Captain Pantoja and the Special Service

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  What was I telling you, kid, when I stopped for lunch? Oh, yes, about the people of Loreto. God, Chichi, everything they say was right and a lot more besides. Every day I find out something new, I’m nauseous and keep asking what is this? Iquitos must be the most perverted city in Peru, even worse than Lima. Maybe it’s true and the climate has a lot to do with it, I mean about the women being so awful, you can already see how Panta put one foot in the jungle and turned into a volcano. The worst thing is that these floozies are really attractive, the men are so ugly and with no class and the women are so great. I’m not exaggerating, Chichi, I think the most beautiful women in Peru (with the exception of yours truly and her sister, of course) are from Iquitos. All of them, the ones who look decent and the ones from the town and even—I’m telling you—the hookers, maybe they’re the best. Some shapes, kid, with a little way of walking so flirty and brazen, moving their backsides with a lot of nerve and throwing their shoulders back so their bust can be seen sticking out. Some pushy ones wear pants that fit like gloves, and do you think they flinch when men say things to them? What a question! They walk a straight line and look them in the eyes so fresh it stirs up some of the men to grab them by their boobs.

  I have to tell you something I heard yesterday when I went into the record shop (where they have the four-for-three system, you buy three things and they give you the fourth, fantastic, isn’t it?) between two very young girls. One of them asked the other: “Have you ever kissed a soldier?” “No, why’re you asking?” “They kiss diviiiiiinely.” She made me laugh, she said it with that Loreto accent and in a loud voice, not worrying if everybody heard her. They’re just that way, Chichi, as fresh as they come. And do you think they stop at kissing? What a dreamer! According to Alicia, these little devils start getting into big trouble as early as high school and they learn to take care of themselves and everything and when they get married, the really smart ones put on a big act so their husbands believe they’re doing it for the first time. Some of them go to those witches who prepare ayahuasca—you’ve heard about it, haven’t you? A concoction that makes you dream really wild things—so they’ll make them like new again. Just imagine, imagine. I swear to you every time I go out shopping or to the movies with Alicia I come home blushing from the stories she tells me. She says hello to a friend, I ask her who’s that, and she tells me some terrible woman, imagine that, who has had at least a couple of lovers, all the married women have gotten involved at some time or other with a soldier, airman or marine, but especially with a soldier, they have great prestige with these floozies. Chichi, it’s not so bad for me they don’t let Panta wear a uniform. These crazy women take advantage of the husband’s smallest slip and Pow! cuckolded. Skinny, it makes you afraid of them. And do you think they do things right, in their own beds and sheets? Alicia said to me, if you want, let’s take a walk down to Moronacocha and you’ll see all the cars where the couples are carrying on (but really, I mean it) one next to the other, as if nothing was happening.

  Just think, they found a woman carrying on with a police lieutenant in the last row of the Bolognesi movie house. They say the film broke, the lights went on and they caught them. Poor people, can you imagine the shock they got when they saw the lights were going on, especially her? They had stretched out, making good use of the benches they have instead of seats and the last row being empty. A tremendous scandal, it seems the lieutenant’s wife nearly killed the woman, because an announcer on Radio Amazon who’s terrible and gives out all the facts repeated the story in a blow-by-blow description and the lieutenant ended up being removed from Iquitos. I didn’t want to believe a story like that but Alicia pointed out the girl to me on the street, a really good-looking brunette, with a face that couldn’t hurt a fly. I looked at her and said to Alicia, you’re fibbing, they did business business in the middle of the movie, so uncomfortable and afraid of being caught? It seems so, they caught the girl without her blouse on and the lieutenant with his little bird up in the air. After Paris, Iquitos is sin city, Skinny. Don’t think Alicia is a chatterbox, I worm it out of her, from curiosity and also to be forewarned. My dear, here you have to have four eyes and eight hands to defend yourself from these women of Loreto, you turn your back and they make your husband disappear on you. Even though she’s a native, Alicia is very serious. Though at times she wears pants that are so tight she has to use a shoehorn to get them on, still she doesn’t go around arousing the men, she doesn’t give them such fresh looks as the other women in Iquitos.

  As to how nervy the women of Loreto are, how stupid I am—I’ve been forgetting to tell you the funniest and best part (or really the worst). You can’t imagine the disaster we had when we were in the middle of getting ourselves settled in this house. Have you heard people talk about the famous “washerwomen” of Iquitos? Everybody’s said to me, but where have you been living, Pocha, where did you come from, the whole world knows about the famous “washerwomen” of Iquitos. Well, I must be dumb or wet behind the ears, sister, but never in Chiclayo or in lea or in Lima did I ever hear people talking about the “washerwomen” of Iquitos. Picture this, we’d been in our little house for a few days, and our bedroom is downstairs, with a window on the street. We still didn’t have a maid—now I have one that’d melt your heart, she’s so good—and suddenly at the strangest hours there’d be tapping at our window and you’d hear a woman’s voice: “Washerwoman! Got any clothes to be washed?” And me, without even opening the window, I’d say no, thanks very much. It never occurred to me to think how strange that there are so many washerwomen out on the streets in Iquitos and on the other hand it’s so hard to get a girl, because I put out a little “Girl Wanted” sign and only once in a while did anybody turn up. So one day, it was very early and we were still in bed, I heard this little tap on the window, “Washerwoman! Got any laundry?” and I had let a lot of dirty clothes pile up on me, because here, let me tell you, with this heat that’s so horrible, you sweat terribly and you have to change two and even three times a day. So I thought terrific, she can wash my clothes as long as she doesn’t charge too much. I yelled wait a minute, got out of bed in my nightie and went to open the door for her. Right there I should’ve suspected something funny was going on because she had enough make-up on to be anything but a washerwoman. But me, I’m a dumbbell, off on the moon. The most attractive little thing, cinched in to make her curves stand out, of course, with her fingernails painted and really fixed up. She looked me up and down in the most surprised way and I thought what’s wrong with this one, what’s wrong with me to make her look at me like that. I told her come in, she came into the house, and before I said anything to her she saw the bedroom door and Panta and Wham! she went right in and planted herself in front of your brother-in-law in a pose that left me cockeyed, her hand on her hip and her legs spread out like a rooster who’s going to attack. Panta sat right up in bed, his eyes popping out from the shock of this woman’s appearance. And do you know what this thing did before either Panta or I managed to tell her wait outside, what are you doing here in the bedroom? She began talking about her rates, you have to pay me double, that she wasn’t used to dealing with women, pointing at me, Skinny, you better believe it, but you really have to turn weird tricks, and I don’t know what other vulgarities, and suddenly I realized what the trouble was and my legs began to tremble. Yes, Chichi, she was a w——-. A w——-! The “washerwomen” of Iquitos are the w——-s of Iquitos and they go around from house to house offering their services with that story about laundry. Now you tell me, is Iquitos or isn’t it the most immoral city in the world, sister? Panta also realized what was going on and started shouting get out of here, you pig, what are you thinking about, get out right now. The thing had the fright of her life, she caught on to the mix-up and shot out of the house, tripping. Can you picture what a fiasco, Skinny? She thought we were some degenerates, that I had made her come in so the three of us could do a little business together. Who knows, Panta was joking later, maybe it was
worth a try, didn’t I tell you he’s changed a lot? Now it’s over I can laugh at myself and make jokes about it but I’m telling you it was really ugly for a little while, I was dying with shame the whole day remembering that little scene. Now you can see what this place is like, sister, a city where the women who aren’t w——-s try to be and where if you’re careless for one second you’re left without a husband. Look at what a hole I’ve fallen into.

  Now my hand’s fallen asleep on me, Chichi, it’s already dark and it’s gotten to be very late. I’ll have to send you this letter in a trunk so it’ll all fit. Let’s see if you answer me right away, and as long as mine and with piles of gossip. Are you still going with Roberto or have you switched already? Tell me everything and, honest, in the future I’ll write to you right away.

  Thousands of kisses, Chichi, from your sister who misses you and loves you,

  POCHITA

  Night of August 29–30, 1956

  Images of humiliation, snapshots of the stinging and inflamed history of the tormenting itch. In the strict, stately Flag Day formation, in front of the monument to Francisco Bolognesi, the cadet Pantaleón Pantoja, in his senior year at Chorrillos Military Academy, while elegantly executing the goose step, is suddenly transported in flesh and spirit to hell, through the conversion of the mouth of his anus and rectum into a wasps’ nest: a hundred stingers martyrize the moist, secret wound, while he, grinding his teeth to the point of crumbling them, sweating great, frozen drops of perspiration, marches without losing step; at the gay, sparkling party offered to the Alfonso Ugarte class by Colonel Marcial Gumucio, director of Chorrillos Military Academy, the young, recently commissioned Second Lieutenant Pantaleón Pantoja feels his toenails suddenly freeze when, having barely begun the steps of the waltz with the seasoned wife of Colonel Gumucio, radiant in his arms, the night’s dance having recently been opened by him and his vaporous spouse, an incandescent itching, a serpentine swarming, a torture in the form of tiny simultaneous and biting itches widens, swells and irritates the privacy of his rectum and anus: his eyes clotted with tears and without increasing or decreasing his pressure on the plump waist and hand of Colonel Gumucio’s wife, Second Lieutenant (Quartermaster) Pantoja, not breathing, not speaking, continues to dance; in the field tent of Regiment 17 of Chiclayo, with the thunder of mortars close by, the ratatatat of grapeshot and the dry belches of the shots from the lead companies which just began the end-of-year maneuvers, Lieutenant Pantoja, standing in front of a blackboard and a map board, explaining to the officers corps in a firm and metallic voice the supplies, system of distribution and the estimates of supplies and provisions, is suddenly and invisibly raised off the ground by a frightening, fiery, effervescent, emulsive and crackling current that burns, stings, exaggerates, multiplies, torments, maddens the anal vestibule and rectal passage and stretches itself out like a spider between his buttocks, but, abruptly livid, suddenly covered with sweat, with an ass secretly puckered by all the stubbornness of a cabbage, his voice hardly blurred by his trembling, he continues to emit numbers, to produce formulas, adding and subtracting. “They’ll have to operate on you, Pantita,” Mother Leonor murmurs maternally. “Have an operation, dear,” Pochita repeats softly. “Get them taken out once and for all, pal,” Lieutenant Luis Rengifo Flores echoes. “It’s easier than being circumcised, and in a spot that’s less dangerous for your manhood.” Major Antipa Negrón of the Military Hospital laughs: “I’m going to decapitate these three hemorrhoids with one slash, as if they were the heads on animal crackers, Pantaleón.”

  Around the operating table, there is a series of moves, splices and grafts that torment him much more than the silent bustle of the doctors and the nurses in their little white shoes, more than the blinding cascades of light that the ceiling mirrors send him. “Is not going to hult you, Mistel Pantoja,” encourages Tiger Collazos, who, in addition to the voice, also has the slanted eyes, the quivering hands and the syrupy voice of Porfirio the Chinaman. “Quicker, easier and with fewer complications than the extraction of a tooth, Pantita,” he is assured by Mother Leonor, whose hips, double chin and breasts have firmed up and overflowed to the point of intermingling with those of Leonor Curinchila. But there, also bent over the operating table, where they have placed him in a gynecological position—between his legs Dr. Antipa Negrón manipulates scalpels, cotton, scissors, receptacles—are two women as inseparable and opposite as certain couples spinning around in his head now and bringing him back to his infancy, to the beginning of adolescence (Laurel and Hardy, Mandrake and Lothario, Tarzan and Jane): a mountain of fat wrapped in a Spanish mantilla and a child crone, in blue jeans, with bangs and smallpox scars on her face. Not knowing what they are doing there or who they are—but remotely he has the feeling of having once seen them, as if in passing, in a crowd of people—brings an endless agony and, without trying to stop it, he begins to cry: he hears his own deep, loud sobs. “Don’t be scared of them, they’re the first recruits for the Special Service. Don’t you recognize Knockers and Sandra? I already introduced you the other night, at Casa Chuchupe,” soothes Juan Rivera, the popular Freckle, who has diminished even more in size and is a little monkey seated on the round, naked, fragile shoulders of Pochita. He feels as though he could die of shame, of anger, of frustration, of rancor. He’d like to shout: “You runt, you abortion, you fetus! How dare you reveal the secret in front of my wife and the widow of my dead father?” But he doesn’t open his mouth; he just sweats and suffers. Dr. Negrón has finished his work and stands up with a few bloody pieces dangling from his hands which Panta glimpses for only a second, since he manages to close his eyes in time. Every second he is more pained, offended and shocked. Tiger Collazos laughs. “You’ve got to face realities and call a spade a spade: the men got to get laid and you either arrange that for them or we shoot you with blasts of semen.” “We’ve chosen the Horcones Post as the pilot project for the Special Service, Pantoja,” General Victoria announces cheerfully. And although he is pointing with his eyes and with his hands at Mother Leonor, at the delicate and gaunt Pochita, imploring discretion, reserve, delay, deletion, General Victoria is insisting: “We already know that besides Sandra and Knockers you’ve enlisted Iris and Lalita. Long live the four musketeers!” He has begun to cry again, at the height of his helplessness.

  But now, around the bed of the man who has recently been operated on, Leonor and Pochita watch with love and tenderness and without the least shadow of malice, with an obvious, marvelous, comforting ignorance shining in their eyes: they know nothing. He feels an ironic rejoicing that rises through his body and mocks him: How could they know about the Special Service if it still hasn’t come into being, if I’m still happy and a lieutenant, if we haven’t even left Chiclayo? But Dr. Negrón has just entered, accompanied by a young and smiling nurse (he recognizes her and blushes: Alicia, Pocha’s friend!) who cradles an irrigator in her arms like a newborn child. Pochita and Mother Leonor leave the room, giving him a united, almost tragic, farewell from the door. “Knees spread, mouth kissing the mattress, ass up,” orders Dr. Antipa Negrón. And he explains: “Twenty-four hours have passed and the time has come to clean out your stomach. These two quarts of salt water will take away all the mortal and venial sins of your life, Lieutenant.” Despite its being covered with vaseline and despite the doctor’s talent as a magician, the introduction of the irrigator into his rectum tears a shout out of him. But now the liquid is pouring in with a warmth that is no longer painful, pleasant even. For a moment the water pours in, bubbling, swelling his bowels, and meanwhile Lieutenant Pantoja, his eyes closed methodically, thinks: The Special Service? It won’t hurt me, it won’t hurt me. He lets out another little yell: Dr. Negrón has taken the irrigator out and has placed a wad of cotton between his buttocks. The nurse leaves, carrying the empty irrigator. “Up till now you haven’t felt any postoperative pain, right?” the doctor asks. “Right, Major,” Lieutenant Pantoja answers, twisting himself with difficulty, sitting up, getting out of be
d, a hand squashed against the cotton pinched between his buttocks, and moving toward the toilet, as rigid as a Judas doll, naked from the waist down, on the arm of the doctor, who observes him with kindness and something like piety. A slight warmth has begun to work its way through his rectum and his elephantine bowels now suffer cramps, rapid muscular spasms, and a sudden shudder electrifies his lower back. The doctor helps him to sit on the toilet, pats him on the shoulder and sums up his philosophy: “Console yourself by thinking that after this experience, everything that happens to you in life will be better.” He leaves, gently closing the bathroom door. Lieutenant Pantoja now puts a towel between his teeth and bites down on it with all his might. He has closed his eyes, buried his hands between his knees, and two million pores have opened like windows all over his body to vomit out sweat and bile. With all the desperation he is capable of, he repeats to himself: “I will not shit specialists, I will not shit specialists.” But the two quarts of water have already begun to descend, to slither, to fall, to burst out, fiery and satanic, pernicious and homicidal, traitorous, dragging solid chunks of fire, knives and awls that scorch, prick, sting, blind. He has let the towel fall from his mouth so he can roar like a lion, grunt like a pig and laugh like a hyena all at once.