As much or more than false memory, bad habits silence habitual phenomena. They form a second nature, just as nature is the first habit. Forget that bezoar stone, Patiño. Forget that tripe of yours about an ear able to understand all languages in a single one. Utter madness!
* * *
—
I have forbidden the woman regarded as my half sister to engage in those practices of witchcraft with which she diddles ignorant, credulous fools like herself. She already does enough damage by giving the little boys who attend her school a dose of the catechism tick. I allow her to do so. Harmless mania. The Patrial Reformed Catechism and patriotic zeal will extirpate these youngsters’ catechistic cyst once they’ve grown up.
The cursed bezoar didn’t keep the cow from being infested with the tick, I told her when she came to complain. It didn’t cure you, señora, of your calenture of the brain. It proved incapable of drawing the poison of dementia out of Bishop Panés. And still less capable of relieving my gout when you brought your stone here to rub it on my swollen leg for three days running. If the stone is of no use except to repeat for amusement’s sake those words that it receives from a world beyond, in an unnatural language that only scatterpates and lunatics think they hear, I’m damned if I see what on earth the stone is good for!
You too have your stone, she answered, pointing to the aerolith. I don’t use it for augury the way you do yours, Señora Petrona Regalada. It will end up fogging your brain, which is how your other brothers and sisters ended up. You know that the specter of madness has always haunted your kin. A more or less common family trait in those of the same blood. Bury your bezoar stone. Bury it in your courtyard. Place it at the foot of a wayside league-cross. Throw it in the river. Flush all this nonsense of yours down the drain. Don’t displease me again as you did when I learned that after ten years’ separation you were continuing to see your ex husband Larios Galván in secret. What is it you want from that Don Juan? He tried to deceive you. Before that he deceived the First Governing Junta. Then after that the Supreme Government. What is it you want, at your ripe old age, from that corrupt rakehell? Orphan offspring? Bastard bezoar pebbles? If not that, what? Bury your bezoar stone, the way I buried your ex husband in prison. Dip your candles in peace and enough of this foolishness!
Her eyes went blank. Characteristic cunning of madness as it outwardly feigns right reason. She began to look inward, seeking to hide herself from my presence in that perverse taciturnity of the Franças. The wretches!
Look here, Señora Petrona Regalada, for some time now the cigars you’ve been rolling for me have been thicker than usual. I am obliged to unroll them. To remove some of their innards. Impossible otherwise to smoke them. Make them as big around as this finger. Wrap them in a single leaf of tobacco softened in night dew and then well dried. The kind least irritating to the lungs. Answer me. Don’t just stand there not saying a word. Am I speaking to a post? Have you lost your tongue along with your mind? Look at me. Speak. She has turned her head. She looks at me with the expression of certain birds that have only one expression. A face strikingly similar to mine. She gives the impression that she is learning to see, seeing for the first time a complete stranger toward whom she does not yet know whether she feels respect, scorn, or indifference. I see myself in her. A mirror-person, old França Velho sends me back my image, dressed as a woman. Beyond all ties of blood. What have I to do with blood relations? Confabulations of chance.
There are many people. There are even more faces, since everyone has several. There are people who wear the same face for years. Simple, thrifty, miserly people. What do they do with the other ones? They save them. Their sons will wear them. It sometimes happens that their dogs wear them. Why not? A face is a face. Sultan’s looked very much like mine toward the last, especially just before passing on. The dog’s countenance looked as much like mine as that of this woman who is standing before me, looking at me, parodying my image. She will not have any more children now. I will not have any more dogs now. At this moment our faces coincide. Mine at least is the last. In a frock coat and a tricorne, old França Velho would be my exact replica. It would remain to be seen how this chance resemblance could be used…(the rest of the sentence burned, illegible). A story just for the fun of it!
Memory is of no use here. Seeing is forgetting. That woman is standing there motionless, reflecting me. The non-face, all of a piece, fallen forward. Does she desire something? She desires nothing. She does not desire the least thing in this world, save non-desire. But non-desire too is fulfilled if non-desirers are persistent.
Did you hear how you are to roll my cigars from now on? The woman wrenches herself violently away from herself. Her face is still between her hands. She doesn’t know what to do with it. As big around as this finger, eh? Rolled out of just one leaf of tobacco. Softened in night dew. Dry. The kind that draw best all the way down, till the red-hot tip gets very close to your mouth. Your breath, all nice and warm, escapes with the smoke. Do you understand me, Señora Petrona Regalada? Her puckered lips move. I know what she is thinking, flayed alive by her memories.
She is disremembering.
* * *
—
She is never without her bezoar stone. She keeps it hidden underneath the niche of the Lord of Patience. More powerful than the image of the Bloodstained God. Talisman. Stair. Platform. Last step. The most resistant. It sustains her in the place of certainty. Place where there is no further need of any sort of help. Obsession has its foundation there. Faith is supported entirely by itself. What is faith if not belief in things that have no verisimilitude? Seeing through a glass darkly.
The ruminant-stone has its own vigil light. Someday it will have its own niche. Perhaps, in time, its sanctuary.
In the face of the bezoar stone of the person taken to be my sister, the meteorite still has—will it ever cease to have?—the flavor of the improbable. And what if the world itself were only a sort of bezoar? Hairy excremental material, petrified in the intestine of the cosmos.
It is my opinion…(edge of the folio burned)…Where matters of opinion are concerned, all opinions are worse…
* * *
—
But this is not what I wanted to say. Clouds are piling up above my head. Quantities of earth. Bird with a long beak, I am unable to get any pellets out of the cup. A shadow, I cannot extract shadows from holes. I continue to wander aimlessly about, as on that stormy night that plunged me headlong into the place where the loss occurred. I thought I knew something about the desert. About dogs, a bit more. About men, everything. As for the rest, thirst, cold, betrayals, sicknesses, they all came my way. But I always knew what to do when the time came to act. As I remember, this is the worst time. If a chimera, swaying back and forth in a vacuum, can eat ulterior motives, I’ve been well chewed and swallowed, as compadre Rabelais put it. The chimera has occupied the place of my person. I tend to be “the very image of the chimerical.” A famous joke, that will bear my name. Look up the word “chimera” in the dictionary, Patiño. A false idea, a vain or foolish fancy, a fantastic creature of the imagination it says, Excellency. That’s what I’m in the way of being, in reality and on paper. It also says, Sire: A fabulous monster with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a dragon. They say that that’s what I was. The dictionary also adds, Excellency: Name of a fish and of a butterfly. Quarrel. Dispute. I was all that, and none of that. The dictionary is an ossuary of empty words. If you don’t believe me, ask de la Peña.
Forms disappear, words remain, to signify the impossible. No story can be told. No story worth the telling. But true language hasn’t yet been born. Animals communicate with each other, without words. Better than we, who are so proud of having invented words out of the raw material of the chimerical. Without foundation. No relation to life. Do you know, Patiño, what life is, what death is? No; you don’t know. Nobody knows. No one has ever known whether life is what live
s or what dies. No one will ever know. What’s more, it would be useless to know, once we grant that the impossible is useless. There would have to be words in our language that had a voice. Free space. A memory of their own. Words that subsisted alone, that brought place with them. A place. Their place. Their own material. A space where the word would happen the way an event does. As in the language of certain animals, of certain birds, or certain very old insects. But does what is not exist?
After that storm-rent night, in the deathly pale light of dawn, an animal in the form of a stag came to meet me. Horn in the middle of its forehead. Green coat. Voice part blast of a trumpet, part sigh. It said to me: It is time My Lord return to earth. I struck it a blow on the muzzle with my cane and went on my way. I stopped outside of “Nothing We Don’t Have,” the general store run by our spy Orrego, who was opening the doors of the place by the light of a candle. Even he didn’t recognize the muddy beggar entering his establishment as the cocks were beginning to crow. I ordered a glass of cane brandy. I’ll be damned, pal!, he exclaimed. Thirsty this early in the day after that downpour last night! I threw an old rusty clipped copper coin on the counter, and it bounced off onto the floor. As the storekeeper bent over I left, melting into the fog.
* * *
—
Excellency, a post rider has just come galloping in on a badly winded horse with this dispatch from the commandant of Villa Franca:
I beg you to allow me to describe to you in brief detail the way in which we have proceeded to observe the occasion of the funeral of our Supreme Lord. On the evening preceding that sad day the plaza and all the houses of this City were illuminated.
On the eighteenth the parish priest celebrated a solemn sung Mass for the health, success, and felicity of the individuals who make up the new, provisory, and sole de fatuo Government. When the Mass was over, the Decree was proclaimed and was received and obeyed with great sounds of rejoicing. I swore allegiance as head of this City. A short three-rifle volley was fired amid the tolling of the bells, and a solemn Te-Demus was sung.
That night the City was illuminated once again.
On the nineteenth the funeral rites were held. A cumulus three cuerpos high, adorned with mirrors, was erected. A table covered with the snow-white altar cloths that the parish priest lent for the notable occasion was placed before it. On a black silk cushion lay the crossed baton and sword, emblems of Sovereign Power. The cumulus was illuminated with eighty-four candles, one for each year of the Supreme Dictator’s life. Many persons—if not all—noted his apparition amid the endlessly multiplied reflections, the very image and likeness of his infinite paternal protection.
On the twentieth a solemn vigil was sung, and during the Mass the parish priest delivered the funeral oration, developing the following theme: The Most Excellent Supreme deceased Dictator fulfilled not only the obligations of a Faithful Citizen, but also those of a Faithful Father and Sovereign of the Republic. But the oration remained unfinished for the reason that neither the multitude nor the father were able to contain their grief. Silent at first, it soon turned into wild sobs of lamentation. The Preacher descended from the pulpit bathed in tears.
On every hand there were moans, sobs, heart-rending laments. Many persons tore their hair with cries of profound pain. Paraguayan souls at their maximum intensity. The same was true of the appreciable crowd of more than twenty thousand Indians who came from both shores of the river to hold their funeral ceremonies in front of the church and mingled with the multitude. The agitation that was felt is beyond all description.
Our limited faculties did not allow us to devote more solemnity to the memory of the deceased Dictator. On the one hand, we were overcome with desolation. On the other, we felt a flood of consolation; we congratulate ourselves whenever the presence of the Supreme Lord appears or represents itself at our gatherings.
My trembling pen wrote as far as the above on the twentieth, at about six o’clock in the evening. But since very early this morning rumors that The Supreme is still alive have begun to circulate; that is to say, that he has not died, and therefore a provisory de fatuo Government does not yet exist.
Can it possibly be that this terrible commotion has profoundly altered the very meaning of the certain and the uncertain?
We beg Your Excellency to relieve us of this horrible doubt that leaves us with bated breath.
Answer the commandant of Villa Franca that I haven’t died yet, if being dead means simply lying beneath a gravestone on which some stupid good-for-nothing will write an epitaph on the order of: Here lies the Supreme Dictator/in perpetual memory/vigilant defender of the Fatherland…et cetera, et cetera.
My absence will be the gravestone over this poor people that will be obliged to go on breathing beneath it without having died since it has yet to be born. When this happens, inasmuch as I am not eternal, I myself will have word sent to you, my dear Antonio Escobar.
What is the date of the dispatch? October 21, 1840, Excellency. I have news for you, Patiño. We have here a Paraguayan who gets ahead of events. He drops his message through the keyhole of a month that hasn’t yet arrived. He leaps over all the hopeless confusions of time. The proper thing to do is to find a time for everything. One that has no end. What river’s flow ever grows old? Is it possible that people like Antonio Escobar have exact and certain knowledge of something that hasn’t happened yet? Yes. It’s possible. There’s nothing that hasn’t already happened. They have their doubts but they’re sure of themselves. They divine with their simple minds that the law is symbolic. They do not take everything literally as do those who speak a confused language.
I do not say unto you: This generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled. I say unto you: After this generation another shall come. If it is not I, it will be He, who is ageless too.
Ah, with regard to Escobar’s dispatch, extend my thanks to him for the magnificent obsequies. Tell him not to let the second ones be so drenched in tears, or the hair-tearing quite so vigorous. Nor is there any need, my dear Escobar, to erect illuminated “cumuli” since my age is not measured in candles. You may spare this expense in my honor. Nor is there any need to decorate them with mirrors that give a false vision of things. Those mirrors must be the ones that were taken from the citizens of Corrientes years ago, during the siege of their city. Return them to their owners, who lost face at the time and haven’t known where to look for it since.
Another thing, Escobar. Inform me immediately, before my ashes grow cold, who signed the circular notifying you of my death and the establishment of what you call a provisory “de fatuo” government. The proper term is de facto, which means “in fact.” Although in fact what we have in this country is a bunch of fatuous fatheads. So that in your dispatch you’re right and wrong at the same time.
Tell me, Patiño…Yes, Excellency. Do you know anything about all this? I’m completely in the dark, Sire! Nose about a little. It wouldn’t be a bad idea for us—the two of us—to find out what’s going on. It’s awkward being alive and dead at the same time. Don’t give it a thought, Excellency. I haven’t, and that’s how things like this happen. Do you suspect anyone in particular? No one, Sire. No one has ever dared go this far. I don’t know who it could be, Excellency, who the guilty party might be. The truth of the matter, Most Excellent Sire, is that as far as I know I don’t know anything. It just so happens that this time I don’t have the least suspicion of anybody, any individual, group, or faction. If another conspiracy is afoot after twenty years of public peace, of respect for and obedience to the Supreme Government, I promise you that the guilty parties will not escape even though they hide underground. Stop picking your nasal fossae. I beg Your Excellency’s pardon! Enough of that! You don’t need to come to attention like that every other minute! Must I tell you so every day? Your diving in and out of the washbasin is going to turn the floor into a mudhole. We’ll both drown in this bog before our enemies have
the pleasure of incinerating us in the plaza. God save us, Excellency! It’s not God who’s going to free you of your troubles. When we’re working, as I’ve also ordered you countless times, don’t keep repeating Your Grace, Your Worship, Your Excellency, all that fancy fiddle-faddle that has no place in a modern State. Less still in this chronic state of incommunication that separates us even as it unites us without visible hierarchy. And even more so, if we are soon to be comrades in the cineratorium of the Plaza de Armas. For the time being, use Sire, if you feel it absolutely necessary to address me in some way. That won’t lessen the distance between us, even if you kick the bucket. As I dictate to you, you write. Whereas I read what I dictate to you so as later to reread what you write. In the end the two of us disappear in what is read/written. Use the appropriate term of address only in the presence of third parties. For, I grant you, we must observe the formalities, save the appearances, so long as we are visible figures. Everyday words of ordinary language.
* * *
—
Let’s go back to the pamphlet found this morning on the door of the cathedral. Where is it? Here, Sire. As you keep nibbling at your nasal conchae with your pen you keep dribbling all over the anonymous screed. You’ve almost effaced the beautiful handwriting. Pass it over to me. The gachupines*1 or the Porteñistas*2 who gave birth to this monstrosity haven’t mocked me but themselves. Let all those termites eat each other up! This just makes me laugh all the more at their stupid self-importance and the pretension of their anonymous squibs. This paper isn’t worth even one of their ears. He who uses a leaf for cover gets wet twice over. Even if they hid underneath an entire forest of pasquinades, they’d still wet themselves in their own piss. Wretched descendants of those usurers, tradesmen, hoarders, shopkeepers who used to scream from behind their counters: We shit on the Fatherland and on all patriots! We shit on the puny little republic of the Paraguayans! They shat out of fear and were buried in their own shit. The same shit those turds were born from. Blood-sucking anopheles, buzzing out their behinds and not their proboscises, like all mosquitoes. In that case, Sire, I’ll be more than glad to wade through even the soiled toilet paper, coil by coil…Hold your tongue, you knave! I forbid you to wallow in filth playing dirty word games. Don’t try to imitate the jakish japes of those culicids. I humbly beg Your Grace’s pardon for my rude though involuntary irreverence. I have never allowed myself, and never shall allow myself, to fail in any way whatsoever to pay our Supreme Sire the respect due him.
I the Supreme Page 2