But they did not do it. They formed swift circles around Quintana and Baltasar as the two stood under the wet mangroves, whose smell competed with the rising aroma of the tobacco sheds (which smelled of fertile earth and female thighs, smoky hair and mandrakes, primroses, a wake, and truffles all mixed together, Quintana murmured): “We must take precautions, Calleja del Rey says he’s obsessed with capturing you alive before the inevitable defeat of the royalist troops. Executions, the taking of hostages, rewards to towns that refuse to help us, the destruction of those that do—all these things are increasing, General. And the worst is that it’s the creole Mexicans who hate you most vehemently; they don’t want you on the political horizon when they take power after independence.”
“What do you advise me to do?” This time Quintana looked at them with a nervous tremor in his left eyelid.
“Come to terms with them, General, save something of all this and, above all, save yourself.”
“Listen to them, Baltasar. That’s how you lose revolutions and even your balls.”
“Come to terms, General.”
“Now, when the final hour is at hand, when my present enemy, Spain, is about to lose, and when my next enemy will be the creole officers? But if for ten years I didn’t come to terms with the king of Spain, who at least is a descendant of Queen Isabella the Catholic, why should I come to terms with a ridiculous little creole like Don Agustín de Iturbide? Who do you take me for, gentlemen? Haven’t you learned anything in ten years?”
“Well then, what will you do?”
The lawyers asked that question more to themselves than to Quintana.
“The same thing we’ve done since the beginning. When we had no arms we made up for it with numbers and violence. We began the campaign looking for weapons. And that’s how we’ll finish it. If they lay siege, we’ll eat tree bark, soap, vermin, just as we did when we joined Morelos in Cuautla. If they capture us and sentence us, we’ll commend our souls to God.”
He shouldn’t be such a fatalist, he should think about them, he should steal a march on Iturbide, and he himself, Anselmo Quintana, because of the sway he held over the people, should proclaim himself Most Serene Highness and with them, his advisers, form a Junta of Notables for the kingdom.
“The only junta I ever hope to see is two rivers joining together, and the only highness I want to experience is the top of a mountain. Mexico will be a republic, not a kingdom. And if there’s anyone who doesn’t like the taste of that, let him make up his kit and leave. There are lots of others to choose from. With me you know where you’re going. And without me we don’t go anywhere. Join up with the Spaniards. They’ll shoot you. Amnesty’s over. Join up with Iturbide. He’ll humiliate you. And forgive my arrogance. I know it’s a grave sin.”
Quintana seized the hand of one of the lawyers, the one who had called Baltasar “boy,” and kissed it. Then, without letting go, he knelt before the lawyer with his eyes lowered, asking for pardon for his bouts of pride; he respected them; he was an ignorant priest who respected learned men. He respected them, above all else, because what they did would remain, while what he did would be carried away by the wind and turned to birdshit. “There is no glory greater than a book,” he said, his eyes still lowered, “no infamy greater than a military victory. Forgive me, understand that without the revolution my life would have been obscure, with no incidents in it greater than a romance now and then with an anonymous woman. You don’t need me.”
He stood up and looked each one of them in the eye. “Forgive me, really. But as long as this campaign lasts, the only fat man around here is me.”
He guffawed, turned his back on them, and left them stunned by his rapid-fire Veracruz-style discourse—unlawyerish, inspired at times, but ridiculous, the lawyers said among themselves, turning their backs on him and heading for their improvised offices among their mountains of paper. But it wasn’t the first time he’d done that to them, and they were still here. Why? Because ten years are an entire lifetime in these parts, where, except by a miracle, no one lives beyond the age of forty, and because the priest was right: at this point they belonged to him, like his children, his women, or, if you like, his parents. No one would believe them if they tried to change sides. But Pascal’s bet would not work, because if the royalists didn’t win, the creoles would. No one would believe them.
“Well, well,” said a lawyer—who wouldn’t take off his black top hat and his funereal frock coat even if fighting broke out—as he wrinkled his nose so his eyeglasses wouldn’t slide down any farther. “In this New Spain, no act is as certain of success as betrayal. Cortés betrayed Moctezuma, the Tlaxcaltecs betrayed the Aztecs, Ordaz and Alvarado betrayed Cortés. You’ll see that the traitors will win and Quintana will lose.”
These men, to their own misfortune and despite everything, thought more about posterity than about immediate gain. Which is why, despite everything, they were still with Quintana, and the priest, despite his jests, did respect them. If they wanted an honorable place in history, this was it, alongside the priest. And if the path to glory depended on writing a splendid series of laws that abolished slavery, that restored lands to communities, and that guaranteed individual rights, they would side with him until the moment they were brought before the firing squad.
Quintana knew it, and even though he annoyed them every day with his insults, he would monthly, along with his religious Communion, perform a kind of civil communion:
“Never in the history of Mexico has there been, nor will there ever be in the future, a band of men more patriotic and honorable than you. I am proud to have known you. Who knows what horrors await us. You, the insurgents, will have saved the nation’s honor for all time.”
They didn’t fight. They wrote laws. And they were fully capable of dying for what they felt and wrote. They were right, Baltasar wrote to Dorrego and to me, Varela. Wasn’t law reality itself? Thus, the circle of the written closed over its authors, capturing them in the noble fiction of their own inventive powers: the written is the real and we are its authors.
Can there be greater glory or certainty more solid for a lawyer from Spanish America?
“And who, from Argentina to Mexico, Varela”—Dorrego smiled at me as he read this letter—“doesn’t have locked within his breast a lawyer struggling to break out and make a speech?”
Quintana, more of a fox than his shepherds, told Baltasar when they’d finally lighted their cigars under the shelter of the entrance to one of the tobacco warehouses: “Perhaps they will abandon me. Perhaps they won’t. But they all know that they owe their personality to me. Even if they’d all be delighted to send me back to my rural parish.”
“The contradictions in the human character will never cease to astonish me,” Dorrego said, sighing, when I read him these lines: he was obstinately engaged in winding a carriage-shaped clock covered with an oval glass dome.
[4]
Dining alone with Baltasar in the kitchen of the tobacco factory, Quintana told more about his past. Thick smoke rose from the braziers fanned by the women as one of them, the solicitous, sniffling woman Baltasar had seen when he reached the encampment, placed Gulf Coast tamales wrapped in plantain leaves on their tin plates. These were followed by cups of Campeche-style seviche, a mixture of oysters, shrimp, and sliced scallops in lemon juice, along with yellow moles Oaxaca-style, redolent of saffron and chilies.
Quintana said he shouldn’t be judged a rebel simply because of the business of his losing his privileges, although he admitted that had been the original reason for his taking up arms. Rebelling for such a reason seemed too much like taking revenge, while insurrection seemed too much like rancor. And nothing good could come of rancor. Baltasar should also consider that the Bourbon reforms asserted that they were merely bringing reality into line with law. Fine. In that case, not even the Pope had any right to possess more than he needed for his personal comfort. The clergy could not be allowed to own land, treasure, and palaces. Canon law prohibited tha
t.
The independence revolution came along and he, Quintana, began to think it over and to look for a better reason than rancor to become a guerrilla. It hadn’t been easy, even when he was ten years younger, to leave the tranquillity of a curacy and start risking his life.
“Should I have stayed there not doing anything? I could have. It was possible. Why did I join the revolution? If I again deny that it was because the Crown took the living away from us poor priests and that my living was my only wealth, I’ll bore you. Besides, you’ll stop believing me. If I tell you that I took one step too many and told myself that if this was all a matter of respecting the law then we’d have to go all the way, you won’t believe me unless I explain something more important. Which is that in order to abandon my peace and quiet or not to stay in my parish like a fool while everyone else chose sides, I had to believe that what I was doing mattered. Mattered not only for me or for the independence of the nation but for my faith, my religion, my soul. And this is where the difficulties begin, because I am going to try to convince you that my political rebellion is inseparable from my spiritual rebellion. I know, because I know who you are, Baltasar, because I see your face and know what boys like you know, how much they’ve read and all the rest, that for you there can be no freedom with religion, independence with a church, or reason with faith.”
He sighed and noisily tossed into his mouth a piece of tamale that was so red with chilies that it looked like a wound.
“But to talk about all that, we need time and opportunity. Now we’re short of both.”
He grasped Baltasar’s impatient wrist. “I know you’ve come for other reasons and not to hear me talk.”
“You’re mistaken. I have the deepest respect for you.”
“Be patient. One thing leads to the other. You know, in my town there was a blind beggar who was always accompanied by his dog. One day, the dog ran away and the blind man regained his sight.”
For a long time, Baltasar stared at the priest, who went on eating noisily and with pleasure, savoring his yellow mole right down to the last grain of rice. Finally Baltasar decided to ask him, “Why do you have such confidence in me, Father?”
Quintana wiped his lips and gave the young Argentine a look of candid, friendly complicity. “We’ve been fighting for the same cause for the same span of time. Doesn’t that seem sufficient reason to you?”
“That’s only a fact. It doesn’t satisfy me.”
“Think then that I see in you something more and better than what you see in yourself. I sense that in your heart you feel slightly dissatisfied with everything you’ve done.”
“That’s true. I have my guilt and my passion, but I don’t have greatness. I find myself laughable.”
“Don’t worry about greatness. Worry about your soul.”
“I warn you, I don’t believe in the Church or in God or in the absolute power of absolution that you think you have.”
“So much the better. Rest today, and tomorrow we’ll meet at midday in the chapel here at the tobacco warehouses. Remember that tomorrow is Thursday and that every Thursday I become very strong, very spiritual. Be prepared to do battle with me. Then you will have your reward, and everything will be resolved. I think your ten years of struggle will not have been in vain.”
Baltasar did not allow the conversation to end there. He had the feeling—he wrote to us later—that the priest was right and that these would be the final hours of his long campaign for love and justice.
“What do you see in me, Father, that makes you treat me with such respect … or simple interest? Forgive my boldness in asking.”
Quintana might have stared at him, looking him right in the eye. He chose instead to scoop up the rest of the mole with a tortilla.
“You have taken charge of other lives.”
“But I…”
“We’ve all committed crimes. Shall I tell you something? Would you like to know mine?”
“Father, in the name of justice I exchanged a poor child for a rich child in his cradle. The poor child died because of me. I stole the rich child from his mother and condemned him to who knows what fate. And, in spite of that, I dared to love the mother, to pursue her ridiculously across half the Americas. Ten years, Father, with no success, no reward, all to become, as you say, a fool … Do you call that justice? Does that deserve respect? Does my having abandoned my sister without a second thought, indifferent to her fate, in the name of my passion? I didn’t give my father a last hope or affection. Am I worthy of compassion because I survived at Chacabuco while my comrades died? Wasn’t I lacking in mercy when I shouted a cruel truth at the Marquis de Cabra on his deathbed? Father Quintana … I killed a man in battle.”
“That’s normal.”
“But I didn’t kill him as a soldier. I killed him as a man, a brother. I killed him because he was an Indian. I killed him because he was weaker than I. I killed him as an individual, abusing him, even though I don’t know his name and can’t remember his face.”
With a strength that came from total conviction, Quintana told him to be quiet. “Don’t force me to confess my own sins to you.”
“What, that you’re a skirt-chaser, that you like cockfights, that you have illegitimate children all over the country, that you like fancy cassocks? Are those serious sins, Father?”
“Tomorrow I’ll make my confession before you,” he said with a sudden huge sigh of fatigue. “I’ll do it tomorrow. I swear. I’ll make my confession before you, even though you don’t believe in the power of absolution. I’ll confess before my younger brother, who in Maracaibo took charge of a fallen woman and the wounded enemy. I’ll do it tomorrow. Tomorrow, Thursday, I shall speak to my brother in mercy.”
[5]
That night Baltasar slept in a hammock. He was lulled by the hammock, but even more by a weariness that came not from a single day but from ten years’ accumulation. It was the sleep that comes when something is about to end, an imminent sleep that told him: This is where you and I part company; now you will have to change, now you must take account of debits and credits, just as these paymasters and secretaries do who accompany Father Quintana.
Might Quintana be the true notary of Baltasar Bustos’s life?
Tomorrow was Thursday. They would meet; the priest had told him to come to the chapel at noon. Did they have anything else to say to each other? Baltasar thought that he had made his confession to the priest that afternoon, and the priest’s sins were the talk of Veracruz. What more could they say to each other? To what ceremony had this proud man surrounded by an aura of obscure self-denial invited him?
He had told Baltasar that in the young man he saw someone who took charge of others. The women in Harlequin House, the Duchess; the slender, disfigured officer … That was a slim list of credits next to the column of debits Baltasar had enumerated to Quintana.
But now, drifting deeper into sleep and rocked by the hammock (And who rocked it? There was no breeze, the Orizaba sky was in mourning but did not weep, and he descended, immobile, into sleep), Baltasar only reproached himself for a greater insincerity, which was to have told the rebel priest that everything he’d done, the good and the bad, had an erotic, sexual, amorous (as the priest liked to call it) purpose, which was to reach Ofelia Salamanca, finally to touch her after ten years of romantic passion paraded over the entire continent, the source both of sighs and of jokes, sung about in corridas, cuecas, and zambas.
To reach her, keeping his passion obsessive and unique, he’d had to sacrifice the love of the beautiful Chilean Gabriela Cóo, since to be unfaithful to Ofelia Salamanca, even if she didn’t know it, would be to betray the adorable Gabriela as well.
To see her face to face. To say to her: I love you. To say to her: I forgive you. To which of the two women would he say that? Didn’t one feed the love of the other, and didn’t both loves drink from a common spring—absence? Did he desire them so much only because he did not possess them?
He opened his eyes. The hamm
ock stopped rocking. He shut them again, overwhelmed by the magnitude of his presumption. What was he going to pardon Ofelia Salamanca for? What did he know of her except, in effect, gossip, idle talk, limericks that often created a new truth only for the sake of rhyme? How did he dare? Hadn’t Gabriela told him in Santiago de Chile that acting is insincere, fleeting, that it leaves no more trace of itself than words?
Then he plummeted again from the peak of his aroused consciousness to a pleasant unconsciousness, drugged by the premonition of peace and rest after ten years of exaltation. And in the depths of his sleep he was always on his way back to El Dorado. Holding Simón Rodríguez’s hand, he returned to that most high abyss, that deep promontory, the heart of the Quechua mountain, the navel of sleep, and there he accused himself, with rage, with despair, with the terrible feeling that he’d lost his chance, because he hadn’t stopped for an instant to watch the passage of dreams in the luminous eyes of the inhabitants of the city where everything moved in light, was born from light, and returned to light.
He scorned dreams. He rejected the possibility of understanding anything through a dream which was not his own, which was not bound to the dream of reason, faith in material progress, the certitude that human perfectibility was infallible, and the celebration that in the end happiness and history, the subject and the object, would become one, once and for all.
The other story, the warning but also the possibility of escape, was perhaps in the eyes of the inhabitants of El Dorado, where light was necessary because everything was dark and where, for that reason, they could see with their eyes shut and reveal their dreams in the screens of their eyelids, warning him, Baltasar Bustos, that for each reason there is an unreason without which reason would cease to be reasonable: a dream that simultaneously denies and affirms reason. That there was an exception to every law, which makes the law partial and tolerable. But his most vivid sensation as he abandoned El Dorado was not that things complement each other, but rather the other extreme, a negation: