Reasons of State

by Alejo Carpentier

  These alternations between building and stoppage were still going on when one morning, with a jubilant air, Doctor Peralta entered the Head of State’s private apartments, where the Mayorala Elmira was still in her underclothes:

  “A miracle, Señor! A miracle! German submarines have just sunk a North American ship, the Vigilentia! All the gringos in the crew went to the bottom! Not one was saved!” (He was laughing.) “Not one, my President! Not one! They were all done for. And although the news isn’t official, it’s known that this will bring the United States into the war. Yes, really: they’ll come into the war!”

  And they were both so pleased that without waiting for anything more they took the Hermès case and filled their glasses with Santa Inés. (“So I’m to be treated like dirt, am I?” said the Mayorala, hastily bringing up a tooth glass.) It was some time since the Head of State had been so delighted, because the European war had become a stationary war of trenches, positions, resistance, and slow struggles to win a height, a copse, the ruins of a fort already ten times ruined, a war of minimal advances and retreats, but with countless dead, and therefore monotonous—in fact: boring. For anyone looking at it from here it lacked interest as a spectacle. People no longer moved little flags over maps of distant lands to mark victories or defeats, because there were no dramatic victories or defeats, and whenever a real battle took place it was always in the same area of the Argonne or Verdun, between places with unknown names, barely a centimetre apart on the 1:1000 maps that were still on display, dusty and ignored, in newspaper offices. Certainly the country was enjoying astonishing prosperity. But the increasing cost of living kept the poor in the same misery as before—breakfast of baked banana, yams at midday, crusts and tapioca after the day’s work, with some dried goat’s meat or cow dead of foot-and-mouth disease on Sundays and birthdays—in spite of wages appearing to be good. As a result of this state of things, students, intellectuals, and professional agitators—that filthy intelligentsia who always destroy one’s patience—had gradually combined together to make an opposition movement. And just when he was counting on peace and quiet, the Head of State was surprised by a proliferation of hostile forces invading the city, manifested here, there, where least expected, to trouble his mind and interrupt his sleep. When he thought he had been quite forgotten, the hand of Doctor Luis Leoncio Martínez reappeared in proclamations arriving in envelopes with different postmarks, and denouncing events—this was the serious part of it—known only to a few people connected with the intimate life of the Presidential Palace. It had been discovered too late (that cretin the Chief of Police we waste money on never knew!) that a professor of modern history at the University had given lectures on the Mexican Revolution, speaking about the strength of its proletariat, peasants’ leagues, the Syndicate of Tenant Farmers of Vera Cruz, agrarianism, the socialist government of Carrillo Puerto in Yucatán, and the articles written by the gringo adventurer John Reed—about everything, in fact, that had ruined, sunk, and impoverished the magnificent estates of Don Porfirio, humanist and civiliser, who instead of reposing in a huge national pantheon was buried, a victim of ingratitude, in a sad corner of the cemetery at Montparnasse. And as a last straw our Secret Service had failed to catch some anarchists, probably from Barcelona, who came out at night like elusive ghosts and chalked the letters R.A.S. on the walls, which appeared to stand for Revolution of Anarchists and Syndicalists, sometimes accompanied by phrases like “Property is theft” and other well-worn formulae taken seriously only in our imitative and backward America.

  Now, with this splendid sinking of the Vigilentia, the United States would come into the war, and we should come into the war ourselves: patriotic feelings would be galvanised, and since a state of war necessarily implies a permanent state of emergency, we should round up, to the tune of the National Anthem, the “Marseillaise,” “God Save the King,” “God Save the Tsar,” and “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the most formidable cast of oppositionists, conspirators, and suspicious ideologues—all pro-German—that had ever been seen in the country.

  Meanwhile the Head of State drank rum on fast days and sent for the Ambassador of the United States to inform him that the republic would stand beside her Great Sister of the North in these days of trial; then, after holding a rapid session of the Council of Ministers, he urgently summoned the two Chambers, appeared before them, and the text of a declaration of war against the Central Powers was approved by acclamation, with applause for every “considering that” and “whereas” serving to justify it.

  And that same day, the war began with an operation as excellently profitable as it was speedy in execution: at exactly five o’clock in the afternoon the military authorities from Puerto Araguato went on board four German ships—the Lübeck, the Grane, the Schwert, and the Cuxhaven, which were moored to the quay awaiting orders from their government—took possession of them, and seized their crews. Delighted to see that the war was over for them, the sailors welcomed the port authorities with cheers and marched gaily off to their place of internment, boisterously greeting passers-by on the way. One Nietzschean officer who shouted “We’ll die rather than hand over our ship!” was thrown overboard with an insult obviously meaning something like “son of a whore” in the Teuton tongue. And the captives were taken to a farm surrounded by a lot of land, where they slung their hammocks from trees and at once began gathering herbs and parasitic plants. Next morning they used some wood given them by orders from above to build pretty chalets in the Rhenish style, while others planted gladioli and rolled the ground to make tennis courts. Three weeks later the farm had become a model estate. There was a library, with the poems of Heinrich Heine and even of the socialist Dehmel. Of course it lacked women, but many of them had no need of them, being homosexual on the whole, and as for the unyielding few, they got permission to visit the brothel of La Ramona every Friday, under military escort. And as they were very musical, they made an orchestra from the instruments they had brought on board ship, and began to play the lesser works of Haydn, Mendelssohn, and Raff, his Cavatina in particular. Sometimes a poisonous reptile, rattlesnake, coral, or mapanare would join the concert; but it was always seen in time by the cellist, who looked at the ground more than the other musicians, and the serpent died at a single blow accurately given on its spine by the stick of the bow—col legno as it is technically called. And the purser of the Lübeck would often sing in his charming tenor voice, well accompanied by the orchestra:

  Winterstürme wichen

  dem Wonnemond

  in milden

  lichte leuchtet der Lenz.

  The second action in this war had as its objective the confiscation of the Little German Train—the Head of State directed this operation in person, at the head of the sappers of the Second Tactical Regiment. When H-day dawned, the two terminal stations were occupied—the one above and the one at the bottom—as well as all the intermediate stops, signal boxes, and controls of points, etc. And as journeys remained suspended pending a fresh order, the President had the chance to realise an old dream: that of playing with the Little Train to his heart’s content, putting Peralta, black in the face with dust, in the coal tender. Once he’d grasped the mechanism, the engine advanced, reversed, went in and out of the repairing shed, and revolved again and again on the turntables; whistled, spouted steam from all its valves and ballbearings, emitted even more steam, came, went, and stopped to take a cargo on board: bundles of sugar cane, barrels, a basket of squid, pots of areca nuts, empty cages, a double bass, hens, and one or two negro drummers. And when the Head of State had mastered the whole technique of stoking the engine, driving, accelerating, keeping up the speed, and braking in such a way as to stop the train with the carriages opposite the platform, the entire Cabinet was invited to take a first trip to the Olmedo Colony, with pies and tamales served in the carriages, and enough champagne to drink the health of the First Mechanic of the Nation. And the President found his artefact so amusing that for several days he quite forgot
the European war, and stopped reading the foreign papers regularly brought him by Doctor Peralta—among them a piquant French magazine called Regiment, full of nudes amongst uniforms.

  Meanwhile, “La Madelon” and “Roses of Picardy” had been succeeded by “Over There,” a tune that invaded the country with astonishing speed. Beginning with the pianolas of Puerto Araguato, it had travelled along the Great Eastern Railway, from gramophone to gramophone, taking possession of pianos in music schools, pianos in middle-class drawing rooms, cinema pianos, café pianos, nuns’ pianos, tarts’ pianos, before reaching its most sonorous expression in the Sunday concerts in Central Park. Over there, over there, over there …

  Huge posters representing a North American soldier charging an invisible enemy with his bayonet and shouting “Come on!” invited the public to buy war bonds, and met with such a good response in the country that a little later Ambassador Ariel solemnly handed President Woodrow Wilson the sum of a million dollars, collected in less than twenty-five days. The cinemas showed documentaries glorifying General Pershing—the man who had sent a scandalous “punitive expedition” to Mexico a short while ago. Over there, over there, over there. Now, as well as “Over There,” came Sousa’s noisy marches with bass tubas and flourishes on the piccolo. A young officer, warmly supported by the government (“War stimulates male energy,” said the Head of State: “War is to man what childbirth is to woman”), took upon himself the task of raising the National Legion of Volunteers to go and fight in France—under his command, of course. Armed warfare was full of dangers, naturally, but much that was enjoyable went with it. In proof of this, one need only read an article by Maurice Barrès, often reprinted in the local press: “Good humour reigns in the trenches. Of course, on rainy nights it’s not like being in a luxury restaurant … But I know a place where there’s a labyrinth of eight kilometres of very well kept trenches, connected by paths called names like the Champs-Elysées or the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince. I know an underground shelter where one officer has installed a crimson velvet armchair, and a table with a vase of roses and old Strasbourg china. The trenches are furnished with objects found among the ruins of bombarded villages. Gaiety reigns in the trenches” [sic]. Such literature was synchronised with pictures of Bengal lancers, handsome bersaglieri, and cossacks—recently become republicans—who were now hurling themselves with fresh energy against a Germany whose starving population had nothing to eat but bread made of straw and sawdust; all this, opportunely reinforced by a portrait of Ofelia dressed as a Red Cross nurse, looking more Creole than ever as she bandaged the forehead of a wounded Englishman, played a part in raising an army of 250 young men eager to see the Eiffel Tower, the Moulin Rouge, and Maxim’s restaurant.

  “Now the people over there will realise we’ve got guts,” said Peralta.

  But there was some disappointment among the public when they heard, weeks later, that as soon as the volunteers from their country arrived over there they had been dispersed among different French units, and that the young officer, deprived of the command of his men, had returned in a state of furious indignation, declaring—after taking a close look at the situation—that the Allies would lose this war, even with North American help, because there was nothing to be seen but mismanagement and chaos. But what interested people most was not whether the Allies would win or lose the war, but that it should last as long as possible. Given three, four, or five years more war we should become a great nation. From the six o’clock Mass to the evening rosary, from the bells of daybreak to the ringing of the angelus, everyone was praying for peace, of course, but with the almost universal gesture, difficult for foreigners to understand, of placing their middle fingers on top of their forefingers. When all was said and done, we were not responsible for what was happening in Europe. We weren’t guilty at all. The Old Continent had been at fault in setting itself up as an example of wisdom. And if our country was enjoying an unexpected period of progress and plenty today, it was proof that the Almighty—as the Archbishop had said in an eloquent sermon—favoured those who were out of sympathy with empty philosophies leaving dust and ashes in the soul, and with certain social doctrines as wicked as they were corrupt and foreign to our character, but who had known how to safeguard the religious and patriarchal traditions of the nation. As he said this the prelate made a gesture embracing both the Holy Ghost swinging above his head and the Head of State, who happened to be present in the Cathedral that morning.

  The construction of the Capitol was almost complete. Already enclosed between the walls of a palace too narrow to shelter her, the Giantess, the Titaness, the Immense Woman, a combination of Juno, Pomona, Minerva, and the Republic, had grown bigger day by day as the building went up around her. Every morning she seemed larger, like those jungle plants that shoot up amazingly during the night, trying to reach a dawn hidden from them by the trees above. As if oppressed, crushed by the surrounding stones, she looked twice as thickset, corpulent, and tall—particularly tall—as she did when she had been set up piecemeal in an open space. The cupola had already closed over her head topped by its noble lantern—imitated from the Invalides in Paris—which, now that its beacon was lit, dominated the city nights, cruelly reducing the Cathedral towers to dwarfish proportions and interrupting the dialogue they used to carry on with the distant cone of the Tutelary Volcano, according to a poem by one of our great writers of the last century.

  The work was nearly finished, but it seemed improbable that the building could be inaugurated, as had been hoped, on the date of the Centenary of Independence, which was already fast approaching. On the day when this problem was broached at a stormy meeting of the Cabinet, the Head of State became suddenly enraged and violently dismissed the Minister of Works, threatening the others with exile or prison if the Capitol wasn’t finished, painted, gleaming and burnished, complete with gardens, in time for a date that could not be postponed.

  And now the work took on Egyptian dimensions. Hundreds of peasants were rounded up with machetes, yoked to carts and drays, lodged in huts and summoned to do alternate shifts of work by bugle calls; with their help, columns and obelisks were erected, gods and warriors, dancers, muses, and kings arose, hoplites and horsemen equipped with helmets and breastplates were elevated to the highest friezes. Everything needing polishing was polished, what had to be gilded was gilded, what had to be painted was painted. The work went on at night by the light of spotlights and reflectors. Hammering continued so incessantly that for weeks it was like living in a blacksmith’s forge, among drills and anvils, while the last paving stones were being laid on the steps of the staircase of honour. And one afternoon the Royal Palms entered the city, lying horizontally on lorries and wagons with their leaves sweeping the pavements and raising dust from the streets, to be planted in deep pits filled with black earth, grit, and manure. Behind—like Macbeth’s forest—appeared small pines, clipped box trees and arecas, brought from all sorts of places, ready to be transplanted and staked by hundreds of men, waiting watering can in hand, though it was far from certain, truth to tell, if their leaves would be green in time for the Great Day.

  “Any leaves that wither must be painted the night before,” said the Head of State. Meanwhile, with their eyes fixed on calendars and watches, impatient and sleepless, the architects and overseers urged on the workers with the shouts and attitudes of slave drivers, until the building was quite complete, even to the sumptuous final touch of inserting a great diamond from Tiffany in the middle of a star of reddish green marble at the feet of Aldo Nardini’s statue, to mark the zero point of all the roads of the Republic—the place where, ideally, all the projected means of communication from the farthest limits of the country would meet in the capital.