The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts

by Louis de Bernières

  She put her nose in the air, as in days of old, and followed Federico and the others to consult with Pedro, Hectoro, Josef, and Misael. They listened gravely to the history of the village since Federico had left it, and then informed the four men of their plans. It was agreed that the guerrilleros should enjoy the hospitality of the village.

  ‘It seems to me, also,’ said Pedro, ‘that as we are both fighting the same Army, there would be good reasons to fight together.’

  ‘When do you expect the soldiers back?’ asked Gloria.

  ‘We do not know. Perhaps we could send you a message when they come, and we will attack them before they attack us.’

  Gloria had a thought. ‘Do you know Aurelio, the cholo?’

  ‘I know him,’ said Pedro. ‘He is a fine hunter. I give him tools, and he gives me medicines from the jungle.’

  ‘Do you know how to find him, without stepping into his traps?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Pedro. ‘He showed me so that our trade might continue.’

  ‘Excellent, then,’ replied Gloria. ‘You must tell him when the soldiers come, and he will tell us.’

  The following morning Dona Constanza left her weapons in Sergio’s hut, and Gloria bound her hands together. The party trudged the two kilometres up the track to Don Hugh’s hacienda. Gloria surveyed the house with her binoculars and said, ‘We are very lucky. He is here.’ She sent Federico and Tomas around the house to reconnoitre, and when they returned, the party stepped out of the shadows and marched boldly down the drive. Gonzago whipped out a knife and held it at Constanza’s throat, for more theatrical effect.

  When Don Hugh answered the frantic banging on the door his heart both leapt and sank simultaneously. He beheld three warriors, Gonzago, Tomas, and Gloria, armed to the teeth, and with them someone bound-up who looked exactly like his wife when she had been young. He looked again, and realised that it really was his wife. ‘Constanza?’ he said.

  ‘Hello Hugh,’ she answered, genuinely glad to see him, as though he were a cousin she had not seen for a long time.

  ‘Let us save time,’ said Gloria briskly. ‘We are the People’s Vanguard. As you see, your wife is alive and unharmed, and we are prepared to release her to you under the terms originally proposed. Half a million United States dollars. We also require you to hand over any weapons, ammunition, or explosives that you may have in the house.’

  ‘I have nothing of that sort,’ replied Don Hugh.

  ‘Do not lie,’ said Constanza sharply, and then realising her mistake, added, ‘they will search the house anyway. They told me.’

  ‘Search the house,’ said Gloria to the two brothers. They came out with two rifles, a Browning automatic, and several boxes of shells.

  ‘We very kindly left you the shotgun,’ said Gonzago, smiling his charming and sparkling smile, ‘so that you may continue to shoot pigeons.’

  ‘Half a million dollars!’ demanded Gloria.

  Don Hugh sighed heavily, and with resignation re-entered the hacienda. He came out shortly with an old brown suitcase.

  ‘Take it,’ said Gloria, ‘to the middle paddock, and empty it. Then refill it and bring it back.’ Don Hugh did as he was told, and Gloria was satisfied that the case was not booby-trapped. Don Hugh came back and Gloria inspected the case minutely for tracking devices. She pushed Dona Constanza towards Don Hugh, and she and the two men retreated up the drive, with Tomas carrying the case.

  ‘Did they say where they were going?’ asked Don Hugh, getting out the keys of his jeep from his pocket.

  ‘They are going to Valledupar,’ lied Dona Constanza, according to plan.

  ‘I’ll give them an hour,’ said Don Hugh, decisively, ‘and then I am driving to Don Pedro’s. We’ll take the aeroplane to Valledupar, and when those scruffy bastards turn up, we will be waiting for them with half the army.’

  ‘I hope you do not expect me to come with you,’ said Dona Constanza. ‘I am so tired I could sleep for a week.’

  Don Hugh suddenly remembered that his wife was back, a fact that had escaped his attention owing to the chagrin of having handed over half a million dollars. He put his arm around her shoulders and kissed her on the forehead. ‘You poor darling,’ he said. ‘It must have been a terrible, terrible experience. You cannot possibly imagine how worried I was! I have been running around in circles tearing my hair out!’

  ‘Do not exaggerate,’ said Constanza cruelly. ‘I do not suppose you did any such thing.’

  Don Hugh looked very surprised; his wife, who had once played every game by the rules, was spoiling his play.

  Silently Dona Constanza took her husband by the hand and led him to the bedroom. She made love to him slowly and tenderly, for the last time, for old time’s sake, to say goodbye, and to say she was sorry. Don Hugh was both suspicious of, and astonished by her new voluptuousness, her new figure, her new sensuality. ‘When I come back . . . I think it will take about a week to pay off the police and the judges . . . let’s go on a second honeymoon! We can go to Rio, or Paris!’

  Constanza nodded.

  Don Hugh roared off in his jeep, and Constanza watched with just a little regret, just a little pang, as she saw his big rugby-player’s shoulders swing the wheel and disappear in a cloud of dust. ‘Sometimes,’ she thought, ‘things happen too late.’

  Dona Constanza sat down and wrote a note:

  My Dear Hugh,

  I have been away a long time from you, and in that time everything with me has changed. I do not think it possible for us to pick up and start again. So I am saying goodbye. It was sweet of you to pay out all that money for me and I shall always remember it with gratitude. However, I know that you could have paid a lot more without even noticing the difference, and I do not think you have ever been happy with me. I do not have anyone else (how could I if I was a prisoner?) but I feel I have to start my life again. I am going to Costa Rica, and then to Europe. Give my love to the children. One day I will be in touch, when I am sorted out.

  I am sorry,

  Constanza.

  She went upstairs and found her cheque-book. There was a lot of money in her account, and one day it might come in useful. She also took a photograph of Hugh and the children.

  Back in the village it was impressed on everyone that Don Hugh should not be told that Constanza had gone back to the mountains, and that he should not under any circumstances be told that she was guerrillera.

  They stayed in the village for five days. Federico was amazed to find that his little sister Francesca had grown into a beautiful young woman, and she laughed at him when he warned her about men.

  ‘You are in more danger of guns than I of men,’ she said. ‘It is you who should be careful!’

  The party met Aurelio at the appointed time, and went back to the camp. Constanza decided never to tell Gonzago about her last tender hour with Don Hugh. Sometimes when it would be a good thing to lie, it is even better simply not to tell the truth.

  Aurelio had seen Parlanchina walking behind Federico, as before. ‘Gwubba,’ he said, ‘did you not marry a god?’ But Parlanchina only tossed back her hair and smiled her secretive smile. Federico began to have aching dreams about a beautiful wild girl who lived in the jungle.

  25

  * * *

  THE TWO VIRGINS

  FEDERICO WAS NOT entirely satisfied with his new gun. It was more modern than the Lee Enfield, and it was shorter. The bullets were smaller, it was also self-loading, but then that was a temptation to waste ammunition, which it was very important to conserve. But then again, it was far easier to get hold of the bullets; the old .303 had been a problem in that respect.

  What did not satisfy him was that firstly the M.16 was not as accurate over long ranges, and secondly that the self-loading mechanism on his weapon could very easily jam and was fiddly to clear. The first fault was annoying because he had come to specialise in sniping, and was one of the guerrillero band’s chief hunters of meat. The second fault was downright dangerous in
a skirmish.

  He tried repeatedly to swap it for a Kalashnikov or a hunting rifle, but none of the others wanted to change. They had all grown used to their weapons and considered it unlucky to part with them. Federico particularly wanted a Kalashnikov because they were extremely simple and even seemed to work when full of mud, but those were exactly the reasons that everybody wanted to keep theirs, so he was obliged to resign himself to having to keep his M.16 scrupulously clean and well-oiled. Remedios promised him a Kalashnikov should the group at some time acquire one.

  Federico used to try to keep track of the activities of the Mountain Rangers. These men were very highly-trained mountaineering soldiers whose original function had been to protect the Indians against the rapacious intrusions of brigands, bandidos, and other representatives of modern civilisation. But nowadays they were mostly men with binoculars and high-definition telescopes, infra-red nightsights, and a brief to locate the guerrilla bands and report their whereabouts. They were under orders not to fire unless there was no choice, and to be as inconspicuous as possible. Remedios and the guerrilleros were justifiably anxious about their activities, and it was part of Federico’s remit, since he was very fit and agile, to scour the area for them and shoot them on sight.

  It was, however, fortunate for everyone that the Sierra Nevada de Santa Margarita was vast, unmapped, and in most places inaccessible, because otherwise the bloodshed upon both sides would have increased dramatically. The authorities usually assumed that any Mountain Rangers who did not return had died in a fall, and did nothing about it, whilst Federico took their weapons and hid the bodies as decently as he could.

  Generally the Mountain Rangers were dropped in pairs by helicopter in convenient places, from where they would again be picked up five days later. In the interim they were supposed to scale nearby peaks and observe any activity within range of their apparatus. The method they employed was to survey adjacent areas systematically, so that in the course of a year the whole cordillera was covered.

  But it was an extremely tough and difficult job; and if the truth were known, actually impossible. It was not just that they were expected to climb several peaks in five days, loaded down with their provisions, their rifles, their climbing equipment and their surveillance apparatus, but also that the mountains themselves were against them. In the peaks it was bitterly cold at above about four thousand metres, and the weather kept changing all the time. It was quite possible to climb a mountain all morning in beautiful sunshine, reach the top, take out your binoculars, and five minutes later be completely enshrouded in cloud and freezing rain mixed up with driving snow and stinging dust. Additionally, the frost at night split the rocks in the mountainsides into shale, and it was quite possible, especially in wet conditions, to find yourself sliding backwards and downwards rapidly, at the same time as trying to climb forwards and upwards.

  The guerrilla groups quickly got wise to the Mountain Rangers. They moved further down the slopes into the dense jungle that sheltered the mountain slopes to quite a considerable height, and when they heard the sound of helicopters they would move promptly into the valleys that the Rangers had surveyed the week before. In this way they only had to move once a year, for just a week. They also found that the Rangers were quite easy to kill off.

  There were two reasons for this. Firstly, the Rangers never seemed to expect to see anyone who was not an Indian. This was because usually Indians were the only people they did see, as the guerrillas always stayed out of sight when the helicopters arrived. This lack of close encounters made them incautious and slapdash, and the easiest possible victims of ambush. Secondly, the Rangers would have had such an exhausting and miserable life if they had worked as expected that quite often they did not work at all. It was just a question of arriving, camping for five days in the same spot, and then being picked up again. They did not appreciate that just because they had got away with this for two years, it did not mean that their throats would not be cut as they slept in the first week of the third.

  Nevertheless, the activities of the Rangers still worried the guerrillas. It was always possible that at some time the Army Air Fleet Command might decide to randomise the searches, and it was also possible that a helicopter might arrive without being heard, as the acoustics in mountain ranges can be very idiosyncratic.

  Federico, therefore, was on permanent solitary patrol to look out for Rangers. He was allowed to treat this job as casually as he liked, and if he had wanted to he could have taken others with him, but he was very like Pedro the Hunter, whom he had always admired and tried to emulate when he was a boy. He was serious about what he did, he liked to stalk alone, and he devoted much time to honing his skill.

  Federico had actually killed two pairs of Mountain Rangers. The first two he had shot whilst they were roped together scaling a face high above him. They had fallen an immense distance, and he had had trouble finding their bodies, which he buried under heaps of shale so that the condors would not desecrate them (he had developed a strong sense of decency in this respect ever since he had failed to protect from the vultures the body of the first man he had shot). Federico had borne their equipment in triumph back to the camp, having to make two journeys to do it, and Remedios had praised him before the whole group.

  The second pair Federico shot when he came round a corner on the side of a mountain and saw below him in the valley two Rangers trying to violate an Indian woman who was fighting back frenziedly. One of the Rangers was trying to beat her into submission with his rifle, and the other was on the ground with his arms around her legs, attempting to topple her over. Federico shot the first man through the head whilst he was on the backswing, and he fell flat on his back.

  The other man stood up, froze for a second, and then ran. The Indian woman picked up a rock in her hand and actually gave chase. Federico was not used to rapidly running targets, and it took him four shots to bring the man down with a bullet in the leg. He fell down and sat clutching his thigh, rocking in pain, and the Indian woman caught up with him and beat his skull with the rock. Then she stood up, straightened her garments, wiped her brow with her shawl, went back to retrieve her hat, and walked proudly and firmly off down the valley. She did not even look back to see who had saved her, no doubt assuming that it was another Indian who was only doing what he ought to do. Federico took their equipment back to Remedios, and received more praise.

  When Federico saw no Rangers, as he very seldom did, he would usually return with some meat for the camp. It was so easy to shoot the stupid and docile vicuna that after a while he began to feel guilty about it and instead shot the feral goats that roamed at high altitudes. Lower down he would shoot wild pig, and any dog that had rabies. These dogs were not eaten, of course, but destroying them was a civic duty that even outlaws observed.

  But one night Federico dreamed for the hundredth time of the beautiful wild girl with the huge brown eyes and the black hair down to her waist, who lived in the jungle. He awoke thinking, ‘This means that I must go into the jungle and shoot the Jungle Rangers’, but it is certain that what he was hoping was that if he went into the jungle he would find the girl who had given him so many restless and delirious nights.

  He went to ask Remedios for her permission, and she refused it outright. ‘I will not give you permission. You cannot go down there. For one thing, Aurelio watches the jungle for us, and we do not need you to go, as the Mountain Rangers are much more of a worry for us. Also Aurelio has left traps everywhere, and you do not know where they are. Also, you know the mountains and the savannah, but you do not know the jungle in between, and you would get lost almost immediately and you would never come back. Also there are no Jungle Rangers in this area at the moment, and I will not give you my permission to waste everyone’s time, including your own.’

  Federico went off on his usual route towards the peaks, and when he was out of sight of the encampment he skirted around the sides of the valley and began his descent into the jungle. He calculated that he
could tell his direction from the sun in the jungle just as easily as he could in the mountains.

  Gradually the vegetation became noticeably more lush and impenetrable, and the humidity grew apace, so that Federico had to stop more and more often to slake his thirst in the streams and splash himself. Over his head the canopy became inexorably thicker and there was less light. He began to find himself swatting insects at every stop.

  Suddenly he stopped. It was as though someone was saying to him inside his head, ‘I will not give you permission. You cannot go down there.’ They were Remedios’ words, but it was not Remedios’ voice. He stood and shook his head. ‘You do not know the jungle,’ said the voice, using Remedios’ words. Federico shook his head again, as though he was shaking a fly out of his ear. He took a step forward, but his legs seemed very heavy, as though he were carrying a great weight or someone was bearing down on his shoulders. He sat by the path to think about whether he should go on with his plan. Everybody had always warned him about going into the jungle. It was a place of swamps, of hostile Indians with blow-pipes and poisoned darts, of snakes, of darkness, of sudden cliffs and holes concealed by creepers. It was a place of forgotten death, where people go insane from being lost. Federico sat there a long time with his common sense doing battle with his obstinacy. He was at that age when a man has that fierce self-confidence and fixed male pride which reveals that he is still not sure if he is yet a man. As he sat, his fear fed his obstinacy. He stood up and walked, resisting the force that pushed him back, like someone leaning with both hands against his chest. He conquered that force and strode on into the perpetual dusk of the jungle.

  Parlanchina appeared at the edge of the clearing and beckoned to her father. He laid down the maize-planting stick he was whittling and followed her as she wended in and out of the trees. Every few paces she stopped and looked at him, beckoning with sorrowful urgency. Aurelio hurried in her wake.