The News from Paraguay

by Lily Tuck

  “Like a cat in heat,” said a sergeant, who was barely recovered from the flogging Franco had ordered and could stand the sound no longer. First thing in the morning, he grabbed his old musket and, after several attempts—the gun jammed and misfired—finally shot Commandant Gomez through the heart.

  Even after he drank himself into a near stupor, Franco could not sleep. During the night, he paced around his tent, stumbling in the dark and frightening the tethered horses, waking up the exhausted sentries, before he let himself in Ella’s tent.

  “Chéri?” Ella was a light sleeper.

  In bed, Ella tried to arouse him. In the past, it had never taken her long, but now she sucked and sucked on his limp penis until she thought she would gag and until Franco pushed away her head.

  “Enough,” he said. For the first time in his life, Franco was impotent.

  Already eight-year-old Carlos Honorio had decided that he would become a zoologist, or perhaps specialize and become an entomologist or an ornithologist or, maybe even still be a circus animal trainer. In any event, he knew that he preferred animals to people. Since the war started he had owned several pets: a chinchilla, a tame ocelot—Ella teased him, saying that he was lucky it was so hot otherwise she would have made its spotted coat into a muff—and, given him by a soldier, a small spider monkey, who had sat on Carlos Honorio’s shoulder, before he ran away.

  Every chance he got—when Rosaria was busy or not paying attention—Carlos Honorio slipped away from the tent he shared with his brothers and walked down to the Aquidaban where, in the shade of the feathery bamboo and with a swarm of bright yellow and pale green butterflies hovering over his head, he sat on the riverbank and forgot the time. He watched two water hogs mating—not sure what they were doing, Carlos Honorio guessed the water hogs were fighting. Another time he watched a capybara, a large rodent that weighed over a hundred pounds, dive into the river and quickly swim across it; he saw a tapir—Carlos Honorio mistook the tapir for a wild pig—and several anteaters. He saw pheasant, snipe, wild pigeons. A black-and-white royal duck—he had read how it was the biggest duck in the world—swam silently by and disappeared into the marsh. He also saw storks, egrets, ibis and one capped heron. Perched in a tree no more than ten yards from where Carlos Honorio was sitting, the heron had a pale blue face that looked like a mask and two long feathers that sprouted out of the black cap on his head and arched gracefully over his back. Watching it, Carlos Honorio forgot to breathe. There was one other bird he would have given anything to see, given even his wooden Noah’s ark: an ipègtàtà. Rosaria had told Carlos Honorio how the ipègtàtà only fed on fireflies and how the ipègtàtà was hard to miss because when it flew, it lit up the sky like a brilliant meteor. But during all the time he spent sitting on the bank of the Aquidaban River—even when he sat there after it got dark—Carlos Honorio never once got to see the ipègtàtà.

  After listening to Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson’s tales, his brother could not help but admire Franco—his energy and his indomitable will. He secretly admired Ella Lynch as well. When he inquired after her, he was told that she was tall and handsome, with gray-blue eyes. In vain he asked to see a photograph. However, while still in Buenos Ayres with his brother, he had occasion to dine with the journalist Héctor Varela, whom he was able to question further about her.

  “She was tall and of a flexible and delicate figure with beautiful and seductive curves. Her skin was alabaster.” Time had not dimmed Héctor Varela’s recollection of Ella. “Her eyes were of a blue that seemed borrowed from the very hues of heaven and had an expression of ineffable sweetness in whose depths the light of Cupid was enthroned.”

  “You Americans always exaggerate.” Nevertheless, Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson’s brother was still curious.

  “No, Señor. I speak the truth.”

  “Mrs. Lynch is a clever and ambitious woman,” Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson himself was less sanguine about Ella. “She is inclined to stoutness,” he also said. When finished with his meal, he offered his brother and Héctor Varela a choice of cigars—a subject of more interest to him. “This variety is called pety-hobi and is most prized in Paraguay. This other here is called pety-para or spotted tobacco, named for the yellow discoloration that appears on the flower. It grows only in certain places in Paraguay—isn’t that so, Señor Varela? The canala or cinnamon-colored variety, I am told, is even rarer.” Lighting the cigar, Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson also cautioned Héctor Varela and his brother, “Although it appears mild in flavor, it is quite heady.”

  Smiling, Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson’s brother nodded, he was still thinking of Ella. Then, he said, “As regards the reputed atrocities of Lopez—his extorting the testimony from foreign employees by torture, his starving to death women and children; his bayoneting his brothers, his sisters—” Puffing on his cigar, he went on to say something that Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson did not quite catch.

  “Sorry?”

  “I said how the truth about Lopez and his mistress appears to be entirely unknown on the banks of this river,” he paused again to puff on his cigar. “In fact nothing about Paraguay is known outside the country—you are quite right, George, the cigar is quite heady,” he also said, interrupting himself.

  Ella sat huddled with the children in their tent; the tent was shaking so hard it seemed ready to collapse or blow away. Together they counted out loud the seconds between the lightning and thunder: uno, dos, tres. Most times Ella hardly had time to open her mouth and say uno before the thunder sounded. In spite of trying to keep a brave face for the sake of the children, she shivered—had not Franco once told her that lightning struck Paraguay ten times more often than it did any other country? The storm was accompanied by the pampero, a fierce hot wind that rushed across the country like a tornado, flattening and uprooting trees, knocking down roofs, carrying off livestock, dogs, cats, chickens and flinging them into trees, stunned or dead. In between the flashes of lightning, the sky was as black as night and rain streamed down in sheets.

  Rosaria had run outside to bring in the laundry that was hanging up to dry on a line. She barely could make any headway against the wind as all kinds of debris, twigs, leaves, clumps of earth and mud hit her. Her skirt billowed out like a sail pushing her back, her braid came undone and her hair whipped her face. Blindly, she grabbed at the clothesline and struggled to unfasten the soaked clothes—Enrique’s shirt, Federico’s breeches, another shirt that belonged to Carlos Honorio. As was her habit, once she removed it, she put a wooden clothespin in her mouth before she put it in her laundry basket.

  On his way back after the storm from visiting his relatives who lived outside the village of Cerra Corá, Cantalicio, the soldier who had picked Doña Iñes up in his arms and put her inside the canoe and later carried her up the steep path over the cordilleras, found Rosaria lying on the ground next to the clothesline. He nearly tripped over her. Rosaria had been struck by lightning; also something was stuck in her mouth. Cantalicio first thought it was a cigar, only when he tried to remove it did he realize what it was. The clothespin was burned black but it had saved Rosaria’s life; once she regained consciousness, Rosaria was all right.

  Franco’s 1,000 men turned into 800 at San Estanislao, then into 500 at Curuguaty—close to home, a lot of men deserted—and at Cerro Corá on the banks of the Aquidaban River, Franco only had 200 men left. Everyone knew the end was near at hand. Everyone also knew that the army could not keep moving from place to place like gypsies, setting up their tents. The children were tired and sick, food had nearly run out; the horses too were nearly dead from exhaustion and starvation.

  On her own, Doña Iñes had started to go out and forage for grass along the banks of the Aquidaban. With her skirt folded up to put the grass inside and her white petticoat showing a little underneath, Doña Iñes was not afraid, she said. She liked to garden and it reminded her of how as a child in Toledo she used to collect dandelion grass for her father’s rabbits. She wore her hair in a long single
braid and she looked almost pretty. Often, girlishly, she stopped to pick a scarlet pomegranate flower or a purple orchid to put in her braid and she smoked one of Rosaria’s cigars.

  Slowly, Mathilde began to fill out, the bald patches on her coat grew in, her eye cleared. Ella noticed the change, she encouraged Doña Iñes.

  “You should go for a ride,” she also told her. “You are light and I have no time. And the horse likes you,” she added.

  When, at last, Doña Iñes got up her courage, she asked Cantalicio to give her a leg up and she sat on Mathilde’s back for a few minutes clutching at the horse’s mane.

  “Bravo!” Ella called out. “Well done, Doña Iñes!”

  The next time, Ella and all the children came out to watch as Doña Iñes sat on Mathilde’s back a little longer. Proudly, she walked the horse around the campsite as Enrique, Federico, Carlos Honorio and little Leopoldo applauded and cheered her on.

  “Hooray! Hooray, for you, Doña Iñes!”

  Smiling nervously, the third time, she rode a little way into the forest. When she came back, she was trotting, awkwardly bouncing bareback, her shorter leg dangling at an odd angle against the horse’s side. Mathilde, unused to such an inept rider, showed her impatience by bobbing her head up and down.

  “Never mind, you are doing very well. Your father—and didn’t you tell me he was a cavalry officer and a member of the Progresista party and that he died saving the life of Colonel Garrigo at the battle of Vicalváro—” Ella was tempted to laugh out loud—how had she remembered all that? “I am sure your father would be proud of you, Doña Iñes!” Ella continued to shout and encourage her.

  The fourth time Doña Iñes rode Mathilde, she rode her to the village of Cerra Corá and beyond that for several miles and she did not come back.

  When Ella found the horse gone, she blamed the boy who looked after her. She hit the boy so hard with her riding crop that he cried out but still he denied it. Later, Ella tried to find Cantalicio and question him. But the soldier was nowhere to be found, he had gone as well—deserted. Ella guessed the rest.

  “Who would have guessed?” Fighting back her tears, Ella told Franco.

  Before dawn on the morning of the first day of March, Franco woke Ella and his five children and rushed them, half dressed, into a carriage. Pancho, the eldest, refused to get in.

  “I am going with you,” Pancho told Franco.

  Franco shook his head. “Take care of your mother. It’s an order.”

  Franco kissed Ella on the lips; he started to say something to her and changed his mind, then he embraced each of his sons. Again, Pancho resisted, raising his hand, he saluted his father.

  Franco had heard the Brazilians coming. He heard the galloping hooves of the well-fed horses; he heard the anticipatory laughter of the overconfident and well-equipped soldiers. No longer able to ford the flooded Aquidaban, and accompanied by only a few of his aides, Franco fled along the river’s edge. In the misty early morning light, he had to duck his head to avoid hitting the branches of scarlet pomegranates, white jasmine, flowering orange trees as, with each stride, his big mule’s hooves sank deeper and deeper into the mud. Behind him, coming closer, he could hear the Brazilians shouting.

  Linda, the big mule, floundered and sank up to his belly and although Franco whipped him, he was forced to dismount. Up to his groin in the mud, he too was stuck in the mire and as he struggled to reach drier ground a Brazilian soldier blocked his path. The Brazilian soldier ordered Franco to surrender. Franco refused. Franco drew out his revolver and fired at him. Another Brazilian soldier hurled his lance at Franco, the lance went through Franco’s stomach. Dropping the revolver and falling to his knees, Franco tore out the lance with his hands, then he tried to stand up again. His legs would not support him and he could not see properly, everything looked blurred; instead of one soldier, he saw several as if, all of a sudden, he was surrounded. He saw the flash of lances as they were thrown at him; he heard a shot fired. He tasted blood in his mouth. Slowly, slowly, Franco fell backward into the mud; he saw a large bunch of scarlet pomegranates spinning wildly in the bright blue sky and out of sight.

  Eighteen

  PARIS

  From Paraguay, Ella brought with her:

  380 ounces of gold

  12,000 worthless dollars (paper money of the Republic of Paraguay)

  A promissory note signed by Dr. William Stewart, Franco’s personal physician

  58 assorted pieces of jewelry including over two dozen rings and an aquamarine necklace made up of exceptionally large stones

  20 valuable buttons, including 7 gold ones for waistcoat and 8 gold ones for cuff

  14 bracelets, including 2 made from human hair (Corinna Adelaida’s and Miguel Marcial’s)

  1 gold and diamond diadem Several pairs of earrings

  A dozen gold watch guards and chains

  Several gold watches

  8 silver bombillas and gourds for maté

  6 head combs (2 gold and 4 silver)

  1 gold crucifix and 3 rosaries (one particularly pretty gold and coral one)

  1 gold cigar holder that had belonged to Franco

  3 gold snuffboxes also belonging to Franco

  Franco’s diamond-encrusted marshal’s baton and his whip with his initials, F.S.L., engraved in diamonds.

  Ella returned to France in May. She left again almost immediately, before France declared war on Prussia, before the fall of the Second Empire and before the Communards set Paris on fire and the great trees in the Bois de Boulogne were cut down for barricades and all the animals in the zoo—including the young elephant, Pollux, whose trunk was sold for forty francs a kilo—were butchered and eaten; she went to England.

  Ella exchanged the 380 ounces of gold for sterling. She used the money to pay for Enrique, Federico, Carlos Honorio and Leopoldo’s schooling at Saint Joseph College, a private boys’ academy in Croydon, outside London, to pay for the rent of a house in Thurloe Square, and to engage a solicitor to reclaim the 212,000 gold pesos owed her by Dr. William Stewart. Ella felt doubly betrayed—not only had Dr. Stewart been Franco’s personal physician, he had been her friend. He and his wife, Venancia Baez, had often dined and played whist with Ella. After they left Paraguay, Dr. Stewart and his wife had settled in Scotland.

  In court Dr. Stewart claimed that the proceeds of the sale of a large quantity of yerba he had exported to Argentina before the war on Franco’s behalf were a gift to him. Ella contended that the proceeds of the sale of the tea were intended for her and her children. She had a letter signed by Dr. Stewart as proof. Under oath the doctor swore that he had been coerced with the threat of torture or death to sign the letter.

  The case, known as the Yerba Case, dragged on for more than a year and used up most of Ella’s money. Also, in order to testify, she had to make several costly, tedious trips from London to Edinburgh. On one such trip, she ran into Dr. Stewart’s wife in the lobby of a hotel. Venancia Baez was just going out the door—Ella was going in—and Venancia did not see her. Ella grabbed her by the arm—Venancia had gained a great deal of weight and the arm felt soft and flabby—and stopped her. “Venancia Baez, I just want to let you know,” Ella spoke in a falsely measured and sweet voice, “that I will be the one to stay up half the night dancing—dancing on the head of both your graves!” The court eventually ruled in Ella’s favor, but her victory was short-lived; Dr. Stewart had filed for bankruptcy and Ella never received a single penny from him.

  With barely enough money left to live on and too proud to admit it, Ella made an effort to keep up appearances. She had sold some of her bracelets and rings and she still dressed well, kept servants, a horse and carriage, went regularly to the theater and entertained in her elegant house. People who saw her remarked on how attractive she was, although her blond hair had begun to turn gray and the lines in her face were a bit more pronounced. In her well-made Parisian clothes, she looked distinguished and more French than English—or Irish, for that matter. What
struck people most, however, was that Ella did not appear to look like someone who had suffered great hardships or had known death at such close hand.

  No one had spoken as the carriage jolted on the road south from Cerro Corá. On the one side, Ella held Carlos Honorio’s hand; on the other, she tried not to look at Pancho, who had tears streaming down his cheeks. In the seat across from her, Rosaria sat with the youngest, Leopoldo, on her lap. Enrique was next to her, a lead soldier clutched in each hand. Then came Federico pressed against the side of the carriage; he too was weeping.

  Less than an hour after they had set out, the carriage was overtaken by a Brazilian cavalry detachment and ordered to halt.

  Ella looked out the window.

  “Lopez’s mistress!” the officer in charge shouted at her.

  Ella did not answer.

  “His bastard children!” he shouted again.

  In the carriage, Pancho stood up and went to the window. Pancho had a pistol. Leaning out, he fired it. Hit in the chest, the officer in charge slipped off his horse and fell to the ground. There was a moment of silence, then a soldier rode up and struck twice inside the carriage at Pancho with his long lance.

  With her son in her arms, Ella sat back in the carriage, her dress suddenly warm and wet with his blood.

  After the Commune was overthrown and the Third Republic established, Ella returned to France. On the train bound for Paris, she was sitting, half dozing, in her compartment when a young man whose hair was very blond and curly walked by in the corridor. As the young man paused and turned his head to glance inside Ella’s compartment—his body must have blocked out the light and caused her to look up—for a brief second their eyes met. Ella thought she saw him smile. Lázaro Alcántara! Or was she dreaming? A part of her knew that Lázaro was dead but another part of her wanted to believe he was alive—and hadn’t he said how his dream was to go to Paris after the war? Ella stood up and opened her compartment door. “Lázaro! Lázaro Alcántara!” she called out. The corridor was empty. Determined to find him, Ella ran down the length of the car, then on to the next—a sign in the car said it was expressly forbidden to do this and Ella had to hold the railing and shut her eyes not to look down at the ground underneath her rushing past as she stepped—still no one. In the corridor of the third car, Ella had to squeeze past a man holding a little dog in his arms. The man said something to her she didn’t catch and he pinched her buttock—or had the little dog nipped her? On she went to the next car and the next, until she could go no farther, looking inside the compartments, but she found no Lázaro or no young man with curly blond hair who resembled him. On her way back, the train went through a tunnel and the corridor went dark, Ella thought of the man holding the little dog as she waited. When at last she got back to her own compartment, her luggage was gone.