Despite its ramshackle state the bridge still appeared from the middle-distance to be a dignified and imposing piece of architecture, and the locals were very proud of it since it was the only one in the whole area, and it was theirs. At either end of it was a notice which said ‘You are now crossing Chiriguana Bridge’. Also on the notice were graffiti detailing the states of people’s hearts (‘Without Erendira There Is No Life’), political slogans (‘Down with the Oligarchy’), and extraneous information and exhortations (‘Juanito Fucks Donkeys’, ‘Come to Consuelo’s’).
Tomas, Gonzago and Rafael sorted out a system of watching the bridge by rota, one hour on, two hours off. During their time off the men would smoke, doze, toss pebbles at lizards, and converse. By midday all three of them were feeling the effects of having been trekking all night. It was also the time when the whole country stops for siesta, even in wartime. This was nothing to do with the ‘natural indolence’ imputed to Latins by the rest of the world; it was to do with not being able to breathe, not being able to move without pouring with perspiration, not being able to see anything (because of the sweat in one’s eyes, and because of the shimmering heat-hazes and mirages), and it was to do with not being able to touch anything outdoors for fear of being burnt. The whole nation would sink gratefully into torpor somewhere in the shade, and one had as little chance of being detected of misdeeds during siesta as one did under cover of darkness; even making love noisily during siesta would scandalise neighbours, not because it was making love, but because it was noisy and therefore anti-social when enervated people are trying to doze.
Tomas and Rafael slumbered in the shade, and Gonzago stared at the bridge for as long as his eyes could stand the glare of the wavering image. Then he would close his eyes and rest them on his arm until they stopped itching and hurting, and then he would watch again. The sweat soaked his shirt and then his trousers; a thirst rose in his throat as though he had half-swallowed a porcupine. The intervals between resting his eyes and watching became gradually longer and longer, and then Gonzago too fell into a profound sleep in which he dreamed guiltlessly that he was still watching the bridge.
All three of them had been obliviously asleep for two hours when they were brought back to wakefulness by what appeared to be the end of the world. First there was a rumbling which shook the earth and sent stones skittering about like demented cockroaches. Then there was a roar like the voice of God and a rush of air that sucked their breath out of them and drew their straw sombreros high into the air. Then there was a mighty wind as the air rushed back into the vacuum and returned them, flat on their backs, into the position from which, bewildered, they had half arisen. They could see an enormous cloud of dust and smoke billowing out above where the bridge had been, and it advanced on them like a sandstorm in a desert. They hastily tugged their shirt-tails over their mouths and noses, only to be thrown to the ground by a furious hail of debris that seemed to appear out of nowhere. Rocks, stones, lumps of steel and concrete, water and mud descended on them at prodigious velocity and in enormous volume, until, half-buried, grievously bruised and wildly disorientated, they rose groggily from the detritus to take stock.
‘Mierda,’ said Gonzago.
‘Madre de Dios,’ said Rafael.
‘Hijo de puta,’ said Tomas.
The land about them was laid to waste in a small but extravagant apocalypse; bushes were uprooted and leafless, the ground was littered with little pieces of bridge. Amongst the stones a fish flapped its tail forlornly as it gulped for air; Gonzago hit it on the head and slipped it into his mochila. ‘For later,’ he said.
‘You two have a nose bleed,’ observed Tomas.
‘So do you,’ replied Rafael, and then he squinnied through the cloud of dust that had begun to settle around the area of the bridge. ‘My God, look at that!’
There was nothing left where the centre span of the bridge had been. Steel rods projected from the broken spars and the pillars leaned raggedly sideways, buckled and twisted. In the river was an overturned Army lorry, some distance from the bridge; it had clearly been vaulted all that distance by the explosion. From somewhere near the lorry there came a pitiful and haunting wailing; it was a soldier staggering out of the water carrying his amputated arm.
The three guerrillas saw with consternation amounting to panic that the whole area of the bridge was crawling with soldiers. They were in complete confusion and disarray, but they could clearly see and hear the fat figure of Colonel Figueras ordering his men to fan out and search the area. Just as the three were about to turn tail and flee, they saw a jeep come tearing along the track, halting at the bridge only just in time. They saw a tall, dark-haired European get out and walk to the edge of the abyss, and stand there in amazement surveying the chaos.
‘That’s Don Hugh!’ exclaimed Rafael. ‘He must have brought the money.’
‘Well, we can’t go and get it from him,’ said Tomas.
‘Let’s go,’ said Rafael.
‘Let me shoot a soldier first,’ pleaded Gonzago.
‘If you can find your rifle in all this rubbish,’ replied Rafael. ‘Don’t be stupid. Let’s go before the bastards get us. God knows where the donkey is.’
They were not in the best condition for walking, still concussed from the blast, still confused and disorientated, but the fear of being caught by the soldiers spurred them to hurry despite their uncooperative legs and feet.
When they staggered into the camp six hours later they were a pitiful sight; they were coloured all over a uniform shade of grey from the paste of watery dust that had descended on them. Their clothes hung off them in rags, and all three were limping. Only their eyes shone forth whitely through the muck and grime, and all of them were caked in dark blood from the cuts they had sustained. Tomas’ forehead was oddly distorted by a huge bruise on one side. They lurched to the centre of the clearing and fell flat on their faces. When Remedios came out to question them they were sprawled out, fast asleep from shock and fatigue.
The camp was in uproar, agog to know what had befallen their three comrades, but Remedios ordered that the three men should be brought into the medical hut and cleaned up. Federico and Franco fetched water from the stream, and the men were undressed, washed, and reclothed without waking or even murmuring. Dona Constanza, aware that her fate depended upon what had happened to Tomas, Rafael and Gonzago, went into the medical hut and tended them most solicitously, wiping their foreheads unnecessarily often with a wet cloth, and muttering little prayers for their health. She noticed with a sharp little pang how handsome Gonzago was, and how innocent he appeared in repose. She wiped his forehead more often than the others.
When they awoke at midday the next day Remedios questioned them rigorously despite their appalling headaches, and the fact that their bruises made it impossible for them to get up or even lift an arm. When Remedios had finished she summoned Dona Constanza. ‘It seems your husband arrived with the money but was unable to hand it over because the place where he was to deposit it was blown up. So we cannot shoot you yet. You have a remission.’
‘Yet?’ queried Dona Constanza. ‘Can you not just send to my husband to arrange another place?’
‘No,’ replied Remedios, gravely shaking her head. ‘It appears that we have a more immediate and pressing problem that takes priority. The Army have invaded the area. We must concern ourselves with that.’
Constanza looked puzzled. ‘I do not want to be pedantic, but an army cannot “invade” its own country.’
Remedios snorted. ‘Ours can. It frequently does.’
‘Oh,’ said Dona Constanza. ‘In that case may I have your permission to continue tending the wounded?’
‘Certainly,’ said Remedios. ‘For once in your life you can do something useful.’
With a light heart Dona Constanza returned to the medical hut, and wiped Gonzago’s forehead more often than the others’. He smiled painfully up at her. ‘Dona Constanza, there is a fine fish in my mochila; I would like yo
u to have it, or it will grow rotten for nothing.’
19
* * *
IN WHICH JOSEF CONTEMPLATES DEATH, AND PLANS ARE MADE
ON A DAY when he had smoked too many puros and drunk too much cane rum, the evening found Josef lying in his hammock beneath the bougainvillea whilst the crickets scraped and rattled in the scrubby hedgerows and a vast tropical moon rose high above the caracolee tree, where from time to time the howler monkeys whooped and cavorted like schoolboys on an unexpected holiday. In the distance he could discern the gruntings of the caimans who lay somnolent in the green waters of the spring, and whose eyes glowed red if ever he passed that way with a lantern. He had often thought of catching them and selling the skins so that women rich beyond his imagination in Paris or New York could have handbags, shoes and purses of ‘alligator skin’ that would cost several hundred times more than he would be paid for all the skins of all the caimans on the entire farm; but Josef was sentimental about the idle creatures, and did not care for the rich ladies of New York and Paris any more than he cared for the Army or the governor, and so he let them be, and instead flattened the heads of vipers and coral snakes with his machete – it was a rule never to cut off their heads, for it was said that they would still bite, and that the viper could still leap at you by flicking its jaws against the earth. In the village there was a man who had had his arm amputated with an axe because he had ignored this advice, and because there were no doctors to administer antidotes and perform operations within three hundred and fifty kilometres. Unlike most others, Josef conscientiously refrained from killing boas, on the grounds that they ate rats, and he shot iguanas only for meat and not for wantonness. The remains he would throw in the river for the pleasure of seeing the waters boil with the little fishes competing for scraps and morsels. Sometimes he would shudder at the thought of being such scraps and morsels himself, and vowed that when he died he should be buried deep, in the proper place, and to this end he had already paid the priest, in instalments, the price of his burial in a box, not in a sheet. Often he had said, ‘I will never be eaten by wild pigs, ants, tigres, or fishes!’ and this had become a joke amongst his friends, who would shrug their shoulders and say, ‘Who cares? When you are dead, you are dead,’ or, ‘At least as food you might die more usefully than you lived!’
On this day Josef was indeed thinking of death, but not of his own. He was thinking firstly of the death of the insects that fizzled and spat in the flame of the lamp, of the singed, fuzzy little aliens that each morning he would sweep off the table, sweep off the stones, or scrape out of the lamp with a grubby finger and a pursing of the lips. He was thinking of how like the death of human beings this was, for with every death of every creature a whole universe dies too, and yet, strangely enough, no death really seemed to make much difference. ‘We are all insects,’ he would think, ‘but because I am this very insect which I am, I am the centre of everything,’ and he would roll that phrase ‘de todo’ about his mind until it appeared to mean so much that it was no longer intelligible.
He thought secondly, with sudden and startling clarity, ‘Perhaps we should shoot only the officers.’ He decided that in the morning he would relay this thought to Hectoro, Pedro, and the others, who were preparing for the return of the Army, now that people coming from Chiriguana had reported that the whole area was swarming with soldiers. Everyone in the village realised that the Army had returned with the intention of securing revenge for their previous humiliations, and everyone was in a state of nervous anticipation, wondering what to do, and looking for solid leadership.
In fact the division of leadership fell fairly naturally into place. Consuelo the whore emerged rapidly as leader of the women and organiser of the children, and Dolores the whore emerged as her lieutenant. They supervised the storing of supplies in strategic caches, tore up old clothing in anticipation of the need for bandages, practised leaping from behind doorways, machete in hand, and squabbled with the men for being too proud and stupid to arm them properly with rifles. The women worked alongside the men to construct a rampart across the street topped with barbed wire stolen brazenly from Don Hugh’s finca. They slashed and burned the fields immediately surrounding the village so that the Army would have no cover for sneaking up, and they filled every available receptacle with water, both for drinking and for putting out fires.
Amongst the men, things were not quite as clear. Misael, Pedro the Hunter, Hectoro, and Josef formed, as it were, a leadership cadre. Josef was fundamentally an ideas man; he submitted intelligent suggestions to the others, who usually decided to carry them out. Misael was expert in sorting out the minute details of what needed to be done. Hectoro was excellent at issuing orders charismatically and in such a manner that one could not refuse, and Pedro was the one who planned strategy, and who would also emerge as the tactician when hostilities commenced. Profesor Luis acted as general lieutenant and messenger-boy for all of them, his not being the kind of decisive and wily intelligence required of a warrior. He was also useful for implementing some of Josefs ideas; for example, it was he who worked out how to electrify the barbed wire with power from the same little windmill that had once powered the gramophone, and he also worked out how to dam the Mula so that the Army could not easily cross it.
Behind all of these men, functioning as a sort of eminence grise, was Don Emmanuel himself. He did not give any orders or make any decisions, and he did not directly involve himself in the preparations, except for turning a blind eye when his tractor was borrowed to help in constructing the rampart. All that he did was give his opinion.
When Josef suggested to the others that they should aim to kill only the officers, they all approved immediately.
‘The soldiers are conscripts on National Service,’ said Josef, ‘and they do not want to fight anyway.’
‘They are campesinos like us,’ observed Misael. ‘They are our brothers, so we should not kill them.’
‘I agree,’ said Pedro. ‘No army can fight with no leaders. Without leaders they will not know what to do, and they will go away.’
Only Hectoro had reservations. ‘Maybe you are right, but it will be hard to hold off from firing until one sees an officer. Also nothing puts an unwilling soldier off fighting more than seeing his comrades killed all around him. I know this.’
‘I think we should ask Don Emmanuel,’ said Josef.
They found Don Emmanuel, stark naked as usual, sitting in the river cooling off after work. They stood on the bank, looking down at him, and put Josefs idea to the test.
Don Emmanuel said, ‘Ah,’ thoughtfully, and stroked his immense red beard. Then he shook his head. ‘I think it may be a bad idea.’
The four men were astonished. ‘Why?’ asked Josef.
‘Because,’ replied Don Emmanuel, ‘officers have the smallest balls. If you are to feed the vultures, do it with the largest testicles, out of charity.’
The four looked at each other in even greater astonishment. Misael, realising that Don Emmanuel was beginning the conversation with his usual pleasantries, replied, ‘Then we should shoot you first, as your co jones are largest.’
Don Emmanuel pretended to clutch his genitals protectively. ‘In that case, my friends, I will give you some more reasons. But first, what makes you believe that you can tell which ones are the officers?’
‘It is obvious,’ said Josef. ‘They wear different uniforms. They are lighter green in colour, and they have little soft hats with peaks. They are armed only with a pistol in a black holster, they have rather white faces, and they speak Spanish very badly. You see them taking charge of everything and giving orders, and they are always chewing.’
‘Chewing?’ said Don Emmanuel. ‘I can assure you that the uniform of the officers is exactly the same as the soldiers’, and they speak Spanish perfectly. These other people are not the officers.’
‘Who are they then?’ asked Pedro. ‘Camp whores?’
‘No,’ replied Don Emmanuel. ‘They are Rangers.’ br />
‘Rangers?’ said Hectoro and Misael simultaneously, an expression of puzzlement on their faces.
‘Rangers are American military advisers. I am told that some of them are CIA but I do not know anything about that. They are mostly Vietnam veterans who are expert in jungle warfare and counter-insurgency. They come here to tell our officers what to do and to look after American interests.’
‘That is even better,’ exclaimed Misael, delightedly. ‘If we kill the Americanos, our officers will not know what to do, and they will go home with the soldiers!’
‘It would be a mistake to kill Americans,’ said Don Emmanuel.
‘But if we kill them the Americans will go home!’ said Hectoro.
‘You do not know Americans,’ replied Don Emmanuel. ‘For one thing they are quite happy to throw their men away in futile causes. Secondly, they always believe they are in the right and that God is personally fighting for them, so they never give up. If you kill one gringo, they will send two in his place, and if you kill them, they will send over a fleet of helicopters. In any case, it is better for you if you do not kill them, for they do you a lot of good.’ Don Emmanuel smiled.
‘And why is that?’ asked Hectoro.
‘It is simple,’ replied Don Emmanuel. ‘Although they are fanatics, they are mostly decent men. When they are present, our officers feel ashamed to commit atrocities. Of course, some of them are not decent at all, but a lot of them are. Secondly, they do not speak Spanish very well, no . . .’ he corrected himself, ‘they speak some Spanish Spanish, but not true Castilian Spanish like you and me. They learn it in academies and when they come here no one understands them and they do not understand anyone either, so their advice is always misconstrued.’ Don Emmanuel laughed. ‘It helps to keep our Army in chaos, and that is good for you. Also, most of the soldiers do not like them because they are gringos, they are rich, and they think they know everything. But they do not know us, and they do not understand us, and all that happens when they stay here is that they get angry and frustrated.’