The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts

by Louis de Bernières

  Gonzago awoke to find that the unbelievable dream he had been dreaming about having the most exquisite blow-job of his life was actually true, and by that time Dona Constanza was too oblivious with enjoyment to worry about whether he was asleep or awake. They made love for a very long time two more times, and then had the problem of trying to reconstitute their shredded clothes so as not to arouse suspicion when they went back with the fruit they had gathered.

  Gonzago and Constanza made love where and when any opportunity arose, and in every possible manner. Sometimes they made love at frenzied speed, nipping behind a rock and tearing their clothes off, and sometimes they made love slowly and languorously in the evening sunlight. They got used to having their backsides bitten by ants, and at night Gonzago would steal into Constanza’s hut. They made love all the more fervidly for the necessity of not waking the General, whose depression fortunately had turned him into a very heavy sleeper.

  Their feverish passion fed itself until they both grew thin, wild-eyed and pale. Dona Constanza, who by this time had acquired a colourful turn of phrase, one day announced breathlessly as they were lubriciously devouring each other with their ravenous genitalia, ‘Gonzito, I want to stay here with you forever fucking you like this until my feet turn green and my head drops off!’

  ‘You will have to join us,’ said Gonzago, in between gasps and thrusts.

  Remedios accepted Dona Constanza’s application, and the latter became the only member of the band who had not a clue what she was fighting for. Who cares about such things when one has found one’s niche in life?

  22

  * * *

  IN WHICH COLONEL RODRIGO FIGUERAS FORGETS THE FIRST TWO PRINCIPLES OF WAR AND IMPERILS HIS PROSPECTS

  HECTORO AND PEDRO were waiting for nightfall. Hectoro was watching the dust devils whipping up the sand and skipping erratically along the track, and he was in a good mood because the doctor had said that his blood was clean. He would not have to worry about telling his three wives and not being able to savour a woman for three months. He scratched his face through his conquistador beard, and pulled his straw sombrero lower over his eyes. Recently he had stopped drinking so much for lack of time, and his grateful liver was allowing his skin to return to a colour less jaundiced.

  Pedro was observing the soldiers with the cool and practised eye of the professional hunter. He had not hunted men before except when tracking down rustlers for the gringos. But the situation was different because the soldiers were not on the move and they were all gathered together in one camp. Pedro smiled at the thought that maybe the officers had not wanted to move out because they wanted to stay near Felicidad. He had watched her creeping from one tent to another in the night and had listened to her furtive gigglings and whisperings.

  Pedro and Hectoro had given the soldiers plenty of reasons for wanting to leave, however. The villagers had dumped the dead steer upstream from the camp and were diligently defecating and micturating in the same spot. Most of the camp now had severe fits of stomach cramp and diarrhoea, and there had begun an epidemic of vomiting. The villagers had found it impossible to sell poisoned food to the military because they had brought their own provisions, but Misael had sold them aguardiente made of wood-alcohol, and two soldiers had already gone blind.

  On the first night of the two weeks since they had first begun to torment the invaders, Hectoro and Pedro had dug up one of the soldiers who had died in the previous raid and dressed the skeleton in khaki that had been taken from one of the bodies before it was buried. They nailed the rotting body to a makeshift cross and left it right in the middle of the camp where it oozed slime and putrefaction so appallingly that even the vultures left it alone. They stole several weapons as they left. The scene in the camp at reveille kept the two men chuckling all day, for the soldiers had beheld the corpse with terror and stupefaction, had held their noses, and an argument had developed as to how to dispose of it. An officer had forced two junior conscripts to remove it at gunpoint.

  On the second night the guard had been doubled, but Pedro made a doll of a soldier and said secretos over it as he banged nails into its eyes and groin. He left it in the middle of the camp and returned to Hectoro. They waited for a guard to fall asleep and Pedro strangled him. ‘I don’t have the will for this,’ said Pedro, and so it was Hectoro who removed the man’s eyes and genitals and stuffed them into the mouth of the corpse. In the morning there was panic in the camp, and the men were gesticulating and saying to the officers, ‘We cannot fight magicians,’ and the officers were saying, ‘There is no such thing as magic. Don’t be superstitious. We are dealing with terrorists.’

  Hectoro and Pedro watched that night as four soldiers stealthily deserted. They caught one of them and Pedro forced him to swallow a mixture that would make him insane for two weeks. They propelled him back into the camp and watched as he stumbled around babbling about ghosts and spirits and falling over tents. The camp came to life and there was a deal of running about and argumentation.

  For the next two nights Pedro and Hectoro did nothing, but they watched as six more men deserted. No one in the camp, however, knew whether the soldiers had deserted or been spirited away by the forces of darkness, and there was no one there who was not nervous or febrile.

  On the sixth night Hectoro and Pedro went to the large pool on Don Emmanuel’s finca and noosed a caiman. It was a huge animal, and it struggled and lashed furiously with its tail until Pedro jammed a stick between its jaws and blindfolded it. He stunned it with a sharp blow between the eyes, and the two men carried it back to the camp. They waited for two men from the same tent to desert, and for a guard to fall asleep, and then they carried the caiman and a dead rat to the tent. They put the dead rat in the mouth of one of the sleeping bags and they zipped the caiman into the other, drawing the string tight so that it could not crawl out. In the morning, the tent was shaking and bulging as the caiman tried to escape, and they heard a soldier, whitefaced, run about screaming, ‘Suarez has turned into an alligator! Suarez is an alligator!’ Figueras halted at the foot of the writhing sleeping bag and stepped back sharply when he found that there really was a very furious monster in it. At that point the imprisoned beast broke the draw-string and crawled angrily and rapidly out of the camp. The men ran to safety and watched it disappear towards the Mula. Figueras ordered a young private to enter the tent and search it. The young man, obviously still in his teens, crossed himself and gingerly opened the tent flaps. Seeing nothing, he felt emboldened and crawled in. He reversed out rapidly and stood bolt upright. His lip quivering, he reported to Figueras, ‘Sir, the other one has turned into a rat. He is dead, Sir.’

  For the next week Hectoro and Pedro did nothing at all. They were very busy during the day, working with Sergio and Profesor Luis, looking in dark corners, collecting. They knew that terror thrives on suspense, and they knew that the soldiers were already both ill and terrified, and were still deserting in the night.

  Hectoro and Pedro carried the three sacks to the camp, and Hectoro was watching the dust-devils and scratching his beard and feeling good that his blood was clean. Night came down and the camp fell asleep, except for the guards, who huddled together for solidarity when they should have been posted evenly around the perimeter. Pedro had stupefied all the beasts with special smoke and secretos.

  They flitted between the tents and Hectoro put large tarantulas in the boots that were laid out neatly outside the flaps of the tents. They were not poisonous, but nearly everyone thought that they were. Pedro moved around invisibly, gently placing coral snakes inside every tent. Coral snakes, if feeling themselves endangered, are swift to attack, and their venom is lethal within a day. These sleepy snakes would not feel endangered until morning, and in the meantime they coiled up and happily slept among the sleeping men.

  Hectoro and Pedro released the bagful of vipers half in the latrine tent and half in the provisions tent.

  The whole village laughed unrelentingly about the results of this mano
euvre, even though Hectoro and Pedro were too doubled up with hilarity to relate it coherently. People would look at each other, and for no apparent reason burst spluttering into hurricanes of laughter. If they were drinking coffee at the time they sprayed each other with it, and if they were eating they splattered each other with food. Dolores nearly choked to death on a morsel of banana, and was saved only by Josef punching her so hard under the ribs that the food was blown out of her windpipe.

  The army moved out the same day, defeated by forces they never understood and never saw. They made camp thirty miles away, passing a peaceful night, and they stayed there thankfully until one morning when Figueras came groggily out of his tent and stumbled to the latrine. He fumbled with his buttons and got out his penis. As his eyes focused on it and he tried to relax enough to urinate he saw that near the end of it there was a small red crater seeping with glistening fluid. His heart sank, and he refocused his eyes just to make sure. ‘Mierda,’ he said. He tried to pass water but found he was blocked. He squeezed his anal sphincter to try to force it out, and a blob of yellow pus fell out and splattered on the zinc. He bent down and inspected it. He sighed and pulled himself upright; ‘Que puta,’ he muttered. Again he tried to relax, and the urine began to trickle out. The expression on his face changed from stunned surprise through agony to despair. He had to piss, but his urethra was on fire. It burnt him to piss, and it burnt him not to piss. He decided not to piss, and deferred the pain for another half-hour until he was vanquished by the pressure of his aching bladder. That day and on the days that followed he and his officers and the gringo adviser found out what it was like to piss broken glass.

  Figueras sent a party of soldiers to arrest Felicidad.

  ‘On what charge?’ asked the Corporal.

  Figueras could not think of any crime. He scratched his head and squinted against the sun. Eventually he spoke more truly than he knew. ‘Arrest her on a charge of sabotage.’

  But Felicidad was not to be found. She had taken her injections in Chiriguana and gone to rest at Don Emmanuel’s. Don Emmanuel gave her the second half of her two thousand pesos.

  ‘Now I am very rich,’ she said happily.

  ‘Very rich?’ echoed Don Emmanuel.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You do not think I let them have it for nothing do you?’

  ‘You little devil!’ exclaimed Don Emmanuel.

  ‘Not at all,’ she said, pouting indignantly, ‘I earned it. I am a very fine whore.’

  ‘So says Hectoro,’ replied Don Emmanuel, ‘but as yet I do not know the truth of it.’

  She laughed and rubbed her thumb and forefinger together in the sign for ‘money’. ‘In three months’ time, when my blood is pure, I will give you a little taste of my guava. And . . .’ she leaned forward conspiratorially, ‘if it is very good I may not charge you.’

  Don Emmanuel placed a kiss on her forehead and went out to brand some steers.

  Felicidad was feted in every house in the village by turn, even though no one knew exactly how effective her sabotage had been. Pedro and Hectoro also received treatment fit for heroes; neither of them was accustomed to such outbursts of demon-strativeness towards them and they found it hard to come to terms with. After all, Pedro had always been a solitary hunter, and Hectoro had always been proud and aloof; they tried to be inconspicuous.

  Things turned out differently for Figueras. An officers’ council at the camp revealed urgent military reasons for returning to Valledupar. They cited the general sickness of the men, even though they were recovering now that they no longer drank from the Mula. ‘In any case I need to consult with my superiors,’ said Figueras loftily, ‘and I cannot do it here as they are beyond reach of the radio.’

  The sexually transmitted diseases department of Valledupar Military Hospital was open on Tuesdays and Thursdays, officers from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., and other ranks from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., thus allowing plenty of time for siesta. On Tuesday morning the officers’ council that had found urgent military reasons for leaving Chiriguana found itself reconvened in its entirety in the ante-room of the clinic. The officers looked at one another, crimson with embarrassment. There was a long silence until Colonel Figueras strode in. He took stock of the assembly and stood, his legs apart and his hands on his hips, nodding his head. ‘Felicidad?’ he asked. Every one of them nodded gloomily. ‘The hot little bitch said I was the only one,’ said Figueras. ‘She said that to me too,’ said the Lieutenant who looked as though he was about to cry. The rest of them nodded with resignation. Then Figueras chuckled, ‘All the same, my friends. It was worth it, and I would do the same again. Yes, by God!’ The rest of the men smiled, and most of them agreed. Figueras looked at a graffito on the wall which said, ‘No one below the rank of brigadier is allowed to claim that he got it from a lavatory seat’.

  The Brigadier was not pleased with Colonel Figueras. Figueras stood carpeted before his superior while the latter sifted through a sheaf of reports, including Figueras’.

  ‘Your report is illiterate,’ he said, looking up at Figueras over the top of his half-moon spectacles.

  ‘Thank you, Sir.’

  The Brigadier sighed heavily. ‘However, your rapid promotion hitherto has been owed to conspicuous bravery and success in the field and not to literary flair.’

  The Brigadier sifted through the reports again, frowning and clicking his tongue. ‘Colonel,’ he said, ‘I read of a demolished bridge, of skeletons, diarrhoea, vomiting, insanity, black magic, snakes, dead rats, spiders, alligators. I read of two soldiers going blind inexplicably, and one guard being mutilated. I read of weapons and ammunition disappearing. I read of the loss of forty men of your battalion. Forty men!’ The Brigadier waved his hands in despair. ‘And how were they lost? Was it in battle? Out on patrol? No! Thirteen of them were lost on account of snakebites, four in the exploding bridge, and the rest you list as “desaparecidos”! How did they disappear, Colonel?’

  Figueras was sweating heavily, and his eyes were glazed. ‘I believe they were picked off by the enemy,’ he said.

  ‘Right in the middle of the camp? None of the disappeared are listed as being on guard duty; I could understand them being picked off if they were guards! But no, you have put “disappeared whilst sleeping”!’ The Brigadier stood up and turned his back on Figueras, frowning out of the window, then he turned and banged his fist on the table. ‘They deserted, Figueras! And I have a simple explanation! One, your guards were not doing their duty. Two, . . .’

  ‘All the men were terrified,’ said Figueras lamely. ‘They believed we were fighting against evil spirits.’

  ‘Don’t interrupt a superior officer! Two, they were demoralised and frightened.’ The Brigadier paused, and said wearily, ‘Did they tell you at Officer Training School about the nine principles of war?’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘What are the first two?’

  Figueras searched his memory in vain, and made a wild guess. ‘ “Fight”, and “Don’t retreat”.’

  The Brigadier sighed wearily. ‘The first, Figueras, is to select and maintain an aim. The second is that morale should at all times be maintained.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Figueras, ‘I remember now.’

  ‘You remember too late. If your men deserted it was because morale collapsed. Let me tell you, Colonel, that the best way to maintain morale is by adhering rigidly to the first principle and keeping your men busy at achieving it.’ The Brigadier paused again, and shuffled the papers. ‘What was your aim, Colonel?’

  ‘To annihilate the Communists, Sir.’

  ‘And did you do anything about annihilating the Communists? There is no record of any patrols, either for security or for reconnaissance. There is no record of a single shot being fired, even accidentally. There is no record here, Figueras, of anyone even seeing a terrorist. You did not do anything at all, did you, except go camping in the country for a month?’

  Figueras stared down at the tip of his boots. ‘We did not know where the C
ommunists were, Sir.’

  The Brigadier frowned. ‘I have several points to make. One is that you failed to liaise in any way either with the Air Force Internal Security Group, or with the Army Air Survey, or with the Jungle Rangers, or with the Mountain Rangers, so it is not surprising that you met no Communists. Secondly, when I read of your troubles with “black magic” I conclude that you were being terrorised not by guerrilleros, but by peasants; alligators in sleeping bags are not a part of classical rural guerrilla tactics, and neither are coral snakes and vipers! Thirdly, there are no accounts in your report of your usual decisive heroism against the terrorists. You have been promoted twice, and been awarded the Andean Condor Medal for Gallantry twice, one silver, and one gold. I am tempted to conclude that in your report this time you could not include accounts of heroism because you knew that our military adviser, Major Kandinski, would also be submitting a report, and that yours would have to tally with his!’