The Campaign (21 page)

The Supreme Director of the Junta of Buenos Aires, Pueyrredón, was not willing to be second to San Martín either in will or in zeal in a feat which in Buenos Aires was being compared with those of Hannibal, Caesar, and Napoleon: “From Buenos Aires we send you dispatch cases, uniforms, shirts. We send you two thousand replacement sabers and two hundred field tents. We send you, in a small box, the only two bugles we could find. And that's enough,” wrote Pueyrredón. “We send the World. We send the Flesh. We send the Devil. I don't have the remotest idea how I'm going to worm my way out of the contracts I've signed to pay for all of it. Damn it! Don't ask me for another thing!”

Cuyo did sweat, Mendoza dried up, and even the church bells and vineyards were squeezed to get blunderbusses and harquebuses, carbines and sabers, daggers and tridents, the pistols, and the yataghans, those fearsome Turkish-style swords with silver hilts.

Already Major De la Plaza is at work, quartermaster in charge of supplies and arms; Alvarez Condarco, the Tucumán chemist, mixes nitrates to make different kinds of gunpowder. In his armory, Brother Luis de Beltrán tucks his cassock up on his waist as he casts cannon and bombs, while his neighbor, Tejada, sweats over his vats, dyeing cloth blue to make new uniforms. Right down to the humblest artisan, everyone contributes something to the campaign, even if it's a lance cut from a reed; the poorest mule skinner turns over his animals, just as the doctors deliver their medicines to the hospital founded by Dr. Zapata. And if donations don't come willingly, then San Martín's men forcibly tear blankets and sheets off the beds, occupied or empty, of those living nearby. “There is no house that cannot give up an old sheet,” shout these pirates of liberty, proclaiming themselves beggars rather than thieves. “When all else fails, we all have to beg.”

But all the hustle and bustle, the clanging, the singing and dancing, the hammers smashing red-hot iron, the neighs, and the banging are like a vast silence when, at dusk on that January day, three horsemen enter General José de San Martín's camp in Mendoza. Three horsemen hurtling down the mountains who cannot rein in their mounts, who spur them on to run, jump, and dodge obstacles around the armories, the supply sheds, the shops, and the mills, until the three sweating, tense chargers meld in the corral and stables with the three thousand horses, the seven thousand mules, and the myriad cows that constitute the marching stock of the Army of the Andes.

The three friends dismount, laughing and shouting, embracing, congratulating one another for being friends, for being alive, for having arrived, for bringing news, and above all for their manly comradeship, the friendship of their twenty-five years, the success of having crossed the Andes on horseback from Santiago—so swiftly that they are their own messengers:

The priest Francisco Arias, handsome and devout, twenty years of age, given to fervent readings and to those sensualities he deems worthy of his all-embracing faith and his noble intelligence.

Lieutenant Juan de Echagüe, valiant and dashing with his reddish
favoris
that show to equal advantage combed for a ball or tangled with dust.

And the young hero Baltasar Bustos, hopelessly myopic but willfully plump—losing, because of a diet of honey fritters, creams, egg-yolk sweets, and powder cakes, the physical hardness won in the Inquisivi campaign, obeying the order to return to his natural state, fat and smooth; losing the pride of his svelte virility to serve the cause to which the three of them have pledged themselves, even if they have to dance with that ugliest of partners: deceit.

“Arias and Bustos will join with Echagüe in Chile. The country is on edge. Despite the Rancagua defeat, the spirit of rebellion has not been vanquished. The captain-general is both an incompetent and a savage. Santiago is the center of all this edginess. Mix with everyone. Make friends with everyone. Spread false rumors. Contradict one another. Confuse anyone who wants the Spaniards to win. Seduce anyone who can serve our cause. Don't leave a single truth unquestioned, create a universe of doubt, confusion, contradiction, false news, rumors … And don't think you're heroes. You are just part of an army of spies and counterspies scattered all over Chile. Spread misinformation but learn the truth for us. Find out the number and position of their troops, supplies, their movements, their plans. But, above all, make them believe we're going to attack from all sides, all along the line from Mount Aconcagua to Valdivia.”

That is what General San Martín asked the three of them to do and that is what they accomplished. Now Baltasar wanted to eat steak and not vol-au-vent, Echagüe felt avenged for the death of his uncle (which took place, rumor had it, in the arms of Ofelia Salamanca, widow of the cuckold marquis), and Father Arias was looking at his two friends with his beautiful, languid, enigmatic eyes, which seduced both men and women, making everyone feel that this young priest could do whatever he wished—it was obvious that God Himself had so deemed it, and had incarnated His divine will in this delicate, strong, tender being ever ready to forgive but also disposed to anger, this youthful herald of Jehovah and Christ.

They walked arm in arm, at a distance from the stables where they'd dismounted, but always accompanied by the diminutive population of the encampment, whose habitual noises began to fill the afternoon once more after the galloping interruption of the friends. Geese, chickens, pigs, ducks. The honking, cackling, and squealing magically drowned out the hammers, bellows, and neighing. Arias looked at Bustos and Echagüe. If only it was true that Baltasar had invented—it was a stroke of genius—the pretext of the beautiful Ofelia to justify his passing through Chile; if only he did not know her or love her. If only Echagüe had never believed that his comrade loved the woman who had killed his uncle. If only this marvel of life, the union of the three young friends, who were not divided by anything, could last, glitter as long as possible, before the inevitable splits triumphed. When his friends asked him what he was doing, Arias said he was praying in his own fashion, using a word,
ojalá
—God willing—whose origin was the purest Arabic. Then they ate and drank together, told jokes, reminisced about family and lady friends, remembered childhood pranks, loved each other like brothers.

“That woman loved you,” Echagüe said to Bustos.

“Which woman?” Baltasar asked, distressed.

But Echagüe and Arias exchanged a glance and were silent. They had sworn never to mention Gabriela Cóo.

[4]

The three of them reported to General San Martín with their lungs cleansed by the air of Mendoza, the most tree-filled city in the world, a city sweet because it is protected by a roof of leaves woven together like the fingers of a huge circle of inseparable lovers.

The priest was all in black, with his long cassock; his eyes, too, were an ecclesiastical color.

The lieutenant carried his leather morion with its gold bars and wore a blue tunic whose buttons were stamped with the arms of Argentina.

Baltasar Bustos placed his glasses in their leather case and put his blue cloth cap with its single gold bar under his arm.

It was a trio of proud friends looking into the face of a hero, wondering at which point the personal fate of each of them—Echagüe, Arias, Bustos—would change or be changed by events, war, or other men—San Martín, for instance. But vanity, wrote Rousseau, measures nature according to our weaknesses, making us believe that the qualities we don't possess are mere chimeras.

In the salon, bare except for a table strewn with maps, portfolios, magnifying glasses, inkwells, and document seals, the general stated outright that the plan for liberating South America hinged on the conquest of the viceroyalty that governed the rest: Peru. But to take Peru it was first necessary to invade Chile. A sustained long-term action could not be expected from the micro-republics in Upper Peru. They would do what they had always done: carry out raids to distract Lima's troops and resources.

Everything was ready. He congratulated the three of them for fulfilling their task of undermining things in Chile. Marcó del Pont was thoroughly confused about where the patriots would launch their attack. He was confident Echagüe had taken advantage of the return trip to carry out orders. The young lieutenant replied in the affirmative: he'd memorized the entire route, down to the last stone, without needing to take notes. Baltasar and Father Francisco looked at Juan and then at San Martín. They knew the secret; there was no need to swear them to silence. But an Indian leaning on a lance at the entrance to the Mendoza map room stared at them with far-off melancholy. Had he been listening? Of course. Had he understood? Yes; no; yes. “I've lived with them. I know they understand everything,” said Baltasar when San Martín ordered the Indian to withdraw. But only by torturing Echagüe could anyone get the secret out of him, said Father Arias.

“In Peru we called them shitty
cholos,
” Bustos said to Arias in a sudden fit of rage.

“Don't worry. They call each other worse.”

“That doesn't solve the problem of justice,” insisted Bustos, somewhat irritated by the young priest's cynical realism. “Are we going to free ourselves from the Spaniards just so we Creoles can take their place, always above the
cholo
and the Indian?”

Echagüe laughed. “Don't think about that now, Balta. Concentrate on glory.”

He hummed
“le jour de gloire est arrivé,”
blushed, and regained his composure. “Excuse me, General. I forgot where I was. It's just that the three of us are such close friends.”

“I, too, am concerned about justice,” said San Martín. “And wherever we go, we are going to establish free trade, suppress the Inquisition, abolish slavery, and prohibit torture. But you all saw what happened to Castelli and Belgrano in Upper Peru. They proclaimed the ideals of the Enlightenment to Indians who didn't understand them and to the Creoles, who didn't want a permanent revolution. Neither theories nor individuals suffice to achieve justice. We must create permanent institutions. First, of course, we have to achieve independence. Then our headaches will really begin.”

“You create laws, General. You must believe in them from the start,” said the impetuous Baltasar, happy to be back in the ranks of the patriots, more and more certain of his ability to combine the dreams and the realities of the revolution.

“We are very legalistic.” San Martín smiled. “We like balance, legal symmetry, because it masks the confusion of our ill-formed societies. We are delighted by hierarchy, protection through dogma, everything we've inherited from the Church and from Spain. We forget that beneath the cupolas of certainty and the columns of law there is a dream full of rocks, vermin, and quicksand that will put the equilibrium of the temple of the republic in danger.”

“We need an iron will, a man who can save us,” said a smiling Echagüe, his eternal glove in his hand.

“My young friends.” San Martín returned them a bitter smile. “I don't know if we are going to be victorious or if we're going to be cut to ribbons once and for all up in the mountains. That's why I'm telling you here and now that even if we win, we will have been defeated if we hand power over to the sword-wielding arm, the successful military man.”

“But if it's a matter of saving the nation,” insisted Echagüe.

“The nation will be saved by all its citizens, not by a military leader.”

“In wartime you don't think that way.”

“But in peacetime I do, Lieutenant Echagüe. If we don't create institutions, if we don't achieve unity among Americans, we will rapidly go from squabbles to fratricidal warfare. I swear to you that I will kill Spaniards but not Argentines. Never. My saber will never leave its sheath for political reasons.”

“General, please pardon me for having spoken. I don't claim to speak for my friends, who…”

“He's just as fiery as his uncle.”

“Don Martín Echagüe would be proud of my actions. I hope I will always be proud of yours, sir.”

“Then never ask me or anyone else to be the executioner of my fellow citizens. A soldier can come to power with only that intention in mind. Beware of civilians as well,” he said to Bustos, and, curiously enough, to Father Francisco Arias. “Let no one propel you to power so that you will kill in the name of the military. Let no one bring you to the crossroads of power in order to kill or be killed.”

He laughed at the solemn silence of the young men and asked them to excuse the perorations of a man about to turn forty who only wanted to do his duty and then retire to some corner of the world to live like a man, in peace and with respect. “Would anyone believe, if I retire to my farm here in Mendoza, that I'm not a false Cincinnatus but a real Sulla waiting to take control of things? Damn!”

Everyone laughed, and he accused them of provoking this discussion about a hypothetical future because of the obvious, omnipresent fact—the American will to win independence: they had seen it, that will was all around them, nothing like it had ever before been seen in the Americas. It was the moment not to weep over the approaching storm clouds but to follow this sun, this will that manifested itself all around them—young men, patriots, Americans. Who could say, after these campaigns, that an Argentine, a Chilean, a Peruvian did not know how to organize or govern himself? The proof was right outside the door!

And outside the door, fresh recruits were being given uniforms, which they put on right out in the open after stripping themselves to the skin for a few seconds. Father Francisco Arias came over to help them dress; many did not know how to put the uniform on properly, button the tunic, adjust the belt, and cross the leather strap over their chests. He waved to the other two to come and help. Baltasar held Juan back.

“Don't. You are going to feel bad the day you can no longer be a comrade to those who are not your equals. Only the war unites us. Society will divide us.”