Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord

by Louis de Bernières

  Real bravery is perhaps when one conquers fear and performs what one is afraid to do. Dionisio on the other hand, although he did not know it, was a man to whom heroism came naturally and of itself. This was because he had had bred into him the strongest instincts of moral outrage, and this would instantly overrule any impulses to flight. His fury rose the instant he saw the two scum approaching with their knives, and he assumed that they were about to try to rob him and Anica. He threw Anica to the cobbles to get her out of the line of the knives, and confronted them.

  In his anger, his eyes glinting with contempt, his mouth snarling, his feet planted apart and his arms spread, he had all the appearance of a tigre about to spring on a little coypu. The assassins stopped dead and their eyes rolled sideways to look at each other. Their victim suddenly looked twice as big as he had before, and what had seemed to be fat suddenly looked like solid muscle. ‘What do you want, assholes?’ he said very clearly and very menacingly.

  There was a silence as the two assassins hoped that the other would speak first, then one of them said, ‘Hand over your wallet.’

  ‘Chinga tu madre, hijo de puta,’ spat Dionisio, and even though this was the worst thing one could say, and an insult which only death could avenge, neither of the two men moved. Behind Dionisio, Anica started to stand up, ashen pale and shaking, and the men turned their attention to her with relief. ‘And you, flaca, you can take off that ring.’

  ‘Leave it where it is, querida. If one of them touches you I will tear his balls off by God, and ram them down his throat.’

  The two men knew that they had to act, that one of them had to move and get the knife into Dionisio’s guts, but neither wanted to be the first. Then one of them, who was ashamed to seem a coward, came forward and feinted with his weapon. Dionisio moved with the swiftness of a great caiman, caught the man’s arm by the wrist, pulled him forward, and kicked his legs from under him. As he went down Dionisio knelt beneath him and snapped his arm at the elbow when it came against his knee. The man howled, crawled to the wall, and lay whimpering against it.

  The other man, his eyes rolling, tried to turn and flee. But Dionisio was now so colossally enraged that he did not let the man run. He threw his whole weight against the assassin like a mountain in avalanche. The man went sprawling, rolled, and to Dionisio’s surprise Anica flashed past him uttering a vicious yell, and kicked the assassin in the stomach with enormous force. Then she kicked him in the face and spat on him as he doubled up with his hands over his bloodied mouth. Dionisio yanked his head back by the hair and with one hand picked up the knife that lay beside him.

  Dionisio was a gentle man, a man who was besotted with cats, a man who liked to pass his time mulling over incomprehensible philosophical tomes, playing his instruments, and making love. He was a man who had at the age of eighteen scandalised the National Service selection board by announcing that he was a pacifist. But this was a different Dionisio, a Dionisio with all the bloody righteousness of the Old Testament God, and he only did not cut the man’s throat because Anica put her hand on his wrist and said desperately, ‘No, querido.’

  Dionisio changed the angle of the blade and savagely thrust it up beneath the man’s jaw so that it went through his tongue and lodged in his palate. ‘Eat it, polla de perro,’ he said ferociously, and taking Anica’s hand he strode off with her without looking back.

  They did not say a word to each other until they reached the bar. Dionisio was still so furious that he could hardly breathe, and Anica was holding her lips so tightly together that they whitened. She was beginning to feel sick, but, like Dionisio, she just walked faster. They arrived at the bar and saw Ramon sitting alone at a table. They threw themselves down on the chairs, and Anica buried her face in her hands and began to twitch and shake uncontrollably. Ramon looked at her in bewilderment, and then at Dionisio. Dionisio’s right eye was twitching, he had a wild staring look, and he was breathing as though he had just been pulling a bull on a rope. ‘What –’ Ramon began to say, but Dionisio waved his hand at him for him to shut up. Ramon stood up, knowing clearly that something terrible had happened, and, knowing from his experience that he would have to wait to hear what it was, he hastened to the bar and came back with double doses of aguardiente. Anica did not look up to see hers, but Dionisio tried to take his, and found that his hand was shaking too much. He looked at Ramon, and managed to say, ‘Thieves.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Ramon. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Knives.’

  ‘Are you hurt? Is Anica all right? What did they take?’

  ‘They took nothing,’ said Dionisio, managing to sip some alcohol, but spilling more of it. ‘It was them who got hurt.’ Then he blurted out ‘Ramon, you should have seen Bugsita kick that bastard.’

  He put his arm around Anica and she leaned towards him and laid her head on his shoulder. With her left hand she clutched onto his shirt, and tears began to pour down her cheeks onto his clothes. Dionisio held her tightly and they sat clutching each other as they shook and trembled. He kissed the top of her head and breathed in the smell of her hair. Ramon looked at them like that, and found that the scene made him feel sentimental, so that he felt like crying as well.

  It took Ramon all evening to get the full story out of them. As their shaking wore off, it was replaced with a kind of exultation over their exploit. Ramon felt that it was like trying to talk to people who were drunk at a fiesta. When Anica went to the excusado, Ramon leaned forward and said urgently, ‘Listen friend, I told you you were in danger. Now take my word for it, will you?’

  ‘Ay, Ramon, they were thieves, that is all. They are both regretting it now. It was nothing to do with that other business.’ Ramon began to shake his head pityingly, so Dionisio continued, ‘They did not try to kill me at first. They demanded money.’

  Ramon began to lose his temper. ‘Look, listen to me for once. Madre de Dios, you are so naive. You know nothing but what you read in books and what you do with your polla. I do not warn you for nothing, idiot, but because I have information that I cannot tell you because it is confidential, and to do with things that you only write letters about. Leave this town, or I will concoct a charge and lock you up for your own safety.’

  Disquieted by this outburst, Dionisio insisted weakly, ‘They were thieves.’

  Anica started to return, her steps careful but unsteady, and Ramon threw his hands up in a gesture of despair and hissed, ‘You stupid son of a bitch.’

  Back in the alley where the couple had merely gone to kiss, the assassins had been hiding in a doorway and waiting for the night. When it came they dragged themselves agonisingly away. The one with the ruined arm was repeating senselessly, ‘He was just a professor, a stupid son-of-a-bitch professor,’ and the other was holding his bandana against his wound and letting the blood roll out of his mouth to leave a trail along the dust which was soon busy with ants. They never returned to report to El Jerarca.

  That night Anica and Dionisio made love three times with ferocious abandon, their bodies incandescent with lust, as though their brush with death had revealed to them the tenuousness of their hold on life and on each other. From that day forward Anica, who was intuitive about such things, began to think of her lover as a man of preternatural force; but she was also a little afraid, as if she knew that he had a destiny.

  10 The Justice Minister Resigns

  Your Excellency,

  This week the former mayor of Cordoba was assassinated in front of his wife and children. Explosive bullets shredded him so completely that his corpse had to be gathered in plastic sacks, and a police guard had to be placed around the spot to prevent the dogs from licking up the blood and the vultures from collecting the little pieces that had not yet been picked out of the trees.

  In our national constitution, widely regarded as the most enlightened in the world, it is stated that ‘justice is a public service to be rendered by the nation.’ The reform of 1945 states that ‘property is a social function that implies obliga
tions’ and that the state may interfere in the execution of private and public business and industry for the purpose of rationalising production, distribution and consumption of goods, and to give labour the protection which is its right. Also stated is that ‘the State protects the lives, honour and possessions of all its citizens.’

  Your Excellency, we have had ten Justice Ministers in the last two years. In the last year five alcaldes, ten intendentes, and fifty judges have been assassinated by the coca caciques, and in addition thousands of ordinary citizens have been killed, tortured, and intimidated.

  I cannot remain as Justice Minister as long as Your Excellency resolutely declines to make available to me the means to uphold the constitution. The coca-rich acknowledge no responsibility accruing from the monopoly of property and power, and the state has failed to protect the lives, honour, or property of its citizens. The state has failed above all to uphold its own honour, and we are now lower in international estimation than we were even in the time of La Violencia.

  I have repeatedly requested Your Excellency to declare a state of National Emergency and to mobilise the armed forces, but Your Excellency has persistently refused. As long as Your Excellency continues in this policy there is no point at all in having a Minister of Justice, and there is no point in having a constitution. For the sake of my family, I regret that it will now be necessary for me to take up residence in the United States, and it is with a heavy heart that I take leave of my Office and my benighted country.

  Dr Maria Paz Bernardez,

  Minister of Justice,

  The Ministry of Justice.

  11 The Disappearance

  ‘OK, CHICOS,’ SAID El Jerarca, ‘the plan is simplicity itself. This Vivo is becoming too well known just to blow him away just like that, OK?’ He took a deep drag on his puro and disappeared behind a cloud of gun-metal smoke. ‘The road south out of town has no turn-offs for twelve kilometres, OK? And it is full of dangerous downhill bends, yes? All you have to do is watch until he leaves his house and heads out of town that way. Then you use the walkie-talkie, and after a few minutes you set up your roadblock, and you let everyone through except for him. Claro? Then he goes over the edge in his car, and he has unfortunately suffered a fatal accident.’

  El Jerarca smiled at his own ingenuity; he always liked to make the plans himself, just so that he stayed in touch with how it was all done. But one of the boys said, ‘Listen boss, what if the chica is with him, what do we do then?’

  ‘Then you take her out of the car, and he goes over by himself. I have certain guarantees from Señor Moreno that his daughter will not say a word except that she managed to jump clear before the car went over. He is a very understanding man, boys.’

  They all laughed in their throats, a laugh of complicity such as conspirators always laugh; it was the laugh of men who have been guilty for so long that the only choice is to give up hope of remission and sink further into guilt. It was the laugh of men who have been conditioned not even to trust their blood brothers, and feel so uneasy in the world that they continually avenge themselves further upon it.

  Dionisio told Anica that he had a secret place where he used to go in order to think, or to wallow in his depressions so thoroughly that they were over with more quickly. ‘It is just south of town,’ he said, ‘I think you will like it, and we can be alone there.’

  Anica was in her tempting shorts again, and Dionisio had put on his swimming shorts under his baggy trousers to save having to change into them when they arrived. Anica hated his baggy trousers because they were not fashionable, but Dionisio refused to wear the skintight ones that she advocated. ‘I am not going to squash my cojones even for you, querida, and furthermore they make one too hot, so that rashes develop, and they restrict one’s movement too much.’ Anica would shrug and make faces that were supposed to indicate how horrible his trousers were, and then launch into a tirade against his belt, which Dionisio also refused to abandon because his mother had bought it for him in Bucaramanga, when she had visited a cousin in Colombia. He would also decline to stop wearing the badges that she referred to as his ‘hippy badges’. One of them had a dove on it with an olive branch in its beak, and the other bore a garish representation of the rising sun. He wore them because he wanted to brighten up his appearance and because he approved of the sentiments that they seemed to imply.

  Dressed, then, in a manner thoroughly distasteful to Anica, and with her shifting the gears to provoke him, Dionisio drove his ancient car out of town towards the roadblock set up by the gangsters, who had been duly alerted by a man who had appeared to be sweeping the street. About half-way there, he suddenly turned on the lights and swung the car dramatically into the cliff-face. Anica yelled, tried to grab the wheel, and hid her face in her hands.

  When she peered through her fingers at last, she saw that they were in a cave. With incredulity on her face she turned sharply in her seat and looked behind her to try to understand how they had driven through solid rock. Dionisio smiled smugly at her. ‘See, the creepers completely disguise the opening.’

  Anica threw back her head and breathed deeply with one hand on her heart. ‘O bastardo,’ she said at last, ‘you nearly gave me a heart attack. Truly, I shit myself.’

  ‘Not truly, I hope,’ he said. ‘Did you bring spare underwear?’

  She pretended to hit him, and said, ‘Pedant.’

  He left the lights of the car on while they got out and looked around. It was a very large cave with a wet floor, and everything seemed to be furry with some kind of lichen. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘stalagmites and stalactites. I can never remember which is which.’

  To their surprise they found a brand-new shoe abandoned; they swapped idiotic theories as to how it might have got there, and then they decided to leave it there in case its owner returned for it, perhaps dishevelled from her frolics. ‘I hope it is not there for something sinister,’ said Anica. ‘It seems very odd that something as new and expensive as this should have been left.’

  Dionisio went and turned off his car lights, and Anica found that it was still quite light. She looked up and there was a hole on the roof of the cave. ‘I reckon it fell through there,’ she said. ‘Is there a flat patch up there?’

  ‘Yes, querida, and we are going to go up there. There is an easy climb to it through another hole. Up there is a little piece of paradise, like the garden of Eden.’

  They went a little further into the cave towards the second patch of light, and scrambled up the rocks. Anica poked her head out and was amazed. ‘Dio’, you would have no idea this was here, looking up from the road.’

  It was a large flat space with a pond in the middle, surrounded by trees stunted into extraordinary and evocative shapes. ‘Those trees look like little old men,’ she exclaimed.

  Anica laid the rug down and took all her clothes off in order to bask contentedly in the sunshine, and Dionisio did likewise in order to experience the sensation of freedom. The couple caressed and made love, and then Dionisio went to the edge of the water to look for crustaceans, because he had the idea of making a paella. But the water had a slimy appearance, and when he put his hand in to take a drink it felt greasy and thick. He bent down to smell it, and it stank of deliquescence. ‘I think there is a dead animal in here,’ he called to Anica. ‘The water is foul. I am not going to swim.’

  He found a few crustaceans and gathered them, but his feet became covered with the stinking mud, so he went and washed them in the little waterfall that fed the pond. ‘I think that the water seeps through the rocks into the cave,’ he said, ‘and that is why it is wet in there.’

  ‘Why does it not flow out over the road, then?’

  ‘Maybe it goes down a crack and comes out somewhere else.’

  He went and lay down next to Anica and tickled between her legs with a feather he had picked up. She squealed and sat up, and they had a mock fight. They spent the rest of the daylight basking in the sun, dozing, and walking amongst the trees, until it was
time to go home and eat.

  The body of the young woman with her feet encased in concrete continued to rot at the bottom of the pond in Dionisio’s Garden of Eden, putrefying beneath the spot where it had been thrown casually from the helicopter. Her shoe, thrown out as an afterthought as the aircraft flew away, continued to lie undisturbed in the cave, having fallen through the hole in the roof just as Anica had supposed.

  As the two lovers slept, the former lover of the body in the pond was listening to the embarrassed explanations of the men at the roadblock. ‘Listen, boss, we had a man at the last house coming out of town, and he saw them go past, and that is the truth, boss. There are no turnings at all along there and there was nowhere they could have gone; nowhere, just like you said.’

  ‘OK chicos, so where did they go?’ said El Jerarca. ‘Make it a good explanation, OK?’

  ‘We waited an hour, boss, and then we thought maybe he has broken down in that old car of his, so we went and we looked for him. We drove up and down that route a hundred times, but we saw absolutely nothing of him, nothing. Then six hours later he comes driving back into town with a big smile on his face like he has just been made president. It is not good, boss, the man must be a brujo or something to pull a trick like that. I tell you it makes me nervous. Maybe he could turn me into a snake or something.’

  El Jerarca put his hands on his hips and went to the window to think. ‘You are right, chicos, there is something going on. You know those boys I sent after him?’ They nodded. ‘Well, they never came back. There was not a trace.’ The roadblockers caught each others’ glances as if to confirm with each other that truly this failure was no fault of theirs. ‘So what do we do, boss?’