Reasons of State by Alejo Carpentier Page A

downpour—the “
gira-gira
” as the locals called it—which in the twinkling of an eye had carried away the whole encampment. While the soldiers did their best to deal with the situation, Colonel Hoffmann and the Head of State, guided by Doctor Peralta, made for a hill, where they had that morning glimpsed the dark opening of a cave. And there they arrived, slipping, stumbling, soaked, shivering with cold, by the light of lanterns. There was a fluttering of terrified bats,which quickly subsided, and then the solid shelter of damp walls, beneath an argillaceous vault festooned with stalactites, under which the rain only made its presence felt like the sound of a distant waterfall. But it was cold; the cold of clay in shadow, onto which water from the deep fissures of the mountain was ceaselessly dripping. The Head of State, sitting on his military cloak, had an unappeasable craving for a drink. (A need that clutched his stomach and his entrails, that made his body seem empty, without viscera, contracted by an urgent obsession which rose towards his throat and his mouth, which concentrated memory in his lips and sense of smell …) Doctor Peralta understood what was happening, and with a sly expression produced the Hermès case, and announced that as a precaution against possible chills during the campaign he had loaded it with brandy, to which—why deny it?—he was a confirmed addict.
    “Everyone knows you were the Prior of Santa Inés,” said Colonel Hoffmann, suddenly cheering up and unbuttoning his overcoat. And joining his entreaties to the secretary’s, he persuaded the Head of State to take some alcohol to preserve his health—more vital now than ever before—from harm from the stormy weather.
    “Just this once,” said the Head of State, raising the first flask, the smell of whose thick and porous pigskin cover at once brought back the Parisian shop where Ofelia used to buy picador’s saddles, reins, bits, and bridles.
    “Don’t hesitate, Señor President; go right ahead; this is a special occasion. A glorious day, too.”
    “A glorious day, indeed,” echoed Doctor Peralta. They were answered by a peal of thunder, which increased their pleasant sense of safety here within. The sweet yet vegetable aroma of the strong liquor drunk in the cave harmonised with the moisture of mud and mosses to call up a remote image ofthe classical vintners’ bodegas where new wine sleeps under deep vaults. His spirits revived, the Head of State remembered a text he had humorously quoted in the Cabinet Council—where he often boastfully referred to books read, quoted poems, appropriate phrases, and proverbs suiting the case—during some passing political squabble wrapped up in military jargon. “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks … And you thought-executing fires, vaunt couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts, singe my white head …” To which Doctor Peralta, who was more of a Zorrillean than a Shakespearean, replied with some sparks from
Puñal del Godo
, so often launched in our National Theatre by the Spanish tragedian Ricardo Calvo, whose too-pure diction he imitated in a comic manner:
    Oh what a threatening storm!
    What a night; may heaven preserve us!
    Is the terrible voice blind
,
    and the light that flashes
    when the wind blows and rages
    and lightning strikes the zenith?
    Once more the case of flasks was opened, to celebrate the “terrible voice” of the poem, and the owner of the “terrible voice” that was roaring. And now that they were sufficiently warmed up, with their uniform tunics somewhat unbuttoned, Colonel Hoffmann began to describe the campaign: until yesterday there had only been slight armed clashes, skirmishes, sharpshooting by guerrillas, collision between patrols; on our side the worst had been the blowing up of a train at the exit of the Roquero tunnel, with a loss of horses and equipment, seventeen men killed and fifty-two put out of action with more or less serious wounds. But the