General Edmilson had at last caught up. ‘Good God, Nandy, that’s bright. Lots of possibilities there. Revenue for the country, revenue for us…. What’s your cut in all this?’
‘Accommodation,’ said Fernando Preciosa succinctly. ‘I want hotels. All hotels come through me.’
‘You got ’em. Er … what do you suppose I could have?’
‘Political power. Kudos. Think about it: as Minister of the Interior it will fall to you to follow up this story and find it genuine. The Minister for Tourism then becomes your appointee. Any developments in tourism which follow from this accrue to you. You’ll be quids in with old Raul and you’ll have complete control over planning further expansion.’
‘That’s marvellous, Nandy…. I – well, I wouldn’t mind a bit of cash, too, if you follow me?’
‘Use your initiative. Go to Tubitan or whatever it’s called and buy the bloody grotto. Get a bit of real estate.’
‘Do we know there’s a grotto?’
‘Of course there’s a grotto; there’s always a grotto. It’ll certainly be one in the eye for the American matrons, won’t it? I mean, if Parazuela’s good enough for the Queen of Heaven to visit it ought to be OK for some fat harridan from Omaha in purple shorts.’
‘That’s a point. Yes, we ought certainly to play that up. Seal of approval, sort of thing. Do you know, Nandy, I think you’re on to a winner. I’ll get someone trustworthy to poke around and get a few hard facts. I only hope it all turns out to be genuine and not some ignorant peasant hoax.’
‘There are no such things as fake Madonnas,’ said General Preciosa wisely. ‘There are only Madonnas.’
‘Yes, but I mean it’s a good job we’re Parazuelans. I can just imagine some jumped-up little Guayadorean dictator inventing the entire thing to make a quick buck.’
‘Can you, Manny? Can you really?’ said General Preciosa, shaking his head as at the perfidy of the less scrupulous.
Inside three days General Edmilson’s spy had reported back to San Sacramento. To the General’s relief the story ‘checked out’, as his informant put it. He had met the children concerned – three little sisters between the ages of seven and twelve – and had convinced himself that whatever may or may not have happened they had not been put up to it by their parents or the local priest. He had interviewed each of them separately and, although they all cried a good deal, they gave identical accounts. There had definitely been a strange sighting the previous week in Tutuban. Local opinion was, however, divided roughly along lay and religious lines. The common folk all believed it fervently, but the Church in Iguaçu province was decidedly sceptical and would need a lot more convincing before they could accept the event as genuinely miraculous. The trend towards radicalism among the younger clergy had evidently forced their superiors to sharpen their wits. The Madonna’s physical appearance was, among some of the older clergy, one sticking-point.
‘She was black, you see,’ said the spy.
‘Black? You can’t have a black Madonna,’ said the General. ‘They’re blondes or brunettes. Everybody knows that. Long blue robes and a sad smile and a sort of haze of light around them. At least, so I’ve always thought.’
‘The children insisted she was black. Apparently there are precedents, sir.’
‘Not’, said the General firmly, ‘in Parazuela.’
‘Also she wore spectacles.’
‘Oh, great. That’s terrific. Everybody else gets the original version but poor old Parazuela draws some damn great buck Madonna in shades.’
‘One or two priests are beginning to think this is a point in her favour,’ the spy explained. ‘They say that if the kids had really invented it all they would have made her conform to the traditional image. To have deliberately made her black and spectacled would have been creative originality way beyond their capabilities. I must say I think it’s quite a convincing point myself.’
‘Well …,’ said the General dubiously. ‘Well … I suppose if that’s the story we’ll have to live with it. What else?’
‘My impression is that, sceptical or not, the Church is going to have to take it seriously. There are already reports of miraculous cures attributed to her.’
‘Are there indeed? That’s good. What sort of cures, I wonder?’
‘Fairly minor stuff so far, I believe. Warts and sprains. But it’s early days yet and, after all, the halt and the lame are probably going to take a long time actually getting to Tutuban. When they do things will become a bit more organised. It only needs one per cent of them able to throw away their sticks and walk home for real pilgrimages to start in earnest.’
‘Bus company,’ murmured the General to himself.
‘I beg your pardon, sir?’
‘Nothing, nothing. I’m sorry, just thinking aloud. Go on.’
‘That’s about it. I’m afraid I don’t know very much about these things so I have no idea what happens next. I don’t imagine the Church will ever come out completely in favour of something like this because they’ve been made to look pretty silly in the past. Some sort of noncommittal tolerance is probably the best we can hope for. On the other hand, certain priests there are seeing it as evidence of renewed spiritual interest on the part of some of their flock and will be happy to use it as a way of reaching those they feel had begun to get out of touch, if you see what I mean?’
‘No,’ said General Edmilson.
‘No,’ admitted the spy, ‘neither do I. I’m simply repeating what an Irish Dominican father told me. Oh, and there was one other odd thing about Our Lady of Tutuban which the children all swore to. She was holding a beautiful casket and as the children watched she gently threw handfuls of greyish dust towards them. She looked very sad and raised her hand to bless them before she disappeared.’
‘There,’ exclaimed the General, ‘that’s more like it. I knew she had to look sad and do some blessing. I’ve never heard of the dust before, though.’
‘It got one of the old priests very excited. Apparently there’s a precedent for that, too, somewhere in Italy in the sixteenth century. It was interpreted then as the dried tears of the Mater Dolorosa. This old fellow thinks it puts the whole thing beyond doubt as there’s no way these illiterate kids or their family could ever have heard that story before. It was officially discredited at the Council of Navarre in 1887 and has been suppressed ever since on the grounds that Our Lady’s tears would have been far too pure to have left a precipitate other than salt. Certainly nothing greyish.’
‘There you see the inexorable march of secular man,’ said the General. ‘The faith of centuries judiciously gives way to high-school chemistry.’
‘You’re probably right, sir,’ the spy agreed. ‘As a matter of fact, there is no high school yet in Tutuban.’
‘There you are, then.’
II
Mexico City,
11 June 1985
Dear Ruthie,
It feels like about a hundred years since waving goodbye to you from a train window in Rio, but my little squeaky calculator tells me it’s only eleven days. I’ve had the weirdest things happen in that time, so it’s all a bit dream-like and I shall wake up soon and find I’m still a Volunteer and you and Ed and I’ll maybe get a little high and drift on down to São Felipe and go on a favela-hunt like we always do Tuesdays. Boy, did we ever find some! I really believe we found places even the city council doesn’t know exist still less Holy Bob Krummmmm!
Well, I haven’t woken up yet and it’s still Mexico City outside and I’m still sitting on the balcony of this place belonging to some Volunteer I’ve never even met because she’s off in Baja or someplace and the Peace Corps Office here gave me the keys! Can you believe? It’s full of her tacky cassettes and books. Small Business Management in the Developing World, yeccch. I fly out tomorrow morning and I’ve got a feeling that Galveston’s going to seem real tame after Brazil, but Life has now got to Begin In Earnest, careers have got to be carved out, a husband lined up and all that shit I think
I’m no longer cut out for. But enough of that and on to the weirds.
Well, you remember I was going to go through Parazuela and drop by Handsome Jack out in the boonies and give him a heart-attack and poor old Poyson? The problems took a day and a half to arrive, which is the time it takes the train from Rio to reach Taquarí on the Parazuelan border after crossing what’s got to be the biggest stretch of unwanted real estate in the world, all cactuses (cacti?) and giant ant-hills. The train stops at the border, and if you want to go on you have to get out and walk a hundred yards and change into another because of course it’s Parazuela and they built their railroad three inches narrower than everyone else in South America. So after a long wait and me putting off going to the john (if only I’d known the john was enough to put you off going: a cupboard with a crusty hole in the floor) we set off and travelled maybe all of a mile before stopping again. In a million years you couldn’t guess why. The answer was tar – you know, like we have on roads back home? – but in Parazuela they’ve got it in damn great lakes and they turn out to be tidal for one month in every fifty years and wouldn’t you know Sage Maclean chooses that one month to hit Parazuela. This tar – and I’m not kidding – had suddenly flooded in great black smoking gloops over the track and was pouring slowly like treacle over the embankment and out across the fields. So everybody got out carrying their luggage and walked! a huge detour right round the fields coughing in the sulphury fumes. I was really pissed off for about a hundred yards and then I started laughing and I just couldn’t stop, specially when this little kid came trotting alongside offering to row us across in an asbestos boat for a dollar fifty. Well, I just collapsed. I never did see the boat incidentally and I expect he made it up except of course we were in Parazuela and you never quite know. Finally we came out on the far side and climbed into three old Greyhound buses hitched together and mounted on railway wheels, and they chugged us along nicely to San Sacramento, the capital.
I was pretty bushed after the journey as you can imagine specially since I’ve left out a lot, for example the Customs at the border going through every one of my bags for about an hour – shook them all out over a table and then examined the luggage itself, I suppose for coke hidden in the handles, etc. They were pretty fazed by poor old Poyson in my jewellery-box. They sniffed him while I deliberately held off saying what it was until one of them stuck in a wet finger and tasted him as I knew they would eventually, they don’t believe a word you say. I explained then it was a pet pooch belonging to a Peace Corps Volunteer working in Parazuela and which had died in exile in Rio but they didn’t believe that, either, and I can’t say I blame them! Anyway I thought I was wonderfully patient, and my whole face was aching from my easygoing co-operative smile. Oh, and they didn’t like my passport photo, either, because they’d shot me in contact lenses before I had that conjunctivitis in Brazil and had to go back to glasses. So one way and another I was feeling pretty much Looney Tunes by the time we reached San S.
Anyway, get to the point, Sage. Next day I found the Peace Corps Office and discovered how to get to Handsome Jack’s and my heart began to fail a bit when I heard it was this two-day trip by bus and river but I reminded myself of how hunky he was and looked at his picture again and sort of felt my resolution coming back. Then off to the airline office to learn if I wanted to get to Caracas I’d have to go at the end of the week in 5 days’ time or wait another week after that. So I booked the earlier flight to keep to my schedule and thought, OK, time enough for one torrid day with Handsome and who knew anyway? he might have some secret way of getting me back to San S. in less than 2 days – you know, wangle me on to an Air Force flight like FAB in Brazil.
I won’t bore you with the journey – it was just like anyone’s used to anywhere in South America: buses with crazed drivers and green-tinted windows crossing endless non-country and stopping in the middle of nowhere for leather steaks and manioc flour or, of course, corn fritters and beans beans beans. The sleepless night with the Latin advances from the seat next to me, the dawn arrival at a riverside quay, the rotting steamer going slowly up-river while avoiding some of the sand-bars. By the time we hit Tutuban it was of course night and the Office was closed and I checked into the usual dump where you just step into the shower and cover yourself in real good smelly lather when the fucking water stops. I was so tired I just sat in the shower and cried, but it made the soapsuds run in my eyes and sting so I had to get out and there was just enough water in the drinking jug to wash the worst off my face. Then the electricity went off, too, and I just thought to hell with the lot of them and lay down on the bed, suds and all, and fell asleep and when I woke it was morning and the suds had dried into a sticky coating which itched like hell. But the water was back on so I got it all off me but it left sort of a rash all over – great, I thought, really looking my best – and I set off in a filthy mood and covered in that freesia lotion of yours – for which bless you because it did stop me scratching in public, more or less.
Well, Handsome Jack’s got this really neat bungalow on the edge of town with hills covered in banana plants behind it, you know quiet compared to Rua Caxias. And I was admiring it at the same time as trying to kick the door down and get my clammy hands on him when this Indian lady appears from a hut nearby and says that Señor Brunner is away for three days at some project he’s got, only it took a bit of time to work out because she obviously wanted to explain in Guaraní or something and Parazuelan Spanish isn’t Brazilian Portuguese and I didn’t want to believe her anyway. I guess I puzzled her, too, because I was wearing the famous Togo toga to be cool (and hide the rash!) and I guess she didn’t realise I was a gringo or whatever they are in Parazuela because gringos have got to be peroxide blondes in Dior safari-suits with paunchy husbands trotting along carrying the home movie camera. They sure as hell can’t be African Queens.
So, dear, dear Ruthie, back to the Hotel Bristol to put on a brave face and drag around Tutuban seeing the sights, which can be done in 5 minutes. Boring Spanish-style church with graven image on the roof, beggars on the steps, people selling religious cards and herbal medicines. Town square with statue of General Santos Velasquez y Something on a horse waving a muzzle-loader in the air, the Don Miguel Baixos Memorial Library (burned out), the local government offices (closed) and the market stretching down to the river which is by far the most interesting thing in town. Lots of indios from up-country selling slabs of compressed leaves (?coca but didn’t risk chewing any, though, they might have been donkey-poultices) also pretty blankets very rough and cheap which were tempting but I couldn’t face humping any more stuff around. I bought some batteries for the radio to see if I could get VOA but luckily I noticed in time they were all fizzy round the ends and took them back and they gave me some more, but you could see they weren’t absolutely delighted. Screw them. So I went back to the hotel again and fell asleep and then woke and thought, right, Sage Maclean, you don’t come all this way to turn round and meekly go away again with your tail between your legs without at least telling Handsome Jack what he’s missed. So I wrote him a letter and was just going off to deliver it when I remembered Poyson still sitting there in my jewellery-box and I got real sad suddenly. I mean he was a great dog even if he never did get much less scruffy than when Jack walked in with him that day in Rio. Do you remember how he came in and stood there holding the dog in his arms and saying, ‘Hi, I’ve just found this little fellow outside about to get all et up by a hound the size of a mule, no kidding, so I’ve rescued him and I guess he’s kinda neat,’ all this in his best laid-back strong silent manner and then without changing his voice, ‘Oh God,’ as he discovered it was pissing all down his shirt. (I think there ought to be a question mark at the end of that sentence but I can’t get worked up enough to put one.) But it was quite witty and unexpected when Jack thought up his name. ‘Nothing soft and cutesie. Anything with pus in one eye which pisses on your shirt has got to be an anti-Snoopy. Poyson; that’s an anagram. And now I’m going off to b
oil him in Drāno.’ And I guess it really was that moment as much as any other I first thought of Jack as handsome, which by golly he was, wasn’t he? (Maybe still is but now I’ll have to wait until the end of his contract to find out.) But we did all have some great times together, didn’t we, Ruthie? And how poor old Poyson howled and howled when the eight months were up and Jack went back to Parazuela and I guess now I’ve seen the place I know it was best he didn’t take him. He’d probably have been turned into pie at the Customs. And anyway the poor animal only spoke Portuguese and English.
I’ve gone off again, haven’t I? But it’s still Mexico City here and I’ve nothing better to do (no offence, it’s actually very therapeutic getting everything down on paper to you of all people). Anyhow, I thought I couldn’t leave Poyson in the care of an unknown Indian lady and I couldn’t explain about cremation, etc., so I reopened my letter to Jack and added a PS to tell him what I was going to do and went off to stuff it under his door, grabbing the radio for company, I guess, but perhaps I did have some crazy idea of sitting on his stoop for a bit, which was as close as I was ever going to get to him, damn him, and a whole lot better than stuck in a hotel room. So back I went and I did sit on the stoop, corny as it was, and found the cassette in the radio was yours! still there from when I was packing my last night in Rio; those Bach cantatas, I’m afraid, and I know it’s about your favourite and I’ve got it right here and I’ll mail it tomorrow with this letter without fail, promise, promise. Anyhow, I put that on not too loud, although there wasn’t anybody else around thinking I was maybe some insane trespasser. But after a while the sun was going down and the mosquitoes came out in clouds and I saw that Jack had screens up on all the windows and doors – obviously a bad place and as it’s Parazuela probably malarial into the bargain. I don’t know if you can stomach the next bit, Ruthie, as it’s to be honest sentimental and I can just hear you laugh scornfully saying ‘Sage, sentimental? Sage Maclean? Ms Spit-in-your-eye herself?’ But I guess it was all to do with Jack not being there after all that and my feeling inadequate when faced with reality after stupidly having looked forward to it too much for my own good. You know? There I was, unannounced and unmet, covered in a rash which still itched like crazy and all I had to give the absent man was his own dead dog when what I wanted to give him was…. Well let’s not go into that.
The View from Mount Dog Page 14