At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig

by John Gimlette

  They then harvested the dead. The Allied soldiers were stripped of their sovereigns, watches and uniforms and their corpses rolled into the ditches. When the swamp was full, the mangled bits were dragged to the river and fed to the caimans, the greedy alligators who now had a taste for war.

  Díaz now thought he was invincible and took a canoe out fishing among the Brazilian ironclads. They got him in the end, of course, ragging his leg with a 13lb shell. His officers swam him to the shore and Dr Skinner, the English doctor, amputated the tattered limb. Madame Lynch drove the general back to Paso Pucú in her buggy. Díaz, now chronically unhinged, had his amputated leg soldered into its own little coffin so he could haul it round with him. The insanity didn’t last: a few days later the old cuckoo was eaten up by gangrene.

  There was a bust of General Díaz shoulder deep in the grass, like a petrified sniper. I didn’t hazard a closer look, partly because my imagination was haunted by the police chief’s warnings about the snakes. There were rattlesnakes, he’d said, and corals and the deadly yarará – the Brazilian fer-de-lance. Of these, there was little encouragement from my Lonely Planet. The rattlesnake, it said, ‘transmits a highly potent neurotoxin that can cause paralysis so severe that the neck muscles cannot hold up the head and the neck appears broken’.

  ‘Worst still,’ thrilled the chief, ‘is the cinco minuto. One bite and five minutes is all you’ve got.’

  My more immediate concern was that I was already under attack. A fuzz of oily black mosquitoes had settled fattly on my clothes. My jeans were mottled with their glossy limbs and I could feel them probing the cloth for weakness and sniffing at my blood. I swatted them off with Thompson’s map, and although they rose in a lazy blurr, they soon fell on me again. I saw the rest of Thompson’s trenches and the banks of the River Paraguay in a state of excited flapping and thrashing. I only managed to regain my dignity very briefly, when a barge washed past, hauling BMWs and whisky up to Asunción. As soon as it had rounded the bend I was off again, slapping and dancing and twisting like a puppet. Eventually, the haze of insects lifted and floated away.

  Unmolested, I suddenly felt the isolation of the place. I was alone with the extravagantly crazy General Díaz. The grass hissed, and beyond the thorn trees of the earthworks, a strangled roar was lifting eerily from the forest. It was Thompson’s ‘thick jungle’ to the south. The roar was the howler monkeys, bidding the day to end. I climbed back on my bicycle and left this bloodied place, churning up its terrible sand in my retreat.

  The rheas were back, to watch me go and to reclaim the place for their own.

  The Allies took Curupayty as a terrible blow. Argentina lost any remaining enthusiasm for the war, and the greater share of the fighting now fell to the Brazilians. Allied strength was built up to 80,000, but even the Brazilians struggled to find the numbers. Brazilian rural life was fractured by violent recruiting gangs, and eventually the plantation slaves of Bahia were drummed into the ranks on the promise of freedom and land. The cost was debilitating at £14,500,000 a year, of which £2,000,000 went on maintaining the horses of the imperial cavalry. All sides were now desperate for a conclusion.

  Curupayty held out for another year. At first the Allies were paralysed with shock, and then the ranks of both armies were liquefied by cholera. López was so terrified of the disease that he forbade anyone to mention it by name, and it was known simply as ‘the Chain’. It claimed fifty men a day for six months. Then the bombardments began again and Thompson pulled the artillery back from Curupayty. The Paraguayan bombardiers hauled them back so fast that they were able to blast the ironclads as they passed Curupayty and then blast them again as they arrived at Humaitá, fifteen kilometres upstream.

  When Curupayty was finally abandoned, Thompson mounted the earthworks with one last, sullen garrison. The wary Allies shelled them for three days before mustering the courage to advance. They were in for a bitter surprise.

  The last defenders of Curupayty were merely scarecrows, stuffed with straw.

  I turned back, for Humaitá.

  A few kilometres from the battlefield, the track in front of me suddenly exploded and a caiman blasted itself from the dust and into the lagoon. It landed on the surface like one of Cruger’s unfortunate torpedoes, belly-flopped towards the deep water and sank. I got off my bicycle and sat on the bank to watch. A pair of cold reptile eyes broke the surface, and then the nostrils. It lay like that for some time, wondering, I fancied, whether I was a predator or another juicy war.

  ‘The jacaré won’t harm you,’ the police chief had told me. ‘They’re too small. And they’re stupid. The brain is just jelly. They’re just little killing machines.’

  The caiman’s brainless, villainous, armour-plated face emerged – almost imperceptibly – from its soup.

  ‘They’ll play dead for hours,’ said the chief, ‘even when you shoot their feet off.’

  54

  ALTHOUGH MRS MICAWBER SAID she’d once run a restaurant – before her pains overwhelmed her – there was now nothing to eat at the shop except the green rocks of bread. Go to the restaurant, said the Micawbers, at the end of the village.

  The restaurant was the last shack before the swamps. It had three rooms: one for eating, one for pool and one for the family. There was a counter in the pool room, and as the place became a home from home, I could soon list every item under its gritty glass: pastries, biscuits, lighters, spaghetti, bullet-rolls and rum. Clumps of brown damp bloomed across the walls and a sausage hung from the ceiling, absorbing the smells and smoke of the cowboys. There were six splintery chairs and two pictures; one depicted the Last Supper and the other a delicious naked blonde who was about to be eaten – or ravished – by a giant black cat.

  It was run by a woman whose face was scrunched with sand and work. Her husband came in from the fields at sundown and changed into a stiff, flowery shirt and matching shorts. Their daughter lay on the pool table all day, dreaming up poems. ‘America is the continent of love …’ she wrote.

  ‘What would you like?’ said the mother. It was a ritual. There was no choice but the day’s dish would be deconstructed and reassembled with ponderous relish. ‘There is minced beef. And butter. And peppers and some tomatoes. There’s bread. And fresh chopped onions. Would you like mayonnaise on that? And salt? And pepper?’

  I would say ‘yes’ to it all, and moments later a succulent hash would be borne to the table, latticed in mayonnaise. On the night I returned from Curupayty, they had dorado. I have never tasted such luxurious fish meat. Its creamy flesh flopped from a flank of thick, hard bones. I polished my plate.

  When I’d finished, a crew of peóns called in at the restaurant. Their spurs scraped across the stone floor, the sound of exhausted men. They had hands of alligator-skin and heavy gun-belts, whips and woven fajas – their cummerbunds. Word had reached them of the dorado and they wanted to buy what remained. The great golden carcass was hauled from the eating room and thrown across a horse. I listened for a while as the scuff of hooves retreated into the darkness.

  Then Humaitá was swirled again in silence.

  By the anniversary of Curupayty, the Allies had cut the road to Humaitá and it was surrounded. Five months later, in March 1868, López broke out of the encirclement, crossing the river and marching up through the Chaco. Of his original army of 100,000, only 20,000 remained, and – elsewhere – widows and orphans were beginning to starve. Even Madame Lynch was forced to abandon much of her sumptuous plumage in Humaitá, but the wine, the silver and the piano all made good their escape on the presidential ox-train.

  Three thousand men were left behind to defend the fortress, under the command of Colonel Alen. He was unhealthily besotted with Madame Lynch and determined to put up a fight commensurate with his ardour. In the end it wasn’t to be, and he blew his eye out with a pistol (later, López had him finished off with a ball in the back of the head).

  Meanwhile, the Allies poured fire down on to the defenders. The Paraguayans respon
ded with all they had left, often just blowing their túrútútús – or trumpets – and infuriating the Allies with their stoicism. They dug themselves fox-holes with names like the Hotel Français, de Bordeaux and Garibaldi and fed their gallows humour.

  ‘If a Paraguayan in the midst of his comrades was blown to pieces by a shell,’ wrote Thompson, ‘they would yell with delight, thinking it a capital joke, in which they would have been joined by the victim himself had he been capable.’

  The allied commander, the Brazilian Marques de Caxias, was less inclined to see the funny side. He still holds the world record for being the youngest soldier ever (he entered his infantry regiment at the age of five in 1808). After sixty years of soldiering, he wasn’t amused by an enemy that blew túrútútús at him and that thought his bombardments ‘a capital joke’. At first he tried bribery and offered Colonel Alen 2,500,000 gold francs to surrender. Alen replied by return.

  ‘I am sorry, General,’ he wrote, ‘not to be able to follow your example by offering money but if you will consent to deliver your squadron, I will give you instead the Imperial Crown of Brazil.’ He signed off the letter, ‘May God Preserve you and the peoples of your great and noble nation.’

  Caxias was incandescent. He had seldom been so insulted in his life – let alone by these howling, painted savages, the Guaraní. The killing was placed on a higher plane; from now on, the annihilation of the Paraguayans was to be industrial. Thompson – who wasn’t shocked by very much – was appalled at Caxias’ ruthlessness and suspected him of prolonging the war for his own profit. His anxiety was shared throughout Europe and the United States. The New York Times railed against the futility of it all. ‘The Allies,’ ran one editorial, ‘must see the impossibility of achieving their object without simply destroying the Paraguayan race from the face of the earth.’

  Caxias could see it all too well; the bloodshed escalated.

  Even some of the Argentines began to chafe at the relentless slaughter of the Paraguayans. One group – the Montoneros – rekindled old anxieties and came out in armed revolt. They would be a thorn in the side of Argentine authority for the next one hundred years.

  After López’s departure, the defenders held out for another five months. When the jerked beef ran out, they survived on robbery. They ran improbably bold raids deep into the allied lines, stealing horses and occasionally whole herds of cattle. Thompson was constantly surprised at what the raiders came back with; it was the only time that he’d enjoyed fresh artichokes in Paraguay. On other occasions they came back with Mitre’s letters from his wife (with a piece of cheese enclosed), tea, boots and – more bizarrely – parasols and crinolines.

  Caxias launched another full-frontal assault with 12,000 men. Hero though he may have been to Brazilians, to Thompson he was an inexcusable buffoon, always throwing his men against the strongest sections of the fortress. Two thousand Brazilians were minced up in the Paraguayan response. The battle is said to have lasted only an hour. The Guaraní lost just forty-seven men.

  But food and powder were now perilously short. It was time for the Paraguayans to bluff their way out of the trap. Under the cover of a vast birthday celebration, the 2,500 survivors of the garrison crossed the river in canoes. The military band was the last to leave, thumping and tooting their outrageous deception until the very end.

  Suddenly, after two and a half years, Humaitá was silent.

  Realising they’d been cheated, ten thousand Brazilians rushed round to cut the fugitives off. For several days the two sides fought miniature naval battles in canoes on the lagoons. A thousand Paraguayans got away, including Alen (stretcher-bound, an eye hanging out and dreading his fate) and Thompson. The rest, under the new garrison commander, Colonel Martínez, fought on until they were too weak to hold their guns. On 5 August 1868, they surrendered.

  On hearing the news, López declared Martínez to be a traitor. His wife, who was Madame Lynch’s lady-in-waiting, was seized and bound. She was flogged by a common trooper and then, more thoughtfully, tortured for a week. When López realised that she was no longer really appreciating any pain, he had her hauled away and blown apart.

  It was harder to get out of Humaitá than I’d imagined.

  At first, I tried to find a lift, but nothing moved all morning except some horses. I was forced back to Micawber, who was the agent for the daily bus. It was a five-hour wait. Sugary with rum, he showed me the junk he’d grubbed up in his yard: bayonets sheared at the hilt, shards of cavalry swords and the skeleton of a revolver. I asked him if he sold these things. His face rolled itself up in horror.

  ‘Never!’ he sloshed, clutching the rusty pieces to his chest. ‘One day this lot will be worth a fortune!’

  All afternoon I sat on Micawber’s porch with his friend, another drunk in bare feet and a pin-stripe suit. The suit was far too big and it so overwhelmed him that his head completely disappeared. This headless, snoring rag was draped across a cradle of massive four-inch iron links.

  It was all that remained of Thompson’s brilliant river chain.

  55

  AFTER THE FALL of Humaitá, the fort received a visit from a group of tourists, probably the first Paraguay had ever seen. They’d chartered a motor-yacht called the Yi, a floating hotel of white panelling, freshly starched napkins and silver plate. It was a sort of plumply upholstered Turf Club, eased into the war zone to offer the rich comfortable views of the carnage. Modern military technology has made this sort of holiday rather unfashionable, but at the time, it was capital sport. Naturally, eating was an essential component of the pleasure and the first feast was served daily at ten a.m. It consisted of sausages, ham, olives, cabbage, meat stew and puddings, and was chased down with table wines, port and cowslip tea. If this wasn’t enough to permanently anchor the guests in velvet plush, the whole collation was repeated again four hours later. This gluttony continued upstream at a very satisfactory twelve knots until the cook, fearing enlistment, jumped ship, followed one by one by the stewards.

  The passenger list was a microcosm of the Triple Alliance. There were a few Argentines and a handful of Uruguayans – who flipped their noses up at the Brazilians and called them ‘the monkeys’. The Brazilians didn’t mind; they were stupendously wealthy, on holiday and in the majority. They got up in the middle of the morning (missing a few tureens of cabbage and sausage) and argued about the order in which the sherry was served. Their gambling was imperial and tended to cause the splendid saloon to overheat. It would have been enough to make a splendid economy overheat; one of the guests lost £2,000 on the leg from Buenos Aires to Humaitá. This was an admirable extra on the already lavish cost of the trip: £14.

  Some guests were there to blend a little business with their pleasure. Segundo Flores, son of the assassinated Brazilian president, had an idea to sell uniforms to the armies. Another passenger was an old friend, that snivelling weasel of a journalist Hector Varela, as eager as ever to delight in the discomfort of the Paraguayans.

  Among the Argentines was a military man called General Gelly. He was variously rumoured to be Irish, romantic and even Paraguayan. On one of his walks through the abandoned fort, he found Madame Lynch’s imposing collection of shoes. He selected some black satin pumps and sent them to his wife in Buenos Aires. She wrote back, ‘I have received the booty of Madame Lynch. After three years’ blockade, Madame Lynch leaves her elegant latest fashion shoes lying about … it’s a pity that woman is not López’s wife. Her heroism would be worthy of every eulogy for following the destiny of her husband.’

  Whilst the idea of abandoning a promising shoe collection (for the sake of a man) might have seemed exorbitantly heroic to a fine lady like Mrs Gelly, she was obviously not in command of all the facts. Little did she know that, at that very moment, Eliza Lynch was having eight boxes of jewels and coin smuggled on to an Italian gunboat for a European retirement. It was just a precautionary measure.

  Scowling amongst this strange assortment of passengers was a hard-drinking and s
lightly mothy Englishman. His thinning hair was brushed forward like a Roman and he wore a forked beard like the devil. This comparison would have pleased him very much because he loathed Christians – as well as liberals, English riff-raff, women and Americans (he shared something with the yacht’s captain here, who thought all yanquis were ‘rascals’). He’d already made himself vaguely unpopular with his fellow-passengers by repeatedly throwing open all the windows and introducing blasts of cold air to their gambling. There was little they could do; the man was breathtakingly famous and something of a Victorian super-hero. He was Captain Richard Burton.

  Burton’s little excursion to Humaitá came at the end of a lull in his boisterous wanderings. It was now fifteen years since his bowel-churning, face-painted adventures in Arabia. The Nile Survey of 1857–9 and a well-publicised spat with his fellow-explorer, Speke, had left him depressed, broke and more querulous than ever. He even managed to infect his fiancée, Isabel Arundell, with some of his misery, fomenting a colourful nervous breakdown. Whilst Isabel sweated it out, Burton took himself off to America for nine months. Although the presence of so many Americans was obviously an irritation, Burton found America satisfactory in almost every other respect. He was particularly fascinated by the Sioux and delighted in the details of their lives – trial marriages, scalping, abundant sodomy and an imaginative punishment for female adulterers (the tips of their noses were bitten off). He also visited the Mormons in Utah, and on his return expended much energy in singing the virtues of polygamy. Adoring though his readers were, they weren’t ready for this.

  By now, however, he could do no wrong. The public recognised him as a man of towering intellectual and sporting ability. He was a scholar, poet, diplomat, botanist, anthropologist and a powerful boxer. He could speak twenty-five languages and brought some of the world’s greatest poetry – like The Arabian Nights – to an English readership. He wrote forty-three travel books of his own, each dashed off so quickly between adventures that he had neither the time – nor the patience – to proofread them. Those who knew him well might have added to his list of talents a flare for spending money quickly and a well-founded appreciation of prostitutes (women did have their uses). These talents were more obvious at some times than at others; always near the surface was a tendency for Burton to plummet into deep, alcoholic melancholia.