Vidal brutally covered her mouth as if he were closing a sewer, Maura made her cross her arms, Baltazar again knelt at her feet. Each of them had his own words, but they all said the same thing, we want to save you, come with us, look at the fires that have still not gone out on the hills, we’ll find refuge there, your father has done his duty, he’s given the order for you to be shot at dawn, we aren’t going to do our duty, come with us, let us save you, Pilar, even if the price is our own death.
“Why, Jorge?” asked Laura Díaz.
In spite of the war. In spite of the Republic. In spite of her father’s will. My daughter must die in the name of justice said the mayor of Santa Fe de Palencia. She must be saved in the name of love said Basilio Baltazar. She must be saved in spite of political logic said Domingo Vidal. She must be saved in the name of honor said Jorge Maura.
“My two friends looked at me and understood. I didn’t have to explain. It isn’t enough that we do things in the name of love or justice. It is honor that sanctioned us. Honor in exchange for justice? That’s the dilemma I saw on the face of Domingo Vidal. Betrayal or beauty? That’s what Basilio Baltazar’s loving eyes were asking me. I looked at the three of them, stripped of everything but the bare skin of truth, that fatal afternoon against the medieval walls and the Roman gate, surrounded by mountains that were going out, I saw the three, Pilar, Basilio, Domingo, as an emblematic group, Laura, the reason why no one but I understood then and now you too because I’m telling you. This is the reason. The need for beauty supersedes the need for justice. The interlocking trio-woman, lover, adversary-was not resolving itself in either justice or love; it was an act of necessary beauty, based on honor.”
What can the duration of a sculpture be when it is incarnated not by statues but by living beings threatened with death?
Sculptural perfection-honor and beauty triumphing over betrayal and justice-dissolved when Jorge whispered to the woman, Run away with us to the mountains, save yourself, because if you don’t the four of us will die here together, and she, between her clenched teeth, answered, I’m human, I haven’t learned anything; even though Basilio begged, nothing is won without compassion, come with us, run away, there’s time; and she, I’m like a dog for death, I smell it and I follow it until I get killed, I’m not going to give the three of you the satisfaction, I can smell death, all the graves in this country are open, there’s no home left to us but the grave.
“Your father and mother at least. Save yourself for them.”
Pilar stared at them with an incendiary shock on her face and began to laugh insanely. “But you understand nothing. Do you think I’m dying just out of loyalty to the Movement?”
Her laughter kept her apart for a few seconds. “I’m dying so my father and mother will hate each other forever. So they’ll never forgive each other.”
(I have to tell you about Pilar Méndez.)
“I think you’re one of those men who are only loyal to themselves if they’re loyal to their friends,” said Laura, leaning her head against Jorge’s shoulder.
“No.” He sighed with fatigue. “I’m a man who’s angry with himself because he doesn’t know how to explain the truth and avoid lies.”
“Perhaps you’re strong because you doubt things, my Spanish boy. I think I figured that out tonight.”
They crossed Aquiles Serdán and passed under the marble portico of the Palace of Fine Arts.
“I just said it now in the café, my love, we’re all condemned. I confess I hate all systems, mine and the others’.”
VIDAL: Now do you see? Victory will not be achieved without order. Let’s win or lose now, victorious today or defeated tomorrow, we’re going to need order and unity, hierarchies of command and discipline. Without them, we’ll always be beaten, because they do have order, unity, command, and discipline.
BALTAZAR: Well, in that case, what’s the difference between Hitler’s implacable discipline and Stalin’s?
VIDAL: The ends, Basilio. Hitler wants a world of slaves. Stalin wants a world of free men. Even though their means may be equally violent, their ends are totally different.
“Vidal’s right,” laughed Laura. “You’re closer to the anarchist than to the Communist.”
Jorge stopped short opposite a poster at the Palace of Fine Arts. “No one was playing a part this afternoon, Laura. Vidal really is a Communist. Basilio really is an anarchist. I didn’t tell you the truth. I thought that way the two of us, you and I, could stand at a certain distance from the debate.”
They stood in silence for a while, staring at the poster’s black letters on yellow paper, improperly fastened to a wooden frame unworthy of the marbles and bronzes in the Palace of Fine Arts. Jorge looked at Laura.
“Forgive me. How beautiful you are.”
Carlos Chávez was going to conduct his own Indian Symphony and Prokofiev’s Love for Three Oranges. The pianist Nikita Magaloff would interpret Chopin’s First Concerto, the one Aunt Hilda rehearsed so futilely in Catemaco.
“How I wish no one on our side had ever committed a single crime.”
“That’s how Armonía Aznar must have been-a woman I met, or rather never met. I had to guess how she was. Thank you for opening yourself to me without mysteries, without locked doors. Thanks, my hidalgo. You make me feel better, cleaner, clearer in my head.”
“I’m sorry. It’s like vaudeville. We meet and repeat the same trite lines, like one of those Madrid comedies by Munoz Seca. You saw it today: each one knew exactly what he should say. Perhaps that’s how we’ll exorcise our disgust. I don’t know.”
He hugged her in the Fine Arts portico, the two of them surrounded by the brownish-black Mexican night, sudden and vicious. “I’m getting tired of this interminable fight. I’d like to live with no more country than my soul, with no more country…”
They made a half turn and went back to Cinco de Mayo, their arms around each other’s waists. Their words were slowly extinguished, like the lights in the candy shops, bookstores, luggage emporia, as the streetlamps came on, opening a path of light all the way to Herrera’s cathedral, where on the previous March 18 they’d celebrated the nationalization of Mexico’s oil-she and Juan Francisco, Santiago and Danton, and Jorge at a distance, greeting her with his hat in his hand and, on high, a personal greeting that was also a political celebration, above the heads of the crowd, greeting and saying goodbye at the same time, saying I love you and goodbye, I’ve come back and I still love you.
At the Café de Paris, Barreda, who had been watching them, asked Gorostiza, and Villaurrutia to guess what the Spaniards had been talking about. Politics? Art? No, wine jugs. He recited another pair of verses from the Bible turned into rhyme by a mad Spaniard, the description of Balthazar’s Feast:
Burgundy, Rhine, Pinot Blanc:
Sausage? All you could want.
Villaurrutia said he didn’t find Mexican jokes about Spaniards funny, and Gorostiza asked why there was this ill will against a country that gave us its culture, its language, even its mixed blood…
“Go ask Cuauhtémoc how it went with the Spaniards at dinnertime,” laughed Barreda. “Toasted tootsies!”