The Autumn of the Patriarch (19 page)

article and beginning with the promulgation of the present decree a state of war was declared between this nation and the powers of the Holy See with all the consequences which international law and all extant international treaties have established for such cases, and in the third article there was ordered the immediate, public and solemn expulsion of his grace the archbishop primate followed by
that of bishops, apostolic prefects, priests, nuns and all persons native and foreign who had anything to do with the business of God in any condition and under any title within the borders of the country and up to fifty nautical leagues in territorial waters, and ordered in the fourth and last article was the expropriation of all goods of the church, its houses of worship, its convents, its schools,
its arable lands with tools and animals thereon, its sugar plantations, factories and workshops and in the same manner everything which really belonged to it even though registered in the name of a third party, which goods would go to form part of the posthumous patrimony of Saint Bendición Alvarado of the Birds for the splendor of her cult and the grandeur of her memory from the date of the present
decree promulgated orally and signed with the seal of the ring of this unappealable maximum authority of the
supreme power, let it be obeyed and carried out. In the midst of the rockets of celebration, the bell-ringing of glory and the music of pleasure with which the event of the civil canonization was celebrated, he busied himself in person to see that the decree was carried out without any
dubious maneuvers so as to be sure they would not make him the victim of new tricks, he picked up the reins of reality again with his firm velvet gloves as in the days of great glory when the people cut off his path on the stairs to beg him to restore horse racing in the streets and he so ordered, agreed, that sack races be revived and he so ordered, agreed, and he would appear in the most miserable
of villages to explain how they should put hens in their nests and how calves should be gelded, because he had just been satisfied with his personal test of the minute details of the taking of inventory of church goods but he took charge of the formal ceremonies of expropriation so that there would be no chink between his will and the accomplished acts, he checked the facts on paper against the
tricky facts of real life, he oversaw the expulsion of the larger communities to whom had been attributed the intent of smuggling out in bags with double bottoms and trick brassieres the secret treasures of the last viceroy which had been buried in potter’s field in spite of the bloodthirsty way in which the federalist leaders had searched for them during the long years of war, and not only did he
order that no member of the church was to take with him any more baggage than a change of clothing but he decided beyond appeal that they be embarked naked as the day their mothers bore them, the rough village priests to whom it made no difference whether to wear clothes or go naked as long as they had a change of fortune, the prefects from mission lands who had been devastated by malaria, clean-shaven
and dignified bishops, and behind them the women, the timid sisters of charity, the fierce missionary nuns accustomed to taming nature and making vegetables grow in the desert, and the slender Biscayan sisters who played the harpsichord, and the Salesian sisters with thin hands and bodies intact, because even in the naked hide with which they had been
thrown into the world it was possible to distinguish
their high-class origins, the difference in their condition, and the inequality of their office as they filed past bundles of cacao and sacks of salted catfish in the huge customhouse shed, they went by in a whirling tumult of frightened sheep with their arms crossed over their breasts trying to hide the shame of the ones with that of the others before the old man who looked like stone
under the fan blades, who looked at them without breathing, without taking his eyes off the fixed space through which the torrent of naked women would inexorably have to pass, he contemplated them impassively, without blinking, until there was not a single one left in all the national territory, for these were the last of them general sir, and yet he only remembered one whom he had separated with
a simple touch of his glance from the troop of frightened novices, he distinguished her among the others in spite of the fact that she was no different, she was small and sturdy, robust, with opulent buttocks, large full teats, clumsy hands, protuberant sex, hair cut with pruning shears, spaced teeth firm as ax heads, snub nose, flat feet, a novice as mediocre as all of them, but he sensed that she
was the only woman in the drove of naked women, the only one who on passing in front of him had left the obscure trail of a wild animal who carried off my vital air and he barely had time to change his imperceptible look to see her a second time forevermore when the officer from the identification services found her name in alphabetical order in the roster and shouted Nazareno Leticia, and she answered
with a man’s voice, present. That was how he had her for the rest of his life, present, until the last nostalgia trickled away through the fissures in his memory and all that remained was the image of her on the strip of paper where he had written Leticia Nazareno of my soul look what has become of me without you, he hid it in the cranny where he kept the honey, he would reread it when he
knew he was not being observed, he would roll it up again after reliving for a fleeting instant the unforgettable afternoon of radiant rain on which they surprised him with the news general sir that they had repatriated
you in fulfillment of his orders which he had not given, for all he had done was to murmur Leticia Nazareno while he contemplated the last ash barge as it sank below the horizon,
Leticia Nazareno, he repeated aloud so as not to forget the name, and that had been enough for the presidential security services to kidnap her from the convent in Jamaica, gagged and in a strait jacket inside a pine box with metal hoops and black letters saying fragile and in English do not drop this side up and an export license in accordance with the necessary consular permission for the two
thousand eight hundred champagne glasses of genuine crystal for the presidential wine cellar, for the return voyage they loaded her aboard among the ship’s stores of a collier and they laid her naked and drugged on the columned bed in the bedroom for distinguished guests as he had remembered her at three in the afternoon under the flour-haze light of the mosquito netting, she had the restful look
of sleep of so many other inert women who had served him without even awakening from the lethargy of the Luminal and tormented by a terrible feeling of abandonment and defeat, except that he did not touch Leticia Nazareno, he contemplated her in sleep with a kind of infantile amazement surprised at how much her nakedness had changed since he had seen her in the harbor shed, they’d curled her hair,
they’d made her up right down to the most intimate nooks and crannies, and they’d put crimson polish on her fingernails and toenails and lipstick and rouge on her mouth and cheeks and mascara and she gave off a sweet fragrance that did away with your trace of a wild animal, Jesus, they’d ruined her trying to recreate her, they’d made her so different that he couldn’t even see her underneath the
clumsy cosmetics while he contemplated her naked in the ecstasy of the Luminal, he saw her come to the surface, he saw her wake up, he saw her see him, mother, it was her, Leticia Nazareno of my bewilderment petrified with terror before the stony old man who was contemplating her mercilessly through the tenuous mists of the netting, frightened with the unforeseeable aims of her silence because he
couldn’t imagine anything in spite of his uncountable years
and his measureless power he was more frightened than she, more alone, more not knowing what to do, as confused and as defenseless as he had been the first time he was a man with a camp follower whom he had surprised in the middle of the night swimming naked in a river and whose strength and size he had imagined from her mare snorts after
each dive, he heard her dark and solitary laugh in the darkness, he sensed the joy of her body in the darkness but he was paralyzed with fear because he was still a virgin even though he was already an artillery lieutenant in the third civil war, until the fear of losing the chance was more decisive than the fear of the attack, and then he jumped into the water with all his clothes on, boots,
knapsack, cartridge belt, machete, carbine, buried under so many military encumbrances and so many secret terrors that the woman thought at first that he was someone who had ridden his horse into the water, but she realized immediately that he was only a poor frightened man and she gathered him into the lagoon of her pity, took him by the hand in the darkness of his confusion because he couldn’t
manage to find his way in the darkness of the lagoon, she indicated to him with a mother’s voice in the darkness to get a good grip on my shoulders so the current won’t knock you over, not to squat down in the water but to kneel firmly on the bottom breathing slowly so you’ll have enough wind, and he did what she told him with a boyish obedience thinking mother of mine Bendición Alvarado why in hell
do women do things as if they were inventing them, how can they be such men about it, he thought, while she was taking off the useless paraphernalia of other less fearful and desolate wars than that solitary war with the water up to his neck, he had died of fright under the protection of that body that smelled of pine soap when she finished unbuckling his two belts and unbuttoned his fly and I
was twisted with terror because I couldn’t find what I was looking for except for the enormous testicle swimming like a toad in the darkness, she let go of it with fright, go back to your mama and have her turn you in for another one, she told him, you’re no good for anything, because he had been defeated by the same ancestral
fear tht held him motionless before the nakedness of Leticia Nazareno
in whose river of unforeseeable waters one was not to enter not even with everything he had on until she could lend him the aid of her mercy, he himself covered her with a sheet, played the song of poor Delgadina ruined by the love of her father on the gramophone until the cylinder wore out, he had felt flowers put into the vases so that they would not wilt like natural ones from the evil touch
of her hands, he did everything he could think of to make her happy but he kept the rigors of captivity intact and the punishment of nudity so that she would understand that she would be well taken care of and well loved but that she had no possibility of escaping that fate, and she understood so well that during the first truce of fear she ordered him without saying please to open the window general
so that we could have a little air, and he opened it, to close it again because the moon is hitting my face, he closed it, he carried out her orders as if they were from love all the more obedient and sure of himself the closer he got to the afternoon of radiant rain in which he slipped inside the mosquito netting and lay down with his clothes on beside her without waking her up, he participated
alone for nights on end in the secret outflow of her body, he breathed in her smell of a mountain bitch that grew warmer with the passage of months, the moss of her womb sprouted, she woke up startled shouting get out of here general and he arose with his heavy parsimony but lay down beside her again while she was sleeping and in that way he enjoyed her without touching her during the first year
of captivity until she grew accustomed to awakening beside him without understanding, the direction of the currents of that indecipherable old man who had abandoned the flattery of power and the enchantments of the world to devote himself to her contemplation and service, she all the more disconcerted as she came to know the afternoon of radiant rains when he had gone into the water with everything
on, the uniform without insignia, the sword belts, the ring of keys, the leggings, the riding boots with the gold spur, a nightmare attack that awakened her in terror trying to get out from
under that caparisoned charger, but he was so resolute that she decided to gain time with the last recourse of take your harness off general the buckles hurt my heart, and he took it off, he should take off
the spur general it injures my ankles with its gold rowel, that he take off the clump of keys from his belt they keep bumping into my hipbones, and he ended up doing what she ordered although three months were needed to get him to take off his sword belt which hinders my breathing and another month for the leggings which break my soul with their buckles, it was a slow and difficult struggle in which
she held him off without exasperating him and he ended up giving in so as to please her, so neither of them ever knew how it was that the final cataclysm occurred a short time after the second anniversary of the kidnapping when his aimless warm and tender hands by chance came upon the hidden gems of the sleeping novice who awoke in shock with a pale sweat and a death quiver and did not try to
get away with either good or evil arts from the uncouth animal she had on top of her except that she shocked him by begging him to take off his boots they were dirtying my Brabant sheets and he took them off as best he could, take off your leggings, and pants, and the truss, take it all off my life I can’t feel you, until he himself didn’t know when he was left as only his mother had known him in
the light that filtered through the melancholy harps of the geraniums, freed from fear, free, changed into a battling bison who with the first charge demolished everything he found in his way and fell face down into an abyss of silence where all that could be heard was the schooner-beam creaking of the clenched back teeth of Nazareno Leticia, present, she had clutched all my hair in her fingers so
as not to die alone in the bottomless dizzy fall in which I was already dying sought at the same time and with the same drive by all the urgencies of the body, and none the less he forgot about her, he was alone in the shadows looking for himself in the brackish water of his tears general, in the gentle flow of the thread of his ox saliva general, in the surprise of his surprise of mother mine Bendición
Alvarado how is it possible to have lived so many years without knowing