The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzmán

by Louis de Bernières

  But Dolores was a wilful proprietor. She did not see why her own mealtimes should be disrupted, and so she closed the restaurant at breakfast, midday, and seven o’clock in the evening, and she would not open during the hours of siesta on the grounds that she needed one as much as anyone else. This meant that she was only open for trade in the mornings after everyone had departed for their labours, and in the evenings when everyone had already eaten. This was a good arrangement in only one way, which was that she hardly ever had to do any work.

  Having passed this stage, and having decided to open at saner times, she then displayed a side of her character which had been hitherto undisclosed to those who knew her. It transpired that she was an obsessive experimentalist. In trials with aji sauce she developed one that was so indescribably hot that it became instantaneously famous. It was the kind of aji sauce that is tasteless for the first few chews, and which then seizes the back of the throat and sends one into a kind of frenzied dementia where one clasps the throat with one hand, half gets out of the chair, sinks back into it, waves the free hand about, emits strangled noises, gasps for water, drinks it in one swig, discovers that water only makes it worse, and then rushes out to throw oneself in the river, from which one emerges dazed and dripping with sweat, smiling sheepishly.

  Dolores made a lot of money out of this dish; she served it up with braised chicken and called it Pollo de un Hombre Verdadero. This Chicken of a True Man was taken up as a challenge by all the men of the city who prided themselves in their machismo. One after the other they were brought in by their compadres and challenged to eat the whole meal without so much as a grimace. Anyone who succeeded was immediately raised to the élite in the machismo stakes, and it was a common thing to hear it said of someone, ‘What? He is no man, he could only eat a little of Dolores’ chicken,’ or ‘Did you hear about Hectoro? He ate two of Dolores’ chicken one after the other without even taking a drink. ¡Qué hombre!’

  But nobody truly enjoyed this ordeal, and the men began to suspect that Dolores had found a subtle way of mocking them. They started to avoid coming to the restaurant in case somebody challenged them to trial by chicken, and so Dolores began her next flurry of experimentation. She tried Fish with Forty Cloves of Garlic, which did not prove popular, and which proved to be tedious on account of having to do so much peeling. She tried a confection called Woman’s Revenge, which consisted of testicles afloat in a tapioca sauce of suggestive appearance, but discovered that it could only be a seasonal dish, since the steers were rounded up and corraled for gelding but once a year. She invented a dish consisting of several layers of tortilla with something different between each layer, depending upon what was available, which she called Bocadillo Improvisado; it turned out to be very popular with women, who have, as it is generally conceded all over the world, more adaptable and exploratory appetites than men.

  At the end of her fantasia period Dolores began to serve up standard favourites, such as picante de pollo, arepas, chiles rellenos, carnitas, salpicon, and esquites, but we should not fail to mention in conclusion her final major experiment, which was with frijoles refritos. She discovered that refried beans could be made to be quite phenomenally carminative by beating eggs into it and using several different kinds of beans all in the same mash. It was this that she served to people upon whom she wished to exercise her sense of humour, and it was the very same one that caused a temporary falling out between Felicidad and Don Emmanuel, this latter having grown extraordinarily fond of it.

  When Doña Constanza wished to learn the secrets of culinary success, it was natural that she should apprentice herself to Dolores, who at first was suspicious of the former’s motives. She made Constanza swear on the apachita, the little pile of stones upon which Aurelio sacrificed coca leaves to the spirits of the hills, that she was not about to open her own restaurant, and that every time she served a meal she should accompany it with the words ‘This is a recipe of Dolores, who makes it better than I do’. The first thing that Dolores did was to take advantage of her quite shamelessly; she made Constanza help with preserving her huge pile of potatoes, under the pretext that it was essential for every cook to know how this was done.

  First she made Doña Constanza separate out the ‘llallahuas’, the potatoes considered to be sacred on account of their shape, and then she made her fill a large cauldron with water brought from the river. She sent Constanza away, and then fetched her after a week, telling her to carry all the potatoes up to the frost line so that they could be alternately frozen at night and heated by day for ten days. She sent the puzzled Constanza away again, only to tell her after the ten days had elapsed to go and stamp on the potatoes until there was no more moisture in them. This she did in a state of perplexity and resentment, which grew worse when she was then instructed to leave them for another month before the next lesson, which consisted of carrying them in sacks down the mountainside and stacking them at the back of Doña Flor’s. ‘There you are,’ exclaimed Dolores, disappearing behind a pall of smoke from her cigar, ‘we have made chuños.’ Doña Constanza looked dubiously at the hardened desiccated vegetables and said, ‘But Dolores, I wanted to know how to cook them, not how to turn them into nuts.’

  ‘With cooking,’ replied Dolores, ‘preparation is everything.’

  This was something that Doña Constanza could understand; her face brightened up and she said, ‘It is just the same with making love.’ Dolores’ experience of men was that mostly they stood in a queue getting drunk, spitting on the floor and shouting to the present customer to hurry up. When it was their turn they just dived in with most of their clothes still on, their boots leaving mud on the sheet, and then they tried to leave without paying. She looked incredulously at Doña Constanza, and drawled in her rum-laden way, ‘Amiga, what man is there who would go to any trouble? They are all like horses, they sink their teeth into your neck to hold you still, and then they go after another mare.’ She spat on the ground for emphasis, leaving Constanza too intimidated to explain to her that Gonzago was not like that.

  It was at this point that a gaunt but insouciant figure strode past the door, and the two women looked at one another in surprise. They could have sworn that a priest had just walked by, a priest who was not Father Garcia. They popped their heads out of the doorway, and without a word to each other, decided to follow him to see what he was up to, only to find that everyone else in the street had had the same idea. There was a crowd of folk following the new priest at a respectful distance, including Father Garcia, whose territorial instincts were struggling with his better nature. He was arguing fiercely with himself as to whether or not he should welcome this new priest or tell him to go away, since the parish was already spoken for. He resolved to bide his time.

  In the plaza the tattered cleric mounted the plinth of an obelisk and gazed distractedly into space as though gathering his holiness together into a point of light. Garcia recognised his own familiar technique for rendering people curious and silent, and he began to enjoy the occasion for its theatrical professionalism. He was able to look at the priest more closely now, and he realised that there was something strange about him. Everything was right, but at the same time it was wrong.

  Look at that hat for example; it was the correct shape, but it was a vaquero’s sombrero punched out and painted black. It had been daubed very thickly to give the impression of smoothness, but one could still see the weave of the straw underneath. And what about that dog collar? It was the right size, and it was white, but it most definitely had the look of carefully torn cardboard. The black robes seemed to be made of unecclesiastical material; they were too diaphanous, too loosely woven, like cheap curtains dyed to black and cobbled into shape. Father Garcia strained forward and noted that the stitches were large and clumsy, the kind of stitching that little children achieve in their first attempts.

  The new priest made the sign of the cross with his right hand, the people fell silent, and he announced, ‘Brothers and sisters, I come to bri
ng you salvation. I am but a poor wandering missionary of the Order of St Haematoma the Blessed Martyr, and I earn my bread by the hearing of confessions and the granting of absolutions. For only twenty pesos I will give you peace of mind and the assurance of eternal bliss, guaranteed by this Most Holy Relic that I carry, which is the rib of St Necrophobia herself, who miraculously ascended into heaven in the year of Our Lord one thousand nineteen hundred and fifty-four, taking with her her carapace of flesh and leaving only her bones behind.’ He waved a yellowed bone that Pedro recognised instantly as having been taken from a dog.

  At this many people crossed themselves, and the priest continued, ‘I am to be found at the first jaguar obelisk at the entrance to the town. Be silent for the blessing.’ He bowed his head and intoned, ‘Non (ita me Di ament) quicquam referre putaui utrumne os an culum olfacerem Aemilio, nilo mundius hoc nihiloque immundius illud. Amen.’ The people reiterated the amen, and the priest departed with dignity towards the place appointed by himself for his ministry.

  Smiling with delight, Father Garcia turned to Dionisio and said, ‘Do you know what he just said?’ and the latter replied, ‘My Latin is not too good, but it certainly didn’t sound right. What was it?’

  ‘It was Catullus,’ said Garcia. ‘It was “I believed (Gods help me) that it made no difference whether I smelled Aemilius’ mouth or anus, the one being no cleaner, the other no dirtier.”’

  ‘He said that?’ Dionisio was astonished. ‘What kind of blessing is that?’

  ‘It is the blessing of a false priest who is concerned to make a living,’ said Garcia. ‘I am going to go at once to confess to him so that I can hear more Catullus.’

  He came back with a spring in his step, having been absolved in Latin with the words, ‘You shit less than ten times in a year, and then it’s as hard as beans and lupins and if you rubbed it between your hands you would never soil a single digit.’

  He had also formed the beginnings of a firm friendship with the false priest, who was none other than the wastrel and rapscallion younger brother of Cardinal Dominic Trujillo Guzman. He had studied at the same seminary as Father Garcia, and had been thrown out on account of his absorbing interest in scatological classical literature. His name was Don Salvador, and he knew all the obscene and lascivious passages by heart. Like Father Garcia, he strongly believed in salvation through good times and fornication.

  4 Ena And The Mexican Musicologist (2)

  DURING THE WEEKS that followed Ena used to appear regularly at dusk, and I very quickly noticed that she had a protean quality about her. On some days she appeared to be slightly plumper than upon others, and I believed that her eyebrows were on some days heavier than upon others. But that was not all, because almost everything about her could be seen to be changing from one day to the next. I found that she would forget things that I had told her the day before, yet remember them weeks later, and often she would ask me the same questions. One day she would take delight in a tune I was playing, and the next she would be dismissive about it and claim that she preferred another which previously she had disliked. Always, however, she would sit cross-legged before me, and study me with her unwavering brown eyes. ‘Ena,’ I asked one day, ‘why do you change so much all the time?’

  Instead of expressing surprise at my question, as I had expected, Ena giggled into her hands and said, ‘Everybody says that. I think it is very funny.’

  ‘I find you most mysterious.’

  ‘O bueno, I like to be mysterious.’

  The next day she brought me two jaguar kittens in a straw basket. She handed them to me by the scruff of the neck, saying, ‘You will never be a real inhabitant of this city unless you have Cochadebajo cats as everyone else does.’

  Normally I detest cats because they make me sneeze, and moreover they detect my dislike and come to sit on me on purpose. I was horrified at being given two of them which would one day grow to be enormous black monsters, but I confess that when I looked at them my heart softened a little, and in any case I was glad of a pretext to kiss Ena upon the cheek in token of gratitude. She blushed momentarily, and her eyes seemed briefly to catch aflame. She put the back of her hand to her cheek where I had kissed it, as if to feel the kiss again, and I felt obliged to rescue her from her confusion by saying, ‘What shall I call them?’

  ‘O,’ she said, ‘I think that they are both girls, so you will call them Ena and Lena, no?’

  ‘Ena and Lena it is, then.’

  Of course the cats rapidly turned my house into a battlefield resounding with squawks and yowlings, and they played incessantly a game which consisted in chasing each other around the rooms without touching the floor, dislodging in the process everything that was upon the shelves and tables. Naturally I did eventually grow to be very fond of them, even when one of them turned out to have been male, and impregnated his sister, so that I ended up being taken over completely by a squad of furry little storm-troopers that grew to be so large that I was obliged to build an extra room onto the house to accommodate them.

  One night I was playing to Ena when I remarked to her, ‘You know, you have completely stopped me from composing,’ and a look of dismay passed over her face.

  ‘O,’ I exclaimed, ‘please do not look so horrified. It is simply that I am so anxious to keep you entertained by learning new pieces, that I no longer spend any time writing music myself.’

  She had a piteous expression as she said miserably, ‘I am so sorry. I did not mean to be a nuisance. I believed that you liked me to come. But if you wish, I will not come any more.’

  It was a very bright night because there was a three-quarter moon, and the Southern Cross was clearly visible, and I was astonished and moved to perceive that her eyes were filling with tears and that her lips were quivering like a little girl’s. Instantly I felt overwhelmed with guilt at my insensitivity, and without thinking about it I went down on my knees before the place where she was sitting, and put my arms around her. I hugged her, patted her consolingly upon the back, and rocked her back and forth as my own mother had used to do. ‘Ena,’ I murmured, ‘you must not cry. I like it that you come here, because it makes a big difference to me. I am never lonely any more.’

  She sobbed upon my shoulder a short while, and then lifted her head. We looked at each other a moment, and I kissed a tear from her cheek. She moved forward, closed her eyes in exactly that fashion so often depicted in romantic movies, and kissed me very shyly and very softly upon the lips. I felt the familiar old knot in my stomach, and soon, of course, the kisses became more passionate, and the embrace more horizontal. There came a point when I knew what to say, knowing that I meant it: ‘Ena, I have just realised that in all this time I have grown to love you.’

  ‘I knew it,’ she said. ‘Or at least I thought I did.’

  ‘What did you think that you knew? That I loved you or that you loved me?’

  She pouted, and said, ‘Both, of course. But please do not send me away.’

  The next evening when Ena arrived I very naturally put my arms around her and kissed her. Or rather, I tried to kiss her. She pushed me away and hit me so hard that I honestly believe that I could not have been more greatly stunned by Muhammad Ali in his prime. I tottered on my feet, and, feeling much aggrieved, I said, ‘Ena, you spent two hours last night kissing me. Now why should I not believe that you would like it just as much tonight?’

  She seemed very surprised. ‘Did I?’

  ‘You know very well that you did.’

  She paced back and forth with her fingers to her chin, as though she were deciphering a recondite code, and then she giggled mischievously, came forward, put her hands on my shoulders, and whispered very sexily, ‘Did you like my little joke? Kiss me all you like.’

  ‘Most amusing,’ I said, still feeling offended, and we began to kiss. On this day she seemed much surer and more expert than she had been the night before, and once more I was astounded and confused. ‘Why do you kiss differently from yesterday?’


  ‘I have a different kiss for weekdays,’ she said. ‘Yesterday was Sunday. And I have been practising.’

  ‘What?’ I expostulated, feeling violently jealous. ‘Who with?’

  She smiled again. ‘With no one. I have been practising by forcing my tongue between the segments of an orange.’

  ‘You are a liar,’ I said, ‘but kiss me some more, according to the correct kiss for the day of the week.’

  Naturally, one thing leads to another, but I did not go to bed with Ena for another two months. It was not because she was a frightened little virgin; in fact she seemed very interested in ceasing to be one at all. It was because I needed to be sure in my own mind that I really preferred to forget about my unrequited love in Mexico City, and accept Ena with the proper dedicated enthusiasm that one owes honourably to a virgin who is in good faith. Furthermore, I earnestly wanted to enter into this at the right pace, so that it was all unrushed, perfectly romantic, without unfair pressures, so that we would have the opportunity to hone our emotions to the finest point of intensity.

  It was Ena herself who, one evening when we were talking by the lights of the hurricane lamps, stood up and took the cigarette from my mouth. She crushed it in the dust and proffered me her hand. I took it and she led me to my bed. In the darkness she slipped with one deft movement out of her shabby blue dress, and put her arms about my neck, embracing me tightly. Even in the darkness I could see that her eyes were glowing luminescently, with that force and brilliance of which I believe that only young women are capable. She kissed me gently and murmured, ‘Now is the right time.’