The Autumn of the Patriarch (24 page)

purse which we deliver here to your own hand general sir, along with these three keys, the wedding ring of blackened gold and these fifty cents in ten-cent pieces which they put on the desk for him to count, and nothing else general sir, it was all that was left of them. It wouldn’t have mattered to him if more had been left or less, if he had known then that the years he would need to erase down
to the last vestige the memory of that inevitable Wednesday were not many or very difficult, he wept with rage, he woke up shouting with rage tormented by the barking of the dogs who spent the night chained in the courtyard while he decided what shall we do with them general sir, wondering in confusion whether killing the dogs might not be killing Leticia Nazareno and the child who were inside
them all over again, he ordered them to tear down the iron cupola of the vegetable market and build in its place a garden with magnolias and quails and a marble cross with a light higher and brighter than the lighthouse to perpetuate in the memory of future generations until the end of time the remembrance of a historic woman whom he himself forgot about long before the monument was demolished by
a nocturnal explosion that no one avenged, and the magnolias were eaten by hogs and the memorable garden changed into a dungheap of pestilential slime which he never came to know, not only because he had ordered the presidential chauffeur to avoid passing by the former vegetable market
even if you have to travel around the world, but also because he never went out again after he sent the officers
off to the solar glass windows of the ministries and kept just the minimal personnel to live in the run-down building where by his orders not the least visible vestige of your urges of a queen was left, Leticia, he kept wandering about the empty house with no known task except the eventual consultations with the high command or the final decision of a difficult cabinet meeting or the pernicious
visits of Ambassador Wilson who was accustomed to spend time with him until well into the afternoon under the foliage of the ceiba tree and who brought him candy from Baltimore and magazines with color prints of naked women to try to convince him that he should give him the territorial waters on account for the enormous interest on the foreign debt, and he let him speak on, feigning to hear less
or more than he really could hear according to his convenience, he defended himself from the wagging tongue by listening to the chorus of the petite painted bird perched on a lemon limb from the nearby girls’ school, he would accompany him to the steps with the first shadows of evening trying to explain to him that he could take anything he wanted except the sea of my windows, just imagine, what
would I do all alone in this big building if I couldn’t look out now as always at this time at what looks like a marsh in flames, what would I do without the December winds that sneak in barking through the broken windowpanes, how could I live without the green flashes of the lighthouse, I who abandoned my misty barrens and enlisted in the agony of fever in the tumult of the federalist war, and don’t
you think that I did it out of patriotism as the dictionary says, or from the spirit of adventure, or least of all because I gave a shit about federal principles which God keep in his holy kingdom, no my dear Wilson, I did it all so that I could get to know the sea, so think about some other nuisance, he said, he took leave of him on the stairs with a pat on the shoulder, he went back lighting
the lamps in the deserted salons of the former offices where on one of those afternoons he found a strayed cow, he chased her toward the stairs and the animal tripped
on the patches in the rugs and fell on her back and tumbled down the stairs and broke her neck to the glory and sustenance of the lepers who fell upon her and carved her up, because the lepers had returned after the death of Leticia
Nazareno and were there again along with the blind men and the cripples waiting for the salt of health from his hand in the wild rosebushes in the courtyard, he could hear them singing on starry nights, he would sing with them the song Susana come Susana from his times of glory, he would peek out of the skylight in the granary at five in the afternoon to watch the girls coming out of school and
would grow ecstatic over their blue aprons, their knee socks, their braids, mother, we would run in fright from the consumptive eyes of the ghost who called to us from behind the iron bars with the torn fingers of his ragged glove, girl, girl, he would call to us, come let me feel you, he would watch them run off in fright thinking mother of mine Bendición Alvarado how young the young girls of today
are, he would laugh at himself, but he would become reconciled with himself when his personal physician the minister of health would examine his retina with a magnifying glass every time he invited him to lunch, he would take his pulse, he tried to make me take some spoonfuls of candlewax to plug up the leaks in my memory, what a mess, spoonfuls of medicine for me who hasn’t had any ailment in
this life except the tertian fevers in the war, shit doctor, he sat eating alone at the single table with his back to the world as the erudite Ambassador Maryland had told him the kings of Morocco ate, he ate with knife and fork and his head erect in accordance with the strict norms of a forgotten teacher, he would go all over the building looking for the jars of honey whose hiding places he would
forget after a few hours and he would find by mistake the rolls from the margins of ledgers where he had written in other times so as not to forget anything when he could no longer remember anything, he read on one that tomorrow is Tuesday, he read that there was an initial on your white handkerchief a red initial of a name that was not yours my master, he read intrigued Leticia Nazareno of my
soul look what has become of me
without you, he read Leticia Nazareno everywhere without being able to understand how anyone could be so unhappy to have left that flow of written sighs, and still it was my handwriting, the unique left-handed calligraphy that was found at that time on the walls of the toilets where he wrote to console himself long live the general, long live the general, God damn
it, completely cured of the rage of having been the weakest military man on land sea and air because of a fugitive from the cloister of whom all that remained was the name written in pencil on strips of paper as he had resolved when he didn’t even want to touch the things his aides put on his desk and he ordered without looking at them to take away those shoes, those keys, everything that might
evoke the image of his dead, to put everything that belonged to them in the bedroom of his wild siestas and wall up the doors and windows with the final order not to enter that room even on my orders, God damn it, he survived the nocturnal shudders of the dogs chained in the courtyard for many months because he thought that any harm done to them might hurt his dead, he abandoned himself to his hammock,
trembling with the rage of knowing who the assassins of his blood were and having to bear the humiliation of seeing them in his own house because at that moment he lacked power against them, he had been opposed to any kind of posthumous honors, he had forbidden visits of condolence, mourning, he was waiting for his moment rocking with rage in the hammock in the shade of the tutelary ceiba tree
where my last comrade had expressed to him the pride of the high command over the serenity and order with which the people had withstood the tragedy and he gave a glimmer of a smile, don’t be a horse’s ass old friend, what serenity, what order, what’s happening is that the people didn’t give a shit for this misfortune, he went back and forth through the newspaper looking for something besides
the news invented by his own press services, he had the little radio put within reach to listen to the same news item from Veracruz to Riobamba that the forces of law and order were close on the track of the authors of the attack, and he muttered of course, you sons of a tarantula,
they had identified them beyond the slightest doubt, of course, they had them surrounded under mortar fire in a suburban
house of ill repute, that’s it, he sighed, poor devils, but he stayed in the hammock without displaying even a glimmer of his malice asking mother of mine Bendición Alvarado give me life for this challenge, don’t let go of my hand, mother, give me inspiration, so sure of the efficacy of the plea that we found him recovered from his grief when we commanders of the general staff responsible
for public order and state security came to give him the news that three of the authors of the crime had been killed in battle with public forces and the other two were awaiting your disposition general sir in the dungeons of San Jerónimo and he said aha, sitting in the hammock with the pitcher of fruit juice from which he poured each of us a glass with the calm pulse of a good marksman, wiser and
more solicitous than ever, to the point that he guessed my anxiety to light a cigarette and gave me permission which until then he had never given to any officer on duty, under this tree we’re all equals, he said, and he listened without rancor to the detailed report of the crime in the market, how from Scotland they had brought in separate shipments eighty-two newborn bulldogs of whom twenty-two
had died in the course of their raising and sixty had been evilly taught to kill by a Scottish trainer who inculcated them with a criminal hatred not only for the blue foxes but for the very persons of Leticia Nazareno and the boy making use of these articles of clothing which they had slipped out little by little from the laundry services in government house, making use of Leticia Nazareno’s brassiere,
this handkerchief, these stockings, this complete uniform of the boy’s which we displayed for him so that he would recognize them, but he only said aha, without looking at them, we explained to him how the sixty dogs had even been trained not to bark when they shouldn’t, they were made accustomed to the taste of human flesh, they were kept locked up with no contact with the world for the difficult
years of training on a former Chinese farm seven leagues from this capital city where they had life-size figures dressed in the
clothing of Leticia Nazareno and the boy whom the dogs also knew from these original pictures and these newspaper clippings which we showed him pasted in an album so that you could get a better idea general sir of the perfection of the work those bastards did, if you
could only say that for everybody, but he only said aha, without looking at them, we explained to him lastly that the accused had not been working on their own, of course, but were the agents of a subversive brotherhood with headquarters abroad whose symbol was this goose quill crossed over a knife, aha, all of them fugitives of military penal justice for other previous crimes against the security
of the state, these three who are the dead ones whose pictures we showed him in the album with the respective police numbers hanging around their necks, and these two are the ones who are alive and in jail awaiting your final and unappealable decision general sir, the brothers Mauricio and Gumaro Ponce de León, twenty-eight and twenty-three years old, the first an unemployed army deserter with no
fixed domicile and the second a ceramics teacher in the school of arts and crafts, and to whom the dogs gave such signs of familiarity and excitement that it alone would have been sufficient proof of guilt general sir, and he only said aha, but he cited with honors in the order of the day the three officers who brought the investigation of the crime to a conclusion and he awarded them the medal of
military merit for services to the nation in the course of a solemn ceremony in which he named the summary court-martial which tried the brothers Mauricio and Gumaro Ponce de León and condemned them to be shot within the next forty-eight hours, unless they received the gift of your clemency general sir, you are in command. He remained in the hammock alone and absorbed, insensitive to the pleas for
mercy from all over the world, on the radio he heard the sterile debate at the League of Nations, he heard insults from some neighboring countries and some distant support, he listened with equal attention to the timid reasons of the ministers in favor of clemency and the shrill motives of those in favor of punishment, he refused to see the apostolic nuncio with a personal message
from the Pope
in which he expressed his pastoral concern for the fate of two errant members of the flock, he heard the reports on public order from all over the country which was upset by his silence, he heard the distant shooting, he felt the earth quake from the explosion without origin of a warship anchored in the bay, eleven dead general sir, eighty-two wounded and the ship out of commission, agreed, he said,
looking out the bedroom window at the nocturnal bonfire in the cove of the harbor while the two condemned men began to live the night of their eve in the chapel at the San Jerónimo base which was set up as for a wake, he remembered them at that time as he had seen them in their pictures with the bushy eyebrows of their common mother, he remembered them trembling, alone, with the tags of successive
numbers hanging around their necks under the always lighted bulb of the death cell, he felt sorry for them, he knew he was needed, required, but he had not made the least gesture that would let the direction of his will peep through when he finished repeating the routine acts of one or more day in his life and he took leave of the duty officer who was to remain on watch by his bedroom to carry
the message bearing his decision at any moment he might make it before the first cockcrow, he took leave as he passed without looking at him, good night, captain, he hung the lamp on the door, fastened the three bars, the three locks, the three bolts, sank face down into an alert sleep through whose fragile thin walls he kept on hearing the anxious barking of the dogs in the courtyard, the sirens
of the ambulances, the fireworks, the waves of music from some mistaken party in the intense night of the city huddling under the rigor of the sentence, he awoke with the twelve o’clock bells from the cathedral, he woke up again at two o’clock, he woke up again before three with the rattle of the drizzle on the window screens, then he got up off the floor with the arduous maneuvers of an ox first
the haunches and then the hind legs and finally the confused head with a string of spittle from his snout and he ordered first to the officer of the guard that he take those dogs off where I won’t hear them under the care of the government