Reasons of State (23 page)

A day of general enthusiasm, a day of jugs full of aguardiente, and veal cooking on the grill, free sweetcorn, barrels of beer, toys for poor children, ribbons and bows, choirs singing in the National Pantheon, salves in the churches, dancing in houses and tearooms, alleys and brothels, with every pianola, piano, gramophone, street musician, and maraca player combining full-tilt in a general haphazard concert, while waiting
for the inauguration ceremony of the Capitol, within whose Large Hemicycle were gathered the entire government, heads of the Armed Forces, Diplomatic Corps, and an elegant crowd, rigorously filtered, surrounded and observed by a whole legion of agents of our Intelligence Service, who were dressed for the occasion in dinner jackets too like one another not to look like uniforms. And then the soirée began with all solemnity, pomp and show, epaulettes, gold braid and decorations—the Order of Isabella the Catholic, of Carlos III, of Gustavus Adolphus, the Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta, Legions of Honour, Honi-soit-qui-mal-y-pense, garters and crosses, and even the exotic insignia of the Dragon of Annam and of the Waterlily and the Arcade, recently granted to our high officials. After listening to the National Anthem, the Head of State walked to the rostrum—he certainly appeared surprisingly confident and in command of himself that afternoon—wearing all the emblems of his high rank. He began his speech slowly as usual, using the theatrical gestures common to a good lawyer and a good orator, sketching an exact and moderate outline of our history from the Conquest to Independence. And those who were ironically expecting his customary verbal flourishes, elaborate epithets, and striking vocatives were surprised to hear him pass from this sober historical narrative to the arid world of statistics, and presenting from the precise viewpoint of an economist a clear and convincing picture of national prosperity, coinciding as it did—and here his tone became more emotional—with the greatest attempt to destroy Graeco-Latin Culture that had been made in any epoch of human evolution. But that great culture would be saved. Before long, victory for our Spiritual Parents would ensure the permanence of values that, threatened
over there
, would rise again on this side of the ocean, more splendid than ever. And contemplating, and inviting others
to contemplate, this superb building wherein we now were, this crystallisation in stone, marble, and bronze of the classical orders of Graeco-Latin architecture—Vitruvius, Vignola, Bramante—the Head of State speeded his rhythm and raised his pitch, while his gestures became wider as he suddenly returned to the prolix, ornate, and overcharged style that had been so often made fun of by his enemies. And closing an invocation to Her who, as the Guide of all Reason and all Intelligence, must rule over the republic itself and thus over this recently built Civic Temple, the inspired voice exclaimed: “O Archagetis, ideal incarnate in the masterpieces of men of genius, I would rather be the least in your mansion than the first elsewhere! Yes: I will attach myself to the stylobate of your temple; I will forget every discipline except yours; I will be a stylite on your columns and my cell shall be placed upon your architrave. And—something more difficult!—for your sake I will if I can become
intolerant and partial …
(The crowd was tense with expectation.)
I shall be unjust to everything that does not concern you; I shall make myself the slave of the last of your sons
. The present inhabitants of the land you gave to Erectheus shall be exalted and flattered by me. I will endeavour to love even their defects, and I will convince myself—O Hippias!—that they are descendants of the horsemen who are celebrating their eternal festival in the marble of your frieze.” (Here he gestured towards the roof.)

The Head of State seemed to have come to the end of his speech. The audience gave him a long standing ovation. But Peralta, sitting in the secretary’s place opposite the audience, the better to keep an eye on the Diplomatic Corps, had noticed the French Ambassador nudging the British Ambassador at the name of
Archagetis
. At
stylobate
, the British Ambassador’s elbow had nudged the Italian Ambassador in the ribs; from
stylite
to
architrave
, from
Erectheus
to
Hippias
a
series of nudges had passed from ambassador to business representative, from councillor to cultural attaché, as far as the lean rib cage of the Japanese Commercial Attaché, who didn’t understand the language and was therefore half asleep. The impact nearly knocked him over, just as in physics the last ball of the apparatus is hurled in the air when the action of a first ball of the same weight communicates its energy to six identical intermediate balls. One or two laughs were stifled behind the many handkerchiefs mopping up non-existent sweat—because it was not a warm night and the winds were from the north, cooled by the snows of the Tutelary Volcano. At this moment the Head of State silenced the audience with a simple gesture and said that he was particularly pleased by this applause, since it was directed at the famous writer Ernest Renan, whose
Prayer on the Acropolis
included the fine paragraph he had just quoted, because it seemed to him to correspond in every way with his profoundest spiritual desires and the solemnity of the occasion.

There was more applause, louder and more prolonged than before—as though some desire for forgiveness lay behind it—during which Peralta left his seat, and going up to the French Ambassador, said to him with sly coarseness:

“
Il vous a bien eu, hein? Pas si con que ça, le vieux!
”

“
Pas si con que ça, en effet
,” replied the other, taken by surprise and suddenly worried by the idea that his thoughtless response might be reported to the Quai d’Orsay, which was in no mood for jokes these days and had had the brilliant ideas of sending Alexis Leger to China and appointing Paul Claudel Minister to Rio de Janeiro, so as to raise the lamentable intellectual level of French representatives in Asia and Latin America.

But this was the signal for the assembly to break up; people abandoned their seats in haste, descended the stairs,
and made for the doors in an avalanche, pushing with their elbows so as to get as quickly as possible to a gigantic buffet whose tables displayed enormous silver dishes laden with as many good things imported from New York and Paris as could be added to the national delicacies: pheasants decorated with their feathers, truffled quails, suckling pigs stuffed with galantine and pistachios, highly seasoned tamales and turkeys with cranberry sauce, Saint Honoré à la crème and maize cream in glasses, marrons glacés and tamarind pies, national savouries next to black and red caviar piled onto elephants sculpted in ice, the whole spread being surmounted in the middle and at the ends by architectonic cakes made of meringue and almond paste representing the Capitol, without a single column missing, and all the statues and obelisks in marzipan. All this was admired and enjoyed, washed down by wine and liqueurs, brandy and tequila; and fresh bottles of champagne were taken from coolers full of crushed ice tinted pink to enhance their gold-covered corks.

And everyone drank toasts standing around the huge statue of the Republic, while an orchestra, hoisted up inside the cupola, launched into Cuban
danzóns
and Creole bambas, interspersed between the “Beautiful Ohio” waltz or the syncopation of “Pretty Baby.” And then fireworks were let off, setting the sky on fire, falling in torrents and cascades of stars and lights on the roofs and terraces of the town.

And at two in the morning—according to the Head of Protocol no official soirée could go on after this hour—Peralta and the Head of State returned to the palace, exhausted but happy, longing to take off their evening clothes and drink something stronger and more to their taste than what the party provided. The Mayorala Elmira was waiting for them in the presidential apartments, dressed in her petticoat, but with her bosom muffled against the cold mountain air
creeping through the Venetian blinds. And as the secretary had been as good as his word and brought her some of what had been served at the buffet that night, despite her doubts as to whether she would find it to her liking, the zamba eagerly took them out of their hamper, one by one, with the mistrustful caution of a bomb-disposal expert examining the suspicious contents of an anarchist’s case. She found a derogatory definition for them all; the Burgundian snails were “slugs”; the caviar, “buckshot in oil”; the truffles, “chips of charcoal”; the halva, “nougat trying to be like
turrón
from Jijona.”

The President had already drunk a lot and was asking for more; he didn’t feel ready for sleep, while Peralta never tired of praising his brilliant use of the quotation from Ernest Renan.

“Don’t they say I’m an affected and ridiculous speaker?” remarked the President. “But I’m really sorry our friend the Academician wasn’t there. Because he would certainly have fallen into the trap too.”

“The thing is that that passage seemed to have been written expressly for the inauguration of our Capitol,” said Peralta, “and with such appropriate threats against the bastards of the opposition.”

The Head of State was looking out the window at the confused panorama of scaffolding and building, which would soon be covered with workmen. Far away, the Tutelary Volcano had hardly emerged from its veils of mist in the belated dawn. After drinking a sixth large beer from the neck of the bottle, the Mayorala pulled her camp bed into the doorway and threw herself down to sleep, as always, with a sawn-off shotgun in reach of her hand. Peralta, who was rather drunk, drowsed off on the leather sofa, with its wide back and deep cushions, standing opposite the somewhat Renaissance-style fireplace—with Louis XII’s porcupine at the top—where,
for lack of the fire that was never lit, red electric lightbulbs winked amongst false logs.

“The ceremony was a success, a real success,” the Head of State kept repeating, listening to the discreet summons to matins from the Cathedral—the bell had been muted because the neighbours wouldn’t get up as early as usual and had asked that it should sound less loudly than before. And he went on pacing around the room, from chair to chair, having a last drink, which always turned into a penultimate drink. A man accustomed to short nights and long siestas, whose spartan audiences lasting into the small hours were the torment of his colleagues, he couldn’t make up his mind to rest a few hours in his hammock tonight—a long net hammock like the one in Paris—before he took the bath that the Mayorala Elmira would prepare for him as usual, scented with English bath salts and the water at blood heat. He was delighted by the Capitol affair. Now photographs of the building would be sent to our embassies and published in the European and continental papers—paying for the space according to the columns occupied and tariff per centimetre, as he always did when he wanted to control the captions under a picture. Thus the world would hear how greatly increased in importance this town had become, which at the beginning of the century had been hardly more than a village surrounded by a wasteland full of snakes, bare hills, thorny scrub, water tanks breeding mosquitoes, and cattle driven along the main streets with shouts and whistles.

He was happy with such thoughts as these, and hardly had daylight dawned when he became aware of distant reveilles from the barracks, and the first trams carrying people with baskets, knapsacks, and crates to the marketplace, where caged birds were already fidgeting and turtles munching lettuces in their boxes. The Head of State looked at his agenda.
Today was free from councils, audiences, and other worries. So maybe he would change the order of his habits: he would have a bath first and then a sleep till the middle of the morning. But he lounged in an armchair and ate liqueur chocolates, in no hurry to make up his mind.

“Whatever you like,” murmured the Mayorala as if talking in her sleep.

“A bit later, my dear. Don’t trouble.”

He felt himself possessed of the same strength and sovereignty as the volcano, which had now emerged from its trammelling clouds and stood revealed among craggy spurs of blue quartz. “A success!… a success,” he went on repeating to himself. “As for the rest …”

A tremendous explosion shook the palace. All the windows of the façade broke at once; several candelabra fell from ceilings; bottles, vases, ornamental pottery, and plates were shattered, and a few pictures came away from the walls. A large high-explosive bomb had just gone off in the presidential bathroom, spreading heavy fumes smelling of bitter almonds. Ashy pale from the effort to appear calm, the Head of State looked at his watch: “Half past six … my regular bath time … Congratulations, gentlemen; but I wasn’t there today.” And while guards, footmen, and maidservants came running with all speed and noise and the Mayorala shouted for more, he added, pointing towards the town: “This is what I get for being too lenient.”

MINISTERS WERE DRAGGED OUT OF BED BY TELEPHONE calls from Doctor Peralta—they had been sleeping off the official dinner, prolonged when they got home by large doses of digestive drinks, yellow liqueurs, green benedictines, and purple cherry brandy—and summoned to an urgent council meeting at 8:30 in the morning, where there would be plenty of coffee trays to help those who were still drowsy shake off the effect of their drinks. When they arrived—chewing peppermint, sweating out aspirin, and clearing their eyes with lotion—the Mayorala Elmira took them to the President’s bathroom, where they were shocked at the sight of broken porcelain, shattered mirrors, debris of bottles, and soap dishes in a pool of eau de Cologne, a bidet with its taps wrenched from their sockets, spouting out uncontrollable fountains of water, and even the ceiling smashed by the explosion.

“Horrible … Terrifying … Inconceivable … And to think how nearly …”

“I’ve refrained from going in,” declared the Head of State somewhat dramatically, when everyone was seated, “because I’m afraid of my own anger.”