Reasons of State

by Alejo Carpentier

  “Yes, the bombs,” said the Head of State, once more undecided. “Communists, like anarchists, put bombs anywhere they can. One only has to see the pictures in the international press. All the same …”

  “The trouble is that people think the Student is responsible for everything that’s happening here,” remarked the secretary. “And so he’s becoming a sort of myth: something like Robin Hood but who owns Gyges’ ring. And our poor population is charmed by such stories.”

  And he was quite right, for the novels of Ponson du Terrail, and also Les Misérables, had had an extremely wide appeal throughout the country, with their characters who changed name, age, and appearance and always deceived their pursuers. Gaston Leroux had shown a criminal’s powers of mimicry in his often translated and much read Mystery of the Yellow Room. So it was against a background of classic rebels, historical outlaws, impossible to catch and always on the side of justice, that the image of the Student was evoked among little groups of farmworkers, in tenement-house gatherings, in the coplas sung softly in the back rooms of village shops (although in fact these people had very little idea what communism was), as a sort of fighter for reform, defender of the poor, enemy of the rich, scourge of corruption, saver of a nation alienated by capitalism, a descendant of the popular leaders in our wars of independence, whose generous and just deeds lived on in people’s memories. The fame of his ubiquity, above all, increased day by day: he was the genius of unpredictable journeys, who made fun of police cordons, customs officers, and sentinels, and flew from the mines in the north to the dockyards of La Verónica, from forest to cistus-covered highlands. And the legend of the Student, greatly enriched by stories of laudable deeds, whispered news, and ballads that passed from mouth to mouth, slipped through windows so narrow that it seemed like magic; he ran over the roofs, jumped from terrace to terrace, now disguised as a protestant pastor, now as a Franciscan capuchin, pretended to be blind one day, acted the policeman another—farmhand, miner, muleteer, doctor with his black bag, English tourist, wandering harpist, loader of crates. And while the forces of State Security were hunting for him, clattering about on their motorcycles and besieging whole suburbs, the hunted man was probably sitting on a seat in Central Park, wearing an old man’s wig, a white beard, and black spectacles, with his nose buried in the daily paper, while a few of his followers—if they really were his followers—began singing far away amongst the agaves and prickly pears, the nets and seaweed, the mountain wheatfields and threshing floors among the clouds, a copla very popular in Mexico some years ago:

  We farmworkers—or so they say—

  Are just a lot of twisters

  Because we have no wish to be

  The oxen of our masters.

  “I don’t like myths,” said the Head of State, faced with the increasing reality of the Student, whose imaginary—but unknown—profile crossed between the large window in his study and the earthly presence of the Tutelary Volcano every morning. “I don’t like myths. Nothing can travel about so far and so fast in this continent as a myth.”

  “Certainly, that’s true,” observed the schoolmaster who often emerged in Peralta. “Montezuma was overthrown by the messianic Aztec myth of a-man-with-a-pale-skin-who-was-to-come-from-the-east. The Andes knew the myth of the Inca Paraclete, later incarnate in Tupac Amaru, who put up a good fight against the Spaniards. We had the myths of the Resurrection-of-the-Ancient-Gods, which gained us a Fantastic City in the jungles of Yucatán when Paris was celebrating the advent of the Century of Science and worshipping the Good Fairy Electricity. There was Auguste Comte’s myth in the Brazilian style, with a mystical marriage between Batacada and Positivism. Myth of the gauchos being immune to bullets. Myth of that Haitan—I think he was called Mackandal—who could tranform himself into a butterfly, an iguana, a horse, or a dove. Myth of Emiliano Zapata, going up to heaven after his death on a black horse breathing out flames.”

  “And in Mexico too,” observed the President, “our friend Porfirio Diaz was done for by the myth of ‘effective suffrage, no re-election,’ and the awakening of the Eagle and the Serpent, who had both been asleep for rather more than thirty years, luckily for their country. And now, here, everyone believes the Myth of the Student—the virtuous redeemer, spartan and omnipresent. We must deflate the Myth of the Student … And our bloody police, trained in the United States, are no fucking use; they don’t know how to tie men up and beat and torture them, or drown them in the bathtub.”

  But Peralta was already opening the Hermès case to calm his master’s rage, when the surprising, unhoped-for, and altogether astounding news arrived that the Student had been found in the least likely place and feebly allowed himself to be taken prisoner without resistance or glory at a customs office in the south, where the ingenuous police—but not as ingenuous as all that—had been surprised to find a cane cutter with uncalloused hands travelling in a cane cart. The photo of this individual, taken at the time, agreed with one on his student’s record of entry to the University. And for almost two hours he had been shut up in a cell in the Model Prison, of course denying that he was the Student—didn’t he like cells?

  “For God’s sake, don’t do him any harm!” exclaimed the Head of State. “A good breakfast with corn griddle cakes, butter, cheeese, black beans, fried eggs, and even a long drink if he wants one. And afterwards bring him to my study. We’ll have a man-to-man talk. And I give you my word I have no intention of using my powers against him. That way there will be less resistance.”

  The Head of State had set his scene very carefully. Dressed in an austere frock coat bound with silk—a pinkish grey tie, a decoration in the buttonhole—he was sitting with his back to the large plate-glass window giving onto the central courtyard of the palace, with his work table in front of him, so that the light would shine on his victim’s face. In the middle of the table was a classical grey blotter bound in embossed leather; an inkpot—a napoleonic eagle on a pedestal of green marble; the obligatory leather cylinder full of well-sharpened pencils; a paperweight souvenir of Waterloo; a gold paper knife with the arms of the republic engraved on the handle, and files—a great many files in ostentatious disarray, with their papers turned out, here, there, as when someone is laboriously going through their documents. And here, on the right of the blotter, as if casually, lay a copy of the manual on breeding Rhode Island Reds in its yellow cover.

  Doctor Peralta showed the Student into the room with the utmost courtesy, although the Head of State did not interrupt his apparent checking of numbers and ticking them with his fountain pen. Raising his occupied hand, he indicated an armchair to the visitor. And after clipping together a few pages he handed them to his secretary:

  “There was an error of 320 pesos in the estimate for the viaduct. That won’t do. Tell those gentlemen they had better see about getting one of those ‘adding machines,’ as they call them, from the United States.”

  Peralta left the room and there was a long silence. Corpulent, heavy-shouldered, his stature increased by the regal proportions of the presidential chair, the Head of State gazed at his adversary in some surprise. Where he had thought to find an athletic young man, his muscles hardened by playing fives at the University, with a tense defiant face, as if ready for battle, he was now looking at a thin, frail youth, halfway between adolescence and maturity, his hair rather ruffled, his face pale, but who was certainly confronting him almost without blinking, with very bright eyes, perhaps grey-green, perhaps grey-blue, and who in spite of a somewhat feminine sensibility expressed the force of character and determination of someone who can act when necessary with the toughness of a convinced believer.

  So they both looked at each other, the Master, the Invested, Immovable Ruler, and the Weak, Invisible Utopian, across the trench dividing the generations, seeing each other in flesh and blood for the first time. Their mutual contemplation produced a lamentable effect on both. To the Inferior his Superior was an archetype, an exhibit in a historical museum, a figure created to
take the centre of one of those posters (the products of very recent folklore) that illustrate the triad situated in a single body, of Power, Capitalism, and the Boss, an image as invariably printed on the retina as were, centuries earlier, those of Turlupin or the Matamoros of the Italian Commedia dell’Arte. Today’s protagonist of revolutionary allegories was this individual sitting in front of him in his frock coat and striped trousers, with a pearl tiepin and expensive scent, lacking only the emblem of a shiny top hat and a cigar stuck between his fierce teeth to symbolise—sitting on sacks of dollars that really existed, even if in the vaults of a Swiss bank—the Spirit of the Bourgeoisie.

  To the Superior, his Inferior was a character from folklore, whom he was measuring, weighing up, and analysing, while conscious of surprise at having to attend to someone so unimportant. The man in front of him was something like a Latin American version of the classical student in Russian novels, full of dreams and theories, more of a nihilist than a politician, proletarian out of sense of duty, who lived in a garret, under-nourished, badly dressed, falling asleep among his books, roused to bitterness by the mediocrity of his existence. They had both had the same origins. But while the Superior, a pragmatist who thoroughly understood his environment, had taken with impatient haste the upward path, which was today bordered with statues and busts of himself, his Inferior had fallen into the trap of a new form of Messianism, whose fatal progress would carry him to the Siberias of the Tropics, to the indignities of Bertillon’s tests, or to the denouement—a theme for the articles of journalists in the far future—of disappearing-without-trace, leaving the relatives of this weak, insubstantial figure to take flowers on assumed anniversaries and lay them on aimless tombs, engraved with names, but with the sadness, worse even than that of an occupied coffin, of an empty grave.

  And in a silence barely broken by the whistle of a bird frisking among the areca palms on the patio, there took place a dialogue between voices that never emerged from lips. Each was looking at the other: He doesn’t realise to what extent he’s playing a part / he seems more like a provincial poet than anything else / he’s absolutely “taken up a position” / one of those who win prizes in Flower Festivals / flashy clothes / suit from the Quality Shop / face like a bottom / cheeks like a girl / comes out paler in photos: as he gets older he returns to his origins / hair uncombed, tie crooked, to give himself some style / smells like a tart, with all that Cologne / he needs size, strength to make something of him / there’s a repulsive quality in his expression / he thinks he’s Masaniello / I thought he was older / I wonder if it’s hate or fear he’s looking at me with / his hands are trembling: alcohol / he’s got a pianist’s hands, but he ought to clean his nails / the classical Tyrant / the Archangel we all were once / a vicious, obscene man: it’s all in his appearance / the face of a boy who hasn’t screwed many women: intellectual lightweight / not even a monster: a petty tyrant giving himself airs / those weak ones are the worst / all this is pure theatre: this way of receiving me, the light on my face, that book on the table / capable of anything: he’s got nothing to lose / don’t look at me like that, I won’t lower my eyes / although he may be brave, he wouldn’t resist torture / I wonder if I could stand torture: some people can’t / I believe he’s afraid / … torture … / if they put him under a certain amount of pressure / they’ll try to get names out of me / why such a long wait? A good fright to start with / his hand’s going to the bell: he’s going to ring / no: I gave my word / I don’t know if I could resist / talk to him first / it’s horrible thinking of that, of that, of that … / one mustn’t make martyrs, one mustn’t make martyrs of these people: avoid it if possible / he gave me his word; but his word isn’t worth a fuck / everyone knows that He is here now, and that I’ve given my word / he’s going to ring: I shall be handcuffed / others, tougher than this one, have been persuaded / when will he decide to speak? / let him go, and have him followed: he must go somewhere / why doesn’t the bugger speak to me? Why can’t he open his mouth? / He’s sweating! Now I’m sweating and I’ve no handkerchief, I’ve no handkerchief; not in that pocket either … / He’s afraid / he’s smiling / he wants to suggest something: some beastliness / I’ll offer him a drink / I’m sure he’s going to offer me a drink / he won’t accept it, so as to pride himself on his virtue / if only he’d offer me a drink: I’d feel better / I don’t want to risk a refusal / come on, go on, that’s it, risk it; it’ll be a bottle from that case; everyone knows what’s inside it / however, yes: I tell you … I repeat … But he doesn’t seem to have heard me: that lorry / now it’s the tram / I don’t understand his expression / I don’t think he understood my expression / we’ve stared at each other quite long enough; now for the book, so that he can see …

  The Head of State picked up the book on breeding Rhode Island Red poultry. He opened it and, pushing back his spectacles, began to read in a markedly sarcastic tone: “A spectre was haunting Europe: the spectre of communism.”

  And the other went on, with even more marked sarcasm: “All the old European powers combined together to pursue this spectre: The Pope and Wilson, Clemenceau and Lloyd George.”

  “Metternich and Guizot,” corrected the President.

  “I see you know the classics,” said the Student.

  “I know more about poultry breeding. Don’t forget I’m a son of the soil. Perhaps that’s why …” And he stopped, perplexed as to the style he ought to adopt in this dialogue. Ornate language, like that of the “Prayer on the Acropolis,” would never do; a young man of the coming generation would find it ridiculous, nor must he fall into the opposite extreme of the rough vocabulary that coarsened his intimate conversations with Doctor Peralta and the Mayorala Elmira, though giving them a certain jauntiness. He therefore opted for a deliberate, humanistic tone, without the familiar form we always used, a tone that by its remoteness from that world of drink and confidences immediately created a distance greater than that set by the table separating them. Like an actor very much in command of his gestures and talking between his teeth like Lucien Guitry, he addressed the boy in front of him as if he were a character in a tragedy, about to be overwhelmed by the inscrutable designs of Fate:

  “Why do you* detest me so much?”

  His formal manner of speech sufficiently conveyed his verbal strategy to the Student / he approaches me in the style of Voltaire when he tells us he “had the honour to go off” with an Indian woman in a loincloth … /, who replied in the meekest and most peaceable voice that his terrified throat could produce:

  “I do not detest you, Señor.”

  “But actions speak louder than words,” said the Powerful One without raising the pitch. “Bombs aren’t thrown against the palace servants. Therefore there is hatred, anger in you.”

  “Nothing against you, Señor.”

  “But … those bombs?”

  “I didn’t plant them, Señor. I don’t understand anything about explosives.”

  “Well, it wasn’t you,† then? But your followers planted them, your friends and accomplices / he suddenly thought the word accomplice was vulgar and belonged to the vocabulary of police reports / your co-religionists, your helpers, those on your side.” / careful: I’ve dropped into flowery language again.

  “We don’t plant bombs, Señor.”

  The Head of State began to grow impatient. The fable of the Wolf and the Lamb was being played out between them.

  “But … who planted them, then? Who? Will you tell me?”

  “Others, not one of us. We’ve too often seen the failure of anarchists’ attempts to change the world. Ravachol and Caserio are just as futile with their deliberate self-immolation as Bakunin and Kropotkin with their doctrines.”

  “Don’t try and come over me with your pointless discussions and sophistries from the Council of Nicaea / as if mine were different! / it all amounts to the same thing, in fact. Even supposing you and your friends didn’t explode a bomb in my bath, you applauded it.”

  “On the contrary, Señor. Th
e worst that could happen to us now is that someone should kill you. I have a comrade, a practising Catholic—there’s nothing to be done about it—who prays and makes vows to the Divine Shepherdess to preserve your precious life for us.”

  The Head of State got to his feet, moved by astonishment and rage mixed.

  “My precious existence? You’ve got a nerve and no mistake! And nerve is a euphemism.” / Now he’s beginning to call me “tú.” /

  “We need you, Señor.”

  The Powerful, Enormous man burst out laughing.

  “That’s really great! So now I’m a Marxist, Communist, Menshevik, and revolutionary, and the same mother bore all these, who are all the same and all after the same ends: to be installed in the Kremlin, the Elysée, Buckingham Palace, or to sit on this chair (and he thumped the back of the presidential chair), enjoy life, fill one’s purse with money, and fuck all the rest. The Tsar’s ambassador who stayed here with us, waiting and hoping that all that business would come to grief, told me that Lenin’s wife used to wear the jewels, necklaces, and crowns of the Empress Alexandra.”

  “It’s splendid that you think that way, and make up such stories, Señor. It’s better we shouldn’t understand each other at all than only half understand each other. Those who half understand us fight us more effectively than those who take us for visionaries.”

  “However, if I were in fact to die tomorrow …”

  “It would be lamentable for us, Señor. Because a military junta would seize power, and everything would go on just the same or worse under the government of someone like Walter Hoffmann, God rest his soul.”

  “Well, what do you want, then?”

  In a slightly raised voice but not speeded up at all, the young man said, “That you should be overthrown by a popular uprising.”

  “And afterwards? You would come and occupy my place, isn’t that certain?”

  “I have never desired anything of the sort.”