Stop your whining and start looking for the perfidious scribbler. Listen, Patiño, don’t you think the padres, the vicar general himself, might be the authors? You never know with the padres, Sire. They weave a very fine, very close net. The handwriting and even the signature of the lampoon, so like yours, Sire. Though it would be bad business for them to get mixed up in these fish-and-fowl affairs now that they’re better off than ever. A new Government of people coming-and-going isn’t in their interest. That would be the end of their bigua salutis. Well put, Patiño! I crown you king of wits. I’ll will you my chamber pot. During the day, now that we’ve fallen on bad times again, you can wear it on your brow. Symbol of your power. During the night you’ll return the alabaster crown to its usual place. In that way it will serve you twice over for different and distant uses. What’s certain, Sire, is that reality has shifted place. When I read the lampoon I felt as though I had one foot touching the ground and the other dangling in the air. That’s exactly what’s going to happen to you. All I know, Excellency, is that I shall move heaven and earth in search of the guilty parties. I promise you I’ll find the hair in the bottomless hole. Don’t just chase after female-hairs as is your usual habit. Don’t do like the fellow who opened a cupboard door one night instead of a window. And then come tell me it’s dark and smells of cheese because you’ve stuck your nose someplace you shouldn’t have, instead of nosing about where you should have. You must bring the culprit to the foot of the orange tree in less than three days. Give him his full ration of rifle bullets. Whoever he may be. Even The Supreme.
You’re to make even the mutes of Tevegó speak. According to the lampooners, they go about on all fours. Give birth to mute offspring that look like dog-headed apes. With no tongue. No ears. A combination of humbug, superstitions, lies, of the sort that the Robertsons, the Renggers, those sulkers, those rogues, those ingrates wrote. The business about the people of Tevegó is true, Sire. Even though the lampoons lie, that’s true. Something not to be seen or believed even with my own eyes! I refused to believe it too, Sire, till at your order I went to investigate the case with the district commissioner of Kuruguaty, Don Francisco Alarcón, and a detachment of troops of the line in that region.
After three days and nights, taking the shortest route, we arrived at the penal colony of Tevegó at daybreak. Too deep a silence. Not a site of life. There it is! the guide said. It was only after a long while, straining our eyes, that we could make out the colony sprawled out all over the countryside. In darkness still, because the sun’s rays didn’t reach that place that had moved its place to another place, to tell it in your words, Sire. There’s no other way of explaining the very strange thing that’s come about there, when there’s no way of finding out what’s going on. A shame not to have had your lens for far-seeing at that moment. Your star-gazing apparatus. Though on second thought, perhaps it wouldn’t have worked for seeing that. I took out the little mirror that I always carry about in my pocket to signal to my travel companions. It flashed for a moment and then went out when its reflection bounced off all that motionless air that had accumulated inside the camp. You can’t get into the penal colony of Tevegó, Excellency. Why not? Criminals, thieves, vagrants, scroungers, prostitutes, conspirators who escaped the firing squad in the year ’21 managed to get in without much trouble. The first bands from Corrientes that I ordered taken prisoner when they invaded Apipé, Yasyretá, Santa Ana, Candelaria got in. Even mulattoes and blacks got in. You’re more than right, Excellency. All I mean is that you can’t get in now. Not because it’s impossible, but because it takes so long. In your case, seeing as how you walk backwards all the time you’re on duty, that doesn’t surprise me. Entering there isn’t entering, Sire. There are no barbed-wire fences, no palisades, no barriers, no trenches. Nothing but ashen earth and stones. First, bare stones, scarcely half a hand high, marking the line where the green of the esparto grass and the reeds ends. On the other side of this mark, nothing but ashen tanimbú. Even the light. A burned light that sheds its ash in the air and hovers there dead-still, light-heavy, moving neither up nor down. If there are people there in the distance, there’s no way of telling if they’re people or stone. Except that if they’re people they’re not moving. Blacks, quadroons, mulattoes, men, women, kids, all ashen-colored, tanimbú-colored ashes, how to explain to you, Sire, not the color of your aerolith, which is black and doesn’t reflect light, but rather the color of that gritty sandstone of the ravines when there’s a bad drought or those big boulders that roll down the sides of mountains. Those can’t be the people that were sent here, Don Francisco Alarcón said. If they are, where are the guards? Look, Don Tikú, the guide said, if they’re stones they don’t need to be guarded. The soldiers laughed uneasily. Then we saw that. Or maybe we only thought we were seeing. Because I tell you, Sire, it’s something you’d see and not believe.
(In the private notebook*3)
My amanuensis, who has his thousand-and-one-nights side, has put his mercury on to heat. He is trying by every manner of means to make me lose time, to distract my attention from what is of prime concern to me. He’s come out now with a weird story about those people serving out a sentence who have migrated to some unknown place while remaining in the same place under another form. Transformed into unknown people who have caused their absence to take on a form there. Animals. Boulders worn smooth. Figures of stone. Fabled monsters, half-man, half-beast, that go by the name of endriagos. Patiño imitates everything. He has seen me practice the transmutation of mercury. The heaviest material in the world, it becomes lighter than smoke. Then on encountering the cold realm it immediately coagulates and turns back into that incorruptible liquor that penetrates and corrupts everything. Eternal sweat, Pliny called it, since there is scarcely anything that can absorb it. Dangerous conversation with a creature so daring and so deadly. It boils, breaks up into a thousand little droplets, and no matter how small, not a one is ever lost, for in the end they all join together to form one again. As mercury is the element that separates gold from copper it is also the one that tinctures metals, the mediator of this union. Does it not resemble imagination, mistress of error and falsehood? All the more deceiving in that it is not always so. For it would be an infallible proof of truth were it an infallible one of falsehood.
Perhaps my trust-unworthy amanuensis is only half lying. He can’t yet manage to melt the quicksilver of mirrors. He lacks the forgetfulness necessary to create a legend. His excess of memory makes him ignorant of the meaning of facts. Memory of an executioner, a traitor, a bearer of false witness. Separated from their people and place by accident or by vocation, they discover that they must live in a world made up of elements foreign to them with which they believe they are conjoined. They believe themselves to be providential figures of an imaginary populace. Aided by chance, they are sometimes enthroned in and by the stupidity of this populace, thereby making it more imaginary still. They are secret migrants and they are not where they appear to be. It costs Patiño an effort not to allow himself merely to coast downhill, to follow instead the uphill path of the telling and write at the same time; to hear the dispari-son of what he writes; to trace the sign of what his ear is taking in. To attune words to the sound of thought, which is never a solitary murmur, however intimate it may be; less still if it is the speech, the thought involved in dictating. If the ordinary man never talks to himself, the Supreme Dictator continually talks to others. He projects his voice before himself so as to be heard, listened to, obeyed. Although he may appear to be close-mouthed, silent, mute, his silence is commanding. Which means that in The Supreme at least there are two persons. The I can divide to form an active third who is an adequate judge of our responsibility with regard to the act that we must decide upon. In my day, I was a good ventriloquist. At present, I am unable even to imitate my own voice. The trust-unworthy scribe, even less capable. He hasn’t yet learned his craft. I am going to have to teach him to write.
* * *
; —
What were you talking about, Patiño? Of the people of the Tevegó colony, Sire. It’s difficult to see that the shapes aren’t stones but people. Those nomads, vagrants, conspirators, prostitutes, migrants, deserters of all kinds and sorts that in another time Your Excellency sent to that place, aren’t human beings anymore either, if one is to disbelieve what one sees. Just shapes, nothing more. They don’t move, Sire; at least they don’t move in the same way people do. And if perchance I’m mistaken, they must move as slowly as tortoises. In a manner of speaking, Excellency: from here where I’m sitting to the table where Your Grace has the blessed patience to listen to me, for example, one of those tortoise-people shapes would take a man’s entire lifetime to cover the distance, provided he hustled right along and finally made it. Because when you come right down to it, those shapes don’t live like other people. They must live some other sort of life. They crawl on all fours without ever moving from the spot. It’s plain to see they can’t raise their hands, their backbones, their heads. They’ve taken root in the ground.
As I was telling you, Excellency, all those people scattered all over the countryside. Not a sound. Not even of the wind blowing. No sound and no wind. Not a single voice, man’s or woman’s, no baby’s crying, no dog’s barking, not the least sign. If you ask me, those people don’t have the least understanding of what’s happening to them, and to tell the truth there isn’t anything that’s happening. Except just being there, without living or dying, waiting for nothing, hoping for nothing, slowly sinking deeper and deeper into the bare earth. Opposite us, brush that must once have been a thicket used as a common latrine, full of cobs of maize. You know, Sire, what our country folk use them for when they relieve their bowels. Except that the stains on those cobs shone with the bright glint of cheap trade trinkets.
These people aren’t dead; these people eat, Tikú Alarcón, the district commissioner, said. That was before, the guide said. We saw no maize fields anywhere about. Refuse, yes, piles of it. Old dry rags, lots of crosses amid underbrush just as dry. Not one bird, not one maize-eating parrot, not one turtledove. A coot swooped down into the hard air overarching the camp. It bounced off as if it had hit a metal plate, reeled about like a drunkard, and finally fell at the feet of our group. Its head was split open and gobs of foam came bubbling out through the slit.
Let’s have a closer look, Tikú Alarcón said. The soldiers climbed down off their horses to gather up the gleaming crapcobs and stow them away in their haversacks in case they turned out to be solid gold ones. Anything can happen, one of them said. They take a walk all around the place. The same thing to be seen from no matter where. The shapes gazing at us from afar; us observing their vague outlines blurred by the smoky haze. If I may so put it, them from some time back; us from that moment, not knowing whether or not they saw us. A person knows when his gaze meets another’s, isn’t that so, Excellency? Well, with these people not a clue, not the slightest sign to tell us or not tell us.
Toward midday our eyes were dry from so much looking. Parboiled by the light of the sun reflecting off the shadow piled up behind. Half dead from thirst because for several leagues around all the rivers and brooks had long since gone dry. We also noted something else. The colony was getting darker, as though night were overtaking it, and it was only that the shadow was becoming denser.
A little patience, the guide said. By patiently waiting for the right moment, someone even saw a patronal festival of the blacks on the day of the Three Kings. My grandfather Raymundo Alcaraz also saw it, but he had been watching for something like three months. He used to tell how he’d even seen an attack by Mbayá Indians, when they were coming around on raiding parties with the Portuguese. A person has to have patience in order to see. You have to look and wait for months, years, if not more. You have to wait to see.
I’m going to have a look inside, the commissioner said, climbing down off his horse. The way I see it, those sons-of-the-devil don’t exist; they’re only pretending to. He spat and entered. After he crossed the line between the greenness and the dryness we lost sight of him. He went in and came out. According to me, he went in and came out. According to the others too. In a manner of speaking, a very quick round trip. The gob of spit that he’d hawked up hadn’t even dried yet and he was back. But he came back an old man, all bent over, so that he too was practically crawling on all fours. Looking for the speech he lost, the guide said.
Tikú Alarcón, the district commissioner Francisco Alarcón, went in a young man and came out an old one, in his eighties at least; bald, bare naked, mute, more stunted than a dwarf, bent double, his skin scaly and wrinkled and hanging off him, and lizard’s nails. What happened to you, Don Tikú? He didn’t answer; he was unable to make the slightest sign. We wrapped him in a poncho and hoisted him across the back of his horse. As the soldiers tied him to the saddle, I took a look at the camp. It seemed to me that the shapes were dancing the dance of the blacks of Laurelty or of Campamento-Loma on all fours. My eyes were filled with tears and might have fooled me. We made our way back as though we’d been to a funeral. The dead man was coming back alive with us.
When we reached Kuruguaty, the commissioner crawled into his house on all fours. The whole town came to see what had happened. The parish priest of San Estanislao and the exorciser of the Xexueños of Xexuí was summoned. Mass, procession, public prayers, vows. They proved useless; nothing could undo the harm done. I tried the Guaykurú remedy: I gave Don Tikú’s hair a good hard yank. It came off in my hands, heavier than a chunk of stone. A powerful smell of something buried.
Artigas was summoned, since people say he knows how to cure with simples. The general of the Oriental army came from his farm bringing a cartload of herbs of all sorts. Satules of melecines. A flacon of angel-water, a very powerful fragrance, distilled from all sorts of different flowers such as orange blossom, jasmine, and myrtle. He saw and treated the patient. He did for him everything that people know the Oriental refugee knows how to do. He couldn’t get a single word out of him—to tell the truth of the matter, Excellency—not one sound. He couldn’t force a single drop of melecine through his lips that had now turned to stone too. They laid the commissioner on his cot. Before we knew it, he was down on the floor on all fours again, like those people. They rubbed him with six taper-lengths of black wax. Don José Gervasio Artigas measured the space from the fingers of one hand to the other, which is the same distance as there is from feet to head. But he found that the measurement fitted two different men. The ex protector of the Banda Oriental shook his head. This isn’t my friend Don Francisco Alarcón, he said. Well then, who is it?, the priest asked. I don’t know, the general said, and went back to his farm.
The work of evil spirits!, the curé of the Xexueños of Xexuí exclaimed in annoyance. There were more public prayers, processions. The Brotherhood took the image of San Isidro the Laborer through the streets. Tikú Alarcón, still on all fours, grew older and stonier. Someone tried to bleed him. The blade of the knife broke when it touched the old man’s skin, which little by little had become hotter than an oven stone.
A cry ran through the village: We must go burn Tevegó down! The Evil One lives there! It’s hell! Well then, Laureano Benítez, the Elder of the Brotherhood, said gently, if this holy man could escape from hell and return, it seems to me we ought to make a niche for him. But by now the commissioner wasn’t even as tall as Saint Blaise.
The following day, Tikú Alarcón died in the same position, older than a lizard. They had to bury him in a child’s coffin. All right, enough of that, you insolent windbag! You sound like the lampoons. I beg your pardon, Excellency. I was a witness of this story; I brought back the preliminary inquiry made by the judge of the Township of Kuruguaty and the dispatch of Fernando Acosta, the commandant of Villa Real de la Concepción. When Your Excellency returned from the Hospital Barracks, he tore up the papers without reading them. The same thing happened, Sire, with the message ab
out the mysterious round stone found by the thousand-some political prisoners that Your Eminence sent under heavy guard to work in the quarries of the Yariguaá. Did both things happen at the same time? No, Excellency. The stone from Yariguaá Hill, or Chair-of-the-Wind, was found four years ago, after the great harvest of ’36. The story of Tevegó not a month ago, shortly before Your Eminence had his unfortunate accident. I ordered that I be sent a faithful copy of all the signs that are carved in the stone. This was done, Excellency, but you destroyed the copy. Because it was badly made, you knave! Or do you think I don’t know what those rock inscriptions look like? I sent instructions as to how the copy to scale of the petroglyph should be made. Measurement of its dimensions. Astronomical orientation. I asked for samples of the material of the stone. Do you know what it would have meant to find the vestiges of a civilization thousands of years old there? Send a dispatch immediately to the commandant of the Yariguaá region ordering him to send me the stone. It will not be any harder than bringing the aerolith from the interior of the Chaco, a distance of eighty leagues. I believe, Excellency, that the stone of the Wind-Chair was used in the construction of the new garrison in the region. Have them remove it! And if it was broken to bits for the foundations, Sire? Have them all collected! I’m going to examine them under the microscope myself. Determine their age, because stones do have one. Decipher the hieroglyph. I am the only one able to do this in this country of know-it-all cretins.
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