My friend Luis did not come back to my room through the window, nor did I see him anywhere else, until some forty days after Goyeneche had left the city, when I ran into him out in the street quite unexpectedly. He looked very sad and pale and was walking with difficulty. A friendly smile lit up his face when he raised his eyes and saw me right before I nearly knocked him over.
“How are you? What have you been doing with yourself?” I asked him.
He looked at me as if he wanted to cry and answered:
“Oh, my friend! I haven’t been able to do anything. . . . I haven’t been able to move even!”
“Have you been ill?”
“I wish I had! I wish I had gotten the most horrendous typhus fever, even if the Aragonese Father had had to bleed me three times a day and then apply mustard plasters from head to foot on me permanently!”
“Well, then! Tell me, what happened?”
“I told you before that I knew my father would wring my neck. But this beating. . . . Oh, my! This thrashing was the worst one ever, Juanito!”
Then, all of the sudden changing his tone as he was wont to do, he started laughing, and also became more excited as he went on:
“But the matter was quite serious, my dear friend! Because of the audacity that someone had had of rubbing his nose in all that ‘rights of man’ stuff, the ‘Invictus Caesar’ got angrier and more worked up than he had even for the battle of Amiraya. He learned that the beautiful verses written by his learned Honor had been substituted for these others and demanded to be told about everyone who knew French in the city. They reported to him that several people did, but none as well as the Gringo. Without further ado, he had the Gringo brought before him by four grenadiers from Cuzco, Indians who are even bigger brutes than our tatas from Arque and Tapacarí. He treated him worse than if he were a Negro and ordered that he be executed without a confession, facing the firing squad wall like the heretic that he must surely be.”
With these last few words, his tone once again became melancholy, and I believe his eyes even became wet with tears. But it did not take him long to laugh again and to go on, saying:
“Luckily, Father Arredondo, who was present at the time, was shocked by what he had heard and tried to jump up. But the arms of the chair where he was sitting broke, and he fell sideways. . . . Are you following me, Juanito? Father Arredondo fell, and the whole floor of the room shook as if there had been an earthquake! This helped undo some of the Caesar’s anger. Meanwhile, his Honor continued to implore him, with many, many words in Latin, and finally my father was allowed to return to his home with his life intact. He was red as a pepper when he came in. He searched through his papers, grabbed a whip, and—”
“Poor Luis!” I exclaimed, solemnly. He nodded in agreement and continued, even more excited than before, as if he were speaking about someone other than himself:
“Have you ever seen a rosebush pruned down all the way to its very last leaf, so that later it will grow back full of fresh, beautiful, fragrant roses? Do you know how they thrash wool to make the soft stuffing for cushions and pillows? Well, my friend, all of that pales in comparison to what my father did to me! Forty days! Forty days I have had to keep to my bed from the pain, Juanito!”
“How I wish I could have comforted you with a visit!” I said to him compassionately.
“I would have loved to see you,” he replied. “But I have had plenty to occupy my time. I memorized his Honor’s verses, and, besides, I made an incredible discovery. Don’t laugh, my friend! Or I’ll get angry. . . . Even my father says it’s good, and you’re going to see it right now, in a moment. We’re going this very instant.”
It is probably unnecessary for me to add that as he said these last words, he had grabbed my arm and was already dragging me in the direction he wanted to take me, throwing in a thousand things as we went along.
“While we walk, and since it’s impossible for me to leave my tongue idle once I have found someone who will listen to me, I shall tell you how I made the discovery. On the other side of the large patio where my father and I live in two rented rooms, lives the lay sister Doña Martina, a very close friend of Doña Teresa’s. She has never been able to look at us without crossing herself, as if we were both devils: my father because he is a gringo, and I because one day I tied a cracker to the tail of her chihuahua and let it back into her room while she was deep in prayer. When she found out about my misfortune, she came to my door, pretending to be offering her compassion. But instead she said a thousand things about my evil creator, including that he has a tail, and ended with the moral that, sooner or later, Heaven punishes those infidels who disturb the just in the middle of their prayers. I begged her, I implored her for everything that is sacred to let me suffer in peace that which I certainly deserved. But she didn’t let up. She continued her sermon for over an hour, until my father finally came back home, at which point his mere presence frightened her away, since, as I have already said, he is like the Devil himself to her.
“I swore to myself that I would do some mean trick to get her back, and I came up with quite a good one, if I may say so myself. Among the many odds and ends that I always have in my pockets, I had half a cartridge of gun powder and a little copper bell that I had taken from the end of one of the ornamental feathers of a dancing Indian during the last celebration of the Corpus Christi. I took the cartridge apart, transferred the gun powder into the bell, and put in a fuse of the appropriate length. Finally, I tied a piece of rope that was about half a vara long to it so as to make it easier to throw the petard that I had just invented. Armed in this manner, I waited until it grew dark. Then, when my father placed a candle near my bed to lovingly care for my wounds with the same hands that had caused them, I asked him to leave me the light so I could study my verses. He laughed and gladly agreed. Then he had to go out for some reason, so I sat up right away, moaning, of course, as I did so. I lit the fuse, spun my bell in the air, and tossed it with such good aim that it exploded loud as a bomb inside the lay sister’s room. Oh, Juanito, you should have heard the shrieks she and her chihuahua let out! Frightened to death, she ran into my room looking for help, crossing herself, saying the Devil had caused a thundering explosion in her room. I crossed myself in the same way that she does, and then I told her, very seriously, that without a doubt this must be how God punishes those who do not honestly pity the misfortunes of their fellow men.”
“Go on! You’re incorrigible!” I exclaimed, but could not help laughing.
“Wait, you have to hear how it all ended,” he replied triumphantly. “For this, my friend, is the most glorious thing of my whole life! When my father found out what happened—in other words, how the Devil had caused a thundering explosion in Doña Martina’s room—it didn’t take him long to guess who was behind such an extraordinary event. He came to see me, looking very serious and with his arms crossed, and, without saying a word, he gestured with his head, indicating that I should explain everything to him. Completely frightened to death, I told him the whole story, in minute detail, and he listened without making any interruptions or asking any questions. Then he thought for a moment, and said: Ah, mon Dieu! This can be put to use!’ And this because he was unsatisfied with the copper and bronze vents that he had made for the tin cannons—he has been searching more than ever for something that would avenge the insults he received to ‘his personage,’ as he says, and, he adds, the grenades made by ‘the system of the garçon will be the end of Goyeneche’s army.”
“Well, that’s incredible!” I exclaimed at this point, unable to put up with his lies. “Do you know something, though, my friend? I don’t believe a single word that you’re saying now, and I’m even beginning to think that perhaps you were ill with typhus fever or whatever else, and that your father never gave you any such beating!”
“But why?”
“Because I already heard a while ago about the grenades invented by someone in Tarata, better than the ones you describe. Because you’re an incorrigible scoundrel, a jester, a—”
“Whatever you want to call me. . . . But stop lecturing me and judge with your own eyes. We’re here already.”
Distracted by Luis’ story, furious for having fallen for his trickery, I had not been paying attention to where we were going. When I realized we were at the door of Alejo’s workshop, I stopped in amazement. The sounds of a volcano and the activity of a wild beehive reigned within; it was so unusual that everyone who passed by in the street stopped to look in, as open-mouthed as I was. The bellows were blowing without rest, and the red coals in the forge and in a furnace built next to it sparked brightly; the hammer struck the glowing orange steel on the anvil incessantly; the file spattered as it bit into the steel and the bronze; and young men in short-sleeved shirts, completely blackened with soot, were coming and going, carrying various steel, tin, copper, bronze, and wooden objects through a door that had been recently installed on the wall opposite the entrance. Dionisio, looking very pale, working the bellows; Alejo, swinging the large hammer; the Gringo, working the file restlessly on the table; and the Mellizo, who I saw then for the first time, walking around everywhere without doing anything: all were shouting out orders and were answered just as loudly by the young men. All of this was occurring in the middle of a bluish smoke or gas from the coals, in the glow of the forge and the furnace, and in temperatures as hot as Hell’s antechamber, according to Luis.
“Ho there, boys! Long live the homeland!” Alejo shouted when he saw us. “Come on in, my sons! And off to work you go, just like everyone else!”
“And none of your pranks, either!” the Gringo added, taking his large Santa Cruz cigar out of his mouth for a moment so he could say this.
We walked quickly through the shop, bumping into the young men more than once, and out into a large yard full of sounds and activities similar to the ones inside, and just as loud. The carpenters’ saws, chisels, and mallets created their dissonant noises among the constant shouting of orders and answers, much like the ones inside the shop. From a pipe that was sticking out of the wall and that came from the furnace inside, molten bronze dripped over small, round molds. From another pipe that came from the forge, tin spouted and then flowed along a groove, and was dispensed into other, bigger cylindrical molds. A few men were removing the molds with the aid of large tongs, shovels, and pikes, and replacing them immediately with empty ones. Others were taking the hollow bronze balls, or the tin cannonballs, out of the molds. The carpenters were building rifle butts and gun-carriages, and, with nails that were still hot, since they were also made inside, they were attaching them to the pieces of steel coming from the shop. The Mellizo was also roaming around outside, going everywhere without doing anything, getting more agitated and yelling louder than anyone else.
My friend explained each and every one of the activities to me in minute detail. It would be impossible to repeat even a small fraction of what he said to me. But I have not forgotten the solemn words with which he concluded, taking on the air, stance, and voice of his learned Honor:
“Per islam,1 Goyeneche!”
And I believed every word he said.
“My teacher is wrong,” I said to myself; “this country has but one sole thought, there must be over forty thousand soldiers, and the weapons. . . . Well, here they are, right before my eyes!”
Such enthusiasm for the homeland! Such simple determination in undertaking the most heroic sacrifices! Such innocence! Such unshakable confidence in the macana, in the tin cannon, and in the grenade made with the system of the garçon! Today, as I recall what I saw then, what I as a child believed among all those men-children, it seems to me that we were much greater then, in our ignorance and naiveté, because of our faith, because of the sacred fire which we all fully and joyfully and wholeheartedly embraced! While today. . . . My God! What do we think about today? What are we doing for our homeland today?
The frightful and constant noise that my ears had grown accustomed to was suddenly interrupted by a solid silence. This had the effect, because of the contrast, of waking me from the ecstatic admiration in which I found myself before a large tin cannon, recently mounted on its gun-carriages, with one-piece wheels that were made out of carob-tree wood—like the ones used in those small carts for carrying heavy rocks with the help of a team of mules. The time for taking a break had arrived, and the sweat-covered workers all put on their jackets or ponchos, and were given a very meager salary, the absolute minimum needed for their sustenance. It was handed out at once by a commissary from the provincial government.
I went back into the shop with Luis. The only ones left there were his father, the Mellizo, and Alejo. The first of these, as I have mentioned before, was a tall, large man, very blond, with bright red coloring. He must have been over fifty years old, he wore the same outfits as the criollos, quite simply, he did not speak Spanish very well, and he liked to laugh and throw in a few words in Quechua, in a sincere attempt to be closer to the mestizos. Why had he come to our country? Was he a humble adventurer looking for work, who had emigrated in search of a fortune in a distant corner of the New World? Or was he a Jacobin2 who had been thrown into the prison of Cayenne,3 and had somehow escaped from there, fleeing to the valleys below the great peak of Tunari? I am not able to answer any part of these questions. Luis himself did not know. Many years later, he told me that his father had come over with Haenke, but he did not know under what circumstances. Also, that he had married a good, young mestiza, who had died when she gave birth to my poor friend. I believe even his surname, Cros, must not have been the actual family name, but some distortion of it that was nevertheless later used by all his descendants in our country.
The Mellizo’s Christian name, which I believe I finally learned after quite a bit of work, was Sebastián Cotrina, but it was useless to use this name when speaking about him with anyone at all, even with his closest friends, nor to get his attention, for that matter. As happens so often even to this day among the common people, the nickname had replaced the person’s real name. Speaking about Sebastián Cotrina would only get everyone around you to look questioningly at each other as if you were speaking about a total stranger. If you were to say Chapaco (another nickname for Sebastián), you might sometimes get the individual alluded to to realize that you were addressing him. But if you just said “Mellizo” plain and simple, there was not a single person in his class that would not answer, “I know him!” And if he was present, he himself would jump up in response to the name.
I don’t know that I would count the Cotrina who was a compatriot of Calatayud among his ancestors. The Mellizo was more cupreous than white, and he was close to thirty years of age. I can still see him in my mind when I recall him today: short and chubby, with bright, deep-set, little eyes; round-faced, with a flat nose; completely bald; restless, a troublemaker, and quite rowdy; and always the loudest of anyone around him. His head was covered with a blue handkerchief, tied at the nape of his neck; he wore a large leather apron; he would grab the first tool before him when he entered the shop and then not set it down his whole time there; and he moved around and shrieked more than anyone, but without ever accomplishing anything productive. When Luis and I came back into the shop, he was going on about his fatigue and the tremendous amount of work that he had done with his hands, or that which had been done by others’, but always under his indispensable supervision and direction. And, saying that he would take advantage of the break to carry out a thousand other patriotic duties, which only he could carry out, incidentally, he ran out of the shop just as he was, with the tool in his hand and the apron still around him, and headed straight for the nearest chichería.
The Gringo was drawing deeply on his Santa Cruz cigar in silence, although no one would have had more of a right than him to boast about their work. He was organizing, in a corner, the bronze balls to which he had given the finishing touches, putting the corresponding short strip of esparto rope they required on each one of them for their use. Then he arranged his tools carefully on the table, and, finally, went over to wash his hands in a wooden wash-tub.
My uncle, the strong, good, and simple Alejo, his head covered, wearing an apron like the Mellizo, was completely soaked in sweat after having worked so eagerly. He was stacking a few small silver coins—his salary—on the anvil with his blackened, callused hands, and more than a few gleaming drops fell on them from his face as he did so.
“What do you think about all this, young man?” he asked me.
“Oh! It’s beautiful, amazing!” I answered, truly carried away with happiness after what I had seen.
“Now, they will learn, revolution,” the Gringo said, letting the cigar fall out of his mouth, and proceeded to calmly put on a kind of greatcoat, which he had left in the back room or in the bedroom.
“Yes, young man,” Alejo replied, “this is a revolution!”
“There is a lot of saltpêtre in the valley; the gentleman Haenke has taught how to make very good gunpowder; the hills are full of lead, there is no lack of tin, and one can also find a bit of copper; and we have «many worlds» of people,” added the Gringo from inside.
My uncle was enthralled, listening to him with that smile of his, in which he displayed his infinite satisfaction and all thirty-two of his teeth.
“That’s it, boys!” he exclaimed. “Long live the homeland!”
“Hurrah! Hurrah!” Luis and I answered.
“Now, another thing. Do you have a paper in your pocket?”
“Yes. Coincidentally, I just got a copy of the proclamation from the Junta of War.”
“Very good. You’re going to make a clean roll for me, a very clean and neat roll for me with those reales from over there. But let’s hear the proclamation from the Junta first.”
I unfolded the paper, pretended to put on a pair of eyeglasses, coughed, straightened myself up like the Notary Don Angel Francisco Astete, and prepared to begin reading, ready also to imitate the Notary’s somewhat nasal voice.
“Wait!” Luis yelled, and ran to arm himself with a lance and stand up behind me, representing the public forces.
“Let’s have it,” Alejo said.
“Go on, you little devil,” the Gringo added, for his part.
And I read, in the manner I just indicated, that famous proclamation, from which I shall copy only a few of the main sections here:
“Don Mariano Antezana, President of this city’s Provincial Junta, along with the other members of the Junta, in the name of his Majesty the King Don Fernando VII, may God keep him forever in good health, etcetera.
“It being necessary in the current circumstances to resort to all available resources. . . . And it being one of them that the entire community contribute to the saintly and worthy aims of the defense of the homeland and the arming and keeping of its troops. . . .
“Therefore, I decree and command that every person in this city and in the entire province, regardless of sex or age, agree to give what each finds appropriate, for the maintenance of the troops. However, so that the expenditure not be unreasonable the contribution is set at the sum of «eight reales». . . .”
“Long live the homeland!” the public forces yelled behind me.
The Gringo shrugged his shoulders and walked out into the street. Alejo was thinking, scratching his head behind his ear, as he always did when he could not figure out what he should do.
“Well,” he said after a while, “my eight reales are right there. Set them aside and roll the rest up for me.”
I did as I was told, as well and neatly as possible, and put the roll into his pocket for him, since he did not want to touch it to avoid getting the paper dirty with his hands. Then he looked at me angrily and said:
“I bet you won’t be able to guess! Go on, you fool! It’s for the Grandmother!”
And right away he lowered his head, adding, with much emotion and, I believe, crying:
“She’s here with Clarita. They came to have Dionisio cured.
She’s gone blind! … They’re living in my small house in the Barrio de los Ricos. . . . Where you used to live with ‘the child.’”