The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzmán

by Louis de Bernières

  ‘But,’ continued Ena, ‘we both liked listening to you, and then we both fell in love with you, and suddenly everything became very serious. And then it was too late.’

  Lena added, ‘And part of the game was not to tell each other what had happened, to give you a chance to guess, but you never did.’

  All I could do was repeat, ‘Two? Two?’ in an idiotic tone of voice, as everything suddenly became clear, and the secret of ‘Ena’s’ protean nature was revealed.

  ‘We have always shared everything anyway,’ said Lena.

  ‘We decided not to fight over you,’ added Ena.

  ‘And now you know why marriage would be a problem, so we are both coming to live with you. If you still want us to, of course.’

  ‘Two?’ I repeated, miserably, ‘How can I cope with two?’

  ‘We love you,’ said Ena. ‘And you love us,’ said Lena, ‘and we will try not to be jealous and have fights.’

  They both nodded in agreement with each other, and said, ‘We promise.’

  ‘And do you promise,’ I asked, ‘not to get your own way all of the time just because there are two of you and only one of me?’

  ‘O no,’ laughed Ena, ‘this is a democratic city, and each of us has only one vote, so you will never win.’

  ‘You do not have a chance,’ said Lena. ‘And anyway, monogamy was an invention of men who wished to reduce the power of women over them. We intend to put that right.’ They began to giggle again.

  ‘What about your parents? I have no wish to be shot.’

  ‘They think that you are rich and famous, and in any case they do as we tell them. Profesor Luis taught us to read and to calculate, but they are ignorant, so really we are in charge of them, and they are our children.’

  ‘And the constitution of the city says that in matters like this you can do as you like. Hectoro has three wives, Dionisio Vivo has scores of them, and Consuelo and Dolores have every man in the town sooner or later, except that they are not going to have you.’

  ‘Ever.’

  ‘Or else.’

  ‘I am tired,’ announced Lena, ‘let us all go to bed.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Ena, pretending very archly to yawn. They laughed at me as I stood, rigid with trepidation, and I said, ‘I need a strong drink.’

  It was one year later, and in fact we had all got married, because Father Garcia said that identical twins were made from a single split egg, and that therefore Ena and Lena were, scientifically speaking, and therefore in the eyes of God also, only one person. He also said that in his opinion, which was informed by personal encounters with angels, God did not really give a damn about how people organised their sexual lives, as long as all that they did was motivated by love in one of its infinitely varied forms.

  I was walking with my friend Antoine, and was talking with him about these extraordinary events. I asked him, ‘How did they fool me? And how did no one else know either?’

  He put his arm around my shoulder, and replied, ‘My friend, love has no eyes. You know, we all knew all of the time. On the one hand we were all very happy for you, and on the other hand it is always amusing to play jokes on Mexicanos.’

  ‘How did you know, you old goat? Come on, tell me.’

  He tapped the side of his nose knowingly; ‘Around here everybody talks, and you know, cabrón, those two were not the only ones who used to sit up here and listen to your music. I come up a great deal myself, though I have to say that I think it is about time that you learned some new pieces. That is advice from a good friend, or maybe you will begin to lose your audience.’

  ‘A good friend?’ I exclaimed. ‘And anyway, I do not have much free time these days, with seven giant jaguars and two women to exploit my time and my goodwill all simultaneously.’

  ‘And soon you will have even less time,’ said Antoine.

  I must have shown my puzzlement, because he added, ‘You mean that they have not told you? Always the last to know? How wonderful. But I am not going to be the one who tells you; you had better ask them.’

  I managed to extract a confession from Ena and Lena that same evening, and I remember exclaiming, ‘What? Both of you at once? O, Santa Virgen.’

  They nodded sweetly, and Ena took a cigarette, lit it, and put it into my mouth, saying, ‘We were going to tell you tomorrow.’

  7 The Submission Of The Holy Office To His Eminence (1)

  I will state my case against my people

  for all the wrong they have done in forsaking me,

  in burning sacrifices to other gods,

  worshipping the work of their own hands.

  Jeremiah 1:16

  YOUR EMINENCE, WE honour in this report your sapient decision to reconstitute the Holy Office in this land and to employ it upon the redoubtable task of examining in secret the state of belief of the nation. To this end one hundred monks of the order of St Dominic were dispatched to every corner, to the stupendous and forbidding heights of the Andean mountains, to the frozen and inhospitable altiplanos, to the torrid zones of the llanos, and to the sodden and unforgiving forests and jungles of the Amazonas. Not only did they penetrate to all these areas and the cities contained within them, they also fulfilled their instruction to examine not only the superstitions of the poor, the animism and polytheism of the savages amongst whom our devoted missionaries strive to bring the light of Christ, but also the educated middle and upper classes, infiltrating themselves even into the highest echelons of secular power. This they did by what Your Eminence has so aptly described as ‘Godly subterfuge’, it being clear that if they had not been disguised as vendors of bamboo whistles, mule traders, herbalists, clairvoyants, egregious Protestants, birdlimers, snake-catchers and chicken-sexers, they would not have had as much success in determining the real state of people’s hearts as they have in fact had. The report which you now find yourself examining is our condensation of these reports, which Your Eminence may examine in full and at his pleasure simply by requesting us to forward them to his palace.

  We divide our report into three sections, beginning with the sorrowful matter of the spiritual health of our own clergy. We are most sorry to report that if Your Eminence were to read through the reports of the proceedings of the Council of Evreux (1195), the Council of Avignon (1209), and the Council of Paris (of the same year), he would obtain a very accurate picture of what still obtains nearly one thousand years later in our own country.

  There are priests who either sell indulgences, trade them for sexual favours, or grant them to the dying in exchange for their patrimony. We have come across the case of a bishop who sold the last joint of the little finger of St Teresa of the Infant Jesus to a pious widow (for fifty thousand pesos), when the real item in fact resides on public view in the cathedral of Bayeux in Normandy. This was the worst example of trade in relics, real and supposed. We have come across numerous samples of the True Cross which are plainly made of Brazilian rosewood, mahogany, Amazonian balsa, quebracha, and even painted clay. There are numerous shrouds of Christ displayed in various churches, there are nails from the hands and feet of Christ made of stainless steel (‘miraculously unrusted despite their antiquity’), there are thorns from the crown of Christ, taxidermised birds (all of them tropical), which have had the benefit of attending the sermons of St Francis of Assisi. There are bones of Christ (contrary to the doctrine of the Resurrection), and a priest in Santander displays a head of St John the Baptist which bears a startling resemblance to the shrunken heads made by the Cusicuari Indians and sold by them in profitable quantities to North American tourists. These are in addition to the relics of so-called ‘popular saints’, such as Pedro of Antiochia, who could produce frogs out of people’s hats and specialised in the blessing of mules and llamas. Many of these uncanonised ‘saints’ have a considerable priestly following, the worst case being that of a church dedicated to Lucia the Innocent, who is reputed to have given birth to twenty-two rabbits despite her virginity.

  We have come across c
ases of monks gambling at dice for penances in monasteries in order to while away their idleness. In Santander several taverns have been opened by clergy, hanging outside of which can be seen signs depicting clerical collars, stoles, eucharistic ciboria and chalices, and even a paten upon whose stem can clearly be seen fauns in a priapic condition. In these ungodly establishments may be found their proprietors, usually in a state of inebriation at all hours of the day, with their vestments rolled up and tucked into their belts, trading scatological stories with their customers and allowing the use of backrooms and cubicles for immoral purposes.

  We have discovered that licentious living is rife. In one city it is widely known that nuns organise dissolute parties and wander the streets at night. Members of religious orders, both male and female, live in a state of open concubinage, the progeny of such unions being popularly known as ‘anticristos’, and on whose behalf much nepotism is exercised. We have uncovered gambling, drunkenness, and a great predilection for hunting and violent sports. There are two monasteries in Asuncion which regularly organise football matches between themselves. In these games the entire monasteries turn out, meeting at a place equidistant from each. The football is sometimes of the orthodox variety, but is sometimes another object, usually a calf’s head or a coconut. The object of the game is to be the first team to hurl the ball over the opposing monastery’s wall. There are no rules in this game; there is much kicking, punching, brawling, hairpulling, and a torrent of obscene language such as would disgust even a stevedore or one accustomed to work with the deranged. At the end of the game there is no one who has not shed blood or had his habit torn; the cost to the monasteries concerned in terms of replacement and repair can only be imagined. It can be considered a matter of relief that the contestants do not resort to the use of arms, since we have established that up to ten per cent of the rural clergy bear arms, ranging from small revolvers to sawn-off shotguns, which are easily concealed beneath their robes. This practise is partly an understandable reaction to the prevalence of brigandage, and partly a perverse enterprise in winning admiration for machismo, which in this country is acknowledged to be a cult all to itself.

  We have established that in the matter of orthodoxy of belief, our clergy matches almost precisely the general doctrinal confusion characteristic of the nation as a whole, which prompts one to question the efficiency of our seminaries. We will deal with this aspect, namely, the varieties of Christian belief, in part three of our report, part two being concerned with aberrant and diabolical practises amongst the people. We conclude this section by noting that in his inaugural speech to the Fourth Lateran Council, His Holiness Pope Innocent III declared that the vice of the laity was caused directly by that of the clergy.

  8 How Love Became Possible In Cochadebajo de los Gatos

  IT IS AN almost invariable fact of experience that consuming passions may arise only when there is time and energy for them; love asserts as its precondition a degree of social organisation and economic stability that allows for leisure, and in this fallow field the seeds of desire, blown in by the winds, germinate, take root, and grow rampant as the orchids of the jungle.

  Of course, many loves were already established at the time of the migration from the region of Chiriguana; that of Profesor Luis and Farides had grown naturally in the village now buried in silt, Doña Constanza and Gonzago had conceived their passion in the indolence of the encampment of the People’s Vanguard, as had Gloria and Tomás, and the ghostly love of Federico and Parlanchina had blossomed in the infinite leisure of death.

  It would be tempting to describe the efflorescence of love in Cochadebajo as a plague, a plague as beneficent as the great plague of cats, except that the word would seem inappropriate when signifying what was in truth the bloom that springs inevitably out of the loam of civilisation.

  At first, the people had concerned themselves solely with the business of survival, when there was nowhere to live and food was scarce. The task of digging out the ruins of the ancient Inca town took many months, and during this time the people were buffeted by the rains and baked by the sun. Most of the houses were intact, excellently constructed, with stones so perfectly shaped that a piece of paper could not have been slipped between them even though they were mortarless. But the old palm roofs had long ago rotted to slime, and an abysmal dankness hung about the place that it seemed no amount of air and sunshine could dispel. To begin with they huddled together at night in the Palace of the Lords or in the Temple of Viracocha, warmed by each other’s bodies and the musky heat of the cats.

  During the day they laboured fitfully, digging the mud out in blocks that were passed up the human chain to reconstruct the andenes that were eventually to circle the city and provide it with potatoes, quinoa and beans, giving the mountainsides the appearance of having been made into staircases for Titans. Others laboured to make adobe to patch up the places where stones had rotted away from buildings, and others still disappeared into the sierra to hunt meat or to go on relentlessly arduous treks in search of palm to thatch the houses.

  The people grew thin with labour and lack of food, but toiled on in the faith that one day they would rest unmolested in their remote city, leading uneventful lives, growing a little fat, glad that the excitements of war would pass them by. They hoped that history would forget them and carry on by itself in other places. This hope sustained them, as did the guinea pigs, viscachas and vicuñas brought in by the stupendous cats and by the hunters, along with the mule-loads of bananas, lemons and almonds traded with the Indian settlements scattered about the sierra. As their clothes fell into shreds from constant toil they were replaced by garments woven by those same Indians, until eventually one would have had the impression that here was an intact pre-Columbian settlement, were it not for the black and mestizo faces replacing the calculatedly expressionless Indian faces that one might have expected to see above those bright red and black stripes. Neither were Indians so tall; here were Misael and Pedro, both nearly two metres in stature, and here was Felicidad, slim and dark like those who dance the siguiriyas in Andalucia, quite unlike the squat indigenous women with their small mouths, heavy thighs, and their multiplicity of petticoats.

  It was when they were levering the remains of the natural dam over the edge of the precipice in order to complete the drainage of the city that Misael leaned over and realised that three hundred metres below there stretched a site ideal for agriculture, if only one could reach it easily, without walking forever to get there roundabout. The great cascade of water from the breaking of the lake had flattened the forest below, covered it with a thick layer of fertile soil, and supplied it with a river flowing through it for irrigation. Most of the work was done. ‘Hijo de puta,’ he exclaimed, grinning from ear to ear, ‘am I or am I not a genius and the saviour of the city?’ He strode off to find Profesor Luis, who was building another windmill to turn a lorry dynamo that would raise the voltage of part of the town to twenty-four. Luis was contemplating his work and wondering whether it could be transformed to a yet higher voltage without losing too many amps.

  ‘Hola, cabrón,’ said Misael, ‘this is indeed a fine machine.’ They stood together watching the two halves of an oil drum rotating in the breeze, and Misael put his hand on Profesor Luis’ shoulder. ‘I have a big challenge for you, the biggest of your life.’

  ‘A bigger one than getting my way with Farides?’

  ‘An even bigger one, viejo. Come and see.’

  Gazing out over the plain below them, already green with the encroachment of nature, but its trees shattered to matchsticks, Misael was elated with his plan and Profesor Luis was inebriated by its grandeur. ‘It will be our estancia, our latifundo, it will be the best farm in the world.’

  Profesor Luis shaded his eyes with his hand and squinnied against the light. ‘We will grow everything,’ he said, ‘We will grow rice in the damp parts, we will grow avocados and bananas, we will grow cattle where the land is fallow, we will drown in milk and cheese, we will
flounder in an orgy of oranges.’

  ‘Maybe so,’ replied Misael, who was suspicious of poetry on all occasions except for this, ‘but you will have to construct a machine to help us up and down. It will be the biggest machine of your life, it will be a machine to make your windmills toys.’

  ‘I will make a machine,’ said Profesor Luis, ‘such as has never been seen.’ And he went away and lay down in the dark for two days with a blanket over his head until the germ of the machine wafted in on the mountain wind, settled in the silt of his imagination, broke its carapace with the force of its first sprout, developed tap roots and hair roots, budded with branches and the intimate details of flowers, and turned into a machine more magnificent than the system of the heavens. Profesor Luis went to eat picante de pollo in Dolores’ restaurant, wiped his mouth, sat back, and mentally prepared his exposition of the machine to the natural leaders of Cochadebajo de los Gatos.

  ‘Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth,’ he proclaimed grandiloquently, but the first great feat of Archimedean leverage to be performed was not the gathering of wherewithals, but the persuasion of the people to undertake the colossal task in the first place. It seemed crazy to almost everyone that when they were still digging out the city, still remaking roofs, and scratching for food, someone should propose the diversion of labour into the construction of a giant lift.

  ‘You are more loco than Father Garcia,’ said Josef, his speech a little indistinct on account of the wad of coca in his cheek.

  ‘It is a wonderful idea,’ said Father Garcia with an expansive gesture, ‘we could have it raised and lowered metaphysically with the aid of angels. If I could be sure of the infallibility of levitation, I would operate it myself.’