Reasons of State by Alejo Carpentier Read Free Book Online

without even looking to see what sum was written on it, although I suspect he knew from having watched the way my hand moved as I traced the numerals.
    “
Ils sont très beaux
,” he said: large pages of art paper, enclosed in leather cases stamped with his ex-libris. “
Vous verrez
.”
    The package, left downstairs, was brought up by Sylvestre. I untied the string, fondled the covers with their calligraphy in two different inks and drawings illustrating the text; I turned the pages with respectful slowness and felt grateful to the distinguished friend who had thought of the Library of my country to save these invaluable writings—a library that, modest though it was, possessed some extremely valuable incunables, Florentine maps, and a few codices from the Conquest. And noticing that his movements were being orchestrated into an ambiguous ceremony of departure, I stood up, as though to look towards the Arc de Triomphe, declaiming:
    Toi dont la courbe au loin
    s’emplit d’azur, arche démesurée …
    Feeling obliged to show me some gratitude, the Distinguished Academician picked up his top hat and his whitegloves and—knowing that it would please me—said that Hugo wasn’t such a bad poet after all, and it was understandable that we, who were so generous with our admiration for French culture, should continue to appreciate his great virtues as a lyric poet. But we must also get to know Gobineau; we
must
read Gobineau.
    I went with him down the red-carpeted stairs as far as the front door. And I was just going to suggest to Doctor Peralta that we should go to the Rue des Acacias and visit Monsieur Musard’s
Bois-Charbons
, when a taxi drew up in front of us and out got the cholo * Mendoza in a remarkably agitated state. Something serious had happened to my ambassador, because he was sweating—he always looked sweaty, but not so much as this—his parting was crooked, his tie carelessly knotted, and his grey felt boot tops badly laced. I was about to make a joke about his disappearances of several days—whether to Passy, Auteuil, or who could say where?—with the blonde of the moment, when with an agonised expression he handed me a deciphered cablegram of several pages: it was from Colonel Walter Hoffmann, President of my Cabinet:
    “Read it … Read it.”
    IT IS MY DUTY TO INFORM YOU THAT GENERAL ATAÚLFO GALVÁN HAS REBELLED SAN FELIPE DEL PALMAR WITH INFANTRY BATTALIONS 4,7,9,11,13 ( FOREMOST IN THE COUNTRY ) AND THREE CAVALRY REGIMENTS INCLUDING “ INDEPENDENCE OR DEATH ” SQUADRON, AND FIVE ARTILLERY UNITS, TO CRIES OF “ LONG LIVE THE CONSTITUTION, LONG LIVE THE LAW .”
    “The cunt! The son of a bitch!” yelled the Head of State, hurling the cables to the ground. “I’ve not finished reading it,” said the cholo Mendoza, picking up the papers. The movement had spread to three provinces of the north and threatened the Pacific zone. But the garrisons and officials of the Centre remained faithful to the government, so Hoffmann assured me. Nueva Córdoba was unaffected. Troops were patrolling the streets of Puerto Araguato. Curfew had been imposed, presumably pending guarantees of constitutional behaviour. The newspaper
Progreso
had been suppressed. The morale of government troops was good, but there was a shortage of armaments, especially light artillery and Maxim machine guns. His Excellency knew how loyal to him the capital was. They awaited instructions. “The cunt! The son of a bitch!” repeated the Head of State, as if his vocabulary was limited to these sordid phrases when thinking of the treachery of the man whom he had dragged from the squalor of a provincial barracks, the rubbishy, third-rate soldier whom he had helped, made rich, taught to use a fork and pull the lavatory chain, and converted into a gentleman, giving him braid and epaulettes, and finally appointing him Minister for War, and who now took advantage of his absence to … The man who, when in his cups at receptions at the