Minutes later, after doing his stuff with the chemicals, the photographer hands over the image and collects his five pesos.
You can see Matus in black and white, arms crossed, staring off into space. Anyone looking at him closely will discover, with the help of a magnifying glass, that the hands of the chronometer are stopped at 2:47:50. Matus’s forehead and his sideburns show signs of a whitish substance, clearly the salt of his sweat, which shows he didn’t even wipe his face after the race. His expression is a mixture of sadness and drunkenness. No one else appears in the image, and the effect of solitude is sharpened by all the bottles scattered on the table and the overflowing ashtray. It is, unquestionably, the image of a defeated man.
How do you win a war, Matus? Azucena asks absentmindedly, as she wets her fingers to wipe a spot off Cerillo’s shoes, do you have to kill all of the gringos? Matus brings the mule to a stop; he wasn’t expecting that question that no soldier should ask. He turns around and notes that Azucena and the rest of the troop are staring at him. His impulse is to answer that they should stick to following orders and the rest, triumph or defeat, is extraneous; yet he sees himself as the first to die in the battle and concludes that a good general must prepare his subordinates to carry on with the fight. I think he doesn’t know, Milagro whispers. Matus imagines himself once again in the classroom and searches for the words a teacher would use to answer Azucena’s question. You don’t have to kill everyone, he finally says, you’ve got to distinguish between a war and extermination. We Mexicans have lost innumerable wars and here we still are, ready to lose even more. War is like chess, it’s not necessary to eliminate all the pieces, just the king. His pupils still look doubtful and Matus understands that chess lies outside the enlightened universe. See, Milagro insists, I told you he didn’t know. Conquering a country is like conquering a woman, you don’t have to take control of her whole body, only that exquisite region between her legs; that’s enough to win her mind, her heart, and her favors. Ubaldo stands up in disgust. Don’t give us that stuff about how you can only beat the gringos by whispering cajoleries in their ears, forget the dumb comparisons and tell us how things really are. Comodoro’s face turns red as he looks at Ubaldo; he would never dare to talk that way to a superior. I’m not talking dumb, he says, I was about to tell you that the place between Texas’s legs is called the Alamo and whoever owns the Alamo owns Texas. Matus describes it as an ancient adobe house, something time has brought to ruin, inhabited at one time by friars and that still has a religious aura. We will leave not a single person alive in the Alamo, just as they did more than a hundred years ago when our forefathers finished them all off, even the most cowardly among them, a poor devil who hid shaking under a bed, and who when they found him begged for forgiveness on his knees. But there is no pity for those who steal the fatherland, and the metal entered his flesh and the little gringo screamed and cried and collapsed, writhing. So when we take the Alamo, we’ll have to check carefully under the beds, because that’s where the cowards hide. Comodoro is hardly paying attention, he doesn’t understand Matus’s comparisons and keeps his startled eyes fixed on the space between Azucena’s legs, still with a religious aura.
Come on, Azucena, come on. Comodoro keeps whispering the sentence as he caresses her hair, which barely reflects the moonlight; he knows that if he says it enough times she will begin sleepwalking with her arms stretched out in front of her, and he can give her orders and she will be in his complete power. Ubaldo gets up and approaches some bushes, and Comodoro wonders if his words have reached the wrong person. After losing Ubaldo in the dark, Comodoro hears a weak stream falling on the ground. Comodoro wants to set up camp and sleep next to the liquid but more abundant sound of the river, the cries of the careless as they drown. Life is on this side, war is on the other, and the enlightened ones cut bamboo tubes so they can breathe underwater, their knives drawn in case there are crocodiles or piranhas. Comodoro in the lead, always in the lead. Because the plan was developed long before they dreamed about being soldiers. Their teacher at the institute showed them a book of photographs: there were long fish and flat fish, with lively or sad colors, and they had to raise their hand if they liked the fish or say the color if they recognized it, and all the fish looked better than in the market under ice. The teacher read the information at the bottom of each plate, giving out forgettable facts about what kind of waters each one lives in, its name, and some irrelevant data about its natural enemies or the period when it mates. Only when she came to an image of a mean-faced one with ferocious teeth did the teacher stop reading and speak from memory. The piranha, she said, is the most feared of all fish, it annihilates everything in its path, we know it’s devoured many explorers and Indians who have attempted to cross the river. And although the teacher tried to go on with other pages in the book, everyone’s mind remained fixated on the piranha. You could hear grunts and biting sounds and cries of anguish in the room. Tell my mother I’ve always loved her, Caralampio cried, before he sank into the waters. Azucena said she was safe because she was neither an Indian nor an explorer, and only when Ubaldo opened his arms to simulate enormous jaws chewing on defenseless Cerillo did the teacher declare that the piranha was a small being that attacked by the hundreds and thousands, its bite barely felt like being pinched, and when you got around to asking who pinched me, you were already nothing but bones. They continued to play piranha during recess and pinched each other until Cerillo was shedding copious tears. It was then they discussed what the best strategy was to cross a river and Ubaldo’s won out among the many ideas. They would have to impale Comodoro and make him lead the way; no matter how fast the piranhas were, they would have their work cut out for them with so much fat and flesh that the rest of the people would reach the other side safe and sound. I’m ready for the sacrifice, Comodoro said, but not the impalement. If you’re going to be a sacrifice, you don’t get to choose the method, Milagro said. Azucena, however, was willing to give in. The important part is that Comodoro be stiff and manageable, so if the piranhas come from the left, we can move him to that side, if they come from the right, we shift the pole to that side, and if they attack us head on, Comodoro is a battering ram; what I mean is that it doesn’t matter if we impale or crucify him, and he’s got the right to choose which one. Comodoro stood up and, as he walked away, he managed to say: it makes me happy to know that I will never cross a river with you guys. But now they were on their way, with no way out, to the Rio Grande and his well-being depended on the forgetfulness of his friends.
Come on, Azucena, come on. She opens her eyes. What do you want? Are you awake or hypnotized? What do you want? We’re man and wife, Comodoro says, you’ve got to follow me and do what I say. They hug each other and dance off in a clumsy waltz; she’s humming a song and he’s keeping silent. They’ve quickly distanced themselves from the group. Comodoro takes his shirt off and casts it to one side. He leans aganst the thickest tree he can find and raises his hands. The moon spreads out over the pale smoothness of his chest and stomach. Gratify me, he says quietly, with the manliest voice he’s capable of. Since Azucena doesn’t move, her face blank and her eyes empty, Comodoro raises his voice. Gratify me. Gratify me. She turns around and looks for the warm grass where she’d been resting a moment before. Gratify me, woman, that’s an order. The voices awaken Matus, who says to himself that Comodoro still has a few things to learn.
It’s morning when the three exit the Lontananza drunk. They go over to the offices of the newspaper, on Guerrero Street, and begin to call for the editor, insulting him, damn lazy lout, yelling that they want the results of the marathon, that’s why there’s a transatlantic cable, so we don’t have to wait for ships to arrive with the news. Finally, a journalist who’s about fifty years old comes out in shirtsleeves, a half-smoked cigarette in his right hand. Did the results come in? Román asks. The journalist throws his cigarette on the street. If all people were as impertinent as you are, we’d have to shut down the newspapers, what’s th
e purpose of printing and learning how to write if it’s enough to go out on the balcony to advise the city who’s died, who won the elections, and the details of the murder last night? You don’t want to see me as town crier. Did they come? Santiago raises his voice. The journalist goes inside and comes back out on the balcony a few seconds later. He studies a sheet of paper he’s holding in his hands. There’s no light here, he says and goes back inside, so that when he begins to speak he’s invisible to the drunken men who are craning their necks looking up. Albin Stenroos was the first to come in, with a time of 2:41:22, second place went to an Italian named Romeo Bertini, whose time was 2:47:19. It begins to strike them that the voice of the invisible man is not coming from the open door above them but is coming from the heavens, with a layover in Paris. The three friends hug each other, filled with nervousness and hope. And the third-place winner was a gringo by the name of Clarence DeMar, 2:48:14.
The journalist completes his reading of the news release and returns to the balcony. There he sees the three men yelling and jumping up and down and grabbing each others’ hands in the air. Third place, Santiago says; a bronze medal, Román says, and one of them seizes a gun and shoots into the air. Go for the glory, gentlemen, let the games begin; run until you drop dead, don’t make your country ashamed of you. I’m the flying Finn, Santiago says and begins to run in circles; I’m the Italian, Román adds, the one with the flag without the eagle, and begins racing in circles. Matus finally joins in with equally drunken steps. I’m the Mexican, the long-distance runner from the north, the immortal racer from Monterrey, and there’ll be no gringos in our gold, silver, and bronze party. Long live Italy and may Finland fly. They open their arms and wave them around as they run and no one bats an eye when Román accidently shoots a bullet into a wall. Long live the Latin American hope who plowed through the Olympic course where only locomotives dare to go. The circle begins to close and soon they are colliding with each other and end up on the ground, hugging, laughing, blending their alcoholic breaths. The journalist looks at them fascinated and senses that there’s a great story here, he feels the urge to run to his typewriter and inform his hundreds or thousands of readers that something marvelous has happened that night in Monterrey, but nevertheless he’s got to resign himself to the fact that, except for the three drunks in the street, no one can figure out what the great happening is. His sheet of paper will remain blank, and he will be incapable of finding the words, true or false or prudent or excessive, to turn the story into a news item worthy of being read in the next edition.
Now we’ve got to decide who’s going to carry the Mexican flag during combat, the greatest privilege among living soldiers, as I don’t need to say that the supreme honor is that of ending up inanimate in the middle of a battle, though not without having taken a fistful of the enemy with you. And to die carrying the flag? Azucena asks. There’s nothing higher in the scale of honor, especially if the bullet that pierces your body first tears through the national standard: dying rigid and gripping the flag so that no enemy dares to touch it, being at the same time a docile and yielding cadaver that allows a fellow soldier to recover the patriotic ensign and to take over carrying it, because the battle has not concluded while the green, white, and red continues to wave in the wind, does not end as long as the eagle goes on devouring the serpent, because in the end war is not a matter of statistics showing who’s killed more of the enemy, but who’s left standing, face forward without running away. I deserve the flag, Comodoro says, because I was the first soldier to enlist, because that’s how the Immaculate One has decided it should be. It should be mine, Milagro comes back, because I’m a miracle. Ubaldo thinks the same of himself, although he can’t find an argument to support his cause. I’ll decide later, Matus says, I’ll be observing everyone’s conduct and I will evaluate your merits with the greatest impartiality, I just warn you that our flagbearer will not be like those of other armies, which because of the number of soldiers allow themselves the luxury of having a man with nothing else in his hands but the flagpole; no, sir, our flagbearer must also carry a rifle, a sword, a knife, and fists, which is why he’ll have to carry the flag over his shoulders like a superhero’s cape. The desire to bear the flag increases with these words. And if you’re lucky everyone will have the honor, because you will all be assigned a number from one to five, which means that if the first flagbearer dies, number two will yank the flag from him and carry it; this is why it is important not to tie a blind knot or a hangman’s knot, but rather one with a loose end that allows you to easily undo it from around the neck of a dead body. That’s no problem, Azucena says, I brought a needle and thread, I can tie an elastic band at the end of the flag so it’ll slip easily on and off, I only need to know if the elastic band should be green or red. Or you could make a slit in the middle, Milagro says, and we can use it like a poncho. That would be a sacrilege, the flag should not be slit by its own children. The idea of the elastic band is good, but impractical, because the road we’re on has no sewing notions stores on this side of the river, and on the other side we can’t go into any store, not until after we are victorious, when we undertake the sacking. Comodoro brought various pairs of underwear, Milagro says, we can cut up one of them. Four heads nod in agreement, one head shakes no, and Cerillo’s doesn’t move. Okay, then it’s all decided. Decided by whom? Comodoro asks without anyone paying any attention to him. Ubaldo is certain he’ll be chosen and, while he’s not enthusiastic about a size 42 elastic band around his neck, he can see himself high on a hillside, the wind tossing his hair and making the tricolor flap like a kite, a symbol of the unity of our fathers and our brothers; the enemy advances to the right and to the left, but he’s unfazed, harkening to the whistling of the projectiles that will never dare touch him.
Mr. Clarence DeMar, Matus writes, incapable of beginning with the word Dear or Esteemed, I hope you are able to read Spanish, as I do not know how to write in your language. I am sending you these lines to clarify a mistake. On July 13 of this year, it was not 84 runners who participated in the Olympic marathon, as the organizers have claimed and the media have repeated; there were 85, since the gunshot in Paris also served for the undersigned to set his legs flying in the city of Monterrey and pursue the same distance as you others did. The attached photograph was taken that same day, and as you can observe, the chronometer stopped at 2:47:50, that is, 24 seconds before your arrival. By contrast to other sports, full of tricks, low blows, and trip ups, by contrast to those that allow for errors or ill will on the part of the judges, ours is pure and gentlemanly. The fact that my government had no interest in paying for my ticket to Paris does not render invalid the recognition due me, since I beat you out in speed, although you may have defeated me in dollars. By the same token I request that you send the bronze medal to the address I give below. With no further reason to extend this letter, I send my best wishes and look forward to hearing from you. Sincerely, Ignacio Matus, long-distance runner, Olympic medalist, 467 South Degollado St., Monterrey, Nuevo León, México.
Although he was unable to find Clarence DeMar’s address, they were able to give him at the gym of the Merchants Club that of the organizers of the Boston Marathon. They will certainly get it to him, the person who ran the sports club told him, Mr. DeMar is almost the owner of that race.
Matus affixes more postage than necessary to the envelope and hands it to the clerk at the post office. How long will it take to get there? he asks. Two weeks, more or less, the man answers without even looking at the address.
A month later, Matus begins keeping an eye out for the postman. Sometimes he sees him walk on by, other times he hears his whistle. The man brings invitations, receipts, or cards, nothing with the solidity of bronze.
In every army it’s good for there to be an artist among the soldiers. As a general I can write my military reports, these only serve to give an account of the courage or the cowardice of my people, to provide information about the statistics of dead and wounded, or piece
s of artillery that have been lost or taken; one says something about the strategy pursued in battle and whether some territory has been seized, attempting to exaggerate its importance even if it’s just a settlement with three adobe houses. It’s considered bad taste in a military report to speak of the show of pain by the wounded, the grotesque position of the bodies, the gallant look of the mortarman at the very instant he activates his cannon, the precise manner in which a flag unfurls in the wind and smoke. No, Ubaldo, that all belongs to your art, to line and color and if it’s called art it’s because you have to forget reality a bit: you don’t have to draw Comodoro as fat as he is, nor always wearing the same polyester pants, nor his reddened cheeks each time he exerts himself, even less with those damned rubber boots, because that’s not how heroes are. They require a fine head of hair and broad sideburns, a body that’s both graceful and steely, like a dancer who’s not a homosexual. I know all that, Ubaldo says, say no more because I’m the artist here, and I already have an idea of how I’m going to represent each one of you, including my own self-portrait, which will be titled Ubaldo Contemplating the Dead from a Window at the Alamo. I will be leaning against the frame, resting on my shoulder; there’s the smoke outside of the recent ceasefire and there are fourteen bodies in my field of vision. My hands are in my pockets and the cuffs of my jacket are large and red. My expression reveals triumph but not happiness, because Comodoro’s among the fourteen dead. Matus pats him on the back, raises his head and makes out a succession of hills and no mountains, which means they are now a very long way from Monterrey. Obispado Hill and Saddle Mountain will be absent from your engraving, but the Alamo and the plains will be there, and please no gringo flag. Don’t worry, Matus, my art is in good taste, because there’ll only be one Mexican among the fourteen dead, and although there will be an enemy flag it’s because in the background you can make out a goat chewing on it. I’ll paint Azucena in another picture, the maja of the Alamo, lying naked on the divan, among purple pillows; Cerillo will be in another one wearing no shoes, floating white and winged over the field of death; it’s difficult to paint Milagro because he can’t stand still, so I’ll do a miniature of him and that’ll have to do. Each one will have his painting, Matus, you included. Could you make me look younger? Of course, you’re giving the orders. Can you make my hair black and put a bronze medal around my neck?
The Enlightened Army Page 9