Reasons of State (6 page)

Council of war. Three silhouettes thrown on the walls and pictures by the lamp on the writing desk: as in a cinema, the cholo Mendoza’s restlessly revolving shadow, the slender form of Doctor Peralta, busy with papers and ink; the thickset, broad-shouldered, slow and choleric figure of the Head of State, gesticulating as he sat in his armchair dictating
letters and plans. To Peralta: cable to his son Ariel, Ambassador in Washington, ordering the immediate purchase of armaments, gun emplacements, logistic supplies, and observation balloons like those recently adopted by the French Army (they would have a tremendous effect over there, where they had never been seen before); proceeding, since all wars cost money and the National Treasury was in a bad way, to hand over the banana zone on the Pacific to the United Fruit Company—a transaction that had been too long delayed because of the doubts, arguments, and objections of professors and intellectuals who talked a lot of foolishness and denounced the greed—inevitable, good God, inevitable, fated, whether we like it or not, for geographical reasons and historical necessities—of Yankee imperialism. To the cholo Mendoza: cable to Hoffmann, ordering him to defend the communications between Puerto Araguato and the capital at all costs. Shoot whoever must be shot. To Peralta, again: cable a Message-to-the-Nation declaring our insuperable determination to defend Liberty following the example of the Founders of Our Country, that (“well, you know the sort of thing …”).

And the cholo Mendoza had already telephoned Cook’s agency: a fairly fast ship, the
Yorktown
, would leave Saint-Nazaire at midnight. They would have to take the five o’clock train. Another cable to Ariel, announcing their arrival time so that he should find means of getting them
there
as early as possible: cargo boat, tanker, whatever was available.

“Tell Sylvestre to pack my bags.” He swallowed a large drink, already mounted on the horse of great decisions.

“Tell Ofelia not to worry. We’ve plenty of money in Switzerland. Let her go to Bayreuth as if nothing had happened and have a good time with her Niebelungen. For me it’s a
question of a few weeks. I’ve thrashed people with more guts than that shit of a general.”

And when Sylvestre began carrying down the luggage the Prime Minister thought that probably that affair last night with the little nun of Saint Vincent de Paul had brought him bad luck after all. That starched headdress. And the scapulary. And that rubber skull, certainly bought in the shop called Farces et Attrapes in the Boulevard des Capucines—another unfortunate coincidence—that couldn’t have helped. But, once again, the Divine Shepherdess of Nueva Córdoba would accept his sincere repentance. He would add a few emeralds to her crown; a lot of silver to her cloak. And there would be ceremonies. Candles. A great many candles. The Flag of Her Divinity between wax tapers and the ambos. The cadets on their knees. The ceremony of the accolades. The Cathedral would be lit up and freshly decorated …

Outside, Rude’s Marseillaise kept up her imaginary noise—sounding soundlessly—from a deep stone mouth which was only one hole more in the monument where the names of 652 generals of the Empire, consecrated by Glory, were inscribed.

“Only six hundred and fifty-two generals?” murmured the Dictator, reviewing his army in his imagination. “Baedeker must have made a mistake.”

TWO HOURS AFTER THE TRAVELLERS HAD ARRIVED in their suite at the Waldorf-Astoria, they were proceeding to sign the final papers of their negotiations with the United Fruit Company, rapidly carried through by Ariel while his father and Doctor Peralta were on the high seas. The documents were incontrovertible, provided that the signatory was by act and right—and he would continue to be so for a long time according to forecasters specializing in the politics of this hemisphere—the Constitutional President of the Republic. Besides, the Company ran no risk, whatever happened, because at the start of his rebellion General Ataúlfo Galván had the intelligence and forethought to tell the agencies of the press that now as always, today and tomorrow,
hic et nunc
, both during the progress of the armed struggle and after the “certain victory”—what a nerve, brother!—of the movement to seize the leadership, all the wealth, property, concessions, and monopolies of North American businesses would be safeguarded. It was known by cablegram that the revolutionaries had consolidated their positions on the Atlantic coast—up till now they held four provinces out of nine, that was the dramatic fact—but a stubborn resistance was frustrating their present attempts to advance towards Puerto Araguato and cut the communications between the capital and the ocean. One squadron of warships was awaiting the Head
of State off a little Caribbean island, at which a Dutch cargo ship would drop anchor next day on her way to Recife. As for arms, bought from an agent of Sir Basil Zaharoff, they were to be despatched from Florida on board a boat registered in Greece, by a freebooter accustomed to hoisting a Panama or Salvador flag once outside the United States’ three-mile limit when it returned to its usual business—transporting men, arms, slave labour, anything that was wanted in South America, whose creeks, inlets, and bays he knew as well as did the most travelled of local coastal steamers.

And since there was nothing urgently needing to be done that night, the Head of State, who was a great opera fan, wanted to hear
Pelléas et Mélisande
, which was on at the Metropolitan Opera House, with the famous Mary Garden in the leading rôle. His friend the Academician had talked a lot about this score, which was said to be very good and, although much discussed at first, had fanatical admirers in Paris, whom that eccentric homosexual Jean Lorrain described as “Pelléasts.”

They seated themselves in the front row, the conductor raised his baton, and the huge orchestra spread at his feet began to play, soundlessly. It made no sound, but emitted a murmur, a quivering, a whispering of a note here and a note there which didn’t amount to music …

“And is there no Overture?” asked the Head of State.

“It’s coming, it’s coming,” said Peralta, hoping that the sound would grow, rise, become definite and swell into a fortissimo. “
Faust
and
Aida
begin like this, almost in silence (I think they call it
a la sordina
), so as to prepare one all the more for what is to come next.” But now the curtain was going up and it was still the same. The musicians were all there, numbers of them, intent, with their eyes on their music—yet they had achieved nothing. They were testing their reeds,
shaking the saliva from their horns, giving a half-turn to their instruments, making a string vibrate, sweeping their harps with their fingertips without succeeding in producing anything like a definite melody. A little stress here, an imperceptible plaint there, themes sketched, impulses still-born, and on the stage two characters gassing away but unable to make up their minds to sing. And now—a change of scene—here is a mediaeval lady reading a letter aloud in an accent from Kansas City. An old man is listening. Shaking his head like someone who didn’t want to hear, who was bored; and then came the interval.

The sight of the galleries and corridors now aroused some amusing and pungent reflections in the President’s mind, about the artificiality of the aristocracy of New York, and how pompously they showed off, compared with that of Paris. However well-cut a tailcoat might be, on the back of a Yankee it made him look like a conjurer. When he bowed in his white tie and shirtfront one expected a rabbit or a pigeon to emerge from his top hat. The matrons of the Four Hundred wore too much ermine, too many tiaras, too many of Tiffany’s wares. Behind them one glimpsed luxurious houses, with gothic fireplaces bought in Flanders, columns from Cluniac monasteries transhipped in the holds of transatlantic liners, pictures by Rubens or Rosa Bonheur and some authentic Tanagras, whose dancing movements were out of rhythm with the beat of “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” pouring in through the renaissance windows. Although some surnames from the former Dutch or British ascendancy went back to the seventeenth century, when they were heard in proximity to Central Park they absorbed an indefinable quality of being imported products—at the same time false and exotic, like those vague titles of Marqueses de la Real Proclamacion or del Merito or del Premio Real that we have in Latin America.
That aristocracy was as fictitious as the atmosphere of the opera they were putting on this evening, with its floating Mediaevalism, its ogival arches all over the place, its vaguely dynastic furniture, its battlements of no special date emerging from a perpetual mist to suit the taste of the designer.

The curtain went up again and other scenes and another interval followed; the curtain went up yet again and more scenes followed, all submerged in evanescent pearly haze, with caves, shadows, serenades, an invisible chorus, doves that didn’t fly, three dead beggars, distant flocks of sheep, things seen by others but not visible to us … And when at last the final interval was reached the Head of State broke out: “No one is really singing here; there is no baritone, tenor, or bass … there are no arias … no ballet … not a single ensemble … and what a little squit that fat-arsed American girl is, dressed as a boy, looking through the window to see what’s going on in the room where, needless to say, the handsome young man and the long-haired blonde are hard at it. And the cuckold in despair downstairs. And that old man with a face like Charles Darwin, who says that if he was God he would be sorry for human heartache. The fact is that although our friend the Academician, and that other chap, D’Annunzio, tell me that this is a masterpiece, I’d rather have
Manon, Traviata
, and
Carmen
. And talking of whores, take me to a brothel.”

And, in no time, the three of them found themselves in an apartment on Forty-second Street where some blondes, with faces made up and hair combed to look like cinema stars, served them with mixed drinks—it was the fashion at this time to mix drinks—after which they amused themselves by comparing what was provided here with the Veracruzan
minyules
of the Hotel Diligencias, pink punches of the Antilles and Cuban
mojos
with their iced mint leaves,
rocios de gallo
(made of gin and angostura) and
zamuritas
of cress or
lemon, pineapple or agave juice with salt, from our Torrid Zone. The women were amazed that in spite of his obvious age the Head of State could swallow so many drinks—always with a regal and deliberate gesture—without getting tangled up in stories that never ended, or losing his aristocratic air. It was unusual for his son Ariel to see him drink like this—“It’s a special occasion,” said Peralta—because when the Dictator was moving in palace circles he was—with his famous drinking of healths in mineral water, and his praise of Peregrino, whose bottling establishment he had bought—a model of sobriety. At fiestas and celebrations he never exceeded one or two glasses of champagne, and his tone became emphatic and his brow furrowed when he broached the serious theme of the constant proliferation of bars and taverns, one of the great social problems of the nation, a defect we owed to the vicious nature of the Indians and the Spanish colony’s ancient monopoly of aguardiente. But people didn’t know that inside a case invariably carried by Doctor Peralta—which looked as if it contained papers of transcendental importance—there were in fact ten flasks, very flat and curved to slip easily into a pocket, such as are made in England, which, being covered in pigskin—and bought at the smart Parisian shop Hermès—never clinked when they were thrown together. So it was that in the presidential study, in the dressing room attached to the Council Chamber, in his bedroom—and of course the Mayorala Elmira was in on the secret—in the train, in the pauses of any journey by road, it was enough for the Head of State to put a thumb to his left ear for one of the flasks instantly to appear out of the secretary’s bureaucratic briefcase. In other respects, the always serious, frowning drinker—a “before-breakfast man” for whom the good Elmira prepared lots of tamarind juice quite early to refresh “his livers” (she always used the plural)—took the greatest possible care to
hide a long-standing addiction to Santa Inés rum, which—it must be admitted—in no way affected the rhythm of his movements, nor the balance of his judgement when faced with some unexpected predicament, nor the almost natural flow of his perspiration: he always talked to people—his head slightly on one side so that his breath would be diverted—across a table, or keeping a definite distance, thus increasing the respect due to his patriarchal figure. To these precautions he added constant use of toothpaste, peppermint lozenges, cachous, and a suspicion of liquorice, flavouring the halo of eau de Cologne or lavender water that always clung to his under-garments and stiff shirts, all most suitable to the dignity of the Head of the State.

Seeing his father drinking that night, Ariel was amazed to find he had a power of absorption greater than his own.

“It’s because he has a virgin organism,” said Doctor Peralta. “He’s not like us, who carry the ‘mother liquor’ about inside us and can never get rid of it.”

Next day, after purchasing from Brentano’s an exquisite edition of Sarmiento’s
Facundo
—which gave rise to some bitter thoughts about the dramatic fate of Latin American peoples, always engaged in a Manichaean struggle between civilisation and barbarism, between progress and dictatorship—the Head of State went on board the Dutch cargo ship which was to make a short call at Havana. And the sea was becoming less grey, and the broad yellow Caribbean moons were shining on a recurring baroque pattern of sargasso and flying fish.

“The air already smells different,” said the Head of State, absorbing a breeze laden with the unmistakable scent of mangroves.