"What a price we've had to pay for an independence that's not worth shit!"
That night Montilla gathered the cream of the city in his seignorial house on Calle La Factoria, where the Marquis de Valdehoyos had lived a villainous life and his Marquise had prospered from smuggling flour and trafficking in blacks. Easter lights had been lit in the principal houses, but the General had no illusions because he knew that in the Caribbean anything, even an illustrious death, could be the excuse for public revels. And in fact it was a false fiesta. Vile broadsides had been in circulation for several days, and the opposition party had incited its gangs to throw stones through windows and battle the police with cudgels. "It's just as well there are no more windows left to break," said Montilla with his customary humor, well aware that popular anger was directed at him more than at the General. He reinforced the grenadiers of the guard with local troops, cordoned off the area, and ordered that his guest not be told of the war in the streets.
That night the Count de Raigecourt came to tell the General that the English packet boat was in sight of the castles on Boca Chica but that he was not leaving. The public reason was his not wanting to share the immensity of the ocean with a group of women, who were all crowded into the only cabin. But the truth was that despite the urbane lunch at Turbaco, despite the adventure at the cockpit, despite all the General had done to overcome the misfortunes of his health, the Count realized he was in no condition to undertake the voyage. He thought perhaps the General's spirit could endure the crossing, but not his body, and he refused to do death a favor. Nevertheless, these reasons and many others like them failed to shake the General's determination that night.
Montilla did not admit defeat. He said early goodbyes to his guests so that the sick man might rest, but he kept him a good while longer on the interior balcony while a languid adolescent girl in an almost invisible muslin tunic played seven romanzas for them on the harp. They were so beautiful, and were performed with so much tenderness, that the two soldiers did not have the heart to speak until the sea breeze had cleared the last ashes of music from the air. The General sat dozing in the rocking chair, floating on the waves of the harp, when without warning he shuddered inside and sang all the words of the last song in a very low but clear and harmonious voice. When the song was over he turned to the harpist, murmuring thanks that came from his soul, but the only thing he saw was the harp, hung with a garland of withered laurels. Then he remembered.
"There's a man in prison in Honda for justifiable homicide," he said.
Montilla's laughter preceded his own witticism:
"What color are his horns?"
The General let the remark pass and explained the case in all its details except for his earlier acquaintance with Miranda Lyndsay in Jamaica. Montilla had a simple solution.
"He should ask to be transferred here for reasons of health," he said. "Once he's here we'll arrange his pardon."
"Can you do that?" asked the General.
"No," said Montilla, "but we do it."
The General closed his eyes, oblivious to the sudden loud barking of the dogs in the night, and Montilla thought he had gone back to sleep. After deep reflection he opened his eyes again and filed the matter away.
"All right," he said. "But I don't know anything."
Only then did he notice the barking that spread in concentric waves from the walled district to the remotest swamps, where there were dogs trained in the art of not barking so they would not betray their owners. General Montilla told him they were poisoning the street dogs to prevent the spread of rabies. In the slave quarter they had succeeded in capturing only two of the children who had been bitten. The others, as always, had been hidden by their parents so they could die under their own gods, or had been taken beyond the reach of the government to the strongholds of the fugitive slaves in the swamps of Marialabaja, in an effort to save them with the witch doctors' arts.
The General had never attempted to suppress those calamitous rites, but he thought that poisoning dogs was unworthy of the human condition. He loved them as much as horses and flowers. When he sailed for Europe the first time, he carried a pair of pups with him all the way to Veracruz. He had more than ten dogs with him when he left Los Llanos in Venezuela and crossed the Andes at the head of four hundred barefoot plainsmen to liberate New Granada and found the Republic of Colombia. He always took them into battle. Nevado, the most famous, who had been with him from his earliest campaigns and had defeated without help a brigade of twenty bloodthirsty dogs belonging to the Spanish armies, had been killed by a lance during the first battle of Carabobo. In Lima, Manuela Saenz owned more than she could care for, in addition to the numerous animals of all kinds that she kept on the estate at La Magdalena. Someone had told the General that when a dog died it had to be replaced without delay by another just like it, and with the same name, so you could go on believing it was the same animal. He did not agree. He always wanted them to be distinctive so he could remember them all with their own identities, their yearning eyes and eager spirits, and could mourn their deaths. Among the victims of the attack on the evil night of September 25 were the two bloodhounds whose heads had been cut off by the conspirators. Now, on his final journey, he had with him the two that survived, as well as the ferocious, ill-favored stray they had picked up on the river. Montilla's announcement that on the first day alone they had poisoned over fifty dogs ruined the state of mind created in him by the harp of love.
Montilla was truly sorry and promised there would be no more dogs killed in the streets. The promise calmed him, not because he believed it would be kept, but because the good intentions of his generals were a consolation to him. The splendor of the night was responsible for the rest. The scent of jasmine rose from the illuminated patio, the air seemed like diamonds, and there were more stars than ever in the sky. "Like Andalusia in April," he had once said, remembering Columbus. A crosswind swept away the noises and the smells, and all that remained was the thunder of the waves against the walls.
"General," pleaded Montilla. "Don't go."
"The ship is in port," he said.
"There'll be others," said Montilla.
"It doesn't matter," he replied. "They're all the last one."
He would not budge. After much pleading, to no avail, Montilla had no other recourse than to reveal the secret he had sworn to keep until just before it was to take place: General Rafael Urdaneta, at the head of the Bolivarist officers, was preparing a coup in Santa Fe de Bogota for early in September. Contrary to Montilla's expectations, the General did not seem surprised.
"I didn't know," he said, "but it was easy to imagine."
Then Montilla disclosed the details of the military conspiracy brewing in all the loyal garrisons in the country, with the compliance of officers in Venezuela. The General gave it deep thought. "It makes no sense," he said. "If Urdaneta really wants to save the world, let him make peace with Paez and repeat the history of the last fifteen years all the way from Caracas to Lima. Then it will just be a patriotic excursion down to Patagonia." Nevertheless, before he retired he left a small opening.
"Does Sucre know?" he asked.
"He's against it," said Montilla.
"Because of his quarrel with Urdaneta, of course," said the General.
"No," said Montilla. "Because he's against everything that keeps him from Quito."
"In any event, he's the one you have to talk to," said the General. "You're wasting your time with me."
It seemed his final word. Very early the next day he even gave Jose Palacios orders to load the baggage while the packet was in the bay, and he sent him to ask the ship's captain to anchor her opposite the fortress of Santo Domingo during the afternoon so that he could watch from the balcony of his house. The arrangements were so precise that his officers thought he would not take any of them because he had not said who was traveling with him. Wilson proceeded in accordance with the plan made in January and loaded his luggage without consulting anyone.
Even those least convinced of his departure went to say goodbye when they saw the six loaded wagons rolling through the streets toward the wharf on the bay. The Count de Raigecourt, accompanied on this occasion by Camille, was the guest of honor at luncheon. Her hair was pulled back into a chignon, she wore a green tunic and slippers, and she looked younger, her eyes less cruel. The General concealed with a compliment his displeasure at seeing her.
"The lady must be very certain of her beauty for green to look so well on her," he said in Spanish.
The Count translated on the spot, and Camille burst into the laughter of a free woman, saturating the entire house with her licorice breath. "Let's not start again, Don Simon," she said. Something had changed in them both, for neither dared to take up the rhetorical jousting of their first meeting for fear of wounding the other. Camille forgot him as she flitted at her pleasure through a crowd educated to speak French on just such occasions as this. The General went to converse with Friar Sebastian de Siguenza, a saintly man who enjoyed well-deserved prestige for having cured Humboldt of the smallpox he contracted on his visit to the city in the year 1800. The friar was the only person who attributed no importance to what he had done. "The Lord has willed that some die of smallpox and others not, and the Baron was one of the latter," he would say. The General had asked to meet him on his previous trip, when he learned that he cured three hundred different diseases using medicines with an aloe base.
Montilla had already given orders to prepare the farewell military parade, when Jose Palacios returned from the port with the official message that the packet would be in front of the house after lunch. As protection against the afternoon sun in mid-June, Montilla ordered awnings placed on the tenders that would carry the General from the fortress of Santo Domingo to the ship. At eleven o'clock, when the house was crowded with invited guests and casual visitors suffocating in the heat, all manner of curiosities of the local cuisine were served on the long table. Camille could not explain the reason for the commotion that shook the room until she heard the faint voice very close to her ear: "Apres vous, madame." The General helped her to a little of everything, explaining the name, recipe, and origin of each dish, and then to the astonishment of his cook he served himself an even larger portion, for an hour before he had refused delicacies more exquisite than those displayed on the table. Then, making his way through the groups searching for a place to sit, he led her to the oasis of large tropical flowers on the interior balcony, and he made his proposition without preambles.
"It would be very pleasant to see each other in Kingston," he said.
"Nothing would please me more," she said, without a trace of surprise. "I adore the Blue Mountains."
"Alone?"
"No matter whom I'm with I'll always be alone," she said. And she added with a roguish touch: "Excellency."
He smiled.
"I'll find you through Hyslop," he said.
That was all. He led her back through the room to the spot where he had found her, took his leave with a bow worthy of a contredanse, left his plate untouched on a windowsill, and returned to his place. Nobody knew when he made the decision to stay, or why he made it. He was besieged by politicians discussing local dissensions, when he turned suddenly to de Raigecourt and made a remark that had no bearing on the subject and was intended for everyone's ears:
"You're right, Count. What will I do with so many women, in the lamentable state in which I find myself?"
"Just so, General," said the Count with a sigh. And he hastened to add: "On the other hand, the Shannon arrives next week, an English frigate with a good stateroom and an excellent physician as well."
"That's worse than a hundred women," said the General.
In any case, the explanation was only a pretext, because one of the officers was prepared to give him his cabin until they reached Jamaica. Jose Palacios was the only man who offered a precise reason, with his infallible: "Only my master knows what my master is thinking." And he could not have sailed in any event, because the packet ran aground on its way to pick him up across from Santo Domingo and suffered serious damage.
And so he stayed, and the only condition was that he would not remain in Montilla's house. The General thought it the most beautiful in the city, but because of its proximity to the sea it was too humid for his bones, above all in winter, when he awoke with the sheets soaked through. His health demanded winds less heraldic than those of the walled district. Montilla interpreted this as a sign that he would be staying for some time, and he hastened to accommodate him.
On the spur of La Popa Hill was a holiday suburb burned in 1815 by the Cartagenans so that the royalist troops who had come back to reconquer the city would have no place to make camp. The sacrifice was futile, because the Spanish captured the fortified area after one hundred sixteen days, during which time those under siege ate even the soles of their shoes, and six thousand died of hunger. Fifteen years later the calcined plain was still exposed to the furious two o'clock sun. One of the few rebuilt houses belonged to the English merchant Judah. Kingseller, who was away on a journey. It had attracted the General's attention when he arrived from Turbaco, for its palm roof was well cared for and its walls were painted in festive colors, and it was almost hidden in a grove of fruit trees. General Montilla thought it was too modest a house for so splendid a tenant, but the General reminded him that he was as accustomed to sleeping on the floor of a pigsty, wrapped in his cape, as in a duchess' bed. And so he rented the house for an indefinite period, with an extra charge for the bed, the water jug, the six leather taborets in the drawing room, and the handmade still in which Senor Kingseller brewed his own liquor. General Montilla also brought a velvet armchair from Government House and had a cane-and-mud barracks built for the grenadiers of the guard. The house was cool during the hours when the sun shone hottest, less humid at any hour than the Marquis de Valdehoyos' mansion, and it had four airy bedrooms where iguanas strolled. His insomnia was less arid at dawn as he listened to the sudden explosions of ripe soursop fruit falling from the trees. In the afternoons, above all when the rains were heavy, the processions of the poor could be seen bearing their drowned to the convent for a vigil.
After he moved to the foot of La Popa, the General returned to the walled district no more than three times, and then only to pose for Antonio Meucci, an Italian painter who was visiting Cartagena. He felt so weak that he had to sit down on the interior terrace of the Marquis's mansion, surrounded by wildflowers and boisterous birds, and in any event he could not sit still for longer than an hour. He liked the portrait, although it was evident that the artist had viewed him with too much compassion.
The New Granadan artist Jose Maria Espinosa had painted his portrait in Government House in Santa Fe de Bogota not long before the September assassination attempt, and it seemed so unlike the image he had of himself that he could not resist the impulse to discuss it with General Santana, his secretary at the time.
"Do you know who this portrait looks like?" he said. "Olaya, that old man from La Mesa."
When Manuela Saenz found out, she did not hide her indignation, for she knew the old man too.
"It seems to me you don't have a very good opinion of yourself," she said. "Olaya was almost eighty years old the last time we saw him, and he couldn't even stand up."
The oldest of his portraits was an anonymous miniature painted in Madrid when he was sixteen. When he was thirty-two another was painted in Haiti, and both were faithful to his age and Caribbean character. He had a strain of African blood through a paternal great-great-grandfather, who had fathered a son by a slavewoman, and it was so evident in his features that the aristocrats in Lima called him Sambo. But as his glory increased, the painters began to idealize him, washing his blood, mythologizing him, until they established him in official memory with the Roman profile of his statues. But Espinosa's portrait resembled no one but him, wasted at the age of forty-five by the disease he did everything to hide, even from himself, until the
eve of his death.
One rainy night when he awoke from a restless sleep in the house at the foot of La Popa, the General saw a young girl sitting in a corner of the bedroom and wearing the rough burlap tunic of a lay evangelical congregation, her hair adorned with a crown of shining fire beetles. During the colonial period European travelers were amazed to see Indians lighting their way with a flask full of the fire beetles that later became a republican fashion, when women used them as shining garlands on their hair, as diadems of light on their foreheads, as phosphorescent brooches on their bosoms. The girl who came into the bedroom that night had them sewn in a band that illuminated her face with phantasmal light. She was languid and mysterious, her hair was graying at the age of twenty, and he soon detected the marks of the virtue he valued most in a woman: untamed intelligence. She had come to the grenadiers' camp to offer herself for any purpose, and she seemed so extraordinary to the officer on duty that he sent her with Jose Palacios in case he might be interested in her for the General, who invited her to lie down beside him, for he did not have the strength to carry her to the hammock. She removed the headband, placed the fire beetles inside a stalk of sugarcane she carried with her, and lay down at his side. After a desultory conversation the General dared to ask her what they thought of him in Cartagena.
"They say Your Excellency is well but pretends to be sick so people will feel sorry for you," she said.
He took off his nightshirt and asked the girl to examine him by the light of the candle. Then she gained thorough knowledge of the most ravaged body one could imagine: the meager belly, the ribs pushing through the skin, the legs and arms reduced to mere bone, all of it enclosed in a hairless hide as pale as death except for the face, which was so weathered by exposure to the elements that it seemed to belong to another man.