The Campaign by Carlos Fuentes

secretly listening, spying on father and son without any excuse, as if saying: Life has given me so little that I can take whatever I want. Less still could Baltasar believe that father and daughter were united in their siege of someone as insignificant in the eyes of his family and the world as he: a romantic idealist, a physically unattractive fellow, a fool in love with an unattainable woman, an agent of the blindest, most involuntarily comic justice. Might that act of sincerity with his father at least have saved him? He detested himself; therefore he detested the intrusive presence of his sister even more, as he imagined a net of possible complicities and actual indiscretions.
    â€œHe still hasn’t asked you?” said Sabina, a candle in her hand.
    â€œAsked me what?”
    â€œWhether you want to be a merchant or a rancher.”
    â€œDon’t be a hypocrite. You heard everything.”
    â€œThe poor old man still has his illusions,” Sabina went on, as if not listening to her brother, as if reciting lines in a play. “He wants you to choose.”
    â€œYou heard everything. Don’t go on pretending. You rehearsed this scene as if we were in a theater. Well, the first act’s over. Say something new, please.”
    â€œI told you that I wanted to get out of here, too.”
    â€œBut you can’t. The old man needs you. Sacrifice yourself for him and, if you wish, for me as well. There’s always one selfish child and one self-sacrificing child. Wait for the old man to die. Then you can get out, too.”
    She began to laugh. No, she was not the only sister who could take care of her father, sacrificing herself for him. The old man had dozens of children. What did little innocent Baltasar think? Didn’t he know the laws of the country? A patriarch like José Antonio Bustos could have as many children as he wanted with the farm girls, if his legitimate wife wasn’t enough, especially if she was as insipid as poor María Teresa Echegaray, who ended her days as bent as a shepherd’s crook, peering at the ground until she forgot people’s faces and died. She was plump and nearsighted. “Like you.”
    José Antonio Bustos had a regiment of children scattered over the pampa and the mountains. But country law was implacable: the patriarch could recognize only one son. As for the others, well, this vagabond land would swallow them up.
    â€œYou are the legitimate son, Baltasar,” said Sabina, as if she were illegitimate or as if, having been born, she died every night in the bed to which she’d been condemned and had no time to be reborn the next day. “But you look just like Mother. That gaucho you challenged a little while ago looks just like you, didn’t you see it? I’m the one who looks like Papa, not you.”
    â€œI don’t know what you’re talking about,” stammered Baltasar in confusion. “There must be any number of Papa’s kids who look like you and him.”
    He felt he was losing himself in the thing he detested most: self-justification. Even though he detested her, he preferred being as honest with Sabina, who was as dry and dark as their father, as he’d been with his father because he loved him.
    â€œI know you heard everything. Think about it awhile and help me. I love a woman. I’ll never win her unless I do what I must do. I’m going to join up with Castelli in Upper Peru, sister dear. But only now, talking here with you—and I thank you from the bottom of my heart!—do I realize that I have to do everything I can to save an innocent child. My friends in Buenos Aires will help me. I want to save that innocent child. I’ll send him here to you so you can take care of him. Will you do me that favor?”
    â€œWhat is all this about an innocent child? Do you want me to stay here, a captive, even after the old man dies? What are you talking about?”
    This wasn’t