He started to look in one of the drawers while he was speaking.
“Years before publishing his Estudios,” he declared, “Sañudo recognized the need to write about other aspects of Bolívar — not the public ones, but the private. He said the private aspects were a way of getting to know the public, that family life resembles a tracing of public life: the leader is always the same, with the same passions, in the family arena as in that of the state.”
Here Doctor Proceso cleared his throat and cast an uneasy glance around him; Primavera seemed to laugh imperceptibly at his words.
The doctor ignored her.
“Someone wrote that history must treat the great as God treats us all,” he said, “impartially and truthfully; those who want their private life respected must limit themselves to living privately, but those who raise themselves on high are very visible and their vices teach those lower down how to commit them. What did Bolívar teach the whole host of politicians who would succeed him throughout Colombia’s history? Firstly, to think only of themselves: of power. Next, to think only of themselves, of power, and then, power again — and so on and so on to infinity. Never to think of the real needs of the people.”
“How very true,” the mayor said.
Primavera’s fleeting laughter was heard at last. The doctor continued, unaffected:
“If Sañudo covered the political and military sides of the so-called Liberator in his Estudios, he never touched upon other intimate facets, and that was out of pure decorum. Besides, those were not the facets he was interested in. But the polemic his Estudios unleashed in the ‘cultured’ corners of the country tempted him to embark upon Bolívar’s other face, his other dimension, the human one. But, nevertheless, he never did take on the work he talked about.”
“Sañudo didn’t write it,” the professor said, “but he did make ironic comments at times. He alleged that little could be said about Bolívar’s education, because he was packed off to study in Spain when he was seventeen years old and still didn’t even know how to spell; that he was only in school there a year, as he opted to marry his cousin and tour around Europe enjoying himself like the Creole dandy he was.”
The professor laughed at his own wit; no-one joined him.
The mayor chipped in. He picked up with Sañudo again, too:
“Bolívar used to say he benefitted from many teachers — does that prove his learning? When young he had Don Andrés Bello, who had no experience and was not much older than he was himself, and after that Don Simón Rodíguez, a conceited and eccentric fellow, whose real surname was Carreño, which he dropped because of a disagreement with a brother; Rodíguez came from Europe, where he had been immersed in the ideas of the French encyclopédistes, and made a show of his religious indifference to the extreme of giving his children the names of fruits and vegetables.”
“Is that true?” Primavera was constantly being surprised, and let out another yelp of laughter, short, frank, of pure amazement. “I’d like to have known a man like that, father to artichokes and beetroots — what if they’d called me ‘apple?’”
With that hair of yours, golden delicious, thought the professor, going off into a reverie, and he raised his glass and forced the others to do the same.
“To Primavera,” he said, “for her presence, saving grace of the evening.”
Mayor Matías Serrano toasted unenthusiastically, and immediately returned to Sañudo:
“In one of his letters to Bolívar,” he said, “General Sucre told him that Simón Rodíguez (who Bolívar named Director for Public Education) made a lot of silly mistakes and messed up the instruction in schools in Cochabamba, where he’d spent ten or twelve thousand pesos on non-sense in six months. ‘I have asked,’ Sucre wrote to Bolívar, ‘that he bring me in writing the system he wants to adopt, and in eight months he has been unable to present me with it. But in conversation he says one thing one day and the following day another.’”
“He was Bolívar’s tutor,” the doctor said, “Simón Rodíguez, who endeavoured to apply the theories of Rousseau’s Émile to the little Simón, which consisted of not teaching his pupil anything, so that he should remain in a ‘natural’ state and learn what he could on his own account; this meant Bolívar’s early instruction must have been utterly useless.”
The bishop, who had barely spoken, joined in impatiently, as if he wanted to clear the matter up once and for alclass="underline" “Sañudo pointed out conclusively that Bolívar was made into a myth, such that the common conception of him bears no relation to reality. But so what, Justo Pastor? The people need their hero — what reason is there to topple Bolívar now?”
“True, why screw Bolívar?” the professor agreed, to ingratiate himself with the bishop.
“‘Screw,’ what an ugly word,” the bishop said, put out. He wanted to go on talking, but just the sight of the professor’s smile dissuaded him.
“No-one here is trying to screw anyone,” the doctor countered. “And what vile injustice towards Sañudo: I still see his ghost passing along Pasto’s streets, always alone, and why wouldn’t he be? In 1925 he dared do no less than the worst thing you can do in this country: tell the truth. It’s the memory of the truth, which struggles to prevail sooner or later. By correcting the error of the past, speaking out against it, you correct the absence of memory, which is one of the main causes of our social and political present, founded on lies and murder. It’s not a whim, Arcaín; it’s our duty to dot the i’s if we don’t want to sin by omission. I’m surprised at you, we’ve talked about this. You share my views more than anyone.”
“Of course,” the professor replied, offended. “And what’s more I speak from personal experience. Remember what happened to me at the university. I’ll remind you if you ask — may I remind you all?”
“While we’re on the subject of truth,” Matías Serrano said, scorning the professor’s own experiences, “I want to let you in on something I’m convinced of, after carrying it around with me for years: Simón Bolívar, the long-winded author of proclamations and ravings, could not have written the Jamaica Letter, the famous one.”
“And if Bolívar didn’t write it, who did?” Primavera asked, just for the sake of it.
All eyes turned towards her. Primavera was entranced by herself; she found she liked the sound of her own voice. She recalled that famous letter, read and reread to the point of tedium at schooclass="underline" Franciscan Sisters, Father Muñoz, history class.
“Some wise little fellow,” the professor said, happy to be exchanging views once more with the only woman at the gathering. “A disinterested foreigner?” he wondered. “An idealistic friend of Bolívar’s? It’s possible; in any case, the Jamaica Letter is nothing out of this world, for goodness’ sake. But I agree: nobody knows who wrote it.”
“Some little ‘philanthropist’ of the day?” Primavera responded.
Chivo hung onto her words, like one begging for mercy.
“Bolívar did not want for power or gold,” the mayor said, “to procure good services. He had no end of amanuenses, ranging from the most well-informed to the most uncouth. The truth is, it’s hard to believe in his authorship; the Jamaica Letter is no big deal, true, but it’s a sensible analysis, and it’s not in Bolívar’s style, if we think of his other writings, those from before and after that ‘Delirium on Chimborazo,’ including the ‘Cartagena Manifesto,’ the ‘Angostura Address’ and the ‘Message to the Congress of Bolivia.’”