The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzmán

by Louis de Bernières

  We have decided that the only legal action possible is to send a detachment of the Portachuelo Guards on a ‘live firing exercise’ in that region. The commander of this ‘exercise’ will be confidentially briefed that he has the legal right of intervention, under the constitution, when this is requested by a local police commander in the interests of public safety. Accordingly we have appointed a ‘local police commander’ to accompany the exercise. The exercise will follow an itinerary from the capital to Cochadebajo de los Gatos. This is a vast tract of land, almost unknown to cartography, including swamps and forests, with only the most basic means of communication, and you will understand that from a military point of view the expedition is almost an impossibility.

  I am afraid that this is the best that can be done within the legal framework that has been established between the Armed Forces and the executive for the protection of the democratic process. You will perceive for yourself that democracy is not always an unmitigated blessing when a strong hand is required.

  You will be interested to know that, according to the office of Cardinal Dominic Trujillo Guzman, who is also in hospital, it is true that a ‘crusade of preaching’ has been authorised, but the office disclaims any knowledge of a crusade of medieval dimension and enthusiasm.

  I wish your father, General Hernando Montes Sosa, a speedy and complete recovery from his wounds, and I trust that you will agree that we have done our best to deal with the matter that you have raised with us. I cannot emphasise too much that we are completely handicapped by the absence of His Excellency, President Veracruz, and many of us will no doubt be influenced by this during the next general election, which is at a regrettably distant date.

  Please treat this communication as confidential, and, upon a personal note, may I say how much I have enjoyed listening to your musical palindromes on the radio? I have often speculated as to whether it would be possible to adapt one from Bach’s Prelude No. I in C from The Well-Tempered Clavier.

  I remain your humble and respectful servant,

  Alfonsina Lopez,

  For and on behalf of the Armed Forces and Civil Police Coordinating Committee.

  (d)

  My Dear Papa,

  I have been desolated to hear from Mama that your worst fears have come true, and that at last one of the innumerable attempts upon your life has borne a bitter fruit.

  I think that you should be reminded that you are the first Chief of the General Staff in the entire history of this country who has not been either a Fascist or a glorified caudillo, and therefore you have an absolute obligation to get well in a time so short as to be unprecedented in medical history.

  The man who bears this letter will be of great help to you. Please treat him with absolute respect and hospitality, do not question anything that he tells you, submit to his treatments, however bizarre. I say this as a devoted son who in his time has had to obey many a paternal directive, and who on this occasion demands that the line of command be reversed for once. If you do as I say, I promise that I will keep my hair short for a year, and wear a suit whenever I am seen with you in public for the rest of my life.

  Please extend my greetings to the British Ambassador when you see him, and tell him that his consignment of wellington boots continues to be much appreciated.

  Your loving son,

  Dionisio.

  (e)

  My Dear Son,

  I write to you from my headquarters, sound in both body and mind, but infinitely perplexed.

  In the first place, I understand from Alfonsina Lopez, the formidable lady who chairs the co-ordinating committee of the Armed Forces and the police, that you have seen fit to meddle in governmental business without the intervening neccessity of being elected and appointed to office. If you had not become the unofficial conscience of the nation through your splendid letters and articles in La Prensa, I would consider your letter to the Defence and Interior Ministers to be blackmail. However, I am very glad that an ‘exercise’ has been inaugurated, and it is exactly what I would have done, given the absence of His Excellency. The capital is rife with talk of a coup, so great is the general disgust in governmental and military circles, but I am doing my best to circulate the idea of impeachment in order to reduce that very undesirable prospect.

  Would you like to hear a story from your Papa, as in the old days? Good. Once upon a time there was a wounded general who had just returned from Miami, where he had been treated for gunshot wounds. He had been told to go home and convalesce, and was doing just that, sitting half asleep in a rocking chair beneath the beneficent shade of the bougainvillaea that grows exuberantly about the pillars and beams of the peripateticon, when there was an immense flutter of wings, a screech, and the scrape of talons clenching the joists overhead.

  I looked up suddenly, hurting my wounds in the process, and thought that I saw a vast bird of prey sitting above my head, settling its wings into a comfortable position. But when I looked harder I saw a small Indian man in native dress sitting there instead. I do not know which sight would rightly be considered by an intelligent man to be more strange. My first thought was that it was another assassination attempt, and my second was that security about the house was still too lax.

  The first hypothesis was confuted when the aforesaid Indian took a coca gourd from his mochila and began to prod and scrape inside it with a pestle, which he proceeded to suck with the air of a satisfied man. He caught my eye, and casually handed down a letter which, upon perusal, was revealed to be from my own unfathomable son. I read it with my eyebrows virtually at the back of my head, and with true Latin hospitality I invited the Indian down from his perch.

  Adeptly he joined me at ground level, introduced himself as, ‘Aurelio, husband of Carmen, father of Parlanchina, and true friend of Dionisio, arriving to perform a cure.’

  I have never had to take orders from an Aymara before, but if the rest of his people are like him, then I am very surprised that they lost to the Inca and then to the Iberians. He may be a small old man with a wizened face and fascinatingly sparse facial hair, but he has the natural authority of a General Bolivar winning a battle whilst simultaneously in bed deflowering a virgin. Before I knew it he had me lying on the ground whilst he poked my stomach with his fingers and told me that I had been operated upon by ignorant butchers. He frowned and informed me that I still had a bullet inside me, and I told him that indeed a bullet was still in there because it was too close to the heart to render an operation upon it an acceptable risk. The Miami surgeons had told me that it had deflected upwards from a rib, and would present no great danger if left in place.

  At that point Mama Julia came out, having seen me apparently prostrate beneath the hands of an apparent assassin. She ran up, ferociously brandishing a machete, and very shortly found herself tamely trotting away to fetch some rum and a cigar. I wish I had had the time to ask him how he managed to pacify her in such short order, because it has taken me over thirty years to achieve nothing of the kind.

  Aurelio contemplated my stomach whilst blowing formidable clouds of tobacco smoke over it. He chanted in a low monotonous drone, swigged a mouthful of rum, and then blew it out suddenly in a very disconcerting jet of flame. Whilst I was still in a state of amazement at this trick, he abruptly dived at my stomach with his right hand, delved about in it up to his elbow, and then triumphantly produced a flattened and distorted piece of lead that looked exactly like a bullet that has been dug out of a sandbag.

  I was turning this object over in my hand, when I heard the fluttering of wings once more and beheld no Indian where once an Indian had been. Instead there was a very impressive eagle arranging its feathers busily in the ceiba tree, whence it took off, circled high into the air, and disappeared in the direction of the cordillera. Your poor father looked down at his stomach and beheld his scars and stitches gone. Furthermore he later went for a medical examination and was bluntly informed that the evidence pointed ineluctably to the conclusion that he had never been shot. T
here was no bullet on the X-ray and there were no scars, so that I have had to send to Miami for photographs and medical certificates that prove that I am entitled to sick-pay, convalescent leave, and the medal for being wounded whilst on active service, of which I now have a growing collection.

  Please thank your friend Aurelio for his remarkable treatment, and in future kindly bear in mind the psychological injury that can be done to an old man when his comfortable understanding of the metaphysical order of the universe is suddenly and violently shattered by small indigenous characters acting under the instruction of his own son.

  Mama Julia sends her love and asks me to ask you what you would do to treat a porcupine that angrily launches fusillades of quills whenever approached, however tentatively.

  Your loving Father,

  General Hernando Montes Sosa, whose son apparently thinks that he can appoint himself to the rank of Field Marshal.

  57 In Which Felicidad’s Gyrating Backside Provokes Hostilities

  INES AND AGAPITA arrived in Cochadebajo de los Gatos two days after the carrier pigeon that had been left with them by Pedro the Hunter. Footsore, dirty and exhausted, but overflowing with the righteous pride of a mission successfully prosecuted, they crossed the drawbridge over the moat, and went straight to the plaza, as by habit do all people who arrive in a town. They sat themselves down with their backs to the great axle-pole, emptied in gulps the last draughts of springwater from their gourds, and waited for Dionisio to pass by and notice them.

  Everything had gone exactly according to plan. Dionisio had been right that the crusaders would avoid Ipasueño owing to the presence there of civil authorities, and would choose Santa Maria Virgen as the obvious place to ‘evangelise’ on the way to Cochadebajo de los Gatos. Accordingly the people of that pueblito had moved themselves and their possessions over the hill and into the neighbouring valley, leaving only the two girls to keep watch for the crusaders. When these latter arrived in Santa Maria Virgen, they found what seemed to be a ghost town, abandoned as mysteriously as the Marie Celeste. They also found numerous notices pinned up on the doors of the houses: ‘No entry: purple fever, paludismo, and pneumonic plague’ all carefully written by Felicidad in the flowing italic script practised by doctors, who are trained at college to believe that fine cursive handwriting lends credibility to their diagnoses and creates confidence in their prescriptions. Against the shed where Dionisio’s ancient vehicle was tended, the girls had pinned a sign that said ‘Quarantine Room’, and at the first sound of the chanting priests they had crept over the hillside to inform the villagers before releasing the carrier pigeon and setting off in its wake for Cochadebajo de los Gatos.

  The panic of the crusaders upon encountering a plague town which had apparently been evacuated did little credit to their faith. As though of one mind, they retreated in disorder and passed it by on the western side, thus ensuring that when they arrived in Cochadebajo de los Gatos they would be utterly fatigued and unprovisioned.

  On their first night outside Santa Maria Virgen, they found themselves the victim of an attack by the renegade spirits of the dead, who were in fact the villagers banging spoons on saucepans, whooping eerily, and rolling rocks down the mountainside onto the nests of bivouacs. On the second night, after a hard day’s march from dawn to dusk in order to distance themselves from the mountain devils, they encamped upon a wide swath of grass that transformed itself miraculously into a freezing bog when it rained during the night.

  ‘These are like old times,’ said Hectoro, narrowing his eyes against the smoke of his puro as he peered out from behind the large boulder where he was concealed alongside Pedro the Hunter and Misael. Hectoro had dismounted reluctantly from his horse, and had tethered it farther round the mountain, but he still wore his creaking leather bombachos and his heavy-calibre revolver.

  ‘These are indeed like old times,’ replied Misael, who had blacked over his sparkling gold tooth in the interests of nocturnal camouflage, ‘but it is a pity that on this occasion we have no snakes and alligators to put into their tents.’

  ‘Aurelio’s herbs will work just as well,’ said Pedro, putting his hand into his mochila and scrunching the dried plants in his fist. ‘I have seen before what happens when animals eat them.’

  ‘We should just shoot them,’ said Hectoro, ‘and our troubles would be over.’

  Pedro and Misael exchanged glances, mutually understanding that Hectoro had a carefully nurtured reputation for machismo to preserve. But he also had a sense of honour, and so, to deter him from rash action, Misael said, ‘No, compadre, it is dishonourable to attack before one is attacked. And besides, a war is no good for anything unless there is some ingenuity in it. Otherwise what tale is there to tell afterwards? “We shot at them and they shot at us, and then we retreated and then we attacked.” It amounts to nothing. It is better to be remembered for brains.’ He tapped the side of his head to indicate intelligence, and winked.

  ‘A man wishes to be remembered for his balls,’ riposted Hectoro.

  ‘It seems to me that the best plans require both,’ observed Pedro, ‘as tonight will prove.’

  When night settled abruptly upon the encampment the three men were sound asleep beneath their saddle-blankets, with their sombreros tipped forward over their eyes, and only their ears awake for footsteps. Hectoro had mastered the ultimate masculine art of smoking whilst asleep, and a cigar smouldered between his lips at the corner of his mouth, its glow brightening at each gentle intake of breath. It would extinguish itself at a distance of exactly two centimetres from his lips at the point where the ash encountered the saliva that had soaked up from the tip. Hectoro believed that in this way he could ensure vigorous and satisfying dreams about heroic exploits, women, and the successful roping of steers.

  Two hours before dawn the three men awoke at the same time, having agreed to do so beforehand, and took fortifying swigs from a bottle of Ron Caña in order to banish the impenetrable cold that could keep a man determinedly tucked up in his tent even when his bladder was weeping for relief. They pressed their sombreros down upon their heads, parcelled out Aurelio’s jungle herbs, shook hands solemnly, embraced, and set off down the mountainside to their allocated corners of the encampment.

  No one can say that their efforts were unrepaid. They watched with merriment as, in the morning, the crusaders attempted to control the horses and mules that had gratefully eaten the aromatic grasses from the outstretched palms of the three conspirators. The animals, enduring terrifying hallucinations about gigantic predators, kicked out and bit at any who approached. Mgr Anquilar’s horse, mistaking him for a vulture with dubious intentions, threw him to the ground in an elegant arc that left him bruised and muttering blasphemies for which he would normally decree ten Hail Marys and two Our Fathers. Brother Valentino was taken for a large puma by a mule that tore the bridle from his hands and set off for the horizon. The army of holy warriors lost half of the mules that formed their recuas, and most of their horses, in the prodigious stampede that ensued from the animals’ delusions of persecution, and were obliged to proceed to Cochadebajo de los Gatos carrying their supplies upon their own bowed backs.

  Thus there augmented amongst the crusaders the suspicion that was never to leave them, that the divine favour was being progressively withdrawn, and only two factors kept them going. One was Mgr Rechin Anquilar’s insistence to the priests that the Lord was testing them and would judge them according to how well they met the test, and the other was the conviction amongst the soldiery that they would have to press forward to Cochadebajo de los Gatos, because if they turned back they would starve before they reached anywhere that could be pillaged. Never far from their minds were the prospects of the plenty of that city, with its beautiful and legendarily willing girls, and its pharaonic stores of food. Their own bedraggled and abused band of camp-followers they abandoned, leaving them behind to perish in the impossible cold of the night, the horizontal rain of the high places, and the perilous shale of the
invious mountain passes.

  Mgr Rechin Anquilar already hated the sierra. In the foothills he had looked down across a vast panorama of lushly vegetated hills and had received the impression of overwhelming femininity. The hills were like an abominable agglomeration of rounded breasts shamelessly naked to the suckling sky. Their fecundity and innocence reminded him of native women sunbathing upon a sandbank, unconscious or uncaring of their curves and mounds that made a man’s hands twitch with the instinct to caress and to surrender. Higher yet there were gorges that he could not look upon without seeing that unfathomable wound between a woman’s legs that made him shudder with disgust and fascination, and which at school he had learned from his peers would smell of fish, being full of intricate folds of slimy dark pink excrescences of fungal shape and texture. The vast and placid lakes set between the stony grey shores of the high valleys reminded him of those orders of contemplative nuns whose unbreakable stillness and serenity enraged his disputatious universe of words and expositions, and the vistas of wispy brown shrubs were unmistakably akin to the conformation of pubic hair. The sierra brought the Monsignor’s deeply ingrained misogyny to a delirium of hatred as he cursed the mists that descended suddenly and, like a woman’s reasoning, fogged the mind as much as the vision. All that intoxicated him was the conviction that here in the sierra he grappled daily with the wiles of demons. His sense of purpose clarified and grew until he was veritably a man who, like so many before him, would know no peace until he had drowned evil in its own blood.

  When he arrived before those mighty ramparts of interlocking stone and found himself excluded by a drawbridge and a moat, he was the only one of the multitude who felt no sense of preordained defeat. He smacked his palm with his fist, jubilant at the thought of the last mighty battle with the legions of the dark, whilst his own legions, fractious, hungry, worn out and embittered, looked at one another and shook their heads with weariness.