The two men had grown to be good friends, despite their great differences in age and in rank. It was not just that both men were besotted with their animals, nor that Fuerte was grateful that Papagato had cared for Maria and her improbable progeny. It was more that they both shared a kind of weariness and sensitivity.
General Fuerte had reached exactly that time of life when a man wonders whether his life has been worth anything, whether anything has been achieved, and whether he really wants to continue as he is. He had been wondering what he might have missed during his long love-affair and marriage to the Army, and whether there was not somewhere a fresher and better way of life with which to round off his days on earth.
Capitan Papagato on the other hand was twenty-eight years old, and was already feeling that youth had slipped away unnoticed, consumed by regulations, form-filling, drills, mess-days, mess-dinners, training periods with the Americans in Panama, and haranguing unwilling and illiterate conscripts. He was feeling unfulfilled, and was terrified of a life stretching forward relentlessly into a vacuum of shadows.
‘I have been thinking of resigning my commission, General,’ he said one day when they were out walking on the savannah.
‘Indeed?’ responded the General. ‘I too have been thinking of doing the same thing. I would like to disappear and start again somewhere.’
‘You surprise me, General; I thought you would want to stay forever, and would try to persuade me to stay as well.’
‘A few months ago that would have been my reaction, before my mission.’
‘Pardon me, General, but none of us know what that mission was. Are you able to divulge it?’
‘Unfortunately not, Capitan, it is highly confidential.’
They walked in silence, hands behind their backs like officers inspecting a parade. ‘Look!’ said the General. ‘A peccary!’
They watched the little animal saunter away at their approach, and the General said, ‘I intend to leave next week. I want to go on a long expedition to taxonomise the animals of the Sierra, as I have done with the butterflies and to some extent with the humming-birds.’
‘An expedition, General? Ah!’ The Capitan screwed up his courage. ‘Forgive the impertinence, General, but may I accompany you? I would be most interested.’
To the Capitan’s relief and surprise the General seemed very taken with the idea, ‘But you know, Capitan, that in the army one must give six months’ notice of resignation. To leave before then is desertion. I cannot condone a crime.’
‘Have you given six months’ notice?’ asked the Capitan.
‘No, I have to admit that I have not, but I have persuaded the Chief Medical Officer to pronounce me unfit for service, so I will cede command next Wednesday and receive confirmation of retirement in six months’ time. I am effectively a free man.’
‘General!’ exclaimed the Capitan. ‘Why not dismiss me?’
‘Dismiss you? What on earth for?’
‘Anything!’
‘The choice is insanity, homosexuality, dishonourable conduct, unsuitability for the service . . .’
‘Insanity, General, I choose insanity. After all I have four cats and have changed my name to Papagato!’
‘I will speak with the Chief Medical Officer,’ promised the General, ‘and he is required to interview you. I advise you to take your cats with you and talk gibberish.’
‘Oh, thank you General! Indeed I thank you!’
‘Think nothing of it, Capitan. I would welcome your company on my expedition; I do this for purely non-military and selfish reasons.’
The Capitan shook the General’s hand vigorously, his eyes flashing with good humour and delight. ‘I shall be quite insane for a week!’
‘Not so insane,’ replied the General, ‘that you forget to buy a burro and pack together all you need for the journey. Leave everything else with the Quartermaster, so that you can claim it later.’
On the following Tuesday night, having packed up all he needed into sacks for Maria to carry, the General left his quarters to take a little paseo in the town, dressed in civilian clothes and sporting a battered straw sombrero. This had been his disguise for eavesdropping on conversations in bars, where he would hear the local populace complaining bitterly about the corruption of officials. He had dismissed many from office as a result of this simple expedient.
This night, however, corruption was far from his mind, and he was scenting in advance the balmy air of liberty. He had left a will bequeathing all his effects to the Patriotic Union of Ex-Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen, and the contents of his strongbox in the bank vault at Asuncion to the Library of Berkeley University, California, where he had once delivered a talk to the Department of Contemporary History on the subject of la Violencia. He was fully intending to leave a suicide note in his room, and had already composed it in his mind, ‘I cannot live with myself any more. I am going to drown myself.’ But later that evening, he was walking home when at the side of the road he stumbled over something yielding but heavy, and barely saved himself from falling. He pulled out his flashlight and passed the beam over the recumbent body. It was El Gandul, a local drunk whose idleness and scrounging way of life had also earned him the soubriquet of ‘El Cucarachero’. His real name was unknown, nobody knew where he came from, and twice before he had been injured from falling over in the road and sinking into an alcoholic stupor. This time something heavy had run over his head, squashing his face into the stones so that it was an unpleasant, bloody, and unrecognisable mess. The General noted that the indigent vagabond was just the right height and build, and pushed him into the bushes, hoping that he could return with a jeep before the body was found by dogs or vultures.
He carried the body into his quarters and undressed it, trying not to look at the ghastly disfigurement of the face. He dressed the body in his army issue underwear (khaki green, cotton, officers for the use of), which he never wore himself, and heaved it into his bed. That night he slept in a camp-bed on the porch, preferring rather to be bitten by mosquitoes than to share the house with the stiffening derelict alcoholic.
In the morning he went to the armoury and drew, on his own authority, a delayed-timing explosive device, filling in in triplicate the requisite form. Under ‘intended use’ he wrote ‘counter-insurgency’. The device was equipped with a simple twenty-four-hour clock with a red arrow to point to ‘time of detonation’ and a white hour hand to be set in advance to the correct time. He read the instructions carefully:
Read these instructions before performing any operations on the device.
Check that button marked ‘set’ is pushed IN.
Set white hour hand to correct time.
Set red arrow to desired time of detonation.
Pull SET Button OUT. The device is now activated and should not be readjusted unless SET button is pushed back IN first.
Under no circumstances proceed in any order or manner other than here described.
The General set the device for three o’clock the following morning, and left it under his bed.
He set about packing his few possessions into Maria’s baggage sacks. He took two changes of clothing, two pairs of combat boots, his medals, ten packs of army-issue survival rations, water-sterilisation pills, mosquito repellent, binoculars, compass, revolver, army survey maps, a copy of his book Picaflores de la Cordillera y de la Sierra Nevada, several notebooks, washing things, towels, a camp-bed, a sleeping bag, a large water bottle, a crucifix given to him by his mother, and a new copy of W. H. Hudson’s Idle Days in Patagonia, which he had not read last time because he had forgotten to ask Father Garcia to give it back. Thinking that he had forgotten something essential, he turned his room upside-down until he had added to his baggage a first-aid kit, a machete, four boxes of ammunition, and a pair of scissors. He stood in the middle of his room wondering whether or not to steal his army rifle, and then unlocked the strong-box under his bed and took it out. He fetched the slide from the other strong-box in the living room,
and sat on his bed to assemble it. He oiled it carefully and pushed the slide back and forth to check its action. He took his pull-through, a roll of cleaning lint and a can of gun-oil, rolled them into a cloth, and put them in his baggage. He mounted a sling on the rifle and checked that it was comfortably adjusted.
He loaded the packs into the jeep and drove it the short distance to Maria’s stable near his office, and left them with her. Then he drove back to fetch his cat, and awaited Capitan Papagato’s arrival with his donkey and his four cats.
The Capitan arrived shortly in peasant clothing, and the two men and their donkeys walked off in silence together towards Chiriguana, their sombreros pulled low over their eyes, their cats prowling beside the road in the savannah, sometimes ambushing each other, and sometimes chasing their own tails.
‘I want to confess something to you,’ said the General at length.
‘Oh yes?’
‘I lied to you, Capitan. I have no medical discharge, I am deserting. I hope you are not shocked, but I have felt guilty ever since I told you that.’
The Capitan looked into the distance and removed his hat to fan his face. ‘Pretending to be insane is also a form of desertion,’ he said.
That evening they brewed sancocho under the stars and talked quietly. In the undergrowth around them the animals rustled and the cicadas scraped. The General smoked a puro with his coffee, and the Capitan said, ‘Now you really look the part of a campesino!’
‘You should try it,’ said the General. ‘And you will discover its beauty. There is nothing else on earth that wipes out troubles and clears the thoughts as well as one of these.’
‘Then perhaps you could spare one.’
‘Of course,’ said the General, and dug in his pack for a cigar.
Capitan Papagato lit it, and the delicate smoke drifted off into the night, mingling with the scent of bougainvilleas.
‘I feel drunk,’ said the Capitan after a while. ‘I hope I am not going to be sick.’
‘You will not be,’ replied the General. ‘The night is too beautiful for that.’ He paused. ‘Did you bring a tent, Capitan?’
‘Of course.’
‘Thank God. I knew I had forgotten something important. Even so, it is not the rainy season, and with good fortune we will not need it.’
That night, just after midnight, Comandante Domingo Hugo Galdos of General Ramirez’ unofficial section of the Army Internal Security Service was waiting for the guard to pass to the other end of his beat. The guard was obviously bored and tired, and had stopped to smoke an illicit cigarette in the cup of his hand, looking around a little anxiously in case the duty officer were to appear unexpectedly on a check.
Comandante Galdos had arrived by train in civilian clothes, carrying a briefcase in order to look like a businessman; but his dark glasses made him look exactly like a secret service agent, as did the ill-fit of his suit and the square ends of his shoes. Inside the briefcase was a very precise map of where to find General Fuerte’s quarters, a plan of the house, details of the movements of the guards, and a long-barrelled hand-gun with a silencer. He had been here in the bushes squatting in a very uncomfortable position, his feet cutting on the leather of the new shoes, his thighs aching, and being bled dry by mosquitoes for two hours, awaiting the ideal moment.
When the moment came he darted across the road from the bushes and up the steps of the General’s house. To his relief and surprise he found the door open, and slipped inside, walking straight into a rack that the General kept for walking sticks. Horrified by the racket he had made, his heart thumping and his stomach churning, Comandante Galdos stood absolutely still, listening to the terrifying silence.
Breathing more easily at last, he slipped a pencil torch from his pocket and flicked it on. He found the door handle to the bedroom and turned it very slowly. The door released with a sharp click, and once more he froze with panic and thought of fleeing. Then he opened the door and was horrified by its grating hinges. He stood still again. He crept into the room, cursing the creaking of his new leather shoes, and shone his light onto the bed. Very quickly and sweating with fear he pumped four shots into the back of El Gandul as he lay on his side under the sheet. Desperately wishing to urinate, Comandante Galdos went swiftly back into the corridor and walked once more straight into the walking sticks. He cursed, gathered his wits together, and peeked out of the door. Seeing no sentries he darted back across to the bushes and ran off, falling headlong into an irrigation ditch. His hands bleeding from breaking his fall onto the stones, he lay there perspiring and shaking until he regained a little of his composure. He went back to the road and headed straight for a bar, where he drank four aguardientes in a row and smoked ten cigarettes. A whore sidled up to him, saw his bleeding hands and his wild eyes, and sidled away again.
Teodoro Mena Machicado, most experienced assassin of the Revolutionary Socialists (Turcos Lima Front), and known as El Amolador on account of always wearing a knife when on missions, arrived shortly after Comandante Galdos had left. He had hitched on lorries all the way from Isabel, and it had taken two days. He was tired and dirty but full of intent to do his revolutionary duty with the utmost firmness and self-sacrifice. He had so far executed seven senior officers on behalf of the people, and was intending General Fuerte to be his eighth. He was ignorant of the fact that so far he had executed no less than three officers with left-wing anti-American nationalist sympathies, three moderates, and only one right-winger. But as far as he was concerned they were all the same, and he was not a man to hedge with caveats and provisos when it came to disposing of class-enemies. Itching with revolutionary justice, that only he could distinguish from blood-lust, he waited in the bushes for the sentry to pass.
Finding his opportunity, excitement rising in his breast, he flitted across the road, sprang up the steps of the General’s house and tried the handle. He burst in, crashing straight into the walking sticks, and, not pausing to clutch his bruised shins, ran into the General’s bedroom. Drawing the lovingly-honed butcher’s knife from his belt he threw himself on the body and frenziedly plunged it four times into its chest, slicing straight through the ribs. Then he withdrew it and wiped the blade on the sheet.
On impulse, he tugged at the shoulder of the corpse to roll it over, and in the bright moonlight pouring through the window, he saw the mutilated, caked and blood-clotted face of El Gandul, crawling with flies, maggots swarming in the open mouth. A nauseating stench suddenly filled his nostrils and made him cover his nose with his hand.
Stupefied and sickened, El Amolador backed off and ran. In the corridor he crashed once more into the walking sticks, and limped to the door clutching his knee. He watched for the sentry to pass and sprinted across the road to the bushes. He ran doubled-up for a few metres and then returned to the road.
Gratefully he entered the nearest bar and sat next to Comandante Galdos, who was already glassy-eyed and incoherent. El Amolador ordered a bottle of ron cana and drank it without the mediation of a glass or the addition of Inca-Cola, watching Galdos’ cigarette smoulder down to a stub until it burned two blisters on the man’s fingers.
Comandante Galdos stood up, wringing his hands, and shouting, ‘Mierda! Que maricon de puta! Jesus!’ El Amolador put a hand on his arm and pulled him back down on to his stool. ‘Have another drink, cabron.’
The two assassins of two political extremes drank with the thirst of elephants, swore eternal friendship, embraced, discussed the hyperbolical misery of their experiences of the love of women, related sexual exploits with degrees of poetic exaggeration, and were fast asleep with their heads on the counter when General Fuerte’s bomb lit up the night and shattered the peace with a resounding boom.
Neither of them awoke. In his unconscious state Comandante Galdos murmured, ‘O, que chucha!’ and El Amolador grunted swinishly and said, ‘What? Where?’
The zoological General slept blissfully under the stars, his arm over the neck of his purring cat, the only man who has been assa
ssinated in his absence three times in one night, once by himself, and who has lived to desert the army and go on an expedition.
41
* * *
THE BEGINNING OF THE POST-DILUVIAN HISTORY OF COCHADEBAJO DE LOS GATOS
ALMOST SINCE THE inception of geological time there had been a long valley there, created by the folding of the Sierra and the inexorable abrasions of water. At the eastern end there had always been at either side two towering mountains rising vertically into the cordilleran sky. Then there had been, before humans had ever set foot there, a mighty earthquake that compressed the folds of the suffering earth even further and tilted the southern peak at an angle over the mouth of the valley so that its face overhung it and the river cascaded through it.
For hundreds of years the Incas lived in the valley of the hanging mountain, and built a stone city there with temples and ziggurats, courts for playing pok-a-tok where sometimes the losing teams were sacrificed, and geometrical paved streets lined with low houses and incised stone columns. At the western end of their city they erected stone effigies of jaguars to line the travellers’ ingress, and half-way up the northern slope they built the palace of their Lords.
Then one day there was a fierce rumbling and a woman working in a field pointed east and shouted. People ran into the streets and courtyards to watch wonderingly as at the edge of their world the overhanging face of the mountain split into fragments along its seams and slid crumbling and roaring to build a huge dam across the exit of the river. With a great crack the final section of the mountainside split off and crashed to earth sending clouds of rock dust high into the air to be dispersed in the bitter winds.
The frantic people could not clear the dam faster than the waters rose. They heaved the rocks over the slope at the end of the valley, but many of them were too heavy to lift even with twenty men. They abandoned the uneven struggle when they began to fear that their route back might be cut off, and they left on a long trek in the direction of Cuzco, only to perish in the implacably hostile waste of the portachuelos. They were dead long before their valley had become a mighty lake that submerged their city and bore with relentless pressure against the dam, awaiting the time when the mountains would move again, the dam burst, and the waters break free to hurl joyfully through the quebradas, crash through the jungles, and spread out in the Mula basin, only to evaporate once more into the bosom of the sky of their birth.