Nacha Regules

by Manuel Gálvez

Three nights a week Monsalvat held classes for some of the workmen in the district. He had begun with three or four pupils, but they had increased in numbers until now he had a class of twenty or thirty. They all knew how to read. He talked to them about history, about the different countries he had travelled in, about ethics. His simple eloquence attracted these simple workers. As he commented upon some of the day's occurrences, or a passage in some book, he summoned before them a vision of a new society, of an era of love, and justice. At such times his voice rang with human sympathy and a strange mystic fervor.

But on that night Monsalvat could not speak to his class in this strain; for there was hate in his heart. The cruel treatment Nacha had suffered in the store had stirred him to the depths of his consciousness, and a multitude of details accumulated there and forgotten, had risen to the surface, looming large with sudden significance.

As the workmen filed into the room they shook hands with Monsalvat and exchanged a few words with him. He always asked after their children, or their wives and mothers. Then most of them sat down. A few preferred to stand, leaning against the wall.

"Today," he was saying, "I came to understand something which I have never understood before, though it is something true, something fundamental! I have been talking to you about love's power to change the world. Well, I was wrong! Love cannot transform the world. It is nineteen hundred years since the world heard the most sublime definition of love. None since has surpassed it, for none can. Yet this love, in spite of the example given us with its definition, has accomplished nothing. What then can we accomplish? If the words that were spoken those many years ago have never been understood by mankind, that must mean that men will never understand any words of love. So then, we must preach hate. For to preach love is to become the accomplice of injustice. To preach love is to work for the preservation of things as they are, to wait for the advent of a day that will never come! Love is almost always passive, inert. Hate is action. Hate will give us strength; and with this strength we shall succeed in winning the world to love. This then is what we must do. Through hate, move on to love. Through violence, the instrument of hate, impose peace, fraternity, justice! Moreover, when we use hate and violence, we who are the underdogs, you and I, my friends, will only be using the methods used toward us. Those who control, despise and hate us, and use violence against us every moment of their lives. They have organized hate and violence. They use force not only in secret, but in broad daylight. I have seen how they use it on the human body, its life and health, imposing monstrous and destructive tasks on human beings! I have seen how they use it on human minds, condemning them to eternal ignorance! I have seen them use it on women, and on children. Even those who come to us with gentle words, hate us and only want our servitude to continue. No, my friends. Love will not set us free. Will the British shareholder who receives enormous dividends for his capital invested in our railroads, in our large stores, in our packing houses, listen to the voice of love? Will the tenement landlords who throw women and sick children out on the street listen to the voice of love? Do you believe they will? Will they listen to any language other than that of check and bank note? But there is another language which they can understand even though they don't want to, the language of our violence!"

His pupils listened, motionless, but stirred. Some of them seemed uneasy, as at the memory of a wrong; others looked at their teacher with pity and with pain; others appeared rapt in a vision of new worlds. It was evident too that more than one of them had difficulty in understanding, and that nearly all of them were trying to establish a relation between their own past and the words they were listening to. For they had led lives of suffering always. They knew squalor, and hunger; but with the years they had grown accustomed to misery and poverty.

There was a pause. No one moved. No one, not even Monsalvat, dared to speak. Something impressive was there among those men, like a visible presence, and they seemed all to be gazing at it; and it was everywhere. It was in each one of them, and in their comrade's eyes, in the echo of their teacher's words that haunted their ears, in the deep stillness of the room, in the rapid beating of their hearts.

The silence continued. One man tried to speak, but he looked about him at his listeners, and said no more. At last they understood that there was nothing to say, and they all got up simultaneously. One by one they shook hands with Monsalvat. Never had those hands of theirs seemed so warm, so vibrant, so vigorous. Some of the men had tears in their eyes, one could not have told whether from joy or sadness.

When his class had gone, Monsalvat felt that he had accomplished an act of justice, that he had taken a step, at least, toward the world's transformation. Living as he did on sentiment and imagination, with little or no sense of reality, he believed in the efficacy of the vague abstract formulas he preached. In his ardent desire for a better world there was a deal of mysticism: he lacked concrete rules, plans of action, the realization that discipline is the basis of progress. In his individualistic and lyric exaltation, he imagined that by means of the just and tragic emotions of revolt, such as he had that evening preached, and only through such means, could a better society be brought about.

The next day he received a summons from the police. He was not disturbed; but he supposed that the secret-service had reported him. On arriving at headquarters he was led to the chief's office, where he found himself face to face with an official personage who affected Napoleonic brusqueness and thoroughness, and tried hard, in spite of a sharp, thin face, to look like that Conqueror. Monsalvat knew him, which did not prevent the chief's adopting a condescending manner towards him.