— The one who holds the cow is as bad as the one who slaughters it.
So said Solomillo, helping himself to the possessions of the Escalona family, masters of the hacienda: quickly grabbing all the gold coins he’d found in the library, behind the complete works of Auguste Comte, he proposed to Prisciliano: —Take these, my captain, so that for once those who are as hungry as you and I may be invited to the banquet of life.
Prisciliano Nieves — the legend goes — not only refused the gold his superior offered him but, when it came time for the execution, he placed himself between the firing squad and the condemned and said to Colonel Andrés Solomillo: —The soldiers of the Revolution are neither murderers nor thieves. These poor people are guilty of nothing. Separate the poor from the rich, please.
What happened then — so the story goes — was this: the colonel, furious, told Prisciliano that if he didn’t shut up he would be the second feature in the morning’s firing; Prisciliano shouted to the troops not to kill other poor people; the squad hesitated; Solomillo gave the order to fire at Prisciliano; Prisciliano gave the order to fire at the colonel; and in the end the squad obeyed Prisciliano:
— Mexican soldiers do not murder the people, because they are the people, said Prisciliano beside the body of Solomillo, and the soldiers cheered him and felt satisfied.
This phrase, associated ever since with the fame, the life, and the virtues of the instantly Colonel and soon-to-be Brigadier General Don Prisciliano Nieves, surely would be engraved on the base of his monument: THE HERO OF SANTA EULALIA.
And now here I come, forty-five years later, to put a damper on the final glory of General Prisciliano Nieves.
— General Nieves, listen carefully. I know the truth of what happened that morning in Santa Eulalia.
The maraca that sounded in the throat of my brigadier Prisciliano Nieves was not his death rattle, not yet. In the dim light of the hospital, my middle-class lawyer’s young breath smelling of Sen-Sen mixed with Don Prisciliano’s ancient respiration, a drumroll scented of chloroform and chile chipotle. No, my general, don’t die without signing here. For your honor, my generaclass="underline" worry no more about your honor, and rest in peace.
2
My house in Las Lomas de Chapultepec has one outstanding virtue: it shows the advantages of immortality. I don’t know how people felt about it when it was constructed, when the forties were dawning. The Second World War brought Mexico a lot of money. We exported raw materials at high prices and the farm-workers entered the churches on their knees, praying for the war to go on. Cotton, hemp, vegetables, strategic minerals; it all went out in every direction. I don’t know how many cows had to die in Sonora for this great house to be erected in Las Lomas, or how many black-market deals lay behind its stone and mortar. You have seen such houses along the Paseo de la Reforma and the Boulevard de los Virreyes and in the Polanco neighborhood: they are architectural follies of pseudo-colonial inspiration, resembling the interior of the Alameda movie house, which in turn mimics the Plateresque of Taxco with its cupolas, towers, and portals. Not to mention that movie house’s artificial ceiling, dappled with hundred-watt stars and adorned with scudding little clouds. My house in Boulevard de los Virreyes stopped short of that.
Surely the Churrigueresque delirium of the house I have lived in for more than twenty years was an object of derision. I imagine two or three caricatures by Abel Quezada making fun of the cathedral-like portal, the wrought-iron balconies, the nightmare ornamentation of decorations, reliefs, curves, angels, madonnas, cornucopias, fluted plaster columns, and stained-glass windows. Inside, things don’t get any better, believe me. Inside reproduces outside: once again, in a hall that rises two stories, we encounter the blue-tile stairs, the iron railing and balconies overlooking the hall from the bedrooms, the iron candelabra with its artificial candles dripping fake wax of petrified plastic, the floor of Talavera tile, the uncomfortable wood-and-leather furniture, straight and stiff as if for receiving a sentence from the Holy Inquisition. What a production…!
But the extraordinary thing, as I was saying, is that this white elephant, this symbol of vulgar pretension and the new money of the entrepreneurs who made a profit off the war, has been converted, with time, into a relic of a better era. Today, when things are fast going downhill, we fondly recall a time when things were looking up. Better vulgar and satisfied than miserable but refined. You don’t need me to tell you that. Bathed in the glow of nostalgia, unique and remote in a new world of skyscrapers, glass, and concrete, my grotesque quasimodel home (my Quasimodo abode, my friends, ha ha! it might be hunchbacked, but it’s mine, all mine!) has now become a museum piece. It’s enough to say that first the neighbors and then the authorities came to me, imploring:
— Never, sir, sell your house or let it be demolished. There aren’t many examples left of the Neocolonial architecture of the forties. Don’t even think of sacrificing it to the crane or (heaven protect us!) (we would never imagine such a thing of you!) to vile pecuniary interests.
I had a strange friend once, named Federico Silva, whom his friends called the Mandarin and who lived in another kind of house, an elegant villa dating from the adolescent decade of the century (1915? 1920?), squeezed and dwarfed by the looming skyscrapers lining the Calle de Córdoba. He wouldn’t let it go on principle: he would not cave in to the modernization of the city. Obviously, nostalgia makes demands on me. But if I don’t let go of my house, it’s not because of my neighbors’ pleas, or because I have an inflated sense of its value as an architectural curiosity, or anything like that. I remain in my house because I have lived like a king in it for twenty-five years: from the time I was twenty-five until I turned fifty, what do you think of that? An entire life!
Nicolás Sarmiento, be honest with those who are good enough to hear you out, pipes up the little inner voice of my Jiminy Cricket. Tell them the truth. You don’t leave this house for the simple reason that it belonged to Brigadier General Prisciliano Nieves.
3
An entire life: I was about to tell you that when I took over this meringue of a house I was a miserable little lawyer, only the day before a clerk in an insignificant law office on the Avenida Cinco de Mayo. My world, on my word of honor, went no farther than the Celaya candy store; I would look through the windows of my office and imagine being rewarded with mountains of toffees, rock candy, candy kisses, and morelianas. Maybe the world was a great candied orange, I said to my beloved fiancée, Miss Buenaventura del Rey, from one of the best families of the Narvarte district. Bah, if I had stayed with her I would have been turned into a candied orange, a lemon drop. No: the world was the sugared orange, I would take one bite and then, with disdain and the air of a conquistador, I would throw it over my shoulder. Give me a hug, sweetheart!
Buenaventura, on the other hand, wanted to eat the orange down to the last seed, because who knows if tomorrow will bring another. When I walked into the house in Las Lomas for the first time, I knew that there was no room in it for Miss Buenaventura del Rey. Shall I confess something to you? My sainted fiancée seemed to me less fine, less interesting than the servants that my general had in his service. Adieu, Buenaventura, and give your papa my warmest thanks for having given away to me, without even realizing it, the secret of Prisciliano Nieves. But goodbye also, worthy cook, lovely girl servant, stupid waiter, and stooped gardener of the Hero of Santa Eulalia. Let no one remain here who served or knew Prisciliano Nieves when he was alive. Let them all be gone!