Azucena will never talk to Matus again, she has no intention of revealing to him Comodoro’s words because she was the one to see him fall at the Alamo, she saw him cry in pain, she saw the blood staining his shirt; she knows that her husband will not leave her a widow out of anger over their defeat, for not having brought them back to a place where they assemble twenty-four-piece puzzles and on Fridays get to take a piece of bread from the basket; she knows full well that her husband died from a bullet wound, which kills, equally, a national hero or a drunken troublemaker.
There’s a complaint dated October 15, 1968, in the files of the Judicial Police of Nuevo León. In it, Mr. Luis Evaristo Dávila Sánchez reports that his ranch house, located in the area of the El Perico district, town of Anáhuac, was vandalized by unknown individuals. The damage done to the building included multiple bullet holes that impacted the front of the house, broke glass, and shattered the wooden doors and windows; one of the interior walls also had a drawing of an adulterated Mexican flag with an imperial chick instead of an eagle, which, as he understands, is a federal crime.
It’s obvious that the complaint went nowhere, since the major part of the damage was caused by the Mexican army itself. One can suppose that Dávila Sánchez made it under the advice of a lawyer: that way you wash your hands of any responsibility, you explain that you did not turn your property over to those rebels.
The document, nevertheless, is useful for placing the enlightened ones, who were still some forty kilometers from the border. In this case, the river they crossed must have been the Camarón Creek, which is now dry most of the year.
In the account of the damage, Dávila Sánchez does not mention the bed reduced to ashes.
Ever since Matus found out about Comodoro’s death he imagined his burial in a gray and rainy setting, not a drizzle but a full downpour with thunder and lightning that muffled the crying and the praying; nevertheless, the sky is blue and the sun beats down without pity, as if the city had not lost the most valiant of its sons. Matus and Román go in front of the coffin; Santiago and an employee of the funeral home in back, because Ibáñez refuses to take part. Comodoro gives his life for his country and he doesn’t even earn the gratitude of four pairs of arms to bear him. So how can Cerillo’s mother expect a statue for her son? Just like the others she will wait in vain for a brief paragraph or even two lines in chapter 8 of the history of Mexico textbook. A portrait of the five enlightened ones next to that of the boy soldiers of the Mexican-American War. Tell me, teacher, who was Fatso Comodoro? Who were Cerillo, Ubaldo, and that individual named Milagro? Matus imagines himself once again in school, now with receptive students who admire him unstintingly, without complaining to their mothers. And he devotes special attention to teaching them about the sacrifice of Fatso Comodoro, who kept on shooting until the rifle melted in his hands; and he spins out the legend of Cerillo, and says that where he fell there is a walnut tree as solid as a rock; that woodsmen have destroyed more than one ax attempting to fell it, until, vanquished, they decided to build an altar around the roots; and before he speaks of the other soldiers, a student interrupts him: teacher, who was Azucena? Don’t tell me that our national history includes another woman and not just Doña Josefa? And Matus, who now signs his name as General Matus, knows that it’s time to give Azucena her place of privilege, the first page of an episode dedicated to women. Doña Josefa is in history because it’s crucial to make a place for women, even though in the end she was nothing more than a meddlesome old lady who ended up doing nothing, and only God knows if it was her inclination to gossip that condemned the fathers of the country. For that reason she will be left out, we don’t need her anymore, just like we don’t need Margarita Maza de Juárez, another useless woman who only represents the white woman defiled by the Indian. Now Azucena can be the one to fill these fundamental pages so that no one can say that history is only made by men, and it’s Azucena’s profile we will see on the five-cent coin.
I can’t go any farther, Román says, and they look around for a tomb to set the coffin down on. I’ve heard that the dead weigh less than the living, but Comodoro contradicts the law. I’m sure it’s because of the lead he’s still carrying inside him, Santiago says. I can ask for help, the employee of the funeral home says, who acts like he’s in a hurry to get back to the funeral home. Please, Román says, my back is breaking. Matus look reprovingly at his friends. What would be normal would be a procession of hundreds or thousands of mourners taking one-minute turns as honor guards, and hundreds of words of admiration recited by friends, politicians, and union leaders, with a sepulchre on which you cannot cast any dirt because it’s filled with flowers; what would be normal would be to not be in this cemetery in Monterrey, but in the capital, in the rotunda of illustrious men. But Matus is not interested in lamentations, the mere fact of finding himself resting on this unknown grave is a triumph, because after an extended exchange of words with Captain Argüelles he was able to save Fatso Comodoro from the unmarked common grave they had set aside for him at the military base. He never thought he’d have to debase himself in this fashion; Matus spoke softly, he promised the captain that everything would be discreet, with no announcement in the newspapers nor invitations over the telephone; he lowered his head every time he said please, there’ll only be the four of us needed to carry the coffin. Captain Argüelles pretended to think it over, because Matus knew that the decisions were made by a superior whose face he never saw. I’ll give you an answer later, he said, and later the answer was affirmative. All right, the captain agreed, but we’ll be keeping an eye on you. That’s why when the employee of the funeral home tells him that he found two guys to help them, that it would only take a minute because they were praying for their deceased mother, Matus knows that they’re two soldiers sent from the military base to ensure the discreetness of the burial. Talk about the soul of the departed, Captain Argüelles said, and avoid patriotic speeches.
The two guys arrive and they take the coffin by the front, the heaviest part; Matus and the employee take the other end and start the procession. Just so they won’t feel useless, Santiago and Román steal fresh flowers from some of the niches.
When they reach Comodoro’s grave, two gravediggers are waiting for them. They have removed the cover and unroll a pair of leather straps that will be used to lower the deceased; even though they’re dressed like workers, Matus nevertheless distrusts them and thinks that they’re two disguised soldiers. It was a pleasure to be of assistance, one of the two guys says, if you need anything else, we will be saying a few more prayers at my mother’s grave. Matus gives them a cynical smile and only because he’s not completely certain, out of the remote possibility that they might really be visiting their mother’s grave, he refrains from spitting in their faces. He wishes he had questioned the funeral home’s procedures; perhaps he could have requested that the burial be later, at dusk, so that the pale light of the moon could have produced the effect of old historic photographs, something that could dignify such a charmless event, since the present never accords either substance or grandeur. The present seems to him simple and banal. In one of those presents, the teacher at the institute scolds Comodoro because he’s throwing crumbs, or Matus scolds him because he doesn’t put the tile down just right. And when Comodoro becomes part of the past, tile and bread are of no concern; what’s important is the bullet in Comodoro’s body and his faded breath because, yes, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, this warrior wanted to ennoble the fatherland, he dreamed that he was ennobling it. The present minimizes, since a man does not go forth to explore the world because his wife asks for money for household expenses; the young do not sign up for the army because they have a test in geography tomorrow; history is not taught because it is worthless for adding and subtracting; a wife doesn’t do what in any event she would never do because she’s got to fetch the vegetables. The demands of the present have nothing to do with history, Matus tells himself, and Fatso Comodoro is the history of Mexico
in four volumes, from the fall of Tenochtitlán to the present.
Leave me alone, Matus requests, and he kneels down at the edge of the grave. It wasn’t in vain, Comodoro, the Alamo is ours, Texas speaks Spanish and the gringos are still running and hiding, trembling under the wooden beds. The fatherland salutes you, Comodoro, Mexico sleeps soundly today, safe from vultures. Blessed be you, soldier. He gets up and joins his friends. He doesn’t stay to see the workers set the cover of the tomb in place. Rest in peace, Fatso Comodoro, young master of Condestable, invincible bean; rest in peace with your eyes firmly shut against the eternal darkness because we didn’t have a glass cover.
Dear Señor Matus, perhaps you know that my husband died ten years ago, or perhaps you did not get this news in your barbarian country. Although we never answered your letters, you were always in our minds, more than we would have liked, since after 1924, every time Clarence ran the Boston Marathon he was competing against you. He used to tell me that he not only needed to win against all the participants, but against Señor Matus as well. Sometimes he called you by name, sometimes he referred to you as the Mexican or the runner from Monterrey. Clarence was a runner his whole life, people called him Mr. Marathon, and he won seven times in Boston, where the course is more demanding than the one in Paris; there’s a steep incline at the end known as Heartbreak Hill, and I assure you you wouldn’t endure it. History says that no Mexican has ever won in Boston and I know that none will.
I’m telling you this because, no matter what you have accomplished in your life, you never did as much as my beloved Clarence.
He ran his last marathon in 1954, at the age of seventy-five; then he got sick, a cancer that filled his insides with worms.
One night, prostrate in bed, he told me: if the Olympics are held someday in Mexico, send Señor Matus my medal. I never knew if he was joking or if he was delirious; there was no time to find out because he died the next day. So, I’m obliged to comply with my husband’s last wish.
Enjoy the medal, enjoy your false triumph, enjoy the empty place in my display case; tell your friends, if you have any, or your wife, if somebody ever loved you, to call the newspapers, let’s see if they’re interested in the comic book story of a washed-up man, because I haven’t the shred of a doubt: if you’re alive, you must be a miserable old man, unable to cross a finish line one last time with your arms in the air. Here you are, Señor Matus, enjoy your third-place medal, raise your cup of cheap liquor.
Affectionately, Margaret DeMar
Aren’t you going to open the box? Of course I’m going to open it, Matus says. Mrs. DeMar’s ironic words are unimportant; this medal is mine, it always has been. He slowly folds the letter and puts it back in the envelope. He stares at the box on the table, the leather exterior, the golden clasp, and asks himself if the original medal is within or if Clarence’s wife, in her resentment, has decided perhaps to send him a replica, or not even a replica but a medal she got at some trophy store, after all the stupid Mexican won’t catch on and for him all that glitters is bronze, and at this point Matus realizes anyway that he has no idea of what the medals handed out in Paris look like, and he has no other choice but to open the box and trust in the integrity of that woman whom he does not know nor ever will, who sends her affectionate regards that are anything but affectionate, to trust, for the first time in his life, someone born in and residing north of the Rio Grande, to trust a woman named Margaret whose greatest merit would have been making Sunday pancakes for her church’s fair and applauding from the sidelines her husband’s steps. Let’s see, dear Margaret, if you are worthy of my trust. Matus opens the box; there is no snap of the clasp nor any creak from the small hinges, and behold: there is the enormous coin with the image of two naked men, one on foot, the other seated on the ground, shaking hands, and below them the Olympic rings. Matus would have expected there to be a hole at the top for the ribbon to go through, he would also have expected the ribbon to be blue. Santiago turns the medal over. Both of them admire it briefly and agree that they prefer this side. Sporting equipment is portrayed: balls, a discus, a small hammer, a javelin, a puck, and other unidentified implements; there’s the word Paris and the number 1924, there are not two homosexuals clutching hands. Matus says to himself that it’s authentic, that Margaret had not tried to fool him. Although he can’t identify the bronze, he can see that it’s not gold or silver.
I waited forty-four years and I receive it, thanks to the instructions of a dead man, someone who can’t be more than crumbled bones beneath one of those simple gringo headstones in a cemetery that’s green in the summer and white in the winter; here lies Clarence DeMar, who came in fourth in the Paris Olympics, he let himself be passed by a Finn, an Italian, and General Ignacio Matus, who in the end, displaying great courage, resisting pain, delivering orders to legs that were unable to go on, passed in front of the American competitor considered the favorite by so many, and succeeded in shaving off a twenty-four-second advantage to come in third. Ladies and gentlemen, long live General Matus, long live that great sportsman who came from Monterrey, who gave our country its first medal in an Olympic joust. Matus raises his arms and Santiago picks up the medal. It is for me a cause for pride and satisfaction to award you this precious token that through the diligence of your legs and the valiant struggle of your heart you will wear for the rest of your days, for your personal pleasure and for the prestige of your country. Since there is no ribbon, Santiago offers it to him between his thumb and forefinger, as though he were giving alms to a beggar. Matus crosses his arms and refuses to take it. No, he says, forty-four years is a long time, and I must demonstrate to the world that I am still worthy of such an important recognition.
The telephone rings several times but Matus has no desire to answer it; if he believed that it was the woman who gives the time of day he would pick up the receiver. Hello? Who’s speaking? It’s 12:30, it’s 4:15, it’s 10:00 on the dot. A voice that neither questions nor reproaches nor threatens, only capable of articulating 720 replies to the same question, what time is it or what’s the hour, or any such variant which is, in the end, the same thing, and Matus can’t think of a question that does not refer to the time and whose reply that woman could provide. He drinks the last of his beer and shouts to Comodoro. Bring me another bottle, Comodoro, why didn’t you answer the phone, Comodoro? If you weren’t so fat the bullet would have entered and exited and you would be alive and I wouldn’t be alone and early tomorrow I would take you by the hand to the institute so you’d learn some rhymes and choke on jello, so the teacher would repeat to you that you’re not an idiot but still treat you as though you were, frightened because one day you went to war instead of reciting that grape begins with a g. The telephone rings again, eleven rings before it stops. It doesn’t seem strange to him that the telephone was invented at the end of the nineteenth century, an age of tyrannies, when no one could dream that the device might announce itself with the soft sound of a harp, it had to be overwhelming, destroy your nerves, be able to stop a game of dominoes, a conversation, an act of love; you could more easily ignore the screeching voice of Arechavaleta’s mother. Metal striking metal would be enough for me, a single blow, a sound like the one that will come in a few weeks, months, or years from Comodoro’s tomb. His body will be eaten away until it releases the bullet that killed him; it will fall with a dry sound of lead against the wood and scare some bugs that have made Comodoro their home. They’ll be the only ones to hear, because the sound will not be loud enough to escape from the tomb and be heard by a widow who is passing by and thinks that there must be a child down there trying to get out. I’m Fatso Comodoro, get me out of here, I asked for a glass tomb. The telephone starts ringing again and Matus gets up because the sound is stealing his imagination. He decides to go to the kitchen for another beer. And what if it’s the woman who tells the time? What if for the first time she breaks with her routine and calls me? Mr. Matus, it’s 8 or 9 or 10 and I love you and excuse me for always having been
so abrupt with you, it’s 11 and I want you in my bed, it’s 12 for the rest of our lives, 12:01. He runs to the phone and picks up the receiver. After a few seconds of silence he asks what time is it? A few more seconds and it’s 10:15, a female voice says, softer and more hesitant than usual. Are you the woman who tells the time? I just told you what time it is, Mr. Matus, I’m Cerillo’s mother. Matus’s first impulse is to hang up: he’s thought a lot about the time when he’d speak to this woman, but he still hasn’t worked out a coherent, worthy explanation. He would like to turn into the male who tells the time, never to answer any more questions from military men or mothers or the enlightened, unless he can answer them with the time. It’s 10:16, he tells the woman. I know, she says, and I also know that three of the children returned to the institute, I found out that Comodoro will not be coming back and I suppose my son won’t be either. Matus leans against the wall and relaxes his legs so that he ends up sitting on the floor. I’m not ready yet for the details, just tell me if Cerillo fell like a hero. Matus thinks that the verb to fall has another meaning for the woman, since for him it evokes the moment when Cerillo fell out of the military vehicle as it was bumping down the road; he imagines starving coyotes savoring that sobbing and immobile piece of flesh dressed in white who wanted a lullaby and got chewing teeth instead. Yes, ma’am, there has rarely been seen so much valor in a combatant. The conversation ends and Matus leaves the phone off the hook. It’s 10:17. There’s a lot of night left for Cerillo to fall hundreds of times, for Comodoro to be perforated by infinite shrapnel.
The Enlightened Army Page 16