Reasons of State by Alejo Carpentier

General,” “Señor General.” And again he looked at the toes of his boots, his spurs and belt. And he thought mockingly of himself as beinglike the character in Molière’s comedy who was a cook when he wore a cap and a coachman when he put on livery.
    “Give me a drink,” he said to Peralta, “and reach me that book.”
    And while waiting for sleep to come, he turned the pages till he came to a certain Sixth Volume that he had been interrupted when reading weeks before.
Chapter XI
: “Since I have arrived at this point, it would seem to be not inappropriate to set forth the customs of Gaul and of Germany and the difference between these nations. In Gaul, not only in every state, and every canton and district, but almost in each several household, there are parties … 
There are parties …
” “That’s why they were able to blast them to blazes as they did blast them,” commented the Head of State between two yawns … Outside, the singing went on:
    The night they killed Rosita
,
    Oh what luck she had!
    Out of the six that hit her
    Just one shot left her dead
.

3
    WHEN GENERAL ATAÚLFO GALVÁN HAD BEEN beaten in the first pitched battle and crossed the Rio Verde behind his wretched, broken troops, leaving on the bank his two camp followers, Misia Olalla and Jacinta the Negress—who had stayed behind to load up with parcels of blouses, worn blankets, and ribbons stolen from the shops of a recently sacked village—the first of the lightning flashes that seemed to crack the sky from top to bottom was seen and two endless claps of thunder resounded, forming the overture to months of hard, inexorable, exasperating rain; persistent, sustained rain such as is seen only in these forests. The forested lands lay on the flanks of mountains that were always haze-covered, veiled in mists that cleared in one place only to thicken in another, letting the sun filter through a gap of sky—a few minutes here, a few minutes there—to illuminate the unknown splendour of nameless flowers, scrambling over the tops of hidden trees, or to magnify uselessly, since there was no one to see them, some superb efflorescence of orchids on the roof of the jungle; these were the rain forests, where the mahogany trees, júcaros, cedars, and quebrachos, and species so numerous and so rare as to confound traditional classifications—they had even confounded Humboldt himself—were bathed in rains so profuse that when men realised their proximity by smelling them from afar, they had the impression ofembarking on a year seven months long occupying its special place within the twelve-month year, or of abandoning the four seasons to keep to only two: one short, moss-covered, a time for hard work, and the other long and wet, of interminable boredom. When the storms had died away a new life began—a new stage, a new stride forwards—surrounded by vegetation so damp and so entangled in its own dampness that it seemed to have been engendered by the lagoons and marshes below, always croaking with frogs, covered with toads, iridescent with wandering bubbles arising from submerged decay …
    The army commanders had ordered a number of tents to be set up. The President’s was in the middle, its ropes attached to posts supporting a tall canvas pediment crowned by the republican flag. After supper of sardines, corned beef, baked bananas,
dulce de leche
, and Rhine wine, the victor of the day’s expedition, thinking his officers might be exhausted after this fierce battle, invited them to take a well-deserved rest until the meeting of the General Staff next day. Colonel Hoffmann, Doctor Peralta, and the Head of State were left alone, playing a half-hearted game of dominoes by the yellow kerosene glow of the street lamps. But at that point five, ten, twenty streaks of lightning plunged into the forest, followed by thunderclaps, each echoing for so long that they were blended one with another, bringing in their train the wind that heralded the