I the Supreme

by Augusto Roa Bastos

  So I picked up the flower. Inside the little crystallized branch the magnifying glass made it possible to see imperceptible veins. At the very bottom of the amaranth crest, peaks of infinitely tiny mountains. Substance of the fossilized aroma? A faint stench; a smell more sound than smell. Sputtering of corpuscles that have been there since BEFORE and that can be perceived only after one has rubbed the mummy-flower for a long time against the back of one’s hand. Nebulae. Constellations like those of the cosmos. A cosmos turned outside in toward the infinitesimal, contracting on itself. A step away from countermatter. Confound it! Rhetoric continues to wreak its havoc. It’s that I’ve completely lost the faculty of putting what I think or believe I remember into everyday words. If I were able to do so, I’d be cured. A harlot arrives, a strumpet sea-fox. She scatters everything that’s written all about. A cruising superwhore appears. She orders you to remember to forget.

  * * *

  —

  Another subject.

  A propos of the History of the Revolutions of the Province of Paraguay, I mentioned the Jesuit Lozano this morning. I read the manuscript in the Hospital Barracks during my confinement because of the fall I had on my last outing. If I am to believe the witness of my senses, I must write that that afternoon I saw Pedro Lozano in the priest who blocked my path, down at the lower end of the Calle de la Encarnación, just as the storm was breaking. Along with the first drops darkness also suddenly fell. The sergeant on point, the scouts, the bugler, the drummer, had already gone on ahead. The priest appeared at a bend in the street, in a surplice and stole. He was accompanied by two or three acolytes carrying lighted tapers that the wind and the rain couldn’t manage to put out. The fanfare of the escort was drowned out by the sound of the little bell that one of the acolytes was shaking, as terror-stricken by the sight of me as by the appearance of a ghost. The black Arabian with the white blaze strode ahead in the direction of the ringing bell, its ears quivering. The thought crossed my mind that some new plot might be lurking behind what seemed to be the bringing of the viaticum to a dying man. I was amazed at the cleverness of the scheme. They’ve arranged everything: pump me full of lead, and then the viaticum. No; perhaps not, another voice said within me. Isn’t that the Jesuit Pedro Lozano, coming personally to place his libel against José de Antequera in your hands? The cortege of the eucharistic ambush has halted in the middle of the street, directly in front of me. It shows no signs of moving aside. It is blocking my path. Out of my way, Pedro Lozano!, I shout at him. I can now make him out clearly in the blinding flashes of lightning. Even the pores of his skin. Livid face. Closed eyes. Lips moving as he mutters the antiphon. He kneels down in the mud. At that moment I remember having read that the chronicler of the order died a century before, in the gorge of Humahuaca, as he was journeying to Upper Peru by the same route that Antequera followed on the way to his beheading. I hear once again the ringing of the little bell, muffled by the more and more violent squalls of wind and rain. The Arabian rears in fright. The acolytes run off screaming Xake Karaí! Xake Karaí! I am almost on top of the priest. What from a distance looked like the gold cover of a book is in reality the large gold pyx in which the sacred form is preserved. I give a hard pull on the reins so as to hold back the Arabian, on the point of bolting. It is then that the end of the whip, snaking amid the gusts of wind and rain, curls about the foot of the pyx, tearing it from the cleric’s hands. I see him dragging himself through the mud searching for it. The strange thing is that the surplice remains snow-white. The very old stole with mourning guards, the two raveled crosses of the pectorals turn a blinding white. The Arabian leaps over the priest and into the whirlwinds of the storm. He slips and falls into a puddle, throwing me far from him. I roll in the mud in my turn, searching for some unknown lost object. Lost in two from the concussion of the fall. I find myself in the position of one who can no longer say I because he is not one and single, feeling himself more alone than ever in those two halves, not knowing which of them he belongs to. Sensation of having been driven to that state, cruelly deceived, thrown in the discard, tossed out like trash, chained to the mire. At that moment, beneath the Deluge, all I could do was pound on the mud with my fists like a blind man. Idiot idiot idiot! A fractured bone, a broken spinal column, a blow at the base of your skull could be responsible for this hallucination. Perhaps I didn’t realize that at that moment. In discouraging situations, the truth stands in need of as much support as error. At that moment I had no support save the mud; and it was sucking me in. Amid the rain and the wind the horse stood waiting.

  *1 Gachupines: Spaniards. (Translator’s note)

  *2 Porteñistas: supporters of the cause of Buenos Aires.

  *3 An outsized ledger, of the sort that from the beginning of his government El Supremo used to keep track of the treasury accounts, down to the last real. More than a hundred of these Great Books, each with a thousand folios, have been found in the archives. In the last of them, in which the real accounts are scarcely begun, there appear other unreal and cryptic ones. Only long afterward was it discovered that toward the end of his life El Supremo had set forth in these folios, in a disjointed, incoherent fashion, events, ideas, reflections, minutely detailed and well-nigh maniacal observations on any number of entirely different subjects and themes: those which in his opinion were positive in the Credit column; negative, in the Debit column. In this way words, sentences, paragraphs, fragments are divided, continued, repeated, or inverted in the two columns, in an effort to strike an imaginary balance. They are somewhat reminiscent of the notations of a polyphonic score. It is well known that El Supremo was a good musician; or at least an excellent vihuelist,* with velleities of composing.

  The fire that broke out in his apartments a few days before his death destroyed the Account Book in large part, along with other files and papers that it was his habit to keep in his coffers under septuple lock and key. (Compiler’s Note.)

  * Player of the vihuela, the Spanish lute.

  *4 Don Mateo Fleitas, El Supremo’s first “confidential clerk,” survived him by more than half a century. He died in Ka’asapá at the age of 106, surrounded by his children and grandchildren, amid the respect and affection of the entire village. A real patriarch. He was known as Tamoi-ypy (First-Grandfather). Oldsters of his time whom I consulted stoutly denied, some with real indignation, the story of the “sombrero crowned with candles,” as well as the life of maniacal seclusion led by Don Mateo, according to Policarpo Patiño’s account. “That’s malicious gossip on the part of that foul-tongued slanderer who ended up hanging himself out of sheer malice and treachery,” the rhythmic but still firm voice of the present mayor of Ka’asapá, Don Pantaleόn Engracia García, affirms sententiously on the recorded tape.

  À propos of my journey to the village of Ka’asapá, it strikes me as not entirely beside the point to relate one event that took place. On the return trip, as I was crossing the Pirapó in flood, on horseback, my tape recorder and camera fell into the water. The mayor, Don Panta, who was accompanying me with a small escort, immediately ordered his men to divert the course of the stream. No plea or argument could dissuade him. “You will not leave Ka’asapá without your equipment,” he growled indignantly. “I will not allow our stream to steal from illustrious and enlightened outlanders who come to visit us!” On being notified of what had happened, the entire population came running to collaborate in diverting the river. Men, women, and children worked with the enthusiasm of a minga (a voluntary collective endeavor) transformed into a fiesta. Toward evening, the lost objects appeared in the mud of the streambed, having suffered no great damage. Everyone danced till dawn to the music of my cassettes. I took off as the sun was coming up, accompanied for a long stretch of the way by the shouts and cheers of this lively and hospitable people, taking with me the voices and images of its oldsters, of its men, women, and children; of its green, luminous landscape. When he thought that the way was now clear, the mayor bade m
e farewell. I embraced him and kissed him on both cheeks. “Many thanks, Don Pantaleόn,” I said to him with a lump in my throat. “There is no name for what all of you have done!” He winked one eye at me and crunched the bones of my hand. “I don’t know if it has a name or not,” he said. “But since the time of El Supremo, these little things are a duty for us that we willingly perform when it is for the good of the country.” (Compiler’s Note.)

  *5 Inhabitants of Buenos Aires.

  *6 In view of the frequent complaints of country people concerning the depredations and thefts that the Indians committed on rural properties in the course of their continual invasions, the Perpetual Dictator, in a long decree promulgated in March of 1816, severely criticized the ineptitude of the commandants of the troops responsible for guarding the frontier, ordering in no uncertain terms that cavalry be sent to reinforce the detachments of Arekutakuá, Manduvirá, Ypytá, and Kuarepotí; armed troops from all the frontier detachments were to organize continual patrols in the surrounding countryside so as to punish the savages for any attempt whatsoever at invasion. The same decree made the commandants responsible for any timidity they might demonstrate in carrying out these measures, and ordered that all Indian invaders taken prisoner while marauding be run through with lances and their heads placed on pikes separated from each other by a distance of fifty yards, at the very spot where they had staged their invasion.

  The most fearsome of the Indians who continually invaded the northern region were the Payaguaces. A people of wanderers, they roved about in hordes and dwelt in nomad encampments. Extremely treacherous invaders, they lived by cattle rustling, fishing, and hunting. There were, however, a reduced number of Indians who had their tents a little farther north of Concepción; these came with their canoes to aid the troops of the nearest detachment to pursue the errant Payaguaces. A surprise attack by some five thousand of these latter was successfully fended off at the end of 1816. They were all run through with lances and their heads, placed on pikes fifty yards distant from each other, formed an exemplary cordon stretching across many leagues of the invaded frontier region, where from that time on there reined an era of peace called by historians the Era of the Calm Heads. (Wisner de Morgenstern, op. cit.)

  *7 “The Fortress of San José is unquestionably the most prodigious of feats of military engineering, of unparalleled dimensions, in the whole of South America during the first half of the nineteenth century. The plan for its erection was conceived at the time of the cessation of hostilities between Brazil and Buenos Aires in the Banda Oriental, a moment favoring the invasion of Paraguay, to the point that more than once it seemed imminent. After lengthy studies and a careful concentration of means, work was begun in the last days of 1833, opposite Itapúa, at the place known as La Guardia or Campamento de San José, on the other side of the river. Two hundred fifty men, who slept at night in leather tents and shelters on the outskirts of the settlement of La Guardia, began their labors. The subcommissioner José León Ramírez, his replacement Casimiro Rojas, and the commandant of the garrison, José Mariano Morínigo, had a hand in the direction (of the operations). As the project became more ambitious with each passing day, the number of men recruited in the course of the project was never sufficient. [The 250 men who began the work eventually grew to 25,000.] The rhythm of the labors accelerated in 1837, and basically everything was finished in the last months of 1838. The Fortress, which among Paraguayans continued to be called by its original modest name, Campamento San José, and among the people of Corrientes and other provinces the Trench of San José or the Trench of the Paraguayans, had an outer wall built entirely of stone, almost four yards high and two yards thick, with a merloned profile and massive corner towers with loopholes covering all the angles of the horizon. Save for the gate that could be opened to let in convoys from San Borja, this great wall, with a deep moat running parallel to it, extended without a break as far as the eye could see, from the marshes of the lagoon of San José to the shore of the Paraná, and then described a vast semicircle measuring many kilometers that like a half-coiled monster turned back upon itself and ended once again at the river.

  “An enormous mass of stone and plaster-work, reminiscent in a way of the Great Wall of China, it enclosed the troops’ barracks, the quarters of commissioned and noncommissioned officers, the arms depot, and other outbuildings and storehouses, laid out in the form of a small town, with a street of fifteen row houses on each side, each room measuring five varas and a half, and the sidewalks more than a cuerda, and finally, on the outer edge, it enclosed two large corner lots or pastures separated by a dense woodlot intersected by a path that ran down to the river’s edge and was lost from sight.

  “In the distance, as the patrols from Corrientes prowled about the hills and the lonely expanses of the desert of Misiones, the Fortress would suddenly loom up before them, awesome, overpowering. Beyond the walls, at the very top of a towering urundey flagpole, straight as a needle and almost piercing the sky, there blazed the tricolor symbol of the legendary, respected, awesome Republic of the Perpetual Dictator.” J. A. Vázquez, Visto y Oído [Seen and Heard].)

  *8 Chivosis: dwarfed beings who live underground; evil spirits.

  *9 The bandeiras were expeditions into the hinterlands of Brazil in search of Indian slaves, land, mines and metals, and precious stones. The members of such expeditions were called bandeirantes. The largest number of them were Paulistas, from the colonial captaincy of São Paulo.

  *10 A cheap wine from Andalusia, an imitation of Benicarló.

  *11 A reference from Peter Martyr’s Décadas de Orbe Novo, inspired by the discovery of the New World.

  Give me your hand. Are you going to get up, Sire? Let me have your hand. A very great honor for this servant to have Your Excellency extend his hand to me. I’m not holding my hand out to you. I’m ordering you to hold yours out to me. It’s not a reconciliation I’m proposing to you; simply a simulacrum of temporary identification.

  This is a lesson. The last one. It ought to have been the first one. Since I am unable to offer you a Last Supper with the flock of Judases who are my apostles, I offer you a last-first class. What type of class, Sire? Homage to your supine ignorance in the pursuit of your duty. For more than twenty years you’ve been the number one secretary of the Government, my confidential clerk, the supreme amanuensis, and you still don’t know the secrets of your calling. Your scriptuary gift is still extremely rudimentary. Small, even less than that, not the least. You boast of having at the tip of your eye the faculty of distinguishing the slightest similarities and differences even in the forms of periods, yet you’re not able to recognize the handwriting of an ignoble pasquinade. You are more than right, Sire. With your permission I wish to inform Your Excellency that I have already shut up seven thousand three hundred thirty-four scriveners in the archive, to compare the letters of the pasquinade with the twenty thousand dossiers that add up to five hundred thousand pages, as well as all the paperwork that Your Grace has ordered me to collect for the same purpose. I have even conscripted Paí Mbatú. Even with his half-addled brain, he’s the most alert and active of all the scribblers I’ve recruited. I’m a madman girded with wisdom and booted with patience!, the shatterpated ex priest keeps exclaiming. So bring on your files: this task is a piece of cake for me! I’ve put them all on hardtack and water in order to prod them and kindle their zeal. Do you remember those old Indians of Jaguarón, Sire, who refused to go on working in the tobacco manufactory, claiming they had poor eyesight? A good stew with lots of tobacco worms in it was cooked up for them, and the Indians sat down to eat. They ate every last kernel of corn, but left all the fat green marandovases untouched on the edge of their plates. I intend to do the same thing with those idlers. All I’m waiting for in order to begin the handwriting investigation is for Your Excellency to hand me over the pasquinade.

  You’ve been my trust-unworthy secretary for more than twenty years now, and you still
don’t know how to secrete what I dictate. You twist and turn my words around. I dictate my circular to you in order to educate the corps of civil and military functionaries as to the cardinal facts and events concerning our Nation. I’ve already sent them the first part, Sire. When they read it, those ignorant beasts are going to think that I’m talking to them about an imaginary Nation. You’re getting to be more and more like those pompous scribes, the Molases and the Peñas for example, who take themselves to be Solons and are no more than Scribleruses. Even when they’re locked up in prison they manage to rat about filching what other people write. Don’t try to imitate them. Don’t use improper words that are not my style, that are not steeped in my thought. I loathe relative talent that’s begged and borrowed. What’s more, your style is abominable. A labyrinthine alleyway paved with alliterations, anagrams, idiosyncratic idioms, barbarisms, paronomasias such as pároli/párulis, imbecilic anastrophes to dazzle imbecilic inverts who experience erections by virtue of the effect of the violent inversions of word order, such as: Beneath the foot of the tree I fall; or one more violent still: Having Revolution firmly planted in my head, the pike winks its conniving eye at me from the Plaza. Old tricks of rhetoric that are now being taken up once again as though they were brand-new. The principal fault I tax you with is your inability to express yourself with the originality of a parrot. You are nothing but a speaking biohuman. A hybrid creature engendered by different species. A she mule-he ass keeping the treadmill of state scribery going round. You would have been more useful to me as a parrot than as a confidential clerk. You are neither the one nor the other. Instead of transcribing what I dictate to you in its natural state, you fill the paper with incomprehensible barbarisms. Pieces of mischief already written by others. You feed on the carrion of books. You have not yet destroyed oral tradition only because it is the one language that cannot be sacked, robbed, repeated, plagiarized, copied. What is spoken remains alive, sustained by the tone, the gestures, the facial expressions, the gaze, the accent, the breath of the speaker. In all languages the most forceful exclamations are not articulated. Animals do not speak because they do not articulate, but they understand each other much better and more quickly than we do. Solomon held converse with mammals, birds, fishes, reptiles. I too speak through them. He did not understand the language of the beasts most familiar to him. His heart was hardened against the animal world when he lost his seal. He is said to have thrown it away in anger when a nightingale informed him that his wife number nine hundred ninety-nine loved a man younger than he.