The Enlightened Army

by David Toscana

  Wake up, soldiers. It’s time to go. Comodoro opens one eye and sees there’s no light coming in through the window. Darkness is no time to be waking up or going anywhere, darkness is only for dying in your sleep if you’re an old person, and I’m still quite a way from that. He rolls over on the mattress and falls back asleep. Ubaldo leaps from the bed and asks Matus if he wants him to prod the others, although he’s seen that the troop always wakes up to a bugle played outside the barracks, on a hillside where you can barely make out the silhouette of the bugler. We haven’t got a bugle or a drum or a tambourine either, so go shout in their ears, shake them and pull their feet; in ten minutes I want them in the dining room because their breakfast is going to get cold.

  Ubaldo does a good job, because before the ten minutes are up they’re all seated around the table, properly dressed, except for Comodoro, who out of habit shows up wearing only his underwear. He realizes his mistake when Azucena doesn’t touch her food and sits there staring at him. Ok, he says, but don’t let anyone touch my food. He goes back to the bedroom and finds his clothes scattered all over the floor. He had undressed in a hurry to get the best bed, a tall one with a thick mattress, a wooden headboard, and a wool cover. His efforts proved fruitless, because when he was all comfortable and wrapped up in the sheets, his companions insisted that that was Cerillo’s bed; the others could make do with thin mattresses they had arranged on the floor and Azucena could use the sofa in the front room. Comodoro reluctantly took one of the thin mattresses and there, before the light was turned out, with his face even with the floor, he managed to see under the bed a pair of black rubber boots. He didn’t go to sleep right away, praying that they were his size. He saw himself running across all the battlefields in the world, squeaking with each synthetic step, bringing down soldiers whether they were armed with a gun, a sword, or a scimitar. Matus and Azucena had managed to get Cerillo into his yellow cotton pajamas, and Azucena softly sang him a song until she was sure he was fast asleep.

  Now Comodoro dresses hurriedly, because he knows that it’s risky to leave a plate of ham and eggs near his companions; someone could empty a saltshaker on them or spit on them or, even worse, eat them up. Gray socks, a blue shirt, and brown pants pulled tight with the belt, with a heavy buckle riding somewhere between his belly button and his breasts. When it comes time to put his shoes on, he reaches his hand under the bed and pulls the boots out: shiny rubber on the outside and lined on the inside with a white gauze, and with an outline of imitation stitching. Comodoro crosses himself and sticks his feet in. They’re too big; nothing that can’t be solved with three layers of socks. He goes over to the mirror and admires how much he looks like a stable groom; he’s convinced that these boots that reach up to his knees have made him a different man, worthy of crossing his arms and inducing silence in everyone because he’s probably got something to say. Ladies and gentlemen, Comodoro would say with a deep voice, and he would start walking around in circles so his audience could admire the elegance of his footsteps, the manliness of his stride. Ladies and gentlemen, Comodoro says, and crosses his arms in front of the mirror and he has to fall silent, just like his audience, because expectancy is precious and words are worthless.

  He returns to the table and wolfs down his breakfast because the dining room is empty and you can hear the noise coming from outside and the cry of let’s go. When he gets outside he can see his friends on a cart. Matus strikes the mule with his whip and the mule begins to walk. Comorodo clumsily runs over to them, his face red and a piece of ham caught between his teeth; he grabs Azucena’s and Ubaldo’s hands, and they help him up into the conveyance. He collapses next to Cerillo, next to the schoolbags and various rifles wrapped in wool blankets. He rests his head on a sack of fruit and provisions. The squeak of the wheels diminishes with each rotation until it disappears completely. Comodoro assumes that if it weren’t for his rubber boots, he’d never have made it into the cart. I thought we were going by car, he says when he catches his breath, or by bus or train, armies travel by freight train. Ubaldo nods without saying a word, and even though the sun’s just come out, Comodoro can see the anger and deception in his face.

  There are blank pieces of paper and a ballpoint pen in Comodoro’s schoolbag because he wants to ask Azucena to write him a letter, since no soldier should go to the front without letters from his girl; he’s also got four pairs of socks and five pairs of underpants, which if you count the ones he’s wearing come to seven and six, respectively, since he’s put on three pairs of socks to make his boots fit tight. Comodoro’s schoolbag is not military green, nor does it have pretend leaves to provide camouflage in the forest, nor pretend sand to blend in with the desert; it’s made of thick leather dyed blue, with a large compartment meant for notebooks and textbooks, and two external pouches in which you can store pens, pencils, erasers, a compass, a protractor, and chewing gum. A label hanging from one end says O’Brien Fine Schoolbags, Olympic model, made in Mexico, one hundred percent cowhide. Since he has no textbooks, Comodoro’s carrying the box of green gelatin and the two cucumbers; he knows that gelatin provides energy and the cucumbers can be eaten as a substitute for water when crossing the desert, although he’d like to hang on to one of them for the moment of his death. When the Immaculate One is not to be found in one of his pants pockets, she’s traveling comfortably in the pouch on the right, because Comodoro carries his money in the one on the left, a few bills and coins he saved up, including a commemorative coin from the Olympics, worth twenty-five pesos. He’s got it just in case of an emergency, because he has no intention of spending it; he’s become fond of the museum Indian stamped on it, dancing over five hoops with a round object in his hand that could well be a grenade. If the bullet that’s going to kill him doesn’t do so instantly, he will have time to take out Azucena’s letter and recite an amorous verse and then close his fist over the piece of paper and inform the world that, no matter how you die, it’s always from a broken heart. Then he will bite into the cucumber. Rest in peace, Comodoro, your widow will remember you, your widow will collect your belongings consisting of some underwear, rubber boots, some spending money, and a coin she should hold onto as a keepsake.

  Comodoro has a few more things in his schoolbag. Before leaving for the institute that morning he went through the house taking everything he thought might be useful. A box of matches to set a field of sorghum on fire or to heat a pot of food in the campground; some aftershave lotion, although now he doesn’t know why he thought that might be useful; a knife, fork, and spoon; a pack of fifty napkins; and a bar of soap. Finally, to hide the contents just in case someone scrounges around among his belongings, he placed an open book on top like a double-pitched roof, a book whose cover shows a chicken with a crown and scepter. He’d stolen it the afternoon before from the institute’s bookshelf and, to judge by the illustration, it contains a story they’d read a month before and that Cerillo had liked very much.

  Azucena’s schoolbag is pink with the image of a blonde girl ice-skating. It has a handle to carry it by hand and a strap to hang it from your back. It contains a fine-tip pen, a box of crayons, and a loaf of bread. It didn’t occur to Azuena to pack at least one change of clothes, not even underwear. But she did put in a needle and thread just in case something got torn. She included a doll that is rigid except for her synthetic hair and the way she closes her eyes when you lay her down, but a snarky comment from Comodoro made her leave the doll behind at the institute, on the shelf of the classroom. She misses the doll and it makes her mad to think someone else has got her now. It’s impossible to suppose that some classmate hasn’t stolen her. She’s got a pencil sharpener, two pencils, and a ballpoint pen that clicks. She’s got a stenographer’s notebook that has only two pages with writing: the first says horse, dog, cat, elephant; the second, in green ink, says Comodoro is handsome, handsome is what Comodoro is, he’s handsome, that Comodoro, not a lot, not so much, not at all. For the day of the battle, Azucena grabbed some of her mothe
r’s makeup. If death comes to her, she wants to look pretty lying there on the ground or on the floor of the fortification, her lips good and red, with long false eyelashes, her face well-powdered to avoid unwanted shiny spots in the photographs, her cheeks rouged so she won’t look like a cadaver, although she couldn’t be sure of this, since an imbecile, thinking she was still alive, might administer a coup de grâce that would only serve to deprive her of any semblance of beauty. She also is carrying some lily-scented perfume, so she will be the only one among the dead not smelling of carrion. She still needs to have Matus sign a declaration. In it she will request that the enemy, no matter how attractive she looks, not cart her off as a trophy, but please send her back to her country.

  Milagro is carrying nothing worthy of mention in his schoolbag, just everyday stuff, including the skin of a banana he ate before Matus came for them.

  Cerillo is used to taking a woven bag to the institute, one that is almost feminine, which hangs from his shoulder by a thick wool rope and fastens with a yellow button the size of a silver dollar. He didn’t put anything in, his mother took care of that. He’s carrying two letters addressed to Matus; one that says he should open it as soon as possible, the other that he should read right before they enter into battle. Matus won’t pay any attention to the second order and will open it along the way, whenever he chooses to. Cerillo has a purple cushion and a small blanket, a book of prayers for children, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a comb and hair cream, a change of clothes identical to what he’s wearing though perhaps a little whiter, a pair of yellow pajamas, underwear, white cream for his shoes, a bottle of mint-flavored mouthwash, cologne, a roll of toilet paper, a pair of nail clippers, baby talcum, and baby lotion. The only sign that his mother was sending him off to war is a roll of bandages.

  Only Ubaldo seems to have fully realized his mission when he went to pack his schoolbag the morning they left. He put in three knives for slicing meat, two knitting needles, a corkscrew, a slingshot, binoculars, and a pound packet of tacks, most of them rusty. He dreams of the moment when he’s being pursued by a horde of northern barbarians; he will toss the tacks in their path and listen to their shouts as they each jump around on one foot. He also included a bilingual dictionary, seeing how it might be necessary to make himself understood by the enemy, where he’d underlined words to make them easy to find, words like surrender, execution, prisoner, truce, and amnesty.

  Although to be fair, one must make clear that Caralampio was also aware of his mission. Besides a two-pound bag of rat poison, he is carrying a pistol, which he fired into the air in the midst of the uproar produced at the institute when they finally discovered the absence of five of the enlightened ones. That’s why the first thought of the people was that Caralampio had shot them, and they looked for the bodies in the bathrooms, in the dispensary, and on the roof. The second thing they thought, once they got over the fright of the gunshot, was that Caralampio had threatened to kill his comrades, which is why the five of them had fled the institute. So there’s no reason for alarm, it will only be a question of minutes before we can find them a few blocks from here.

  Matus examines his five soldiers; he’s no longer bothered by having a woman in his ranks, he’s now concerned about how Cerillo looks, dressed all in white, wearing short pants, socks that come up just to his knees, a lace shirt with a ruffle around the neck, and a clear blue tie. Patent leather shoes. Dressed for a nineteenth-century piñata party or for immediate burial. I could shoot you in the head right now, Matus says, put the barrel of the gun to the back of your neck and tell you to say a Bless Me, O Lord and that would be the end of it: the bullet enters and exits with no mess, and I send you, a stiff, back to your mother with a note explaining how you were the bravest of my men, women, and children; I could leave you under the shade of a tree and we would all pile into the cart and I would poke the mule to get it going; night will fall there and you’d be standing still, all clean and white under the moon because it’d be a shame to take you into war where you’d get your clothes dirty; I could carry you over and set you down on the side of the road and before you’d know it a woman would come along and cover you in kisses and say this is the child I always wanted to have and she’d put you in her car and you would grow up in the bosom of an aristocratic family worthy of your lace blouse, have tea and cookies right on the dot, the kind that crumble to dust when you bite into them, and be careful the child doesn’t get too much sun because we don’t want him looking like an Indian. I can imagine a lot of things but I can’t imagine you on a battlefield with bombs coming down and kicking up mud, because even Azucena looks like more of a man than you do; she fires a gun and you sing a Christmas carol like a Vienna boy, she can wield a dagger and you put a blindfold on and turn around three times before pinning the tail on the donkey, she bleeds and you drool. What kind of hero does your mother want? A paladin who endorses some brand of detergent? No, Cerillo, I want to see you dressed different: in a way that inspires fear or respect in your opponent. Is he always dressed so fancy? Matus asks the others. No, Ubaldo says, he came this time dressed for a party, and maybe that’s fine, in accord with how he sees the war; the harmony would be broken if we put a rifle in his hands, but if we give him a nuclear warhead he would be the living image of the seraph of death. Let’s see if you brought any other clothes, Matus says as he rummages around in his schoolbag. He makes a face when he finds another identical suit of clothes and a whole hygiene and beauty collection. He takes out the two letters and sees that they’re addressed to him, the Honorable General Matus. He puts the one he’s supposed to open before the battle in his pocket, and tears open the other envelope.

  Matus leaves the railroad to Saltillo behind and takes a righthand turn, following the tracks to Piedras Negras. He knows he still has five kilometers and three hundred meters to go and if he wants to have the chance to win he needs to reach this point within two hours. His right shoe has been bothering him ever since he reached Villa de García, his laces are loose and the rubbing of the leather against his threadbare sock has produced a bleeding wound on his ankle. By his calculation he concludes that adjusting his shoe will cost him twenty seconds; he can’t afford this luxury with Clarence DeMar breathing down his neck. Twenty seconds are a hundred meters or even more because those incidents serve to make the enemy pick up speed, leaving Matus frustrated as well as exhausted. Let my feet bleed, my toenails fall out, blisters and callouses and bruises appear, let my body complain all it wants to because I’m not going to listen, so don’t go claiming victory, Clarence, I’m right here beside you, one step after another until you collapse.

  How are we doing for time? he gasps out. Ramón checks the hands and spurs his horse to catch up with Matus. Two hours and three minutes. Matus receives the notice nervously. Three minutes over budget, that means Clarence DeMar’s back has diminished, almost can’t be made out because of the distance, he is very certain of raising his hands in victory. In addition to everything else, Clarence is enjoying the Paris breeze that comes off the river and rustles the thick vegetation. It’s after five o’clock over there and the summer sun will be beating down. It’s only a little past ten o’clock in the morning over here, the sun’s not beating down yet, and nevertheless he’s sweating freely even though there’s already a patch of salt on his skin. Matus speeds up and his breathing becomes a sob; he feels like a board, his hands are clenched and his arms move with wooden clumsiness. The wind is blowing and swirling the dust being kicked up by Clarence DeMar, the flying Finns and who knows how many other runners who didn’t waste three minutes on something insignificant; the Chilean Manuel Plaza is undoubtedly among the group because the newspapers claimed he had a chance to win a medal and called him the Latin American hope. Although Matus pushes himself to the limit, it’s obvious to Santiago and Román that his speed has diminished; they both think their friend is going to collapse with each stride. Santiago brings his horse up alongside and pours water from the jar on Matus’s head. Are you
going to allow a damn gringo to win? The water flows fresh and salty and irritates his eyes. The French girls along the track no longer are clapping, they got tired of doing it after the first runners, the ones from the civilized countries; they watch Matus silently, compassionately, because his useless efforts inspire pity. He’s a Mexican, one says, and another makes the comment that Mexicans smell bad.

  The minutes go by, perhaps twenty minutes, perhaps a half hour or more. Matus is thirsty: his mouth has become gummy, unable to spit. The discomfort through his whole body is so much, he’s so upset, that he’d willingly confess to a crime. Yes, I killed him; please don’t make me run anymore. Yet he continues on and imagines the Colombes Stadium, he’s certain he can see it there where the train track curves to go around a hill, crosses over a bridge spanning a nameless and waterless river. He still has to do a lap around the track. There are photographers and a judge who will tell him how important it is to compete, that it’s best to show determination until crossing the finish line and if not the judge will send two Samaritans to help him and in the process give them a good reason to disqualify him, but don’t worry, Mr. Matus, we’ll give you for your effort a diploma signed by Baron de Coubertin himself, many are called and only one is the winner. Matus stumbles on one of the ties. It’s hard for him to regain his rhythm, he’s not sure he can hang on. The torture continues and he has got to confess. I killed him, he says, panting, I killed him to steal his high-precision Swiss watch.