The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzmán

by Louis de Bernières

  They buried Josef deep beneath the floor of the whorehouse so that he could listen to the familiar tumult and have copas of aguardiente poured over his resting place at moments of sentimentality and nostalgia. The burial was somewhat delayed by the absence of his lower limb, which Pedro and Sergio had left on the plateau in the urgent rush to bring him back up to the town. This severed item had been carried off by an opportunistic puma, and all that turned up in Leticia Aragon’s hammock was the foot that the puma had detached to give to her cubs. It was intact but covered with the tiny pinpricks of their teeth. Eventually the eloquent and squint-eyed policeman whose niece Josef had pleasured had the idea of fashioning a wooden part to complete the corpse’s anatomy, and thus Josef was consigned to the soil with all his presents, fully equipped for a riotous and fulfilling afterlife.

  Josef’s unjustly premature taking off had the consequences that from then on people who visited the plateau always smoked cigars with great vehemence, since snakes hate tobacco, and on their feet they rubbed a concoction of snakeroot, garlic, and sweet oil, which snakes find deeply offensive. The one was for protection, the other for revenge

  On the night of Josef’s death Aurelio called in on Francesca and found her weeping in the arms of Capitan Papagato, her husband. He closed the door softly behind him, and said, ‘I have come to give you some news. When your child is born, you must not call him Josef, as you have been thinking. You must call him Federico, after your brother, the husband of my daughter Parlanchina.’ He answered their questioning gaze with the remark, ‘Some things are fate, because of the gods.’

  He went out into the night and walked up the street. He stopped briefly by the axle-pole in the plaza and looked up at the stars. When he came into the sierra from the arboreal canopy of the jungle he was always startled into admiration by the immensity of the sky. He sat down and thought about how Parlanchina too had begun to fade away. These days she merely stood still by the path in the jungle, her beautiful long hair washing about her waist, her soft eyes empty and dreaming. He had seen that her child was fading also, and her capricious pet ocelot was curled at her feet, its vibrant spots and rosettes phasing in and out of focus.

  Aurelio walked on to the door of Leticia Aragon, and knocked lightly. She appeared shortly, as naked as the snow, as if she had known that there was someone there who would not be astonished. Aurelio studied her beauty; her eyes were now sea-green, and her fine black hair fell upon her shoulders like a familiar caress. He suddenly wondered whether she had always been Parlanchina’s mother, and was utterly smitten by a sense of the ineffable. Leticia smiled remotely and told him: ‘I know that I am pregnant again.’

  ‘It will be the first female child of Dionisio who will not be called Anica,’ he said.

  She nodded and invited him in, saying, ‘It will help to free him.’

  ‘And another thing,’ added Aurelio. ‘The girl will be born with a child in her womb, and this child will be born on a day before your daughter has ever known a man. But the father is Francesca’s baby who has yet to be born, who will be called Federico. Do you understand?’

  Leticia nodded. ‘Oshun came to me in a dream as Nuestra Señora de la Caridad del Cobre. I will do as she said, and call the child Parlanchina.’

  55 Sibila Retrieves Her Fallen Crown And Dons Her Robe Of Light

  ‘O SAN NICOLAS, who raised from the dead three children who had been pickled in a salting tub, O San Quentin, who spared a thief by causing the hangman’s rope to break, O Santa Rita, who four times performed the impossible, O San Cosmas and San Damian, who could be harmed neither by fire, air, water, nor by the cross, intervene with Our Lady and Our Lord, that she may be spared. Amen. And God forgive me.’

  This was the prayer that I prayed many times in my house during that night when I could not sleep for my pain, for my terror, and for my betrayal of Sibila. I am not religious by nature, and my words were as empty in my soul as they were unheard by God, but I prayed because there was no other recourse. I knew all the time that it was an illusion to pray, but it passed the night as I huddled sleepless in my room that had been emptied even of the bed. I had seen a vision of Hell, such as each generation sees it. My parents saw just these things during La Violencia, and their parents saw just these things during the civil war. It was the same play with new actors, and I asked the same question as my parents: ‘What is wrong with us that we shit on paradise?’

  I did not go near the church in the next few days because I knew that Sibila was there. I stayed in my house waiting for her to confess, be released, and come to see me. I practised the words that I would use to ask her to forgive me. I said them aloud, trying out the different ways, and I had nothing to eat, because they had taken even my food. But there was no knock upon the door. There was nothing except the silence of the afflicted, the squabbles of the vultures, the coarse jokes of the bodyguard, drunk in the street, the interminable chant of the priests in the plaza. There was nothing except the pain, which was like a hurricane roaring in my spirit.

  Then after the days had passed there was the sound of chanting passing my house, and the priests went by, bearing candles and the green cross. I was already educated enough in their ways to know that tomorrow there would be another auto de fe, and my heart jumped in my breast as I understood that very probably it would be the occasion when I would know what was to happen to Sibila.

  That night I prayed my prayer again until I had said it so often that I thought, ‘Maybe I will weary the saints with my prayers, and they will concede to me what I ask,’ and I slept. I had a dream in which Sibila and I were lovers. It was a cruel dream, because when I awoke I was happy.

  At the auto de fe all the surviving children of the village were brought out. They made the children swear to attend confession at Easter, Christmas, and Pentecost, and to remain orthodox of belief. It was pitiful to see the chidren, streaked with dirt, the tracks of tears upon their faces, bruised, hungry, and orphaned. The Monsignor was in purple again, and there was a great censer burning in order to drown the stench of death.

  When the children were led away, a tractor arrived with a trailer behind it. It was Patarino’s tractor, and the trailer was piled high with bodies. They were not those of the newly dead. They were old and shrivelled, falling apart, with yellow bones and blackened skin. There was soil upon them, there were pieces of coffin plank, tufted pieces of scalp, hanks of brittle hair. Something connected in my mind, and I realised that they had dug up all the people that I had named as dead santeros, and perhaps many more besides. I could not help but look; there is something about the grotesquerie of death that fascinates. It was hard to make the connection between those caricatures of humans, and the friends and relatives that they used to be. I actually felt a kind of satisfaction that my own parents had died during La Violencia and had been left to rot on the hillsides. Who knows if it was the Conservatives or the Liberals who killed them? But at least I knew that they were not exhumed and thrown into this tangle of cadavers.

  The Monsignor and his priests withdrew into the church, and I watched as the bodyguard dug a deep hole in the ground and set a post into it. They piled it about with brushwood and faggots, and they began to throw the bodies onto the heap, limb by limb. They made jokes, such as, ‘Ay, cabrón, how about this one for a dry fuck?’ and, ‘Ay, this one has no teeth. She was good for a blowjob, eh?’ They put one of their number on the lookout for the priests, and they pulled all the gold teeth from the jawbones with pliers. They broke off the fingers to get at the rings. It made a desiccated sound, like the snapping of twigs, but you could see from the twisting and pulling that it was hard to break the tendons. Over the heap of bones they poured gasoline, and I knew for sure that they intended to burn heretics retrospectively, as if the dead had not already passed to judgement.

  I had almost forgotten Sibila by this time. But then she was led out of the church behind El Inocente.

  Perhaps I should explain that the priests themselves would not tortur
e the prisoners or carry out sentences, and everything of a brutal nature was carried out by the bodyguard.

  How can I speak of this? Did I tell you that the bodyguard were divided into clubs, and each club had its own methods? It seems that the ones who questioned Sibila were the Agatistas. That is to say that they recapitulated the sufferings of St Agatha. To me it is a blasphemy to do this, but I heard it justified. They said that to be a heretic was to insult the saints who had suffered for the true faith, and they inflicted the torment now upon those who truly deserved them, as an expiation. To me, this is a pretext.

  Sibila was dressed in a black sanbenito painted gaudily with demons and flames, but it was soaked in blood. She could barely walk, and she was brought out leaning upon two of the bodyguard. Her eyes were half closed, her head lolled upon her chest, and with her arms around the shoulders of those two ruffians, her attitude reminded me perhaps of the deposition from the cross, and also of a Corpus Christi. Her hair fell forward about her face in the way that it used to do when she was concentrating on a book or making coffee, and I saw that blood was running down her legs to her ankles, forming dark pools in the dust of the street. She was all but dead. Believe me, my heart was bursting, but still I had no strength.

  El Inocente stood before the table and gestured for silence. He preached a long sermon, of which I cannot recall a single word, but I can tell you that it was full of vileness, decorated and embellished to the point where one might almost believe that it was a noble speech. He read out a long list of those whose corpses were to be burned, and whose property was to be confiscated from their inheritors, so that there was no one in the village left with any possessions.

  Then the Monsignor gestured to the bodyguard that Sibila should be taken, and I realised that they intended to burn her along with the corpses. They dragged her, trailing her feet, and there was a stream of blood behind her where she went. Do you know what happened to St Agatha? Her breasts were torn off with shears, she was rolled on broken shards, then on burning coals, and she died before they could burn her. But Sibila was alive, and she had suffered all those things. I began to weep, but my eyes were open; I was watching the consequences of my cowardice and treachery, and the consequence was that I was going to lose the one I loved in all the world.

  The Monsignor went up to her as she stood bound amid the corpses and the stench of gasoline, and he said to her, ‘Do you abjure? If you abjure you will be mercifully strangled before you are burned. What faith do you embrace?’

  Sibila raised her head, and for a second I was relieved that she had not died, because that is what I had been beginning to think. She said in a voice that was feeble but very clear, ‘I believe that the world was made by the Devil. I believe that when I am released I shall wear a robe of light and see the face of God. I believe that I was an angel.’ She looked him in the face and continued, ‘I believe that you were an angel.’

  There was a peculiar emphasis in the way that she spoke the word ‘were’, an emphasis that seemed to imply that the legate was a soul lost forever. I know that he understood her because he was taken aback and did not know what to say. It was as though he had suddenly seen his own conscience in a mirror, and there was a long pause. Then he turned his back and walked away.

  The men were lighting their torches when Sibila looked up for the last time, and she saw me. Her look struck me to the heart. It was not that she accused me with her eyes. It was that she saw my helpless tears, and pitied me. Sibila was feeling sorry for me, the one who least deserved her pity. I fell to my knees and clasped my hands so that she would know that I was begging to be forgiven, and she smiled as gently as if she had seen a child. It was a smile full of love, a smile with nostalgia in it, as though she were remembering me. She shook her head from side to side, as a parent reproves a mild misdemeanour, and I knew that she was saying to me, ‘Why did you underestimate me by thinking that I would pretend to confess? Did you think that I would not stand up for the truth?’

  Do you think that I am a shallow man, that I should be telling you of my feelings when it was Sibila who endured so much? I felt a rending shame that for so long I had pretended to her that I believed in her ideas. I had loved her, but I had deceived her. Do you think that she knew all the time? Do you think that she forgave me? Do you think it is possible that she was happy to die because she foresaw a better life, that she confessed on purpose so that she could die? Was I the instrument of her torment, or was she thanking me for being the means of her release? Can anyone sincerely wish to relinquish life?

  I know that I loved life, cripple though I am, and I know that I loved it simply because she was a part of it. An insanity overtook me, and I threw myself forward. I do not know what I intended to do, but I think I meant to do two contradictory things at once. I wanted to release her, to fight to the last moment, because suddenly all my courage returned. And because my courage had returned, I wanted to die beside her. It seemed to be all I had ever wanted, a consummation, as the poet said.

  I ran forward, but I am a cripple, and one of the bodyguard warded me off with a rifle, so that I fell down, and at that point they threw the torches on the pyre, and the priests sang the Veni Creator.

  When the crusaders left, having torched my village of Quintalinas de las Viñas, one of them threw something down to me. He said, ‘Hey, cripple, have a memento of your girlfriend.’ I looked at it and knew what it was, because the crusaders had the habit of removing the private parts of women and stretching them over their pommels as trophies. I took it and put it on the cinders with the rest of Sibila, and I followed the crusaders at a distance, which was easy because they were moving at the speed of the carts that were laden with our possessions. Do you know what I did? In the night I cut the throat of the crusader who had done that foul thing to Sibila.

  They are planning to come to Cochadebajo de los Gatos, Señor Vivo; I often heard them talking about it. They were working their way across the countryside, keeping from the towns for the sake of self-preservation. Señor Vivo, you must help our poor people, because you killed El Jerarca and everywhere you are known as the Deliverer. Have pity on the people as Sibila pitied me.

  56 Letters

  (a)

  My Dear Son,

  I am writing this in a terrible hurry at the aerodrome in Valledupar. There is no telephone service to Cochadebajo de los Gatos, and I have no idea how long this letter will take to reach you, and I am in despair at being so much isolated from you under these terrible circumstances.

  I have to tell you that your father has been the victim of another assassination attempt. He was picking mangos in the orchard when someone put two bullets in his body from close range. I do not know if it was the Communists or the Conservatives, or the Liberals, or a faction in the Army, or someone from the Navy or the Air Force, or if it was someone from the coca cartels.

  The General came into the house and fell at my feet, and we are taking him in a military transport to a hospital in Miami where he stands a better chance than in our own hospitals, where the surgeons are qualified only in carving joints of meat and prescribing lethal doses of poison for cases of mistaken diagnosis.

  He is in good spirits and is more worried about who will assume temporary command of the General Staff than he is about himself. La Prima Primavera is coming to look after the house and the wounded animals. I will let you know as soon as we return from Miami, and in the meantime, pray for us both.

  Your loving Mama Julia.

  (b)

  Dear Minister,

  I am writing to let you know that I have heard eyewitness accounts of untold savageries committed by a band of religious fanatics who are terrorising the countryside on an arc that extends from the capital towards the mountainous regions of Cesar. It appears that they intend to finish their ‘crusade’ in this town of Cochadebajo de los Gatos from which I write.

  It is imperative that immediate action be taken either by the police or the Armed Forces to end this terrorism, or else I
foresee the possibility of yet another civil war inspired by religious intolerance. We in Cochadebajo de los Gatos have already made our preparations, but legal intervention by the state would be gratefully welcomed by us before I am obliged to resort to an exposé of governmental inaction in the pages of La Prensa.

  Yours With Respect, Dionisio Vivo.

  Copies to: The Ministry of Defence

  The Ministry of the Interior

  (c)

  Dear Señor Vivo,

  We thank you for your letter concerning disturbances of a religious nature in the countryside. We have been aware for some time of rumours about this, but have been unable to substantiate them. Several villages have been discovered to be razed and entirely depopulated, and so we have been unable to discover whether this was due to wars between local caudillos, the Communists, or the coca cartels.

  You will be aware that we cannot initiate military actions without a Presidential directive. His Excellency is at present embarked upon a diplomatic mission abroad, and so we are without legal recourse at present. You, above all others, will be aware that your own father, who is Chief of the General Staff, is in hospital in Miami, and we are doubly incapacitated from a military point of view, especially as we already have heavy commitments in Medio-Magdalena.