The Enlightened Army

by David Toscana

  LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE IN TRANSLATION SERIES

  THE ENLIGHTENED ARMY

  DAVID TOSCANA

  Translated by David William Foster

  UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS

  Austin

  Original Title: El ejército iluminado

  © 2006, revised edition 2013, David Toscana

  By arrangement with Literarische Agentur Mertin Inh., Nicole Witt e.K. Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

  English translation © 2019 University of Texas Press

  All rights reserved

  Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to:

  Permissions

  University of Texas Press

  P.O. Box 7819

  Austin, TX 78713-7819

  utpress.utexas.edu/rp-form

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Toscana, David, 1961–, author. | Foster, David William, translator.

  Title: The enlightened army / David Toscana ; translated by David William Foster.

  Other titles: El ejército iluminado. English

  Description: Austin : University of Texas Press, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018012649

  ISBN 978-1-4773-1777-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  ISBN 978-1-4773-1778-5 (library e-book)

  ISBN 978-1-4773-1779-2 (nonlibrary e-book)

  Subjects: LCSH: People with disabilities—Fiction. | Anti-Americanism—Fiction. | Mexico—Fiction. | Texas—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PQ7298.3.O78 E5413 2018 | DDC 863/.64dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018012649

  doi:10.7560/317778

  THERE IS A DOCTOR’S OFFICE at 467 Degollado Street. Its façade has been remodeled in such a way that it’s impossible to make out the old house where Ignacio Matus and Fatso Comodoro lived. It’s now painted blue and white and a lighted sign announces treatment for respiratory ailments. In the living room, where so many skirmishes were recounted, where there’d been cigar smoke, games of domino, beer and laughter and silence, you can today find a woman who asks How may I help you? to anyone who walks in. There was a monument erected by Matus’s friends until the remodeling took place. It was a mound of concrete, perhaps meant to emulate Saddle Mountain, crowned by a metallic plate with the legend The Enlightened Army, 1968. Two men pounded away at the mound with picks and axes, reducing it to rubble to make way for three parking spaces. No one was interested in saving the plaque, which was probably melted down in a pile of scrap metal.

  The last car of the train disappears around a curve near the Monterrey station. Although the screeching of the wheels and the clacking of metal can still be heard in the distance, as far as Román and Santiago are concerned things quiet down once the machinist stops blowing his whistle over and over. What to do in such cases? Santiago asks. I don’t know, Román says and scratches his head in a gesture of doubt he thinks that moments like this require, maybe we should wait for the police or an ambulance or the press. There’s a body sliced into three or four pieces lying on the tracks a few feet away. It’s night and colors have turned to gray and black. Impossible to distinguish between the oil the trains spill and blood: the dead man’s skin is leaden; the olive green of his pants brownish gray. Only his boots are as black as in the daylight. What happens if another train comes? Santiago asks. Román twists his lips and arches his eyebrows. I’ve heard that soldiers’ boots come off when they die. That’s a myth, Santiago says, what happens is they get stolen and then someone comes along and sees them barefoot and ends up fabricating a story. They’re both sitting on the ground. What about a grenade? asks Román, throwing a rock in the direction of the nearby avenue. Every so often a car or truck comes by, but none of the drivers notice them. Santiago nods and sits up in a slow process, his legs creaking on him. Things change when a grenade is involved. Your boots, pants, and piss go flying. He picks up the smell of the nearby cigar factory and decides to change the subject because he’s never seen anyone who’s died from a grenade. It smells like tobacco, he says, just as it always does, as though this were any other day.

  A dozen yards beyond the body there’s a white flag made from rough cotton and a broom handle, planted in the ground. Santiago walks over and yanks it out. On his way back he goes by the dead man and counts out five railroad ties. Then he replants it, leaning his weight on the pole. No one can say he didn’t reach the finish line. Román gets to his feet and takes a medal from his pocket. He attained it, he says, there’s no doubting that. He looks at the medal in the moonlight: the round bronze shows two naked men shaking hands, one standing and one sitting on the ground. The other side shows a diffuse image that Román is unable to make out, but he discerns the inscription in a mixture of French and Roman numerals. VIIIth Olympic Games, he reads in a whisper, Paris, 1924. That medal has traveled half the world in a lifetime and finally, forty-four years later, it will hang from the rightful winner. He goes over to the body. For the first time he observes it up close and discovers with relief that it hasn’t been decapitated, that there’s still a good, strong neck to hang the medal from. Nevertheless, the man’s face is lying in the dirt and Román doesn’t want to turn him over, so he pulls the loop hard between the ground and the forehead, nose and mouth. He leaves the medal resting on the severed trunk, taking care the naked bronze men are facing up. It’s an honor for me, in the name of the Mexican people and the international Olympic movement, to award you this medal enshrining your numerous merits in sports, education, and social and military causes, and I order you to wear it with the humility of the vanquished and the glory of a champion, since often greatness is borne by the loser and ignominy by he who comes in first. So be it. He motions to Santiago to stand alongside him. They each raise their hand to their chest and begin to sing the national anthem, knowing that in many places in the country the tricolor flag is waving and that throughout the world the word Mexico is being pronounced in different languages with varied accents. They sing off-key but with more gusto than in long-ago school assemblies. They sing because the man on the tracks, who gave his all for the nation, deserves it. They sing as they imagine a full stadium around them, with tens of thousands of voices in accompaniment. They sing and in the second verse they need to increase the volume because a squad car with red lights and the frantic scream of a siren is approaching at full speed.

  There are three domino tiles lying on the table. A cloud of smoke rises up around the four players; it’s going nowhere, no breeze comes in through the windows. Someone huffs impatiently. Fatso Comodoro looks back and forth between his seven tiles and the three lying on the table. It’s his turn, but he doesn’t make a move, he’s afraid of a wrong play; he’s seen these men play and knows they put a lot of effort into each game, they concentrate, they raise their arms if they win, they spin the orphan tiles on their metallic centers, they anticipate their opponent’s moves, they barely talk because the game is for drinking, for smoking, not for talking about the events of the day or work. It can’t be all that difficult, there are seven tiles and I’ve got to choose one. He likes the white one for its purity, because it’s the easiest to interpret; but Fatso Comodoro knows it’s not a question of taste. The game has a logic, rules, and they’ve got to be respected. He feels better going to the kitchen and bringing some beers, emptying the ashtrays, asking if they want anything; he prefers to sit in a corner and watch, just watch. But one of the men, Mr. Ibáñez, left town and this is a game for four people, Matus told him, you’ve got to learn. Matus spent all Sunday morning explaining the science behind these twenty-eight tiles to him. Never let your opponent see them, don’t even let him imagine them. That’s difficult because Comodoro’s hands are clumsy and several time
s while practicing he knocked a tile over and left it exposed to enemy eyes; which is why he now dries the sweat from his fingers on the leg of his pants. Santiago blows a cloud of smoke toward the center of the table. This isn’t chess we’re playing here, Fatso. Matus raises his hand to silence him, asks for his patience and then turns to Comodoro. Remember how you did it this morning: if there was a three at the end of the row, you matched it with a three, if there was a four, you matched it with a four. You’re not supposed to talk, Román rises from his drowsiness, you’re giving him tips. Damn Ibáñez for deciding to go off to his ranch, he’s telling us to go to hell, Santiago says, what are we going to do now? There ought to be a law against people leaving their friends in the lurch, this was a four-way agreement, and what’s the upshot? Ibáñez is likely sitting right now on a bench with nothing to do, somewhere where everything goes dead right after dinner. Comodoro can’t hear anything, he’s studying the white tile, the Immaculate Mother of God tile and pray for us blessed art thou among all tiles and women and damn the obligations of this game because I want to play the white tile and sometimes you’ve got to do what you want and not what everybody else wants, and maybe with a bit of luck this is the right move to make, the one an expert winner would play. He raises his hand and slowly advances his thumb and forefinger to pick up the chosen tile. Finally, Santiago says, although at this rate we’ll be here until tomorrow. Comodoro places the tile next to the row ending in three with a forceful smack to the table, as he’s seen the men do when they’ve won a game. No one speaks; the vision of the two tiles that don’t match leaves them thunderstruck. Comodoro guesses he’s made a masterful play and now it’s the others’ turn to meditate about the next move as they wipe sweaty hands on their pants. It’s stillborn, Santiago says, all this waiting and it’s stillborn. Comodoro looks at the men’s eyes; they are not directed at the game, but at him and they’re looking him up and down. He would like to take the tile, put it back with the other six and pretend no one saw it, choose again, maybe this time getting it right, with the Immaculate Lady left for a later move; but they saw it, and Matus told him about the secrets they had to keep. Maybe he could just flee, he thinks about fleeing, leaving the men, going far away like Mr. Ibáñez, if only the brave had the right to flee. Matus takes a swipe at the tiles and knocks some of them to the floor. Jerk, he gets up and goes over and yanks Comodoro by his wispy hair, what’s the use of everything we talked about? The ashtray also bites the floor. They’ve got to sweep it up, look for the butt that was still burning. Comodoro tries to say something, he doesn’t like being called a jerk, his teacher told him he shouldn’t take insults from anyone. Now not only are his hands sweating, his forehead is covered in sweat, his neck is wet; it’s hard for him to articulate when he’s angry. He falls to the floor and crawls around until he finds the Immaculate Lady; there she is, next to the leg of a chair. He picks it up and stands up. He tries once again to say what he’s feeling and can barely pronounce the word unfair. Unfair, he repeats, unfair and the tile is a communion wafer that Comodoro raises with both hands.

  Fatso Comodoro walks down Hidalgo Street, holding Matus’s hand. They haven’t spoken since last night, they suppose that the brotherly gesture of one holding the other’s left hand with his right one is more eloquent than any explanation, recrimination, or apology. In any event, Comodoro, to compensate for his dishonor, got even. As usual, he cleaned the house after Santiago and Román left and Matus went to bed; he picked up the empty bottles, swept up the ashes from the floor, and emptied the garbage. When it came time to store the domino tiles in the wooden box, he only put twenty-seven away. He put the Immaculate Lady in his pocket and just now, as he hurries to cross the street, he squeezes it with his free hand. He’s not sure what he’s going to do with it, whether he should throw it away, hide it, or give it away as a gift; he’s only certain he won’t return it. Matus’s step is firm, he’s always in a hurry. Comodoro tries to keep up, his body sways with his short gait, wearing thin his pants between his legs. You’ve got to do exercise, Matus says, or you’ll end up exploding. When I was your age. . . . I’ve already heard that story many times, Comodoro interrupts, but the teacher told us no one’s ever been our age, that our age is something different, another thing we the enlightened share with each other. So don’t go telling me again about what you did when you were young or calling me a jerk like last night. They let go their hands. In the end, holding hands didn’t keep them from speaking. Comodoro looks at the house in front of them; it’s old, with two floors. He thinks about tossing the Immaculate Lady up on the roof so no one can ever find it, but he’s afraid he’ll miss and he’ll see it hit the façade of the house and bounce on the sidewalk. I’m sorry, Matus says, I won’t call you that again. And it might break and that’d be worse than losing it forever, worse even than putting it back in the wooden box with the other twenty-seven. OK, Comodoro says, don’t call me that again, and he puts the tile back in his pocket. A few steps farther along, they’re holding hands again.

  That’s not manly, a voice says behind them, you should have a beautiful girl on your arm. Comodoro turns around and Azucena offers him her hand. I’m running late, Matus says, I think the two of you together can find your own way, and he breaks into almost a sprint.

  He’s not running late, it’s barely seven-thirty, and the school where he teaches is five minutes away. But he has no desire to deal with Comodoro this morning or much less engage in conversation with Azucena. Why does her mother let her go out alone? Doesn’t she consider the risks? Perhaps yes, her mother considers the risks and that’s precisely why she sends her out alone, with a little bit of bad luck she’ll cross the street wrong or run into an open ditch.

  Matus greets the custodian at the entrance and sees him head toward the principal’s office. He walks into his classroom and settles into a chair. The back wall shows an ancient map where you can see an enormous territory north of the Rio Grande as part of Mexico. He bases his most passionate history classes on it, striking his finger against a series of cities: San Antonio, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and he asks his students why do you they think they have Spanish names? And he points to the Monterey Bay and says that place has the same name as our city for the same reason, to honor Don Gaspar de Zúñiga y Acevedo, Count of Monterrey, Viceroy of New Spain, a Spanish, not an English, count, although the gringos dropped one of the r’s because they don’t know how to pronounce the two of them together. Every year the director scolds him for the way he rants on about the subject, and because he applauds the way General Santa Anna finishes off the wretched defenders of the Alamo, some in battle and the rest by slitting their throats, die you dogs, because surrender is no reason to pardon the bums who steal our country; and he narrates with relish how the Mexicans stack the gringo corpses, piling them like firewood and lighting an enormous bonfire where their hair is the first thing to go up in flames; and Matus observes how his students fall into groups, the timorous, the majority, and the enthusiastic, barely three or four. He knows he’s going to have some problems this morning because on Friday he called his students cowards and traitors; you youngsters today are born defeatist, he told them, with your pants down around your feet, incapable of taking up a rifle if it isn’t a toy. One of them, named Arechavaleta, stood up and said that in the United States the streets were not full of potholes and the clothes were better and cheaper and electronic appliances really worked and the government did not steal and they would have been better off not to have set the border at the Rio Grande but farther down, south of Monterrey, and that way we’d be gringos and wages would be paid in dollars and. . . . He stopped because Matus grabbed him by the ear and threw him out of the classroom.

  Now, precisely on that map he can see the first reprisal. Someone has drawn in thick red ink the border that runs through the Rio Grande, with a text that reads: Understand, Matus, this line is where Mexico ends. The good handwriting, the commas in the right place, there’s no doubt in Matus’
s mind that Arechevaleta wrote it. Disillusioned, he props his elbows on the desk. He thought he’d start the day with a quiz, only one question: who does Texas belong to? On the basis of the answers he’d be able to distinguish between the servile and the dreamers, between the fearful and the heroes, or instead, he’d end up finding the answer was the same for all of them.

  Matus hears footsteps. He doesn’t need to look up to know that it’s the principal.

  Santiago and Román finish singing the national anthem and move away from the body. The squad car parks to the side of the avenue and two policemen hurriedly get out, leaving the doors open. They have no trouble finding the deceased, at the point where there’s no moon shining on the rails. They move toward the spot, saying something to each other neither Santiago nor Román can make out. One of the men in uniform lets out a laugh and draws his pistol as though pretending to give the coup de grâce. Now they’re both laughing. Santiago curses the Mexican trains, which creep along like piles of junk, he wishes a Japanese train would appear on the track at that very moment and surprise the men, killing their laughter. One of the two policemen squats down and takes the medal between two fingers. Don’t touch that, Román draws close and immediately regrets his authoritarian tone, he knows it would’ve been better to ask him please. The policeman puts his pistol away and walks toward Román and Santiago. Do you know this man? Román nods with no desire to waste words on a lowly policeman; he would prefer to talk to the press, in front of a microphone, so his voice would be heard from coast to coast. Who was he? the policeman asks. You really don’t recognize him? Santiago says, goading him, letting a few moments go by before continuing: it’s Ignacio Matus, General Ignacio Matus, a native of this city, the defender of our country, the last of the national heroes, the savior of the fatherland.

  The policeman changes his attitude, he’s no longer smiling or looking arrogant, and although the doubt on his face shows he’s never heard of General Matus, he turns to his companion and begins to give orders: don’t touch a thing and call an ambulance to come for the general’s remains, tell them to hurry up because another train might be coming.