<
id="heading_id_62">The Note</
>
I
His Excellency the minister for Spain had ordered his carriage for half past six. Perfumed, powder-puffed, be-medaled, dressed with effeminate elegance, the Baron of Benicarlés placed his Panama, cane, and gloves on a console. Sucking in his stomach, he now laced his corset tight and retraced his steps to his boudoir. Carefully rolling up a trouser leg, so as not to crease it, he administered a shot of morphine. He stretched his leg, limped slightly, returned to the console, and put on his hat and gloves in front of the mirror. His bulging eyes quivered at the corner; his drooping mouth betrayed his roller-coastering thoughts. As he eased on his gloves, an image of Don Celes’s yellow pair flashed though his mind. Now other snapshots hurtled through his memory, scampering as vigorously as young bulls in the ring. From acute angles and with ruptured grammar, words unleashed themselves with epigrammatic energy: futile jab of the goad; young steers from Guisando; hewn from granite. A lethal leap on the trampoline and a single thought hanging in the air, weightless and gaseous: Don Celes! What an entertaining ass! Splendid! The thought then dissolved into a vaguely playful feeling, transmuted into a succession of graphic, vivid intuitions suffused with the absurd logic of a dream. Don Celes was performing fantastic tricks with clownish sacks in a circus arena. It was that rotund whitey for real. Wow wee! Castelar had led him on to think that he would be appointed minister of the exchequer when he became prime minister.
The baron moved away from the console, walked through the drawing room and gallery, barked an order at his chambermaid, and went downstairs. The gleaming reflections from the stream flooded his mind. His carriage drew up, teetering on the edge of that quicksilver. The driver huffed and puffed as he reined in his horses. The lackey stood by the carriage door, frozen in a salute. These static, disconnected stills had a cruel and mocking impact under a cirrus sky, dominated by a green, crescent moon. Spain’s minister rested his foot on the folding step and mentally spelled out his thoughts: “If they come up with a formula, I can’t stand aside and make myself ridiculous for the sake of a quartet of grocers. It would be ridiculous to oppose the prohibition the diplomatic corps is calling for! Ridiculous!” His carriage rolled on. Mechanically, the baron raised a hand to his hat. Then thought, “Someone said hello. Who was it?” He squinted and registered the riotous street music and lights out of the corner of his eye. Spanish flags adorned bars and pawnshops. Again he squinted, recalling that drunken jamboree in the Spanish casino. Then he slid down through elusive shadows into a quiet corner of his consciousness, where he found himself enjoying a tedious atmosphere of refinement and isolation. Snippets of angular, broken grammar inscribed polyhedrons of thought in that blessed abyss, and acrobatic clauses swung back and forth on a trapeze of hidden connections. “Let them post me to Central Africa. Wherever there isn’t a Spanish colony...Well, well, Don Celes! A grotesque fellow! What a brainwave that Castelar idea! I was quite cruel. I almost regret that. But the fellow had only come with his IOUs. It was right to nip him in the bud. An opportune ploy! And my debt can only increase...It’s annoying. It’s insulting. Diplomatic salaries are derisory. And the expenses!”
II
His carriage swung around a corner into the Portuguese Mothers Arcade. A cockfight was going on. Tense silence, broken by bursts of pandemonium. The baron lifted his monocle to look at the plebs, and then dropped it. A string of conflicting, vaguely literary reflections reminded him of life in the courts of Europe. A scent of orange blossom caressed him. His carriage trundled past the walls of a kitchen garden belonging to the nunnery. The sky was suffused with green light, like a sky painted by Veronese. The moon, as everywhere, wore a halo of Italian, English, and French verse. And lost in a subtle, pessimistic, nostalgic reverie the diplomatic roué let his confusion unravel in myriad triangles of connected thought. “Explanations! Why? Granite heads!” Via a chain of suggestions, threaded together by a quasi-cabalistic theory of images and words, he conjured up the illusion of a journey to exotic parts. He reviewed his collection of ivories. That totem with the naked paunch rippling with laughter looked like Don Celes. Once again his polyhedral pensées fleshed themselves out in words: “It will pain me to leave this country. I will take many memories with me. The loveliest friendships...It’s been sweet and sour. Life, as everywhere...The men are worth infinitely more than the women. Just like Lisbon. There are real Apollos among the young. In all probability, I will never cease to miss these tropical climes. Ah the tremor of naked flesh!” His carriage rolled on. Jesus’s Little Gate, the parade ground, Monotombo Square, the Portuguese Mothers Arcade, saddles, silver filigree, knives in a circle, gaming tables, strings of glass baubles that shimmer and shine.
III
Real Grand Guignol! Rowdies punching and stabbing opposite the English legation. The carriage slowed at the curb, the driver huffing and puffing as he reined in his horses. The lackey stood by the carriage door, frozen in salute. Alighting, the baron vaguely glimpsed a woman wearing a shawl. Her arms opened like black pincers. Was she summoning him? The vision vanished. Perhaps the old biddy was trying to get through to him. The baron lingered briefly on the step of his carriage and let his eyes take in the party in full swing on the Portuguese Mothers Arcade. He entered the legation. For a moment he thought he heard someone calling out to him; someone undoubtedly was. But he couldn’t look around. He must deal with two ministers, two sticklers for protocol, raising their hats in tandem by way of welcome. They were standing on the bottom step of the staircase, under the chandelier’s cascading light, opposite a mirror in which their reflected images appeared in a crazy oblique-angled jumble. The Baron of Benicarlés doffed his hat in turn, absentmindedly, mind miles away. The image of that old woman: her pincerlike arms beneath her shawl had distracted him. The echo of his own name, that voice that had perhaps called out to him, now also faded from his thoughts, as he remained lost in his recollections. He smiled mechanically at the two personages waiting for him beneath the resplendent chandelier. Exchanging polite nothings and pleasantries, he headed up the stairs sandwiched between the ministers for Chile and Brazil. Under his breath he hissed, “I think we musst be the firsst.”
Vaguely worried that his trouser leg might still be rolled up, he glanced down at his feet. He could still feel the sting from the shot. A garter was working loose. What a disaster! And the minister for Brazil was sporting Don Celes’s yellow gloves!
IV
Sir Jonnes H. Scott, His Gracious British Majesty’s minister, dean of the diplomatic corps, expressed his puritanical scruples in limp French, punctuated by aspirated aitches. He was small and plumpish, with a jovial belly and a patriarch’s baldpate. His face was a bright, ruddy-apple red and there was a dash of malign suspicion in his blue eyes that still sparkled with childish playfulness. “England has manifested in various ways its abhorrence at the way the most elementary laws of war are being flaunted. England is duty-bound to react when prisoners are being executed. Every pact and accord reached between civilized peoples is being violated.”
The Latin American diplomats’ mumbles of approval garnished the silence that broke out whenever the Honorable Sir Jonnes H. Scott sipped at his brandy and soda. Meanwhile Spain’s minister was fluttering his eyelashes at Ecuador’s minister, Dr. Aníbal Roncali, an electrically charged Creole, black curls, smoldering eyes, and handsome features, all blended together with subtle, somber charm, as in Chinese shadow theater. Germany’s minister, Von Estrug, was quietly exchanging interminable Teutonic clauses with Count Chrispi, Austria’s minister. France’s representative kept his chin on his chest, doing his best to feign interest, his face half reflected in his monocle. The Honorable Sir Jonnes wiped his lips and continued: “A Christian sentiment of human solidarity offers us a chalice with which to commune in a joint action entreating respect for international legislation with regard to the lives and exchange of prisoners. Naturally, the government of the republic will not ignore the recommendations of the diplomatic corps. England’s representative has a code of ethics, but at the same time he is interested in the opinions of the diplomatic corps. Ministers, this is why we have gathered here today. I apologize with due humility for the disturbance, but I did think it was my duty as dean to summon you.”
The Latin American diplomats purred a perfunctory chorus of reverential yeses, congratulating His Gracious British Majesty’s representative. Brazil’s minister, rotund, jet-black, with the features of an Asiatic mandarin or bonze, spoke up, aligning his sentiments with those expressed by the Honorable Sir Jonnes H. Scott. He waved a pair of gloves that he’d twisted together. The Baron of Benicarlés was deeply irritated: those gyrating yellow gloves were getting in the way of his flirting. With a knowing smile, he got up and approached Ecuador’s minister. “Those canary-colored mittens our Brazilian colleague is showing off are something loathsome!”
The first secretary and acting minister for the French legation explained: “Cream actually. The latest mode from the court of St. James.”
The Baron of Benicarlés envisioned Don Celes with ironic glee. Ecuador’s minister now climbed to his feet, ebony curls in a frenzy, and began to declaim. The Baron of Benicarlés, a great stickler for protocol, smiled a long-suffering smile at his posturing and torrential metaphors. Dr. Aníbal Roncali suggested that the diplomats from Spanish America should hold an initial meeting, to be presided over by the Spanish minister. Bracing their wings before taking heroic flight, the eaglets snuggled up to Mamma Eagle. The Latin American diplomats muttered agreement. The Baron of Benicarlés bowed: he acknowledged the honor on behalf of the mother country. Tilting his head to one side and smiling like a syrupy nun, eyes beady and sly, he clasped the Ecuadorian’s ebony hands between his odalisque fingers and spoke fastidiously: “My dear colleague, I accept with but one stipulation, that you sit next to me and serve as secretary!”
Dr. Aníbal Roncali felt a desperate desire to liberate his hand from the Spanish minister’s insistent grasp. A puerile, timorous angst repelled him. He recalled a painted hag who’d caught his eye when he went to the lycée. A horrible hag, as insistent as a rule of grammar! But the roué went on clasping his hand and seemed on the verge of sinking it into his bosom. He spoke with ponderous emphasis, beamed ecstatically, and conducted himself with appalling cynicism. Ecuador’s minister made an effort to escape. “Just a minute, Minister, I must say hello to Sir Scott.”
The Baron of Benicarlés stiffened and inserted his monocle. “And am I not owed the same pleasure, dear colleague?”
Dr. Aníbal Roncali nodded, ruffling his curls, and slunk off, his back almost tingling, as if he could still hear that painted hag hissing at him on his way to the lycée. He edged himself into the circle that was busy slapping perfidious Albion’s evangelical plenipotentiary on the back. The baron stood up, felt his corset slither down around his hips, and walked over to the U.S. ambassador. Meanwhile the excessive rapture of the huddle sending up incense to British diplomacy attracted the formidable Von Estrug, representative of the German Empire. Saffron-tinted Count Chrispi, the representative of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was a mere satellite in his orbit. The Yankee spoke in a confidential tone: “The Honorable Sir Jonnes Scott has eloquently expressed the humanitarian sentiments animating the diplomatic corps. There can be no doubt about that. But do those sentiments justify intervention in the republic’s internal affairs, even if only at the level of offering advice? Doubtless the republic is undergoing a profound revolutionary upheaval. Repression is necessary and must be adequate to the task. We witness executions, cover our ears, close our eyes, speak of advice...Gentlemen, we are too susceptible. General Banderas’s government is acting responsibly and knows what it is doing. In the government’s view such rigor is necessary. Is the diplomatic corps really in a position to advise?”
The German minister, a blue-blooded Jew who’d made a fortune in Bolivian rubber, manifested blunt approval in Spanish, English, and German. Severe, bald Count Chrispi also agreed, twirling his saffron mustache in the purest French. His Spanish Majesty’s representative was undecided. The three diplomats—the Yankee, the Teuton, and the Austrian, rehearsing a coordinated threefold dissent—had alerted him to their conspiratorial path. He felt genuine sorrow, for he knew that in the diplomatic world, his world, all the cabals operated without appeal to the minister for Spain. The Honorable Sir Jonnes H. Scott had pronounced yet again, “May I request that my respected colleagues be seated.”
The huddles separated. The ministers took their seats, bowing and whispering to one another, humming like the Tower of Babel. Trawling his Puritan conscience for righteous words, Sir Scott again offered the honorable diplomatic corps that chalice overflowing with humanitarian sentiments. After labyrinthine debate it was agreed to issue a “Note” to be signed by twenty-seven nations. An act with impact! Cabled laconically in true telegraphese, news of the Note soon sped its away around the world through the portals of the world’s greatest newspapers: “Santa Fe de Tierra Firme. The honorable diplomatic corps has presented a Note to the government of the republic. The Note, to which the diplomatic corps attaches great importance, advises the immediate closure of all liquor stores and demands that the protection of foreign legations and banks be reinforced.”