Chapter 25 another death

About two years ago (I can't find the original letter), Gannon wrote from Gualeguaychu that he had sent me a copy of Ralph Waldo Emer's long poem "Once Upon a Time" which may be the first A Spanish translation, with a postscript saying that Don Pedro Damian, whom I may remember, died of lung congestion the other night.The man's febrile delirium seemed to be in the bloody battle of Masoliel again; the news seemed to me to be expected, not sudden, because Don Pedro died when he was nineteen or twenty years old. Has fought under Aparicio Sarabia. During the revolution of 1904, he worked as a hired laborer on an estate in Rio Negro or Paisandu; They are equally brave and ignorant.He survived some melees and one final battle; disarmed and returned to the fields in 1905 to resume his hard and menial farm work.As far as I know, he has not left the province since.He had spent the past thirty years in a very remote spot a league or two from Nyankai; one afternoon in 1942 I was chatting (trying to chat) with him in that desolate place.He was a man of few words and little imagination.His account of the Battle of Masoliel is limited to the shouts and ferocity; it does not surprise me that he seems to be back on the battlefield at the moment of his death... I know I will never see Damian again, and I want to recall What he looked like; what he looked like is lost, I just remember a picture Gannon took of him.This is not surprising, since I saw him only once in person, at the beginning of 1942, and his photographs many times.Gannon sent me that photo; I don't know where, I didn't look for it.I dare not look for it.

The second event happened a few months later in Montevideo.The fever and dying pains of the Entre Ríos man inspired me to write a good story about Masolier's failure; I told Emile Rodriguez of my thoughts Monegal, who wrote a note referring me to Colonel Dionisio Tabarez, who commanded that campaign.The Colonel received me after dinner one day.He sits in a canvas chair in the patio, rambling and fondly reminiscing about times gone by.He spoke of the shortage of ammunition, the exhausted horses, the soldiers covered in dust, blinded by cocaine, marching as if in a labyrinth, that Sarabia could have entered Montevideo, but he did not, "Because the gauchos are terrified of the city," he also talked about the plight of soldiers with their throats cut. His account of the civil war sounded to me not like a conflict between two armies, but rather like a fugitive nightmare .He spoke of Eliscas, Tupanbae and Masolier.He told each incident so vividly that it seemed to me that he had said it so many times that his words did not need to be recalled.I managed to mention Damian's name during his break.

"Damian? Pedro Damian?" said the colonel. "He's under me. A Tapae native. The brethren call him a hireling." He laughed, then stopped abruptly, in feigned or real displeasure. He changed his tone and said that war is like a woman, it is a test for men, before going into battle, no one can tell whether he is a hero or not.A man who thinks he is a coward can be brave; a man who thinks he is brave can be a coward, as was the case with poor Damien, who went in and out of the tavern with the emblem of the White Party, and who became a coward in Masolier. Pustules.There was a shootout with a drunk, and he looked like a man, but it was far from that on the field, where the two armies were facing each other, and the guns started, and everybody thought five thousand men were ganging up to kill him.Poor little aborigine, he used to drive sheep to bathe in medicine, but he was suddenly involved in that patriotic war...

I was absurdly ashamed by Tabarez's presentation.That's not what I was hoping for.After talking to old Damian one afternoon many years ago, I couldn't help creating a kind of idol; Tabarez's statement shattered it.I suddenly understood the reason for Damian's reticence and reclusiveness; it was not humility that drove him to do so, but shame.To no avail, I kept convincing myself that a person plagued by cowardly behavior was far more complicated and interesting than a person who was simply brave.I don't think Martin Fierro the Gaucho is as impressive as Master Jim or Razomov.That's all well and good, but as a gaucho, Damian has a duty to be Martin Fierro—especially in front of a Uruguayan gaucho.In Tabarez's words and in their implication I detected the rawness of so-called Artigasism: a perhaps unquestionable awareness that Uruguay was more important than our country and therefore more courageous... I remember that In the evening we said goodbye with great enthusiasm.

In the winter, my story was lingering, and with a situation or two missing, I had to pay another visit to Tabarez's.With him was an elderly gentleman: Dr. Juan Francisco Amaro, a Paisandu, who had also participated in the revolution led by Sarabia.The topic naturally came to Masolier.Amaro mentioned some anecdotes, and then said slowly, as if talking to himself: "I remember we camped at the estate of Saint-Irene, and some people came to join us. Among them was a French veterinarian who died on the eve of the battle, and a shearer from Entre Ríos, a man named Pe Dro Damian's lad."

I interrupted him rudely. "I already know that," I said. "It's the Argentine who's scared of the bullet." I fell silent; they both looked at me inexplicably. "You're wrong, sir," said Amaro at last. "Pedro Damian saw death at home. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon. The Red Party infantry occupied the hill; our troops charged the hill with spears; He stood on the stirrup, stopped breathing, then rolled over and fell under the chaotic hooves of the horse. He was killed instantly, and Masolier stepped on him for the last charge. He was so brave, and he died dissatisfied. Twenty years old."

Undoubtedly, he was talking about another Damian. I had a whim and asked the native what he was shouting at that time. "Dirty words," said the colonel. "Footbites while charging." "Probably so," Amaro said. "But he also shouted Urquiza!" Neither of us said anything.The colonel murmured at last: "It's not like fighting in Masolier, it's like fighting in Cagancha or Indiana Muerta a century ago." He said in bewilderment: "I was the commander of those troops, but I could swear it was the first time I heard of a soldier named Damian."

We couldn't remind him of the situation. In Buenos Aires, my consternation at his forgetting was repeated.One afternoon, in the basement of Mitchell's British bookstore, I was flipping through Emerson's delightful eleven volumes when I came across Patricio Gannon.I asked about his translation of "The Past".He said he had no plans of translating at all, and that Spanish literature was dull enough that there was no need to introduce Emerson.I reminded him that his letter to me said he was sending me a Spanish translation and mentioned the news of Damian's death.He asked me who was Damian.I told him, but he was unimpressed.I noticed with horror how surprised he was to hear me tell this, and I turned away to discuss Emerson's attackers; Emerson, as a poet, was a more complex, More sophisticated and therefore more unique.

There are some other facts I should mention. In April I received a letter from Colonel Dionisio Tabarez; Buried his soldiers under his feet. I was passing through Gualeguaychu in July; I couldn't find Damian's cottage, no one in the area could remember such a person.I wanted to know about the Patriarch Diego Abaloa, because he had seen Damian killed; but Abaloa died before winter.I wanted to recall what Damian looked like; a few months later, I looked through the photobook and found that the sullen face I remembered was actually a still photo of the famous tenor Tenberic as Othello.

So I guess.The simplest, but also least satisfactory scenario is that of two Damians: a coward who died in Entre Ríos in 1946;The disadvantage of this idea was that it did not answer the real mystery: how Colonel Tabarez's strangely capricious memory managed to forget the appearance and even the name of the demobilized man in a very short time. (I disagree, and would not agree, with another, simpler guess: that I saw the first Damien in my dream.) There is also an even more bizarre supernatural guess that Ulrike von Ku proposed by Erman.Pedro Damian died in battle and prayed to God to return him to Entre Ríos, Ulrique said.God hesitated before bestowing grace, and the man who begged for grace was dead, and several saw him fall.God cannot change the past, but he can change the image of the past, so he changed the image of death into fainting, and the shadows of the Entrerios returned to their homeland.Although he has returned, we must not forget that he is only a shadow.He lived alone, without wife, without friends; he loved everything and had everything, but seemed to be separated from him on the other side of the glass; and when he "died", his faint image disappeared, like water. Disappear in water.This guess was wrong, but led me to a true vision (what I believe to be true today) that is both simple and unheard of.I discovered that assumption almost miraculously in Pierre Damiane's treatise "On the Omnipotent", where two lines in Canto 21 of "Divine Comedy: Paradise" happen to speak of identity. The problem aroused my interest in studying "On Universality".In the fifth chapter of that treatise, Pierre Damiani, contrary to Aristotle and Fredegalio de Torre, asserts that God can bring about what has not happened before.I studied those old theological discussions and began to grasp the tragic story of Don Pedro Damian.

The story goes like this: Damian showed cowardice on the battlefield of Masolier, and for the rest of his life he was determined to wash away this shame and humiliation.He returned to Entre Ríos; he did not bully, he did not fight with a knife, he did not seek a reputation for bravery, but he toiled in the fields of Niankai, fighting against the mountains and wild animals .He has been preparing for the miracle to appear, obviously not knowing when it will appear.He secretly thought: If fate brings me another battle, I will definitely live up to the expectations.For forty years, he waited quietly, and fate finally brought him a battle at the moment of his death.Battles appear in delirium, but the ancient Greeks have long said that we are all shadows of dreams.The battle reappeared as he was dying, and a bullet struck him in the chest as he acted valiantly and took the lead in the final charge.Thus, in 1946, due to his long years of passion, Pedro Damian died in the defeated Battle of Masolier, which took place at the turn of the winter and spring of 1904. "General Theology" denies that God can prevent past events from happening, but it does not mention the intricate causal relationship. The relationship is extremely large and hidden, and it affects the whole body. It is impossible to cancel a distant and insignificant event. Little things without canceling the present.To change the past is not to change a fact; it is to undo the consequences of its infinite tendency.In other words; creating two kinds of all-encompassing histories.For example, in the first type, Pedro Damian died in Entre Ríos in 1946; in the second type, in 1904 in Mazoller.That is the history we are experiencing now, but the cancellation of the former history is not achieved overnight, but produces the various incoherent situations I mentioned.Colonel Dionisio Tabarez, for example, went through various stages: first he remembered Damian as a coward;The case of Patriarch Alba Roa is also sufficient; he is dead, I know, because he has too many memories of Don Pedro Damian. As for myself, I know that I am not taking similar risks.I guessed at processes unknown to one, guessed at some kind of paradox; but there were circumstances that somewhat outweighed that terrible privilege.First of all, I'm not sure if what I wrote is true.I suspect there are some false memories in my story.I suspect that Pedro Damian (if there is one) is not necessarily called Pedro Damian, the reason why I remember him as that name is because I will remember his story one day. • Inspiration from the Damian layer argument.The collection of poems I mentioned in the first paragraph has a similar reason, because it deals with the irrevocable past. 1951.I think I created a whimsical story, but recorded a true event; two thousand years ago, the unexpected Virgil thought he announced the birth of a man, but predicted the coming of the Son of God Poor Damian!He was led by death at twenty to a sad, unknown war and a campaign of his own, but getting what he wanted, and taking a long time to get, was perhaps his greatest happiness .