Evelio Rosero - Feast of the Innocents

“Bolívar pitted an army against a band of highlanders.”

“Before the fight, Bolívar’s aide, Demarquet, wrote: ‘His Excellency plans to operate according to all the rules that the art of war provides… His Excellency’s intention is to defeat the Pastusos out on the open plain and far away from Pasto so that not a single one is able to return… and that once defeated, villagers should be advised that they may harry them, killing them or taking them prisoner… and in addition he offers a reward of ten thousand pesos to the corps which is first to break them.’”

“In Ibarra — without arms, without logistical support, when they were resting — the Pastusos were surprised by a devastating cavalry attack. Agualongo’s men hurled themselves at the horses’ necks, trying to bring them down. They fought without surrendering: they had no trust. How could they believe in the word of the liberators, when the Liberator himself so conspicuously failed to abide by his word, just as his successors in Colombia would be conspicuous from then on, for ever and ever?”

“It was an appalling battle, if it can even be called a battle when it was so unequal. And as is traditional, historians shut their eyes when faced with it.”

“At a certain point in the fighting, being apprised of the death of more than five hundred Pastusos and only eight republicans, Bolívar — rather than halting the action, calling upon his good judgement, or at least showing the indulgence of the victor once things were already way past victory — did the exact opposite: he overcame his legendary cowardice, or displayed it all the more clearly, and rode off to fire on the unarmed, instructing his lancers to run through body after body without mercy, until night fell.”

“The final tally gives an idea of his ruthlessness: according to official sources, more than eight hundred Pastusos lay scattered on the battlefield, and only thirteen republicans. Wounded Pastusos were shown no quarter; they were finished off. The bodies were not buried, as the most fundamental human right demands: Bolívar made them into a pyre.”

“And what about the widow Hilaria and her Fátima, after Black Christmas?”

“Fátima was on the bridge over the River Chapalito when Bolívar returned to Pasto, on the morning of January the second. From that bridge, enveloped in the cold, she saw Bolívar cross the other: the bridge over the River Pasto, far off, though visible; she saw him almost without being able to make him out, but how could you not spot him on his white horse, at the head of an endless column of armed men?”

“Men without mercy.”

“Bolívar didn’t need to see her to find her; they used to take the Liberator the spoils of the hunt, and he would choose.”

“He had his ‘fixer’ for these errands: a discreet subordinate with name and surnames, but so out in the open that no historian ever showed any interest in mentioning him. Some simply acknowledged his task, and gave it their blessing, applauding it: ‘And then he enabled that magnificent leader, that invincible man, a latter-day Alexander, to put aside his role as hero for a minute; he sought him out and showed him the little doe.’”

“That’s how the Liberator got his bit on the side.”

“The fixer took him to the first assignation of the night, encouraging him: ‘Liberator,’ he said, ‘woman was made for the warrior’s repose.’”

“But in Bolívar’s case you shouldn’t really say woman, but little girl, child, maid, kid, infant, innocent, babe, pure flesh.”

“Very pure appreciation, a very pure list,” Primavera said to the professor, and he deliberately ignored her, secretly thrilled by her interest.

“The fixer was a religious and sober man too, just the type employed for the dressing and undressing of a general in those days, doing his hair and shaving him, putting him to bed and waking him; a man who inspired a certain spiteful respect among the soldiery because of this. He was cunning, just as he was discreet. He knew how to tell the Liberator things without saying them. He arranged everything, from the time of the assignation to the bedclothes. He preferred to take charge of things personally, as he knew His Excellency’s likes and dislikes very well.”

“Three days after the Liberator’s arrival in Pasto, the fixer and his men ‘discovered’ Fátima Hurtado. They found her at a gloomy bend of the River Chapalito and, when they observed her contemplating herself in the water, in the words of the story passed down by word of mouth, they knew straight away she was another of the ‘Liberator’s doves,’ as they called them.”

“Like they were secretly jealous.”

“It wasn’t unusual for the soldiers themselves to present these offerings to Bolívar, or else they did it via his officers. Everyone, just like the fixer, knew of His Excellency’s most pressing needs.”

“Fátima Hurtado was like Our Lady of Fátima,” Fabricio Urdaneta reportedly said; “he was native of Riohacha, a barber-soldier under the fixer’s orders, one of those who discovered Fátima, according to the story passed down by word of mouth.”

“Marvelling at the apparition, and observing the due caution these exercises demanded on pain of death, the soldiers and the fixer followed her through the outskirts of Pasto, without the apparition noticing. The soldiers seemed quite unhinged by so much beauty concentrated in one girl: the fixer discovered them plotting as they followed her, but a single reprimand from him, invoking the name of Bolívar, was enough to discourage them.”

“And they saw her shut herself up in the rural quiet of a tumbledown cottage, with a little path of carefully swept stone leading to the door, this was the house where Fátima lived with her grandmother, sole survivors, given that they knew nothing of their relatives.”

“There the soldiers knocked at the door, with the fixer in their midst: he waited prudently, mindful of convention but, nevertheless, authoritarian; there was an uneasiness that came over him whenever a mission of this type drew towards its conclusion; he knocked on the door again himself.”

“And the widow Hilaria Ocampo answered it — the giantess.”

“From this point on, the inexplicable story, passed down by word of mouth, unfolds. Doña Polina told it very well, with its back and forth, its body blows, eh, Justo Pastor? I heard it too. Now I should pass it on.”

“If you wish.”

“I’d rather hear it from Polina Agrado,” Primavera said.

The professor pretended not to hear.

“The fixer was intimidated by the brawniness of the old woman who came to open the door. But he regained his composure and explained, with the restraint typical of him in such situations, that he would have to take her daughter to the Liberator, Simón Bolívar. That these were his orders.

“‘She’s not my daughter, she’s my granddaughter,’ the widow clarified.”

My ancestor Hilaria Ocampo already knew what was afoot —Polina Agrado related— sooner or later the time had to come. Sooner or later they were going to discover her — not her, but her Fátima — sooner or later.

She had avoided being corralled by death during Black Christmas, dodged the monster’s ambush, its claws, and now she saw it at the door, inescapable, in the summoning of her Fátima. This time it was not the young murderer who had harried them in the church, and whom she dispatched as was only right and proper, but Bolívar, for God’s sake, it was Zambo.

And it grieved her that that very morning she had considered hiding Fátima out near La Laguna, far away from Pasto, but she had let the premonition pass and remembered it too late, when they were hammering at the door: that was what distressed her most, forgetting to hide her granddaughter when so many eyes were already menacing her; not hiding her in time. Why, she lamented, didn’t I do it? Why didn’t I tie her to my apron strings? At what point did I let her out of my sight? She was confounded by the fact that her granddaughter had not ended up being claimed by some murderer, whom she might very well take on and defeat, but by a well-dressed agent who was almost pleasant, and a few open-mouthed soldiers — four in all, she counted them, preparing herself — Bolívar’s emissaries. It distressed her, and finally she understood: it was Bolívar; behind that whole calamity stood Zambo.