The General in His Labyrinth Read online

  The mule reserved for him was the best of a pack of one hundred presented to the government by a Spanish merchant in exchange for canceling his indictment as a horse thief. The General already had his boot in the stirrup that the groom was holding for him when the Minister of the Army and Navy called to him: "Excellency." He stood motionless, his foot still in the stirrup and both hands holding the saddle.

  "Stay," said the Minister, "and make one final sacrifice to save our country."

  "No, Herran," he replied. "I no longer have a country to sacrifice for."

  It was the end. General Simon Jose Antonio de la Santisima Trinidad Bolivar y Palacios was leaving forever. He had wrested from Spanish domination an empire five times more vast than all of Europe, he had led twenty years of wars to keep it free and united, and he had governed it with a firm hand until the week before, but when it was time to leave he did not even take away with him the consolation that anyone believed in his departure. The only man with enough lucidity to know he really was going, and where he was going to, was the English diplomat, who wrote in an official report to his government: "The time he has left will hardly be enough for him to reach his grave."

  THE FIRST DAY'S travel had been the most trying, and would have been even for someone less ill than he, for his mood had been twisted by the larval antagonism he sensed in the streets of Santa Fe de Bogota on the morning of his departure. The light was just beginning to penetrate the drizzle, and he encountered only a few stray cows along the way, but the rancor of his enemies hung heavy in the air. Despite the government's precautionary order that he be escorted through the quieter streets, the General still saw the insults painted on convent walls.

  Beside him rode Jose Palacios, who wore what he always wore, even in the heat of battle: the sacramental frock coat, the topaz pin in his silk tie, the kidskin gloves, and the brocade vest crossed by the chains of his two identical watches. The trimmings on his saddle were of Potosi silver and his spurs were made of gold, and for this reason he had been mistaken for the President in more than one Andean village. Nevertheless, the diligence with which he attended to even the slightest whim of his master made any such confusion unthinkable. Jose Palacios knew and loved him so well he could feel in his own flesh the pain of this furtive departure from a city that at one time had made the mere announcement of his arrival reason enough for patriotic fiestas. Less than three years earlier, when he had returned from the arid southern wars weighted down by more glory than any American, living or dead, had ever won before, he had been greeted by a history-making spontaneous reception. Those were still the days when people would grasp his horse by the halter and stop him in the street to complain about public services or taxes, or to ask him for favors, or simply to feel themselves close to the radiance of greatness. He would pay as much attention to petitioners in the street as he did to the most serious matters of state, demonstrating a surprising knowledge of each one's domestic troubles, or the condition of his business, or the state of his health, and every man who spoke to him was left with the impression that he had shared for a moment in the joys of power.

  No one would have believed he was the same man, or that this taciturn place he was leaving forever, with all the wariness of an outlaw, was the same city. Nowhere had he felt so much a stranger as in those stiff, narrow streets, the identical houses with dark roofs and private gardens filled with sweet-smelling flowers, where, over a slow flame, a village community simmered whose affected manners and crafty speech hid more than they told. And nevertheless, although it might have seemed to him then a trick of the imagination, this was the same city of fog and icy winds he had selected long before he saw it as the place to build his glory, the same city he had loved more than any other and had idealized as the center and reason of his life and the capital of half the world.

  When the final reckoning came he seemed more surprised than anyone at the loss of his prestige. The government had posted hidden guards even at the least dangerous locations, and this prevented a confrontation with the choleric gangs of hoodlums who had shot him in effigy the previous afternoon, but all along the route he could hear the same distant shout: "Skinny Shaaaaanks!" The one soul who took pity on him was a beggar woman, who said as he passed by:

  "Go with God, phantom."

  No one showed any sign of hearing her. The General sank into a brooding gloom and rode on, lost to the world, until they came out onto the grandeur of the savanna. At Cuatro Esquinas, where the paved road began, Manuela Saenz, alone and on horseback, was waiting for the entourage to pass, and she kept her distance as she waved a last goodbye to the General. He waved back and continued on his way. They never saw each other again.

  The drizzle stopped a short while later, the sky turned radiant blue, and two snow-covered volcanoes remained at the same spot on the horizon for the rest of the day. But this time he displayed none of his passion for nature, he took no notice of either the villages they passed through at a steady trot or the greetings of the people who did not recognize them. And yet what seemed most extraordinary to his companions was that he did not have so much as a tender glance for the magnificent herds of horses on the numerous breeding farms in the savanna--the sight, as he had often said, that he loved best in the world.

  In Facatativa, the village where they slept the first night, the General said goodbye to his spontaneous companions and continued the journey with his permanent entourage. There were five men in addition to Jose Palacios: General Jose Maria Carreno, whose right arm had been amputated as the result of a wound received in combat; his Irish aide-de-camp, Colonel Belford Hinton Wilson, the son of Sir Robert Wilson, a general who had fought in almost all the wars of Europe; Fernando, his nephew, aide-de-camp, and clerk, who held the rank of lieutenant and was the son of his older brother, who had died in a shipwreck during the First Republic; his kinsman and aide-de-camp Captain Andres Ibarra, whose right arm had been disabled by a saber cut during the assault of September 25 two years before; and Colonel Jose de la Cruz Paredes, who had proven himself in countless campaigns for independence. The honor guard was composed of one hundred hussars and grenadiers selected from the best of the Venezuelan contingent.

  Jose Palacios took special care of two dogs that had been taken as booty in Alto Peru. They were beautiful and brave and had served as watchdogs at Government House in Santa Fe de Bogota until two of their companions had been slashed to death on the night of the attempted assassination. On the interminable journeys from Lima to Quito, from Quito to Santa Fe de Bogota, from Santa Fe de Bogota to Caracas, and back again to Quito and Guayaquil, the two dogs had watched over the cargo, walking alongside the pack animals. They did the same on the final journey from Santa Fe de Bogota to Cartagena, although this time there was less cargo, and it was guarded by the troops.

  The General awoke in Facatativa in a bad temper, but his mood improved as they descended from the upland plateau through rolling hills and the climate grew more temperate and the light less harsh. They invited him several times to rest, for his physical condition was cause for concern, but he preferred to go on, not stopping for lunch, until they reached the hotlands. He often said that the motion of his horse helped him to think, and he would travel for days and nights on end, changing mounts several times so as not to ride them to death. He had the bowed legs of old cavalrymen and the gait of those who sleep with their spurs on, and a callus as hard as a barber's leather strop had formed on his buttocks, earning him the honorable nickname Iron Ass. Since the beginning of the wars for independence he had ridden eighteen thousand leagues: more than twice the distance around the world. No one had ever disproved the legend that he slept in the saddle.

  After midday, when they were already beginning to feel the hot breath rising up from the ravines, they agreed to rest in the cloister of a mission. The Mother Superior attended them in person, and a group of indigenous novices gave them marzipan fresh from the oven and a grainy corn masato to drink that was about to ferment. When she saw the column o
f sweating soldiers in their haphazard uniforms, the Mother Superior must have thought Colonel Wilson was the highest-ranking officer, perhaps because he was good-looking and blond and wore the uniform with the best trimmings, and she concerned herself only with him, displaying a very feminine deference that provoked evil-minded comments.

  Jose Palacios did not disabuse her of her mistake so that his master, wrapped in a wool blanket to sweat out his fever, could rest in the shade of the ceiba trees in the cloister. There he remained, not eating or sleeping, listening through a fog to New World love songs sung by the novices to the harp accompaniment of an older nun. When they finished, one of them walked through the cloister with a hat, begging alms for the mission. The nun with the harp said to her as she passed: "Don't ask the sick one for anything." But the novice took no notice. The General, without even looking at her, said with a bitter smile: "I'm the one who needs charity, my girl." Wilson gave from his own purse with so much generosity that he earned a cordial jest from his superior: "Now, Colonel, you see the price of glory." Wilson himself later expressed his surprise that no one at the mission, or anywhere else along their route, had recognized the best-known man in the new republics. No doubt this was an unexpected lesson for the General as well.

  "I am no longer myself," he said.

  They spent the second night in an old tobacco factory that had been converted into lodgings for travelers near the village of Guaduas, where they were expected for a formal ceremony of regretful farewells which he refused to attend. The building was immense and gloomy, and its very location caused a peculiar malaise because of its untamed vegetation and the black precipitous waters of the river that hurtled in a thundering explosion down to the banana plantations in the hotlands. The General knew the spot, and his first time there he had said: "If I had to ambush someone to assassinate him, this is the place I would choose." He had shunned it on other occasions only because it reminded him of Berruecos, a sinister stretch on the road to Quito that even the most fearless travelers preferred to avoid. Once, against the judgment of all his men, he had made camp two leagues away because he did not think he could bear so much sorrow. But this time, despite his fatigue and fever, it seemed in every way more tolerable than the love feast of condolences his troubled friends in Guaduas had prepared for him. When the innkeeper saw him arrive in so grievous a state, he proposed sending for a local Indian who could cure a sick man, regardless of distance, and sight unseen, just by smelling a shirt he had sweated into. The General laughed at his credulity and forbade his men to attempt any kind of dealings with the miracle-working Indian. If he had no faith in doctors, whom he called traffickers in other people's pain, he could not be expected to entrust his fate to a backwater spiritualist. And then, as further affirmation of his contempt for medical science, he refused the decent bedroom they had prepared for him because it was the one most appropriate for the state of his health, and he ordered his hammock hung in the broad open gallery that faced the ravine, where he would be exposed to the dangers of the night air.

  Nothing had passed his lips that day except the infusion he drank at dawn, but he joined his officers at the table only for the sake of courtesy. Although he adapted better than anyone to the rigors of life in the field, and was almost ascetic in his eating and drinking, he knew and appreciated the arts of the wine cellar and the kitchen as if he were a refined European, and beginning with his first trip abroad he had learned from the French the custom of talking about food while he ate. That night he drank only half a glass of red wine and tasted the venison stew out of curiosity, to see if what the innkeeper claimed and his officers confirmed was true: that the phosphorescent meat had the flavor of jasmines. He said no more than two sentences during the meal, and he did not say them with any more animation than the very few he had said during the journey, but they all held in high esteem his effort to sweeten the vinegar of his public misfortunes and poor health with a spoonful of good manners. A man who could not overcome the bitter gall of a grudge for years after the offense, he had not said another word about politics or alluded to any of Saturday's events.

  Before they finished eating he asked to be excused, and shivering with fever, he put on his nightshirt and sleeping cap and collapsed into his hammock. The night was cool, and an enormous orange moon was beginning to rise between the hills, but he was in no frame of mind to look at it. The soldiers of his escort began to sing popular songs a few steps from the gallery. Following a standing order of his, they always encamped close to where he slept, like the legions of Julius Caesar, so he could learn from their conversations at night what they were thinking and feeling. His insomniac's wanderings had often taken him to where they slept in the field, and not a few dawns had found him and the soldiers singing barracks songs with the stanzas of praise or mockery they improvised in the heat of the fiesta. But that night he could not tolerate their singing, and he ordered them to be still. The eternal crashing of the river among the rocks was magnified by his fever and became part of his delirium.

  "The fucking water!" he shouted. "If we could just stop it for a minute!"

  But no: he could no longer stop the flow of rivers. Jose Palacios tried to calm him with one of the many palliatives they carried in the chest of medicines, but he refused it. That was the first time he was heard to say his recurrent phrase: "I've just renounced power because of an emetic that should not have been prescribed, and I'm not prepared to renounce life as well." Years before, he had said the same thing, when another physician cured him of tertian fever with an arsenical mixture that almost killed him with dysentery. From that time on, the only medicines he accepted were the purgative pills he took without hesitation several times a week for his persistent constipation, and a senna enema for the most critical bouts of sluggishness. A short while after midnight, exhausted by his master's delirium, Jose Palacios stretched out on the bare brick floor and fell asleep. When he awoke, the General was not in his hammock, and his nightshirt, drenched with perspiration, lay on the floor. This was nothing out of the ordinary. When there was no one else in the house he would leave his bed and wander naked until dawn, whiling away his insomnia. But that night there were more reasons than usual to fear for him: he had been ill all day, and the cool, damp weather was not the most propitious for his walking about unclothed. Jose Palacios took a blanket and looked for him in the house that was lit by a lunar green, and he found him lying like a funerary statue on a stone bench built into the corridor wall. The General turned to him with a lucid gaze in which no trace of fever remained.

  "This is another night like the one in San Juan de Payara," he said. "Without Queen Maria Luisa, sad to say."

  Jose Palacios understood the allusion all too well. It referred to a January night in the year 1820 when the General and two thousand troops had come to a remote spot on the upland plateaus of the Apure in Venezuela. He had already liberated eighteen provinces from Spanish domination. He had created the Republic of Colombia out of the former territories of the Viceregency of New Granada, the Captaincy General of Venezuela, and the Presidency of Quito, and he was at the same time its first president and the commander in chief of its armies. His ultimate hope was to extend the war into the south in order to realize the fantastic dream of creating the largest country in the world: one nation, free and unified, from Mexico to Cape Horn.

  Nevertheless, his military situation that night was not the most favorable for dreaming. A sudden plague that struck down the animals in midstride had left behind a pestilential trail fourteen leagues long of dead horses on the Llano plain. Many demoralized officers consoled themselves with rapine and reveled in their disobedience, and some even laughed when he threatened to have the guilty shot. Two thousand ragged and barefoot soldiers without weapons, without food, without blankets to defy the bleak upland plains, weary of wars and disease, had begun to desert in droves. For lack of a rational solution, he had ordered a reward of ten pesos for any patrol that captured and turned in a deserter, who would be shot with
no questions asked.

  Life had already given him sufficient reasons for knowing that no defeat was the final one. Less than two years before, when he was lost with his troops in the not too distant jungles of the Orinoco, he had been obliged to give orders to eat the horses for fear the soldiers would eat each other. At that time, according to the testimony of an officer in the British Legion, he had the outlandish appearance of an exotic vagabond guerrilla. He wore the helmet of a Russian dragoon, a mule driver's espadrilles, a blue tunic with red trim and gold buttons, and he carried the black banner of a privateer hoisted on a plainsman's lance, the skull and crossbones superimposed on a motto in letters of blood: "Liberty or death."

  On the night in San Juan de Payara his costume was less disreputable, but his situation was no better. And this reflected not only the momentary condition of his troops but the entire drama of the liberating army, which often reemerged triumphant from the worst defeats and was nevertheless about to collapse under the weight of its many victories. On the other hand, the Spanish general Don Pablo Morillo, with all the resources to crush the patriots and restore the colonial order, still controlled large areas of western Venezuela and was entrenched in the mountains.