In Zacatecas and Aguascalientes, in the little country towns and the
neighboring communities, haciendas and ranches were deserted. When one
of the officers found a barrel of tequila, the event assumed miraculous
proportions. Everything was conducted with secrecy and care; deep
mystery was preserved to oblige the soldiers to leave on the morrow
before sunrise under Anastasio and Venancio.
When Demetrio awoke to the strains of music, his general staff, now
composed chiefly of young ex-government officers, told him of the
discovery, and Quail, interpreting the thoughts of his colleagues, said
sententiously:
"These are bad times and you've got to take advantage of everythin'. If
there are some days when a duck can swim, there's others when he can't
take a drink."
The string musicians played all day; the most solemn honors were paid
to the barrel: but Demetrio was very sad.
"Did he know why?
I don't know why."
He kept repeating the same refrain.
In the afternoon there were cockfights. Demetrio sat down with the
chief officers under the roof of the municipal portals in front of a
city square covered with weeds, a tumbled kiosk, and some abandoned
adobe houses.
"Valderrama," Demetrio called, looking away from the ring with tired
eyes, "come and sing me a song--sing 'The Undertaker.'"
But Valderrama did not hear him; he had no eyes for the fight; he was
reciting an impassioned soliloquy as he watched the sunset over the
hills.
With solemn gestures and emphatic tones, he said:
"O Lord, Lord, pleasurable it is this thy land! I shall build me three
tents: one for Thee, one for Moses, one for Elijah!"
"Valderrama," Demetrio shouted again. "Come and sing 'The Undertaker'
song for me."
"Hey, crazy, the General is calling you," an officer shouted.
Valderrama with his eternally complacent smile went over to Demetrio's
seat and asked the musicians for a guitar.
"Silence," the gamesters cried. Valderrama finished tuning his
instrument.
Quail and Meco let loose on the sand a pair of cocks armed with long
sharp blades attached to their legs. One was light red; his feathers
shone with beautiful obsidian glints. The other was sand-colored with
feathers like scales burned slowly to a fiery copper color.
The fight was swift and fierce as a duel between men. As though moved
by springs, the roosters flew at each other. Their feathers stood up on
their arched necks; their combs were erect, their legs taut. For an
instant they swung in the air without even touching the ground, their
feathers, beaks, and claws lost in a dizzy whirlwind. The red rooster
suddenly broke, tossed with his legs to heaven outside the chalk lines.
His vermilion eyes closed slowly, revealing eyelids of pink coral; his
tangled feathers quivered and shook convulsively amid a pool of blood.
Valderrama, who could not repress a gesture of violent indignation,
began to play. With the first melancholy strains of the tune, his anger
disappeared. His eyes gleamed with the light of madness. His glance
strayed over the square, the tumbled kiosk, the old adobe houses, over
the mountains in the background, and over the sky, burning like a roof
afire. He began to sing. He put such feeling into his voice and such
expression into the strings that, as he finished, Demetrio turned his
head aside to hide his tears.
But Valderrama fell upon him, embraced him warmly, and with a
familiarity he showed everyone at the appropriate moment, he whispered:
"Drink them! ... Those are beautiful tears."
Demetrio asked for the bottle, passed it to Valderrama. Greedily the
poet drank half its contents in one gulp; then, showing only the whites
of his eyes, he faced the spectators dramatically and, in a highly
theatrical voice, cried:
"Here you may witness the blessings of the revolution caught in a
single tear."
Then he continued to talk like a madman, but like a madman whose vast
prophetic madness encompassed all about him, the dusty weeds, the
tumbled kiosk, the gray houses, the lovely hills, and the immeasurable
sky.