That “Delirium” was another of Bolívar’s writings, Primavera remembered, almost a poem, that she and two fellow students recited as girls, one July 20, day of the Cry of Independence: “I came, wrapped in the mantle of Iris… A feverish delirium seized my mind. I felt inflamed by a strange superior fire. It was the God of Colombia who possessed me…”
“And even if he did write the Jamaica Letter?” Doctor Proceso said. “What is written with the hand is wiped out with the feet. How about him talking of freedoms while planning to crown himself monarch of the Andes? He urged on the advances of the republic, but behind the scenes tore down everything he constructed in public; he schemed, deceived, dissembled, so that once again those around him echoed his real objective: dictatorship, which they proposed as if it would never have occurred to him. There were innumerable occasions. He was engaged only in this, while the crucial priorities of the new republic were held in abeyance: education, industry, those things that make for the real independence of a country — not the independence of one master being replaced by another. Oh, the soldier: he prolonged the war to suit himself. For years. Chaos fascinated him. The most naive now say that he aspired to monarchy because he found it necessary in order to combat the fickleness and brutalities of the politicians of his day; nothing could be further from the truth: he led the way in fickle brutality, he was the prototype himself. If there was killing to be done on a whim, he killed on a whim. The dream of Gran Colombia was his own dream, of his own power. He delegated authority and public wealth to rough squaddies and unrefined thinkers, to the toadies who did not trouble his ambition, the same men who ruined Colombia at his fall, imitating him like little mirrors from which destiny called them. Upon the living flesh of Gran Colombia (a beautiful dream if you look at it like a child, but a dream for us, the millions of us, not for Bolívar), upon Gran Colombia’s young body, his minions carved out larcenies of their own: if he did it, so can I. All those treacherous men are epitomized, explicitly, by one of the most unpleasant sycophants: Vidaurre, a character from Peru, Bolívar’s plenipotentiary for the Panama congress, who got down on all fours in meetings so that Bolívar might mount him: and Bolívar did; Bolívar provided the disastrous model that would turn itself over time into Colombia’s political culture.”
All the while, Doctor Proceso was rifling about in the cabinet drawers. What was he looking for? A book, a letter, a document? He could not find what he was after and this fact seemed to weigh down not just upon him, but on his audience too.
“Well, señores,” he said, “I have human records, which might clarify certain hidden aspects of Bolívar, those aspects repudiated by historians. To be precise I’ve called them ‘Human Investigations.’ I’d like to share two of the most important testimonies with you: two tapes, two recordings.”
And from a drawer he took a white tape recorder, and placed it beside the trays, which encouraged the guests to eat empanadas and drink more aguardiente.
“Belencito Jojoa, Polina Agrado,” the doctor said. “Do those names mean anything to you?”
“I knew Polina Agrado, may she rest in peace,” the Bishop of Pasto said. “An upright woman. God bless her soul.”
“And we’re all familiar with Belencito Jojoa, of course,” Chivo, the professor, added. “They say he’s very sick.”
“Two of Pasto’s old folk,” Matías Serrano sighed heavily. “How could we forget them? And we know their stories, too.”
“But not in their own words,” the doctor replied.
He carried on opening and closing drawers, showing his irritation for the first time. He did not find what he was looking for. Finally he opened and searched the last drawer, which he thought would be the end of it, but still he found nothing. His voice trembled: was he muttering? Talking to himself? He looked anew in the drawers he had already been through: it seemed he had found the recorder, but not the tapes.
“Which of the two tapes shall we start with?” the mayor asked. “Doña Polina or Belencito?”
“Justo Pastor has to find them first,” the professor replied, unruffled. “Couldn’t we run through my own Bolivarian experience at the university in the meantime?”
“Patience, Justo Pastor,” the bishop said, paying no heed to the professor’s request. “You could have put the tapes in another cupboard.”
“When the tapes appear, we’ll start with whichever one you choose, señora,” the professor said. “Polina or Belencito?”
He awaited the answer eagerly: unable to prise his eyes from Primavera, as she lounged beside the bishop, legs crossed; one of her sandals, half falling off, showed her delicate toes, tiny and pink; above, her pearly face was hidden behind the smoke from a cigarette.
“Let fate decide,” she replied. “My husband can choose with his eyes closed.” And she smiled wearily.
“It’s very simple,” the doctor said, turning to Primavera. “I can’t find the tapes.”
She held his gaze steadily:
“Are you sure?”
The doctor returned the tape recorder to its drawer. He closed the rest one by one, unhurriedly; he went back to his chair and sat down, breathing heavily, without a word — Polina Agrado had already died, he thought, Belencito Jojoa did not leave his bed; he would die soon; it was impossible to get those voices again. He had the recordings transcribed onto paper, but paper was not the same as the voices, the recording of their sufferings, their real turmoil, their bitterness and jokes, their weaving in and out through memory.
Amid the uneasiness, they heard him clear his throat.
“I’ll soon find them,” he said. “Whatever happens, I’ve got them in my notebooks.”
But it pained him to see — was he sure that he saw? — a cruel smile on Primavera’s red mouth. It’s perfectly possible, he thought. And also perfectly possible that the paper transcripts no longer existed either, that they had made them disappear. Was it really likely, he asked himself, and asked again, aghast. He did not believe Primavera had any regard what-soever for Simón Bolívar, nothing would be falser; this was all against him, against his nights of work, his zeal, it was against him alone that Primavera conspired.
But, he wondered, disconcerted, what about General Lorenzo Aipe?
He remembered the robbery the sculptor Arbeláez had undergone. He remembered that the night before, on Thursday, December 29, he had been out of the house until midnight, first with Cangrejito, then with the maestros Abril and Umbría, and that he had not slept with Primavera: he found the bedroom door locked; he had to resort to the couch in his consulting room, the same one where he had ‘operated’ on General Aipe. He carried on sleeping on the divan that Friday morning, and breakfasted there alone, as Primavera and the girls disappeared without saying goodbye, and there in the afternoon he treated an older woman with a tricky pregnancy, and there too he lay to reread the poems of Aurelio Arturo, which had the power to calm him, while his guests were arriving.
He felt panicky.
Was it possible they had stolen the recordings, his documents?
He pulled himself together as well as he could. He showed not one iota of fear as he said:
“I also have the conversations memorized, from beginning to end, with expressions and everything. If you like, I’ll recite them.”