(Noted in the margin)
That idiot is right on one point. Our first knowledge of fire gives rise to a social prohibition. This is thus the real basis of the respect for flames. If the child brings his hand close to the fire, his father gives him a fillip on the fingers. The fire does this without any need to hit out. Its language of punishment is to say I burn. The problem to be solved is deliberate disobedience…(remainder of the folio burned).
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Gaming should not be prohibited, Benítez said, Excellency. The passion for gambling is the only one that does not die in man’s heart, he repeated. The more it is fanned by the wind of necessity, the higher its flames blaze, the more it illuminates the soul of the man in need. Apart from the last phrase that you doubtless culled from somewhere as usual, isn’t all the rest of this little discourse on the pros born of the cons of gaming something you trumped up yourself? Isn’t it true that you’re quite fond of peeking at the pips yourself? In the name of heaven, Excellency! Have my tongue cut off, my mouth sewn shut if I lie!
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A clever cardsharp’s idea, that one of ex minister Benítez’s to impose a fructuary tax on gambling. Other governments have made of their countries veritable gaming houses where the people rob each other, trick each other, kill each other, exactly as gamblers do.
Here in Paraguay they didn’t win. I beat them. I destroyed their advantages as clandestine gamblers by forcing on them the counteradvantage of knowing that they’re miserable sharpers. I know the mark of each card they play. I know what books they’ve been ripped out of. I hear the gallop of the steed of cups.* I hold the four aces. The ace of clubs in my hands, the staff of my power. The ace of gold in the coffers of the State. The ace of cups in which to offer gall and vinegar to traitors. The ace of swords to lop off their heads. This is my game of truque. In it I play the trump card cold-bloodedly, without tricks of any sort. In the end, out of the black intentions of that shyster Echevarría there came to light clear, very clear things.
* Card in the Spanish suit of copas (cups) with the figure of a horse.
I come back to Correia da Cámara. In this same place, fifteen years later, I am with Manoel attending the performance not of Tancrède but of Gasparina. Its author, my liaison officer Cantero, aide-de-camp of the imperial envoy, whom I have placed at his service not so much to serve him as because it serves my purpose, has taken on the task of writing the play and staging it. We are no longer spectators of the theater of tancredulity but of incredulity. Gasparina is a woman wearing a liberty cap who, according to the author, represents me and the Republic. She is not incarnated by Petrona Zavala, but by a sculptural Payaguá girl who appears onstage with nothing on but the eyelashes, tattoos, and paint of all colors that make a mask of her face. Correia da Cámara outdoes himself in praise of the work. I know that it is really meant for the indigenous actress. Dazzled by her, he cannot take his eyes off her. He devours her with a gaze clouded by the gleam of desire. The Republic advances to the center of the stage to be crowned by the Great Sorcerer, wearing a tricorne and a frock coat. Scales in one hand, Sword in the other, the Republic halts beneath the throne canopied with palms against which an imposing prop lion is leaning on two paws. The Republic turns, slowly and majestically, toward the audience. She stands firmly on her scissored legs. The two blades spread slightly apart. Pubis shaved completely bare. Bathed in broken reflections, patches of light. Phosphorescent flashes—achiote, bija, orellana, tapaculo, urukú*1—turn it into a black sun. Likewise her mouth. Two beacons of intermittent light. One half necessarily black, the other necessarily gray. Correia runs his tongue over his lips. A born pedant in all his expressions, he exclaims: That Woman-who-comes-from-the-forest appears to be enveloped in a dazzling, primordial visibility. In her the visible and the invisible are one and the same. At once nocturnal and solar in each one of her movements; even when she mimes absolute immobility. Profound secret. Inviolable secret. Only in certain seraglios of Barbary have I seen the like, Excellency. That woman, Excellency, is a meteorite from out of the protonight! Look! Look! She is splitting in two! She is motionless yet parting night from night. Dividing in two! Two bodies and two faces in a single body, a single face! The rustic author, señor consul, has attempted to represent in Gasparina both the natural-Woman and the Republic. Well, he has succeeded, Excellency, and at this moment I proclaim him greater than Racine himself! The dialogue is idiotic. It must be patiently sat through. The envoy has promised, in the name of the Empire, to send rifles and cannons. El cargamento mais grande do mundo! That’s what really interests me. It doesn’t interest me to waste saliva on the plumed Cariocan/Rio Grandese consul. Our saliva cleans and heals over our wounds yet kills the serpent, I say to the macaque, imitating him. As Correia devours the Woman-who-comes-from-the-forest with his eyes, her naked body swaying back and forth beneath the liberty cap, as the devout worshiper of the muses quavers choked phrases, I observe the extreme left of his mouth; that is the corner of it that is moving and pronouncing the aforementioned words, half in Spanish, half in Portuguese. The rest of his mouth remains motionless and closed. A recourse of courtly liars, of imperial envoys. Thanks to long years of practice they arrive at the point where they can split their lips and their tongue into independent sections. Articulate simultaneously phrases intermingled with different voices and intonations. The left half is now curling up like a horse’s lip, baring his teeth without carrying along with it in its undulations the right region, which remains closed and impassive in the counterphrases. I know that trick. I myself have learned to double-tongue. To fugue my voice. To superpose ventriloqual voices through tightly closed lips. Child’s play for me. Art that this bungling imperial buffoon has not mastered. He is trying to convince me that the empire is offering Paraguay its alliance simply to protect it from being ambushed by Buenos Aires. He knows my sore spots: I know those of the empire. What the latter in fact is seeking is precisely the opposite: seizing the Banda Oriental, crushing the Plata. Eventually swallowing up its “ally.” Not much. A mere nothing. I allow the envoy to mouth words as long as he likes. I’m the one who is holding the hook. I pay out more line to the gold fish of the empire. Meanwhile I get my hands on a copy of all his secret correspondence with French and English spies. Then I give a quick jerk. I reel the emissary in to the shores of my demands, and refuse to let him go till he assures me that my terms will be met. Full, irrevocable recognition of the Independence of Paraguay. Return of usurped territories and cities. Indemnification for the incursions of bandeiras. New boundary treaty erasing the crucificial frontiers imposed by the bull of the Borgia pope and the Treaty of Tordesillas. Arms and ammunition in exchange for lumber and maté.
Look, señor consul, you will put down in writing everything you’ve promised. I take your words as though they issued from the very mouth of your emperor himself. What is pledged in them is the honor of the empire. Eh eh ah. Mais claro, absolutamente verdade, Excelencia! Vocé va a tener el cargamento de armas mais grande do mundo!*2 I trust the arms will arrive soon, I say to him, and imitating him: Que sabe faz a hora nao espera acontecer. Os amores na mente as flores no chao/ A certeza na frente/ A historia na mao.*3 Eh? Eh? Certissimamente, Excelencia! Certissimamente! When will the shipment come, seor consuleiro? Embora embora, que esperar nao é saber,*4 I buzz in his ear. Certissimamente!, the consul’s voice zoomed from left to right. Sucking motion with the Y-piston of the linguageral.*5 There is also the question of those drifting limits that we must tie down, eh, seor cónsul? The waterfalls. The dam sites. Above all those damned sights fixed on Paraguay by the Imperio mais grande do mundo. Eh. Eh. Eh. Ah! Ah! Ah! Certissimamente!, the flustered farceur went on muttering out of both sides of his mouth. Ah y ah y ah, and this time I expected the titles of the respect due the Republic and the Supreme Government. I remind you that this is not play-acting. What we agree upon with the empire will not be a reason for applause but for soli
d signatures on the dotted line. Honest and honored. From one cordillera to the other. Certissimamente, Excelencia! When I saw that the commissional commissure was going to slip something in my ear, I raised my hand: Vocé va a pedirme*6 to send the Woman-who-comes-from-the-forest to your lodgings after the performance, isn’t that right? You want her to repeat in private the scene where she does the splits, isn’t that it, seor conselheiro? You are a genius, Señor Perpetual Dictator of the Republic of Paraguay! You have the gifts of a thaumaturge and a seer. The cleverest of mind readers! Sheer telepathy! Look, my esteemed telepath Correia, how to convey to you that I cannot prostitute the Republic by bringing her to your dark room! No, da Cámara, that lovely naked body will not touch your raw hide. Would I ask you to bring the empire and put it in my bed? Frankly, no. The least that can be said on the subject, seor consuleiro, is that it’s not right, right? Nada beim! Os amores na mente/ As flores no chao, eh? no? Certissimamente tein razón,*7 Excellency! Well then, we’ll go on talking together in Government House tomorrow, because the play is ended now. I see Minister Benítez coming in with the imperial envoy’s plumed hat. Don’t you know, you knave, that you are not to accept gifts from anyone? Return that featherduster to the person who tried to suborn you with it! This extravagant farce is going to cost you a month’s arrest.
*1 Names of plants of the dye-producing Bixaceae family. Cf. English annatto, bixin, orellin.
*2 Naturally, absolutely true, Excellency! You are going to have the biggest arms shipment in the world! (As El Supremo notes above, the envoy’s language is half Spanish and half Brazilian.)
*3 The man who knows goes straight ahead, doesn’t wait for things to happen./ Love-making in mind, flowers fallen to the floor./ Certainty ahead/ The whole story well in hand. (A Brazilian popular song.)
*4 Right away, right away, for waiting isn’t knowing. (Another verse from the song.)
*5 Lingua (tongue, language) + geral (common, general), Portuguese.
*6 You’re going to ask me.
*7 You’re more than right.
In the same place where Echevarría is sitting on October 12, 1811, witnessing the parade and biting his nails, I seat the third Porteño envoy, Nicolás de Herrera, two years later. A congress of more than a thousand deputies has established the Consulate by acclamation. I occupy Caesar’s seat; Fulgencio Yegros, Pompey’s. My first cousin, ex president of the ex First Junta, is now in second place, behind me.
In Buenos Aires, on the fall of the Triumvirate, a supposed Supreme Power in Formation sends the ill-tempered tomcat of a Herrera to me. He has arrived in Asunción in May. Bad month for Porteños. He has been waiting since then for me to receive him. I have put him up in the Customs warehouse. Most suitable accommodations, this shed for suspect goods smelling of contraband. The emissary cat sits there with eyes that have itchy fingers. He gives vent to his frustration, meanwhile, by sending his government confidential notes heavily embroidered with fancied reasons for misconfidence.*1
He is now seated in the same place once occupied by Echevarría. Forming with him the second person of a single traitorous non-person. A while back, I permitted him to attend the Congress in order to present his pretensions. The answer was no, no, and no, to every last one. I told him that Paraguay has no need of treaties to defend its liberty and maintain fraternity with the other States. These are natural laws and sentiments of its constitution. Two months later he will go off with empty hands. Without a union, without an alliance, without a treaty, with only the pair of new shoes and the poncho with sixty stripes offered him out of public funds to replenish his wardrobe and footgear, completely worn out in his vain comings and goings. It was only with the greatest of difficulties that he managed to save his skin on being attacked by the citizens on account of his arrogant behavior at the congress.
There he is, under heavy guard, witnessing, peeved and aggrieved, the parade that he supposes I have ordered in his honor and by way of apology, without realizing the real ends that it is intended to serve.
My plan being to seat like individuals together, I place the Porteño Herrera next to the Brazilian Correia da Cámara, our well-known Brazilian envoy. In those days we did not yet know him, since it will be just over ten years before he makes his appearance in Paraguay. My favorite diversion is to put two scorpions together in the same bottle. Two of a kind easily turn into a trey. So let’s put another Porteño scorpion in the bottle. This third one, that wood-borer of a Coso, like that crab Herrera and that fox Echevarría, is much given to letter-writing. This third man in, Coso García*2 complains to me of his clients in Buenos Aires. At the same time he flatters me with Porteño shamelessness. I don’t know why all these rascals think they are going to be able to ruin Paraguay with epistolaries. To the devil with them.
Here in this world I put them in the bottle. Three scorpions. Four. However many you like. They intertwine their tails, their pincers, secrete their venefic juices. Shake the bottle well. Expose it to the night air till all the creatures therein cool down altogether. The poison then becomes a benefic potion. To be taken on an empty stomach, at dawn. Homeopathic doses. At the same hour, regularly. Continuity-simultaneity is the best thing to remedy obstructions of all sorts.
Nicolás de Herrera, Juan García Coso, Manoel Correia da Cámara, master diplomat-scorpions with degrees to prove it, serve me as a diuretic. They tried to use me. I used them.
By his behavior Correia shows that he is still brooding, still fearful. He always walks sideways. Shows only one eye, one cheek, one hand, one leg, half a heart, no head. Crab figure. One can’t tell if he’s walking backward or forward. Double heels. The only difference is that the feathers of his hat and the hair all over his body have grown longer. On his ermine cape, in the middle of summer, the black stain of his intentions is spreading across his back, in the form of the map of the empire, also folded down the middle. Only the half that is spreading toward the west is visible. For now, half an inkstain trailing after the bandeiras. We’ll see later on.
Possible interference from Buenos Aires is an obsession with Cámara. This suits my purpose. He suspects that Coso will use underhanded tricks to block my negotiations with the empire. He also fears that the Porteños and the Porteñistas of Asunción will stage an attempt on his life. Last night, during dinner, he told me of the plot that is being hatched against him. He directly accuses the government of Buenos Aires of wanting to murder him. Just look at the letter, Excellency, from Doctor Juan Francisco Seguí to Bonifacio Isaz Calderón that my agents have managed to intercept. The Emperor has appointed as his emissary to the Paraguayan government a hair-brained idiot who is in Montevideo at present, about to depart for Asunción. It is advisable that he be surprised en route and taken to Buenos Aires where he will be received as he deserves, or that he be assassinated somewhere in the middle of the Countryside, if possible by some Peasant who would like to earn himself Six Thousand pesos. Or if not that, a good dose of arsenic in his soup. Is that letter authentic, Correia? Certíssimamente, Excelentísimo! It’s not something made up? Não é! It’s a very real letter! Don’t worry, my dear doomed sir! You are now eating in peace and quiet with me, and I assure you that this soup of well-pounded meat, which we call so’yo, is the healthiest and most nutritive soup in the world. Take some of it, without thinking twice about it. In Paraguay you’re under safe cover. Certíssimamente, Excelencia! Mais me he salvado só por un pelinho!*3
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I decided, then, to combine these festivities into a single one. And since we’re on the subject of carousing, let’s start off with the celebration in Asunción that inaugurated these festive excesses, even before Independence. Let’s go back a little way. My association with crabs has left my notes riddled with atavistic vices.
What is deplorable about all popular fiestas is that they always smack of a circus, a trap. Lion cages ready and waiting. The poor people come running to divert thems
elves, forget their penury, roar at the top of their lungs to banish the cares of their humiliated existence. How? At the spectacle of petty lords on the boards. Anything serves as an excuse. The least little trifle. The fall of an ingrown nail on the toe of the foot of a monarch. The anniversary of the birth of a delphine menarche. The fall of an empire. The rise of another to replace it. The birthday of a favorite. The signing of a treaty. Anything. The people flock to these costly and miserable chimeras. They are taken in by them, their spirits sent skyrocketing all for nothing by fancy fireworks displays. They are robbed of hours of their labor. Money that belongs to the State is wasted. It is as though the miseries that ensnare them can be kept hidden only by arousing collective fanaticism. But what is to be done about it, what is to be done? It is the oldest custom in the world, dating from the Romans. Someday we will go back to living austerely in catacombs like the first Christians. All in cages, the tigers, the emperors, the consuls, the fine gentlemen. Meanwhile let the people live. Kill bad habits little by little.
I the Supreme Page 33