In times of misfortune we can console ourselves by talking about better days. This present chronicle brings back gratifying memories, recorded by pens more talented than mine. For such an undertaking, however, I do not lack qualifications. In the '80s I was already a young man in my prime. Besides, I had daily conversations with one of the main characters involved in this awe-inspiring episode, namely the retired Lieutenant Colonel Rossi.
At that time, you would have given him some fifty-odd years at a glance; there are some who would have said he was pushing ninety. He was a heavyset man with a smooth-shaven face, his ruddy dark skin parched as if weather-beaten by many a harsh storm. Someone once compared his booming voice, typical of a sergeant accustomed to giving orders, to that of a fearless bugle.
Useless to deny it, in Colonel Rossi's presence I always felt as if I were in a false position. I held a deep fondness for him, and considered him to be a courageous, picturesque old man, a relic from the days when there were no cowardly Argentines. (Take note, reader: I saw him in that light not only in 1980 but in previous years as well.) On the other hand, it did not escape me that his seven a.m. radio harangues inspired fierce prejudices, boasting as he did of a completely unfounded self-sufficiency, and undermining our most generous convictions. Probably because of his maniacal repetition of his favourite maxim, "Measure your love of your country by your hatred for the others", they nicknamed him "Cain at the crack of dawn". I restrained from joining in on these jokes. The truth is that there were no meddlers around when I was with him, and we got work done. I was never with him in the company of others, so I couldn't be aware of his keen anxiety to be supported by his apparently most faithful fans. (I have discovered that such anxiety is common among old war-horses.) I would often tell myself that in my duty toward my friend and toward truth itself I should ask questions from time to time, or at least be especially attentive. But I never went beyond making the most discreet observations, so that neither the colonel nor anybody else would take note. If on some occasion he did manage to notice, he seemed so surprised and disappointed that I hastened to repeat to him that his admonitions were justified. Sometimes I asked myself if I weren't the arrogant one, if I weren't treating the patriotic old colonel like a child whom one shouldn't take seriously. I am probably being hard on myself. Perhaps I thought it pedantic to make a human being suffer over some truth that was merely an abstraction.
Continues in issue 19. Order now.
Translated by Suzanne Jill Levine
