Peruvian Traditions
Page 27
3The zorongo is a dance of Andalusian origin.—Ed.
Ninth Series
The Liberator’s Three Etceteras
I
At the end of May 1824, don Pablo Guzmán, the governor of what was then the small town of San Ildefonso de Caraz, received an official letter from the chief of staff of the Army of Independence, written in Huaylas, in which he was advised that since one of the divisions would be arriving two days later, he should ready, without delay, cattle for the troops’ mess and forage for the horses. He was further ordered to make ready for His Excellency the Liberator comfortable and decent lodging, with good food, a good bed, etc., etc., etc.
That Bolívar had such sybaritic predilections is no longer a subject for discussion, and Menéndez y Pelayo puts it very well when he says that history takes advantage of everything, and that it is not rare to find in the small the revelation of the large. Many times, without giving it a second thought, I heard soldiers of the generation now passed on that gave us a Homeland and Independence say, when they had incurred expenses by consuming a certain article that there was no imperious need for and tried to exaggerate the figure:
“My dear fellow! You spend more on cigars (for example) than the Liberator spends on cologne.”
No one ought to be surprised that don Simón Bolívar was meticulous about his personal toilet and that his daily consumption of cologne amounted to a bottle a day. He was right to do so, and I have nothing but praise for his cleanliness. But the fact is that in the four years he stayed in Peru the national treasury had to pay 8,000 pesos—8,000! —spent on cologne for the use and consumption of His Excellency the Liberator, which compares with this list drawn up by the Great Captain: In axes, pikes, and hoes, three million pesos.
I am not inventing this. Had the archive of the Supreme Court of Accounts not disappeared in 1884 as a consequence of a raging (and perhaps malicious) fire, I could exhibit a certified copy of the objection offered by the member of the court who was entrusted, in 1829, with the examination of the accounts of the Liberator’s commissariat.
It was logical, then, to ready good lodging, a good bed, good food, etc., etc., etc. for the sybaritic don Simón.
As fleas were created to infest skinny dogs in particular, so these three etceteras gave the good governor a great deal to think about, for he was one of those men whose mental powers fit in a syringe, and are thicker than bean soup.
His pondering resulted in the summoning, to ask their advice, of don Domingo Guerrero, don Felipe Gastelumendi, don Justino de Milla and don Jacobo Campos, who were, if we may so put it, the dignitaries of the town.
One of those consulted, a young man who boasted of not suffering from a brain stone, said:
“Do you know, don Pablo, what etcetera means in Spanish?”
“I like the question. It’s not an impertinent one, a matter of seeing that I’m in a hurry and asking me about my virginity, as a vulgar slattern put it. I haven’t forgotten all my Latin yet, and I know well that etcetera means ‘and everything else,’ señor don Jacobo.”
“Well then, you dimwit, why are you wrinkling your brow? It’s clearer than spring water. Haven’t you noticed that those three etceteras are placed right after the order for a good bed?”
“Of course I’ve noticed! But it doesn’t make sense to me. This chief of the general staff should have written as Christ teaches us: bread meaning bread, and wine, wine, and not wear me out trying to guess his thoughts.”
“But in heaven’s name, don’t tell me you’re one of those people who don’t buy onions because they have no stem! Can you imagine a good bed without even one etcetera? Don’t you realize yet what the Liberator, who’s a great devotee of Venus, needs per day?”
“Say no more, comrade,” don Felipe Gastelumendi interrupted. “A girl for each et cetera, if my accounting is not in error.”
“Well then, go look for three nymphs, señor governor,” said don Justino de Milla “so as to obey the order from above, and take no pains to choose them from among young girls wearing shoes with French heels and fancy petticoats, for His Excellency, so I hear, will feel well served if only the girls are as toothsome as supper on Christmas Eve.”
According to don Justino, as the possessor of an erotic palate Bolívar was like that drinker of beer whom the servant at an inn asked: “What beer would you like? Black or white?” “Bring me a halfbreed,” was the reply.
“And what do you think?” the governor asked don Domingo Guerrero.
“My good man,” don Domingo answered, “as far as I’m concerned there’s no reverse side of the page, and you’re losing time that should have been used in providing etceteras.”
II
If don Simón Bolívar had not had the tastes of an Oriental sultan as far as skirts were concerned, he surely would not figure in History as the liberator of five republics. Women always saved his life, for my friend García Tosta,1who has every detail of the hero’s life at his fingertips, tells of two incidents that in 1824 were already well known in Peru.
Let us note the first one. While Bolívar was in Jamaica in 1810, the fierce Morillo or his lieutenant Morales sent to Kingston an assassin who sank a dagger into the breast of Major Amestoy, who had lain down in the hammock in which the general was in the habit of sleeping. Because of a torrential rain, the latter had spent the night in the arms of Luisa Crober, a beautiful young Dominican girl, to whom there might well have been sung:
Colored girl of my heart,
Colored girl, for your love
I would journey across the sea
in a paper boat.2
Let us speak of the second incident. Almost two years later, the Spaniard Renovales stole into the patriot camp at midnight, entered the officers’ field tent, in which there were two hammocks, and killed Colonel Garrido, who was sleeping in one of them. Don Simón’s was empty, because he had left for a love–adventure in a nearby town.
And although it doesn’t seem the right moment, it is worth recalling that on the night of the 25th of September, in Bogotá, it was again a woman who saved the life of the Liberator, who had been unwilling to flee the conspirators plotting against him, saying to her: “A woman’s advice...” And she appeared before the would–be murderers, whom she succeeded in stopping as her lover escaped through a window.
III
Bolívar’s reputation as a woman chaser, which had preceded him, played a large part in causing the governor to find the deciphering of the meaning of the three etceteras logical and correct, and after mentally passing in review all the pretty girls of the town, he chose three of the ones who seemed to him to be of surpassing beauty. To each of them this song might be sung without qualms:
of flowers, the violet,
of emblems, the cross,
of nations, my homeland,
and of women, you.3
Two hours before Bolívar arrived, the captain of the militia, don Martín Gamero, headed, as ordered, to the house of the girls who had been chosen, and with only a few words in the way of a preamble, declared the three of them prisoner, and as such took them to the house that had been readied to serve as the Liberator’s quarters. Their mothers protested in vain, claiming that their daughters were not royalists but patriots through and through. It is common knowledge that the right to protest is a feminine right, and that protests are reserved for being heard on Judgment Day, at the hour when lamps are lit.
“Why are you taking away my daughter?” a mother cried.
“What would you have me do?” answered the poor captain. “I’m taking her because I have orders from above.”
“Well, don’t obey such an order,” another elderly woman put in.
“Not obey? Are you mad? You seem to want me to oblige you because of your beautiful eyes, only to have the Liberator fry me for disobedience. No, my good woman, I’m not about to enter into any such agreement.”
Meanwhile, Governor Guzmán, accompanied by the dignitaries, went out halfway to meet His Excel
lency. Bolívar asked him if the rations for the troops’ mess were ready, if the barracks were comfortable, if the forage was abundant, if the inn in which he was to be lodged was decent; in short, he overwhelmed him with questions. But—and this surprised don Pablo—he didn’t say a word that would reveal a curiosity as to the qualities and merits of the captive etceteras.
Luckily for the grieving families, the Liberator entered San Ildefonso de Caraz at two in the afternoon, acquainted himself with what had gone on, and ordered the dove cote opened, without even exercising the prerogative of a glance at them. It is true that Bolívar was free of temptations at the time, for he was bringing along Manolita Madroña from Huaylas (in his baggage, I presume), a young girl of 18, among the prettiest that God had created by way of females in the administrative department of Ancachs.
Don Simón immediately dressed the presumptuous governor down as only he could, and removed him from his post.
IV
When friends made fun of the ex–governor, bringing up his failure in his post, he would answer:
“The fault wasn’t mine. It was the fault of the one who didn’t express himself with the necessary clarity in his letter.
Y no me venga un cualquier
con argumentos al aire;
pues no he de decir Volter
donde está escrito Voltaire.4
Three etceteras listed after a good bed, for anyone in the know, means three girls...and I won’t back down from that even at pistol point.”
1Francisco García Tosta (1852–1921), a Venezuelan author of traditions and legends, such as Leyendas patrióticas (1893–1898).—Ed.
2Morena del alma / mía morena, por tu querer / pasaría la mar / en barquito de papel.
3de las flores, la violeta / de los emblemas, la cruz / de las naciones, mi tierra / yde las mujeres, tú.
4And let no one come to me / with frivolous arguments; / for I won’t say Volter / where Voltaire is written. (Voltaire in the last line rhymes with Spanish aire.)
Tenth Series
The Incas Who Played Chess
I
Atahualpa (To Dr. Evaristo P. Duclos, the eminent chess player)
The Moors, who dominated Spain for seven centuries, introduced the love of the game of chess into the conquered country. Once the expulsion of the Moors by the Catholic Sovereign Isabella was ended, it was only natural to presume that all their habits and pastimes would disappear with them. But far from it; among the heroic captains who destroyed the last bastion of Islamism, the liking for the chess board with 64 squares, or checkers as they are called in heraldry, had taken deep root.
Chess soon ceased to be the favorite game only of men of war, for it became widespread among churchmen, abbots, bishops, canons, and eminent friars. Thus when the discovery and conquest of America were a glorious reality for Spain, seeing anyone named to an important post who came to the New World move pieces on the chess board came to be a sort of guarantee or passport attesting to his social background.
The first book on chess to be published in Spain appeared in the first quarter of a century after the Conquest of Peru, with the title: Invención liberal y arte de axedrez, por Ruy López de Segovia, clérigo, vecino de la villa de Zafra,1printed in Alcalá de Henares in 1561. Ruy López is considered to be the first chess theorist, and shortly after its appearance, the little work was translated into French and Italian.
The little book circulated widely in Lima until the year 1845, more or less, when copies of Philidor2 appeared. It was the book that it was imperative to consult in those far–distant days of my adolescence, as was the Cecinarrica3for checkers players. Today a copy of either of these two oldest texts cannot be found in Lima, even if one is willing to pay an eyetooth.
Many of the captains who accompanied Pizarro during the conquest, as well as the governors Vaca de Castro and La Gasca, and the first viceroys, among them Núñez de Vela, marquis of Cañete and count of Nieva, whiled away their leisure time absorbed in the changing fortunes of a game of chess. This was not something that attracted notice, since the first archbishop of Lima was such an aggressive chess player that he managed to undermine even the prestige of royal arms, which could not resist paying him tribute. According to Jiménez de la Espada, when the Royal Tribunal entrusted one of its judges and Archbishop Fray Jerónimo de Loayza with the leadership of the royalist campaign against the revolutionary caudillo, Hernández Girón, the popular muse of the royalist camp, reproached the slothfulness of the man with a toga and the fondness for chess of the man with a miter with this bit of song, poor in rhyme, but rich in truth:
El uno jugar y el otro dormir,
¡oh qué gentil!
No comer ni apercibir,
¡oh qué gentil!
Uno ronca y otro juega...
¡y así va la brega!4
The soldiers, giving in to inertia in camp and neglectful of their supply of provisions, were already beginning to become demoralized, and perhaps fortune would have favored the rebels if the Tribunal had not decided to send elsewhere the judge who slept like a log and the archbishop who was an ajedrecista, or chess player.
(Note that I have italicized the word ajedrecista, because despite its common use, it is not to be found in the Dictionary of the Academy, nor does the Dictionary show the form ajedrista, which I have seen in a book by the eminent don Juan Valera.5)
* * *
TRADITION HAS IT that the captains Hernando de Soto, Juan de Rada, Francisco de Chavez, Blas de Atienza, and the treasurer Riquelme gathered every afternoon in Cajamarca in the room set aside as a prison for the Inca Atahualpa from November 15, 1532, when the monarch was captured, until two days before his unjustifiable execution, which took place on August 29, 1533.
In the room, the five men named and three or four others not mentioned in succinct and curious notes (that we had at hand, set down in an old manuscript preserved in the former Biblioteca Nacional), had the use of two crudely painted chess boards, set on a wooden chess table. The pieces were made of the same clay that the natives used for fashioning little idols and other objects of native pottery, which nowadays are dug up in huacas.6Until the first years of the Republic the only pieces known in Peru were those made of ivory, sent by Philippine tradesmen for sale here.
The mind of the Inca must have been deeply preoccupied during the first two or three months of his captivity, for even though he seated himself every afternoon alongside Hernando de Soto, his friend and protector, he gave no sign of having realized how the pieces moved or how fortunes changed during a game. But one afternoon, during the end game of a match between Soto and Riquelme, Hernando made a move toward putting the knight into play, and the Inca, touching him lightly on the arm, said to him in a low voice:
“No, captain, no...the rook!”
Everyone was surprised. After a few brief seconds of reflection, Hernando played the castle, as Atahualpa had advised him, and a few moves later Riquelme experienced the inevitable checkmate.
After that afternoon, and always giving him the white pieces to play as a sign of respect and courtesy, Captain Hernando de Soto invited the Inca to play just one match with him, and after a couple of months the disciple was a credit to his teacher. They played as equals.
The notes that I have mentioned tell how the other Spanish chess players, with the exception of Riquelme, also invited the Inca to play, but he always excused himself for not accepting, telling each of them through the interpreter Felipillo:
“I play very little, and Your Grace plays a great deal.”
Popular tradition assures us that the Inca would not have been condemned to death had he remained untutored in chess. The people say that Atahualpa paid with his life for the checkmate that Riquelme suffered because of his advice on that memorable afternoon. In the famous council of 24 judges called together by Pizarro, Atahualpa was sentenced to the death penalty by 13 votes for and 11 against. Riquelme was one of the 13 who signed the death sentence.
II
Manco Inca (To Jesús Elías y Salas)
After the unjustifiable execution of Atahualpa, don Francisco Pizarro made his way to Cuzco in 1534, and to gain the devotion of the Cuzcans declared that he was not coming to take away from the caciques their lands and properties or to disregard their preeminence. Since the murderous usurper of the throne of the legitimate ruler Inca Huáscar had already been punished by being put to death, Pizarro proposed to hand over the imperial insignia to Inca Manco,7 a youth 18 years old, the legitimate heir of his brother Huáscar. The coronation took place with great solemnity, and following it Pizarro proceeded to the valley of Jauja, and then to the Rimac or Pachacamac valley to found the capital of the future viceroy.
I needn’t give an account of the events and causes that occasioned the breaking off of relations between the Inca and the Spaniards headed by Juan Pizarro, and on his death, by his brother Hernando. I need only note that Manco contrived to flee Cuzco and establish his government on the high plateaux of the Andes, where it was always impossible for the conquistadors to defeat him.
In the conflict between the supporters of Pizarro and the partisans of Almagro, Manco lent the latter certain services, and once the ruin and death of Almagro the Younger were an accomplished fact, 12 or 15 of the vanquished, among whose number were the captains Diego Méndez and Gómez Pérez, found refuge with the Inca, who had set up his court in Vilcapampa.
Méndez, Pérez, and four or five other of their companions in misfortune diverted themselves by playing bowls and chess. The Inca easily hispanified himself (a verb of that century, equivalent to today’s hispanicized himself), acquiring a great fondness for and even skill in both games, and becoming an outstanding chess player.