Paradise With Serpents

by Robert Carver

  Nine

  Piranha Soup

  I was now planning to head off into the interior. Alejandro Caradoc Evans was full of discouraging and unhelpful information. The gist of this was that if I thought Asunción was bad, just wait until I got outside into the rest of the country. I had met a complete lack of national pride in Paraguay – rather the reverse – everyone I spoke to had a low opinion of both place and people. I found myself in the odd position of actually defending the country to its own inhabitants. Wonderful climate, superb natural beauties, unspoilt landscapes, uncrowded, very affordable, superb birdlife, generally friendly and helpful people – but perhaps this last was stretching it a bit far. There were no smiles on anyone’s face, and no one knew anything at all when you asked them. The boat service to Concepción upriver? The ticket office by the port was generally closed, but when open it proffered two men asleep on the counter in a deserted and ticketless office. I awoke them both, but neither of them knew anything. ‘No se nada, no se nada, no se nada de nada’ might have been the national anthem of Paraguay, I had heard it so often – ‘I know nothing, I know nothing, I know nothing about anything’. It was one principle Paraguayans of all political stripes agreed on, they knew nothing. There was the missing spare parts theory, the shortage of diesel possibility, the sunken vessel scenario; perhaps corrupt elements in the government had sold the boats? Or the pirates had captured them? Or the Brazilians had repossessed them way upriver for outstanding debts. All was possible. But there were no boats, and so no tickets. Soldiers, loafers, drinkers around the port were all willing to discuss these theories with me over draughts of maté, but boats or tickets there were none, whatever reason might in the end be correct.

  Caradoc Evans was going downhill fast. He sat at the bar in the Gran Hotel, the ancient fan churning the sultry air above his head, his clothes ever more rumpled, glass of beer before him and cigarette in his mouth, as if preparing for a Dylan Thomas self-destruct competition. The barman was still letting him chalk up his drinks and cigarettes. He still had no money or passport. ‘Look at this,’ he indicated a newspaper clipping with one hand. ‘You should watch out when you go up-country.’ I read that vampire bats, some infected with rabies, were spreading out of the Amazon region of Brazil into neighbouring Paraguay, due to the cutting down of the rainforest. These bats were biting men, horses, cattle and jaguars while they slept. One fully grown bat could drain more than a pint of blood at a sitting and, if rabid, they infected their victim with incurable madness. ‘And then there are the piranhas in all the rivers. They are here in Asunción even, which is why you see no one swimming,’ Alejandro added, lighting a new cigarette from the butt of the last. On the terrace outside, through the open french windows, another reception was in full swing, with the ladies in long dresses and the men in black ties and dinner jackets. Cocktails and canapés were being served on silver trays by the hotel’s waiters in full-dress uniform, with scarlet cummerbunds, black patent leather pump shoes, snowy white trousers and shirts with black tie. A delicious scent of tropical blossom wafted in through the doors. Faint strains of the hotel band came from beyond the swimming pool, playing a soft chacha. ‘They attack in swarms,’ continued Alejandro remorselessly, signalling the waiter for another beer. ‘They actually jump right out of the water in a feeding frenzy. The cattle abattoirs all along the riverside discharge blood and guts straight into the river and the piranhas thrive as a result. There are million upon million of them. You may have noticed the locals here eat a piranha soup – a short food chain, eh? The fish eat the men and then the men eat the fish. If you dip so much as a finger in any of the rivers you risk having your arm stripped to the bone in seconds – they can leap almost a metre out of the water. Fall in and you’ll be a skeleton in a matter of minutes.’

  With a sinking heart I ordered another beer for myself and tried to look on the bright side. There was the excitement of going into a tropical South American jungle, a wild and untamed nature … ‘And then there is the candirú – you know about that don’t you?’ he asked. I admitted I didn’t. ‘It is a tiny, microscopic fish that is attracted by the urea excreted by larger fish through their gills. It swims in as the gills open, plunges its fangs into the larger fish’s flesh and then sucks the blood – a sort of tiny marine vampire if you like. Then when replete, it withdraws its fangs and swims out through the gills again. The larger fish knows nothing of this. Like the vampire the candirú injects a powerful analgesic when its fangs go in so the victim feels nothing at all, like at the dentists, without even the pinprick. The trouble is that the candirú cannot tell the difference between the urea a fish excretes and that which a man, a horse, a cow or a jaguar excrete when urinating in or very near a river, stream or pool of water. So when an innocent cow, horse or man decides to take a piss while crossing water, the candirú swims up the stream of urine into the penis or the urethra, and lodges itself there, plunging its fangs in and sucking the blood. The only trouble is, it can’t swim out again. So it dies and festers, and the animal – or man – dies too, in excruciating agony, very slowly, of internal gangrene and rot.’

  Without any conscious thought I found my hands had suddenly gripped my groin in a protective spasm. ‘Is there no cure?’ I asked. My voice was unaccountably trembly, I remember thinking. ‘Well, for men, you can have your penis amputated, if it’s caught in time, before the gangrene spreads, but usually you are so far from a hospital that it’s not really practical. Some people try a machete job on a tree stump with a bottle of rum as anaesthetic, but you usually die of shock and blood loss. The easiest way out is a bullet in the head. For women there’s no hope at all.’ Alejandro took a definitive swig of beer with some gusto and stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. I was going into the interior, of course, not him. He picked up a small metal tea strainer from the bar that the waiter used for filtering cocktails which had fruit in them. ‘This is your best bet,’ he advised, placing the strainer in front of himself strategically, like a codpiece. ‘Line this with fine-mesh mosquito netting, and take no chances – piss through it. If the mesh is fine enough the candirú can’t get through.’ I suggested, somewhat faintly, that wouldn’t it just be enough never to piss anywhere near water. ‘Well, in theory, yes. But they are great jumpers, the candirú, they can leap up waterfalls, like salmon. They can leap right out of the water, yards even, on the sniff of a stream of urine. You might think you were miles away from water, but a small rivulet can be hidden a yard or so away, under the shrubbery. You whip your dick out for a quiet piss and the little bastard takes its chance and leaps up. You feel nothing, of course, but you’re a goner. Why risk it? Take a tea strainer, better be safe than sorry.’ I began to think that perhaps I had taken on too much when I had decided to come to Paraguay.

  ‘Have you noticed there are stand-up urinals here in the hotel, on your way to your room?’ Alejandro added. I said that I had. He lowered his voice and continued in a confidential tone. ‘The candirú have got into the municipal water supply of Asunción from broken pipes which lead from the river. The filters are all full of holes. The candirú can swim up into the tanks and reservoirs. Many men, here in the city even, prefer to use a stand-up urinal rather than piss directly into a toilet bowl. A boy had a candirú swim up his urine stream from a toilet bowl in the city only this year – the candirú jumped, you see – he died in agony. They got him to hospital but there was nothing anyone could do. I always piss through a tea strainer lined with mozzy net, or else in a stand-up urinal.’ I suddenly became aware of a prickling, painful sensation in my genitals. ‘Don’t worry,’ he added, seeing my alarm. ‘If you had it you’d know all about it. And then, of course, there’s the amigo del culo – the arse-pal …’ I had had enough of South American wildlife by now. A sympathetic London editor had advised me before I left to make sure I ‘hugged some wildlife’ while I was in Paraguay. She had been thinking of David Attenborough and his zoo quest, and I do not imagine for a moment she had these micro-beasties in mind
.

  ‘I don’t actually want to know about the amigo del culo,’ I managed to get out with as much firmness as I could manage. My right hand, I noticed, had developed a distinct tremor. ‘Well, this little feller is a jumper, too,’ he continued, completely ignoring me. ‘You are walking through the jungle and it jumps up and grips your skin, like so,’ here he mimed a grip with his two hands formed into claws, and made a grimace, baring his teeth. ‘It crawls up your leg and into the crack of your arse, and then right up into your culo, until it lodges itself inside your lower intestine, where it drinks your blood in the usual South American parasitic fashion, and lays its eggs, which eventually hatch out …’

  ‘… and eat their way into your vital organs until you die by inches in screaming agony,’ I interjected. He looked surprised. ‘Oh, you know all about this parasite already then …?’

  ‘I guessed the ending, that’s all. No cure possible of course?’

  ‘That’s right. Cheers.’ He took a swig of beer, raising his glass to my health as he did so. Perhaps, I suddenly thought, I could change my travel arrangements, get a flight out – say tomorrow morning – and go straight to a Greek Island in the Aegean, book into a hotel with a sea view, and write the rest of my Paraguay book from there. No one would ever know. It was a tempting idea. ‘No one in their right fucking mind goes into the interior, unless they have to,’ added Alejandro with vehemence. ‘It’s why the whole country is so empty. Snakes, insects, jaguars, pumas, piranhas, pythons, vampire bats, malaria, dengue, yellow fever – and the food is terrible and there’s never any beer. Apart from that you’ll have a wonderful time, of course.’

  Veronica of Sunny Vacaziones had the same message. She turned up her pert little nose and said, ‘Snakes and insects, Indians and crazy people, I hate the interior, and the Chaco is the worst.’ This might have seemed a poor sales pitch for a Paraguayan travel agency, but Sunny Vacaziones existed to send people out of Paraguay on holidays to exotic, pleasant places. There were posters of Florence and Venice, Rome and Paris, London and Florida on the walls of their office, but none at all of Paraguay. I was like someone wandering into a Thomson Holiday office in Stoke-on-Trent expecting them to help me tour the Black Country. Veronica could book me on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, a beach holiday in Rio, a walking tour of Machu Picchu, a ranch holiday in Arizona, but not a trip to the Chaco, the Jesuit Reducciones or the old colony at Nueva Australia. ‘No tourists come here because it is so horrible,’ she said to me very frankly. ‘I want to go and live in Miami with my sister and her husband – is a paradiso.’

  Getting into the Sunny Vacaziones office was not easy. Although based in the prosperous and relatively calm zone where the Gran Hotel was located, there was a large, electronically operated metal gate behind which an armed guard sat in a white plastic chair, at the top of a stone staircase. He cradled a sub-machine gun in his lap and wore a baseball cap and wrap-around dark glasses, like every other armed guard in the capital. If he liked the look of you when you pressed the buzzer he slipped off the safety catch of his Uzi and pressed his buzzer to open the gate, keeping his weapon trained on you as you climbed up the stone staircase and turned left into the office itself. While examining the posters of Rhodes and San Remo, one was uncomfortably aware that the guard still had his weapon trained on your back through the open door from outside. ‘It is necessary,’ said Veronica sadly, aware of my unease. ‘There have been many robberies. Last year the girl who had my job was raped as well – we had no guard then. Now we have Alfredo.’ Unlike post-war Germany, where all the Adolfs simply vanished into thin air, post-stronato Paraguay still had plenty of Alfies around. Veronica smiled and gave the guard a little wave over my shoulder. She was a pretty girl, well dressed with a nice figure. The poster of Rhodes looked particularly seductive – no piranha, no candirú, no amigo del culo, no vampire bats, no Paraguayans. There were no posters at all of anywhere in el cono sur, as Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina were called, anywhere in the city. I explained to Veronica what I was looking for – a skilled, experienced, intrepid and knowledgeable local guide, trustworthy and honest, dependable and reliable, with whom I could entrust myself in my voyages into el interior. She nodded brightly. ‘This person will not be Paraguayan. I do not think this person is existing, actually, ever in the history of South America. This would be a saint whose blood liquifies every year and to whom the peons light candles. If he was skilled and knowledgeable he would not be in Paraguay, but in el norte, working and earning many dollars. If he was intrepid and experienced he would be a politico or a bandit – or both. The only Paraguayan who would go into el interior would be stupid, ignorant and without any culture, and who you would not want to let into your bathroom. Unless he owned a big estancia, of course and was very rich and had an avionetta to go to Miami for el shopping.’ At this thought she brightened up considerably. ‘Yes, you could stay on a big estancia. This would be quite comfortable with electricity and hot showers. You could ride horses and have an asado – a roast meat feast from the barbecue. This is what foreigners used to do when they came to Paraguay in the time of Don Alfredo.’ She didn’t actually cross herself at this point, or genuflect, but clearly Alfie had another devout fan in Veronica. ‘It would be very, very boring, but you would see el interior, and not become a dying tourist in the process, which would be so sad,’ she concluded happily. I had to agree with the last sentiment.

  In fact, I didn’t disagree with this proposition at all: getting anything at all organized in Paraguay was so difficult that the promise even of a full-costume Boy Scout Jamboree would have excited my interest. I tried another tack. ‘What about a foreigner then?’ I asked. ‘Are there any of these acting as guides to el interior?’ There had been a Mennonite called Paula who had once arranged trips to the Chaco and the jungle, I had heard, but she had moved to Canada. I had visited her erstwhile travel agency, now covered by an elaborate metal grill, behind which sat the ubiquitous Paraguayan security guard who pointed his Colt .45 automatic at my stomach, and repeated the Paraguayan national anthem ‘No se nada, etc’. Many of the Mennonites were reported to be leaving the country. ‘Is very dangerous now, Paraguay. Everybody leaving,’ Veronica chipped in when I mentioned it. ‘I prefer Miami.’ This was evidently an idee fixe with her.

  The Annual Day of the Police had arrived. The newspapers all published reverential supplements praising the – as yet still unpaid – defenders of the whole society. The force, clad in military uniforms of a greenish-khaki hue, peaked military hats, white blancoed ammunition pouches hanging from white straps and belts, rifles at the ready, looked on as the Paraguayan flag was raised over the tomb of the Unknown Policeman Gunned Down By Drug-Crazed Cocaleros, and a pudgy senior officer bent over to light a candle at the shrine of Santa Rosa of Lima, the force’s patron saint. Flowers in brass vases and other small votive gifts stood at his feet. By decree of Monsignor Anibal Mena Parte, the Church’s high dignitary responsible for allocating saints, Asunción’s Finest had been under Santa Rosa’s personal protection for the last 19 years. The force was, in Ultima Hora’s words, ‘una institución que está al servicio de toda la comunidad’, though not, one supposes, at the service of the substantial criminal elements of the community. On the other hand, perhaps it was, that is if there were any parts of Paraguayan society which could be considered completely non-criminal. The police chief himself was currently under indictment for corruption, and there was considerable local speculation into what precisely the police would do if they were not paid their back-wages before the big Oviedista rally-cum-demonstration was staged in a few weeks’ time.

  Taking advantage of the Police’s Saint’s Day was Perfecta SAMI a local gun retailer which had three special offers for its customers, pictured in its advertisement in the supplement. There was the .38 calibre Rexia revolver, available in matt black or silver; the 15 shot semi-automatic rifle Marlin – a direct import from the USA, we were advised – the best-selling rifle in the world; and for the ladies, there
was the C2 automatic pistol, calibre 6.35, designed for the handbag, available in matt black. Customers with e-mail could order directly from perfecta@supernet.com.py.

  The Paraguayan police in dress uniform looked like soldiers from the 1950s, General Franco’s Spanish Foreign Legion, perhaps. The actual army itself was more exotic. In a country where horses cost as little as US$45 each and conscript labour was free, the exuberant, baroque spirit of the country flowered into esoteric cavalry regiments – lancers, uhlans, hussars, sabre-wielding horsemen, all in the appropriate 18th or 19th-century dress uniforms, accoutred with lance and sabretache, carbine and shako, frogging, knee boots, spurs and pennons. If anyone was so foolish as to invade Paraguay, they would be met with cavalry charges which would put the Polish army of 1939 to shame. Was there another country in the world that still had regiments of lancers? Paraguayans assured me that both Argentina and Uruguay still had them, too. Before I left Sunny Vacaziones, Veronica had opened a drawer to give me her card – and of course there had been a perfectly formed lady’s pearl-handled automatic nestling in between a packet of Virginia cigarettes and a pack of tampons – the essential trio for every smart young gal about town in Asunción, surely. There was always the chance that Alfredo might nod off, that the Uzi might jam, or force majeure, in the form of a bazooka-wielder might appear. Or, more prosaically, Veronica probably had to go home by bus, like everyone else.