On Heroes and Tombs by Ernesto Sabato
Thus I too was able to learn something of what was going on in the most hidden part, and for me the most nostalgically longed-for part, of Georgina’s soul.
To what end, in the name of heaven? To what end?
4
For days on end he prowled round and round the house, hoping that the guard that had been posted there would be withdrawn. He confined himself to gazing from a distance at what remained of that room in which he had known utter happiness and utter despair: a skeleton blackened by the flames that the twisted spiral staircase seemed to be pathetically straining to rejoin. And when night fell, on the walls dimly lighted by the street lamp on the corner the empty frames of the door and the window formed hollows resembling the eye sockets of a charred skull.
What was he looking for? Why did he want to get inside? He would not have been able to answer. But he waited patiently for the now-pointless guard to be withdrawn, and once it was, he scaled the iron gate and entered the grounds that very night. Flashlight in hand, he retraced the same path that he had followed with her that first time, a thousand years ago, on a summer night, walking around the side of the main wing of the house and heading for the Mirador. The entire gallery, as well as the two rooms underneath the Mirador and the storage room to the back, was now nothing but black walls covered with ashes.
It was a cold, cloudy night, and the pre-dawn silence was profound. Martín heard the distant echo of a ship’s siren, and then again there was not a single sound. He stood there for some time, not moving, in great agitation. And then (although it could not possibly be anything but his overworked imagination) he heard Alejandra’s voice, faintly but clearly, uttering just one word: “Martín.” Utterly devastated, he leaned against the wall, unable to move, for a long, long time.
He was able at last to overcome his deep depression and head toward the house. He felt a need to go inside, to see once again that sitting room of the grandfather’s in which the spirit of the Olmoses seemed somehow to be crystallized, where eyes foreshadowing Alejandra’s stared down forever from old portraits.
The entryway was locked. He retraced his steps and noticed that one of the doors of the house was barred with a chain and a padlock. He searched around in the ruins left by the fire and found a stout iron bar with which he pried loose one of the iron rings to which the chain was attached: it was not a difficult task, for the old wood was rotten. He entered the house through the corridor inside, and in the beam cast by his flashlight everything seemed even more bizarre, even more like an auction house full of odd bits and pieces of furniture.
In the old man’s room everything was the same, except for the wheelchair, which was missing: the antique kerosene lamp, the portraits in oil of ladies with big ornamental combs in their hair and the gentlemen who had sat for Pueyrredón, the console table, the Venetian mirror.
He looked around then for the miniature of Trinidad Arias and contemplated once again the face of that pretty woman whose Indian features seemed to be the secret murmur of Alejandra’s, a soft murmur amid conversations of Englishmen and Spanish conquistadors.
He had the impression that he was stepping into a dream, as on that night when he had entered this same room with Alejandra: a dream that fire and death had made even deeper still. That gentleman and that lady with the ornamental comb in her hair seemed to be watching him from the walls. The souls of warriors, of madmen, of municipal councilors and priests appeared to be stealing invisibly into the sitting room and telling stories of conquests and battles.
And above all the spirit of Celedonio Olmos, Alejandra’s great-great-grandfather. Right there, perhaps in that very armchair, he had gone over in his mind in his old age his memories of that last retreat, that ending following the disaster at Famaillá that made no sense to reasonable men, with the forces of the Legion scattered by Oribe’s army, divided by defeat and betrayal, dazed by despair.
They are marching toward Salta now along unknown paths, paths that only their guide knows. The defeated number a bare six hundred. Yet he, Lavalle, still believes in something, for he always seems to believe in something, even though—as Iriarte thinks, as Major Ocampo and Major Hornos mutter—it is only chimeras and illusions. With whom is he going to do battle with these tattered remnants of his troops, I ask you? And yet there he is, riding at the head of their ragged band, with his straw hat and the sky bluefn2 cockade (which is no longer sky blue or any other color) and his sky blue cape (which is no longer sky blue either, which little by little has taken on the color of the earth itself), dreaming of who knows what mad undertakings. Although in all likelihood he too is trying not to allow himself to give in to despair and death.
As he rides along, Lieutenant Celedonio Olmos is struggling to hold on to his eighteen years, for he feels that this age that he has contrived to reach is at the very edge of an abyss and may fall at any moment into vast depths, into ages without end. Yet as he sits astride his horse, exhausted, wounded in the arm, he looks at his leader up there ahead of him and at Colonel Pedernera riding there at his side, pensive and gloomy; and he fights to defend those towers, those bright, lofty towers of his adolescence, those glowing words, proud guardians of the absolute whose great capital letters mark off the boundaries between good and evil. Within those towers he is still defending himself. For after eight hundred leagues of defeats and disloyalties, of betrayals and dissension, everything has become confused. With the enemy in close pursuit, saber in hand, bleeding and desperate, he has mounted one by one the stairs of those towers that once were resplendent but now are defiled by blood and lies, by defeat and doubt. And as he stubbornly defends each step of those stairs, he looks around at his comrades, silently asking for the aid of those who are waging similar battles: Frías, Lacasa perhaps. He hears Frías say to Billinghurst as he eyes the commanders of the cavalry squadrons from Corrientes: “They’ll abandon us, I’m certain of it.”
“They have made up their minds to betray us,” those from the Buenos Aires squadron think.
Yes, Hornos and Ocampo, who are riding along side by side. And the others watch them and suspect them of plotting to betray or abandon them. And so when Hornos leaves his comrade’s side and rides over to the general, one and the same thought occurs to all of them. Lavalle orders a halt then, and these officers talk together. What are they talking about, what are they discussing? And then, as they begin moving on again, terrible, contradictory rumors spread: they have given him fair warning, they have tried to persuade him, they have announced that they are abandoning him. And the story also makes the rounds that Lavalle has said: “If there were no hope left I would not try to go on fighting, but the governors of Salta and Jujuy will help us, they will provide us with men and equipment, we will retreat to the mountains, dig in, and become a force to be reckoned with; Oribe will be obliged to divert a goodly number of his troops in order to deal with us, and Lamadrid will hold out in Cuyo.”
And then, when someone mutters: “Lavalle has gone utterly mad now,” Lieutenant Celedonio Olmos unsheathes his saber to defend that last remaining part of the tower and flings himself upon the man, but his hand is stayed by his friends, and the other man is forced to hold his tongue and is vituperated, because above all else (they say), above all else, we must stick together and not let the general see or hear anything. “As though (Frías thinks) the general were sleeping and it were necessary to keep watch over him as he sleeps and dreams his dreams full of chimeras. As though the general were a mad but innocent and beloved child and we were his older brothers, his father and his mother, keeping watch over him as he sleeps.”
And Frías and Lacasa and Olmos look at their leader, fearing that he may have awakened, but happily he goes on sleeping and dreaming, watched over by his sergeant Sosa, the eternal sergeant, ever the same, beyond the reach of all the powers of earth and man, stoic and silent.
Until that dream of aid, of resistance, of equipment, of horses and men is brutally shattered in Salta: the townspeople have fled, panic reigns in the stre
“Do you see now, sir?” Hornos asks the general.
And Ocampo says to him: “Those of us who are all that is left of the Corrientes division have decided to cross the Chaco and offer our support to General Paz.”
Night descends on the city caught up in disorder and confusion.
Lavalle has bowed his head and makes no answer.
What, is he still dreaming? Major Hornos and Major Ocampo exchange glances. But finally Lavalle replies:
“Our duty is to defend our friends in these provinces. And if our friends withdraw to Bolivia, we must be the last to do so; we must cover their retreat. We must be the very last to leave the soil of the fatherland.”
Major Hornos and Major Ocampo exchange glances once again, and one and the same thought crosses both their minds: “He is mad.” How could he cover a retreat, with what forces?
Hearing nothing, his eyes staring fixedly at the horizon, Lavalle repeats:
“The very last.”
Major Hornos and Major Ocampo think: “He is moved by pride, his accursed pride, and perhaps also by his feelings of resentment toward Paz.” They say:
“We are sorry, sir, but our squadron will join General Paz’s forces.”
Lavalle looks at them, then bows his head. His wrinkles grow deeper from moment to moment, years of life and death are coming crashing down upon him. When he raises his head and looks at them again, he is already an old man:
“Very well, major. I wish you luck. May General Paz carry on this fight to the very end. It is one that has no further use for me, it would appear.”
The remaining troops from the Corrientes division gallop off, as the eyes of the two hundred men who are remaining at their general’s side follow them in silence. Their hearts shrink and in their minds is a single thought: “Everything is lost now.” The one thing left for them is to die at their leader’s side. And when Lavalle says to them: “We will hold out, they’ll see, we’ll wage guerrilla warfare in the mountains,” they remain silent, staring at the ground. “We will march to Jujuy for the moment.” And these men, who know that going to Jujuy is mad, who are not unaware that the only way of saving at least their skins is to head for Bolivia along unknown paths, to disperse, to flee, reply: “Yes, sir.” For what man among them would be capable of depriving this child-general of his last dreams?
They ride off now. There are not even two hundred of them. They are marching along the highway to the city of Jujuy. The main highway!
5
“Del Castillo,” he said to him, “Alejandra,” he said to him. “Eh, what’s that?” They were disconnected, incoherent words, but finally “death,” “fire” aroused the man’s amazement. And even though Martín felt that talking with him about Alejandra was like trying to extricate a precious stone from a mixture of clay and excrement, he told him. “All right, I see,” he replied. And when Bordenave arrived, he scrutinized Martín with a look that betrayed his confusion and fear: a Bordenave very different from the one that first time. Martín couldn’t get a single word out. “Here, drink this,” he advised him. His throat was parched and he felt terribly weak. “I wanted to talk to you about …” But he sat there not knowing how to go on, looking at the empty glass. “Here, drink this.” But suddenly the thought occurred to him that this was useless and stupid: what could they possibly talk about? His head was getting fuzzier and fuzzier from the alcohol and the world more and more chaotic. “Alejandra,” another person said. Yes, everything was turning into chaos. That person was different too: he seemed to be someone bending over toward him solicitously, almost affectionately. For many years he analyzed that ambiguous moment, and later, when he returned from the South, he told Bruno about it. And Bruno was of the opinion that by mistreating Alejandra, Bordenave was taking vengeance upon her not only for his own sake but for Martín’s as well, like those Calabrian bandits who robbed the rich to give to the poor. But, wait a moment, all that still wasn’t clear at all. Why, to begin with, was Bordenave taking vengeance on Alejandra? For what affronts, what insults or humiliations? A certain word that Martín recalled amid all his confusion was very significant: Bordenave had spoken of contempt. But Bruno was of the opinion that it was not that so much as it was hatred and resentment toward her; no one has contempt for someone he hates, whereas one feels contempt for someone who is in some way inferior and one feels resentment toward persons who are superior. Hence he had once treated her badly or habitually treated her badly (it was difficult to determine which with so few facts to go on) in order to satisfy an obscure feeling of rancor. Rancor or a sentiment very typical of a certain sort of Argentine male who looks upon the woman as an enemy and never forgives her for a rebuff or a humiliation; a rebuff or a humiliation very easy to imagine, knowing the two persons in question, since it was almost certain that Bordenave possessed sufficient intelligence or intuition to realize that Alejandra was superior to him, and he was sufficiently Argentine to be humiliated by the feeling that he was able to dominate only her body, while in her mind she looked down upon him, mocked him, and scorned him, and her mind was a dimension of herself that was inaccessible to him. And he was humiliated too by the even more exasperating feeling that she was using him, as she undoubtedly used many others, as a simple instrument: the instrument, it would appear, of an extremely complex and perverse sort of vengeance that he never was able to understand. For all these reasons he would feel inclined to look upon Martín as a kindred soul, not only because he did not look upon him as a rival, not only out of a sense of fraternity in the face of their common enemy, but because by hurting a youngster as helpless as Martín Alejandra herself became a more vulnerable being, to the point that she could be attacked by Bordenave himself—as though someone who hated a rich man because he has a fortune, realizing that this sentiment is base and dishonorable, instead seized upon one or another of his more vulgar shortcomings (his niggardliness for example) so as to be able to detest him without feeling any sort of scruples. But Martín was unable to think any of this through at that moment; it was only much later that he was able to do so. It was as though they had removed his heart and were pounding it to pieces on the ground with a stone; or as though they had cut it out of him with a jagged knife and were now tearing it to bits with their fingernails. His confused emotions, his feeling of total insignificance, his dizziness, the immediate confirmation that that man had been Alejandra’s lover all conspired to prevent him from saying a single word. Bordenave was staring at him in bewilderment. What was the point of all this anyway? “She’s dead now,” he commented. Martín continued to sit there with his head bowed. Yes, what indeed was the point in this need to know, this absurd desire to pursue the whole thing to the very end? Martín didn’t know, and although he had a certain vague intuition as to the reason, he would not have been able to express it in words. But something was forcing him to go on in this absolutely senseless way. Bordenave eyed him thoughtfully; he appeared to be weighing something in his mind, to be pondering the proper dose of a tremendously powerful drug.
“Here,” he said to him, handing him a glass of brandy. “You aren’t feeling well. Drink this.”
And as though he had had a sudden inspiration, Martín said to himself: “Yes, I want to get blind drunk, I want to die,” as he heard Bordenave say something to him like: “Yes, on the next floor, upstairs, you know,” looking at him attentively as he downed this glass too. All at once everything in the room began to turn round and round, he was nauseated, and his legs felt wobbly. His stomach, empty since the night of the fire, seemed all of a sudden to be full of something burning-hot and repugnant. Struggling upstairs to that infamous place, he spied, as in a dream, the river through the large bay window. And with a feeling of self-pity, along with the feeling that he was being ridiculous, he thought: “Our river.” He had a mental picture of himself, as small as a young child, and felt sad, as though he were looking at himself standing there in front of him.