Carlos Fuentes - The Campaign

“The best part, sir, is that he makes sure we have good uniforms, too.”

“And he won’t accept anyone in the troop if he can’t give him at least a sword and a gun.”

“The ones I’m thinking about are the poor tailors who work for General Father Don Anselmo Quintana, because when the Spaniards capture his coats they’re going to shoot the poor tailors who sewed them.”

“How they hate him!”

“Don’t be a fool. That’s why the general’s coats don’t have labels.”

“There aren’t even any bills, not a single reference in the ledgers to receipts and payments,” said a lawyer carrying a bundle of papers. He’d stopped to drink a steaming cup of coffee handed to him by the woman with the cold, who offered to carry the papers from one archive to another. The lawyer gave her the papers and then turned to Baltasar. “You’re looking for Quintana? Well, son, you’ve been given the countersign, haven’t you? You can find him if you want. Or if you are able.”

“Is he here?”

“I can’t tell you that, boy. Who are you?”

“I’m not going to tell you. What’s good enough for Quintana is good enough for me.”

“You don’t talk like a Mexican. But you don’t sound like a Spaniard, either.”

“Well, it’s a big continent. It’s hard for all of us to know each other.”

“Well, boy, let me give you some advice. The general seems really easygoing, but he’s a tiger when he gets his back up. So watch your step. Don’t play with him.”

“What do you mean?”

“What right do you have, addressing me so familiarly?”

“What right do you have calling me boy? ”

“I have a degree in jurisprudence from the Royal University of Valladolid in Michoacán.”

“I see. In that case, what is it your excellency wishes to say to me?”

“Boy, I want to tell you what happened to a man who looked like you who was with us in the Oaxaca campaigns. A little creole officer, about your age, was insubordinate to General Quintana. He disobeyed orders by visiting a woman. But he found her in the arms of the Spanish commander of the town. And the commander, in his underwear, felt ridiculous and beaten. Without his uniform, what is an officer, whether creole or Spaniard? Nothing! Our young officer threatened him, and the commander disgorged some military secrets. Our little officer then ran out to report what he’d learned, but found no one in headquarters. So he acted on his own and without permission attacked the rear guard of the Spanish garrison at Xoxotitlán along the Oaxaca road. His action allowed us to take old Antequera, Mr.…?”

“I see. You, sir, are both curious and impertinent.”

“Boy, I want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, as we say in court.”

“I am Captain Baltasar Bustos. My last posting was to accompany General José de San Martín in the Andes campaign.”

“Captain, a thousand pardons. You seem so…”

“Callow. Yes. Your story interests me, please finish it.”

“Delighted. Let’s see now. Sit down on this crate here. We lack amenities.”

“Just go on. Quintana was faced with a dilemma: should he punish the officer or not?”

“Exactly, Captain. Your perspicacity is astonishing.”

“No more than your malice, Counselor.”

“You flatter me, Captain. That was the dilemma. Punish him. Or allow a tradition of disorder and caprice to flourish. The priest Quintana has enough headaches defending himself against edicts of excommunication and anathemas for heresy.”

“And he wouldn’t add lack of discipline to excommunication?”

“And he couldn’t allow aristocratic creoles — sorry if I offend you, Captain — to place themselves above the law.”

“Which you, Counselor, represent.”

“Exactly. To carry on with their caprices.”

“So he had him shot.”

“Precisely. It’s only fair to warn those who come here alleging they’ve put aside their social class and become one of us.”

“Take a good look at my skin, Captain,” said a soldier in a white shirt sitting on a crate across from two bottles of wine, which he studied while making paper cartridges. “You’re white, I’m very dark. What does your freedom matter to me if it doesn’t include my equality?”

“What are you doing?” Baltasar asked the soldier, whose face, with thick, half-open lips, seemed as flexible and rough as a wrinkled leather wineskin.

“I’m trying to choose between these bottles.”

“Why?”

“Because one kind of alcohol is merciful and another is hostile. I look at the bottles and wonder which is which.”

“I couldn’t have guessed. And what are you doing with those papers?”

“I’m making the edicts of excommunication published by the Holy Inquisition against our leader Father Quintana into cartridges.”

“But you are Father Quintana,” said Baltasar.

“How do you know that?” The soldier raised his dark, wrinkled face.

“Because you’re the only person in this entire encampment who is wavering between two things, even if they happen to be two bottles of wine. And also, you’re showing me your bare head, while everyone else has his covered. You don’t want to be identified by your cap, which you always have on. Your cap would betray you, but the fact that you take it off betrays you more.”

“No,” said Quintana without emotion, covering his black, curly head with a tawny cap with long earflaps. “It isn’t alcohol that concerns me but Hosts. We’re making them out of corn, out of sweet potatoes, out of whatever we have. There is no wheat in this region. And I have to think about the effects of Communion not only on Christ’s body but on my own. Understand?”

He fixed his gaze on Baltasar’s light eyes without interrupting his cartridge making and added that the boy, if he was going to join them, should know right from the start that every Thursday — tomorrow — everyone had to live in suffering without the Father — only once a week, from Thursday to Friday, but every week without exception, accepting the Host and the wine as the literal body and blood, not only of Christ, but of all those who take Communion: Quintana, Bustos, that toothless man over there, this woman with the cold, the children playing blindman’s buff. “Don’t try to find out how many are with me, because over the course of the war I myself have lost count. Even those constipated lawyers who fill my head with projects and laws”—Quintana raised his voice so the interested parties could hear—“because they would like to carry out this revolution their way, with order and laws, but without me they would win no battles, not even against their mothers-in-law.

“So all of us, all of us, Captain Bustos, are without the Father because Christ dies on the cross and we only recover Him in the Eucharist; we all have to live this anguish and this hope from Thursday to Friday or we have no right to go on calling ourselves Christians. But only I, Captain, have the pleasure of mixing in my mouth the Host and the wine and of liberating with my saliva and the alcohol two bodies: mine and Christ’s. It is not enough to keep the first Fridays because Christ made a charming promise to St. Margaret Mary! This is not a matter of beatitude and grace, it’s a question of pain and necessity: every week at least, and not every day so as not to shock anyone.”

The priest Anselmo Quintana paused to take a breath, looked around him with a singular mix of arrogance, humor, irony, and unity with his people, and concluded: “That’s why I have to choose very carefully which wine I drink at Mass. As you see, with the excommunication edicts I make cartridges and return them like Roman candles to the Spaniards. Now come and eat something and talk awhile. You must be very tired.”