A deadly silence reigned throughout city. Burning lights intermittently illuminated the deserted streets and the hermetically sealed houses. That night, a phenomenon that is frequently seen from the beautiful valleys of my beloved land was once again present. A thick, grayish cloud extends over the northern Cordillera, while others, thinner and lighter ones, cloak the rest of the sky, creating a mother-of-pearl veil through which the stars of the first magnitude can be seen. The large gray cloud silently discharges flashes of lightning, luminous rays in arborescent shapes. These in turn light up the smallest of objects with a light that—to eyes that are not expecting it in the middle of the darkness—can seem brighter than daylight. I have heard many explanations for the phenomenon, but most are quite absurd. I think that it must simply be the effect caused by the violent storms that break out over the immense forests on the other side of the Cordillera.
I was already along the side of the Church of the Matriz when I heard a sentinel shout out in the middle of the night. Turning to look in that direction, I saw, with the light provided by a flash of lightning, a human head on the end of a pike sticking into the ground near the fountain. The soldier was sitting on the border of the circular fountain, his rifle resting between his legs. With another flash of lightning, I was able to immediately distinguish that the head belonged to Governor Antezana. I also saw a strange shadow slivering on the ground like a snake toward the pike.
“Stop! Who s there?” the soldier shouted and jumped to his feet. He must have then cocked the rifle, because I heard both dry sounds that the weapon makes when it is cocked.
No one answered. A third flash of lightning, brighter than the previous ones, must have allowed the soldier to see the man who was about to pounce on the pike, which I could clearly see. The shot went off. A guttural scream, like that of a wounded wild animal, resounded in the silent night, and the strange man ran off, heading down the Calle de los Ricos. By the scream, I recognized Paulito. And it was him, sure enough. I later learned that on another night, darker and better suited for his goal, he returned and was able to get away with his master’s head, and that it was then buried in the cemetery at St. Francis. Reliable people, who say that they saw it with their own eyes, also assured me that the day afterward, Paulito was found lying dead on the grave, like a loyal dog that could not go on living without its master.
I bolted off in the opposite direction like a rabbit, down the Street of Santo Domingo, and did not stop until it came to an end, near the banks of the Rocha River. And I did stop only because I saw another head displayed there; it was clearly that of the patriot Agustín Azcui. The same thing would have happened to me regardless of the route I had chosen to leave the city. On that day, Don José Manuel Goyeneche had more heads than he needed to put one on each of the roads that led in and out of the city. However, the one thing that he was never able to accomplish was precisely his objective: “To teach a lesson to that city of untamable rebels.”
I feared there would be another sentinel posted there, like the one in the plaza, and that he might detain me or slow me down, at the very least by forcing me to take a roundabout way to avoid being seen by him. With this in mind, I climbed up an adobe wall that surrounded an orchard and jumped over to the other side. And I kept on doing this as necessary. Once I had made it to the shores of the river, I sat on the fine sand to catch my breath. I saw a pile of logs and willow tree branches nearby. I picked out a good club to take with me and continued on my way, heading toward Quillacollo. It was already late at night. The ominous sign of the Scorpius constellation, which the peasants had taught me about, referring to it with the common name of “the scorpion,” was shining in the middle of the sky, in a wide clearing without clouds.
I heard the wonderful, pure, and silvery voice of a woman who was singing somewhere in the distance, in the middle of that deadly silence. It was a huaino that later became very popular in all the valleys of Cochabamba:
Soncoippatanña kuakainiijuntta …
Faithfully translated into Spanish, it was also later sung in salons by leading ladies who would gather round a guitar, a harp, or a clavichord—musical instruments that were played better by them than the magnificent Collard pianos, of which only a few of their more civilized granddaughters know how to put to use; it being rare, besides, that any of these know how to make their voices trill in the Italian style.*
My chest filled so that it could burst
With a sad cry,
That did not pour from my eyes,
When I was crushed.
Crying would be a welcomed comfort,
But never, ever
Would I want you to think, when you see my sorrow,
That I am tamed.
This is the last lament I heard as I left my brave Oropesa behind—my city, which was defeated by Goyeneche in an uneven battle; coldly handed over by the barbarian to the brutal passions of his hordes, the “defenders of the Crown and the altar”; and drowned in the blood of its best native sons, whose sacrifice saved the provinces of the Río de la Plata, from where redeeming crusades later arrived from Chile and from Perú, as I will very shortly recount to you, if God allows me to continue writing my memoirs.
I walked at a good pace through the populated areas of Maicas and through the outskirts of Colcapirhua. Then, at once, I ran across the plain of Carachi, where not even the most humble rancho could be seen, for it was known as an area that highwaymen frequented. No one stopped me, and I did not see a single living being, nor any from the other world.
I tripped over many sleeping pigs in the narrow and winding streets of Quillacollo and had a very hard time fighting off the countless barking dogs that came out from all the patios and all the enclosures. They jumped over the walls, surrounded me aggressively, but did not dare come within range of my club.* The light of sunrise was already dawning when I reached the cross road that I would now follow to my destination. A young mestizo man, tall and strong, was coming toward me, panting from fatigue. He was armed with a special whip made from a thick tucuma club with a ball of lead attached to its end that could serve him as much to shoo away the dogs as to strike a fellow human being. But I was not at all frightened when I saw him. Instead, I had a strange premonition, and asked him in Quechua:
“Brother, how is the ill gentleman?”
“I’m on my way to get the tata priest,” he answered, and hurried off.
My premonition had not been wrong. I have had this same thing happen to me many times, even without having prior information, as I had then. I believe that there is such a thing as the ability of divination, which is still not understood, but which is revealed in this manner to many people who have a certain anxious nature, like mine.
The door leading into the patio of the Old House was wide open. The patio had a white, narrow path that led to the foot of the stairs, which was overgrown with grass, just as I had seen it from beyond the wall the time that I passed by with Ventura and heard the melody from the violin. I followed the path unhesitatingly, but then stopped, alarmed. I took a step back and raised my club. There was an enormous Newfoundland dog at the foot of the stairs, but it did not make even the slightest of movements. I then noticed that it was lying on its back and realized at once that it was dead, as I quickly confirmed. I jumped over it and climbed up the stairs, taking two steps at a time. Some of these were very much ravaged by time.
The stairs ended in a narrow balcony that had a door and two latticed windows that led into the house from there. The door was open and dark, but light could be seen through the cracks and fissures of the planks of the closed windows. I went through the door and into a short corridor or antechamber where I saw a large, half-opened vestibule door with a strong movable railing that was completely opened. My heart was beating so fast and so hard that I thought it was about to burst inside my chest. I gathered all my courage before looking carefully into the room.
It measured some ten varas in length by six in width. The whitewashed walls were covered with strange drawings, some of them done with charcoal, others with colored chalk. Among the drawings there were men with heads of animals, and animals with human heads; fantastic trees; flowers with wings; and birds hanging from branches as if they were flowers. In many areas, broad leaks that came down from the ceiling had washed away the white plaster and the drawings. All along the walls, at a level where they could be reached by a man of average height, boards were nailed up, serving as shelves. These held many clay, stucco, and stone figurines that were as strange and unpredictable as the drawings. I have one of them in front of me right now; carved out of white stone, it is the figure of a woman dressed in a sheer tunic who is reclining back on one of her arms, resting against the back of a sleeping lion. Several friends of mine, who consider themselves experts on the matter, claim that the man who sculpted that small figurine with a makeshift chisel, without anything to model it after other than a simple illustration, could have been an artist. But an artist in colonial America! Oh, no, that would have been quite impossible! It would be just as likely to expect a poor bird whose wings are clipped at birth to be able to fly!
Near the railing, in the corner to the right, there was a large and solid bedstead. Within, on a humble bed, a man was lying on his back, completely motionless; I did not know if it was a corpse or someone on the verge of death. Don Anselmo Zagardua was standing at the head of the bed, leaning forward on his walking stick, carefully examining the mans face. A criolla woman, who looked to be about fifty years of age, robust, well kept, and very kindly, sat on a small, wooden stool at the foot of the bed.
Across from the bedstead, in the corner to the left, there was a table with a laced cloth draped over it. On it, there were two candelabra with the burnt-up candles emitting the last of their light, and a crucifix between them.
I turned all of my attention toward the man on that humble bed, the man who was suffering, or who had perhaps already died. I knew that he was young, that he was barely thirty-five years of age, but he looked like an aged man of more than eighty. He had barely a few tangled tufts of hair left on his balding head, above his ears and neck, and these had already turned very white. His forehead was furrowed with deep wrinkles. The features of his face, those that could be seen above his long, thick beard, that is, were thin and fair. That man, whose mind was not well, had spent the last thirteen years of his life in that place! At first he had tremendous outbursts of rage; afterward, he sunk submissively into a dark and silent melancholy. He could not stand to look at any human being other than Don Anselmo and his wife, Doña Genoveva, whose rooms were in the lower level of the house. His dog, Leal,1 was always at his side, and he spoke to him, addressing him as if he were a human friend, and interpreting the growls and barks with which the dog responded. He spent his time making the drawings and figurines I have just mentioned. A violin on a small table near the head of his bed was another friend of his, from which he knew how to extract wonderful comfort through rushing lines of harmony. A real Stradivarius from the Peninsula, it had been obtained by Doña Isabel, despite a thousand obstacles, for her favorite son, the youngest of the four, her Benjamin.
“What a night! … I thought it would never end. That dog’s barking was the worst, but it has finally stopped. I’m so scared that I’m starting to imagine that I’m hearing strange noises everywhere. … Just now I thought I heard someone walking out in the corridor,” Doña Genoveva said.
Her husband raised his head. He sighed and went to comfort her affectionately
“My poor little old woman!” he said to her. “Leal won’t torment us with his barking any more. Just a short while ago, when I went down to send Roque to get the good priest, since I didn’t want to disagree with you, I found the animal dead at the foot of the stairs.”
“It’s a bad omen,” the lady replied.
“Yes, I can believe it,” the Basque man answered, “the birds of night have also cawed many times, as they flapped against the bars of the windows with their wings. I don’t believe that Carlos will come back to us from this accident. At least not until the Archangel calls us all to the Valley of Josafat.”
“Dont tell me … Jesus Christ! How horrible it would be if he were to die just when he seemed like he was starting to get his sanity back! Didn’t I tell you yesterday that he spoke to me about poor Rosa? Didn’t he tell you that he wished to see his brother?”
“That’s what confirms my fears, Genoveva. There’s no question about it! It seems that God returns their sanity to the miserable ones who have lost it right before He calls them to His side. I tell you again: my nephew Carlos is already dead, for sure. . . . But you should get some rest in any case, my little old woman. I’ll stay here, keeping vigil over him, until you come back to take my place.”
“That I won’t do, my dear man! I am very healthy and feel quite well, while you are an ailing old man and quite, quite sick.”
“Bah! What are two or three nights like this to an old soldier like me? How many nights did I spend out in the high plateaus and in the Cordilleras during the campaign against Catari and Bartolina?”2
“But when you did that you were a young lad and you had both your legs. Go on! Don’t talk back to me like that, Don Anselmo! Off to bed you go, you doddering old man!”
“The lady Genoveva will be the one who will take her robust self to bed. I will not allow the lady to wear the trousers in this house.”
“Be quiet! Your stubborn whimsical actions—I know very well that you’re Basque!—your stubbornness, as I was saying, will end up in such a way that I will be forced to keep vigil over two men instead of one. I can no longer be held accountable for my actions, and. . . . May Our Lady of Mercy have pity on whatever happens to us all!”
When I heard these last words, I entered resolutely into the room. Don Anselmo and his wife screamed out in surprise.
“What do you want?” the former asked, raising his walking stick and taking a step toward me.
“I have come, sir,” I answered, “I have come to keep vigil without rest at the bed of Don Carlos Altamira.”
But I had arrived too late. . . . There was nothing there for me to do other than to mercifully close his fixed, glazed eyes. Perhaps the man, who had been one of the most tortured souls in this Vale of Tears, had raised them consciously in agony toward the sky.
I must end here. My life changed completely from that moment onward, as you shall see, if you remain interested in this simple story.