7
* * *
DON EMMANUEL’S INEFFECTIVE DIPLOMACY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
DON EMMANUEL MAY have been the obvious and logical choice as emissary to Dona Constanza, but he was a long way from being the best. This was because, ever since someone had told him in an ‘old-boy-just-a-word-in-your-ear’ manner that his Spanish was unacceptably vulgar, especially in his choice of adverbs, adjectives and common nouns, he had adopted a style of speech when talking to influential and respectable people which consisted partly of his customarily outrageous bluntness, and partly of that elaborate courtesy which one finds in medieval romances. The not entirely unintended effect was that of extreme sarcasm, and his reputation as an outstanding boor was thereby greatly enhanced, more especially as he never tried to abandon or modify his peasant’s accent.
His customary mode of conveyance was an unfortunate bay horse with a white blaze on its forehead that had earned it the unromantic name of ‘Careta’. The beast was unfortunate firstly in that, although Don Emmanuel was a fit and strong man, he had a very large belly as tight as a drum which contributed an unreasonable quantum of extra kilos to the horse’s load. Secondly the horse was a pasero, which in this case does not mean a ferryman but a horse which has been carefully trained not to trot but to move at a steady, undulating lope. This was the one pace at which Don Emmanuel never rode it, so it had not only a sagging back, but also the depressed, irritated and frustrated air of a natural artist whom financial straits have reduced to taking a job as a bank clerk. The horse always breathed in hard when its master tightened its cinturon, and would stop in the middle of the river in order to exhale so that the girth would loosen and Don Emmanuel would fall off sideways. Don Emmanuel was very proud of his horse on account of this trick, and always quoted it as irrefutable proof that a horse can have a sense of humour. However, he took to waiting for the horse to breathe out before tightening the cinturon, and Careta became probably the only horse in the world to have discovered for itself some of the techniques of Hatha yoga.
Don Emmanuel rode his dispirited pasero through the only street of the pueblo, raising little plumes of dust that were caught up and whirled away by the dancing dust-devils, and wishing ‘Buena’ dia’!’ in the customary nasal drawl to everyone he saw. He passed the three brothels with concrete floors, the little shop that sold machetes, alcohol, contraceptives, and the huge avocados that little boys stole from his own trees; he passed a small field of maize, Profesor Luis’ creaking little windmill that generated electricity, and turned left up the track to Dona Constanza’s hacienda, all the while thinking of things he could say to irritate her.
Dona Constanza looked out of her window, where she had been reading a copy of Vogue that was already three years old, and witnessed his arrival with a fascinated mixture of dread and excitement. She watched him tie his horse to the lemon tree, his torso bare and his trousers hanging from halfway down his buttocks, and challenged herself to remain cool and dignified in the face of this impending trial of her patience.
Her maid, an unprepossessing and clumsy mulatta who affected oligarchic manners, ushered him into Dona Constanza’s room and waited to be dismissed.
‘Dona Constanza,’ said Don Emmanuel, ‘it is a sign of the exquisite times in which we live that a lady’s maid may be as lovely as her mistress!’
The maid flushed with pleasure, and her mistress flinched visibly. ‘Don Emmanuel, you are as charming as ever. Now, as I am very busy, as you see, perhaps you would tell me the purpose of your visit?’
Don Emmanuel made a show of scrutinising the degree of her industriousness and bowed, removing his straw sombrero with a flourish, ‘Madame will forgive me for not perceiving her busyness. It is a sign of the highest breeding to be able to be busy whilst appearing idle to the uninformed observer.’
Her mouth tightened and her eyes flashed before she regained her composure. ‘Senor is full of signs today. Now what is the purpose of your visit?’
‘It has come to my ears, dear lady, that you intend to divert with a canal the very river which waters my land and that of the campesinos in order to replenish your piscina. I must say, as I know you appreciate frankness, that I and the local people will be fucked, buggered and immersed in guano of the finest Ecuadorean provenance before we permit such a thing to occur.’
‘The permission,’ she rallied, her temper rising almost immediately beyond control, ‘is not yours or theirs to grant. I will do as I wish with the water on my land.’
‘I appeal,’ said Don Emmanuel, ‘to your highly-developed social conscience and to your concern for my nether parts.’
‘Your nether parts?’ she repeated with astonishment.
‘Indeed, Senora. In the dry season the Mula is the only water where I may rinse the dingleberries from my nether parts.’
‘Dingleberries!’ she exclaimed with mounting outrage.
‘Dingleberries,’ he said, assuming a professorial air, ‘are the little balls of fluff that appear in one’s underwear and sometimes entwine themselves in one’s pubic hair. Frequently they are of a grey colour and woolly texture.’
Dona Constanza oscillated between amazement and fury before remarking icily, ‘Indeed I should bear in mind your nether parts, as you call them, for I hear they often are found in the most unsavoury places.’
‘Indeed,’ said Don Emmanuel, ‘it is often most unsavoury between one’s legs, which is their usual location, as a lady of your wide experience will doubtless know, and this is why I appeal to you . . .’
But Dona Constanza was already leaving, and Don Emmanuel was already aware that he had allowed himself to fail in his mission out of perversity. He rode home with a heavy heart.
So it was that under Don Emmanuel’s and Hectoro’s secret supervision Sergio and his men began to dig a canal, for Dona Constanza had absolutely refused to consider any of the more sensible and less disastrous alternatives, her one purpose now being to annoy Don Emmanuel.
They started to pretend to dig a very shallow canal from the swimming pool end with the intention of routing it the longest possible way. For three months Dona Constanza watched the peasants, their muscles gleaming with perspiration, slaving with enormous energy and achieving almost no progress with their picks and spades. When she saw that the canal was both too shallow and heading in the wrong direction she issued instructions to dig it deeper and to take the most direct route to the Mula. Sergio told her that the Mula was lower at that point and that ‘We cannot make the water flow uphill.’
‘Kindly do as I ask,’ was all she said.
So the canal was started again and dug about ten centimetres deeper at a prodigiously slow rate of progress. When it was half complete the rainy season began, the Mula flooded over its usual flood-plain, work ceased, and when the water had receded and the mosquitoes had disappeared, the canal was full of silt, small stones, and tree trunks. Not only this, but the Mula had diverted itself into its other bed two hundred metres further over, as it often did. In between the two beds was a huge outcrop of solid pink rock.
Dona Constanza was undeterred, but the campesinos were elated that she would continue to pay them at above the standard rate to work at a project that had no prospects of completion before the end of the world. When a further six months of toil had elapsed it became clear that Sergio had fortuitously been in the right and the dry bed of the Mula was indeed too low even if it had carried any water. Dona Constanza instructed Sergio to dig the canal deeper, and reasoned that next year the Mula might change course back into its previous bed. Profesor Luis arrived with poles and pieces of string and calculated that at the swimming pool end, the canal would have to be four and a half metres deep, and at about the same time Sergio and his men discovered that beneath the depth of one and a half metres there were massive boulders of the same indestructible pink rock as the outcrop between the beds, at which point Dona Constanza had a brainwave.
The bulldozer took one month to arrive from Asuncion, two hundred
kilometres away. It was not just that the machine was slow, which it was, nor that the roads were appalling, which they were; it was simply that the driver was easily bribed into doing all sorts of lucrative little oddjobs along the way, especially as he revelled in the people’s admiration for the awesomeness of the feats that his beloved machine could perform with magical ease. He gave free demonstrations to interested knots of people who never tired of seeing trees pulled over to no purpose, and huge fearsome bulls dragged along by a rope around the horns despite their having their hooves firmly planted against the soil and all their muscles straining. Halfway to the pueblo he had to turn back to Asuncion to fetch more diesel.
When the bulldozer finally arrived it immediately began to make triumphantly easy work of the canal, so much so that Don Emmanuel became alarmed and took to leaving bottles of aguardiente near the machine every evening. He also told Sergio to tell everyone in the village to be very generous every time the driver came into it after dark. The driver took on a haggard and bilious mien, work began later and finished sooner, and Dona Constanza threatened the man with imprisonment, which was hardly an idle threat, since all magistrates without exception would find someone guilty of something in return for a gratuity. Doing one’s civic duty was therefore both an honourable and profitable burden, and posts were eagerly sought and sedulously canvassed for with the aid of banknotes, usually in the form of US dollars.
When the driver returned to his former diligence and the pink boulders began to be piled up in the river to redivert it, Hectoro began an heroic campaign of covert sabotage. Don Emmanuel ordered Pantagruelian quantities of ron cana and aquardiente from the little shop and Hectoro ensured that it found its way into the fuel tanks of the bulldozer along with small quantities of sugar dissolved in water.
On the first morning the bulldozer started perfectly on the unsullied fuel that was left in the lines. After a minute or two, however, the engine raced, then backfired several times, releasing puffs of pure white smoke into the air from the exhaust, and then became marvellously erratic. There were periods of pre-ignition, periods of spectacular explosions like gunfire, and periods of total stoppage which would find the perplexed and frustrated driver tinkering for hours with the fuel pump, which he believed to be faulty, bleeding fuel lines which he believed to be full of air, and, his mouth stinging with diesel, kicking the massive tracks and shouting with rage until, his face buried in his hands, he would sit with his back to the machine, a picture of pure dejection. Eventually he would throw back his head, look at the sky as if for aid and inspiration, rise slowly to his feet and climb into his cab, where he would sit grim-faced before turning the key. The machine would fire, operate briefly, backfire, race, and cut out, whereupon the whole pantomime would begin anew, watched by audiences of washerwomen with baskets of laundry on their heads and cigars in their mouths who would say ‘Whooba!’ softly at every explosion, and ‘Ay, ay, ay!’ every time the machine stopped. Having watched the driver tinkering and cursing for a while they would turn as though unanimously and walk off in a line, to pound their washing on the largest flat stones in the river, singing rhythmic songs of forgotten meaning which are probably still sung in West Africa.
Needless to say, work progressed with wondrous slowness and infinite pains. When the canal seemed to be roughly right to the naked eye the driver took the first opportunity to jerk his explosive way back to Asuncion, where his much-abused machine slowly recovered its health with transfusions of unadulterated diesel, and where the driver slowly recovered his erstwhile good humour, taking once more to pulling over trees and dragging bulls. However, like a man who has once found himself impotent, he never quite regained his faith in himself and his powers.
There were unexpected and terrible consequences of this lighthearted but essential sabotage. It was not that it had not succeeded, because it did – the river was not diverted, and the canal was still dry – nor was it that the driver was psychologically somewhat battered.
What had happened was that word had spread around the area that there were many explosions coming from near the pueblo, which sounded like gunshots and bombs and shells. Further away there arose rumours that there actually were gunshots, bombs and shells going off in the pueblo, and by the time these stories reached Valledupar they had been elaborated into graphic accounts of skirmishes and even pitched battles between ‘the Cubans’ and the beleaguered peasants, who at this very moment were being tortured, raped and pillaged without pity. General Fuerte being on leave, searching for humming-birds, Brigadier Hernando Montes Sosa sent a company of men by truck, armed to the teeth and twitching with nervous fear, to defend their country and their democracy.
Thus it was that Comandante Rodrigo Figueras found himself once more at the scene of his humiliation, but with three times the number of men and different insignia on his epaulettes. The first thing anyone knew about it was when Dona Constanza answered the door to be confronted by an unpleasant, lecherous-looking, surly character with greasy hair, a revolver, and a large number of soldiers at his back.
‘Where are the Communists?’ he demanded.
8
* * *
AURELIO IS DISINHERITED
DON HERNANDEZ ALMAGRO MENDEZ, descendant of conquistadores and owner of inconceivably vast tracts of land exhausted and enfeebled by overgrazing and familial irresponsibility, found himself inclined to acquire a little more land. The barren scrub where now there grew only a few eucalyptus had once been virgin jungle smelling of spices, draped with orchids and lianas, glittering with metallic morpho butterflies, reverberating to the cough of the jaguar, creeping with giant mugale spiders, and echoing after sunset to the eerie crowing of the night hawk.
Then the Mendez family had arrived and enslaved the Indians, who were set to work under the lash and the sword to destroy their former homes by fire until the whole forest was consumed by an inferno whose orange glow could be seen in the sky after dark far away in the Sierra. It is inconceivable how many creatures perished in the conflagration; afterwards there lay among the charred stumps of the trees the calcined remains of tapirs, of armadilloes, of capybara, of garapu stags, of three species of ant-eaters, of leguan lizards, of peccaries, of sloths, of capuchin monkeys, of coati raccoons, and of frogs that could call with a sound exactly like a child weeping.
No sooner had the great pall of white ash descended on the land than the captive Indians were set to cultivate it. Many died of diseases, of malnutrition, of cruelty; the remainder died by hunger-strike, or escaped the packs of dogs and the horsemen to take their chances with the hostile clans of headhunters in what jungle was left beyond the encomienda. To replace the Indians, the Mendez family brought in Negros from West Africa who were more easily resigned to servitude.
The land was worked for bananas, tobacco, cotton, and cattle, but it failed completely in a few years as the fragile soil was swept into the rivers by the torrential inundations of the seasons of rains. Deep gulleys grew apace in the fields as the waters carved them out in horrifying flash floods which swept away cattle and houses alike and eventually reduced the former Eden to bare rock and infertile packed earth which supported only scrub grass and a few herds.
In places the jungle began to reclaim the land; it crept slowly and unsurely, unable to recreate in centuries that which it had lost in a few days, but sending out tendrils and feelers, creating tongues of verdure where once more there were bromelias, piassaba palms, and situlis with their exquisite crimson flowers. The Mendez left the farm alone, for they had gone to live in perpetuity in the capital, leaving the management to enganchadores who hired jornaleros and macheteros to work hard but without commitment to grow what little could be grown and to keep count of the cattle.
The enganchadores adopted the usual method for not paying the workers; they would sell them the basics of life – food, tools, leather, horses, fake medicines made of seawater and chicken blood – and ensure that the campesinos always owed more than they earned. Enormous debts that
were never to be paid off were inherited by sons and passed on in turn to their children, and there was an agreement amongst all latifundistas that they would never employ a peon who still owed money to his patron. In this way generations of the same families passed their protected but impoverished lives on the Vida Tranquila Hacienda.
Centuries later, Don Hernandez, who had been speculating on government bonds with great success, decided that it was time to put his money into minerals; and gold in particular, with a little coffee cultivation as a back-up. He knew that in the highlands beyond and above the Vida Tranquila he could grow the very finest Arabica beans for the connoisseur market in Europe and North America, and he also knew that beyond and above that there were a great many Inca mines which, if reopened, might yield a viable amount of ore. He hired a French engineer to examine these old workings, who came back with favourable reports, but who said that the mountains were still populated by Aymara Indians who were likely to be hostile to any industrial activity.
Don Hernandez decided to go ahead in any case, and his workforce first went into action to erect fences way up into the hills and clear them for the coffee planting. This part of the plan went perfectly smoothly, but it was not quite so simple to fence off the mountains above; one cannot drive stakes into solid rock in neat lines over peaks and chasms, even if one does have a property deal signed by a government official. Eventually Don Hernandez was obliged to reconcile himself to having piles of stone erected at intervals around the periphery of his property, and to allowing free passage to travellers. But he was possessed of the fixed idea that he had to get rid of the Indians, whom he regarded as lower than the animals and far more dangerous.