The Elder Lady by Jorge Luis Borges — Read

The Elder LadyOn the fourteenth of January, 1941, María Justina Rubio de Jáuregui was to be one hundred years old. She was the last surviving daughter of any of the soldiers who had fought in the South American War of Independence.

Colonel Mariano Rubio, her father, was what might, without irreverence, be called a minor immortal. Born in 1799 in the Buenos Aires parish of La Merced, the son of local landowners, he was promoted to ensign in San Martín's Army of the Andes, and he fought in the battle of Chacabuco, in the defeat of Cancha Rayada, at Maipú, and, two years after that, at Arequipa. It is told that on the eve of one of these battles, he and a fellow-officer, José de Olavarría, exchanged swords. At the beginning of April, 1823, there took place the famous engagement of Big Hill, which, having been fought in a valley between two summits, is often also known as the battle of Red Hill. Always envious of our glories, the Venezuelans attribute this victory to General Simón Bolívar, but the impartial observer, the Argentine historian, is not easily taken in and knows only too well that the laurels rightfully belong to Colonel Mariano Rubio. The Colonel, at the head of a regiment of Colombian hussars, turned the tide in this battle, waged entirely with sabers and lances, which paved the way for the no less famous action at Ayacucho, in which he also took part, receiving a wound. In 1827, it was his fate to fight boldly at Ituzaingó, under the immediate command of Alvear. In spite of his blood tie with the dictator Rosas, in later years he Was one of Lavalle's men, and once broke up a troop of gaucho militia in an action the Colonel always referred to as a saberfest. With the defeat of the Unitarians, he emigrated to Uruguay, where he married. In the eighteen-forties, in the course of that country's long civil war, the Guerra Grande, he died in Montevideo during the siege of the city by Oribe's Blancos. He was nearly forty-four, which at that time was almost old age. He had been a friend of the writer Florencio Varela. It is quite likely that professors at the Military Academy would have flunked him, since his only experience lay in fighting battles, not in taking examinations.