Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord

by Louis de Bernières

  While these events were unfolding in Ipasueño, Anica and Dionisio were happily making wooden frames for the tapiales, constructing another wooden frame to serve as a former for the Naked Admiral’s mausoleum, taking immense siestas, eating prodigious quantities of La Prima Primavera’s guacamole sauce, and making love languidly in the stultifying heat of the late evenings. They spent the days absolutely filthy from their labours, which scandalised those who had certain preconceptions of the necessary appearance of a General’s son.

  Building the mausoleum was immensely hard work; Dionisio wanted the foundations to be very deep in order to withstand hurricanes and earthquakes, because he wanted the structures to be strong long after his death so that there would remain on earth some evidence of his existence. But the problem was that he was building on the detritus of centuries of rural life. The fragile spade he had borrowed from his mother’s collection of implements crashed time and again against pottery shards, bricks, tree roots, wire mesh, donkey shoes, adze heads, unrecognisable lumps of cast iron, and even a musket abandoned by some forgotten conquistador engaged upon a journey into death. In the febrile heat he lost litres of perspiration which ran down his body and stung his eyes, so that Anica would take turns with him until she too could not bear it any longer, and they would go to the Naked Admiral’s kitchen and scrounge fruit juice from the tractable maids.

  Eventually he called in on the Regiment of Engineers and used his father’s name to borrow an earth-mover with which Anica instantly struck up a rapport, and she deftly dug out the foundations in a couple of hours while the servants and the Naked Admiral’s lyrical wife set up chairs under a tree in order to watch. Her venerable gardener from thenceforth stoutly maintained that Anica was really a man, despite the fact that the rounding of her breasts was very obvious beneath her shirt.

  The lovers worked only short hours, because that is in fact how the most work gets done. They worked through the morning until it was so hot that even the trees sweated, while the Naked Admiral’s wife ensured that they were always full of fortifying herbal tisanes. They spent a great deal of time sitting in the shade idly flicking cigarette-ends at the lizards and talking about Ipasueno scandals. Then they would go home and eat La Prima Primavera’s guacamole fantasias, and spend the afternoon swinging in hammocks for siesta beneath the reproduction of Aristotle’s peripateticon, dozing and watching the little birds in the bougainvillea. At the first cooling of the evening they would return to work and travail with rhythmic bursts of energy, so that every day they saw a beautiful structure emerging from the earth. He would look at Anica’s face as she glowed with pride in what they had achieved together, and he in his turn would feel pride in how she had thrown herself into hard physical labour worthy of a convict on a penal colony.

  As the dusk rapidly transformed itself into darkness and the bloodsucking bats swarmed out of their hollow trees where the ground beneath their roosts was crimson with droppings of pure blood, the lovers would go home, wash, and retire once more to their hammocks beneath the bougainvillea.

  In retrospect Anica greatly enjoyed building the mausoleum, especially the bit when they drank two bottles of Chilean wine and then smashed them on the floor to cut the Devil’s feet. She would only accept a third of the goodly pile of pesos that they were paid by the Naked Admiral, so that Dionisio could better afford to go to Nueva Sevilla.

  34 Hope Is When Army Officers Are Democrats

  THAT MORNING DIONISIO awoke with the taste of raw onions in his mouth and the sensation of having been wrapped in cobwebs. When he had sufficiently awoken he understood that this was because Anica’s brother was due to call in that evening after having spent the day at the military barracks in Valledupar attending a course on counter-insurgency. It was not just that Dionisio was violently prejudiced against all military types except for his own father and the ones he knew personally, but that he strongly resented anybody whatsoever who distracted Anica’s attention from himself. Anica and Eloisa, her sister, worshipped their brother in the elite Portachuelo Guards, and he was fully anticipating having to pass the evening with an obsessively clean-cut neo-fascist who talked in formulae and was used to being admired.

  When the young Captain arrived in a jeep in a fog of dust and had been waved past by the guards at the gate, Dionisio was instantly nauseated by the man’s two metres of almost Nordic good looks and the row of medal ribbons on his chest.

  Anica, starry-eyed with sibling adoration, suggested that they take him to a bar in town, and Dionisio, irritated as if by fire-ants, agreed with poor grace. But at the bar Dionisio began to find that the brother was after all not so obnoxious, especially when Anica whispered to him that her brother had been frightened to meet him on account of his fame as a letterist and a possible martyr to the drug mafia. ‘I arrived,’ said the Captain, ‘believing that you were already dead. I read your obituary in La Prensa this morning, and I was fully prepared to have to spend the evening consoling my sister. You must imagine my confusion when I found you intact.’

  Dionisio was impressed that an army officer could read a quality newspaper, and was bemused by the idea that anyone could have reported him dead for no reason. ‘Do you have the paper?’ he asked.

  He read his own obituary and an editorial lamenting his demise and praising his fortitude, and immediately began to think up witty ways of writing to the paper to announce his continued and uninterrupted existence. The other two joined in the game with enthusiasm, and soon all three of them were howling with laughter and emptying bottles at a rate which would have alarmed even a depressed Scandinavian.

  Now that all awkwardness had dissipated and Dionisio had forgotten to be froward, the two men found that they had much to discuss. The Captain described how his officer-training had been little better than brainwashing and brutality, about how he had been near to suicide, about how the officers never knew what the non-coms were doing, about what a relief it had been to find himself at last in the Portachuelo Guards up in the sierra. More interestingly, he had, as a young lieutenant, been one of the squad that had liberated the political prisoners from the infamous Colonel Asado’s Escuadron de la Muerte. He described how General Fuerte had led them to the Army School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineers at eleven o’clock in the morning, how they had simply walked in and found hell on earth. The Captain’s lip trembled when he described how everything stank of burned flesh, how everything was covered in blood and excrement, how the prisoners were mutilated beyond possibility, how they had begged him to kill them. ‘I cannot go on,’ he said, ‘but it is my opinion that General Fuerte was a liberator to rank in his own way with Martin and Bolivar. There will never be another man like him.’

  Dionisio was excited, and his eyes glowed because they were filled with tears at the man’s memory. ‘He is a hero of mine as well. But everyone knows he was assassinated by the army. They even blew up his hearse at the funeral. It was my own father who succeeded him who said that in public at a news conference.’

  The Captain leaned forward and said very sincerely, ‘Do not make the mistake of believing that a uniform makes one a monster. Remember that it was the army that cleaned the whole mess up as well; it was men like your father.’

  ‘And yourself.’

  ‘I propose a toast,’ said the Captain. ‘To democracy and to the memory of General Carlo Maria Fuerte.’

  ‘Long live the one and the memory of the other.’

  They drank a deep draught and sat in a long silence before the conversation resumed. When they said farewell at the end of the evening Dionisio and the Captain shook hands for a long time and then embraced. ‘I hope to see you again, Dionisio. Keep writing the letters.’

  ‘Anica must remind me to tell them that I am not dead, or I will forget and they will believe my next letter to be from an impostor. You are the first person to tell me to keep writing, Felipe; everyone else warns me to stop.’

  ‘General Fuerte did not stop. You are a civilian general in the same fi
ght. But for the love of God, take care of my sister in all this.’

  When the Captain had gone Dionisio said, ‘He is a fine man. I like him very much, even though he is an army officer.’

  ‘You did not let me say anything all evening,’ complained Anica, and then she reflected, ‘But I am not surprised that you get on well with him. You two are like enough to be brothers.’

  ‘The day when I am like an army officer is the day when the whole world must have changed.’

  ‘Then obviously it must have changed.’

  Dionisio did not see Felipe again until the day in Cochadebajo de los Gatos when to their mutual astonishment they found themselves fighting side by side in the same cause.

  Part Two

  For the enemy hath persecuted my soul; he hath smitten my life down to the ground; he hath made me to dwell in darkness, as those that have long been dead.

  Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate.

  I remember the days of old.

  Psalm 143.

  35 Anica’s Journal (2)

  WHERE DO I start? At the beginning? It is all too terrible, like something from a yanqui movie. The other evening I got an urgent telegram from Ipasueño supposedly from my father, saying that I had to return instantly. I was very alarmed, because God knows what could have happened, but I could never have suspected that it would be as bad as this. D. offered to drive me back himself, but I said I would go by train and bus. So he offered to pay half my train-fare, but I said no.

  When I eventually got here I was exhausted and still very worried because I had been thinking all the way about what could have gone wrong, but when I got to the house there was a car at the front with two men in it reading comics. My heart sank because everyone around here knows them, and knows that they are two killers who work for that fat shit. One of them was El Guacamayo, who is called that because he dresses up like a macaw in bad-taste clothes. He’s got gold teeth and he stinks of revolting cheap perfume that he probably puts on to impress whores. The other one was El Chiquitin, who is called that because he is so small.

  I was about to run away when El Guacamayo pointed a gun at me and said something like, ‘Inside, chica, or you get lead in you right now, OK? I have a little message from someone important.’

  My whole mouth went dry and my heart was going so fast that I thought I would faint. I thought that at the very least I was going to be raped and cut up, which is what those bastards always do to women. I couldn’t put the key in the lock because I was shaking so much, and El Guacamayo wrenched it out of my hand and opened it himself.

  They pulled me by the hair into the living-room and threw me down on the floor, and then they taunted me. They were saying, ‘What do you think we are going to do, flaca? Shall we cut off your breasts to make purses? Shall we enlarge your little honeypot so it gives your famous lover no more pleasure? Shall we see what it is that he likes so much, and then write him a full report on it?’

  I was trying to sit up, and they kept kicking me down, and I was just saying, ‘Why? Why?’ and I was begging them to leave me alone, and El Guacamayo said, ‘Who does one love the most?’ and the other little shit said, ‘One’s family, of course,’ and then the other bastard said something like, ‘Precisely. Now listen to this, guapacita, the message from a very important person is “Leave Dionisio Vivo, or we will kill first your father, then your sister, then your brother, then your stepmother, then your stepmother’s dog, and then you, in that order.”’

  I was still saying, ‘Why? Why?’ and El Guacamayo said, ‘Because we will be well paid to do it,’ and they started laughing because that is about their level of wit, the shits. Then they said, ‘And if Vivo hears anything of this, or anyone else, you will all die anyway. Painfully and slowly.’

  I said, ‘Why?’ again, and the little one said, ‘Because he can’t get Vivo directly. Don’t you think that this is excellent revenge? We think so, don’t we?’ And they laughed again at me and dragged me up by my hair, and I was sick on the carpet which made them laugh even more.

  I said, ‘How long do I have?’ and they said, ‘One month, which is enough for a few farewell fucks.’

  Then they stood up and straightened their clothes in front of the mirror, like they were film stars or something, and El Guacamayo, the shit, he was combing his hair and putting oil on it. Then he came up to me and grabbed me and tried to kiss me, but it made me feel sick, and I clenched my teeth. But he kept pushing in his tongue and it was so revolting that I couldn’t think of anything to do except bite it as hard as I could. He threw me off and put his hand to his mouth, and then he started to take off his belt to beat me, but the little shit stopped him and said they’d been told not to harm me yet, and he put big emphasis on the ‘yet’.

  El Guacamayo pushed me against the wall and then they left, and I ran up to the bathroom and I kept washing my mouth out over and over to get his saliva out, and I was shaking so much that I was sick again, except that nothing came out. I had to change my clothes and I went downstairs and I smoked about ten cigarettes in a row, and I went to see Janita.

  She hugged me a lot and made me tell her what happened, and we were both crying and I was still shaking so much that she had to hold both my hands. She said I had to go straight to Ramon at the Police Station, and she said that I had to go back to Valledupar and tell Dionisio because his father is a general in the army and would bring in the soldiers and wipe out the bastards once and for all because he was that kind of general, and I kept saying, ‘No, I can’t, what will happen?’ and she was saying, ‘You’ve got to,’ so I said, ‘OK, I will,’ but somehow I know that I won’t. Oh God. I am angry with God. He is a bastard as well. I believe that he is some kind of devil with the sense of humour of a sadist degenerate. I would like to kill God for what he allows to happen when we are all only trying to be happy. God is a shit.

  Now I am going back to Valledupar, and I don’t know what to do.

  36 Nueva Sevilla

  DIONISIO HAD GIVEN one hundred pesos to the stationmaster to telephone him when the train was coming in, and because there had been no floods, no avalanches, no accidents, and no one had stolen any rails to build bridges with, the train was only seven hours late.

  He flung himself into her arms as she stepped out of the carriage, but she only managed to smile wanly and stiffen in his embrace. His heart sank, because he knew that there was something wrong, but thought that it was a recurrence of her physical shyness. He began to feel the familiar niggle of resentment.

  The General and Mama Julia had returned from holiday bearing gifts, and La Prima Primavera had decided to stay on so that she could regale them with guacamole sauce. The General rumbled about this, saying that he had always known that it was a mistake on Mama Julia’s part to plant so many avocados in the grounds, and he began to find excuses to eat in the officers’ mess at the barracks.

  Anica, embroiled in her own tragedy and unable to share it, became pale and withdrawn. She was so tense that she could not make love any more, and she told Dionisio that she could not do it with his parents in the house in case they were overheard. He pointed out that they had done it every night before his parents had gone on holiday. He felt that he ought to respect her feelings, but he also thought that he knew that there was nothing to worry about. He thought that she was being wilful and obstinate, he felt irritated, and he felt insulted that she would not believe what he said. He wondered whether she might not be having one of her periodic relapses into virginity. He became moody and detached, like a dog that someone has forgotten to feed. He expressed his irritation by ignoring her, hiding his head in the pages of La Prensa, and by becoming sarcastic. He could not resist the powerful impression that he was being stalled for something other than her stated reasons, and so it was that he began to treat her badly at the very time when she needed his love the most and was being consumed with desperation. She fell into a misery so profound that lines appeared around her eyes, her han
ds began to shake, and she hovered always on the edge of tears. She felt his distance almost as bitterly as if he was keeping it in the full knowledge of what had happened to her in Ipasueno.

  The Aerocondor plane was a relic of the Second World War and was too tired to fly above the mountains. Instead it flew between them and caught every buffet of the winds. The air hostess in her smart red dress with matching hat and lipstick was thrown about unmercifully as she stoically went up and down the aisle apportioning orange juice in foam-plastic cups, before tottering away again on her patent high-heeled shoes. Dionisio proved to Anica that if you left the juice in the cup for long enough, the plastic would start to dissolve. He thought that she would be delighted by it, but she was thinking about losing him, and she offended him by her indifference. She sat with her chin in her hands wondering how it was that even in a Dakota flying amid the sierra she felt harried by the machinations of evil men.

  It was depressing to go in the coach through the backstreets of Bastanquilla. Everything seemed to reflect her state of mind. It was all dereliction, there was not a spot of new paint anywhere; the decay had gone far beyond the merely picturesque. He looked at her and suddenly felt as though he had come here with a stranger. Her solitary tears had puffed her face, she had withdrawn all her affection and was obviously acting out an imitation of her own habitual jollity. The cord of light that had invisibly connected them seemed to have been broken, and he settled into a prescient depression that was fully congruous to hers. He shot darts of black hatred at the buzzards and vultures atop the houses, because he was reminded everywhere of death.