I the Supreme

by Augusto Roa Bastos

  To make matters worse, the night before his departure, with everyone drunk as a piper, his brother had bade him farewell with rather prophetic jokes and pantomimes. Don’t laugh, gentlemen, you especially, Don Juan, my future commercial consul. He who laughs first laughs worst. If an old hen scratches for corn long enough, she’ll find what she wasn’t looking for. Told is foretold.

  Juan Parish was saved by the piccolo he used to play during our evenings together. As the vandals of La Bajada had their way with him, they discovered the double piccolo among his effects. Play the flute!, his costumed captors ordered again and again as they carried him off, tied to the mast of his own ship, to the command post in the town. With my wounds and sores still bleeding, the satyrs disguised as women, curés, military officers forced me to keep playing the piccolo, as they strutted and shimmied round me, making the bridge shake with their darky dances, Juan Robertson recounted, seeking to garner my sympathy. Play the flute! Play the flute!, they kept ordering, striking me with the flat of their swords each time my breath gave out. I was gasping my last, and in desperation I clutched my instrument with my fingers, my fingernails. I had nothing to cling to save that little straw of sound. I assure you, Excellency, that there is nothing sadder than to tootle one’s own requiem out of tune on a damned flute to keep those who are about to kill you in a festive mood!

  Juan Robertson didn’t die. Confounded scoundrel! Artigas’s brigands didn’t kill him. On the contrary, he contrived to get himself paid a good price for the snags he’d hit and the rags he was missing. He managed, with the collusion of the British squadron, to get himself generously indemnified for the attack by the hordes of Artiguistas of which he’d been the victim. With the safe-conduct granted him by the Protector of the Banda Oriental, he reaped fat profits all along the coast, coming out with double or triple the amount that the goods they’d stolen from him had been worth. Shamefully trading on his misfortunes, the Anglican trafficker sold for its weight in gold every drop of blood he had lost in the modest Golgotha at La Bajada. Afterwards he had the nerve to turn up here, despite his having been forbidden ever to set foot on Paraguayan soil again.

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  What I can’t forgive you for, Señor Robertson, is your having basely negotiated an arms sale with Director Alvear in exchange for the blood of Paraguayans! The Porteño blackguard offered me a trade: muskets for men. He offered me 25 rifles per 100 Paraguayans. Four citizens of this free Nation for one shotgun! Infamous merchants! That’s the price they estimate the valor of my compatriots to be worth! And you, to whom I offered more honors and considerations than to any other foreign subject, are the one who brings me this offer. Hawker of human flesh! What did you think, you pirate slave-dealer! I’ll have everyone know that there is not enough gold on earth to pay for as much as the nail of the little finger of the most useless of my fellow citizens!

  Timidly, like a worm cut in two speaking through a crack in the ground, Juan Robertson tried to clear his name: I never had any part in such a negotiation, Excellency! I merely agreed that Director Alvear could send a sealed and signeted letter addressed to Your Excellency in the mail pouch of my boat. Not just a hypocrite but a coward too! Or perhaps you had no idea what was in that infamous letter? I won’t say that I had no idea whatsoever, Excellency. General Alvear had told me a little something regarding his proposal at the fort of Buenos Aires. He told me that he needed to obtain recruits from Paraguay to reinforce the Río de la Plata legions. I immediately informed Director Alvear that you would never accept such an agreement; that it was evident to me that Your Excellency only exchanges trees or maté, tobacco or cowhides for arms and munitions, never human skins! Ah, the Supreme Dictator of Paraguay would not tolerate such a thing under any circumstances whatsoever!, I said to the head of the Porteño government, and roundly refused to serve as a third party in this affair. Yet you agreed to bring the infamous letter in your boat. You don’t bring the letter. No. It’s the mail pouch of your boat that brings it. Clever way out. Discreet alibi. In addition you allowed yourself to be robbed of the arms that I paid you for in advance with a shipment of goods worth a hundred times more. Sire, they robbed me of everything that a man can be robbed of. And more besides. But I am prepared to make complete restitution, in good hard coin, for the shipment that was stolen. Naturally; you will do precisely that, down to the last céntimo, plus punitive damages! But there is more to it than that. In the meantime, Artigas has sent off copies of the purloined letter to the four winds so that everyone in the world will know that my fellow citizens are going to be sold as slaves. I am deeply sorry, Sire. The truth of the matter will soon be reestablished. Don’t you know yet that the truth doesn’t exist and that falsehood and calumny are never effaced? But enough of this vain philosophizing. What I want to know nonetheless is when the arms under embargo are going to be handed over to me. I regret to tell Your Excellency that unfortunately that will not be possible. Kindly explain to me, then, Señor Robertson: what purpose is served by the cannons of the British squadron, which served you quite nicely when it came to getting yourself reimbursed many times over for everything you were robbed of? Why didn’t you insist to the consul of your empire, to your bosom pal, the commandant of those warships, that what belongs to me be returned to me? Doesn’t that fleet back the British protectorate over the Río de la Plata? Is it incapable of preventing acts of piracy from being committed with impunity, acts that have robbed my country of armament necessary for its defense? Arms, Excellency, are considered articles of war, and in such cases the British consul and commander forbear to intervene. That would be to violate the sovereignty and autonomy of States. Your Excellency knows that, and would be just as unwilling to permit it in his case. Don’t bother me with such trifles. I have had more than enough of slippery tricks coated with English phlegm! Hence, in brief, and to put a fine point on all this arrant nonsense, your commandants and consuls cannot assure me of free traffic on the river which, according to the right of peoples and nations, is neither the patrimony nor the exclusive property of any of the bordering states. That is how it is, Excellency. It is outside their powers, I am sorry to say, Sire, but that is how it is. So then, señor slave-trader, when it is a question of the sovereignty of the Protectorate there is sovereignty, and when it’s a question of the sovereignty of a free and sovereign country such as Paraguay there is no sovereignty. A splendid way of protecting the self-determination of peoples! They are protected if they are vassals. They are oppressed and exploited if they are free. It would appear that there is no alternative now other than to place our bet and take our chances with an English or French master and those who come after. I for my part am not willing to tolerate such chicanery by any empire on earth.

  Look here, Robertson, you and your brother have been received generously in this Republic. You have been allowed to engage in commerce on as broad a scale as you pleased. You have trafficked in everything and dealt with a free hand in all manner of contraband, even coca and mulattas.*2

  I choke with indignation. I take out the little pouch containing the Corvisart balm that Bonpland gave me. I inhale it in the form of snuff (it was no time for tisanes!), a goodly number of whiffs, till my entire face and hands take on a greenish phosphorescence. Overawed, Juan takes a step backward. Listen! Your face has disappeared, Excellency! Better than being a barefaced scoundrel like you, you miserable bugger! Not only have you and your brother lived and traded here as you pleased. Many other English merchants did too. When they wanted to leave they did. They took fortunes away with them. You and your brother have made a fabulous fortune here. I have tried, as you know, to initiate direct relations between your nation and this rich country. It has been my desire to name you my commercial representative, my consul, my chargé d’affaires accredited to your Common House. And this is the payment I receive! When I ask for the articles I need, I am told that your authorities cannot free traffic in arms! When it is necessary to take my interes
ts into consideration, I am told that the matériel destined for my Republic is to remain at the mercy of troublemakers and cutthroats, while the British officials scandalously turn a deaf ear to my rightful claims! Allow me to inform you then that I shall no longer allow you, your brother, or any British trader to reside in my territory. I shall no longer allow you to carry on your English rag trade. The words English rag send me into a fit of sneezing. A rheum of revulsion. I inhale more phosphorescent snuff. Clouds of fire-beetles fly in through the windows. I squash them by the handful. I rub my face, my neck, with the guts of these lampyrids. I rub my entire body with this luminous grease. The room is filled with livid lights. My fury burns from the floor to the ceiling. The series of sneezes overturns the funeral urn where I keep snuff from Brazil. A black fog flecked with yellow fills the room. I know this now as I write it. Back then Robertson saw it, electrified by those flashes. As he cowers there in terror amid the shower of sparks, I push along, upside down and right side to, from one wall to another, from one shore to another, turned into a green flame. Clear out and take your miserable rags with you! Ignoble ragpickers’ gladrags! Rags infested with troops of fleas, lice, and other species of insects! We’ve no need in this country for tatters spattered with filth! You and your brother must leave the Republic in twenty-four hours if you don’t want to leave your hides behind once the time limit is up. Allow me to say, Excellency, that we must get our belongings together!…I won’t allow you anything! You don’t have any belongings except the dirty rag of your existence! Get it out of here before my Syracusan ravens pick your Britannic scraps to the bone! Did you hear me? Eh? I beg your pardon, Excellency? Shut up, Robertson! Hold your doormat of a tongue and get packing. You and your brother are banished and expelled. The two of you have exactly 1435 minutes to cast off your moorings and free this city of your pestiferous persons! Did you hear me?

  The impostor backs out of the room, his eyes riveted on the buckles of my shoes, the buckles of my breeches, the buckles of my patience. He comes wriggling back as though he were unable to get free of that strand that has him caught in an invisible web. Pardon, Excellency! Dog-fashion. Dragging himself along the floor yelping, licking the soles of my shoes. Robertson, I’ve told you get out! How long do you think my patience is going to last! Go with God or with the devil! But clear out once and for all! Go and tell the commander of your squadron for me that I dub him a scoundrel! Go and tell your consul for me that I dub him a double-dyed scoundrel! Go and tell that cur of a king of yours and that bitch of a queen that I dub them the most consummate scoundrels this planet has ever given birth to! Tell them for me that my rusty chamber pot is worth more, a very great deal more, than their filthy crown, and I’m not about to trade! And if I don’t say to go tell the honorable members of your Common House for me that I dub them worthless scoundrels and bastards it’s because the one thing I still have respect for is the commons, which like the common outhouse is of and for the people, even in the stinking hole of your empire. Lieutenant, take this green-go-home to the barracks, where he is to be kept under guard with that other green-go-home of a brother of his, till it’s time for them to leave. Tell the district commander of my order so that he can execute it. Ko’ã pytaguá tekaká oñemosê vaêrã jaguaicha!*3 He has exactly 1431 minutes, beginning at this moment, to do so. Like seven powder flashes, the seven timepieces lifted their faces up from the table, showing their needle-sharp hands riveted on the same point and struck the hour in unison. Come on, herd this blackguard off to the guards! Then go wake up my confidential clerk. Bring him here, asleep or dead. I am going to dictate to him, this minute, the order of confiscation and expulsion. Juan Robertson threw himself at my feet, sobbing and pleading, in one last desperate attempt to get me to commute their sentence. At a sign from me, the sublieutenant pulled him up by one arm and pushed and shoved him out of my presence. I stood motionless in the middle of the room until the sound of their footsteps, martial in the one case, dragging in the other, died away. The greenish light of my person projected itself into the darkness through the door. I went out to give the watchword to the sentinel. Patiño arrived, buttoning up his breeches, his eyes covered with spider webs. You’ve been ages getting here, as always, you scoundrel! I was just called, Sire! Go back to sleep. Tomorrow will be the same day as today. I closed the doors and barred them. I went into my chamber and began to write in the white cone of the little candlestick.

  *1 Guaranís. More generally, persons who appear to be Indians.

  *2 One of the Letters is illustrative in this respect. It transcribes verbatim et literatum the one that the Scottish sergeant David Spalding (who had become a deserter at the time of the English invasions and later settled in Corrientes) writes to his friends, the Robertson brothers, asking them for payment of a small “debt.” Sergeant Spalding’s letter is dated around the time of Juan Parish’s misadventures at La Bajada, thus proving in this aspect as well to be firsthand “testimony,” despite its peculiar spelling and obscure syntax. Here are the pertinent paragraphs of the letter, written in English:

  “I deeply regret being ovliged to inform you of the news that I have just received thanks to the fact that Don Agustín, the skipper of Ysasy’s [sic: the reference is to José Tomás Isasi] brig, found your brother in the Río San Juan, some three leagues downstream from the port of Caballú Cuatiá, who had been taken away or brought back by Artigas’s soldiers who attacked him at La Vajada as he was coming upriver bringing arms for El Supremo of Paraguay. On the 25 of this month I intend to head for that place, and if I can be of any serbice to him, I will do everything within my power and limited resources, and find out how matters stand once I get there.

  “I sent you from the coast of the river, through Don Enrique de Arébalo (who goes by the nickname of the Tucu-tucu) a gold chain, a cross idem, four rings idem, from those lists of things to be given as gifts and an equal number of others that are worth less than they weigh but look as though they are worth much more. Kindly tell me whether or not you have received them, since the emboy is not at all to be trusted in such matters. The gold chain is two yards long, and it would be a shame if it were to end up hanging in the wrong place, especially when I am still owed the price it cost me.

  “I hope that as of this date you will have sold my mulatta girl, and now that your brother is in prison and God only knows when he’ll get out, be good enough to send me the price she brought in first-quality yerva suave at your first opportunity. (Robertson, Notes.)

  *3 These gringo shits must be thrown out like dogs!

  In the flicker of the candle an insect is burning: my certainty as to the law of necessary chance. It is only an insect. Has it come in through the cracks? Has it come out of me? A fly, a flesh fly. The first one. The first one? Who knows how many may have already come to spy on my inclination to negotiate an agreement, to surrender unconditionally! In any case, the first one I’ve seen. A black emisery, omissory, emissary of the anomalous animal souls of the night. Very soon now they will begin to invade me. For the moment only one, apparently. The flesh fly insists on burning itself up. It is not able to. It’s not that the flesh fly can’t burn itself to death. It’s that the flame of the stubby candle is unable to consume it. The bad smell of the tallow and the scorched insect fills the pit of my inner chamber. I can’t ventilate it now. I can’t remove the fly that’s getting soaking wet in the flicker of the candle, the way I removed the flies drowned in the inkwell with the point of my lance-pen in time gone by. Memory-pen. I’m the one who’s drowning now. Who’ll fish me out with the point of his pen? Some creeping, crawling, son-of-a-bitching bookshitter, doubtless, on whom I place my curse henceforth. Vade retro! The fly takes on the color of hot ashes. Flutters happily about. Polishes its wings with its feet. Its enormous faceted eyes observe me. Reddish diamond. Iridescent flashes in the blackness. Have you come out of me, you son of a bitch?! The flesh fly shoots one of its polyhedral eyes mounted on springs out at me. I feel in me the
effect of a cannon shot. Vae victis!* The moment has arrived, the instant has passed, the hour, the minute, the fraction of eternity is about to strike in which I cast the iron scepter into the balance weighing the treasure destined to redeem our Nation.

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  Rule over happenstance! Ah madness! Rule out chance. Chance is there spawning in the fire. Hatching the eggs of its immortality unlike any other. Chance emerges intact from the trembling flame. I have tried in vain to reduce it and place it in the service of Absolute Power, weaker than the egg of that fly. You will know it as a fetor, the pen writes-repeats. There must be something hidden at the bottom of everything. Old space, there is no chance. Old time, you are the chance that does not exist. No? Yes! Don’t try to fool me at this late date! Deception is not your business anymore. Not with me at least. The candle smells of what dies and ends. Condemned to live in the heart of a race, I too am tied to the orange tree of executions. Un-usable carrion. Even my own ravens scorn it in disgust. Useless madness. Someone dictates to me: Blow out the candle of being whereby everything has existed. Come on, try. Blow. I blow as hard as I can. The light doesn’t dim in the slightest. The dark ember of the fly simply brightens a little. Very little. Almost nothing. Nothing. Come on! Try again. Impossible. I’m very weak. I’m going to have a go at it another way: by way of supreme weakness; by way of words; by way of the dead end of the written word. Go ahead and do it this time, then, this last time, with the most simple-minded, most idiotic rhetoric possible. Do the exercise as though you really believed in it. The simulation must be perfect. Like the formula for the most efficacious exorcisms. The recipe for incantations, conjurations. Come on! Write. Write as the flesh fly watches you, gleefully making mock of you.