Read Online The Campaign by Carlos Fuentes - Free Book Online

father as someone he’d never understood before. A patriarch stronger than the laws of today and tomorrow. Baltasar didn’t know if all the liberal constitutions in the world could be stronger than a simple patriarchal presence.
    â€œDon’t come out at night. It’s too cold. You might get sick,” Baltasar said affectionately to José Antonio, using the familiar form of “you,” forgetting for a moment to treat his father with the usual deference: the old man was so full of dignity, so strong, and at the same time so vulnerable, at the mercy of the elements, as Sabina had said, that at that moment his father was in fact his son. Which is what he wrote to Dorrego in Buenos Aires.
    José Antonio Bustos overlooked his son’s lack of respect. He attributed it to what he’d just seen. The unprecedented physical contact, between his son’s hands and the gauchos’. He did not want to admit that old age turns parents back into children.
    â€œDon’t worry. When the doctors say I’m sick, I just make believe, to be polite. If I don’t, they get discouraged and go back to being, I don’t know, to being gauchos.” The old man laughed to himself. “You’ve got to respect people’s titles. It costs them a lot to get them. Anyway, we lead a healthy life around here. We don’t need doctors, people live a long time, and the only things that kill the young ones are knife fights and falling off horses.”
    â€œIt’s good to see you looking so well, papa,” said Baltasar, reverting to the proper respectful tone.
    â€œAll I’ve got left are the small pleasures of old age. Like walking out to see the stars. Nights here are so beautiful. When I was a child I counted the stars, I couldn’t understand that they were uncountable. Then, when I was a little older, I went on to count the nights when there was a moon, until I found out it was in the almanac. So what are we left with? Who knows.”
    â€œYou aren’t the way people in Buenos Aires say ranchers are,” Baltasar said awkwardly. He felt as inept as the gaucho with the wounded arm.
    â€œSavage rancher? Barbarous creole? No. I think I’ve had a few ideas. I don’t want to lose my faith altogether. How good it is that you keep yours strong.”
    The son took the father’s wrist, the way he had taken the gaucho’s a moment earlier. “You’ve kept your senses, papa, along with your faith.”
    Now José Antonio laughed openly. “Five of them left me a while ago. The sixth stayed, but it’s pure memory.”
    â€œThen let me add a seventh, which is your intelligence.”
    The father was silent for a moment and then said that old age offers small pleasures; not everything is lost. Arm in arm, they walked into the house.
    Sabina seemed to be waiting for her brother after he left the old man asleep in his bedroom. He was surprised; he tried to see the beauty in her ugliness; he hadn’t given up on that score.
    â€œHasn’t he asked you yet?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œWhether you want to be a merchant or a rancher. The poor man has his illusions. Didn’t he mention the small pleasures of his old age?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThat’s to set the scene. He wants you to choose.”
    â€œI can’t.”
    â€œOf course you can. This damned revolution will be your career.”
    â€œAnd what about you?” asked Baltasar, furious, seeing her uglier than ever.
    â€œYou know the answer to that, too. Don’t play the fool. While you go to your revolution, I stay here taking care of the old man. If I don’t, who will? Someone has to.”
    Baltasar felt the reproach. Sabina’s eyes that night were filled with a burning desire.
    â€œHow I’d like to go off somewhere far away, too.”
    Afterward, a pause during which the two of them looked at each other like strangers. To see if they could