‘Look at that,’ said Anica. ‘What language is it?’
‘English, I think,’ said Dionisio, scrutinising the graffito that someone had painted neatly on the wall. ‘Earl is a real cool dude,’ he read, mispronouncing all the words. When he got home he borrowed a bilingual dictionary from Ramon, and was puzzled to find that it meant something like, ‘The English nobleman ranking between a marquis and a viscount is an actually existing townsman of a moderate temperature.’ He was tormented for days by the question of why anyone should want to inscribe such a gnomic utterance on a wall.
The failed bombers were equally tormented as to why their infallible magnetic bomb had fallen off. The answer was mundane: a few months before, Dionisio had noticed that the floor beneath his seat had rusted through, so he had cut it back to clean metal and replaced it with a sheet of aluminium held in place with pop-rivets, intending to get a piece of steel welded into position when he could persuade someone to do it for a reasonable price. He had forgotten about it altogether, and the magnet had only stayed there at all because it was attracted to the frame of the seat.
But the assassins were now perfectly convinced that he was a brujo, and they were beginning to lose heart so much that one man said, ‘I will never shoot a bullet at him in case it comes back, by the Virgin,’ and some others agreed, and swore that they too would never fire a bullet at him, even in self-defence.
20 The Grand Candomble of Cochadebajo de los Gatos (3)
IN THE STREETS of Cochadebajo de los Gatos an exotic and ethereal perfume was hanging delicately and elegantly in the air. It would have reminded a visitor of the smell of expensive incense in a Catholic cathedral, and they would have been astonished if anyone had told them that it was simply brown sugar and garlic husks ground together and burned on a bed of charcoal. Its function was to drive away evil spirits, such as Iku, Lord of Death, so that they did not turn up and manifest at the guemilere.
For a week everyone had been sleeping with a gourd of water beneath their bed or their hammock, for the same reason, since it is common knowledge that evil spirits dissolve in water as though they were sugar or salt.
But the problem with this was that the water had to be thrown out of one’s front door in the morning without anyone observing. But how impossible this was! Felicidad would poke her head around the door at the same time as Consuelo, and they would see each other and duck back in. Sergio would look out, and lo and behold, Dolores the whore was also looking out. Then Tomas would peer round his doorjamb and catch sight of Felicidad peeping around hers once more.
In this way hours were wasted each morning as heads popped in and out of doorways, and tempers became frayed. People began to shout at each other across the street, and one time Francesca became so fed up that she marched out and actually emptied her bowl of evil spirits over Father Garcia’s head for having spotted her, so that he had to go into the church to bless himself in order to exorcise the baneful influences.
Eventually Hectoro and Misael went to discuss the problem with Don Emmanuel, and he called a meeting in the plaza. ‘Amigos,’ he said, ‘there is a simple solution to your difficulty, but I will not tell it to you unless . . .’ and he arched an eyebrow and winked.
‘He is going to ask one of the women to do something embarrassing,’ commented Misael.
‘No, it will be one of his jokes about testicles,’ predicted Josef.
Don Emmanuel was playing the crowd. He raised a finger in the air and waggled it; he grimaced and opened his mouth to speak, only to close it again without saying anything. The crowd were in a fury of suspense, and Consuelo the whore cried ‘Ay, ay, ay,’ in desperation. She rolled her eyes, and tossed an egg at him.
The egg described a short arc through the air and cracked resoundingly against Don Emmanuel’s forehead. ‘Whooba,’ shouted the crowd in evident delight, and they exclaimed it again when Don Emmanuel scraped the mess off his face with his fingers and ate all of it, including the shell, before their very eyes. Don Emmanuel patted his stomach in mock satisfaction, and belched lengthily, a trick he had learned at a progressive public school in England, before he had disappeared to this country. The advantages of his expensive education having been conclusively confirmed by the rapturous applause of the people, he finished his sentence, ‘. . . unless Consuelo gives me an egg.’
The people groaned with the bathos, and then heard Don Emmanuel’s elegant solution to their conundrum.
Thus it was that early the next morning and on all the following mornings the fat, goat-loving, and squint-eyed man who used to be the policeman and the alcalde in Chiriguana went to each street in turn, closed his eyes, and blew very hard upon his whistle. The blindfolded people who were standing within their doors then simultaneously ejected their containers of dissolved spirits onto the street, to the satisfaction of all but the dogs, the chickens and the giant black jaguars, who very soon learned the Pavlovian art of skipping sharply sideways at the blast of a whistle.
By this expedient Don Emmanuel’s reputation for sagacity was once again enhanced. It is also the case that he received anyway the kiss from Felicidad that he had been about to demand as his condition for divulging his plan, and in Consuelo’s whorehouse he related to the company the story that he had been about to tell concerning the matador, the bull, and the cardinal’s testicles.
21 Dionisio Gets A Nocturnal Visit
WHEN ALL THREE of them were in the house they never bothered to lock the door at night. It was three o’clock in the morning and Dionisio was already gagged and bound before he had had a chance to wake up.
The two men wore hoods with slits cut for the eyes and mouth, and they did not say a word. They shone a torch in his eyes all the time so that he could not see anything, and he was so outraged that all he could do was kick out at them with his knees and feet.
The struggle lasted only a short time, because one of the men said, ‘Oh, shit,’ and coshed him across the side of the head with the barrel of a gun.
When he woke up again he was in a bare room, bound to a chair with his hands behind his back. He was thinking, ‘So this is it,’ when a big man came in still wearing a hood, and bearing a mug of water in one hand and a pistol in the other. Dionisio said, ‘I need a piss,’ thinking that in this way he might be unbound and be able to take a chance to escape, but the man said, ‘Piss yourself then,’ and offered the water up to his mouth. Dionisio took a mouthful, swallowed what he wanted, and spat the rest out at his captor. The big man recoiled and said, ‘Spitting water will not stop us from cutting you into little pieces and giving you a necktie, my friend, so be polite or we will start on you before we intended, OK?’
Dionisio sat there for two days in the half-light and had to piss himself several times. He got used to the wet feeling and even grew to like the comfort of the warm sensation that the urine gave him when it first came out, but he would not let himself shit. In between getting used to the idea of torture and death he found himself having inconsequential thoughts about how spacemen go to the excusado when they are shut into the same suit for days on end. He thought a great deal about Anica, wondering what she was doing about his disappearance. He imagined Ramon comforting her, and even felt a little jealous of his arm around her shoulder and the way that he was wiping away her tears, but he thought that if he died it would be good if Anica could end up with Ramon. ‘Ramon likes children,’ he thought. He revolved his memories, thinking of Mama Julia and the General, his childhood in Ipasueno and his adolescence in Valledupar. He thought about the time that he had once climbed a mountain in order to be able to see out over the Caribbean, and how a fog had come down as soon as he had reached the top, thinking that that was a metaphor for life in general. He thought about how hungry he was and yet how he would probably be unable to eat under these circumstances. He remembered every incident of his relationship with Anica, and smiled about it even in his captivity, and he reckoned that his short life had only begun when she had turned up at the door with a camera an
d a beseeching expression.
On the second day two bodies were thrown into the room with him, and one of the hooded men said to him in a strange accent, ‘The contemplation of death has a deeply humanising effect, don’t you think?’
One of the bodies was of a black man, and the other was a mulatto. There were dark crimson patches of blood where the bullets had torn out of their backs, and he could see that the exit holes were cavernous. The flies were already busy laying eggs and creating a deafening buzz when the two assassins came in and dragged the bodies out again. One of the assassins was limping.
Having at first been in a state of fear and horrified anticipation, Dionisio later achieved an unexpected calm, and became reconciled to death. He reckoned that it would be like feeling all over what at present he felt in his hands, which was nothing at all because of the effect of being bound by the wrist for so long. He played a game with himself of trying to obliterate by willpower all the itches that normally one would be able to scratch, and sometimes he hung his head on his chest and slept, only to awake with a constricted feeling in his throat and a fierce desire to smoke.
On the third day the two men came in with submachine guns and one of them pointed his at Dionisio and cocked it. He raised it to his shoulder and planted his feet apart, and then pointed it downwards towards his victim’s stomach. A cigar fell out of the end of it, and a voice behind the hood said, ‘Have a smoke, Zeno.’
Dionisio was astonished and disbelieving. ‘Ramon?’ he said.
‘El mismo,’ exclaimed Ramon, whipping off his hood and performing a pirouette. Agustin took off his hood and smiled.
‘You bastards,’ said Dionisio, ‘what is all this about?’
‘We thought that we would give you a lesson in real life, Melissus.’
‘You can’t do that, I could sue you. This is abduction, armed kidnap with the use of violence or something. I swear that when you untie me I am going to rub your faces in dogshit.’
‘In that case, Xenophanes,’ said Ramon, ‘we will not untie you until you have read this little piece of paper.’ He drew out of his breast pocket a leaf of paper covered with official stamps and held it in front of Dionisio’s face. He read ‘Warrant of Protective Custody; Dionisio Vivo, Calle de la Constitucion, Ipasueño. It is hereby ordered that the above be taken into protective custody for a period of three days, the period to begin at the discretion of Officer Ramon Dario, Ipasueño Police. The above Dionisio Vivo may not be detained for any further periods without official renewal of this warrant.’
The warrant was signed by two judges and the Alcalde of Ipasueño, and countersigned by Ramon.
The latter folded the warrant and put it back into his pocket. ‘I had this taken out months ago,’ he said, ‘and I kept it until I needed to use it, so forget about the dogshit, Anaximander, and thank us for saving your life, and in particular thank Agustin for taking a bullet graze in the leg, and thank me for the bruises I got for these.’ He held out two distorted bullets.
Dionisio looked at them and raised his eyebrows, ‘Shit Ramon, are you bullet-proof?’
‘I am with an armoured jacket on, Thales.’
‘Who were the bodies, then?’
‘They were the two who came to turn you into a sieve. You are very fortunate, my friend, that there are those in the employ of El Jerarca who understand that one day he will be on the losing side. They get themselves future pardons by supplying us with titbits of useful information. We awaited those two in your staircase, and gave them their last surprise. But I regret that some of your house is now full of bullet-holes, and we didn’t get round to clearing up the blood.’
Dionisio turned pale, and all he could think of was, ‘But what about my lectures, and Anica, and Jerez and Juanito? What did you do?’
‘We cleared your two friends out, and it was very funny you know, because Juanito wanted to stay and join in the fun, and Jerez cleared out so fast that he fell down the stairs. We told Anica in advance, and your college Principal said something like “Oh well, it makes a change from bodies and hands in the garden,” so as you see, everything was allowed for. And something else. OK, we shouldn’t have tied you up and starved you, and we shouldn’t have let you piss yourself, and we shouldn’t have used force in the night, but,’ and suddenly Ramon was vehement and very serious, ‘you damn well needed a lesson in real life. This is the land of grown-ups, now, and if you have any sense you will move out, marry Anica, and go away and live in fairyland where you belong.’
When he was washed and fed, wearing borrowed clothes, smoking the cigar from Ramon’s gun-barrel, and was being driven home in the police van, Dionisio said, ‘Why have you never married, Ramon? Have you never wanted to? I see you everywhere being followed by children, and you should be a father.’
‘These are bad times, Archelaus, and I see too many widows and orphans. Maybe in better times. There is nothing I would like more, my friend, but it is a mistake to marry in times of war. Everyone knows that.’
That evening when Dionisio had just finished counting thirty-four bullet-holes in his walls and was wondering what to do about them, Ramon arrived wearing old baggy trousers and carrying a bag full of materials. ‘You wash the blood and I will do the walls,’ he said.
Dionisio embraced him and said, ‘I still think that you’re a bastard.’
22 His Excellency Is Saved By The Intercession of The Archangel Gabriel
FOREIGN SECRETARY LOPEZ GARCILASO VALLEJO burst into the presidential office in a high state of excitement. His tie was askew and his flabby forehead was dripping with perspiration. He waved his arms in a hyperbolical gesture, and then placed his hands upon the desk, exclaiming, ‘Your Excellency, Your Excellency.’
President Veracruz looked up from the latest Rosicrucian monograph, in which he was being advised to change the colour of a candle flame by mere effort of will, and contemplated his dishevelled protégé. ‘Lopez,’ he said, ‘why don’t you ever knock? I am reading a confidential document that not even you can see.’
Lopez Garcilaso Vallejo and the President went back a long way. They had met during one of His Excellency’s political exiles in the time of General Panela, when Señor Veracruz had been a frequent visitor to the ‘stripclub’ in Panama City. This was the same ‘stripclub’ where His Excellency had come to be acquainted with his young wife, who had been working there as an ‘actress’. It may seem improbable that a young ‘actress’ and a distinguished middle-aged politician should have found true love in a brothel; some may contend that he married her for her youth and somewhat unprepossessing beauty, and that she had married him for his wealth and his political prospects. But the fact was that the two of them found in one another whatever was lacking in either of them alone, and very soon the future Señora Veracruz was refusing to charge him for her Panamanian expertise and declining to accept his presents, saying that she accepted him into her bed out of love alone. She cut back on her regular clientele whenever he was in town, and he in turn lost his taste for the variety offered by her colleagues.
Señor Vallejo had at that time been a manager at the club. He was well-adapted to this metier by virtue of his colossal size, intimidating aspect, and his encyclopaedic knowledge of the occult. This latter was an asset insofar as those who thought of giving him trouble did not do so for fear of falling impotent, losing their hair, or developing ulcers on their nether parts, all of which feats he was reputed to be able to perform with astonishing ease and rapidity. Naturally, he and Señor Veracruz had come to know each other quite well, and the former had ended up as Foreign Secretary through the natural operations of elective democracy and political patronage. His Excellency owed him the colossal debt of having been instructed by him in the hermetic arcana of sexual alchemy, and Señor Vallejo owed His Excellency the debt of having been allowed to publish at public expense all those weighty occult tomes that had been dictated to him personally by the Archangel Gabriel.
‘OK, Lopez, what do you want?’ asked the Presid
ent. ‘I hope it is important.’
Señor Vallejo sat down heavily and wiped his brow with a silk handkerchief. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘don’t go to the Club Hojas tonight.’
‘But I always go on Thursdays.’
‘You can’t, Your Excellency, I have had a message that it must be avoided.’
‘And who did this message come from, Lopez?’
Señor Vallejo, slightly bashfully, pointed to the ceiling.
His Excellency looked up at the ceiling with a puzzled expression, and furrowed his brow. ‘You mean you have a message from God? Are you serious?’
‘Of course not, Your Excellency, I would not tell you anything so stupid.’
‘I am glad to hear it, Lopez, I was fearing for your sanity. Who is it from, then?’
‘Gabriel.’
The President ran through his memory to try to think who Gabriel was, gave up, and asked, ‘Gabriel who?’
‘The Archangel Gabriel, your Excellency. He came from the Tenth Heaven specifically to warn me to warn you not to go to the Club Hojas.’
‘This Gabriel, why did he not tell me personally, and what did he look like? You know he could have been anybody, masquerading as an Archangel. I suspect you of credulity. Did you have him followed?’
‘Your Excellency, I know it was the Archangel: he had one hundred and forty pairs of wings, and he was clothed in linen. He had an illuminated feminine silver head, a purple slender neck, golden yellow radiant arms with huge biceps, a delicate slate-grey torso, epicene legs in sky-blue, sort of whirling and scintillating, and he had women’s blue feet. He was unmistakable, Your Excellency, and he distinctly told me – he has a lisp, you know – that you should not go to the Club Hojas.’
President Veracruz furrowed his brow ever more deeply, wondering, not for the first time, about the intellectual integrity of his Foreign Secretary. ‘Did you count all the wings, to know that he had one hundred and forty pairs?’