“A change of scene” was the reason Lieutenant-Major George Thompson, Franco’s military engineer, gave his brother for leaving England and going to Paraguay. He also claimed to have had no previous knowledge of military engineering or artillery; everything he knew he had picked up from Macaulay’s Field of Fortification and The Professional Papers of the Corps of Royal Engineers. He had taught himself, he said: “I took bearings, with a small hand prismatic compass, to all objects I could see, and these bearings I laid down by applying my paper-scale to the proper bearing on the pricked protractor, and carefully shifting it along thence, in a parallel direction, to my station on the paper, and then ruling a line. I then estimated the distance, which I laid down by scale. I surveyed in this manner a great part of the Bellaco…. I also made a trigonometrical survey of the River Paraguay, from Curupayty to its fall into the Paraná.”
Shortly after he finished building the fortifications at Curupayty—the name was derived from the Guaraní word for the acacia tree—Lieutenant-Major Thompson, along with Captain Ortiz and Major Sayas, the commanders of the river battery, and Captain Gill and Major Hermosa, the artillery commanders, took Franco for a tour. Pancho and Ella came, too.
“We constructed a trench two thousand yards long and six feet deep and eleven feet wide,” Lieutenant-Major Thompson explained. Riding ahead, he proudly pointed out each of the gun emplacements; as always, he had a cigar in his mouth—the smoke, he claimed, helped drive away the buffalo gnats and mosquitos, which were a great source of aggravation. “These two eight-inch guns are aimed at the land front, the two over there at the right flank, those four at the river.”
Slightly south of Humaitá and across the river from it, Curupayty overlooked a bend in the Paraguay at a point where the water was deep and flowed swiftly. From there the Paraguayans launched torpedoes at the Brazilian fleet. The torpedoes were flimsy homemade affairs—glass capsules filled with sulphuric acid, chlorate of potash and white sugar, all wrapped in cotton wool. Many of them were accidentally exploded by driftwood or by curious crocodiles; one torpedo blew up an American, Mr. Krüger, and a Paraguayan, Mr. Ramos.
“Over here you will find several thirty-two-pounders mounted on both the trench and in the river battery—” Lieutenant-Major Thompson paused to slap at a buffalo gnat that, in spite of the cigar smoke, had landed on his neck. Dark clouds of buffalo gnats rose from the river and descended upon the camp—there were so many that a slap of the hand might kill half a dozen. The sting left a black spot that marked the skin for weeks, Lieutenant-Major Thompson’s body was covered with them. “Already the five twelve-pounders and the four nine-pounders are in position in the trench.” He wiped the blood where the gnat had stung him. “All in all there are forty-nine guns and two rocket stands. Thirteen of the guns belong to the river battery, the rest to the trench.”
Ella could never quite say why she did not like the lieutenant-major. His manner was too dry, too formal. He never looked at her directly.
Finished, he bowed politely to Franco, then lowering his eyes, he bowed ever so slightly to Ella. Lieutenant-Major Thompson did not much like her either. Ella was too flashy, too pretty; he was more used to women like his mother and his sisters back home in England, who served tea and spoke only when spoken to. And a woman did not belong on a battlefield.
Since his bout with malaria, Franco had stopped drinking. He had lost weight and looked fit; for once his teeth did not bother him. Dismounting, with Pancho at his side, Franco walked over to speak with the officers. In an attempt to be friendly, Major Sayas put his hand on Pancho’s shoulder but Pancho shrugged it off.
General Diaz, the commander in chief, who had just arrived, rode up to Ella. General Diaz was married to Doña Isidora, one of Ella’s ladies-in-waiting. Short and stocky, he was enthusiastic and polite and Ella liked him well enough—more than she liked Lieutenant-Major Thompson.
Taking off his hat, General Diaz said, “This time, we will have them for certain.”
“I sincerely hope so,” Ella answered.
Reaching up, General Diaz slapped at a cloud of buffalo gnats that hovered over his bare head. “A victory, I guarantee it.”
Summer in Asunción was murderously hot and Charles Washburn was determined to move his wife, who was pregnant and suffering from the heat, to cooler quarters. Fortunately, Doña Rafaela, who was kinder and less avaricious than Inocencia, her sister, offered him her own quinta, a few miles outside the city. Built on a hill, the quinta had a splendid view and large airy rooms that caught the breezes. Also, it had a walled-in garden for Mrs. Washburn’s terrier to run in (although, at nearly twelve, Bumppo was a little arthritic and no longer quite so active). Mrs. Washburn spent most afternoons sitting on a balcony, reading and resting, and most afternoons too, unannounced, Rafaela came by to visit and to practice her English.
“American,” Mrs. Washburn corrected her. “It’s quite different actually.” Although blond and fragile-looking, Mrs. Washburn knew how to stand up for herself.
“As different as Guaraní is from Spanish?” There was something childish and naïve about Rafaela and Mrs. Washburn did not dislike her. Also, each time Rafaela brought gifts. The gifts of food, the look and smell of them, made her feel ill; some of the gifts were valuable: a gold chain with a pearl pendant for the baby.
“Oh, but I can’t accept this,” she started to tell Rafaela.
Rafaela frowned, her lip began to tremble, she looked as if she might cry.
“Oh, my dear,” Mrs. Washburn quickly got up and kissed Rafaela. “Of course, I’d be delighted.” Then, embarrassed, she called, “Here, Bumppo, here!”
Ella’s equerry, Lázaro Alcántara, claimed to be eighteen but Ella guessed he was only fifteen or sixteen years old. He was a quiet, soft-spoken boy, with blond, curly hair. If Ella went out alone, Lázaro rode with her; if Ella needed a leg up—which she didn’t—Lázaro helped her mount her horse; if Ella, for some reason, had to dismount, he held her horse. When Ella asked Lázaro questions about himself and his family, he told her that his mother was German originally—it was from her he had inherited his fair hair and curls; his father had died; he had a younger brother and sister to support. Lázaro also told Ella that his dream, once the war was over, was to go to Paris, to study. He wanted to study architecture there, he wanted to build the same kind of buildings in Paraguay that he had seen in books about France.
“I could teach you French,” Ella told Lázaro one day as they were riding along the bank of the Paraguay River.
“Do you think I could really learn?” Lázaro’s eyes shone with pleasure.
“Of course. We can begin right away. Bonjour, Monsieur. Comment allez-vous? You must repeat exactly what I say.”
“Bonjour, Monsieur. Comment allez-vous?” “Très bien. Only you must call me Madame.”
Standing in his shirtsleeves in front of his quarters at Humaitá, Franco was looking at the battle through his field glasses. It was an exceptionally hot and humid day but Franco hardly noticed (he did not notice until it was almost too late the sound of a stray enemy shell that landed a few feet away from him). He was watching the Argentinian soldiers cross the open plain and then, long before they reached Lieutenant-Major Thompson’s trench, get slaughtered at point-blank range by the fire of the 8-inch guns. When he was not looking through his field glasses, Franco was reading the dispatches; Baron von Fischer-Truenfeld had laid down the posts and telegraph lines from Curupayty to Humaitá—there were not enough telegraphs and Baron von Fischer-Truenfeld had had to improvise with an instrument that looked like a knocker. By the end of the afternoon, Franco had received several dispatches confirming what he himself could see: five thousand Argentinian soldiers dead and only fifty-four Paraguayan soldiers and two officers killed, one of whom was Major Sayas. Franco, who had barely moved from his post all day, except to run for cover from the stray shell, stayed where he was a little longer to watch the enemy retreat and his own soldiers go and gather the spoils: rifles, pistols, knives, watches, money, clothes, also saucepans—the enemy had planned on having supper that night at Curupayty. Franco watched the wounded who were lying in the field get shot—only a lieutenant, who had a shattered knee, managed to crawl away as the soldier who was going to shoot him had trouble reloading his musket—or, to save bullets, get hanged from trees. He watched until night fell and until the rest of the Argentinian dead were thrown in the marshes and into the river.
No longer used to drinking alcohol, the champagne to celebrate the victory went straight to Franco’s head. All night long, he sang, he danced, he told bawdy jokes. During the battle, one of the officers had gotten hold of a packet of letters from the enemy—letters from General Flores to his wife.
“Old impassioned Venancio, from your beloved Maria!” General Diaz, who also had drunk too much champagne, made as if to read the letters out loud to Franco. He mimicked a woman’s high-pitched voice. “To my old impassioned Venancio!” General Diaz repeated as he made loud smacking sounds with his lips and shook his hips.
Smoking a cigar and sitting off to one side, Lieutenant-Major Thompson, who was sober, was telling Colonel von Wisner about how the Allies had fired some very beautiful 40-pounder Whitworth rifled balls and percussion shells.
“So beautiful, in fact,” he said, “it would almost be a consolation to be killed by one.”
“I recommend you, Venancio, send me no finery or silk dresses,” General Diaz continued in the high-pitched voice.
“Receive my whole heart, my beloved Maria!” Franco embraced stocky General Diaz to his chest—General Diaz’s head barely reached Franco’s chin—then, laughing, Franco danced and twirled him around the room in his arms, as if he were a woman, while the other officers whistled and clapped.
“Mañuel!” Franco shouted, “bring us more champagne!”
Frederick Masterman was arrested a month after the battle of Curupayty. Riding home from visiting friends one evening—for him a rare luxury to be away from the hospital—he was absorbed thinking about why the sand flea needed to lay its eggs under the skin of a living animal, and he was not a bit apprehensive for his own safety. He had worked out in his mind that the sac in which the flea laid its eggs was not just a bag of eggs but the developed abdomen of the flea, which absorbed nutritive material from the skin of its host, when all of a sudden he was stopped by an officer and several armed soldiers. He was bound and gagged, and thrown into prison.
Although repeatedly questioned, it was not clear what he was accused of—something to do with the improper delivery of letters not stamped by the Paraguayan post office, a mere pretext for his arrest. Under the threat of torture or, worse, death, he was forced to sign a deposition admitting to his guilt. Guilt for what? Frederick Masterman never found out.
Always damp, his narrow, underground cell was furnished with a bed (a hide stretched over a wooden frame), a broken chair, a candle and a basin; his servant, Tomàs, was allowed to visit once a day and to bring books and wine (later, Frederick Masterman claimed that Monsieur Narcisse Lasserre, a French distiller and a friend who lived in Asunción, saved his life by sending him three bottles of brandy). Tomàs was forbidden to speak to Frederick Masterman—a soldier with a drawn sword always stood between them.
The worst part of his imprisonment was he could not sleep. A sentry stood outside the door of his cell and all through the night, every fifteen minutes, to show that he was awake, the sentry shouted “Sentinela alerta!” His cry was taken up in succession by a series of sentries inside the prison and when the last one had finished shouting, it was time for the first one to begin all over again. Also Frederick Masterman feared for his health. Toads shared the cell—each time he got out of bed he put his foot on one. There were cockroaches and he lived in terror of being bitten by a centipede or a scorpion (luckily it was too damp for fleas). There were so many spiders, his cell resembled a giant cobweb. One spider that made its home in a hole in the wall next to his bed became the object of his special attention. He was fascinated by how seemingly effortlessly the spider managed to capture and devour the poisonous scorpions and by how frequently the spider laid its eggs, and as an experiment, to test the spider’s fecundity, he removed the ball of eggs, which was almost as large as the spider itself. Each time he did this—six times in a three-week period—the spider produced another ball of eggs.
After seven months!—as he himself was later to write in his journal—Frederick Masterman was finally released from prison. He was as thin and as pale as a corpse. His hair, which had turned gray and had not been cut for all this time, hung to his shoulders, his beard was long and tangled. His eyes appeared unnaturally large, the pupils, used only to dark, were hugely dilated. Alone and barely able to walk by himself—his servant, Tomàs, had not been advised of his release—and squinting at the unaccustomed light of dusk, he slowly made his way to the home of the nearest Englishman he knew, Mr. Taylor, the stonemason.
Alonzo Taylor was at supper with his two daughters and his wife—since the war had begun, Mrs. Taylor had decided to leave her bedroom, comb her hair, and take more interest in life.
“More tea, dear?” Mrs. Taylor held up the teapot and was asking her husband when there was a knock on the door.
“Go and see who it is, Elizabeth,” she also told one of her daughters.
When Elizabeth opened the front door and saw Frederick Masterman, she started to scream and her father got up from the table so quickly he knocked over his teacup.
Standing protectively in front of his daughter and blocking the door, Alonzo Taylor did not recognize him either. “Que quiere usted, Señor?” he asked Frederick Masterman.
Inside Inocencia’s aviary, sitting at his table with the same little mean green parrot on top of his head, Dr. Eberhardt was listing the parrots according to their sex. Inocencia had insisted on this. More important to Dr. Eberhardt—he had tried to tell Inocencia but she did not listen to him, she claimed the parrots were molting—was the general state of the parrots’ health. The parrots were pulling out their breast feathers—the aviary floor was littered with red, blue, green, yellow feathers. A lot of parrots had abscesses on their mandibles and could not eat properly, others had scaly feet and diarrhea. One poor white-fronted parrot whose nails were bleeding could not perch properly and repeatedly fell down on to the aviary floor. When Dr. Eberhardt caught sight of his favorite parrot, the big hyacinth macaw, he wanted to weep. The big hyacinth macaw’s breast was plucked bald and the rest of his usually brilliant feathers were a dull faded blue.
Tea? Profesor, tea? one of the parrots screamed, mimicking his mistress, but Inocencia did not come in and ask, “Dulce, Profesor?” the way she usually did. The truth was that, this time, Dr. Eberhardt would have very much liked to have had some tea with plenty of sugar in it and perhaps something sweet to eat as well. He was old and lived alone in a small house in Asunción, with only one servant—he no longer owned a horse—and although he had managed to escape Franco’s notice and was left in peace, his life, now that Paraguay was at war, was hard. Like Inocencia’s parrots, Dr. Eberhardt did not have enough to eat.
Silly, selfish Inocencia! And what had she said? Male parrots were larger and had flat heads and females had round ones—bah! Dr. Eberhardt shook his own head and the mean little green parrot on top of it had to tighten his grip; and what else had the woman said to him?—males tended to sit up on their perches while females sat with their feet spread farther apart on account of the position of their hipbones—bah! What did Inocencia know about hipbones? Hers were hidden under layers of fat. And males, she also told him, were louder—she herself was nearly shouting when she said this—and females tended to bite more. He could hardly believe the ignorance of the woman! Old wives’ tales, Dr. Eberhardt wanted to tell her.
Holding a squawking yellow-naped Amazon upside down, Dr. Eberhardt counted the red feathers in the parrot’s speculum. Males, he knew, normally had five, females only four. This male—Dr. Eberhardt had good reason to believe the parrot was a male—however, had four, the reason perhaps the parrot had been unable to attract a mate. Shrugging his shoulders, Dr. Eberhardt wrote female in his notebook. Next he picked up a blue-fronted parrot and counted five red feathers in his speculum—the same theory applied to this species—and, in a pique, Dr. Eberhardt again wrote down female.
Tea? Profesor, tea? This time the parrot nearly fooled Dr. Eberhardt, making him swallow hard and making tears spring to his eyes—he could almost taste the sweetened tea. More than ever, Dr. Eberhardt was determined to speak to Inocencia. She had only to take one look at the hyacinth macaw to see for herself that the poor bird had lost half his lovely blue feathers and to see that the poor bird was starving to death.
Every evening before dinner, Ella looked in on her horse, Mathilde—she did not trust the stable boy. Speaking softly so as not to alarm the horse, she opened the stall door and slipped in. After making sure the straw on the floor was clean, the bucket filled with fresh water, Ella put her arms around the horse’s neck and rested her head against Mathilde’s broad gray shoulder. She stroked Mathilde’s head, running her hands down the slightly dished profile, the large flaring nostrils until she reached under the small velvety muzzle, letting the horse nuzzle her hand. “My darling,” Ella said to the horse, “my dear, my pretty.” One time, reaching into her pocket for sugar, she found an old letter from Princess Mathilde. “From your namesake,” she said to the horse, as smiling, she started to read the letter out loud: “Let me think what you have missed this season—Augier’s Le Mariage d’Olympe, the revival of Gautier’s Giselle, a mandolin concert by Velati—I have never heard anyone quite like him and to think that he is blind!” The crease in the paper made the writing illegible, Ella had to skip a line—“such a stream of people have come to visit me at the rue de Courcelles: the Duc de Brabant, the King of Portugal, the Prince of Orange and I don’t know who else. Of course the Goncourt brothers always come with their sharpened pencils. I am very fond of them both but I admit that sometimes I find their endless scribbling a little tiresome as well as not always accurate. The new faces are Hippolyte Taine and Louis Pasteur, a very pleasant and intelligent man who is a scientist….” Outside darkness was falling and Ella was vaguely aware of the noisy croaking of frogs—some nights the frogs sounded like hammers hitting anvils—but by now Ella was accustomed to all kinds of sounds, including the sound of gunfire. In the semidarkness of the stall, she folded Princess Mathide’s letter and put it back in her pocket. Then, pressing up against the warm and solid weight of Mathilde, she inhaled the smell of fresh grass and horse and breathed deeply. Before leaving, she found the lump of sugar—each day sugar was harder to find—and with a final caress, gave it to the horse.
Charles Washburn was the one responsible for Frederick Masterman’s release from prison. He had convinced the Paraguayan authorities for personal reasons. Frederick Masterman was the only European doctor left in Asunción and he had no choice (the truth was Charles Washburn did not much like Frederick Masterman, he thought him queer—he was single and always off on his own examining insects); he wanted him to deliver his wife’s child. Not only did Mrs. Washburn have difficulty conceiving, there were signs she would have difficulty giving birth. To make sure of Frederick Masterman’s presence, Charles Washburn invited him to live with him and his wife at the American Legation and, to legitimize his position, Charles Washburn officially made Frederick Masterman surgeon to the legation.
Located on Plaza Vieja, the American Legation in Asunción was an old Spanish-style house. It was so large it occupied one side of the square; it had a tiled roof and thick stucco walls decorated with pilasters; the rooms and doorways were so high and wide a horse and rider could easily ride through them. The house was built around a large courtyard with a fountain in the middle that was surrounded by flower beds, and it was there that Frederick Masterman spent most of his days recovering from his ordeal in prison. He was there examining a spider web that stretched between a Cape jasmine and a bunch of orange trees, a distance of nearly twenty feet, when Mrs. Washburn’s maid came to fetch him. Mrs. Washburn’s water had broken.
The birth of the baby took three days. On the third day, although in intense labor, Mrs. Washburn’s cervix was still not fully dilated and Frederick Masterman knew enough about childbirth to be afraid that if the situation continued, he would have to perform a cesarean. He was sweating profusely in the closed-up bedroom; the shutters were shut and the servants kept lighting candles and throwing sickeningly sweet rose water onto the floor. Mrs. Washburn’s screams, he guessed, despite the thick stucco walls, could be heard out in the street. (The first day of labor, Mrs. Washburn’s dog, at her request, had stayed in the room but, by the afternoon, the dog’s incessant barking had gotten on Frederick Masterman’s nerves and he had the dog sent out—the dog had had to be dragged out forcibly, snapping and biting.) And what was he to do? Ill equipped, he did not have obstetrical forceps and, except for spirits, he had no anesthetics. Also, he was used to taking care of men, most of them soldiers, and although he had learned to amputate arms and legs, remove bullets and shrapnel, stitch up wounds, he had never before in his life performed such an operation. The grim alternative, which he hardly dared to contemplate, was to perform a craniotomy—he had never done that either—which meant destroying the fetal skull with scissors and crochets, then extracting the fetus piecemeal, but he did not think he had the stomach for that. Better to cut Mrs. Washburn right above the pubic hair line, then cut the stomach muscles and wall, then the uterus. As Frederick Masterman was preparing for the task, the hand holding the scalpel began to shake so hard all of a sudden he was afraid he would drop it, and Mrs. Washburn, who may have caught sight of the scalpel or merely the metal flash of it—by then she was nearly delirious with exhaustion and pain—let out a tremendous scream and, at the same time, a tremendous push and out came her baby.
Ella was right, Lázaro Alcántara had lied, he was only fifteen years old. He had also lied about his family—his mother was not German but Guaraní and he did not know who his father was—and he may or may not have lied about his dream to go to Paris to study architecture and build the same kind of buildings in Paraguay that he had seen in books about France. He did not in fact lie but told the truth about having seen the books about France, along with books about Hungary, since Lázaro Alcántara was Colonel von Wisner’s lover.
The victory at Curupayty made General Diaz euphoric and imprudent. The commander in chief also felt he was impervious to danger and he rode around the camp at all hours of the day and night, often without an escort, often unarmed. On a clear moonlit night, against his aides-decamp’s advice, he insisted on getting into a canoe and going fishing in the river. The canoe was hit by a torpedo—probably one of the homemade glass capsules—and capsized. Wounded, General Diaz could not swim and his aides had to rescue him and bring him back to shore. Then Dr. Stewart had to amputate his leg. The leg—General Diaz had insisted on keeping it—once the cut on it was soldered shut, was placed in a little coffin of its own right next to his bed. Ella saw it when she went to the hospital to visit General Diaz; the leg was dressed in a black boot and in a bloodstained white trouser leg with a gold stripe down its side. But a few days later, General Diaz died.