Read Online The Campaign by Carlos Fuentes - Free Book Online Page A

love each other only that way: “How I wish I could be like Mother—all she knew was how to make sweets. She who spent more on candles for the church than on food for the children. How she worried about which things she was going to leave us, how many cups, tea sets, or sterling-silver platters. And not only us. She thought about the generations to come. And at the same time, how sure she was that, once she was buried here, underneath the ombu, she would come back to see what had happened to the pot of honey, the biscuit, the silver teaspoon.”
    â€œWhy don’t you leave, then?” Baltasar asked her, understanding the comparison she was making between their lives, as well as the fear that lurked behind his sister’s words.
    â€œOur father doesn’t say it, but he’d rather give me to some creole as a mistress than see me married to a half-breed. The problem is that in all this immensity there are no creoles.”
    She looked at him with disdain and a bitter coquettishness, unconsciously rubbing her thigh.
    [4]
    â€œIf my friends could just see me stuck here on this ranch, they’d be happy for me and pity me at the same time,” said the old man with humor, perhaps recalling the days when he was politically active in Buenos Aires, when he felt it was necessary to defend the Spanish Crown against the English. Not even the viceroy’s ineptitude could make him change his mind; the creole regiments were defending the same thing the viceroy defended.
    â€œI fought against English Protestants, not Spanish Catholics. That would have been like fighting against ourselves.”
    During his stay, Baltasar tried to observe and understand his father’s life. A life he did not want for himself: feudal, isolated, without recognized laws, and with no authority other than that which the patriarch managed to win for himself. Unlike other landowners, José Antonio Bustos was too elegant a man to resort to theatrics and demand his patriarchal rights. He exercised them discreetly, with an admirable sense of personal honor, and, as a result, his chaotic world took note and even obeyed him. It wasn’t easy, he said one day to Baltasar, not to brag but to teach his son, it wasn’t easy to gain the respect of men whose livelihood was smoking beef, of roving town criers and horse drovers, judges and royal attorneys, scribes and court clerks, horse dealers and common criminals … For each one, he said, one had to have a good word, a bit of pity, and some reason to be feared. Without the patriarch, José Antonio Bustos suggested, they’d all devour each other. And not out of hunger, but out of satedness. That was the enigma of this land as well as its paradox.
    â€œIs there anything this country doesn’t produce?” said José Antonio. “A man can get a return of more than twenty times the value of his labor here. There are no forests to clear, as there are in North America. You can plant twice a year. The same field yields wheat for ten years without being exhausted. The only thing you have to be careful of is planting too much in one spot. If you do, the harvest will be overly abundant. And the cattle graze on their own.”
    The father paused with a smile and asked his son: “Aren’t you worried about a country like this?”
    â€œOn the contrary. You confirm all my optimism.”
    â€œI’d be more cautious. A country where all you have to do is spit for the land to produce may turn out to be weak, sleepy, arrogant, self-satisfied, uncritical…”
    What Baltasar feared was that his father, the patriarch, a power so discreet and at times so ironic, would have to make a show of strength in a dramatic, forceful, theatrical fashion to regain his authority.
    The opportunity came that winter, when the news was spread by two scouts on horseback, from the country to the general store, to the workshops and the fort, that the cimarrons were