Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART SECOND: THE ISABELS 1. CHAPTER ONE (continued)

Don Jose Avellanos loved his country. He had served it lavishly
with his fortune during his diplomatic career, and the later
story of his captivity and barbarous ill-usage under Guzman Bento
was well known to his listeners. It was a wonder that he had not
been a victim of the ferocious and summary executions which
marked the course of that tyranny; for Guzman had ruled the
country with the sombre imbecility of political fanaticism. The
power of Supreme Government had become in his dull mind an object
of strange worship, as if it were some sort of cruel deity. It
was incarnated in himself, and his adversaries, the Federalists,
were the supreme sinners, objects of hate, abhorrence, and fear,
as heretics would be to a convinced Inquisitor. For years he had
carried about at the tail of the Army of Pacification, all over
the country, a captive band of such atrocious criminals, who
considered themselves most unfortunate at not having been
summarily executed. It was a diminishing company of nearly naked
skeletons, loaded with irons, covered with dirt, with vermin,
with raw wounds, all men of position, of education, of wealth,
who had learned to fight amongst themselves for scraps of rotten
beef thrown to them by soldiers, or to beg a negro cook for a
drink of muddy water in pitiful accents. Don Jose Avellanos,
clanking his chains amongst the others, seemed only to exist in
order to prove how much hunger, pain, degradation, and cruel
torture a human body can stand without parting with the last
spark of life. Sometimes interrogatories, backed by some
primitive method of torture, were administered to them by a
commission of officers hastily assembled in a hut of sticks and
branches, and made pitiless by the fear for their own lives. A
lucky one or two of that spectral company of prisoners would
perhaps be led tottering behind a bush to be shot by a file of
soldiers. Always an army chaplain--some unshaven, dirty man, girt
with a sword and with a tiny cross embroidered in white cotton on
the left breast of a lieutenant's uniform--would follow,
cigarette in the corner of the mouth, wooden stool in hand, to
hear the confession and give absolution; for the Citizen Saviour
of the Country (Guzman Bento was called thus officially in
petitions) was not averse from the exercise of rational clemency.
The irregular report of the firing squad would be heard, followed
sometimes by a single finishing shot; a little bluish cloud of
smoke would float up above the green bushes, and the Army of
Pacification would move on over the savannas, through the
forests, crossing rivers, invading rural pueblos, devastating the
haciendas of the horrid aristocrats, occupying the inland towns
in the fulfilment of its patriotic mission, and leaving behind a
united land wherein the evil taint of Federalism could no longer
be detected in the smoke of burning houses and the smell of spilt
blood. Don Jose Avellanos had survived that time. Perhaps, when
contemptuously signifying to him his release, the Citizen Saviour
of the Country might have thought this benighted aristocrat too
broken in health and spirit and fortune to be any longer
dangerous. Or, perhaps, it may have been a simple caprice. Guzman
Bento, usually full of fanciful fears and brooding suspicions,
had sudden accesses of unreasonable self-confidence when he
perceived himself elevated on a pinnacle of power and safety
beyond the reach of mere mortal plotters. At such times he would
impulsively command the celebration of a solemn Mass of
thanksgiving, which would be sung in great pomp in the cathedral
of Sta. Marta by the trembling, subservient Archbishop of his
creation. He heard it sitting in a gilt armchair placed before
the high altar, surrounded by the civil and military heads of his
Government. The unofficial world of Sta. Marta would crowd into
the cathedral, for it was not quite safe for anybody of mark to
stay away from these manifestations of presidential piety. Having
thus acknowledged the only power he was at all disposed to
recognize as above himself, he would scatter acts of political
grace in a sardonic wantonness of clemency. There was no other
way left now to enjoy his power but by seeing his crushed
adversaries crawl impotently into the light of day out of the
dark, noisome cells of the Collegio. Their harmlessness fed his
insatiable vanity, and they could always be got hold of again. It
was the rule for all the women of their families to present
thanks afterwards in a special audience. The incarnation of that
strange god, El Gobierno Supremo, received them standing, cocked
hat on head, and exhorted them in a menacing mutter to show their
gratitude by bringing up their children in fidelity to the
democratic form of government, "which I have established for the
happiness of our country." His front teeth having been knocked
out in some accident of his former herdsman's life, his utterance
was spluttering and indistinct. He had been working for
Costaguana alone in the midst of treachery and opposition. Let
it cease now lest he should become weary of forgiving!