Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord
Page 26
Despairing of interviews I went to sleep amongst the rocks, only to be awakened by the two enormous cats, which had taken it into their heads to treat me as a cushion. I lay beneath their frightful weight for no less than two hours, until Señor Vivo himself called them away without taking it upon himself to apologise to me for allowing them to put me through such an horrendous ordeal.
I most unfortunately missed most of the details of the formidable battle that ensued, because the women spread out in order to ring the estate, and it was impossible for me to be in enough places at the same time to grasp the full mechanism of the struggle. Señor Vivo, however, near whom I stayed, entered the gates of the hacienda in full view of the defenders, who retreated to the house itself as soon as they saw him with the cats and their former master’s grey stallion. He mounted the horse and remained upon it in the driveway in the full firing line of those within, but my guess is that no one dared to fire upon him on account of the myths that have widely spread, to the effect that anyone attempting to harm him would receive his own bullets in return.
In the meantime it seems that while Señor Vivo was perturbing the occupants of the hacienda by his mere presence, and thereby occupying their entire attention, the company of women that had encircled this very large estate clambered over the walls and advanced upon the network of buildings from all sides, announcing their arrival with blood-curdling yells and fusillades of bullets that struck so much of the rendering off the walls of the building that very soon the air was filled not merely with the stench of cordite, but with white cement dust.
The former lackeys of the caudillo, sensing inevitable defeat, emerged from the building with white cloths tied to the ends of their carbines, and made as if to surrender to Señor Vivo, who curtly commanded them to surrender instead to Señora Fulgencia Astiz, who ordered them to strip naked before leaving the grounds of the hacienda. This they did, and they left by the front gates under a hail of stones from the women, with their hands clutched over their nether parts of shame.
Half of the women then commandeered the building, and when I left with Señor Vivo and the other half, they were performing an inventory of its tasteless contents with the intention of selling most of them off for charitable causes, and speculating with each other as to the best way of dividing the building so that they could live there amicably together.
Returning to Ipasueño after nightfall, the reduced band of women then entered the Barrio Jerarca, meeting no resistance. They entered the repulsively opulent church where the deceased Señor Ecobandodo was lying in public view upon a catafalque laden with carnations whose purpose was not merely to honour him in his death but to conquer the already pervasive stench of purulence and putrefaction emanating from the corpse, which was clearly in the early stages of deliquescence and decay.
Señora Astiz pushed aside the attendant priests who were engaged in reciting the Litany for the Dead, and the catafalque was dragged out into the plaza in front of the church. Here Señor Vivo did something of which I have never seen the like since I entered the Army School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineers to document the casualties of the illegal torture chambers of those times. Señor Vivo took out a knife and slit the upper throat of the deceased. He pushed his hand up into the gullet, and pulled the already blackened and swollen tongue out through the cut that he had made. I confess that I could not help but retch at the barbarity of the sight, but I have learned since then that this was the standard form of barbarity employed by the deceased himself in the days of his hegemony in these parts. Señor Vivo performed this act with the utmost coolness, washed his hands in the public fountain, and then left upon the grey horse, accompanied as always by the jaguars.
Feeling too ill to follow him, I stayed and was a witness to the sight of the body of Pablo Ecobandodo being hauled over a lamp-post, where it hung upside down for two days, adorned with buzzards and dropping maggots onto the pavements, until the stench became so appalling that the police were called to take it away. I was informed by the young policeman who was with the band of women that the body was buried by the police beneath the refuse of the municipal rubbish tip. In this extraordinary fashion was the serpent strangled by the latter-day equivalent of the infant Heracles, and the hawk vanquished by the hummingbird.
I continued to attend Señor Vivo’s lectures for another two days, and then one evening I called at his house, and was met at the door by a young man of strikingly good looks, who introduced himself as ‘Juanito’. This gentleman was accompanied by a young woman named ‘Rosalita’, who I recognised as a resident at my ‘hotel’, and with whom he had plainly been disporting himself antecedent to my arrival. He declined to answer questions about his housemate, but was kind enough to show me around the house and to offer me a tinto, which I gratefully accepted. Señor Vivo was in his room with his two intimidating feline companions, and when I entered the room I perceived that he lived in considerable disorder. There was upon the wall a line drawing of the Egyptian goddess Isis, and very numerous photographs of a young mulatta woman who was plainly very tall, of almost Nordic appearance, and of outlandish taste in dress. The rest of the room was largely filled with musical instruments and books. Señor Vivo ignored me, and so I entered another room which was stacked with boxes, apparently containing presents, for they were full of parcels wrapped in green or lilac paper. One of the boxes contained numerous labelled stones, also wrapped in green paper, from which I concluded that Señor Vivo had an interest in geological formations.
Señor Juanito invited me to stay for the night, an opportunity I siezed upon, even though I had eaten nothing that evening, for the reason that I hoped to be able to discover more about Señor Vivo during the night. I was, however, unable to do this, because as soon as I was in my bed I was leapt upon once more by the monstrous and execrable cats, who slept soundly upon my immobilised body, pinning me to the bed in an invariable position. I was unable even to leave the bed to perform the functions of nature, and was rendered sleepless for most of the night by the infernal volume of their relentless purring and the alarming vibration which accompanied it.
I awoke in the morning to find that I was freed of feline encumbrance, and quickly dressed. I cautiously opened the door to the room of Señor Vivo, and perceived that he had already left it. But hearing voices outside, I hurried down the stairs and went out into the garden.
In the garden conversing with Señor Vivo was a small and fairly old Aymara Indian in full traditional dress, wearing trenzas, and accompanied by two cats the equal in size and colour to those of Señor Vivo, whose cats were also present, and engaging in a mock battle with those of the Indian. The two men ignored me, and talked to each other in riddles, enacting at the same time a pantomime that I took to be at my expense.
Señor Vivo said, ‘And here is the beautiful young woman of whom I have heard,’ looking to one side where there was plainly no one at all. The Indian replied, ‘This is my daughter, Parlanchina.’ He then addressed the vacant space, saying, ‘Gwubba, this is Dionisio.’
Señor Vivo went through the motions of shaking the non-existent woman’s hand, and then kissed her upon what would have been her cheek, had she existed. He bent down and patted upon the head an invisible animal, exclaiming, ‘This is indeed a very pretty ocelot. Hola, el gatito, como estas?’
The Aymara then asked, ‘Is all the dross burned away?’ in response to which Señor Vivo replied, ‘It is.’ The Aymara then said, ‘You will come to Cochadebajo de los Gatos. We will have need of you.’
Señor Vivo entered the house, and came back a few minutes later with an envelope which he handed to me without even looking at me. Upon the envelope it said, ‘The Final Coca Letter’, and I put it in my shirt pocket in order to read it later.
The two men, with the grey stallion and the preposterous company of cats, then proceeded to the women’s camp, and Señor Vivo consulted briefly with the women there, saying that he would in a month be prepared to lead those who wished to come to the ci
ty of Cochadebajo de los Gatos.
After this Señor Vivo and the Aymara began to walk across country which included the most intimidatingly precipitous terrain, frequently addressing the invisible woman and her purported ocelot, and I felt further humiliation at being the victim of such a seriously executed thespian pleasantry. After about three kilometres of this unpleasant walk, I found that I was completely incapable of keeping pace with them, even though it appeared to me that they were walking in an extremely leisurely fashion. When they were so far ahead that I reluctantly was obliged to yield up the chase, I was left with no alternative but to return to the town of Ipasueno.
I remained in Ipasueno for a further week in order to contemplate these untoward events and to enjoy its amenities, at the end of which time I encountered in the street a young man whom I knew to be a member of Señor Vivo’s philosophical class. He said to me, ‘I have not seen you in class this week. You have missed all the lectures upon Spinoza. You would have enjoyed them.’
Astonished at this information, and believing that Señor Vivo had been all this time in Cochadebajo de los Gatos, I proceeded to the camps, where Señora Astiz informed me that she had seen him every day, and that I clearly was still nursing the ambition to be hurled down a precipice. Furthermore, I then encountered a group of travellers from Cochadebajo de los Gatos, one of whom, a white man of quite outrageous vulgarity with a protuberant stomach and a large ginger beard, told me that he had indeed seen the grey stallion, the objectionable cats, and Señor Vivo in (to use his words) ‘our magnificent submarine city of unmitigated fornication’.
It is very clear that in all this Señor Vivo must have been perpetrating an elaborate joke at my expense. However I recommend to our readers the serious perusal of Señor Vivo’s final Coca Letter, which seems to me to encapsulate the philosophy of this enigmatic and unfathomable man who has almost singlehandedly swung informed public opinion against the noxious traders in coca, proving once again the truth of Dr Fabio Lozano Simonelli’s famous observation that ‘Journalism is to a large extent responsible for the formation of our National Being.’ Readers will be aware that this is the last word of the man who has singlehandedly extinguished that trade in this region, in which it is fervently to be hoped that henceforth our citizens may live in peace.
Dear Sirs,
Irrespective of the ideology or the social structure under which one lives, it is a fact of common experience that the single force capable of both welding us together and imparting meaning and purpose to our lives, is that bond of natural affection which renders us most truly human, and which forges with its excellently gentle flame the essential conditions of mutual trust.
It is from this that there follows the absolute necessity of exterminating the compadres of the late Pablo Ecobandodo, who, incapable of love themselves, commit sacrileges upon it wherever and in whatever form it may be found.
Dionisio Vivo,
Professor of Secular Philosophy,
Ipasueño.
Epilogue
Fernando, for some reason known to everyone as ‘Dungball’, puffed his cheeks and fanned his face with his sombrero. It was not only that it was stifling in the office and that the slowly revolving fan was blowing the fetid air straight down at him, it was also that he was growing angry and frustrated. He was in the office of the local Department for Agricultural Progress and Reform.
‘Escuchame,’ he said, ‘the price of coffee has fallen thirty per cent, and I don’t even want a grant. I want a loan until the prices go back up again. At the moment it’s not worth carrying on.’
The bureaucrat sighed and said, ‘I have already told you, we have no policy on that, and no budget, so I am very sorry, but it is impossible. If it was coca, you would be eligible for a grant to tear up the shrubs and plant coffee instead. You don’t have any coca, do you?’
Fernando Dungball shook his head, and out of curiosity asked, ‘How much is the grant for that?’
The bureaucrat rifled in his desk for the piece of paper and passed it to him. Fernando perused it, furrowing his brow every time that his eyes fell upon a long word. Then he whistled, and observed, ‘That grant is worth more than I earn from my coffee in a year.’
‘Courtesy of the government, and no doubt of the gringos,’ replied the bureaucrat in a dry tone of voice.
‘Mierda, that means I could tear up my coffee shrubs, plant coca, sell the coca for a good profit, and then apply for a fat grant to tear up the coca, and plant coffee again when the prices go back up, yes?’
The bureaucrat shrugged. ‘I suppose so.’
Fernando Dungball thought about it, considering how rich he would be. But then he thought about his coffee plants that he had nurtured so carefully over the years. Suddenly he became very exasperated and his face grew even more flushed. He turned and went to the door, where he wheeled around, waving the piece of paper and circling a finger against his temple. ‘You are all locos,’ he said.
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Copyright © Louis de Bernières 1991
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First published in Great Britain by
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