Carlos Fuentes - The Campaign

He so desired the only kiss he and Gabriela exchanged, his vision of that act was so intense, so red were the girl’s lips when they joined his, their mouths parting and their tongues joining and separating only to tickle their palates and count their avid, cruel, and tender teeth, that from it there emerged another mouth, another kiss, a kiss that stole theirs away, banished it, took it from them and turned it into the kiss, the mouth, the voice of Ofelia Salamanca.

And that was the third thing that happened.

He promised himself not to think about Gabriela until he could be hers alone.

[3]

Facing Santiago, but separated from it by the rampart of the Andes, Mendoza — capital of the Argentine province of Cuyo — was the revolutionary center of the Americas. The sweetness of its valley of vines and cherry trees, the eternal springtime of its warm breezes and its snow-capped backdrop, its lands given over to golden pear trees and fertile earth, was all negated. Mendoza was given over to the extremes of cold calculation and infernal din because of the activities of the Army of the Andes that was forming, in spite of all apathy and against all obstacles.

At the beginning, there was nothing; San Martín set about turning that nothing into war supplies. He ordered contributions, extorted money from everyone, pestered President Pueyrredón to distraction, exhorted the ladies of Mendoza to donate their jewels at the municipal council, proscribed luxury, and cut officers’ salaries in half. From the back of a horse no taller than the liberating general himself, sitting bolt upright, barely thirty-seven years old but already showing an incipient maturity that did not wholly extinguish the veiled glint in his eyes or the stubborn determination in his mouth, he proclaimed:

“Cuyo must sweat money for the liberation of America; from this day forward, each one of us must stand guard over his own life.”

The Supreme Director of the Junta of Buenos Aires, Pueyrredón, was not willing to be second to San Martín either in will or in zeal in a feat which in Buenos Aires was being compared with those of Hannibal, Caesar, and Napoleon: “From Buenos Aires we send you dispatch cases, uniforms, shirts. We send you two thousand replacement sabers and two hundred field tents. We send you, in a small box, the only two bugles we could find. And that’s enough,” wrote Pueyrredón. “We send the World. We send the Flesh. We send the Devil. I don’t have the remotest idea how I’m going to worm my way out of the contracts I’ve signed to pay for all of it. Damn it! Don’t ask me for another thing!”

Cuyo did sweat, Mendoza dried up, and even the church bells and vineyards were squeezed to get blunderbusses and harquebuses, carbines and sabers, daggers and tridents, the pistols, and the yataghans, those fearsome Turkish-style swords with silver hilts.

Already Major De la Plaza is at work, quartermaster in charge of supplies and arms; Alvarez Condarco, the Tucumán chemist, mixes nitrates to make different kinds of gunpowder. In his armory, Brother Luis de Beltrán tucks his cassock up on his waist as he casts cannon and bombs, while his neighbor, Tejada, sweats over his vats, dyeing cloth blue to make new uniforms. Right down to the humblest artisan, everyone contributes something to the campaign, even if it’s a lance cut from a reed; the poorest mule skinner turns over his animals, just as the doctors deliver their medicines to the hospital founded by Dr. Zapata. And if donations don’t come willingly, then San Martín’s men forcibly tear blankets and sheets off the beds, occupied or empty, of those living nearby. “There is no house that cannot give up an old sheet,” shout these pirates of liberty, proclaiming themselves beggars rather than thieves. “When all else fails, we all have to beg.”

But all the hustle and bustle, the clanging, the singing and dancing, the hammers smashing red-hot iron, the neighs, and the banging are like a vast silence when, at dusk on that January day, three horsemen enter General José de San Martín’s camp in Mendoza. Three horsemen hurtling down the mountains who cannot rein in their mounts, who spur them on to run, jump, and dodge obstacles around the armories, the supply sheds, the shops, and the mills, until the three sweating, tense chargers meld in the corral and stables with the three thousand horses, the seven thousand mules, and the myriad cows that constitute the marching stock of the Army of the Andes.

The three friends dismount, laughing and shouting, embracing, congratulating one another for being friends, for being alive, for having arrived, for bringing news, and above all for their manly comradeship, the friendship of their twenty-five years, the success of having crossed the Andes on horseback from Santiago — so swiftly that they are their own messengers:

The priest Francisco Arias, handsome and devout, twenty years of age, given to fervent readings and to those sensualities he deems worthy of his all-embracing faith and his noble intelligence.

Lieutenant Juan de Echagüe, valiant and dashing with his reddish favoris that show to equal advantage combed for a ball or tangled with dust.

And the young hero Baltasar Bustos, hopelessly myopic but willfully plump — losing, because of a diet of honey fritters, creams, egg-yolk sweets, and powder cakes, the physical hardness won in the Inquisivi campaign, obeying the order to return to his natural state, fat and smooth; losing the pride of his svelte virility to serve the cause to which the three of them have pledged themselves, even if they have to dance with that ugliest of partners: deceit.

“Arias and Bustos will join with Echagüe in Chile. The country is on edge. Despite the Rancagua defeat, the spirit of rebellion has not been vanquished. The captain-general is both an incompetent and a savage. Santiago is the center of all this edginess. Mix with everyone. Make friends with everyone. Spread false rumors. Contradict one another. Confuse anyone who wants the Spaniards to win. Seduce anyone who can serve our cause. Don’t leave a single truth unquestioned, create a universe of doubt, confusion, contradiction, false news, rumors … And don’t think you’re heroes. You are just part of an army of spies and counterspies scattered all over Chile. Spread misinformation but learn the truth for us. Find out the number and position of their troops, supplies, their movements, their plans. But, above all, make them believe we’re going to attack from all sides, all along the line from Mount Aconcagua to Valdivia.”

That is what General San Martín asked the three of them to do and that is what they accomplished. Now Baltasar wanted to eat steak and not vol-au-vent, Echagüe felt avenged for the death of his uncle (which took place, rumor had it, in the arms of Ofelia Salamanca, widow of the cuckold marquis), and Father Arias was looking at his two friends with his beautiful, languid, enigmatic eyes, which seduced both men and women, making everyone feel that this young priest could do whatever he wished — it was obvious that God Himself had so deemed it, and had incarnated His divine will in this delicate, strong, tender being ever ready to forgive but also disposed to anger, this youthful herald of Jehovah and Christ.

They walked arm in arm, at a distance from the stables where they’d dismounted, but always accompanied by the diminutive population of the encampment, whose habitual noises began to fill the afternoon once more after the galloping interruption of the friends. Geese, chickens, pigs, ducks. The honking, cackling, and squealing magically drowned out the hammers, bellows, and neighing. Arias looked at Bustos and Echagüe. If only it was true that Baltasar had invented — it was a stroke of genius — the pretext of the beautiful Ofelia to justify his passing through Chile; if only he did not know her or love her. If only Echagüe had never believed that his comrade loved the woman who had killed his uncle. If only this marvel of life, the union of the three young friends, who were not divided by anything, could last, glitter as long as possible, before the inevitable splits triumphed. When his friends asked him what he was doing, Arias said he was praying in his own fashion, using a word, ojalá —God willing — whose origin was the purest Arabic. Then they ate and drank together, told jokes, reminisced about family and lady friends, remembered childhood pranks, loved each other like brothers.