The News from Paraguay

by Lily Tuck

  One morning as Ella was walking down the tree-lined street of Piribebuy, she met Inocencia and Rafaela. The two sisters were holding their prayer books, they were on their way to mass. Since Ella had last seen them, they had aged and lost weight; Rafaela was limping and much of Inocencia’s dark hair had fallen out.

  “Buenos días, Señoras.” Ella felt sorry for them all of a sudden.

  Immediately, the two sisters crossed to the other side of the street.

  Inocencia spat in Ella’s direction. “Puta!”

  “Ladrona! You stole my gold buttons,” Rafaela shouted at her.

  A hundred times Ella had packed her suitcases, a hundred times she had unpacked them. She had made plans to leave, to board a French ship and take her children, Rosaria, her horse, Mathilde, a few of her most valuable possessions: her favorite dresses, her toiletry set of silver-backed combs and brushes, her aquamarine necklace. Now she was determined to stay.

  “I’ve been recalled,” General MacMahon told Ella.

  “It’s too complicated to explain,” he said when she asked him the reason. “But one of Ulysses Grant’s first appointments when he took office as president of the United States was Elihu Benjamin Washburn as secretary of state.”

  “Charles Washburn’s brother?” Ella asked.

  “Exactly. Elihu Washburn was so disliked and his appointment was so controversial that he was forced to resign after only eleven days in office.”

  “I am not surprised,” Ella said.

  “However, during those eleven days,” General MacMahon went on, “he issued an order which recalled me from my post in Paraguay. Apparently my reports which supported President Lopez were a rebuke to his brother, who is scheduled to appear before a congressional committee called to review his conduct in office.”

  “His dreadful conduct,” Ella also said.

  Next General MacMahon rode over the cordilleras to inform Franco at Cerro León.

  “Not only am I losing the recognition of the United States, but I am losing a good friend,” Franco said, clasping General MacMahon to his chest.

  “Do not forget us,” he also said.

  When General MacMahon left Paraguay, he took a large number of boxes and packages along with his own personal trunks and valises. When asked by the Brazilian officials in Asunción what the boxes and packages contained, he answered, “Cigars and yerba maté.”

  In August the Allied forces attacked Piribebuy. The town was bombarded by cannons for four hours; houses, tidy gardens, orange trees were reduced to rubble, dust and ash. The cavalry chased the women and children who tried to escape, trampling them down, driving their lances through them, cutting them up with their sabers. When the hospital was set on fire, all the sick inside burned to death. Fortunately, Ella had been warned in time. A few hours earlier, she and the children had made their escape in a carriage, with Mathilde tied to the back on a lead rope.

  Mrs. Taylor and her two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, sought refuge in the quaint old church with the bell tower. When the Brazilian soldiers broke down the doors, Mrs. Taylor threw herself on top of her daughters trying to shield them but Elizabeth, who had not been herself since the incident by the stream at Luque, struggled from under her mother and ran to the nearest soldier. Snarling like a dog, she lunged at him, biting his face, biting his neck. The soldier, a stout man with a thick black beard, was so startled that at first he did not move, then realizing Elizabeth must be mad, he tried to push her off but, in her frenzy, Elizabeth was nearly as strong as he, and she wrapped herself around him.

  “Ruf!” Elizabeth barked, she was foaming at the mouth.

  “Argh!” The soldier yelled, in spite of himself he was frightened of her.

  The two rolled around on the church floor like stuck dogs, until, finally, to free himself from her, the soldier pulled out his pistol and shot Elizabeth in the head. As Elizabeth fell back, her mouth opened and a large wad of the soldier’s black hair fell out of it. Mrs. Taylor and Mary, along with the other women who had sought refuge in the church, were raped, then shot or, to save ammunition, had their throats cut. A virgin still, Mary was raped so often she fainted, and, fortunately, did not regain consciousness; the last man to have her, after pulling up his pants, knifed her through the heart. When they were finished, the Brazilian soldiers stole all the silver from the church—the chalice, the candlesticks, the offering plates. They left just as the bell in the tower tolled three.

  Instead of going to the church, Alfredo d’Escragnolle Taunay, a captain in the Brazilian cavalry, rode over to Ella’s house. Among the possessions left behind, Captain d’Escragnolle Taunay discovered Franco’s wine cellar, he opened a bottle of champagne and drank it all down. He also found a beautifully bound edition of Don Quijote de la Mancha inscribed to Ella, With best wishes, from your good friend and countryman, Martin MacMahon. When later Captain d’Escragnolle Taunay had to go to the toilet, he ripped out the pages and used them to clean himself.

  Seventeen

  AQUIDABAN RIVER

  Justo José’s wife named their daughters after the women in the Lopez family: the oldest, Juaña, the second, Rafaela, the third, Inocencia; by the time the fourth daughter was born, the daughter whose arms looked like wings, afraid she had run out of names, Justo José’s wife, on an impulse—in spite of her husband’s protests—named her Ella.

  Juaña was fourteen and she was pregnant. The handsome young soldier who said he would marry her had been taken prisoner at Angostura, then he was forced to take arms in the service of the Brazilians.

  (Hearing about this practice while still in Buenos Ayres, Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson was outraged; he wrote the Brazilian minister of war a letter of protest:

  I have the honor to address Your Excellency for the purpose of communicating to you that, from various Paraguayans who have lately come from Asunción, I have heard that many of the men who capitulated at Angostura, of which I was the commander, have been obliged to take arms in the Allied army whether they like it or not.

  As this is contrary to the written stipulations of the capitulations, and the verbal assurances of the Duke de Caxias, I address myself to Your Excellency to beg you will inquire into and rectify this….

  Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson’s letter proved useless. The practice of making prisoners fight on the side of their enemy continued and the soldier who was the father of Juaña’s unborn child was killed in battle by one of his own countrymen.)

  Rafaela, the second girl, died of diphtheria, her throat closed until she could no longer eat or breathe—Justo José, who had returned home to his village of San Estanislao only twice during the war, was still unaware of her death. Inocencia, the prettiest of the four daughters and Justo José’s favorite, was twelve and she was employed as a maid in Asunción. No word had been heard from her for over a year; Inocencia did not know how to write and even if she had known, there was no way since the Allies had captured the city that she could have mailed a letter home. The English family she worked for had gone to Luque then on to Piribebuy. According to one rumor Justo José’s wife had heard, there was not enough room in the family’s carriage for Inocencia but according to another rumor, Inocencia had preferred to stay in Asunción alone. Every day Justo José’s wife went to church and prayed for the safety of her daughter; once a week she lit a candle for her. Also, she had hope. A neighbor boy in the village who was about the same age as Inocencia—they had played together as children—told her how, when he had gone to Asunción the week before with some chickens to sell to the Brazilians, he had seen Inocencia. Inocencia was well, he said. He did not say any more or where he had seen Inocencia—on the Plaza Vieja, standing at the front door of the Gran Hotel de Cristo smoking a cigar. He also did not tell her mother how when he went inside the Gran Hotel de Cristo and tried to speak to Inocencia, she had a vacant look on her face and stared at him without recognizing him. Moreover, when the neighbor boy told her who he was, Inocencia just laughed and blew cigar smoke in his face
.

  Like Justo José her father, Ella, the youngest, was musical; she had a good ear and she was a good mimic. When she walked in the woods she had no trouble imitating birds, their songs, their calls. She could whistle like a duck on its way south, she could scream like a large flight of parrots whirling overhead, she could purse her mouth into the warning sounds of the peewit at the approach of the carácará and the chimangos, the buzzards and vultures. She could sit so still under her favorite bunchy fig tree, which yielded dark juicy fruit, that a já-khá, a wild turkey, flew down from its perch high up in a mimosa tree when she called to it: chakhan-chaja, chakhan-chaja! One time, not long after the neighbor boy had seen Inocencia in Asunción, Ella was standing under that same bunchy tree, reaching up with her mouth to eat a ripe fig—her arms were nearly useless, she had two little digits sticking out at the end of each stump—when a parrot perched in the tree grabbed the ripe fig out from in between her teeth.

  Instead of being frightened, Ella laughed. And Ella had never seen such a large parrot—with its wings spread out, it was more than a meter long—or such a beautiful parrot: his feathers were a deep violet-blue. The parrot too was looking down at her with his yellow-rimmed, unblinking, curious eyes. After a while, the parrot scrambled up the branch of the fig tree and grabbed another fig, then he scrambled back down holding the fig in his beak. Ella opened her mouth and the parrot dropped the fig into it. Up again went the big blue parrot to get Ella another fig, and another, and another, until Ella had had enough figs to eat. Then Ella waved one of her winglike arms at the parrot and, as if a signal or an action familiar to them both, the parrot—using his beak to balance himself—climbed down from the fig tree onto Ella’s shoulder.

  “Kráa, kráa,” Ella said.

  “Kráa, kráa,” the big blue parrot answered her.

  With the big blue parrot perched on her shoulder, Ella walked back to her house in San Estanislao where her mother and sister—hot and impatient, Juaña was fanning herself with a palm leaf—were in the kitchen waiting. They were waiting for a pumpkin, a sugarcane, a parsnip, a melon, a bunch of oranges—whatever Ella could find in the woods and carry back in her winglike arms—and she had brought them a big blue parrot.

  Dropping her palm leaf fan, Juaña made a lunge for the parrot. Quicker, the parrot bit her.

  “Aiii!” Juaña held up her bleeding hand.

  Justo José’s wife was more devious. Standing behind Ella so that Ella could not see her, she took a cloth sack and, with one swift, sure movement, she yanked it over the parrot. Before Ella could turn around and stop her, she set the cloth sack on top of the kitchen table and picked up her wooden mallet. Too late, Ella screamed as her mother repeatedly struck the parrot inside the sack.

  When Justo José’s wife was certain there was no more movement or sign of life inside the sack, she opened it. The parrot’s blue head was crushed; his yellow-rimmed eye was a bit of jelly. Satisfied, Justo José’s wife began to pluck the parrot while Juaña filled a pot full of water and put it to boil. Soon bright blue and violet feathers covered Justo José’s kitchen floor. Later, his wife would sweep them into the fire, the same fire she used to cook their supper.

  After the fall of Piribebuy, Franco lived like a fugitive. He fled through the swamps of the Alta Paraná, first to Caraguatay, then to San Estanislao, to Curuguaty, and finally to Cerro Corá on the banks of the Aquidaban River, never more than a few miles ahead of the pursuing Brazilians. Each battle was more desperate as Franco, who had a thousand men left—boys and old men—a few pieces of artillery, some broken muskets held together with hide and ropes, case-shot made out of screws and chopped up bar-iron, useless beyond a hundred yards, fought to keep from being hemmed in by the enemy. Also, as a result of his drinking, he was more and more unpredictable, more and more unstable and irrational. One day, pleased and proud, he had medals hammered out from whatever pieces of metal were left and ceremoniously distributed them to his troops. He gave a twelve-year-old boy with a broken leg who could hardly walk a medal for not running away, he gave an old man with one eye a medal for being a good lookout. During all that time, Justo José, who hardly had the strength left to lift up his harp and was so hungry that one night he dreamt he ate it—he chewed the cedar wood and swallowed the dozen or so strings, all that remained of the original thirty-six—had to keep on playing, ta dum ta dum ta dum dum dum. Then he had to play again the next day when, for no apparent reason, Franco changed his mind and ordered half a dozen of his soldiers flogged, ta dum ta dum ta dum dum dum, including the twelve-year-old boy with the broken leg who had received a medal, ta dum ta dum ta dum, and the old man with one eye, ta dum ta dum. The old man with one eye did not survive the flogging, ta dum.

  At about the same time, in New York City, Commander Kirkland, captain of the U.S.S. Wasp, was sworn and examined by the House Committee that was investigating the conduct of Mr. Washburn as American minister to Paraguay.

  QUESTION: In your letter marked “private,” you say this: “Mr. Washburn told me that he had never heard of a revolution or conspiracy against the government; but on one occasion Mrs. Washburn, when her husband was not present, stated that there was a plan to turn Lopez out of power, and to put in his place his two brothers, Venancio and Benigno.” Please state the circumstances under which you received this information.

  COM. KIRKLAND: It was on the passage down the river, two or three days after we left the batteries. Mrs. Washburn said distinctly that there was no conspiracy but that there was a plan. It was at the dinner table. Mr. Washburn had finished his dinner and had gone out for something and, shortly after, came back. This remark struck me as rather singular. I know that she made a distinction between the words “conspiracy” and “plan.”

  QUESTION: Was any person present?

  COM. KIRKLAND: Yes, sir; a Mr. Davie was present.

  QUESTION: Did Mrs. Washburn, at the time and in connection with the remarks that you have just stated, say that there was no conspiracy?

  COM. KIRKLAND: We were speaking of Lopez and the country and the people, and she said that there was no conspiracy, but that there was a plan to turn Lopez out.

  Then Mrs. Washburn was duly sworn and examined by the House Committee and Commander Kirkland’s testimony was read to her.

  QUESTION: Please state your recollection of that conversation.

  MRS. WASHBURN: I do not remember ever to have had any conversation with him about it, more than that we were all conversing about the conspiracy. I could not have said that there was a plan or conspiracy because I did not then believe it; but I may have said that at one time we may have supposed there was, because of the arrest of people, etc. I did not then believe that there was a conspiracy, and, of course, could not have said that there was one. I do not remember definitely what occurred on that voyage, as I was very nervous and suffered a great deal.

  Ella could no longer remember where she had last ridden Mathilde. In Caraguatay? San Estanislao? Curuguaty? Nor could she remember when she had last ridden Mathilde. A week ago? a month? a year? a lifetime ago? Mathilde was nearly skin and bones. Her beautiful shiny gray coat was filled with sores, and there were bald patches where the hair had rubbed off. Too tired to lift her neck, her head drooped; one eye was half closed and crusted over with dried mucus. Every morning Ella washed it out with warm water but by the afternoon the eye had closed up again. Worse, when Mathilde walked—months since she had lost two shoes—she stumbled. The boy who looked after her thought Mathilde should be put down; he was also thinking of the horsemeat. If he had dared, he would have stopped feeding Mathilde entirely.

  “Oh, my darling,” Ella spoke to her horse, “soon this misery will be over. You’ll have as much hay and oats as you can eat. More than you can eat. You’ll be fat again.” At the sound of Ella’s voice, Mathilde pricked up her ears. “You’ll have straw in your stall up to your knees. Every day, fresh straw.” Ella sighed. “You’ll see, my darling, we’ll go on long rides the way we once did. We�
��ll gallop for hours on green fields bordered by mimosa and sweet-smelling orange trees.” Ella stroked the horse’s neck. “You’ll see, my darling, my dear.”

  Venancio Lopez, Franco’s brother, was nearly dead. Beaten and tortured, he was put inside a cart and dragged along with another prisoner, Commandant José de Carmen Gomez, the no longer handsome commandant of Villa Franca. In the last stages of untreated syphilis, Commandant Gomez was demented and nearly blind. He did not know who Venancio was and when one time Venancio summoned the strength to tell him his name, Commandant Gomez still called him by other names—names of endearment. Two or three times a day with a mad single-mindedness, Commandant Gomez undid his breeches and masturbated in the cart; he rubbed himself against Venancio’s leg, against Venancio’s thigh, calling out: “Querida, amor mío, amada, vita mía,” as his sperm spilled onto Vencancio. Too weak and in too much pain to complain or care, Venancio closed his eyes. At last on a particularly hot day—the wooden cart was airless—on the way to Curuguaty, Venancio died. Left alone in the cart, Commandant Gomez shouted and beat his chest, he gnashed his teeth and tore out his hair. All night long, he screamed, “Querida, amor mío, amada, vita mía!”