by Dick Cluster
Was that all? Nothing but the whacking of an insignificant little leather ball? Could there be a diversion for the masses that lacked the atavistic dignity of spilled blood, the grandeur of a willing sacrifice, the risk of death or even sometimes death itself? Wasn’t such a courtesy required to dress up the onerous task of teaching proper behavior? Not even Christ himself, in his right mind, would have thought of disappointing the masses by denying them the supreme offering of his crucifixion. All this being true, the content of the game about to unfold could not be what was stirring the crowd. Rather, some word must have leaked out about the participation of three black men, with the stature of giants, who were now suddenly spotted by a woman in the audience, as evidenced by her heaving breast and vociferous cries. Their attention thus attracted, others spread the news. The local men recently trained to join the contest on the foreigners’ payroll bore the everyday names of Juanico Cañongo, Indalecio Bendito, and Ñungo Calderón. They paraded onto the field like unexpected cards tumbling from a gambler’s sleeve, causing the monsignor to rub his eyes, because the trick being played by the foreign authorities had to be seen to be believed. And at first sight it smacked of barefaced betrayal. It was one thing for his flock to assemble to watch the gringos brandish sticks and bang at balls, but quite another to participate in this spectacle that insulted rather than amused. Yet there they stood, like recently washed fighting bulls, ensconced among the invaders who waited for their admiral in his fringed uniform and feathered cap to honor the impending entertainment by tossing out the first of the spheres.
The participation of three of their own brought out a growing multitude that soon packed the fortress. It did not matter very much that the native-born players were mere supplementary patches sewn quickly into the folds of the redshirted team. Although the game was being played primarily by Yankees, the unexpected local participants gave the spectacle new meaning. Knapp smiled. He shot his honored guests an insolent look, for he was sure he had made the right decision. At least on this occasion he had managed to arrange things to impart a genuine glow to what he wished to honor. He saw that the crowd had, of its own volition, brought forward La Niña Mejía, conveying her to the front row and seating her on the wall. Still very attractive, she was the city’s highest-ranking lady of the night, well known to be the lover-in-case-of-emergency of the most important gentlemen. It would be foolish for those on the reviewing stand to pretend not to recognize her. Neither the admiral nor the monsignor nor Don Ubaldo Rondón de la Cierva, the chief justice who performed the duties of president of the Republic, tried to hide his shock at seeing the bruises and black eyes upon La Mejía’s normally immaculate face. Never before had she shown signs of such an attack, yet today she exhibited them with provocative nerve. It was true, of course, that long immersion in a combustible mixture of dalliance and flirtation could bring consequences, and on more than one occasion the city had mourned the death of a maenad of bodily pleasure. But who would dare to take such liberties with La Mejía, who accepted caresses and coins only from the most select? For a moment she seemed to shoot a glance of pain, spite, and accusation toward the seats of honor, but she was following the lead of the entire crowd, which was directing its intention to Knapp as he approached the field to hurl the minuscule ball, now wrapped in a garish silk ribbon, toward the corner where a player awaited it with one of the sticks or clubs, also beribboned, as the signal for the contest to begin.
Immediately after, one thrower took up his position in the center of the field while a powerful club handler in the designated corner awaited the delivery. Would such a ridiculously small item as the tiny leather sphere be able to awaken the sleeping emotions of the multitude? Equally lacking in elegance were the sticks—officially denominated “bats”—and the flat, cakelike objects the players wore on their hands, the shabbiest excuses for gloves, to be used to interrupt the projectile’s solitary flight. Suddenly bat met ball with a downward chop that sent the sphere rolling through the grass, surely nothing of importance, but the batter ran like a madman toward one of the pillows marking the boundary. He remained there while another stick-wielder took his place in the spot where it had all begun. The thrower gave him a searching look, as if weighing some secret knowledge, as if the ball could fly with the living intelligence of a mysterious bird, a wingless moon that never allowed itself to be trapped. The blue team was batting against the red, as befitted the opening frame of a special game to mark the solemn commemoration.
The batter, a rather sullen young man, somehow read the fleeting thoughts of the rapidly advancing ball. With a swing that was beautiful in its rhythm, he made contact and drove it to the leftmost boundary of the field, where the parade ground ended at the cliffs overlooking the sea. The runner on the first of the bases, electrified by the majestic flight of the ball, sprinted to the third one, while the hitter who had unleashed the shot reached the spot the first man had left. The game had taken a favorable turn for the blue team, an augury fulfilled when the next batter hit a line drive to the center of the field, allowing the two men on base to score easily. The pair of runs was duly recorded with chalk on a large scoreboard by the diminutive scribe who served in one of the offices, now puffed with pride that seemed to make him larger than life. For players who considered themselves skilled at the game and the equal of their opponents, surrendering two runs in the first inning was a hard pill to swallow. The audience, however, having come to the game in complete ignorance of the rules, attracted only by the presence of their three countrymen who had been secretly trained to take part in this important event, neither applauded nor stirred. Rather, they found themselves in the position of anyone who attends a weighty speech or sermon delivered in a foreign language and must rely on inferences from tone of voice, or moments of stridency and heat, at best deciphering a sudden gesture here or there.
At this moment, a soldier approached Admiral Knapp to whisper a message in his ear, suddenly bringing a new expression to his face. With enforced calm in keeping with his rigid manners, the officer stared vacantly at the crowd. He stroked the golden belt buckle of his dress uniform and, begging the pardon of those around him, he left. His aides likewise disappeared into the tower of the fortress, reappearing en masse on the outer side of the upper battlements. Surely the admiral’s departure from the game was a mistake that, even if involuntary, diminished him before the other dignitaries. What grave occurrence could have caused it? Many eyes were upon him, as always happens to those in high positions who must live and die within narrow cages of glass. Thus, everyone saw Knapp point the long, thin finger of a telescope toward the northern plains, to investigate more closely something that must have raised a deep shadow of fear and rage in his mind. Luckily for him, a burst of applause among scattered exclamations served as diversion, a puff of smoke emerging opportunely from a magician’s handkerchief and wand. The admiral now disappeared from the ramparts and soon resumed his place of honor before the sharp gaze of Counselor Rondón, the first magistrate of the Republic, and his bitter enemy, the Reverend Monsignor.
“Something unexpected, your Excellency?”
It was impossible for those two men, who for some trifling reason never spoke in front of third parties, to be completely ignorant of what was afoot. All reports indicated that on this very day of celebration, the self-proclaimed general Aquiles Contreras intended to enter the capital. According those same reports, however, there was little or nothing to worry about in terms of defense. To cancel the sporting event that the occupation troops had organized would only offer gratuitous comfort and substance to the enemy—especially since Spencer Knapp was confident that nothing in the innermost life or soul of the guerrilla general could escape being recorded between the covers of a leather portfolio polished to such perfection as to match the glow of his knee-high boots, a portfolio that rested on the shining surface of his desk and contained what were referred to as Special Reports. The monsignor, for his part, was a haughty and capricious prelate, cut to the mold o
f an office that for thousands of years had commanded respect by inspiring fear. Although this made him rather predictable, he managed to fortify himself behind a reputation for unchallenged integrity. If others believe—or are disposed to believe—that one is good, then one is indeed good unless and until something happens to shake one’s position. Justice Ubaldo Rondón was a different matter. His perpetual smile was like a bloody knife on a velvet napkin, a rigid steel weapon that hung from his flowing, fierce mustache, its gleam gaining color and depth when his eyes so desired. He was skilled at conveying the impression he could see everything without even looking.
Given all this, as well as the lethargic pace at which things unfolded, could there be any truth to reports predicting the entrance of a defiant and perhaps even victorious Contreras into the heart of the capital?
In Knapp’s case, he simply could not let go of his first impression of the enemy who—in the shaky handwriting of a reluctant schoolboy—was reported to be the illegitimate son of a certain Sinforoso Rodríguez, a rich farmer in the south who, attempting to shake off the demons so easily invoked by the boy’s sharp-witted mother, sent him to be brought up among the robes and skirts of priests and nuns and then (in accord with the custom of his cockfight companions) dispatched him for polishing to no less a place than Paris, from which he returned with French tastes and the title of physician, a profession he deemed inappropriate for his temperament and therefore never practiced. There were, of course, other versions. One of these, without contradicting the first one, cast him as the haphazard descendant of a black emperor in Africa. Another, credited by many, held him to be nothing less than the milk nephew of Don Ubaldo, which in popular parlance meant someone brought up alongside the offspring of the magistrate, perhaps the child of their wet-nurse indeed. Other claims, as foolish as they were widespread, attributed his messianic proclivities to quite different bloodlines, whether that of a particular secular demon or of Christopher Columbus himself. Why, we might ask, is it so hard to explain any man’s actions without recourse to the mania of making him the son of someone, and thus explaining both his ambitions and his circumstances by means of a pedestrian, one-dimensional vision that attributes any and all destinies to lineage and family? All agreed that Contreras had to descend from some august household and that fate, itself corralled into a very narrow channel, had decreed that the rebel and the gringo should share the same woman. Yes, the Niña Mejía, who (being very young when all this began) could not have imagined, even given the most portentous of omens, that the middling handsome youth who embraced her so ardently night after night would find himself in a fight to the death with the Yankee commander—now, years later, with the country in the throes of a domestic war that had opened the way to a dishonorable invasion.
But, in all honesty, what did it matter? Whether lord or beggar, Contreras was there, in command of an invisible army that would follow him into the teeth of sworn annihilation, and what was worse, for Knapp’s purposes, was that he had proved impossible to capture. Everyone offered the admiral smiles, but their respect and their money went to Contreras in proportion to his deeds. If his hazardous insurrection had suffered its ups and downs, still the effects of his sustained attacks had made themselves felt in outbreaks of resistance under the noses of the marines and in the remotest corners of the nation. These included fearful assaults such as the battle at Barranca de los García, from which Knapp’s troops had to withdraw bearing their dead and wounded in shame. Worse still, Spencer Knapp could not learn to let go of his first impression. Carried away by the apparent clarity of his provincial outlook, he wrote in the meticulous tidiness of his diary, in some despair:
The people of this land have arms and legs, that is to say, torso, head, and extremities. But neither the infinite shades of their skins nor the elemental simplicities of their minds reach the stature required to define them as men in the full sense of the word. Our case is different. We are human. They are not.
And so he let his emotions convince him that differences in external decoration confirmed his superiority (though these were nothing more than a skin-tight biological disguise). He let that belief be buttressed by the most logical of sophistries and let it extend from himself to what was external: to the size and strength of the army he commanded and the wondrous mechanisms that had created it. Therefore, he and his forces were fated to govern a world of debased remnants of humanity that could have no other destiny but to submit. His pride found itself reduced to this frighteningly childish belief and its associated rites and customs, made most visible in the majestic carved and painted eagles adorning the fortress’s barracks and storehouses and his resplendent personal office most of all. To Knapp it was unthinkable that a nobody like Contreras could defeat him. Further—and this was worse—it was unthinkable that others of the rebel’s ilk could be right about anything at all. Of course, such a presumption had to be hidden from the public, who must not sniff even the faintest whiff of the contents of the books and journals Knapp so avidly read in private. Perhaps those opinions could be expressed, occasionally, within the confines of a lewd joke that served as escape valve for the repugnance produced by everything around him. Such ideas were the fruit of a long, silent, unexamined gestation that nourished the darkest parts of his heart. They were a clumsy and irrelevant justification, which a closer look at his surroundings would have toppled to the ground. Haven’t we been told, since the dawn of historical time, how Cain judged Abel and then destroyed him? In this way, Spencer Knapp was no more foolish than the soldiers who served him as advisors, nor was he a lesser man than the antediluvian chaplain who soothed any doubts about his duties with all manner of rationales. Whenever we give power to another, we know what he may be capable of in the depths of his soul.
Upset as he was by news of Contreras’s advance, Knapp did not take in the extent of the public ovation greeting the three mulatto players. The first of them to hit was Indalecio Bendito, a well-built young man with a gladiator’s bearing. The bat seemed a child’s plaything in this youth’s strong hands, as he patiently let the first two pitches go by. All indications suggested that both teams already knew him well. The pitcher was noticeably tense, and so was the player crouching to receive the ball nearly in the pathway of the bat. Buoyed by the crowd, Indalecio Bendito took careful measure of his adversaries and succeeded in giving the ball such an unexpected blow that it disappeared into the sea. The seaside cliff stood just to the south of the fortress, its height obviating the need for any wall or other system of protection. But the nearby lower cannon emplacement, beside which the wall for victims of the firing squad had been built, made the waters below an equally fatal location for any craft daring to approach the dock. Bendito, proudly and with great care as if handling a slim sliver of glass, lay his bat on the ground and, amidst wild cheering from the crowd, proceeded at a walking pace around the square, duly scoring the run that his towering four-base hit had earned. No one observing his muscles could doubt that such a feat was within his power. Even the sergeant serving as umpire, unaware of the involuntary lapse, greeted the hitter effusively as he crossed the plate. When Indalecio reached the long bench where the other players were waiting, however, the team captain confronted him angrily. “Why didn’t you run? Why didn’t you circle the bases at the speed our rules require?”
Indalecio Bendito, who was never at a loss for words, hesitated. Whether or not he liked what he had done, he knew that the words of Corporal Jack Perry contained a dangerous truth. But his mockery, if that’s what it was, had already been committed. As if to calm the waters, the next batter—Lance-Corporal Bruce Palmer, a Viking cyclops equal in size to Bendito—advanced to the plate, where he repeated the black man’s feat, adding another run. That was what the game was all about.
Interrupted by the events on the field, Admiral Knapp had left Counselor Rondón’s casual question unanswered. Avoiding the magistrate’s bleary eyes, the admiral clapped him on the shoulder in a comradely way as if that constituted an
answer. Then Knapp left again, this time for the solitude of his office. As he reached for his pipe to refill it with tobacco, La Niña Mejía took him unawares. A few tears betrayed tumultuous waters deep inside. The admiral was disturbed. One could not trust a whore, of course, but she had come to confront him with her best weapons. Confident of her powers, she approached him and spoke with fearful gravity.
“Sir, this is going to be a terrible day.”
Spencer Knapp could clearly see the scratches and bruises that had surprised all observers. They seemed so out of place on a woman known for her composure. In spite of her office, she never made scenes, much less appeared in public bearing the marks of anyone’s rage, a condition both sad and beneath her dignity. The admiral, who for some curious reason always thought of an eight-ball when he saw her, rested his hands on a silver paperweight. Flattered by the weakness she was displaying, he blurted out, “Do you love me?”
That was going too far. The naïveté of such a question, even if asked without thinking, pierced her like an ornamental pin that is suddenly stained with blood. It was she who had provoked this encounter, of course; she had shed a few tears for him; she was here now with something intangible in hand, repayment of debt owing to some degree of tenderness. But love him? Having grown strong, or perhaps impervious, in the tiresome labor of offering pleasure, she could not accept the defeat of succumbing to love. Letting her shock show, she stepped away. With the grossest of chuckles, deceiving him as she did herself, she demanded, “Is your intent to force me to lie?”