“Señor Zarama, read.”
“I don’t read either, Professor.”
“Señor Ortiz.”
“No thank you, Professor.”
“Señor Trujillo.”
“Me neither, Professor.”
“Señorita Antonia Noria, come and read.”
“Me?”
“Enrique Quiroz.”
“You read, Professor. Your voice is better than mine.”
Chivo persevered, brazening it out. But, nonetheless, the students’ absence of enthusiasm or even their simple attention affected him; he did not stumble over his words, but he did omit certain pages and radically reduce his comments. He felt as if he were reading to a gathering of stones.
He read that Bolívar, who had belonged to the Venezuelan Creole aristocracy, visited Europe, attending Napoleon’s coronation as emperor in 1804 and his assumption of the Iron Crown of Lombardy in 1805. That in 1809 he returned to his country, refused to join in the revolution that broke out in Caracas, on April 19, 1810, but once the uprising was over, accepted a mission to London with the objective of buying arms and soliciting the protection of the British government. He obtained nothing beyond the authorization to export arms for ready cash, and hefty taxes on top.
He read that the betrayal of Miranda procured for Bolívar the special favour of the Spaniard Monteverde, to the extent that when he applied for a passport, Monteverde declared that “Colonel Bolivar’s request should be complied with, as a reward for his having served the king of Spain by delivering up Miranda.”
He read, pages further on, that Bolívar proclaimed himself “dictator and liberator of the western provinces of Venezuela” thanks to the victories of other patriot generals. He read that he established the order of the “liberator,” created a choice corps of troops under the name of his “body-guard,” and surrounded himself with a sort of court, but that (like the majority of his countrymen) he was incapable of sustained effort, and it was not long before his dictatorship became a military anarchy, in which the most important matters lay in the hands of favourites who squandered public funds and then resorted to foul means in order to restore them.
“The same thing happens today,” Chivo said. “Identical.”
None of his students responded. Some of them were leaving.
But it was later — on reading about some of Bolívar’s other deeds — that Professor Chivo incited the wrath of his listeners: he read that Bolívar, while advancing in the direction of Valencia with eight hundred men, met the Spanish General Morales not far from Ocumare, at the head of a troop of about two hundred soldiers and one hundred militiamen. According to an eyewitness, on seeing that the initial skirmishes with Morales’ troops had scattered his advance guard, Bolívar “lost all presence of mind, spoke not a word, turned his horse quickly round, and fled in full speed toward Ocumare, passed the village at full gallop, arrived at the neighbouring bay, jumped from his horse, got into a boat, and embarked on the Diana, ordering the whole squadron to follow him to the little island of Buen Ayre, and leaving all his companions without any means of assistance.”
“Tell that to your granny,” he heard an anonymous male voice mutter somewhere in the lecture theatre.
Well, he had managed to get their attention, Chivo thought.
“Did I hear something?” he asked, lifting his eyes from the sheaf of papers. “Does somebody want to say something? It’s still possible to talk like civilized people.”
Enrique Quiroz raised his hand:
“You’re just confirming with your reading what Simón Bolívar himself feared to the end of his days. He said he ploughed the wind and sowed the sea.”
“I believe he said he ploughed the sea. It’s possible he also said he sowed the wind, nobody knows.”
“At the end of his life,” the student Quiroz continued, unperturbed, “Bolívar pointed out, quite rightly, that there had been three great madmen in humanity: Jesus Christ, Don Quixote and himself.”
“He didn’t say madmen. He said ‘greatest fools.’ He said this to Doctor Révérend: ‘Do you not know, Doctor, who the three greatest fools in history have been?’ The doctor replied that he did not, and Bolívar said in his ear: ‘The three greatest fools in history have been Jesus Christ, Don Quixote, and myself.’”
“Madmen or fools, for our purposes it’s the same thing.”
“Well, no, it isn’t. A madman is not the same as a fool.”
“They were the words of a visionary.”
“Quite,” the professor replied. “A visionary. It’s true that he ploughed the sea, in the sense that he did not get what he wanted, his cherished dream right from the beginning of his political career, that lifelong presidency, or dictatorship or monarchy or whatever you want to call it, the absolute power over the new republics: yes, he ploughed the sea. His influence over the fate of the nations was so disruptive that in the end nobody wanted anything more to do with him, and he was asked to leave Colombia. So, the fact that he compared himself to Jesus Christ and Don Quixote is simply further proof of his infinite vanity. In the case of Jesus Christ, I don’t need to explain why. In the case of Don Quixote, even lovers compare themselves to him, but Bolívar? Poor Don Quixote.”
“He died in absolute poverty. Where’s the vanity in that?” Enrique Quiroz insisted. Pale, bolt upright at his desk, not a single muscle moved in his face.
Professor Chivo approached him.
“Everything about Bolívar’s life has become the stuff of legend,” he said, “Sañudo warns us of that. Legend goes so far as to tell us he died destitute, to the extent that they had to ask the indigenous leader — the ‘cacique’ of Mamatoco — for a shirt to bury him in; a puerile myth: didn’t it occur to its inventor that those attending the funeral were wearing shirts, even if Bolívar wasn’t, so there was no need for the embellishment of a semi-savage chieftain? According to the inventory that his nephew Fernando Bolívar and steward José Palacio took five days after his death, he left great wealth behind him. Not just dozens of linen shirts, but six hundred and seventy-seven ounces of gold in coins; three dinner services: one ninety-five-piece set of solid gold; another thirty-eight-piece platinum one; and the third, two hundred pieces of beaten silver — aside from sixteen chests of his clothes and other personal effects, another chest containing gold and silver medals, and one full of jewellery set with precious stones plus gold and silver swords, the most noteworthy of which was the solid gold weapon given to him by the Municipality of Lima on his saint’s day, encrusted with one thousand, four hundred and thirty-three diamonds, with a very ornate scabbard and a magnificent sword belt. This gift, according to Ricardo Palma, cost twelve thousand, eight hundred and seventy-nine pesos and five reales in total. As a curious aside, Bolívar owned around twenty tablecloths. In the inventory, bejewelled insignia, thirty-five gold medals and four hundred and seventy-one silver ones, and ninety-five gold knives and forks also appear: he had cutlery for his own exclusive use, he did not take his meals with his soldiers; in fact, he did not eat meat, which was the dish par excellence for the troops, and more than anything he enjoyed the salads he prepared himself, according to recipes learned from the ladies of France. He spent ten thousand pesos of the day on perfumes, and they lasted him no time at all, so unhealthy was his fondness for splashing them on, morning, noon and night: he never took the scented handkerchief from his nose. A division of bodyguards surrounded him, protecting him from the world. He had no need for ready cash because he could avail himself of the public purse whenever he liked, and he got through hundreds of pesos a week, as well as the pension of thirty thousand pesos a year for life they gave him shortly before his departure from Bogotá for Santa Marta — that is to say, shortly before his death ‘in the most abject poverty,’ as so many historians so foolishly maintain.”