The Autumn of the Patriarch (28 page)

them what they asked of me and bought everything they wanted to sell me not because he was soft-hearted as
his mother Bendición Alvarado said but because a person needed an iron liver to refuse a favor to someone who was singing his praises, and now on the contrary there was no one to ask him for anything, no one to say to him at least good morning general sir, did you have a good night, he didn’t
even have the consolation of those nocturnal explosions that woke him up with a hail of broken glass and blew the doors off their hinges and sowed panic among the troops but which at least let him feel he was alive and not in this silence that buzzes inside my head and wakes me up with its noise, all I am now is a fright painted on the wall of this horror show where it was impossible for him
to give an order that hadn’t been carried out long before, he found his most intimate desires satisfied in the official newspaper which he still read in the hammock at siesta time from front to back including the advertisements, there was no impulse of his feelings or design of his will which did not appear in print in large letters with the photograph of the bridge he had not ordered built because
he’d forgotten, the opening of the school to teach sweeping, the milk cow and the breadfruit tree with a photograph of him with other inaugural ribbons from the times of glory, and yet he couldn’t find peace, he dragged his great feet of a senile elephant looking for something that hadn’t been lost to him in his house of solitude, he found that someone before him had covered the cages with mourning
cloths, someone had contemplated the sea from the windows and had counted the cows before him, everything was complete and in order, he went back to the bedroom with the candle when he recognized his own amplified voice in the quarters of the presidential guard and he looked in through the half-open window and saw a group of officers dozing in the smoke-filled room opposite the sad glow of the
television screen and there he was on the screen thinner and trimmer, but it was me, mother, sitting in the office where he was to die with the coat of arms of the nation behind him and three pairs of gold eyeglasses on the desk, and he was reciting from memory an analysis of the nation’s finances with the words of a sage that he never would have dared repeat, damn it, it was
a more upsetting
sight than that of his dead body among the flowers because now he was seeing himself alive and listening to himself speak with his own voice, I myself, mother, I who never had been able to bear the embarrassment of appearing on a balcony and had never overcome the shyness about speaking in public, and there he was, so genuine and mortal that he stood perplexed by the window thinking mother of mine
Bendición Alvarado how is this mystery possible, but José Ignacio Saenz de la Barra remained impassive facing one of the few explosions of rage that he permitted himself in the uncountable years of his regime, it’s nothing, general, he said with his softest emphasis, we had to use this illicit recourse to keep the ship of progress within order from running aground, it was a divine inspiration, general,
thanks to it we have succeeded in conjuring away the uncertainty of the people over a flesh and blood power who on the last Wednesday of every month rendered a soothing report on the acts of his government on the state radio and television, I assume all responsibility, general, I put this vase with six microphones in the shape of sunflowers here and they recorded the thoughts you had aloud,
I was the one who asked the questions he answered during Friday audiences without suspecting that his innocent answers were the fragments of the monthly speech addressed to the nation, because he’d never used an image that wasn’t his or a word that he wouldn’t have said as you yourself can see with this record that Saenz de la Barra put on the desk beside these films and this letter in my own hand
which I sign in your presence, general, so that you may decide my fate as you see fit, and he looked at him disconcertedly because suddenly he came to the realization that Saenz de la Barra was without the dog for the first time, defenseless, pale, and then he sighed, it’s all right, Nacho, do your duty, he said, with an air of infinite fatigue, sitting back in the swivel chair with his gaze fixed
on the accusing eyes of the portraits of the founding fathers, he was older than ever, gloomier and sadder, but with the same expression of unforeseeable designs that Saenz de la Barra was to recognize two weeks
later when he entered the office again without an appointment almost dragging the dog by the leash and with the urgent news of an armed insurrection that only his intervention could stop,
general, and finally he discovered the imperceptible crack he had been seeking for so many years in that obsidian wall of fascination, mother of mine Bendición Alvarado of my revenge, he said to himself, this poor bastard is shitting in his pants with fear, but he didn’t make a single gesture that would let his intentions show but wrapped Saenz de la Barra in a maternal aura, don’t worry, Nacho,
he sighed, we’ve got plenty of time to think without anyone’s disturbing us where the hell was the truth in that bog of contradictory truths that seem less true than if they were lies, while Saenz de la Barra checked his pocket watch to see that it was going on 7
P.M
., general, the commanders of the three branches were finishing dinner at their respective homes with their wives and children, so
not even they could suspect his plans, they will leave dressed in civilian clothes without an escort through the service entrance where a taxi called by phone awaits them to trick the vigilance of our men, they won’t see any, of course, but there they are, general, the drivers, but he said aha, he smiled, don’t worry so much, Nacho, explain to me instead how we have lived up till now with our skins
intact since according to your figures of severed heads we’ve had more enemies than we had soldiers, but Saenz de la Barra was only sustained by the tiny throb of his pocket watch, there were less than three hours left, general, the commander of the land forces was on his way at that moment to the Conde barracks, the commander of the naval forces to the harbor fort, the commander of the air forces
to the San Jerónimo base, it was still possible to arrest them because a state security van loaded with vegetables was following them at a short distance, but he didn’t change his expression, he felt that the growing anxiety of Saenz de la Barra was freeing him from the punishment of a servitude that had been more implacable than his appetite for power, calm down, Nacho, he said, explain to me
rather why you haven’t bought a mansion as big as an ocean liner, why you work like a mule
since money doesn’t matter to you, why you live like a monk when the tightest women get all loosened up with the thought of getting into your bedroom, you’re more of a priest than any priest, Nacho, but Saenz de la Barra was suffocating in a cold sweat that he was unable to hide with his matchless dignity
in that crematory oven of an office, it was eleven o’clock, it’s too late now, he said, a coded message began to circulate at that time over the telegraph wires to the various garrisons of the country, the rebel commanders were pinning decorations onto their parade uniforms for the official portrait of the new government junta while their aides were transmitting the final orders of a war without
enemies whose only battles were reduced to the control of the centers of communication and public services, but he didn’t even blink at the eager throbbing of Lord Köchel who had stood up with a thread of drivel that looked like an endless tear, don’t be afraid, Nacho, explain to me rather why you are so afraid of death, and José Ignacio Saenz de la Barra with one tug pulled off the celluloid collar
softened by sweat and his baritone face was soulless, it’s quite natural, he answered, a fear of death is the ember of happiness, that’s why you don’t feel it, general, and he stood up counting out of pure habit the bells of the cathedral, it’s twelve o’clock, he said, you haven’t got anyone left in the world, general, I was the last one, but he didn’t move in the big chair until he perceived
the underground thunder of the tanks on the main square, and then he smiled, don’t be mistaken, Nacho, I still have the people, he said, the poor people as always who before dawn took to the streets instigated by the unpredictable old man who over the state radio and television addressed all patriots of the nation without distinction of any kind and with the most vivid historical emotion to announce
that the commanders of the three branches of the service inspired by the unchanging ideals of the regime, under my personal direction and interpreting as always the will of the sovereign people had put an end on this glorious midnight to the apparatus of terror of a bloodthirsty civilian who had been punished by the blind justice of the mob, for there was José Ignacio
Saenz de la Barra, beaten
to a pulp, hanging by his feet from a lamppost on the main square with his own genitals stuck in his mouth, just as you had foreseen general sir when you gave us orders to cordon off the streets to the embassies to stop him from seeking asylum, the people had stoned him general sir, but first we had to riddle with bullets the butcher dog who sucked the guts out of four civilians and left seven of
our soldiers badly wounded when the people attacked his living quarters and threw out of the window two hundred brocade vests with the price tags still on them, they threw out some three thousand pairs of Italian boots that had never been worn, three thousand general sir, that’s what the government money was being spent on, and I don’t know how many boxes of buttonhole gardenias and all the Bruckner
records with their respective conductor’s scores annotated in his own hand, and they also freed the prisoners in the dungeons and set fire to the torture chambers in the old Dutch insane asylum with shouts of long live the general, long live the stud who finally discovered the truth, because they all say that you didn’t know anything general sir, that they kept you in limbo abusing your good heart,
and even at this moment they’re hunting the state security torturers down like rats since we left them without military protection in accordance with your orders so the people can relieve themselves of so much pent-up rage and so much terror, and he approved, agreed, moved by the bells of jubilation and the music of freedom and the shouts of gratitude from the crowds massed on the main square
with large signs saying God keep the magnificent one who redeemed us from the shadows of terror and in that fleeting replica of the times of glory he had the cadet officers who had helped him take off his own chains of a galley slave of power gather in the courtyard and pointing to us according to the impulses of his inspiration he used us to fill in the last high command of his decrepit regime
in replacement of the authors of the death of Leticia Nazareno and the child who were captured in their bedclothes when they tried to find asylum in foreign embassies, but he barely recognized them, he’d forgotten
their names, he searched in his heart for the burden of hatred he’d tried to keep alive until his death and all he found were the ashes of a wounded pride which was no longer worth maintaining,
get them away from here, he ordered, they put them on the first ship to weigh anchor for a place where no one would ever remember them again, poor bastards, he presided over the first cabinet meeting of the new government with the clear impression that those exemplaries chosen from a new generation of a new century were once again the usual civilian ministers with dusty frock coats and
weak guts, except that these were more avid for honors than power, more jittery and servile and more useless than all the previous ones in the face of a foreign debt more costly than anything that could be sold in his ravished realm of gloom, because there was nothing to do general sir, the last train on the upland barrens had fallen down an orchid-covered precipice, leopards were sleeping on the
velvet seats, the carcasses of the paddle-wheelers were sunk in the swamps of the rice paddies, the news was rotting in the mailbags, the pairs of manatees tricked by the illusion that they were engendering mermaids among the shadowy irises of the round mirrors in the presidential stateroom, and only he was unaware of it, naturally, he had believed in progress within order because at that time the
only contact he had with real life was the reading of the government newspaper which they printed only for you general sir, a whole edition of one single copy with the news you liked to read, with the photographs you expected to find, with advertisements that made him dream of a world different from the one they had given him for his siesta, until I myself was able to ascertain with these incredulous
eyes of mine that behind the solar glass windows of the ministries still intact were the colors of the Negro shacks on the harbor hills, they had built the palm-lined avenues to the sea so that I wouldn’t notice that behind the Roman villas with identical porticoes the miserable slums devastated by one of our many hurricanes were still there, they had sown aromatic herbs on both sides of the
railroad tracks so that from the presidential car the world seemed
magnified by the venal waters his mother of my insides Bendición Alvarado used for painting orioles, and they were not deceiving him in order to please him as had been done in the later years of his times of glory by General Rodrigo de Aguilar, or to keep useless annoyances from him as Leticia Nazareno used to do more out of pity
than love, but to keep him the captive of his own power in the senile backwater of the hammock under the ceiba tree in the courtyard where at the end of his years even the schoolgirl chorus of the petite painted bird perched on a green lemon limb wasn’t to be real, what a mess, and yet the trick didn’t affect him but rather he tried to reconcile himself with reality through the recovery by decree
of the quinine monopoly and that of other potions essential to the wellbeing of the state, but truth came back to surprise him with the news that the world was changing and life was going on behind the back of his power, because there wasn’t any more quinine, general, there’s no more cocoa, there’s no more indigo, general, there wasn’t anything, except his personal fortune which was uncountable
and sterile and threatened by idleness, and still he wasn’t upset by such dire news but sent a message of challenge to old Ambassador Roxbury in hopes they might find some formula of relief over the domino table, but the ambassador answered him in his own style of never in a million years, your excellency, this country isn’t worth a plug nickel, except for the sea, of course, which was diaphanous