Gaspar Ruiz Page 5

  V

  GASPAR RUIZ, who could with ease bend apart the heavy iron bars of theprison, was led out with others to summary execution. "Every bullet hasits billet," runs the proverb. All the merit of proverbs consists inthe concise and picturesque expression. In the surprise of our minds isfound their persuasiveness. In other words, we are struck and convincedby the shock.

  What surprises us is the form, not the substance. Proverbs areart--cheap art. As a general rule they are not true; unless indeed theyhappen to be mere platitudes, as for instance the proverb, "Half aloaf is better than no bread," or "A miss is as good as a mile." Someproverbs are simply imbecile, others are immoral. That one evolved outof the naive heart of the great Russian people, "Man discharges thepiece, but God carries the bullet," is piously atrocious, and at bittervariance with the accepted conception of a compassionate God. It wouldindeed be an inconsistent occupation for the Guardian of the poor, theinnocent and the helpless, to carry the bullet, for instance, into theheart of a father.

  Gaspar Ruiz was childless, he had no wife, he had never been in love.He had hardly ever spoken to a woman, beyond his mother and the ancientnegress of the household, whose wrinkled skin was the colour of cinders,and whose lean body was bent double from age. If some bullets from thosemuskets fired off at fifteen paces were specifically destined forthe heart of Gaspar Ruiz, they all missed their billet. One, however,carried away a small piece of his ear, and another a fragment of fleshfrom his shoulder.

  A red and unclouded sun setting into a purple ocean looked with a fierystare upon the enormous wall of the Cordilleras, worthy witnesses of hisglorious extinction. But it is inconceivable that it should have seenthe ant-like men busy with their absurd and insignificant trials ofkilling and dying for reasons that, apart from being generally childish,were also imperfectly understood. It did light up, however, the backsof the firing party and the faces of the condemned men. Some of themhad fallen on their knees, others remained standing, a few averted theirheads from the levelled barrels of muskets. Gaspar Ruiz, upright, theburliest of them all, hung his big shock head. The low sun dazzled him alittle, and he counted himself a dead man already.

  He fell at the first discharge. He fell because he thought he was a deadman. He struck the ground heavily. The jar of the fall surprised him."I am not dead apparently," he thought to himself, when he heard theexecution platoon reloading its arms at the word of command. It was thenthat the hope of escape dawned upon him for the first time. He remainedlying stretched out with rigid limbs under the weight of two bodiescollapsed crosswise upon his back.

  By the time the soldiers had fired a third volley into the slightlystirring heaps of the slain, the sun had gone out of sight, and almostimmediately with the darkening of the ocean dusk fell upon the coasts ofthe young Republic. Above the gloom of the lowlands the snowy peaksof the Cordillera remained luminous and crimson for a long time. Thesoldiers before marching back to the fort sat down to smoke.

  The sergeant with a naked sword in his hand strolled away by himselfalong the heap of the dead. He was a humane man, and watched for anystir or twitch of limb in the merciful idea of plunging the point of hisblade into any body giving the slightest sign of life. But none of thebodies afforded him an opportunity for the display of this charitableintention. Not a muscle twitched amongst them, not even the powerfulmuscles of Gaspar Ruiz, who, deluged with the blood of his neighboursand shamming death, strove to appear more lifeless than the others.

  He was lying face down. The sergeant recognised him by his stature, andbeing himself a very small man, looked with envy and contempt at theprostration of so much strength. He had always disliked that particularsoldier. Moved by an obscure animosity, he inflicted a long gash acrossthe neck of Gaspar Ruiz, with some vague notion of making sure of thatstrong man's death, as if a powerful physique were more able to resistthe bullets. For the sergeant had no doubt that Gaspar Ruiz had beenshot through in many places. Then he passed on, and shortly afterwardsmarched off with, his men, leaving the bodies to the care of crows andvultures.

  Gaspar Ruiz had restrained a cry, though it had seemed to him that hishead was cut off at a blow; and when darkness came, shaking off thedead, whose weight had oppressed him, he crawled away over the plain onhis hands and knees. After drinking deeply, like a wounded beast, ata shallow stream, he assumed an upright posture, and staggered onlight-headed and aimless, as if lost amongst the stars of the clearnight. A small house seemed to rise out of the ground before him. Hestumbled into the porch and struck at the door with his fist. Therewas not a gleam of light. Gaspar Ruiz might have thought that theinhabitants had fled from it, as from many others in the neighbourhood,had it not been for the shouts of abuse that answered his thumping. Inhis feverish and enfeebled state the angry screaming seemed to himpart of a hallucination belonging to the weird dreamlike feeling of hisunexpected condemnation to death, of the thirst suffered, of the volleysfired at him within fifteen paces, of his head being cut off at a blow."Open the door!" he cried. "Open in the name of God!"

  An infuriated voice from within jeered at him: "Come in, come in. Thishouse belongs to you. All this land belongs to you. Come and take it."

  "For the love of God," Gaspar Ruiz murmured.

  "Does not all the land belong to you patriots?" the voice on the otherside of the door screamed on. "Are you not a patriot?"

  Gaspar Ruiz did not know. "I am a wounded man," he said apathetically.

  All became still inside. Gaspar Ruiz lost the hope of being admitted,and lay down under the porch just outside the door. He was utterlycareless of what was going to happen to him. All his consciousnessseemed to be concentrated in his neck, where he felt a severe pain. Hisindifference as to his fate was genuine.

  The day was breaking when he awoke from a feverish doze; the doorat which he had knocked in the dark stood wide open now, and a girl,steadying herself with her outspread arms, leaned over the threshold.Lying on his back, he stared up at her. Her face was pale and her eyeswere very dark; her hair hung down black as ebony against her whitecheeks; her lips were full and red. Beyond her he saw another head withlong grey hair, and a thin old face with a pair of anxiously claspedhands under the chin.