The General in His Labyrinth

  "All that's missing is the man," Humboldt said.

  He told Jose Palacios about it many years later, in Cuzco, perhaps because he found himself at the top of the world at a moment when history had just demonstrated that he was the man. He did not tell anyone else, but each time the Baron was mentioned he took the opportunity to pay tribute to his prescience:

  "Humboldt opened my eyes."

  It was the fourth time he had traveled along the Magdalena, and he could not escape the impression that he was retracing the steps of his life. He had sailed its waters for the first time in 1813, when he was a colonel in the militia who had been defeated in his own country and had come to Cartagena de Indias from his exile in Curacao in search of resources to continue the war. New Granada had been divided into autonomous fragments, the cause of independence was losing popular support in the face of savage repression by the Spaniards, and final victory seemed less and less certain. On the third voyage, aboard a paddleboat, as he called it, the work of liberation had been concluded but his almost maniacal dream of continental unity was beginning to crumble. On this, his final voyage, the dream was already destroyed, but it survived in a single sentence he never tired of repeating: "Our enemies will have all the advantages until we unify the government of America."

  Of the countless memories he shared with Jose Palacios, one of the most moving was that first voyage, when they waged the war to liberate the river. He led two hundred men armed with whatever weapons they could find, and in some twenty days there was not a single monarchist Spaniard left in the Magdalena Basin. Jose Palacios himself realized how much things had changed when, on the fourth day of the voyage, they began to see the ranks of women along the riverbanks at every village, waiting for the barges to pass. "Those are the widows," he said. The General looked out and saw them, dressed in black, lined up on the bank like pensive crows under the burning sun, waiting for anything, even if it was only a charitable greeting. General Diego Ibarra, Andres' brother, used to say the General never had a child but was, instead, father and mother to all the widows in the nation. They followed him everywhere, and he kept them alive with heartfelt words that were true proclamations of consolation. Nevertheless, he was thinking more of himself than of them when he saw the lines of funereal women in the villages along the river.

  "Now we are the widows," he said. "We are the orphans, the wounded, the pariahs of independence."

  They did not stop in any town before Mompox except Puerto Real, where the Ocana emptied into the Magdalena River. There they met General Jose Laurencio Silva, the Venezuelan who had completed his mission of accompanying the rebel grenadiers to the border of their country and had come to join the cortege.

  The General remained on board until nightfall, when he went ashore to sleep in an improvised encampment. While he was on the barge he received the ranks of the widows, the impoverished, the helpless of all the wars who wanted to see him. He remembered almost all of them with astounding accuracy. Those who had remained were dying of poverty, others had gone in search of new wars to survive or had become highwaymen, like countless veterans of the liberating army everywhere in the nation. One of them summed up their feelings in a phrase: "We have independence, General, so now tell us what to do with it." In the euphoria of victory he had taught them to speak to him this way, with the truth in their mouths. But now truth had changed masters.

  "Independence was a simple question of winning the war," he said to them. "The great sacrifices must come afterwards, to make a single nation out of all these countries."

  "We've made nothing but sacrifices, General," they said.

  He would not give an inch:

  "More are needed," he said. "Unity has no price."

  That night, as he wandered around the building where they had hung his hammock, he saw a woman who turned to look at him as he passed, and he was surprised by her lack of surprise at his nakedness. He even heard the words of the song she was singing under her breath: "Tell me it's never too late to die of love." The watchman was awake under the portico.

  "Is any woman here?" the General asked him.

  The man was certain. "None worthy of Your Excellency," he said.

  "And unworthy of my excellency?"

  "None at all," said the watchman. "There's no woman within a league of here."

  The General was so sure he had seen her that he looked for her everywhere in the house until it grew very late. He insisted that his aides-de-camp join the search, and the next day he delayed their departure for more than an hour until he was vanquished by the repeated reply: there was no one. The matter was not spoken of again. For the rest of the journey, each time he thought of it he insisted he had seen her. Jose Palacios would survive him by many years, with so much time to review his life with him that not even the most insignificant detail remained in shadow. The only matter he never clarified was whether the vision that night in Puerto Real had been a dream, a hallucination, or an apparition.

  No one thought again about the stray dog, still with them recovering from his wounds, until the orderly in charge of the food realized he had no name. They had bathed him and perfumed him with baby powder, but they could not rid him of his dissolute appearance or the stench of mange. The General was taking the air in the stern when Jose Palacios pulled the dog over to him.

  "What name shall we give him?" he asked.

  The General did not even have to think about it.

  "Bolivar," he said.

  A GUNBOAT MOORED in port began to move as soon as it was informed that a flotilla of barges was approaching. Jose Palacios sighted it through the tent windows, and he leaned over the hammock where the General was lying with his eyes closed.

  "Sir," he said, "we're in Mompox."

  "God's country," said the General, without opening his eyes.

  As they sailed down to the coast the river had grown more vast and solemn, like a swamp with no beginning or end, and the heat was so dense you could touch it with your hands. Without bitterness the General gave up the sudden dawns and piercing twilights that had kept him in the stern of the barge for the first few days, and he yielded to dejection. He did not dictate letters, or read, or ask his companions any question that might reveal a certain interest in life. Even during the hottest siestas he covered himself with the blanket and stayed in the hammock with his eyes closed. Thinking he had not heard him, Jose Palacios repeated the message, and again the General responded without opening his eyes.

  "Mompox doesn't exist," he said. "Sometimes we dream about it, but it doesn't exist."

  "At least I can testify to the existence of the Santa Barbara Tower," said Jose Palacios. "I see it from here."

  The General opened his tormented eyes, sat up in the hammock, and in the aluminum light of noon saw the first roofs of the very ancient and long-suffering city of Mompox that had been devastated by war, debased by the turmoil of the Republic, decimated by smallpox. This was the time when the river had begun to change course with an irreparable disdain that would become total abandonment by the end of the century. All that remained of the masonry dike that the colonial governors, with Peninsular obstinacy, had hastened to rebuild each time it was destroyed by flood was rubble scattered along a beach of fallen stones. The warship approached the barges, and a black officer who still wore the uniform of the old viceregal police aimed the cannon at them. Captain Casildo Santos managed to shout:

  "Hey, black man, don't be an idiot!"

  The oarsmen stopped rowing, and the barges were left to the mercy of the current. The grenadiers, waiting for orders, raised their rifles and took aim at the gunboat. The officer was unperturbed.

  "Passports," he shouted. "In the name of the law."

  Only then did he see the soul in torment who emerged from under the canvas, the exhausted hand that still held inexorable authority ordering the soldiers to lower their weapons. Then he said to the officer in a faint voice:

  "Although you may not believe it, Captain, I have no passport."

/>   The officer did not know who he was. But when Fernando told him he leaped into the water with his weapons and ran down the riverbank to inform everyone of the good news. The gunboat, its bell clanging, escorted the barges into port. Even before the entire city came into view at the last bend in the river, the bells of its eight churches were ringing out the tidings.

  During the colonial period Santa Cruz de Mompox had been the commercial bridge between the Caribbean coast and the interior of the country, and this had been the origin of its wealth. When the windstorms of liberty began to blow, that stronghold of the American aristocracy was the first to proclaim independence. Reconquered by Spain, it was liberated again by the General himself. It consisted of only three wide, straight, and dusty streets running parallel to the river, with large-windowed, one-story houses where two counts and three marquises prospered. The fame of its craftsmanship in precious metals had survived the vicissitudes of the Republic.

  On this occasion the General arrived so disillusioned with his glory and so disenchanted with the world that he was caught off guard by the crowd waiting for him in port. He threw on his velveteen trousers and high boots, wrapped himself in the blanket despite the heat, and changed his nightcap for the broad-brimmed hat he had used in Honda for waving farewell.

  The funeral of a high dignitary was taking place in the Church of La Concepcion. In attendance at the solemn Mass were all the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, the congregations and schools, and the leading citizens in their finest crepe, and the clamor of the bells made them lose their composure because they thought it was a fire alarm. But the same bailiff who had entered in great agitation and whispered the news into the Mayor's ear shouted for everyone to hear:

  "The President is in the port!"

  For many still did not know he was no longer President. On Monday a mail carrier had spread the rumors from Honda among the towns along the river but had clarified nothing. And so the ambiguity made the unexpected reception more effusive, and even the bereaved family understood that most of the mourners would leave the church to gather at the ruined wall. The funeral ended before it was over, and only an intimate group accompanied the coffin to the cemetery, in the midst of thundering rockets and bells.

  The river was still low because of May's light rainfall, and as a consequence the General and his entourage had to scale cliffs of stone debris to reach the port. With bad grace the General refused someone's offer to carry him, and he climbed, leaning on Captain Ibarra's arm, staggering at each step and struggling to hold himself upright, but with his dignity intact.

  He greeted the authorities in the port with energetic handshakes of incredible vigor, given the condition of his body and the smallness of his hands. Those who had seen him the last time he was there could not believe their memories. He seemed as old as his own father, but the little breath he had was enough to keep anyone from making special arrangements for him. He refused the platforms carried in Good Friday processions which they had prepared for him, and he said he would walk to the Church of La Concepcion. In the end he had to ride the Mayor's mule that the official had saddled in great haste when he saw him disembark in so weakened a state.

  Jose Palacios had noticed many faces in port tiger-striped with the red embers of smallpox, a stubborn illness endemic to the towns of the lower Magdalena. The patriots had come to fear it more than they feared the Spaniards after it decimated the liberating troops during the river campaign. Then, when the smallpox persisted, the General arranged for a visiting French naturalist to stay long enough to inoculate the people with the serous fluid that oozed from the smallpox of cattle. But this method of treatment caused so many deaths that in the end no one wanted to hear anything more about the cow cure, as they called it, and many mothers preferred that their children be exposed to the risks of contagion rather than the dangers of prevention. Nevertheless, official reports received by the General led him to believe that the scourge of smallpox was being conquered. And therefore when Jose Palacios pointed out to him the number of marked faces in the crowd, his reaction was not so much surprise as weary disgust.

  "It will always be like this," he said, "as long as subordinates lie to make us happy."

  He did not allow those who welcomed him in port to see his bitterness. He gave them a summary accounting of the events of his renunciation and the disorder that reigned in Santa Fe de Bogota, exhorting them to give their unanimous support to the new government. "There is no other alternative," he said. "Either unity or anarchy." He said he was going and would not return, not so much to seek relief for the evident afflictions of his body, which were numerous and very grave, as to attempt to find respite from the untold sorrow that other people's suffering caused him. But he did not say when he was going, or where, and he repeated without real relevance that he had not yet received from the government the passport that would allow him to leave the country. He thanked them for the twenty years of glory that Mompox had bestowed upon him and begged them not to honor him with any title except Citizen.

  The Church of La Concepcion was still draped in mourning and the breath of funeral flowers and candles still floated through the air when the crowd trooped in for an improvised Te Deum. Jose Palacios, sitting with the rest of the entourage, realized that the General could find no comfort in his pew. Yet the Mayor, an immutable mestizo with a handsome leonine head, stayed next to him inside a closed circle. Fernanda, the Widow Benjumea, whose American beauty had created havoc at the court in Madrid, lent the General her sandalwood fan to help him defend himself against the stupefying ceremony. He moved it back and forth without hope, not even for the consolation of its little gusts of air, until the heat began to interfere with his breathing. Then he whispered in the Mayor's ear:

  "Believe me, I don't deserve this punishment."

  "The love of the people has its price, Excellency," said the Mayor.

  "Sad to say, this isn't love, it's curiosity," he said.

  When the Te Deum was over he said goodbye to the Widow Benjumea with a bow and returned her fan. She attempted to give it back to him.

  "Do me the honor of keeping it as a remembrance of one who loves you well," she said to him.

  "The sad thing, Senora, is that I do not have much time left for remembering," he said.

  The priest insisted on protecting him from the suffocating heat with the Holy Week canopy as they walked from the Church of La Concepcion to the Academy of San Pedro Apostol, a two-story mansion with a monastic cloister of ferns and pinks, and a luminous orchard of fruit trees in the rear. The arcaded corridors were not habitable during those months because of unhealthy winds that blew in from the river even at night, but the rooms adjoining the large parlor were protected by thick masonry walls that kept them in autumnal shadow.

  Jose Palacios had gone ahead to have everything ready. The bedroom, its rough walls covered by a fresh coat of whitewash, was dimly lit by a single green-shuttered window that looked out on the orchard. He had the position of the bed changed so that the window facing the orchard would be at the foot and not at the head of the bed, and in this way the General could see the yellow guavas on the trees and enjoy their perfume.

  The General arrived on Fernando's arm and in the company of the priest from the Church of La Concepcion, who was also the rector of the academy. As soon as he walked through the door he leaned his back against the wall, surprised by the scent of the guavas lying in a gourd on the windowsill, their luxuriant fragrance saturating the entire bedroom. He stood with his eyes closed, inhaling the heartbreaking aroma of days gone by until he lost his breath. Then he scrutinized the room with meticulous attention as if each object were a revelation. In addition to the canopied bed there was a mahogany chest of drawers, a marble-topped night table, also of mahogany, and an easy chair covered in red velvet. On the wall beside the window was an octagonal clock with Roman numerals, which had stopped at seven minutes past one.

  "At last, something's still the same!" said the General.


  The priest was surprised.

  "Excuse me, Excellency," he said, "but as far as I know, you've never been here before."

  Jose Palacios was also surprised, for they had never visited this house, but the General persisted in his recollections, with so many accurate references that he left everyone perplexed. In the end, however, he attempted to reassure them with his habitual irony.

  "Perhaps it was during a previous incarnation," he said. "After all, anything is possible in a city where we've just seen an excommunicated man walking under a canopy."

  A short while later a thunderstorm broke that left the city shipwrecked. The General took advantage of it to recover from his reception, enjoying the scent of the guavas in the shadowy room while he pretended to sleep on his back with all his clothes on, and then in fact did fall asleep in the recuperative silence following the deluge. Jose Palacios knew this was true when he heard him speaking with the good diction and sharp timbre of his youth, which by this time he regained only in sleep. He talked of Caracas, a city in ruins that was no longer his, its walls papered with attacks against him and its streets overflowing with a torrent of human shit. In a corner of the room, almost invisible in the easy chair, Jose Palacios watched to make certain that no one outside the entourage could hear the secrets of his sleep. Through the half-opened door he signaled to Colonel Wilson, who sent away the soldiers of the guard wandering through the garden.

  "Nobody wants us here, and in Caracas nobody obeys us," said the sleeping General. "It all evens out."

  He continued with a psaltery of bitter laments, remnants of a ruined glory that the wind of death was carrying away in tatters. After almost an hour of delirium, noises in the corridor and the metal of an arrogant voice awoke him. He snorted abruptly and spoke in his faded waking voice without opening his eyes:

  "What the hell's going on?"

  What was going on was that General Lorenzo Carcamo, a veteran of the wars of emancipation with a thorny disposition and an almost demented personal courage, was trying to force his way into the bedroom before the hour scheduled for interviews. He had pushed Colonel Wilson aside after hitting a lieutenant of the grenadiers with his saber, and he had bowed only to the other-worldly power of the priest, who led him, unprotesting, to an adjacent office. The General, informed by Wilson, shouted in indignation: