, and then Leticia Nazareno doubled over sobbing oh my father and my lord have pity on this your humble servant who has taken much pleasure in breaking your holy laws and accepts with resignation this terrible punishment, but
biting her lace wristlet at the same time so that the sound of the disjointed bones of her waist would not reveal the dishonor held in by the linen petticoat, she squatted down, she fell to pieces in the steaming puddle of her own waters and withdrew from among the muslin folds the seven-month runt who had the same size and the same forlorn unboiled-animal look of a calf fetus, she lifted him up
with both hands trying to recognize him in the dim light of the candles on the improvised altar, and she saw that he was a male, just as the general had decreed, a fragile and timid male who was to bear without honor the name Emanuel, as had been foreseen, and he was appointed a major general with effective jurisdiction and command from the moment he placed him on the sacrifice stone and cut his
umbilical cord with the saber and recognized him as my only and legitimate son, father, baptize him for me. That unprecedented decision was to be the prelude of a new epoch, the first announcement of the evil times in which the army cordoned off the streets before dawn and made people close balcony windows and emptied the market with their rifle butts so that no one would see the fugitive passage
of the flashy automobile with armored
plates of steel and the gold shackles of the presidential squiry, and those who dared peek from the forbidden rooftops did not see as in other times the age-old military man with his chin resting on the pensive hand with the velvet glove through the peepholes edged with the colors of the flag but the chubby former novice with her straw hat with felt flowers
and the string of blue foxes that hung around her neck in spite of the heat, we would see her get out across from the public market on Wednesdays at dawn escorted by a patrol of combat soldiers leading by the hand the tiny major general no more than three years old and because of his grace and his languid air it was impossible not to believe that it was a little girl dressed up as a soldier in the
dress uniform with gold braid which seemed to be growing on his body, for Leticia Nazareno had put it on him even before he grew his first teeth, when she would take him in his baby carriage to preside over official acts as representative of his father, she carried him in her arms when he reviewed his troops, she would lift him over her head to receive the cheers of the crowds in the ball park,
she would nurse him in the open car during parades on the national holiday not concerned with the secret jokes brought on by the public spectacle of a five-star general clinging ecstatically to his mother’s nipple like an orphaned calf, he attended diplomatic receptions from the time he was able to take care of himself, and then along with the uniform he wore the military medals which he had chosen
himself from the jewel case full of decorations which his father had given him to play with, and he was a strange, serious child, he knew how to conduct himself in public from the age of six holding in his hand the glass of fruit juice instead of champagne as he spoke about grown-up matters with a natural propriety and grace that he had not inherited from anyone, although on more than one occasion
a dark cloud would cross the ballroom, time would stand still, the pale dauphin invested with the highest powers had fallen into a lethargy, silence, they whispered, the little general is sleeping, his aides-de-camp would carry him out in their arms through the crisp conversations of
high-class thugs and modest ladies who scarcely dared murmur repressing the laugh of embarrassment behind feathered
fans, how awful, if the general only knew, because he let flourish the belief of his own invention that he was aloof from everything that happened in the world which was not up to the level of his grandeur and for that reason we had the public boldness of the only son he had accepted as his among the countless ones he had bred, or the widespread functions of my only and legitimate wife Leticia
Nazareno who would arrive at the market at dawn on Wednesdays leading her toy general by the hand in the midst of the noisy escort of barracks maidservants and assault-troop orderlies who had been transfigured by that rare visible splendor of the awareness which precedes the imminent rising of the sun in the Caribbean, they would wade into the pestilential waters of the bay up to their waists to
sack the sloops with patched sails that were anchored in the former slave port loaded with flowers from Martinique and ginger roots from Paramaribo, they swept away all the live fish in their path like a wartime mopping up, they fought over the hogs with rifle butts around the former slave platform still in use where on another Wednesday of another time in the nation before him they had sold at public
auction a captive Senegalese woman who brought more than her own weight in gold because of her nightmare beauty, they wiped out everything general sir, it was worse than the locusts, worse than a hurricane, but he remained impassive at the growing scandal which had Leticia Nazareno bursting as he himself would not have dared into the motley gallery of the bird and vegetable market followed by
the uproar of street dogs who barked in surprise at the astonished eyes of the blue foxes, she moved with the insolent domination of her authority through slender columns of ironwork with great yellow glass leaves, with pink glass apples, with fabulous cornucopias of riches amidst the blue glass flora of the gigantic dome of lights where she chose the most delicious fruits and the tenderest vegetables
which would wither the instant she touched them, unaware of the evil virtue of her hands which made
mold grow on bread that was still warm and had blackened the gold of her wedding ring, so that she heaped curses on the vegetable women for having hidden their best wares and for the house of power had only these miserable pig mangoes left, sneak thieves, this pumpkin that sounds like a musician’s
gourd inside, ill-born wenches, these shitty ribs with wormy blood that a person can see a mile away didn’t come from a steer but a donkey dead from some disease, by your evil mothers, she screamed, while the serving girls with their baskets and the orderlies with their troughs cleaned out everything edible in sight, their corsair shouts more strident than the clamor of the dogs maddened by the
dampness of the snowy hideaways of the tails of the blue foxes she had had brought alive from Prince Edward Island, more cutting than the bloody reply of the foul-mouthed macaws whose mistresses taught them in secret what they themselves could not have the pleasure of shouting leticia larceny, whorehouse nun, they shrieked roosting up on the iron branches of the dusty colored-glass foliage of the
dome of the market where they knew they were safe from the devastating wind of that buccaneer zambapalo dance which was repeated every Wednesday at dawn during the turbulent childhood of the miniature hoax of a general whose voice became more affectionate and his manners sweeter the more he tried to look like a man with the saber of a playing-card king that still dragged when he walked, he would
stand unperturbed in the midst of the rapine, he would remain serene, haughty, with the inflexible decorum his mother had inculcated in him so that he would deserve the flower of the bloodline that she herself was squandering in the market with her drive of a furious bitch and her Arab vendor’s curses under the unaffected look of the old black women in bright-colored rag turbans who bore the insults
and contemplated the sack fanning themselves without blinking with the canyon-deep calm of sitting idols, not breathing, ruminating wads of tobacco, wads of coca leaves, the medicines of poverty which allowed them to live through so much ignominy as the ferocious assault of the whirlwind passed and Leticia Nazareno