Carlos Fuentes - The Campaign

“I suppose you’ve made a decision, then,” said the father in his usual tone.

“Yes,” Baltasar lied.

He realized that his father’s odd harshness in their political discussion had no purpose other than to oblige the son to reach a decision. Baltasar understood in that instant that his father wanted not to annoy or offend him but to force him to make up his mind. Obliged to review his options, the young Bustos had to choose, as he told us in a letter: “I am not going to stay here. It doesn’t matter to me whether the merchant destroys the rancher or if the pampa takes control of Buenos Aires. I’m interested in two things. First, to see Ofelia Salamanca again. And second, to bring the revolution to those who have not yet been liberated. But I can’t make an impression on her unless I act first. So I’ll start by attending to the revolution. I’ll join up with Castelli and the northern army to support the integrity of the republic against the royalist forces.”

“Tomorrow I’m going to join up with the revolutionary army in Upper Peru.”

The old man sighed, smiled, stretched out a hand that not even the candles could warm anymore.

“Do you believe so firmly in the final triumph of your ideals? I envy your faith. But don’t fool yourself, or you’re going to suffer a great deal. Have faith, but be sincere. Can you do that? Are you capable of modifying your own behavior before you change the world?”

Baltasar Bustos sat down next to the old man’s armchair and told him what had happened the night of the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth of May in Buenos Aires. “Don’t let anyone tell you it was the revolutionaries who caused the fire. I did it, Father. It was my clumsiness. I knocked over a candle without realizing it when I was exchanging the children. I’m the guilty party. I caused the death of an innocent child.”

[6]

Sabina was outside the door. One never knew if she was secretly listening, spying on father and son without any excuse, as if saying: Life has given me so little that I can take whatever I want. Less still could Baltasar believe that father and daughter were united in their siege of someone as insignificant in the eyes of his family and the world as he: a romantic idealist, a physically unattractive fellow, a fool in love with an unattainable woman, an agent of the blindest, most involuntarily comic justice. Might that act of sincerity with his father at least have saved him? He detested himself; therefore he detested the intrusive presence of his sister even more, as he imagined a net of possible complicities and actual indiscretions.

“He still hasn’t asked you?” said Sabina, a candle in her hand.

“Asked me what?”

“Whether you want to be a merchant or a rancher.”

“Don’t be a hypocrite. You heard everything.”

“The poor old man still has his illusions,” Sabina went on, as if not listening to her brother, as if reciting lines in a play. “He wants you to choose.”

“You heard everything. Don’t go on pretending. You rehearsed this scene as if we were in a theater. Well, the first act’s over. Say something new, please.”

“I told you that I wanted to get out of here, too.”

“But you can’t. The old man needs you. Sacrifice yourself for him and, if you wish, for me as well. There’s always one selfish child and one self-sacrificing child. Wait for the old man to die. Then you can get out, too.”

She began to laugh. No, she was not the only sister who could take care of her father, sacrificing herself for him. The old man had dozens of children. What did little innocent Baltasar think? Didn’t he know the laws of the country? A patriarch like José Antonio Bustos could have as many children as he wanted with the farm girls, if his legitimate wife wasn’t enough, especially if she was as insipid as poor María Teresa Echegaray, who ended her days as bent as a shepherd’s crook, peering at the ground until she forgot people’s faces and died. She was plump and nearsighted. “Like you.”

José Antonio Bustos had a regiment of children scattered over the pampa and the mountains. But country law was implacable: the patriarch could recognize only one son. As for the others, well, this vagabond land would swallow them up.

“You are the legitimate son, Baltasar,” said Sabina, as if she were illegitimate or as if, having been born, she died every night in the bed to which she’d been condemned and had no time to be reborn the next day. “But you look just like Mother. That gaucho you challenged a little while ago looks just like you, didn’t you see it? I’m the one who looks like Papa, not you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” stammered Baltasar in confusion. “There must be any number of Papa’s kids who look like you and him.”

He felt he was losing himself in the thing he detested most: self-justification. Even though he detested her, he preferred being as honest with Sabina, who was as dry and dark as their father, as he’d been with his father because he loved him.

“I know you heard everything. Think about it awhile and help me. I love a woman. I’ll never win her unless I do what I must do. I’m going to join up with Castelli in Upper Peru, sister dear. But only now, talking here with you — and I thank you from the bottom of my heart! — do I realize that I have to do everything I can to save an innocent child. My friends in Buenos Aires will help me. I want to save that innocent child. I’ll send him here to you so you can take care of him. Will you do me that favor?”

“What is all this about an innocent child? Do you want me to stay here, a captive, even after the old man dies? What are you talking about?”

This wasn’t a complaint or even a question. It was simply a statement of the fatal, implacable fact that dominated her life. And when, in the days that followed, new information came, brother and sister would catch each other’s eye during dinner or when Sabina would bring freshly pressed shirts into the bedroom where Baltasar was packing his bags. They only had eyes, in fact, for the corrals and fields, where the gauchos had become agitated because of the news. The government of Buenos Aires had passed a law against nomads. The gauchos were to abandon their barbarous, wandering, useless customs and settle down on ranches or farms or in industry. To that end, they would be given identification cards. In turn, they would have to produce employment certificates. Violators of the law would be sentenced to forced labor or military service.

José Antonio Bustos had to read this law aloud to the gauchos summoned to the entry gates of the ranch. The hairy men, with no break in their matted pelts other than the glint of their eyes and teeth, listened as if they were getting ready to fight, their hands on their belts or resting on the hafts of their daggers. Their blades, spurs, and belt buckles also glinted, blinding the old rural patriarch more than the tenuous rays of this winter sun that sank behind the mountain range early, as if bored with the laws of men. As he read the proclamation of the creole revolution, old Bustos looked into eyes that said: “Old man, you’re useless to us. You are unable to save our way of life. Fence in a gaucho and you kill him. Let’s see if there’s someone here among us who will take charge and send you, Buenos Aires, and these laws straight to hell. Who do these people think they are? Do they really think they can dictate to us from there? Maybe we ought to go there and govern those sons of bitches. So who wants to take charge of the gauchos? Let’s see who wants to be our chief. Whoever it is, we’ll follow him to the death, against the capital city, against the law, and against you, to keep our freedom to roam as we always have, free.”