Autor: Tassilon-Stavros
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Un
puesto militar en tiempo de paz es un lugar monótono. Pueden ocurrir
algunas cosas, pero se repiten una y otra vez [Carson Mc Cullers]... Me hablaron de un fuerte en el Noroeste de Estados Unidos donde, hace pocos
años, 1949 para ser más exactos, tuvo lugar un suicidio y un asesinato.
Los participantes en esta fatalidad fueron: un sacerdote militar, un
soldado, un capitán, una mujer y un perro.
A
military post in peacetime is a monotonous place. Some things may
happen, but they are repeated again and again [Carson MC Cullers]... "They told me about a fort in the Northwest United States where, a few years ago, 1949
to be more exact, suicide and murder took place. The
participants in this fatality were: a military priest, a soldier, a captain, a
woman and a dog.
El enemigo más letal del ejército de EEUU: el suicidio. Un
estudio analiza datos de 200 años. Tradicionalmente las tasas de
suicidio entre los militares descienden en periodos de guerra, y la
tendencia comienza a cambiar en tiempos de paz. [JAMA Network Open]
The deadliest enemy of the US army: suicide. A study analyzes
data of 200 years. Traditionally, suicide
rates among the military drop in periods of war, and the trend begins to change in peacetime. [JAMA Network Open]
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El capitán visita con frecuencia el espejo. Es soldado taumaturgo, médico y profeta de sí mismo. Vive con intensidad irracional la mezcla y disolución de esa virilidad que, por emocional turno, dominan al hombre en la evolución del tiempo. Porque al capitán, tras dos años de insufrible matrimonio, entrado ahora en la edad de los cuarenta y ocho, ciertas particularidades conyugales comienzan a hacerle sentir su desavenido peso. Pero, aunque el capitán no alcance a meditarlo, no es posible que las sensaciones mueran por entero. Pasan unas a través de otras, y vuelven a nacer cada vez de una forma. Del amor, que nunca existió, Thomas Huntington se reconoció a sí mismo, pese a todo, como hombre perfectamente encajado en los cánones más nobles y armoniosos del estamento varonil. Del odio, ya cada vez más presente en su vida, la génesis de sus pasadas apreciaciones se le presentan ahora como conjeturas un tanto engañosas. Su rostro parece decirlo con más profundidad. Irradia una escrutadora mirada de rabiosa soledad, metáfora de piel formada por las aristas azulosas de unos ojos inquietos. Su amplia mandíbula, cuidadosamente afeitada a diario, semeja un limitado mar oscuro al que surca una nariz roma de boxeador noqueado. De su muy modelada boca los labios brotan prietos y copiosos, pero lívidos de sequedad. Y allí se quedan, como repelidos por unos dientes corsarios, que rajan con sus sables la rasurada umbría de la cara. Una cara levemente hendida por tres cicatrices de combate en la pasada contienda mundial. El capitán Huntington es todo británico en su porte.
El capitán y su esposa, Margaret Huntington, vivían en un extremo alejado de los barracones del campamento. Su casa era un típico edificio cuartelario, casi monástico, de dos pisos y cinco habitaciones, tres de las cuales se hallaban selladas por falta de uso. El guarnecido amarillento del inmueble, dañado por el tiempo, ofrecía una imagen de apacible vulgaridad. En hilera y con separaciones ajardinadas, la casa Huntington era idéntica al resto de las otras viviendas que presidían la calle. Una extensa arboleda de arces envolvía y contemplaba todo aquel vecindario formado por militares de mayor o menor rango. Pero, pese a toda esta habitada contigüidad, con sus únicas respiraciones allí dentro resguardadas, la calle resultaba tan estrujada como solitaria.
Con sus porches agitanados por algunas flores frágiles, en los que parecía querer penetrar también el jardincillo frontal y acercarse para no quedarse solo en sus portales cerrados, estas casas, acechándose, ofrendaban también un aire de borrosa flaccidez cuando las devoraba alguna de aquellas tardes lluviosas o de rojo desprendido de un crepúsculo de vendaval. A lo lejos, después de esta jerárquica singularidad habitacional, en una nueva quietud de recinto familiar, los barracones y la iglesia próxima remataban certeramente y en toda su necesaria modelación la vieja pradera, que una vez fue huerto sagrado de las cercanías urbanas, y ahora astillado por el prolongado enchapado militarista. Una gran extensión boscosa, de unas diez millas, crecía en el horizonte del fuerte. Era una zona agreste revestida por altos pinos y una inmensa abundancia floral. Y en aquel entorno semi salvaje y laberíntico se ocultaban a la vista humana zorros, ciervos y hasta algún que otro jabalí. Y también las ásperas carrascas y las zarzas, más cercanas al campamento, como invasores herbajes montaraces, de contornos de siglos, formaban una nueva anécdota del paisaje. Desnudas y foscas entrañas que dejaban sus agónicos gritos frente a una naturaleza ahora de piedra y metal.
A Margaret Huntington, sin ser excesivamente bonita, no le complace la abnegación violenta y militarista que le profesa su marido Thomas. En realidad, Margaret no ha amado nunca a Thomas. Ni parece haber amado antes a nadie. Es una mujer fría y distante. En su vida, marcada por el fanatismo religioso, intolerante y odioso de su padre, un pastor evangélico, no han habido hombres ni pasiones. De ello se desprende que no hayan existido jamás grandes afectos tras esa máscara de relajación amoral que la cubre. Margaret es de ese tipo de mujer capaz de enamorar sin conceder nada; y podría engañar a todos los hombres sin ser fiel a ninguno. Pero estas incongruencias son sólo aparentes, porque Margaret sí abre su esquivo antifaz, y de sus mejillas redondas y sofocadas, de su boca tierna y casi esmaltada por unos labios gatunos, parten emociones que la alimentan; emociones que poseen una amorosa alegría aniñada, una enérgica piedad de gozo caliente por Lissy, su hermosa hembra pitbull de amarronado color. En la exactitud de sus silencios antipáticos tan sólo siente esta oculta raíz emocional por un perro. Por ello, ha preferido siempre con mucho a los animales. Siendo muy niña, recordaba a una gata que merodeaba por el agreste campo cercano a su hogar familiar. Y cuando el pobre animal tuvo una camada de cachorros, su padre no dudó en sacrificarla junto con sus gatitos recién nacidos. Nunca pudo perdonárselo... Margaret y Lissy, hartas de sentirse vigiladas, vuelan juntas cada vez que les es posible por el bosque cercano, por sus caminos y arboledas Toda aquella calma se acomoda para el goce de Margaret. Y así se cumple en ambas, mujer y mascota, una especie de antigüedad anímica con la tierra. Una inexplicable necesidad biológica y estética capaz de unirse con un sentimiento étnico y exclusivista de recóndita estampa infantil.
Margaret no carece, sin embargo, de esa conciencia sensitiva de sus cualidades de mujer, que en una callada exclamación de sus sentidos, puede hasta vanagloriarse de ser hermosa sin serlo. Precisamente, porque nadie de entre las amistades militares del campamento lo contradice, y mucho menos Thomas, la esposa apática no se cohíbe. También se podría asegurar que en ella la sensualidad ha sido anecdotizada por una ingenuidad a lo Brueghel. Y que su desnudez insuficiente, posterior a la del hombre, se niegue ahora a morder del cielo solitario del viejo Paraíso. La imagen de Margaret, que no pudo ser niña, y con el que se nos ofreciera Eva. Un casi imperceptible estrabismo se ha quedado escarchado en sus pupilas pardas, sobre las que caen, como un grito curvado, sus castaños cabellos suntuosos. Margaret es como una gata de contornos tibios; un pequeño felino no criado del todo. Y en ese engaño, no puede por menos que rechazar las manos del cuerpo de Adán.Las pocas hojas de los arces estaban ya más descoloridas y más alargadas. Los días iban respirando en ondas invernales que helaban las tardes, y el sol, cuando asomaba, parecía tenderse sin calor en distancias estrechas y lejanas. Y de nuevo los días nos acercan imágenes concretas, vinculadas al sincronismo anecdótico del fuerte. Y Margaret, frente al acecho de Thomas, que puede llegar a no dejarla disfrutar de la libertad en ella deseable, no acaba por rehuir la milicia vecina, tan inmediata como la quietud del gran recinto militar. Y forma parte también del anecdotario obligado de esa confraternidad forzada. Y ante ese cuerpo transitorio de amistades, la vida se recupera, y el hachazo recóndito se desmiente.
[Captain
Thomas Huntington was a man of tight and rough meat trapped in a stable and
consistent manner in his impolite military suit. But his body, thus hidden
among the tight uniformity imposed by his rank in the army, was already
inscribed in the damage of an incipient obesity. The proportion of its height, just
about 5.9 inches, oscillated in its subconscious between discouragement and forced acceptance. He had
acquired the unchanging disciplinary habit of the firm and ceremonial soldier.
An affectation without deception. A den
in which to shelter its manifest vanity. They were the genuine lines with which
the pity man. Lines that have disrupted physiognomies originating from
ministers, senators, deputies, tycoons, lawyers, bankers, and military. Future
apocryphal limits for the ferment in the narrow coffin. The
captain fueled the incentive of his authority as if it were solely the work of
an exclusive merit. A
heritage of his iron ambitious will. Because the captain was a careerist
who did not cease to auscultate himself, as if to feel that "one goes all over one." There was
no statistics, no data, no army regulations that had not been screened, sieve
in sieve, in his memory. But his conscience was unaware of any kind of
sybilitic phrase as the Socratic could well be: "How
many things I have no need of" because everything was scrutinized,
everything was removed, everything was palpated, until it was done as
soon as he elucidated his exalted military cartridge. In Captain Huntington
there was much of the
avid architect who leaves nothing intact for other creators.
The captain frequently visits the mirror. He is a soldier miracle worker, a physician, and a prophet himself. He lives with irrational intensity the mixture and dissolution of that virility that, by emotional turn, dominate man in the evolution of time. Because to the captain, after two years of insufferable marriage, now entering the age of forty-eight, certain conjugal peculiarities begin to make him feel their misguided weight. But, even if the captain does not manage to meditate it, it is not possible that the sensations die completely. They pass through each other, and are reborn each time in one way. Of love, which never existed, Thomas Huntington recognized himself, despite everything, as a man perfectly fitted into the noblest and most harmonious canons of the male establishment. Of hatred, already more and more present in his life, the genesis of his past appreciations now appear to him as somewhat misleading conjectures. His face seems to say it more deeply. He radiates a searching gaze of angry loneliness, a metaphor for skin formed by the bluish edges of restless eyes. His broad jaw, carefully shaved daily, resembles a limited dark sea lined with the blunt nose of a knocked out boxer. From her highly modeled mouth the lips sprout tight and copious, but livid with dryness. And there they remain, as if repelled by corsair teeth, which slit with their sabers the shaved shaved face of the face. A face slightly scarred by three combat scars in the last world contest. Captain Huntington is all British in bearing.
The captain and his wife, Margaret Huntington, lived at one end away from the camp barracks. His house was a typical, almost monastic, two-story, five-room, quartet building, three of which were sealed for lack of use. The yellowish trim of the property, damaged by time, offered an image of gentle vulgarity. In a row and with landscaped separations, the Huntington house was identical to the rest of the other houses that presided over the street. An extensive maple grove enveloped and contemplated the entire neighborhood formed by military officers of greater or lesser rank. But, despite all this inhabited contiguity, with its only breaths inside sheltered, the street was as crowded as lonely.
With their porches agitated by some fragile flowers, in which they seemed to want to also penetrate the front garden and approach to not stay alone in their closed portals, these houses, stalking, also offered an air of blurred sagging when they were devoured by one of those rainy afternoons or red detached from a gale twilight. In the distance, after this hierarchical housing singularity, in a new stillness of family enclosure, the barracks and the nearby church finished off the old meadow, which was once a sacred garden near the urban surroundings, and now in all its necessary modeling. splintered by the long militaristic veneer. A large wooded expanse, about ten miles, was growing on the horizon of the fort. It was a rugged area lined with tall pine trees and an immense floral abundance. And in that semi-wild and labyrinthine environment, foxes, deer and even the occasional wild boar were hidden from human sight.And also the rough holm oaks and brambles, closer to the camp, like invading mountainous herbaras, contours of centuries, formed a new anecdote of the landscape. Naked and weak bowels that left their agonized screams in front of a nature now of stone and metal.
Margaret Huntington, without being excessively pretty, is not pleased by the violent and militaristic self-denial that her husband Thomas professes towards her. In reality, Margaret has never loved Thomas. She doesn't seem to have loved anyone before. She is a cold and distant woman. In her life, marked by the religious, intolerant and hateful fanaticism of her father, an evangelical pastor, there have been no men or passions. From this it follows that there have never been great affections behind that mask of amoral relaxation that covers it. Margaret is the type of woman capable of making you fall in love without conceding anything; and she could deceive all men without being faithful to any. But these inconsistencies are only apparent, because Margaret does open her elusive mask, and from her round and suffocated cheeks, from her tender mouth and almost enameled by cat lips, come emotions that feed her; emotions that possess a loving childish joy, an energetic pity of warm joy for Lissy, her beautiful female pitbull of her brown color. In the accuracy of her unsympathetic silences, only she feels this hidden emotional root for a dog. For this reason, she has always preferred animals by far. As a very young girl, she remembered a cat that prowled the wild field near her family home. And when the poor animal had a litter of puppies, her father did not hesitate to sacrifice her along with her newborn kittens. She could never forgive himself... Margaret and Lissy, fed up with feeling watched, fly together whenever possible through the nearby forest, through its paths and groves. All that calm is accommodated for Margaret's enjoyment. And so it is fulfilled in both, woman and pet, a kind of psychic antiquity with the earth. An inexplicable biological and aesthetic need capable of uniting with an ethnic and exclusivist feeling of a recondite childish stamp.
Margaret does
not lack, however, that sensitive awareness of her qualities as a woman, who in
a quiet exclamation of her senses, can even boast of being beautiful without
being so. Precisely, because nobody among the military friends of the camp
contradicts it, much less Thomas, the apathetic wife is not prohibited. One could
also assure that in it the sensuality has been anecdotal by a naivety to
Brueghel. And that his insufficient nakedness, subsequent to that of man, now
refuses to bite from the lonely sky of old Paradise. Margaret's image is, however,
a satin auction metaphor. The honey color of her flesh has that Edenic
well-being, which could not be a girl, and with which Eva offered us. An almost
imperceptible strabismus has remained frosty in its brown pupils, on which
fall, like a curved scream, its sumptuous brown hairs. Margaret is
like a cat with warm contours; A little feline not raised at all. And in that
deception, he cannot help but reject the hands of Adam's body.
The few
leaves of the maples were already faded and more elongated. The days were
breathing in winter waves that froze the afternoons, and the sun, as it
appeared, seemed to run without heat over narrow and distant distances. And again
the days bring us concrete images, linked to the anecdotal synchronism of the
fort. And Margaret, facing Thomas's stalking, who may not let her enjoy the freedom in
her desirable, does not end up avoiding the neighboring militia, as immediate
as the stillness of the great military compound. And it is also part of the forced anecdotary of that forced fellowship. And before this transitory body of friendships, life recovers, and the recondite ax is denied.]
