Selected Writings (Dario, Ruben) (33 page)

Soon after, the pensive poet came across a tiger, its paws resting on the bones of an ox he had just had for dinner.

“I,” said the tiger, “recommend military dictatorship. You crouch in the branches of a tree or behind a nice big boulder, and when a herd of free buffalo passes by, or sheep, you shout
Long live freedom!
and pounce on the juiciest animal in the bunch, using your teeth and claws the very best you can.”

Not long afterward, a crow came by and began to pick through the bones the tiger had left.

“I like republics,” the crow exclaimed. “And especially the republics of Latin America, because they’re the ones that leave the most bodies on the field of battle. We have these feasts so often that there’s nothing better under the sun, unless it might be the slaughters of barbarian tribes. And I vow on Maître Corbeau that that’s the truth.”

From the branches of a laurel tree came the voice of a dove, answering the poet:

“I personally am theocratic. Incarnated in my body, the Holy Spirit descends upon the Pontiff, who is the highest of all priests and three times king, in the light of God. The happiest nation would be that land whose shepherd and guide is, as in Biblical times, the Creator of all things.”

But the fox had an answer to that:

“My dear sir, if the people elect a president they will have acted very wisely. And if they proclaim a man king, and crown him, they will have merited my applause. I beg you to take my warmest felicitations to either one—oh, and tell them that if they send me a fat hen on the day of the celebration I will most gratefully accept it, and eat it feathers and all.”

A bee answered:

“Once we bees tried to depose our queen—a monarch very much like Queen Victoria, because you no doubt realize that a hive has a great resemblance to the England of today in its form of government. But that one attempt went so badly for us that all that harvest’s honey was spoiled. And what’s more, we had an increase in drones and went through the worst time of our lives. Since then, we’ve taken an oath to be sensible about all this—our cell is always hexagonal and our leader is a woman.”

“Long live the republic!” shouted a swallow, picking at the fruit on the tree it sat on. “Citizens of the forest, attention! I ask for the floor! Is it possible that since the Day of Creation we have been subject to the most heinous tyranny? My fellow animals! Our hour has come—progress shows us the road that must be followed. I come from the cities in which thinking bipedals live, and I have seen the advantages of universal suffrage and parliaments. I have seen a vessel called a ballot box, and I can tell you great things about
habeas corpus.
Who of you can deny the advantages of self-government and home rule? Lions and eagles must be brought down. Down with eagles! Miserable birds, begone! Let us declare the republic of the United States of the Mountain and the Air, let us proclaim liberty, equality, and fraternity. Let us establish our own government, of the animal, by the animal, and for the animal. And I will be happy to be elected this nation’s first magistrate—as could be the respectable mister bear, or the very distinguished mister fox. But now—to arms! War, war, war! And later, we shall make peace.”

“Poet,” said the eagle, “have you heard what this demagogue says? I believe in monarchy—and why should I not, being myself a monarch of the skies and having always accompanied such crowned conquerors as Caesar and Bonaparte? I have seen the grandeur of the empires of Rome and France. My image is on the coats of arms of Russia and the great empire of the Germans.
Ave Caesar
is my finest salutation.”

To which the poet objected that as the bird of Jupiter, if he spoke Latin in the land of the Yankees, it would be to cry out
E pluribus unum.

“The best form of government,” said the ox, “is that which imposes no yoke and requires no mutilation.”

And the gorilla:

“Form of government? None. Tell that country of yours to return to the heart of nature, to abandon that system it calls civilization and return to the primitive, savage life, in which I believe it will find true freedom. As for me, I protest against Darwin’s dreadful slander against my species, for I find nothing good about what the human animal does and thinks.”

 

On the second day, the poet heard other opinions:

THE ROSE: “All we know of politics is what the four-o’clock whispers at nightfall and the sunflower says during the day. I, the empress, have my court, my splendors, and my poets to praise me. I admire both Nero and Louis XIV. I love this splendid name: Pompadour. I have no other opinion than this: Beauty above all things.”

THE FEUR-DE-LIS: “I defer to Her Most Holy Christian Majesty!”

THE OLIVE TREE: “Frankly, I advise a republic. A good republic, that is the ideal. But I must also tell you that in most of your republican nations not a year goes by that I am not left without a single branch, for the people pull them off to adorn their temples to peace . . . after the yearly war.”

THE COFFEE TREE: “Compare the millions of hundred-weights that were exported from Brazil in the time of dom Pedro with those that are exported today—that will be my answer.”

THE SUGAR CANE: “I advise a republic, and I beg you all to work to free Cuba.”

THE CARNATION: “And what about General Boulanger?”

THE PANSY: “The dress I wear, the color I bear, that is my opinion.”

THE CORN: “Republic.”

THE STRAWBERRY: “Monarchy.”

 

That night, the poet consulted the stars, among which there exists the most luminous of hierarchies. Venus had the same opinion as the rose. Mars acknowledged the autocracy of the Sun. The only thing that disturbed the majesty of the skies was the fleeting demagogy of the meteors.

 

On the third day, the poet made his way to the city, where he was to deliver his reply to the inhabitants there, and as he walked, he thought: Which of all the multitude of opinions he had heard was the best, and which would be the most suitable for bringing happiness to a nation?

Suddenly he saw an old man as hunchbacked as an archway coming toward him. He had a long, long beard, as white as a torrent of snow, and above his white beard there was a curved Semitic nose, like a red beak about to peck his lips.

“Ahasuerus!” exclaimed the poet.

The old man, who was hurrying along with the aid of a thick walking staff, stopped. And when the poet explained to him what had brought him to this road today, the Wandering Jew spoke to the poet the following words:

“You surely know the saying that the Devil is not as clever as he is because he’s the Devil, but because he’s old. I am not the Devil, and indeed I hope one day to enter the kingdom of Heaven, but I have lived so long that my experience is greater than the waters of the ocean. And as bitter! But I must tell you that with respect to the way to govern nations, I couldn’t really say whether this way is better than that. Since I have been wandering the earth I have seen the same evils in republics, empires, and kingdoms, for when the men on the throne, or in power because they were elected by the people, are not guided by wise principles of justice and right action and truth, only evil can come of it. I have seen good kings who were like fathers to their subjects, and presidents like the plagues of Egypt upon their people. The commonplace that each country has the government it deserves should always make one stop and think. It is true that when Attila passes, the nations tremble like poor flocks of sheep. Sometimes a Haroun al-Raschid comes, and sometimes a Louis XI. There are many republics, from the Republic of Plato to the republic of Boulanger, and from Venice to Haiti. . . . Nations are very much like children, and like women. One day they will love monarchy because of its golden crown, and the next they will adore the republic because of its red beret.

“Men slice open bellies with bayonets and shatter skulls with bullets. Today they grab up someone to direct their affairs and set him in a chair high above his station, and then not long after they pull him down and raise another. Or they hold celebrations of trickery and sham and call it democracy, and carry the chosen one—whom they call ‘elected’—in triumph through the streets, to the sound of peaceful fifes and drums. I tell you, humanity has no idea what it is doing. In nature, one sees the order and justice of the eternal divine intelligence. Not so in the work of humans, where the reason that enlightens them seems to make them descend ever deeper into the abyss of darkness. That is why I must tell you, it is not the form of government that brings happiness to a people, but rather those who direct their destinies, whether they be heads of republican states or monarchs of divine right.”

 

The old Jew said many more things, with words that seemed as wise sometimes as Solomon’s, sometimes as Pero Grullo’s. And so eloquent was the ancient man about the politics of the world that the poet repeated his advice word for word to the citizens gathered to hear his reply.

And no sooner had he stopped talking when a storm of cries and protests rose around him. A red citizen who had read many books from ancient Greece set a crown of roses upon the poet’s brow, and then those citizens so judicious that they consulted a master of poetry for answers to their public questions threw him, with great jubilation, out of the city, to the smiles of the flowers, the cackling of the birds, and the astonishment of the shining theories that run through the azure of the stars.

THE STORY OF MARTIN GUERRE

“Is it a story?” asked Pérez Sedano’s wife.

“A true story,” replied old M. Poirier. “A true story that is hard to believe true. How is it possible for a woman, no matter how many years have passed, to confuse her husband with another man?”

Pérez Sedano, recently married, happy, healthy, and cheerful, looked at his wife.

“Impossible!” she exclaimed, giving him, in turn, a speaking look.

“Well, I shall tell it one more time,” M. Poirier said, “Just as I read it when I was a law student, in that work by Jean de Coras titled
De l’arrêt mémorable du parlament de Toulouse, contenant une histoire prodigieuse.
I assure you that it is as interesting as a novel. . . .”

 

Back in the year 1539, in Artigat, in the diocese of Rieux, in Gascogne, a wedding was celebrated between two people, very young and very much in love—Martin Guerre and Bertrande de Rols. They lived together for ten happy years—ten years!—and then suddenly the husband,
le petit mari,
disappeared, and no one knew where he might have gone. Eight years later, a man appeared who resembled him completely—same size, same features, same “distinguishing marks,” as they are called: a scar on the forehead, a dental defect, a blotch on the left ear, and so on.

What joy for the abandoned wife, who took him in her arms and into her bed, and everything went swimmingly. But when three years had passed, it was discovered that this false husband was named Arnoult du Thil, alias
Pansette,
and that he had managed to dupe everyone, especially the wife of Martin Guerre. Who, speaking of the devil, appeared one day to reclaim his rights.

And so the case went to trial.

Of twenty-five to thirty witnesses, nine, or perhaps ten, swore that the impostor was Martin Guerre, seven or eight that he was du Thil, and the rest wavered. Two witnesses testified that a soldier from Rochefort had passed through Artigat not long before and was astonished to see du Thil passing himself off as Martin Guerre; the soldier had said quite loudly that this man was an impostor, because Martin Guerre was in Flanders, with a wooden leg, having been wounded by a bullet at St. Quentin on the mission to take St. Laurens. But almost everyone testified that when the defendant arrived in Artigat, he greeted everyone he met by name, without having ever seen or known them. And to those who said they didn’t know him he would remind them: “Do you not recall when we were at such-and-such a place, ten, fifteen, or twenty years ago, and that we did such-and-such, and So-and-so was there, and he said such-and-such?”

And on that first night, he even said to his alleged wife: “Go fetch me my white breeches if you will, the ones lined with white silk that I left in such-and-such a trunk when I left.” And lo and behold, there were the breeches.

The court found itself in great perplexity, but the good and powerful God, showing that He is always ready to assist Justice and not allow such an extraordinary transgression to remain hidden and unpunished, ordained that as though by a miracle the true Martin Guerre should appear—and Martin Guerre, come from Spain with a wooden leg, just as the soldier had said a year earlier, presented a complaint against the impostor.

The judges took him aside and asked him to secretly reveal to them something more private, which neither one side’s interrogations nor the other’s had yet uncovered. And when he had done this, they brought in the prisoner and asked him to do the same. He replied in the same way as the first, which astounded all who heard him and made people think that du Thil knew his bit of magic.

“There was, in truth,” writes Jean de Coras, a man of unquestioned and profound probity, in his curious annotations to this trial, “great reason to think that this well-prepared fellow had conversation with some familiar spirit. There can be no doubt that among the extraordinary and abominable tyrannies which Satan, since the creation of the world, has cruelly exercised against men, to entrap them and draw them to his kingdom, is that of the great storehouse of magic, an ever-open shop that traffics in such merchandise, and gives of it to men so prodigally that many of them have been reverenced with great wonder, and persuading many men that all is possible through the virtue of magic.”

The judges called Bertrande, who, suddenly, after setting eyes on the man who had just arrived, cried out in desolation and, trembling like a leaf in the wind, her face bathed in tears, ran to embrace him, begging his forgiveness for the error which, through imprudence, though led by du Thil’s seductions, impostures, and perparations, she had committed; and she accused Martin’s sisters above all, for they had been too quick to believe, and had vowed that the prisoner was their brother.