The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts

by Louis de Bernières

  Aurelio learned of all those aspects of social life that make a people distinctive, and became popular with the children by making them toys in the traditional style. For example their rattles were made of a cicada fastened to a stick, which vibrates indignantly when shaken. He fastened balls of cotton to mutucana horseflies so that the children could watch them fly short distances, become exhausted, and then catch them again. He made them little bows and arrows, and especially the kinds of arrow that are tipped with hollow nutshells that ring in flight.

  Aurelio learned the art of wrestling, which had become quite sophisticated since the captive yanqui had taught them jujitsu, and which, just like judo, finished when one contestant was pinned to the ground. He picked up the art of chest-patting, which was done as a greeting and varied according to perceptions of social status. He found out how to make animal calls to communicate in the forest, and also to lure prey. He was taught how to make knives and arrowheads out of teeth, mussel shells and split bamboo, he played music in the huts on pan-pipes, bark trumpets, and the goo. No woman was ever allowed to see the musicians play in case she should think it effeminate, and any woman who did see was obliged to allow the offended musician to prove his virility. If the woman was a little girl the musician would have to wait until she reached puberty before he could retrieve his pride.

  Aurelio was married twice through the mating dance and learned what it was to have a mother-in-law to feed, to whom one was not allowed to speak except through one’s wife. Both his wives, before they died, produced children, so that he learned to undergo the couvade. He took to his hammock for four days at each birth, groaning with the pain of the delivery, to be tended by his anxious spouse, who had given birth squatting over a hole in the ground. In this way the men took away the pain of birth and took it on themselves.

  Twice he made the marriage vows:

  I will nourish this woman as I do myself.

  I will take the same care of her as I do of myself.

  I will give her the use of my virility.

  He never had to beat his wives for infidelity, as required by law, and his wives were never raped, so he did not have to beat any rapists, who were forbidden to resist, or use the rapist’s wife in the same way. Crime was in fact unknown, except against other tribes, when it was common to attempt to abduct their women, especially the ones who were good potters. The women accepted this as normal, and settled down happily wherever they were, some of them having belonged at one time or another to several different tribes.

  The women had their own rites to which the men were not a party. When a husband died the wife cut her hair off and no one could ask her hand in marriage until it was regrown. This permitted a decent period of grieving, and since the hair took about nine months to grow, it incidentally prevented any confusions about paternity. The women also believed that the period of transition during puberty was very dangerous, and there should be no shocks, surprises, undue elation or disappointments during that time. Accordingly they sat on palm shoots in a hut, behind a screen, with their hair over their faces for six months, not talking to anyone and only going out at night for a walk with their mothers. They would emerge from this chrysalis state as full-grown women who were entitled to wear the uluri and get married. The boys, less privileged, were only allowed three months to become men, and were never allowed into the special corral for menstruating women, which was like a social club for which musicianship was the counterpart for men.

  How and why Aurelio lost his wives and his children, and how and why he had to leave the Navantes are part of another story that waits to be told, as is his meeting with Carmen in Chiriguana and his marriage; but in the details given here are found the reasons why Aurelio, an Aymara Indian of the Sierra, became so expert a jungle-dweller – a thing that always had puzzled Pedro – and why, since this is the only way one can proceed in the jungle, he always walked in single-file for the rest of his life.

  12

  * * *

  FEDERICO IS TAUGHT TO BE A GUERRILLA AND GENERAL FUERTE IS CAPTURED

  GARCIA WAS ASSIGNED to be Federico’s instructor and special minder; to Federico’s surprise he turned out to be one of those revolutionary priests who dispute every teaching and every command of the church and yet remain through and through a priest and a Catholic, at the same time as being a Marxist and a revolutionary.

  Garcia had come from a middle-class family in Medellin, a pleasant town on the side of a mountain from where Profesor Luis also came. At the age of nineteen he had fallen in love with a young woman of better family who had been sent to live in Costa Rica with relatives in order to put an end to the socially unacceptable relationship. In San Jose she had married a stupendously wealthy Uruguayan, and Garcia, heartbroken, took instead to the arms of the Holy Mother Church. As a seminarian he was solitary, serious and studious, but he sometimes alarmed his superiors by expressing heterodox opinions. He was therefore sent far into the countryside to a little town where such things did not make any difference, and there he set about his duties conscientiously.

  It often happens that certain women of the bourgeoisie conceive an hysterical and irrational passion for their parish priest, even going as far as to prostrate themselves before him, offering him the use of their charms. When this first happened to Father Garcia he tried to be gentle and understanding, and he told the woman firmly but sympathetically that such a thing was impossible. But she continued to pester him and to follow him so persistently that soon the whole town was scandalised by the quite unfounded rumour that the priest was an adulterer. One day, in a rage of frustration, he told the woman in no uncertain terms to leave him alone. She took his rebukes more personally than Christianly, and in her wounded pride she haughtily vowed revenge – she wrote to the bishop that the priest had attempted to rape her on frequent occasions, especially in the confessional box and upon the altar.

  The bishop’s investigators arrived secretly and soon found themselves listening in bars and whorehouses to all kinds of salacious gossip about Father Garcia, along with numerous ribald jokes featuring Father Garcia as protagonist. At his trial before the ecclesiastical court Father Garcia protested his innocence in vain, and was defrocked by the bishop for fornication.

  The sentence weighed heavily on Father Garcia’s mind, for he was only too aware that in falsely condemning an innocent man the bishop had committed a mortal sin. Night upon night he was tormented by vile dreams in which the bishop writhed hideously amid the flames and tortures of Hell.

  One morning after fervent prayer Garcia decided to save the bishop’s soul by destroying his own innocence and committing the very crime for which he had been condemned. In the brothel the girl crossed herself before she made love to him, and Garcia gave her absolution afterwards. It would not be far from the truth to say that Garcia acquired a taste for fornication thereafter; he quite possibly believed that by committing the sin as often as possible he made doubly sure of saving the bishop’s soul.

  Garcia continued his ministry on his own and unsanctioned by the church, by becoming mendicant. He wandered from pueblo to pueblo, comforting the sick and the dying, begging alms, preaching the Gospel and blessing the unions that substituted for marriage. Daily he grew more angry, bewildered and depressed by the poverty, ignorance and suffering of the campesinos, and when he was finally abducted by the guerrillas on suspicion of being a spy he found himself at last amongst his true brothers.

  They had taken him when one of their number had observed him entering and leaving three brothels in a row. Reasoning that he could not possibly be a priest, must therefore be in disguise, and must therefore be a spy, Franco had marched him off at the business end of his Kalashnikov.

  The camp at that time was run by the second leader; the first leader had organised an extortion campaign throughout the countryside in order to raise funds for the revolution. When a very large sum had been amassed, he had absconded with it to Spain. The second leader was to do exactly the same thing a year later, but
at the time of which we speak he was unpleasantly present, and knocked Father Garcia about with his boots and his rifle butt until the priest was spitting blood and almost unable to cross himself. He was tied to a tree and left for the night, but in the morning he proved he was a priest by reciting the service for the burial of the dead all the way through, after which he absolved the second leader of any blame for the previous night’s violence. This left the guerrillas with a dilemma; most of them did not want to kill a priest, however lecherous, and on the other hand it seemed unwise to let him go, because he might inform. The second leader wanted to cut his tongue out so that he could not talk, cut his hands off so that he could not write, pull his eyes out so that he would not recognise them again, and then let him go. ‘These are small things to lose for your country,’ he told Father Garcia solemnly.

  ‘There is no need,’ replied Garcia. ‘With your permission, I will stay and fight alongside you.’

  ‘We would shoot you at the first sign of betrayal,’ said the second leader, considerably taken aback.

  ‘At the first sign of betrayal I will shoot myself,’ replied Garcia.

  ‘Tiene cojones!’ exclaimed the guerrillas, chuckling.

  Garcia was a small, lithe man, with quick movements and the lugubrious face of a hare. Very soon he was bearded and burned brown like all the others, and had the same crows’ feet about the eyes from squinting into the distance against the sun. However, he never discarded his ragged ecclesiastical dress even though it somewhat hampered his movements and made him very hot indeed. In time his gentleness, his heroic deeds, his wise counsel and his active concern for his comrades endeared him to the whole band, and even the genuinely atheist Marxists amongst them grew to respect him, especially as he could quote pieces of the Gospel which sounded just like Engels.

  It was Garcia who took the fledgeling Federico under his wing and taught him how to use a gun, how to trap animals, which berries were poisonous, which plants were medicinal, always fought beside him in skirmishes, and always tended the cuts that Federico liked to think of as ‘wounds’. He it was also who heard Federico’s confessions and absolved him of the death of the tall campesino whose goat he had tried to shoot.

  He was with Federico when the latter spotted General Carlo Maria Fuerte from the top of the crag.

  ‘Let us take his gun,’ whispered Federico. Garcia considered for a moment, tugging the end of his beard.

  ‘I think,’ said Garcia, ‘that if he has a revolver rather than a rifle, he must be something a bit different. No one sane uses a revolver for hunting. I think we had better take him and his gun and show them both to Remedios. I also think that it is suspicious that he has binoculars – peons do not habitually carry them, in my experience.’

  Federico restrained himself from showing that he was impressed by Garcia’s reasoning; replying with the air of an equal he nodded and said, ‘In addition, Garcia, his burro is too healthy to be campesino. That too is suspicious.’

  Garcia smiled to himself and indicated to Federico with a stabbing motion of his finger that he was to go down first. Adeptly and silently they slithered and skipped down the mountainside and stationed themselves in the scrub at either side of the steep path, just on the blind side of a bend.

  General Carlo Maria Fuerte came round the corner whistling a sentimental tune from Juarez to find himself face to face with two heavily armed men, one of them obviously little more than a boy. He was so surprised that all he could do was say, ‘Bandidos?’ in a strangled tone of voice.

  The boy levelled a rather long and old-looking weapon and said proudly, ‘No Senor; guerrilleros.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the General, even more taken aback.

  ‘May I enquire who you are?’ said Garcia, ‘and what you are doing here?’ Garcia prodded the binoculars and the camera with the end of his sub-machine-gun, clicked his gun and added, ‘May I also ask the function of this apparatus?’

  The General decided to tell part of the truth, as his instincts told him that he might pay a heavy price for lies. ‘I am a researcher into butterflies and humming-birds. At present I am researching humming-birds, and my name is Fuerte.’

  ‘Ah, humming-birds,’ said Garcia. ‘Are you familiar with a wonderful piece by Sagreras called “Imitacion al Vuelo del Picaflor”?’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Fuerte, ‘I heard it in Buenos Aires once. I know it by the shorter title of “El Colibri”.’

  ‘It is a pleasure to meet a cultivated man,’ exclaimed Garcia. ‘We shall continue our discussion whilst you come to meet our leader. Please do not oblige me to use force.’

  Federico jabbed his Lee Enfield into the small of the General’s back and they set off up the path with no events other than the frequent refusals and whimsical obstinacies of the General’s burro, which Federico was leading by its halter.

  By the time they reached the deserted Indian village which served as their camp, Garcia and the General had discussed the Venezuelan waltzes of Antonio Lauro, agreed that the Paraguayan guitarist Agustin Barrios must have been very eccentric and blessed with huge hands, had deplored the music of the Argentine, Ginastera, praised that of the Mexican, Chavez, and also that of the Brazilian, Villa-Lobos. When they arrived, Garcia was singing ‘Mis Dolencias’ to the General to demonstrate a real case of ‘saudade’, and the General was listening to him with surprise, having only just noticed that his frayed and filthy garments were those of a priest.

  As they entered the camp a crowd of guerrillas appeared as if from nowhere to witness the event, some of them not breaking off their conversations; the General heard them as through a thick plate of glass, wondering if this was all really happening to him.

  In a moment he was standing before Remedios, who listened attentively to Garcia’s story. ‘Search him,’ she ordered. Garcia turned to the General, ‘With your permission?’ and the General nodded assent.

  Unfortunately for him, the General had not had the presence of mind to attempt to dispose of his cedula and his military identification card, and Garcia very quickly found them in the General’s shirt pocket.

  ‘Madre de Dios!’ exclaimed Remedios. ‘We have here not only a General, but the military governor of Cesar! I don’t believe this! We must instantly hold a council. Federico!’

  Federico ran out into the sunlight, straight into the pack of people who had been attempting to listen. ‘Council! Council!’ he shouted, waving his arms, and more ragged warriors emerged from the huts and hurried to sit down in a ring in front of Remedios’ hut, eagerly asking each other what was going on.

  Inside the hut, Garcia reproached the General. ‘You lied. You said you were a lepidopterist and a humming-bird expert. To lie is a sin before God, and very stupid before men with guns.’

  The General looked at him with amusement. ‘I told no lies. My book on the nation’s butterflies is in my baggage if you care to look. You may read it if it pleases you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Garcia, ‘and may I also read Idle Days in Patagonia?’

  ‘Of course,’ replied the General, ‘but try not to crack the spine.’

  ‘This climate and the insects will destroy your books before I do,’ responded Garcia.

  ‘That’s very true,’ said the General. ‘I have had holes drilled straight through my books by termites, and in the rainy season I dare not open them since the humidity unglues them entirely.’

  Garcia laughed. ‘In more peaceful times, General, we should invent books indestructible in the tropics.’

  ‘In more peaceful times we should also teach the people to read them, but I fear that too much money is spent feeding the army that defends us from you.’

  ‘I do not feel,’ said Garcia, ‘that when released from active service your soldiers would necessarily become teachers. When they come across teachers in the pueblos they customarily kill them, unless they are women, in which case they rape them first.’

  Garcia and the General looked at each other in silence for several seconds, until t
he General said, ‘If that was true my friend, I would have them court-martialled. However, I do not believe it.’

  Garcia laughed ironically, and slapped a mosquito off his arm. ‘General, I think you will stay with us for a little while – that is, if we don’t shoot you – and you will soon find out for yourself what the Army does. Since you are in charge of it in Cesar, I am very surprised that you do not know already, especially as it is you that orders it to do what it does.’

  ‘Padre,’ said Fuerte, very seriously, ‘I have never ordered indiscriminate crime. You insult me to suggest otherwise.’

  ‘Then the left hand knoweth not what the right hand is doing,’ said Garcia.

  ‘I think the left wing knoweth not what it is doing either,’ replied Fuerte. ‘But in any case, Padre, may I ask you one thing?’

  Garcia nodded.

  ‘I would ask of you that if I am to die you would first take my confession, and afterwards bury me decently.’

  ‘I doubt it will come to that,’ said Garcia, ‘but naturally I would do as you wish in the event.’