I the Supreme

by Augusto Roa Bastos

  All this matters little to my deceased, who is already dead, or to me, who am still alive, and I would have asked for nothing from our Supreme Dictator. But I have twelve sons, and the biggest of my little ones is barely fifteen. He is the drummer in the Hospital Barracks band. I am a washerwoman, but what I earn from the dirty laundry of the people up there above isn’t going to be enough for me and my little chicks to live on.

  But this too doesn’t matter very much to me, Supreme Sire. What matters a great deal to me, more than anything, is that because of the slander and malice of wicked people, I am unable to offer Christian burial to my much-lamented deceased. Nobody knows what a good, kind soul poor José Custodio was. One of the Lord’s own. It’s not the same to bury him in the yard of our hut or dump him into the river, even though the man that served our Supreme with utter loyalty and died through and in the service of the Fatherland and the Government was an Arroyo.

  Arise, señora. What is your name? Gaspara Cantuaria de Arroyo, at your service, Yr. Excellency. Arise. I cannot allow any Paraguayan, man or woman, to kneel before anyone, not even before me. Go, with my condolences. Your wishes will be fulfilled.

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  Has she gone, Patiño? Who, Sire? The widow, you clod. She hasn’t been here, Excellency. Your Mercy refused to grant anyone an audience. I’ve merely been reading the widow’s petition, Sire. You’re such an idiot you don’t know that persons, things, aren’t real. Wake up for once and for all from that sort of besotted bewitchment that makes you continually miss out on what’s going on. Don’t you sense all the misery of the general? People whose life is rife with difficulties, ripe with discouragements. The poor, the only ones who have a pitiful love of uprightness. Trees that gather dust. If they weren’t able to breathe at least a sigh, they’d suffocate. I’ve found out, Excellency, that this matter involves a long-standing enmity between the priest and the Arroyos because they refused to pay the baptism tariffs for their twelve children.

  Inform the parish priest of Encarnación of my sovereign will and decree:

  He is to declare where the soul of the late José Custodio Arroyo ended up. If he finds him in hell, he is to leave him there. Should this prove impossible to verify, he is to proceed immediately to give the corpse sacred interment, after a funeral with the body lying in state. Without charge. Pass the dossier on to the vicar general. Order is also hereby given to transport the priest of Encarnación to the penal colony of Tevegó.

  Supreme Decree:

  Pay 30 ounces of silver to the widow Gaspara Cantuaria de Arroya as a compensation for moral and material damages. Plus a pension of six pesos, two reales for each son until the eldest attains his majority. On so doing, he will join the Hospital Barracks Band as a musician with the rank of corporal.

  By the way, in order that the bands of the entire country may again deafen the air with their martial sonorities as I have ordered, take note of the following order to be forwarded to the Brazilian traders in Itapúa: 300 brass bugles and an equal number of bronze-plated ones; 200 cornets-à-pistons; 100 oboes; 100 horns; 100 violins; 200 clarinets; 50 triangles; 100 fifes; 100 tambourines; 50 kettledrums; 50 trombones; two gross of music paper; 1000 dozen treble and bass guitar strings, to replace the previous shipment that fell into the water during the crossing of the Paraná through the carelessness and negligence of the transporters.

  Of these instruments a complete set is to be given to the Indian musicians making up the band of Infantry Battalion No. 2, directed by Maestro Felipe Santiago González, which is to be rehabilitated and enlarged to a complement of one hundred places. The soloists Gregorio Aguaí, oboe, Jacinto Tupaverá, trumpet, Cristano Aravevé, violin, Lucas Araká, clarinet, Olegario Yesa, fife, José Gaspar Kuaratá, tambourine, José Gaspar Jaharí, triangle, members of the orchestra that paid the last tribute at the funeral, are to be retired with the pension due them.

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  What have you found out about the theft of the 161 flutes stolen from the organ in the choir of the temple of La Merced? I have here, Excellency, the report of The Hon. Ecclesiastical Judge and Vicar General Dn. Roque Antonio Céspedes Xeria: In view of the gravity of the sacrilegious theft, I resolved to threaten the presumed thieves and their accomplices with all the weight of the machinery of State, but as of this writing this has produced no results worth communicating to Your Excellency. Despite such threats and that of excommunication which I decided to fulminate post mortem, the only thing that has come to light is that the musician Félix Seisdedos (who is called that because in fact he has six digits on each hand and each foot; organist of the suppressed convent of La Merced, servant and slave of the deceased presbyter O’Higgins) is presumably the one who sold the flutes to the silversmith Agustín Pokoví as scrap lead. This too has not been possible to verify, Excellency, since Pokoví the silversmith died shortly after the theft, of an attack of apoplexy, and the aforementioned slave and organist Seisdedos drowned in a river in flood, on the very same day as the storm in which Your Excellency had the accident. Pede poena claudo!*1 Our investigations are now leading us in the direction of the public schools, since I have received reports that secret bands of flutists have been formed among the pupils of the said establishments. I submit this information to Your Excellency without waiting to acquire more, in the belief that its prompt arrival may best befit the action that Your Excellency may deem desirable to pursue in order to halt the spread of this evil.

  Order the investigation of the robbery not to be pursued, Patiño. Add to the list of musical instruments that I have already dictated to you the quantity of 5000 small piccolos, which are to be distributed to each one of the pupils of the public schools. I order, furthermore, that in each one of them bands of piccolo players be formed from among the most gifted pupils. From this day forward, theory and solmization are to be included in the school curriculum.

  What else? Corporal Efigenio Cristaldo, musician, humbly presents to Your Excellency a petition to retire from the post of drum major that he has held for thirty years. He maintains that his age and bad health no longer permit him to fulfill his obligations with the capacity demanded by his duties. He asks permission, on the other hand, to resume his labors as a farmer, especially as a planter of royal water lilies in Lake Ypoá. Do you see, Patiño, how infirmity disturbs men’s activities even more than death? At the very moment that I am sowing the seeds so that thousands of musicians will spring up in this country of music and prophecy, the dean of drummers, the very best of my drummers, the one who made of his instrument the very sound box of my orders, wants to retreat into silence. Why? To cultivate victoria regias in the muddy water of the lake! What victories are there without drummers? Summon him. This is a problem that he and I must resolve between us.

  What else? Petition from Josefa Hurtado de Mendoza, who asks for the restitution of the landed property that belongs to her in consequence of the division of her husband’s estate. An afternoon of widows, musicians, flutists, drummers, of any wretched devil that takes it into his head to come here to wag his tail at the wrong moment! Have you looked into the antecedents of the case? Yes, Excellency. The Judge of the Court of Appeals has ruled in her favor. Isn’t that plump widow dripping a little candle fat your way, Patiño? In the name of Heaven, Sire! The widow Hurtado de Mendoza is merely asking that justice be done. My sovereign decree then: If there’s nothing furtive going on and it won’t leave the late Mendoza hurting, the petition is granted.

  What else? The widow Noseda seeks Your Excellency’s permission to take the cargo of maté she is carrying through to Itapúa. More widows! Where are the certificates of payment of the sales tax on foreign merchants, the fractuary contribution, the war duty, the state monopoly, all the taxes required by law? They are not included in the dossier, Excellency. They are still under consideration. Listen, you immeasurable scoundrel. Raise your eyes! Don’t sneeze. That Noseda widow, who has a face harder
than leather and stone, is in the process of pulling strings with you: you’re her compadre from way back. She’s your old bosom pal. No, I swear that’s not true, Excellency! All right then. We’ll handle Señora Noseda with silk gloves. Write: The widow Noseda, traderess, is to be given what she has asked for: Let her bring in her cargo if her hold is empty, but if it’s full don’t let her bring it in. For her belle-lettristic contrabandistic legerdemain, the petitioneress is to be charged a fine of three thousand pesos, to be paid to the Treasury in specie.

  Your favorite can’t complain, Patiño. Some years ago I levied a fine of 9539 silver pesos against the mulatto José Fortunato Roa, a secret agent of the Porteñistas, for a similar shady deal he tried to put over on me, in connivance with his ladroni-sociate Parga. I, Most Excellent Sire…You for now will take care of those dossiers while I make a note of other notes. No road is all bad if it has an end.

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  What about those rings for the boats? Ah, yes, Excellency. The carter who was bringing them drowned in the Pirapó, which had overflowed its banks in the recent rains, trying to get to the other side. What I’m asking you about is the iron rings. They’ve already arrived at their destination, Sire. The commandant of the town of Yuty, near the place where the cart went down, the driver was drowned, and the whole cartload was lost, gathered all the inhabitants together and they decided to change the course of the stream that had turned into a raging river. Even the lepers from the lazar house worked. In three days and nights the rings were high and dry again. A hundred horsemen rode hell for leather to deliver the rings to the Deputy of Itapúa.

  Send a dispatch to that useless official:

  To the deputy of Itapúa, Casimiro Roxas:

  On receipt of this dispatch, you will immediately carry out the following orders:

  (1) It is absolutely necessary to speed up the construction of the barges. The flotilla must be ready before the month is out. I am sending Trujillo to direct the work. He knows precisely where to place a cannon, how to secure the breeches, just as I myself showed him, so that the recoil doesn’t capsize the vessel.

  (2) I am also sending marine gun carriages, one hundred in number. Another hundred land ones. I shall see about sending whatever else is needed later. More details concerning all of this will be forthcoming in the Sealed Confidential Instructions that will be sent to all military commanders. The idea is that this war fleet will contribute, when the proper moment arrives, to breaking the blockade of the river and freeing navigation. I myself shall arrive shortly to organize the preparations for defense. I shall lead the troops myself and direct operations in accordance with a plan that I have drawn up. I am going to keep a strict accounting of what there is on hand and what is spent; and with regard to equipment I am not going to pay those insatiable Brazilian traffickers the exorbitant prices you people show on your lists. Not one grain of powder will be bought for more than it is worth.

  (3) Tell the commander of the garrison that in order not to ruin the horses for good by giving them time to put on fat this summer, it is necessary to put them to work in the fields with extra bastos*2 under their work harnesses. Tell him also that he may continue to cut wood till the first quarter of the moon, which will be on Friday. He is to sort the wood cut into two parts: in one, the logs that can be used for the construction of the boats; in the other, those which are to be traded off to the Brazilian and Uruguayan smugglers for arms. In your reports and dispatches, omit the don, which is no longer customary.

  (4) What about Señora Pureza? Has she already arrived there? Have you offered her asylum, cordial hospitality, as I ordered you to do in my previous dispatch? Treat her with all the respect that so eminent a lady deserves, for the country owes her many services that I alone have any knowledge of. You need not play high and mighty with her or launch into those lofty diatribes of yours which in your stupidity you fondly believe enhance your authority. Authority that is not yours, but merely conferred upon you as a deputy of the Supreme Power.

  (5) I have received many complaints about you from the Brazilian traders. Rage, no matter how justified, is something one should never tolerate in himself. For nursing anger against someone is the same as allowing that person continued control of our thoughts, our feelings. The least moments. That is a lack of self-sovereignty. The height of stupidity in fact. Plant this bit of advice beneath your bush of kinky hair. Let it take root there and flower one day in thoughts, in useful actions. My dear Roxas, do as duty commands you.

  (6) Send numbers of the Buenos Aires Gazeta. The last one you sent me was six months old. Pay a surcharge, even if it is for back copies. Pamphlets, any sort of publication that comes out there. I have read that Rosas is beginning to be favorably disposed toward me, which might mean something, if only astute flattery on the part of the Restorer so as to win time and win me over now that Lavalle’s army is pressing him hard. That wet rag of a Ferré is again governor of Corrientes. The Correntinos deserve him. Verify the truth of the story that the liar Rivera has been offered the command of the army against Rosas and Paz the one-armed has been put at the head of its troops.

  (7) Ask Spalding, the Englishman on the other side, to send me the promised book by the Robertson brothers on my Reign of Terror, along with their Letters on Paraguay. I want to see what new villainies those two scoundrels come up with after a quarter of a century. For those lies bound in leather you may pay up to a hundredweight of maté. One more if there are two volumes. Haggle. To my mind, those miserable lies in print are worth no more than a pair of hemp sandals. In any case, don’t go beyond the two hundredweight in all. If it’s not a deal, to hell with Spalding the Englishman, the two Scots Robertsons, the British Empire and every last one of its miserable subjects.

  (8) Tell agent León to order in good time another shipment of toys to be distributed to children at Epiphany. The toys will be paid for this time in specie by the Treasury, out of my uncollected salary. The caravan of carts bringing the gun carriages and the cannons can bring back on their return the bundles and crates of toys, a detailed list of which follows.

  (9) See what you can do to improve our secret service in the area outside our borders for which you are responsible. To make it more rapid, more effective, more secret. As it functions at present, I am the last to know what’s going on. Especially now that I have embarked upon a project of vast proportions. On this head you will find further details in the sealed Confidential Instructions.

  (10) Sound out Señora Pureza as to her relations in Rio Grande, the Banda Oriental, Entre Ríos. Don’t say anything to her yet. As usual, you will only muddy the waters. The best thing would be to invite her in my name to journey to Asunción to talk with me. Don’t inform her of the reasons. If she finds the prospects of such a journey pleasing, provide her with the means of transport, along with a proper escort. The old coach of the governors, it seems to me, is still around somewhere thereabouts after having been abandoned in Itapúa by those Robertson rascals on their journey to Misiones. Put it back in good enough shape so that Señora Pureza may use it. Should she decide to avail herself of it, advise me beforehand that she is coming.

  (11) Increase to three the number of relay stations for the Asunción-Itapúa courier service. One in the town of Acahay; another on the Tebikuary-mi River; the third at the confluence of the Tebikuary and the Pirapó. Have rafts made for the transit of heavy cargo across the two largest rivers. Assign to these points the best rower-raftsmen you can recruit there. Send people from the leprosarium at Yuty to look after the equipment, the installations. You will furnish one head of cattle daily, plus provisions and military uniforms, both to the raftsmen and to the river patrols. Likewise to the crews for storing, repairing, and maintaining the matériel.

  (12) I do not understand, my dear Roxas, why you should suddenly say in a report that you need clothing for the battalion. Here where I am, I’m not able to finish uniforming more than a thous
and recruits. The only three tailor shops, with three tailors and twenty seamstresses, can’t get the job done, even though they’re working in three shifts. Hence these recruits haven’t yet been able to pass in review, though they have been duly instructed and are ready to join the troops of the line. Let those others wait their turn; and if they are really in such great need of clothing, let them get along as best they can, because at the moment I am occupied with other extremely important matters besides providing fancy traps for the troops. And what is that business of mixing uniforms all about? You know very well, or should know after twenty years, that the issue uniform is a blue jacket with facings whose color varies according to the branch of service. White breeches. Yellow cording in the back seams distinguishes Cavalry from Infantry. Round leather hat with tricolor cockade and the inscription Independence or Death above. Another larger one over the heart on the tunic. If these details are neglected, the units will be unable to maintain order in the first real hand-to-hand combat. Battalions, squadrons, companies will be all mixed up. Each one will attack, open fire on his own. As happened to Rolón in his skirmish with the Correntinos.

  The carts bringing the gun carriages will also bring those articles of clothing that are ready at the moment. Perhaps everything, outside of the cravats, which will come later.

    Itemized toy order:

  2 figures of uniformed generals on horseback, each one on a cart with four small wheels, the figures ten inches tall.

  6 uniformed officers, also on horseback and likewise on a cart with 4 little wheels each, 7 inches tall.

  770 figures of uniformed grenadiers, 6 inches tall, 10 of them with bugles.

  10 figures of uniformed drummers with their drums, and springs to make them play, in assorted sizes from 5 1/2 inches on up, each one mounted on a box containing the spring.