Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord

by Louis de Bernières

  The letter was so contradictory and confused that Dionisio could make no sense of it, and nor could Anica explain it. But that letter was the nearest that Dionisio ever came to the truth with her. From then on she resigned herself reluctantly to telling outright lies. She told him that she had not been happy with him, that he had been merely an infatuation. She changed the events of their history to forge explanations, and together they steadily and accidentally constructed an unbelievable false mythology. It happened dialectically, because he assumed that it had all been his fault. Casting himself down into a pit wherein he immersed himself in an orgy of self-criticism in the attempt to understand what it was that he had done to drive her away, he would think up reasons of the most arrant implausibility and she would say, ‘No, it was not that.’ But then in a few weeks she would agree that it was because his breath was bad, it was because he was too old, it was because she felt entrapped, it was because she felt guilt about enjoying the sex so much. In the end he had a pile of long letters from her full of reasons that he had suggested himself, that she had at first denied, that she had then clutched at and come up with herself.

  The consequence of this strange process was that slowly his self-esteem crumbled at the foundations below the ground, and his self-confidence melted to water and flowed away down the mountains to soak into the Ilanos and evaporate into the sky.

  But on that evening of Anica’s first letter she did not have the courage to continue her pretence, and at the end of it they were officially together again and she was hoping desperately that it might just be possible to get away with it. They made love with such abandon that his clothes were torn in the battle of undressing, and in the morning she put a note through the shutters: ‘I am in a hurry, so this is just my quick note to tell you my new address and telephone number in the capital. If you like, and even if you do not, I will telephone you at the house of Rosamunda at a reasonable hour. Have you seen my green triangle? I have mislaid it from last night. My love, Anica.’

  He sought it for an hour without success, and then found it in the bed. He went over to her house and put it through the shutters.

  Later that day there was another note from Anica:

  ‘Thank you for the earring. Dio’, I am afraid that I have to change my mind. You cannot know what sorrow it gives me, but it is definitely over for us. I am so sorry. You must understand that I cannot see you again.’

  The strange thing about Dionisio’s reaction to this was that he did not really believe that it was over. He continued to behave as if they were still lovers, thinking happily about her, writing her tender letters full of news and saying how much he looked forward to seeing her again. He bought presents to give to her one day, and felt very happy.

  But all the time he was flinching inwardly because a part of him knew very well that sooner or later he would have to face up to having lost her, and would have to begin to go mad with grief.

  45 Pedro The Hunter

  ON HER FIRST night in the capital, Anica dreamed that Dionisio was dreaming of her, which he was. They had dreamed of a mesa that rose high above a jungle that was populated only by scarlet macaws, by capybaras, and by giant otters. From the heights of the mesa there plummeted waterfalls of spoonbill feathers that fluttered amongst the lianas and turned into hummingbirds and heliconius butterflies. In her dream Anica saw Dionisio naked and alone upon a rock with a staff of judgement in his hand and a crown of gold leaves upon his head. His arms were spread wide and his head was thrown back because he was invoking Viracocha and challenging Him to return. She saw that from head to foot he was covered in gold-dust, and that his lips were red. In his dream Dionisio saw Anica clothed in scales of lapis lazuli, stooping down to run the black soil of the mesa through her fingers, and he saw the plump arm of Pachamama break through the fallen leaves and touch Anica softly on the lips with one finger. Then in both their dreams they looked upon one another and began to walk towards each other with arms outstretched. But with every step forward they receded from each other until each was a tiny speck upon the horizon. And at that point they turned away and walked in opposite directions, so that in a fraction of a second they were face to face and in each other’s arms.

  Anica awoke with a feeling of exhilaration, and before she even drank her tinto she wrote in her journal: ‘I dreamed that D. was El Dorado.’

  Dionisio awoke also with a feeling of exhilaration. He felt mysteriously restored to paradise.

  Anica wrote in her diary: ‘I have been very stupid all this time because it did not occur to me that in the capital it would be impossible that the coca shits could be aware that he was visiting me here. And I have made myself pregnant with his child perhaps for nothing. But I am determined to have this child, and I do not care what my father thinks or what anyone else thinks. I know that D. loves me. This crisis has made it plain to me that he loves more than I suspected. And he is a modern man. He will not make me stay at home and tend babies (I hope) and he is a better cook than I am. I will marry him because I know that he will ask me and because I know that I will always love him and because if that is the case, then why not? And because I want to. Where could we go and live, so that they would never find out?’

  Dionisio went to Jerez’ room because he wanted to know whether Jerez had returned or not from wherever it was he had gone. The three men in the house never kept track of each other’s movements, unlike women who share the same house who always leave each other copious notes even when there is no call for it.

  But Jerez never did return. He had found it tedious waiting for Dionisio to be assassinated, and he had taken the sack of pesos and gone to Antiochia, where he had started a successful business hauling the wrecks of lorries out of rivers and refurbishing them. He took to wearing white suits and Panama hats with a blue band round them, he had the nicotine scraped from his teeth, he gave up marijuana and began to smoke Havanas, which made him even more disconnected, and he married a very young girl in white called Consuelo. Her black hair and cherry lips made of him a happy man, and in his old age he wrote a memoir about Dionisio Vivo that for all its omissions became frequently anthologised. He died having become respectable and wise. His daughters married into the oligarchy, and his sons all attended the Harvard Business School and cited frequently their father’s example of how honesty and hard work could pay off. They paid their annual subscriptions to the Club Hojas and to the Conservative Party, and began to claim descent from the Spanish nobility.

  Dionisio left Jerez’ empty room and returned to his own. Even though he had already inspected the weather through Jerez’ window he went to his own out of habit to see what kind of day it was. Down below a man with a sack over his shoulder and a large pack of dogs waved at him with a brief movement of the hand and beckoned him to come down.

  He went downstairs in a state of puzzlement because he had never seen this man before. He looked like a man from the backwoods, with his sandals made from car tyres, his trousers made of animal skins torn off half-way down the calf, his shirt from which all colour had long ago been washed by frequent beatings in the rivers, his antique Spanish musket held together with wire, and his straw sombrero with jagged edges and circlet of caymans’ teeth.

  When he emerged from the door Dionisio walked forward and held out his hand, but found himself craning his neck to look into the man’s face. He was extraordinarily tall and lean, and had the air of a man who could concentrate for days without sleep and then forget to go to bed afterwards. He was an old man by the standards of his way of life and his origins, but at about fifty-seven years of age he seemed to differ from a thirty-year-old in no other respect than in the metallic blue-grey of his hair. He held out his hand deferentially but without humility, and took Dionisio’s. The latter felt his hand tingle afterwards as though recovering from an ant-bite.

  ‘Don Pedro,’ he said, surprising Dionisio who had no reason to know that in Cochadebajo de los Gatos Pedro was so widely respected that everyone addressed him as ‘Don’
Pedro without a thought. ‘These,’ he said, ‘are my dogs.’ By way of further explanation he added, ‘I am a hunter, but that was mostly in the past.’

  Dionisio looked at the milling animals; they were scruffy little mongrels with bright eyes and waving tails. He reached out a hand to pet them and they licked it as if expecting food. He stood up suddenly. ‘There is something strange about these dogs. What is it?’

  Pedro smiled proudly. ‘They have been bred from a dog of Aurelio whom you have met. These are silent dogs. They never speak like other dogs. They are ideal hunting dogs because of that, Señor, but as I seldom have need to hunt these days, it is more of a curiosity than a practicality. I keep them because a man needs to know who he is.’

  Dionisio’s ears pricked at the name of Aurelio, and he recalled the small old Aymara with the trenzas who had spoken to him in runes and permitted him to play with his cats. ‘Aurelio?’ he said.

  ‘Aurelio has asked me to give you a gift, to remind you of the three dangers, and to say that he will see you before long. He apologises that he is not here and he tells you that he would have come himself.’ He added, ‘I wanted to go for a walk, and so I came in his place.’

  ‘A paseo is usually a little shorter than from here to Cochadebajo de los Gatos,’ observed Dionisio. ‘You must have walked for days.’

  ‘I know how to go quickly without tiring. I was a hunter. I am a hunter.’

  ‘What were the three dangers?’ asked Dionisio, who had been too pleased to come across the tigres to remember exactly what Aurelio had said.

  Pedro put three fingers to his temple and concentrated in order to remember. ‘The first was that you believe that you know everything, and the second danger was that consequently you will not understand anything, and the third danger is that death may come in the wrong place.’

  Dionisio wrongly took the first two dangers to be referring to his own worst fault, which he knew to be his intellectual arrogance. He felt a little angry, as one always does when a criticism is too close. The third danger he took to be the kind of superstitious mysticism that is outgrown in mature civilisations. A little contemptuously he remarked, ‘And you are a brujo as well, I am to presume?’

  With extreme simplicity and sincerity Pedro replied, ‘I know how to become the river god at the time of the fishing fiesta, and I know the secretos for curing illnesses. But for the most part in animals.’

  They looked at each other with the air of fathers who look at their sons knowing patiently that one day they will grow out of their stupid opinions, and then gently Pedro took the sack from his shoulder and laid it carefully on the ground. ‘From Aurelio, who has good reasons for the gift.’

  Aware from the movements that in the sack there was something that was alive, Dionisio bent down, opened the neck of the sack, and peered in. His heart melted, because inside there were two very small jaguar kittens with oversized ears and whiskers. One of them was fast asleep, and the other looked up at him and mewed, but without making a sound. ‘O los gatitos,’ he said, and put in a hand. The kitten reached out a paw and softly let its claws into the skin of his knuckles so that he could not retract his hand without tearing himself. It pulled his hand down and gave it a small nip, licked it, and then let go.

  Dionisio was concerned. ‘I love these cats, but they are too young to take from their mother. With me they will die.’

  ‘These are different cats, Señor. You will be their mother. You will discover that you do not have even to feed them. They eat only for pleasure, and despite that, they still grow. They will be black and very big, as you will know if you have ever been to my city. These are two cats of Cochadebajo de los Gatos.’

  ‘I have heard of these cats, but I do not believe it. If INDERENA hear that I have two of a protected species I will be in big trouble. Aurelio’s gift is a prison sentence and a fine. I cannot keep them.’

  Pedro smiled again. ‘INDERENA are good people, but these are domestic cats of Cochadebajo de los Gatos. They will not know of you, but if they do, they will have no case against you. They are a species that protects itself, as you will come to know.’

  Dionisio lifted the kittens out of the sack and put one upon each shoulder. He felt the warmth of their tight bellies against his bones, and the needle-pricks of their claws as they clung to his shirt for balance. ‘Tell Aurelio that I thank him with a full heart, but that I do not understand why it is that he has given me these cats.’

  ‘He wants people to know who you are, and with these cats, everybody will. And now I am leaving.’ He held out his hand, and once more Dionisio felt that his hand was tingling as if recovering from ant-bites. Hastily he put it into his pocket, and went back into the house with the cats pulling at his hair and biting his ears. Don Pedro called his dogs together and began to walk home. From his window Dionisio watched Don Pedro go, and then he put the kittens down and tried to coax them with goat’s milk. They refused it, and upset the dish. All day he tried them with different foods, and began to fear that they would starve to death, but later on he found that the door of the frigo was open, that there were scraps of silver foil everywhere, and that the cats had eaten all the chocolate that he had been keeping to give to feed Anica’s new appetite. He was still counting on being reunited with her.

  In the meantime Pedro the Hunter had turned mayombero. He never used evil magic except against evil, and even this caused him some uneasiness from time to time. One had to be very powerful to prevent it from turning against oneself; one could end up like that Congo in Asuncion who had called down evil upon his own father, and had been consumed by ulcers and died.

  In his mochila Pedro had a jar which contained the skull-bones of a black dog, the skull-bones of a black cat, sulphur from the volcanic field in the mountains, dust from the grave of a bad priest, salt, a tarantula spider, and guao poison ivy. This powerful bilongo he tossed over the wall of the Hacienda Ecobandoda before he left for Cochadebajo de los Gatos. He was satisfied that El Jerarca would soon be in for all kinds of trouble.

  46 The Womb of Pachamama

  ‘EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED,’ said Velvet Luisa.

  Downstairs in Madame Rosa’s whorehouse it was just getting to the time when everyone begins to vomit all at once, except for the men who are dancing awkwardly with the whores in the attempt to make their erections less obvious. The record player was playing a sentimental bolero from Cuenca, and Rosario was weeping in a corner because the bolero was too much to take on top of all the chicha and the good company.

  Upstairs in Velvet Luisa’s arms, Dionisio Vivo was saying, ‘Yes, everything has changed, and I think that I am going mad.’

  Luisa said, ‘Maybe she had good reasons. It often happens that one never knows the true reason for things for years, and sometimes never. Your problem is that you think that just because she has left, then there must be something wrong with you.’

  ‘There must be,’ he replied, laying his head upon the voluptuous black skin of her shoulder. ‘This always happens to me. I think that everything is perfect and that I have done everything exactly right, and then suddenly the sky falls in on my head and I am left in the dark.’ He looked at the crucifix on the wall and continued, ‘So there is something wrong with me that is so bad that no one has the heart to tell me. Can you tell me what it is, Luisa?’

  She sighed a little impatiently and stroked the hairs of his chest. She made that chirring sound with her teeth and tongue that black people make to express disapproval. ‘Everybody loves you,’ she said, ‘except for you. And that is all the wrong way round.’

  ‘I am just rubbish. I am learning to hate myself, and I know that I am going loco. You know, I wake up in the morning and my pillow is drenched with tears that I cry in my sleep. I dream terrible dreams where I take revenge upon Anica and cut her to pieces, and I rape her and knock out her teeth, and I wake up sweating like a pack-animal and shaking. And then in the morning before my classes come in I stand at the desk in my classroom and I want to cry all
over again. When I come home I go running until I am nearly dead and I drive my car so dangerously that one day I will go over a precipice. What am I supposed to do when I am going mad?’

  Luisa saw the fear in his eyes and said, ‘Listen, Dio’, just come to this whorehouse and talk to me. There is nothing I have never heard.’ She told him confidingly, ‘Most of the men who come here don’t even want to make love. Most of them want to cry and talk. It is OK with me, it is part of the service.’

  Dionisio’s face took on a perplexed expression. ‘I don’t want to make love either,’ he said, ‘but I will pay you anyway. I want to hold you and feel how warm you are. I feel less sick like that.’

  Later on, down in the bar, Dionisio was sprawled across the table with several empty glasses. He had taken enough copas to deaden his loss and bring him to the edge of a stupor.

  Big Simon Esteso came in looking for trouble. Most people referred to him as Crazyface, because he had a staring look and a cut across his face that had left his lips badly aligned.

  Crazyface was dedicated to the cult of his own machismo; he was one of those types who picks upon people bigger than himself and taunts them until they take a swing at him, and he used to boast about winning these fights even when everyone else considered that he had been the loser by a big margin.

  Crazyface knew all about Dionisio and the legends of indestructibility, and he did not even bother to taunt him. ‘I hear you have been calling me an hijo de puta,’ he shouted, picking up a stool.

  With absolute lack of interest his intended victim raised his head from his arms and looked at him groggily through an alcoholic haze. Slurring his words he replied, ‘Why should I say that? Everyone knows it already.’