Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord

by Louis de Bernières

  Lazaro learned from them about the great sorcerer Dionisio Vivo, who walked about the town with an empty look in his eyes and two giant black jaguars of Cochadebajo de los Gatos at his heels. Dionisio Vivo had the scars of a hanged man about his neck and the gash of a knife where his throat had been cut and he had not died. Dionisio Vivo knew how to conquer death and had worked miracles.

  One day on a Saturday morning, in the plaza, Lazaro saw a man walk by who could be no other than the brujo himself, and he threw himself down at his feet. Dionisio stopped, and people who had been watching him anyway took a new interest in this sudden turn of events.

  Lazaro threw back the hood of his garment, and some of the people screamed or gasped with horror. Dionisio Vivo looked down at Lazaro, who was extending his arms in supplication: ‘Heal me, dueño,’ he said.

  52 Las Locas (2)

  WHEN LETICIA LEFT, writing him a note with all the ambience of a testamental deposition and a last request, Dionisio stood in the impermeable darkness of his renewed solitude and considered its proposition that he should go to the other women. He rolled up the piece of paper, and then unrolled it and read it again.

  On the way down to the camp Dionisio entered the police station and left a note for Ramon:

  Querido Cabron,

  Understand me when I say that finally I have woken up and have come back to live in this world. I have been close to death; I have been reputed dead once, when the newspapers pre-empted the facts, and I have died once, for which I have the scars upon my neck. As one who has some familiarity with death and who therefore understands the full poignance of life, I wish you to know that I am your true friend loyal to death, and that I love you equally as you have shown that you love me, with the love of David and Jonathan. It is necessary to tell you this, old friend, because it is a debt demanded by life that I owe to you, and I pay it to you now because it is fresh in my heart. Dionisio.

  Fulgencia Astiz, formidable Santandereana with a revolver in her belt instead of her superannuated Corpus-Christi anti-rape charm, with her bottles of aphrodisiacs and her campesina’s muscles, matriarch of the camp, recognised Dionisio as soon as he entered the encampment. She took one glance at the man with the lope of an Indian, the scars of a hanged man, and the two hypnotic cats with yellow eyes and paws shod in black velvet, and she knew without doubt that this was the Dionisio Vivo of her maternal ambitions. She strode out and confronted him with her hands on her hips and her legs apart, and she addressed him with the impatient familiarity of an exasperated wife. ‘Ay,’ she exclaimed, ‘now where the hell have you been all this time? We wait for months and nothing happens. We wait so long that we are so bored that when nothing happens even nothing seems exciting.’

  ‘It was never the right time,’ he replied. ‘You have my apologies for the discourtesy. But now I am here.’

  The young women of the camp emerged from their barracas, their plastic hovels, their shelters of corrugated iron and corrugated cardboard, and began to gather around Fulgencia and Dionisio with the self-confident courage of women who have fended for themselves, repelled armed rapists, thrown thieves and molesters over the cliffs, ignored ridicule, hunted vicuna in the sierras armed only with rocks and cunning, survived avalanches, and travelled hundreds of kilometres equipped only with an intuition of being a part of something momentous.

  Looking at them standing with their arms at their sides, cooked by the sun of outdoor life, and battle-hardened by the enforced resignation of patient waiting, Dionisio had the impression of being surrounded by soldiers. He was confused by the feeling that here in one place were the representative types of all the women of all the diverse regions of the Nation; hardy, strong, inflamed with the very idealism absent in most of the men, practical as the en never were, incorruptibly themselves. One by one they stepped forward solemnly and kissed him formally on the cheek as comrades do.

  Dionisio turned to Fulgencia Astiz, and said, ‘I have a plan,’ to which she replied, ‘As do I.’ Squatting before the flames of the campfire that night they discussed their plans, which turned out to have been almost the same.

  In those months Dionisio achieved an anaesthetisation of his grief, which was transformed into a kind of awe. The women organised everything in their lives into strictly fair rotas that were never without a human touch; they suckled each other’s children and did each other’s washing in the streams, operated with no serious sense of hierarchy, embraced as old friends at the end of arguments in which they had been tearing out each other’s hair and casting aspersions upon each other’s legitimacy, and freely transcended all the incomprehensible restrictions of received morality in order to pursue the fireflies of their purpose.

  In that musky jungle of women’s bodies and the infinitely surprising varieties of love, Dionisio felt as though he was absent from himself. In the darkness of the improvised dwellings of cardboard and pieces of cars, out in the palpable starlight of the rocks and the momentary fireworks of meteors, he was puzzled by the sensation of being a man operating with the energies of someone else. He made love with the women with dead eyes and not a spark of passion in his heart.

  It was the effortlessness of it that often struck him as he returned in the morning after no sleep in order to inform his classes that today he would tell them about more crap at the foundations seeping from the crevices of the culture which they had to understand in order to come to know intimately what they should under no circumstances believe or take seriously. It was the effortlessness of it that aroused in him the suspicion that he had been taken over, and yet he felt none of the knee-jerk rebelliousness of his nature that, if someone said, ‘Eat, you are starving,’ would cause him to lose his hunger. In his National Service, when the corporal had said, ‘Clean your rifle, maricon, you pansy, or I will have you cleaning latrines,’ Dionisio used to go and clean the latrines in order to bypass the obeying of an order, and the corporal would have to say, ‘Clean your rifle, hijo de puta, or I will have you up before the Capitan,’ and Dionisio would report himself immediately for having shit in his barrel, Sir, and several threads of pullthrough, Sir, which are dangerous, Sir, because if the Soviets invade tomorrow, Sir, as everyone around here thinks that they will, Sir, then the bullet might get stuck in the barrel and blow my own balls off, Sir, and then you have one more useless soldier, Sir, who is no more good against the barbarian Commies coming to destroy civilisation as we know it, Sir, and the Capitan would sigh and have him locked in the guardroom and go and listen outside the door and hear him scrounging cigarettes and telling jokes with the military police who were supposed to be giving him a hard time, and he would write another long letter to the then Brigadier Hernando Montes Sosa about the incorrigibility of his son, and would go and talk to the Corporal who would beg him to put that man in another platoon, Sir, I cannot take it any more and he is subverting the whole company and as far as I know, the whole battalion as well, Sir.

  It often occurred to Dionisio that he was an honorary Colonel of a regiment in which he had prestige but no power; where the real Colonel was Fulgencia Astiz, and the General was as far behind the lines as generals always are. Alternatively, he thought, he was like the standard of a regiment that everyone salutes, and is stored up in the regimental chapel, and of which everyone scrambles for the honour of polishing the silver bands and the ebony staff.

  And yet it neither amused him as it would have done in former days, nor did it cause him to doubt that he had lost control of his autonomy, and nor did it cause him a moment’s guilt.

  In the fullness of time, amongst those women who chose to stay in Ipasueño, amongst those who returned to the regions to take their own men, amongst those who chose to go with Dionisio and Aurelio to Cochadebajo de los Gatos to settle there, there were eventually born twenty-nine children. Of these, sixteen grew up to be women with the unusual name of Anica. Thirteen children grew up to be men with the stocky build of an Indian, and the startlingly blue eyes of the Conde Pompeyo Xavier de Estremadura
. Every one of them bore upon their neck the henceforth hereditary scar of the rope and the six-centimetre gash.

  53 The Firedance (7)

  ‘WHAT IS YOUR name?’ asked Dionisio.

  ‘Lazaro, dueño.’

  Dionisio was puzzled and had to think about it before he realised. ‘What is your real name?’

  ‘Procopio, dueño.’

  ‘Come with me, Procopio,’ said Dionisio, and he reached down and took Lazaro’s arm by the elbow in order to help him to rise to his feet.

  Upon hearing Dionisio ask Lazaro for his real name, those in the crowd who heard knew immediately that magic was afoot; why else would one want to know a man’s real name? They tried to follow Dionisio, but he turned round in irritation and said to them, ‘Por el amor de Dios, just go away and leave us.’ The people in the crowd suddenly thought that maybe the jaguars did look very fierce today, and maybe Dionisio Vivo would make their hair fall out if they did not obey him. They stood sullenly and watched the two men depart.

  In the clinic the nurse took one look at Lazaro and knew what his disease was. Ugly and unhelpful she may have been, grim and hairy, but she was not ignorant, and she knew how to check Lazaro over in case her diagnosis was wrong. She checked through the Paramedical Directory of Differential Diagnosis and eliminated pachydermopteriostosis, peroneal muscular atrophy, Leishmaniosis, granuloma, erythema, Karposi’s sarcoma, sarcoidosis, tertiary syphilis, myxoedema, and everything else she could think of. But all her tests and criteria came back to only one conclusion. ‘You have lepromatous leprosy,’ she announced.

  She performed a skin biopsy, a nasal scraping, a nerve biopsy, a histamine test, and a sweating test, and discovered to her amazement that the bacilli that were present in large numbers were all dead. She looked down from her desk where she had been scrutinising a sample with the microscope, and said, ‘You have already been cured, or had some kind of remission. There is no other explanation.’

  Lazaro looked at her, sharing none of her surprise. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘Aurelio the brujo did it. But I want to be restored. I wish to look like a man, and make love to a woman like a man.’

  The nurse frowned and scratched her temple, compassion for once breaking its way into her soul and briefly illuminating it. She smiled resignedly, ‘Vale, it is possible to correct the breasts and the face with plastic surgery, and nearly everything else too, and the other thing may be restored with injections of testosterone, but I have to tell you that no facilities exist for that in this country. We would have to send you to the Estados Unidos or to England, and that would cost an enormous amount of money. You could not possibly afford it.’

  Lazaro bowed his head. He was disheartened, but, ‘I cannot remain like this,’ he said. He turned to Dionisio. ‘What can I do? Can you not help me, as Aurelio did, and complete his work?’

  It occurred to Dionisio that it might be possible to raise a public subscription, or hold a lottery in the Alcaldia, and he replied, ‘I will see what can be done, but you will have to wait. It will take time.’

  But Lazaro could not wait, and he resolved to throw himself upon the mercy of the richest man in the district that he could think of. He rose at dawn the next day and left the crypt, receiving before he left the blessing of Don Innocencio, who had been praying at the altar at the time of day that he loved the most, when there was nothing but peace in the world.

  Naturally the nurse could not resist telling her husband about the leper who had turned up cured in the company of Dionisio Vivo, and naturally he could not resist telling everyone he knew, in the strictest confidence. Naturally, Dionisio was accredited with the miracle, and from now on he was pestered by the sick wherever he walked. When he told them to go to the clinic they were aggrieved, and attributed to him that worst of sins, which is spiritual idleness. This did not prevent some people from claiming that it was really he, and not the nurse, who had cured their chancres, their intimate weepings of varicoloured mucus, and the sprained tendons that they had imputed to the encroachment of terminal illness.

  Hindered by the disobedience of his limbs and the limitations of his feet, Lazaro took two days to reach the Hacienda Ecobandoda, sustained solely by his hope. The way was long, and, in places, steep. He stopped frequently, taking advantage of the cedars to rest from the implacable assault of the sun. He would watch the vizcachas scurrying and think that one day he too would be able to run free. He would feel the play of mountain electricity in his hair, and watch as the alacrans, the mountain scorpions, negotiated their way through the play of the dust-devils. Once, in the distance, he heard yavari music, and knew that there were Indians nearby, creating their eerie sounds by playing the olla flute inside a pot. The music reminded him of beauty, and he thought that one day he too would be beautiful. Sometimes he would stop at the gaudy little shrines by the side of the road that commemorated the death by road accident of some unfortunate, and he would feel pity, because he himself was about to arise from the dead.

  As he lurched onward he indulged in fantasies; when he was handsome again, would he seek out Raimunda and then spurn her? He smiled with vengeful satisfaction. Would he throw himself into her arms and forgive her, and make love with her in the hut on stilts? That was romantic, and he smiled with the thought of the rediscovery of that bliss. Would Raimunda be old and fat and ugly by now? He might find a young bride. Would Raimunda be married to someone else by now? He would win her away; they could elope together into the forest. How old were the little ones? He realised that he had no idea how much time had passed; he did not even know his own age any more. Was he thirty or sixty? He had lived outside life, and therefore outside time. His history was about to begin again after a long darkness. He liked the idea of being in the world again. Farewell to the dusk of the all-but-dead.

  He slept the night amid the ichu grass of the pajonale, wrapped in the embroidered habit, and dreaming that one day soon when he passed an ariero driving his train of mules he would look the ariero in the eye, without his cowl obscuring his face, and say, ‘Buena’ dia’,’ and the ariero would nod in a friendly fashion and reply, ‘Buena’ dia’, que tal?’ and they would talk about the weather in a companionable way like ordinary people. He awoke with the cold once or twice, and thought wryly that there was an advantage to having no sensation in his feet and hands, but he slept again because there was a warmth like forgiveness and absolution, or smouldering palo santo wood, in his lust for the new world of the future where people would nod and say, ‘Buena’ dia’.’ How excellent that would be. And Raimunda would love him again. That was for sure.

  He reached the Hacienda Ecobandoda in the middle of the afternoon. He was covered in dust, and was hungry and thirsty, despite having drunk only recently at an arroyo and having breakfasted on a jackfruit that he had brought all the way from Ipasueño. At the gate was a surly-looking man with a rifle and a bottle of chacta in the pocket of his shirt. He was unshaven and squint-eyed, and he looked at the mysterious cowled figure with automatic contempt. He did not speak, but raised his eyebrows and shoved his head forward to indicate to Lazaro that he should state what he wanted.

  ‘I have come to see El Jerarca,’ croaked Lazaro. ‘I have come to plead for his mercy. I am a leper, and I need money for the cure.’

  The guard laughed ironically and feigned extreme courtesy. ‘Certainly, Don Leproso, the boss always likes to help lepers. Now turn around and get out of here or I will put you out of your misery myself.’ He lowered the rifle and pointed it at Lazaro’s stomach.

  Lazaro saw all his dreams collapsing as though they were a bridge with severed ropes. ‘In the name of God, I beg you,’ he said. But the guard prodded him in the chest with the barrel and pushed him over. He laughed.

  At this point El Chiquitin arrived in a cloud of dust in a pick-up truck, with El Guacamayo sitting beside him in the passenger seat. They had just returned from an all-night session of violating two young girls in a choza and cutting them up, but were not too tired for a little fun.
They listened to what the guard told them, and told Lazaro to climb into the back of the truck, which he did with great difficulty but with renewed optimism.

  They left him in a corral and told him to wait, and then went to see El Jerarca and relayed the story to him. It so happened that El Jerarca was bored, and was receptive to the idea of a little spectacle, so he called everyone together, and the whole party trouped off to the corral in a chattering, happy gaggle, while El Chiquitin went to get the necessaries. El Jerarca took his seat in the shade of a ceiba tree, just as he did at corridas, and waited for the return of El Chiquitin, who shortly arrived with a large jerrycan. He pushed the can through the rails and climbed in after it, and then he carried it to where Lazaro was waiting patiently, feeling most important, in the middle of the corral. El Chiquitin was speaking very loudly to Lazaro, so that the others would hear and be amused by his drollery.

  ‘We have a certain cure here in our hands,’ he was saying. ‘We call it “La danza del fuego” and it is very cheap, cabron, very cheap. It begins with a little wash in our curative water, so sit down and I will pour it over you.’

  Lazaro started to make a speech of special thanks that he had been preparing for two days in his head, but El Jerarca waved his hand to signify that his modesty forbade, and Lazaro sat down.

  Because of his disease he suffered from anosmia, and could not smell that the liquid was not water. He sat drenched in gasoline awaiting further instructions, and was still sitting patiently when El Chiquitin threw the match.