I the Supreme

by Augusto Roa Bastos

  Another dispatch to the commandant of Villa Real. Order him to proceed to dismantle the penal colony of Tevegó, using the troops of the line under his command. If there is a single survivor, have him sent here in chains under heavy guard. What was that you muttered? Nothing, Excellency, nothing in particular. It’s just that I think that it’s going to be easier to haul in the stone with its thousands of years and its thousands of arrobas than it will be to get those people out of Tevegó.

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  Let’s get back to the matter at hand. Let’s begin the cycle all over again. Where is the pasquinade? In your hand, Excellency. No, you secreting ink-slinger. On the door of the cathedral. Pinned up with four thumbtacks. A patrol of grenadiers takes it down with the tip of a saber. They bring it to headquarters. They advise you. When you read it, it leaves you with eyes bulging like a roped steer, seeing the bonfire already lighted in the plaza, about to turn us all into firebrands. You bring me the paper with the eyes of a butchered calf. Here it is. It doesn’t say anything. It doesn’t matter what it says. What matters is what’s behind it. The sense of the non-sense.

  You are to start tracking down the handwriting of the pasquinade in all the files. The dossiers of agreements, disagreements, counteragreements. International communications. Treaties. Remissory notes. Demissory letters. All the bills of Portuguese-Brazilian traders, of Oriental merchants. The piles of paperwork concerning food excises, tithes, the salt tax. Fructuary assessments. State monopoly, commercial commissions, war duties. Import-export records. Customs permits for incoming-outgoing shipments. Complete correspondence of all functionaries, from the lowest rank to the highest. Messages in code from spies, informers, agents of the various intelligence branches. Invoices of arms smugglers. Everything. The least little scrap of paper with writing on it.

  Do you understand what I’m ordering you to do? Yes, Excellency: I must search for the model of the handwriting of the cathedral pasquinade, look hide and hair for it in all the documents in your archives. You’re finally learning how to speak without getting lost in the clouds. This is not to be a listless search, remember. You are to go systematically through the names of the enemies of the Fatherland, of the Government, the faithful friends of our enemies. I want you to catch the most intempestive of the many pesky idiots buzzing about the streets of Paraguay, as my jingoist uncle, Friar Bel-Asshole, claims in his proclamation. Cherchez the culicid. Make him sizzle in his definitive candle-flame. Bury him in his own shit. I want to be shut of him. Do you follow me? Well then, get to work! No more mooning about. The only thing, Excellency…What’s the matter now? It’s just that the job is going to take me a certain amount of time. There are some twenty thousand dossiers in the archives. As many more in the secretarial offices of the tribunals, district headquarters, regional headquarters, frontier outposts and all the rest. Not to mention the ones on hand that are still being examined. Some five hundred thousand pages altogether, Sire. Not counting the ones that have gotten lost through your carelessness, you master of disorder, negligence, neglect. The only reason you haven’t lost your hands is that you need them to eat. If I may say so, Excellency, if I may so put it with all due respect, my will never grows cold in your service, and if Your Grace so orders me, I’ll find the hair in the bottomless hole, and above all those miscreants of the written rumor. You keep saying that, but you haven’t put a stop to them. The dossiers get lost; there are more and more lampooners all the time. I allow myself to remind Your Eminence that of the dossiers the only one missing is the trial of the year ’20, presumably stolen by the criminal José María Pilar, your manservant, who thanks to Your Excellency’s inexorable justice has already met the fate he deserved. If it wasn’t for that crime that he ended up underneath the orange tree, since there was not sufficient evidence against him, it was for others no less grave. All the other dossiers are there. I might even venture to say to Your Grace, begging his pardon, that there are so many that there are even too many. You’re soaked in the feet, otherwise you couldn’t come up with such nonsense! Those documents, even the ones that in your misjudgment are completely insignificant, have their importance. They are sacred, since they record in detail the birth of the Nation, the formation of the Republic. Its many vicissitudes. Its victories. Its failures. Its patriotic sons. Its traitors. Its invincible will to survive. Only I know how many times it was necessary to add a bit of fox fur when the lion’s skin rampant on the shield of the Republic wasn’t enough to cover its ass. Go over those documents one by one. Examine them through a loupe with the eyes of a lupus, with the three eyes of ants. Even though they’re totally blind they know what kind of leaf they’re cutting. So as not to reduce your time on duty, recruit the horde of public scribes, scriveners, scribblers, and pen-wigglers who spend all their days scrounging themselves a living in the public squares and marketplaces. Conscript them. Shut them up in the archive. Set them to tracing the handwriting. The market women won’t have their letters written for them for a few days, and the scribes won’t have their mess of spicy pottage. And we too will have a few days’ respite from all that written trash. How much better it would have been for the country if those parasites of the pen had been good plowmen, wielders of the hoe, field hands on the farms, on the patrial estancias, rather than this plague of letricides worse than locusts!

  There are more than eight thousand scribes, Excellency, and there is only one pasquinade. They would have to take turns, one by one, so that it will take them some twenty-five years to go through the five hundred thousand pages…No, you knave, no! Tear the paper up into such small bits that it loses all meaning. Nobody must find out what it contains. Divide the puzzle up among those thousands of penpushers. Find a way to go about things so that they all spy on each other. The wasp-spider that has woven this web will fall into the trap all by itself. It will be tripped up by a single phrase, a single comma. The blackness of its conscience will cause it to lose its way in the delirium of similarity. Any one of them may be the miscreant; the most insignificant penman of all of them. Your order will be executed, Excellency. Although I might almost be so bold, Sire, as to say that it almost isn’t necessary. What do you mean it isn’t necessary, you lazy good-for-nothing? I have the handwriting of each of the documents right here at my eyetips, Excellency. And if Your Worship presses me, I would even go so far as to say the forms of the periods at the end of the sentences. Your Lordship knows better than I do that periods are never perfectly round, just as in handwriting that appears to be identical there is always some difference. A thicker stroke. A thinner one. The mustaches of the t’s longer or shorter, depending on how free the hand of the person who set them down. The little pigtail of the o, standing straight up or drooping. Not to mention the instep, the crooked legs of the letters. The columns. The fleurons. The finials. The curlicues. The campanulas capping the capitals. The morning-glory vines of the flourishes drawn in a single spiral with one stroke of the pen, which is what Your Excellency traces beneath his Supreme Name, climbing the wall of the writing sometimes…Enough of your scriptuary floriculture, you dimwit! I only wanted to remind Your Grace that I remember each and every one of the files in the archive. At least since Your Lordship deigned to name me his confidential clerk and actuary of the Supreme Government, in the line of succession of Don Jacinto Ruiz, Don Bernardino Villamayor, Don Sebastián Martínez Sanz, Don Joan Abdón Bejarano. Don Mateo Fleitas, the last one whom I replaced in the honor of the office, is now enjoying a well-deserved retirement in Ka’asapá. Don Mateo Fleitas lives shut up in his house, as in a dungeon, in utter darkness. Nobody sees him during the day. An owl, Sire. More hidden than the urukure’á in the depths of the forest. Only on nights when the moon doesn’t come out, when its cold-fire makes his skin break out in a sort of mange like white leprosy and his eyes fill with a gummy secretion like sleep does Don Mateo come out for a walk about the village. When the moon doesn’t come out, Don Mateo does. Enveloped in the cape with the red lini
ng that Your Excellency gave him as a gift. His palm-fiber hat crowned with lighted candles. The villagers no longer take fright when they see those lights because they know that beneath that lighted sombrero is Don Mateo, out for a stroll. You’ll find him down by the Pozo Bolaños perhaps, they told me when I inquired as to his whereabouts on the night I arrived in the village to look into that business of the cattle rustling.

  In the pitch black of that very dark night I saw him just as he climbed up on the edge of the miraculous fountain. I saw only the sombrero floating in the air, myriad tiny little lights all aglow, which at first I took to be a swarm of fireflies illuminating the patches of thistles with their greenish light. Don Mateo!, I shouted to him in a loud voice. The sombrero crowned with candles drew closer. I say, Don Polí, what are you doing hereabouts at such a late hour? I’ve come to investigate the cattle-stealing from the patrial estancia. Ah, rustlers!, said Don Mateo Fleitas, now a bit of human shadow at my side. And how are things with you?, I asked him, just to be saying something. Well, as you can see, colleague, the same as always. Nothing new. It seemed as though I ought to tease him a little. What are you up to, Don Mateo—out playing bull-candle or what? I’m a little old for that, he said in his high-pitched little worn-out voice. At any rate, with those candles in your sombrero you’re not going to get lost, compadre. No, no chance of my getting lost, not any more than I already am at any rate. I know these whereabouts very well. If I care to, I can go all over Ka’asapá with my eyes closed. Is it some sort of vow then? Before going to sleep, I always come down to the Pozo Bolaños to have myself a drink from the Saint’s spring. There’s no better remedy. Opilative. Diuretic. Let’s go up to the house. That way we can talk for a bit. He put his hand on my shoulder. I felt his fingernails digging into the fringes of my poncho. I didn’t even realize we’d entered the hut. He took off the sombrero and put it on top of a pitcher. He snuffed out all the candles except the stubbiest one with those nails of his of a hairy armadillo; the thumb and index one especially, Sire, as sharp and curved as knife blades. He wet the room down three times with liquid from a little squat bottle. In a trice a fragrance without an equal drove out the stuffy air reeking of old man’s piss and rotten flesh that I had smelled on entering. It now smelled exactly like a garden. I looked around to see if he’d set some aromatic plants in the corners. All I could see were some shadows hovering almost motionless just under the ceiling, and others hanging in clusters from the straw thatch.

  He brought a blanket out of a trunk; it appeared to be woven of wool or very soft hair, of a sort of darkish-brown color; I’d be more inclined to say a colorless color since the dim light from the candle didn’t penetrate that froth that with more light would have been still less visible; the color of nothing, I suppose, if nothingness has a color. Touch it, Policarpo. I extended-withdrew my hand. Touch it, colleague—don’t be afraid. I felt it with my hand. Softer than silk, velvet, taffeta, or fine Dutch linen it was. What’s this fabric made of, Don Mateo? It feels like down from newborn squabs, the plumage of some sort of bird I don’t know, though in fact there aren’t any birds I don’t know. He pointed to the ceiling: from those creatures fluttering above your head. I’ve been weaving this blanket for ten years now so as to give it to His Excellency on his birthday. This January sixth, if my rheumatism permits me to walk the fifty leagues to Asunción, I’m going to bring him my gift myself because I’ve been told that our Karaí has almost no clothes and is quite ill. This blanket is going to keep him warm and cure him. But a blanket made out of that hair, Don Mateo! Do you think His Excellency is going to use a thing like that?, I stammered, retching. You know very well that our Karaí Guasú doesn’t accept any sort of gift. I know, Don Polí! But this isn’t a gift. It’s a remedy. There will never be a blanket like it in this world. Soft, you’ve already touched it yourself. Couldn’t be lighter. If I toss it in the air at this moment, you and I will become old and gray as we wait for it to fall back down. Couldn’t be better insulation. There’s no cold can get through that weave. It can be used against the heat from outside and fever from within. This is a blanket for everything and against everything. I looked up toward the ceiling, closing my eyes. But how were you able to collect so many long-eared bats? They know me. They come. They feel at home here. They just go out for a little while perhaps as it’s getting dark to have themselves a breath of fresh air. Then they come back in again. They like it here. Don’t they bite you, suck your blood? They’re not stupid, Polí. They know that there’s not one drop of good red blood in my veins. I bring them little wild creatures; the ones that go about by night are the liveliest and have the warmest blood. The mbopís, well-fed and content, grow a hair so fine that only hands that know the feel of a feather pen, like yours or mine, can handle, spin, weave it, he said, trimming the candle with those very long nails of his. I pluck their fine silky down while they’re sleeping, with a gaze and a touch as soft as silk. We’re very close. But aside from the bedcover, which I won’t even discuss, I suspect that one of these little creatures of mine might remedy His Excellency’s ills. Some years ago now, a Dominican friar was dying here of a burning fever. The bloodletter couldn’t manage to get a single drop of blood out of him with his lancet. Since the friars were certain that their sick brother was dying, they went off to bed after bidding him a last farewell and ordered the Indians to dig his grave so as to bury him in the cool of early morning. I opened the window and let out a bat I had been keeping shut up without food at the time because he’d been disrespectful. The mbopí attached itself to one of the friar’s feet. When it had had its fill it flew off again, leaving the vein open. At sunup the friars came back, thinking they’d find their sick brother dead. They found him alive, chipper, almost well, reading his breviary in bed. Thanks to the medic mbopí, the friar was very soon his usual self again. Nowadays he’s the fattest and most active one in the congregation; the one who is said to have given his Indian girl parishioners the most babies; but I don’t pay attention to malicious gossip of that sort, occupied as I am day and night weaving the blanket for our Supreme.

  Stay and sleep here, friend Policarpo. I invite you to do penance. There’s your cot over there. We have lots of things that happened in the good old days to talk about. He put the blanket back in the trunk. Don Mateo’s long-eared rats fluttered and screeched up among the shadows of the ceiling, their little skull-faces veiled with signs of mourning. He slowly removed his cape, exposing his bare carcass to the air. What else do I have to do except pull the wool over the eyes of these innocents and take their hair to make clothes for our Father? Get in bed, Policarpo. He was about to blow out the candle. I rose to my feet. No, Don Mateo, I’m going to leave now. We’ve had a very pleasant time together. The commissioner is waiting for me. I imagine they’ve already caught the cattle thieves. If so, they’ll have to be shot at dawn, and I must be present to sign the order. Pump those bandits full of lead!, the old man said, blowing out the candle.*4

  You’re the most conniving chatterbox in the world. An odd bird that cackles all the time. A bird of ill omen for whom death has already knocked on the door; who is going to die forthwith, though gradually. I haven’t managed to make a decent servant out of you. You’re never going to have so much material to deal with that it will shut you up. In order not to work, you invent happenings that haven’t happened. Don’t you think that I could be made into a fabulous story? Beyond the shadow of a doubt, Excellency! The most fabulous, the truest, the most worthy of the majestative exaltedness of your Person. No, Patiño, no. It’s not possible to make stories of Absolute Power. If it were, The Supreme would be de trop: in literature or in reality. Who would write such books? Ignorant people like you. Professional scribes. Pharisaical farceurs. Idiotic compilers of writings no less idiotic. The words of power, of authority, words above words, will be transformed into clever words, lying words. Words below words. If one wishes at all costs to speak of someone, one must not only put oneself in that someone’s place: on
e must be that someone. Only like can write about like. Only the dead can write about the dead. But the dead are very feeble. Do you think you could relate my life before your death, you ragtag amanuensis? You would need at the very least the craft and the strength of two Fates. Eh, isn’t that so, compiler of fictions and falsifications? You smoke-collector who, deep down, hate the Master. Answer! Eh, isn’t that so? Ah! Come now! Even supposing in your favor that you’re playing me false in order to spare me, what you’re doing is taking away from me, hair by hair, the power to die and be born by myself. Preventing me from being my own commentary. Concentrating on a single thought is perhaps the only way to make it real: that invisible blanket that Mateo Fleitas is weaving. That won’t be enough to cover my bones. I’ve seen it, Excellency! That isn’t enough. Your seeing isn’t knowing yet. Your own-eyes-seeing blurs the contours of your rejuntative memory. That’s the reason why you’re finding it impossible to discover the pasquinaders, among other things. Let’s suppose that you and one of them have gotten together. Suppose that I myself am an author of pasquinades. We talk of very amusing things. You recount stories to me. I do my accounts. You close your eyes and fall into the irresistible temptation of believing that you’re invisible. On opening your eyelids it seems to you that everything is as it was before. You sneeze. Between one sneeze and another, everything has changed. That is the reality that your memory does not see.