THE INSURGENCE of CHAN SANTA CRUZ

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

For General Bravo, it had been an evil night. An hour before dawn there came a scratching at his door; Bravo answered it with his pistol drawn. It was the Jackal... he held up a saddlebag and extended it to the General.

"What is this, you fool?" Bravo said, shrinking back. "Her head?" The Jackal grinned stupidly and dipped one of his huge hands into the saddlebag, removing something wet and red. "Her heart! Her cursed, devious heart... take that away. Go!" El Chacol nodded and pushed the door open with the hand that held the empty, bloody saddlebag, marching out into the night with Consuela's heart still gripped, pulsing, between his fingers.

Drenched with sweat, and unable to return to sleep... his head aflame but his tongue as raw and dry as that of one of the luckless prisoners trapped in the church... Ignacio Bravo had stepped outside. The city of his dreams sprawled before his gaze, a sleepy ruin. Dead trees from the last planting of eighteen months ago lined the muddy streets. Here and there could be seen a huddled form of someone who had drunk too much to return to their beds or hammocks, even to find shelter from the rain; one turned over, sat up, howled in the direction of the General and sank back.

The wind was from the southeast and, thus, brought a smell of death from the hospital, the door to which creaked slowly back and forth. Bravo turned his gaze away from this and towards the church; the sky above it was blacker than usual, the stars seemingly blotted out by shapes of darkness that undulated as if they were the breath of some animal prowling the cosmos. The words of one of the educated prisoners, a Professor of Science who was, unhappily, disfavored by the Cientificos and now dead, returned to General Bravo. Darkness, this unfortunate had said, was an absence, a non-entity... to be specific, an absence of light which could not be absolute, for the quantity and variety of illumination from the sun, the stars and all the accomplishments of men. But the shapes Bravo saw were absolute; they moved, they dipped and hovered and, seeming to draw even the minimal light from the church or, perhaps, from Santa Cruz itself, they swelled.

"Only a cloud," the General had assured himself and stumbled back to his quarters. But still he could not sleep, for the thoughts and worries intruded and measures he must take at once... remove the trees, locate the doctor, plan the capture of Peto... disintegrated into irrational and vaguely ominous snatches of memory and intuition. Only with the light of false dawn, perhaps an hour before Rivera's coming, did he fall into a troubled sleep.

Now, a pounding at his door seized Bravo's temples like the fingers of a thousand demon drummers. "What is it?" he shouted, sitting up.

"Some men to see you," answered Corporal Boleaga. Bravo put his feet upon the cold floor and raised his hands to his head; the act of leaning forward caused the hammock to pitch him to the floor, bruising a shoulder. An eggshell crumpled under his palm, his fingers felt another, more rubbery object. Boleaga had resumed the infernal pounding.

"Tell them that I am coming," the General answered, pulling himself to his knees, then to his feet, not even daring to think who these men were, nor what their purpose might be. He buttoned his coat over his nightshirt and, instinctively, picked up his pistol.

The sun was still low, for the hour had not reached eight... but it dazzled him, and Bravo advanced with his left hand shielding his eyes, his right waving the pistol.

Rivera was visibly astonished. He had been forewarned of the eccentricities of the territorial commander but nothing had prepared him for this ridiculous apparition stumbling towards him like a spider disturbed from its weaving, and he felt shame for the Republic, shame and disgust. This wizened General's uncombed hair stood up in stiff white spikes, he was unshaven, red of eye and attired only in an overcoat atop a greasy nightshirt that fell away at the waist, exposing his genitals, pasty thighs and bony knees. His feet were unshod, his ankles gnarled and bony as those of a bird and, at first, it seemed that he could not speak but only gasp and gap and move his lips and nostrils like a fish.

Even a harder man than Manuel Sanchez Rivera would have pitied the unkempt and blinking little General but, mindful of his mission, Rivera unrolled his letter of commission, keeping one wary eye on Bravo's pistol. Soldados, emerging from the huts and barracks in groups of a dozen, twenty, even fifty, were converging on the plaza and, with them, came soldaderas with their buckets of tortillas, sleepy Arab peddlers, howling children, dogs and rats and pigs. Thousands of creatures of every description, many wielding weapons of every description... even a great cloud of gnats and mosquitoes which had descended over the plaza... waited as the General on horseback stared down at the other General before him.

Rivera extended his hand... it held no weapon save a single rolled up page.

"By the authority and orders of the honorable Francisco I. Madero, President of the Republic, you are ordered to return at once to Mexico City for reassignment. I, Manuel Rivera, have been appointed Jefe Militar in your place and interim Governor, interim Superintendent of Works, Superintendent of Education, etcetera, etcetera." He held the decrees downward towards Bravo as if afraid that the other General's touch would soil his gloves. "Here are the orders bearing the signature of the President and the Minister of War."

RETURN to HOMEPAGE – “THE INSURGENCE of CHAN SANTA CRUZ”

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