The General in His Labyrinth Read online

  For many people, above all his secretaries and copyists, the Aroa Mines were another of his feverish ravings. He had shown so little interest in them that for years they had been worked by casual operators. He remembered the mines toward the end of his life when money began to grow scarce, but he could not sell them to an English company because his titles were not clear. That was the beginning of a legendary legal imbroglio that would go on for two years after his death. In the midst of wars, political conflicts, personal hatreds, everyone knew what he meant when the General said "my case." In his opinion the Aroa Mines were the only case. The letter he dictated in Guaduas to Don Gabriel Camacho left his nephew with the mistaken impression that they would not leave for Europe until the dispute was settled, and Fernando mentioned this later when he was playing cards with the other officers.

  "Then we will never leave," said Colonel Wilson. "My father has reached the point where he wonders if that copper exists in the real world."

  "The fact that no one's seen them doesn't mean the mines don't exist," replied Captain Andres Ibarra.

  "They exist," said General Carreno. "In the Department of Venezuela."

  Wilson replied in disgust:

  "At this stage I even wonder if Venezuela exists."

  He could not hide his vexation. Wilson had come to believe the General was not fond of him and kept him in his entourage only out of consideration for his father, to whom he was forever grateful for his defense of American emancipation in the English Parliament. Through the disloyalty of a former aide-de-camp, a Frenchman, he learned that the General had said: "Wilson needs to spend some time in the school of difficulties, not to mention adversity and misery." Colonel Wilson had not been able to determine if that was in fact what the General had said, but in any case he believed that just one of his battles would qualify him as a graduate of all three schools. He was twenty-six years old, and eight years earlier, when he finished his studies at Westminster and Sandhurst, his father had sent him to serve the General. He had been his aide-de-camp at the battle of Junin, and he was the man who carried the first draft of the Bolivian Constitution on muleback from Chuquisaca to La. Paz along three hundred sixty leagues of narrow precipice. When he said goodbye the General told him he had to be in La Paz in twenty-one days at the latest. Wilson snapped to attention: "I'll be there in twenty, Excellency." It took him nineteen.

  He had decided to return to Europe with the General, but each day increased his certainty that he would always find another reason for deferring the trip. His mention of the Aroa Mines after more than two years of not even using them as a pretext for anything was a disheartening sign for Wilson.

  Jose Palacios reheated the water after the letter had been dictated, but the General did not take a bath and continued his aimless walking, declaiming poetry in a voice that resounded throughout the house. He went on to poems he had written that only Jose Palacios knew about. Several times he passed the gallery where his officers were playing ropilla, the American name for Galician lansquenet, which he too had once played. He would stop for a moment to watch over each officer's shoulder, draw conclusions regarding their progress, and continue walking.

  "I don't know how you can waste your time on such a boring game," he said.

  Nevertheless, on one of his many turns around the house he could not resist the temptation of asking Captain Ibarra to allow him to take his place at the table. He did not possess the patience good gamblers have, he was aggressive and a poor loser, but he was also astute and fast and knew how to put himself on equal footing with his subordinates. On that occasion, with General Carreno as his partner, he played six games and lost all of them. He threw the cards on the table.

  "This game is shit," he said. "Who's brave enough to try ombre?"

  They all were. He won three games in a row, his humor improved, and he tried to ridicule the way Colonel Wilson played. Wilson took it well but made use of the General's enthusiasm to gain an advantage, and he did not lose again. The General became tense, his lips hardened and turned pale, and the eyes set deep under bushy eyebrows burned with the savage brilliance of other times. He did not speak again, and a pernicious cough interfered with his concentration. It was past twelve o'clock when he stopped the game.

  "The wind's been blowing on me all night," he said.

  They carried the table to a more sheltered spot, but he continued losing. He asked them to quiet the fifes that could be heard playing at some nearby fiesta, but the fifes continued to sound over the din of the crickets. He changed his seat, he put a pillow on his chair so he could sit higher and be more comfortable, he drank an infusion of linden blossoms to relieve his cough, he played several games while walking from one end of the gallery to the other, but he continued losing. Wilson kept his clear, embittered eyes on him, but he did not deign to look back.

  "This deck is marked," he said.

  "The deck is yours, General," said Wilson.

  It was in fact one of his, but still he examined it card by card, and at last he had it changed. Wilson gave him no rest. The crickets stopped, there was a long silence shaken by a humid breeze that brought the first scent of the burning valleys to the gallery, and a rooster crowed three times. "That rooster's crazy," said Ibarra. "It can't be later than two o'clock." Without taking his eyes off the cards, the General ordered in a surly voice:

  "Nobody moves from here, damn it!"

  No one breathed. General Carreno, who was following the game with more apprehension than interest, remembered the longest night of his life, two years before, when they were waiting in Bucaramanga for the results of the Ocana Convention. They had begun to play at nine o'clock and did not finish until eleven the next morning, when his companions agreed to let the General win three games in a row. Fearing another test of endurance that night in Guaduas, General Carreno signaled Colonel Wilson to begin to lose. Wilson ignored him. Then, when he asked for a five-minute break, General Carreno followed him along the terrace and found him pissing his ammoniacal bitterness into the pots of geraniums.

  "Colonel Wilson," General Carreno ordered. "Attention!"

  Wilson replied without turning his head:

  "Wait until I finish."

  He finished with absolute serenity and turned around as he adjusted his trousers.

  "Begin to lose," General Carreno told him, "if only as an act of kindness to a friend in trouble."

  "I refuse to pay anyone such an insult," said Wilson with a touch of irony.

  "That's an order!" said Carreno.

  Wilson, standing at attention, looked down at him from his full height with imperial contempt. Then he returned to the table and began to lose. The General understood.

  "It isn't necessary for you to do it so badly, my dear Wilson," he said. "When all is said and done, it's time we went to sleep."

  He took his leave of everyone with a firm handshake, as he always did when he got up from the card table, in order to show that the game had not altered his feelings, and he returned to the bedroom. Jose Palacios had fallen asleep on the floor, but he stood up when he saw him come in. The General stripped off all his clothes in a rush and began to sway in his hammock, his thoughts in a whirl, his respiration growing louder and harsher the more he thought. When he sank into the tub he was shaking down to the marrow of his bones, but this time it was not fever or cold, but rage.

  "Wilson's a slippery bastard," he said.

  It was one of his worst nights. Jose Palacios disobeyed orders and warned the officers in case it proved necessary to call a doctor, and he kept him wrapped in sheets so he could sweat out the fever. He soaked through several of them, with momentary respites that only hurled him back into hallucinatory crises. Several times he shouted: "Make those damn fifes be quiet!" But no one could help him this time, because the fifes had been silent since midnight. Later he discovered who was responsible for his prostration.

  "I was feeling fine," he said, "until I let all of you talk me into that fucking Indian with the shirt."
r />   The last stage of the journey to Honda was along a heartstopping precipice through air like molten glass that only physical stamina and willpower like his could have endured after a night of agony. After the first few leagues he had moved back from his usual position to ride beside Colonel Wilson, who knew to interpret the gesture as an invitation to forget the grievances of the gaming table and who offered his arm, as if he were a falconer, for the General to rest his hand on. In that way they made the descent together, Colonel Wilson moved by his courtesy and the General using his last strength to struggle for breath but sitting unbowed in the saddle. When the steepest stretch was over he asked with a voice from another century:

  "What do you suppose London is like now?"

  Colonel Wilson looked at the sun, which was almost in the center of the sky, and said:

  "Very bad, General."

  He showed no surprise but asked another question in the same voice:

  "And why is that?"

  "Because there it's six in the evening, the worst time in London," said Wilson. "And a rain as filthy and dead as toad water must be falling, because spring is our sinister season."

  "Don't tell me you've conquered nostalgia," he said.

  "On the contrary: nostalgia has conquered me," said Wilson. "I no longer put up the slightest resistance to it."

  "Then do you or don't you want to go back?"

  "I don't know anything anymore, General," said Wilson. "I'm at the mercy of a destiny that isn't mine."

  The General looked straight into his eyes and said in amazement:

  "That's what I should be saying."

  When he spoke again, his voice and mood had changed. "Don't worry," he said. "Whatever happens, we will go to Europe, if for no other reason than to not deprive your father of the pleasure of seeing you." Then, after long reflection, he concluded:

  "And let me tell you one last thing, my dear Wilson: they can call you anything they like except a slippery bastard."

  Accustomed to his gallant repentances, above all after a stormy card game or a victory in battle, Colonel Wilson yielded to him one more time. He continued to ride at a slow pace with the feverish hand of the most glorious invalid in the Americas clutching like a hunting falcon at his forearm, while the air began to boil and funereal birds circling above their heads had to be driven away like flies.

  On the most difficult part of the slope they crossed paths with a crew of Indians carrying a party of European travelers in sedan chairs. Then, when they had almost completed the descent, a demented horseman passed them at full gallop, riding in the same direction they were taking. He wore a red hood that almost covered his face, and his haste was so disordered that Captain Ibarra's mule almost plunged over the edge in fright. The General just had time to shout "Watch where you're going, damn you!" He stared after him until he disappeared around the first bend but was still watching for him each time he reappeared on the lower curves of the precipice.

  At two o'clock in the afternoon they rode the crest of the last hill, and the horizon opened into a brilliant plain at the end of which the celebrated city of Honda lay dozing, with its bridge of Castilian stone spanning the great marshy river, with its walls in ruins and its church tower destroyed by an earthquake. The General contemplated the burning valley but betrayed no emotion except when he saw the rider in the red hood crossing the bridge at his unending gallop. Then the light he had seen in his dreams was rekindled.

  "Merciful God," he said. "The only explanation for that kind of speed is that he's carrying a letter for Cassandro with the news that we've left."

  DESPITE THE WARNING against any public demonstrations to mark his arrival, a high-spirited troop of horsemen rode out to welcome him in the port, and Governor Posada Gutierrez arranged three days of bands and fireworks. But rain ruined the fiesta before they even reached the streets of the commercial district. It was an inopportune downpour of devastating violence, which tore up the cobbles in the streets and sent water flooding through the poor neighborhoods, but the heat remained imperturbable. In the welter of greetings someone repeated the eternal cliche: "It's so hot here the hens lay fried eggs." For the next three days this same disaster was repeated without any variation. During the torpor of siesta a black cloud descended from the mountains, settled over the city, and burst open in an instant deluge. Then the sun shone again in a diaphanous sky, as merciless as before, while the civic brigades cleared the streets of the debris left by the flood, and the next day's black cloud began to form on the crests of the hills. At any hour of the day or night, indoors or out, one heard the panting of the heat.

  Prostrate with fever, the General could scarcely endure the official welcoming ceremony. The air was at a rolling boil in the salon of the town hall, but he managed a sermon worthy of a cautious bishop, which he spoke very slowly in an unwilling voice without getting up from the armchair. A ten-year-old girl wearing angel wings and a dress of ruffled organza choked with haste as she recited from memory an ode to the glories of the General. But she made a mistake, began again at the wrong place, became lost beyond all hope, and not knowing what else to do, stared at him in panic. The General gave her a smile of complicity and reminded her of the lines in a low voice:

  The brilliance of his saber

  is the living reflection of his glory.

  In the early years of his power, the General missed no opportunity to give splendid banquets for a multitude of guests, whom he would urge to eat and to drink to the point of inebriation. From that sumptuous past he still had his personal monogrammed place setting, which Jose Palacios would bring to dinner parties. At the reception in Honda he agreed to sit in the place of honor, but he drank only a glass of port and just tasted the river turtle soup, which left an unpleasant flavor in his mouth.

  He withdrew early to the sanctuary Governor Posada Gutierrez had readied for him in his house, but the news that the mail from Santa Fe de Bogota was expected the next day drove away the little sleep that was left to him. Prey to apprehension after the three-day respite, he began to think again about his misfortunes, and again he tormented Jose Palacios with, idle questions. He wanted to know what had happened since he left, what the city would be like with a government different from his own, what life would be like without him. On one gloomy occasion he had said: "America is half a world gone mad." That first night in Honda he had even more reason to believe this was so.

  He spent the night in suspense, plagued by mosquitoes because he refused to sleep with netting. At times he walked around and around the room talking to himself, at times he swayed with great lurching swings in the hammock, at times he rolled himself in a blanket and succumbed to his fever, almost shouting with delirium in a marshland of sweat. Jose Palacios stayed with him, answering his questions, telling him the exact hour and minute every few seconds without having to consult the two watches he wore on chains fastened to the buttonholes of his vest. He rocked the hammock when the General did not have the strength to do it himself and drove away the mosquitoes with a cloth until at last he lulled him into a sleep that lasted over an hour. But he awoke with a start just before dawn when he heard the sound of animals and men's voices in the patio, and he went out in his nightshirt to receive the mail.

  His young Mexican aide-de-camp, Captain Agustin de Iturbide, who had been detained in Santa Fe de Bogota by a last-minute emergency, arrived with the mail carriers. He had with him a letter from Field Marshal Sucre, a heartfelt lament at not having arrived in time to say goodbye. There also arrived in the mail a letter written two days earlier by President Caycedo. Governor Posada Gutierrez came into the bedroom a short while later with clippings from the Sunday papers, and the General asked that he read the letters to him since the light was still too dim for his eyes.

  The news was that on Sunday the weather had cleared in Santa Fe de Bogota, and numerous families with their children invaded the horse-breeding farms with baskets of roast suckling pig, baked brisket, blood sausage with rice, potatoes with melted che
ese, and ate their lunch on the grass under a radiant sun that had not been seen in the city for ages. This May miracle had dissipated Saturday's tension. The students from the Academy of San Bartolome had taken to the streets once more with the all too familiar farce of symbolic executions, but to no effect. They dispersed in boredom before nightfall, and on Sunday they exchanged rifles for treble guitars and could be seen on the breeding farms singing bambucos among the crowds of people warming themselves in the sun, until it rained again without warning at five o'clock in the afternoon and the fiesta was over.

  Posada Gutierrez interrupted his reading of the letter.

  "Nothing in this world can stain your glory," he said to the General. "No matter what they say, Your Excellency will continue to be the greatest Colombian anywhere on earth."

  "I don't doubt it," said the General, "if all I had to do was leave to make the sun shine again."

  The only item in Caycedo's letter to provoke him was that even the Interim President of the Republic committed the abuse of calling Santander's followers liberals, as if it were official terminology. "I don't know where the demagogues got the right to call themselves liberals," he said. "They stole the word, pure and simple, just as they steal everything they lay their hands on." He leaped from the hammock and continued to vent his anger to the Governor as he paced off the room from one end to the other with his soldier's strides.

  "The truth is, the only two parties here are those who are with me and those who are against me, and you know that better than anyone," he concluded. "And although they may not believe it, no one is more liberal than I am."

  Later a personal emissary from the Governor brought him the verbal message that Manuela Saenz had not written to him because the mail carriers had categorical instructions not to accept her letters. The message came from Manuela herself, who on the same date had sent the Interim President a letter to protest the prohibition, which was the origin of a series of mutual provocations that would end in her exile and oblivion. Nevertheless, contrary to the expectations of Posada Gutierrez, who had firsthand knowledge of the stormy quarrels in that tormented love affair, the General smiled at the bad news.