The police station was only about five minutes away up the road. The poor old taxi driver got no fare, I fear, and wisely scooted off as soon as I clambered out, assisted by my helping angel. Up the concrete steps we went into the Seventh Precinct police station. It was obvious what we’d come about, as my bleeding head and bloodstained clothes told the whole story. The police station was having a quiet spell and we were shown straight away into an open-air courtyard which acted as a processing hall. The Paraguayan lady with me started to explain what had happened, and two policemen started to get out their handcuffs to put on her. ‘Perdoneme, señores – no, no, no’ – I intervened, and explained that she had saved me, not that she was responsible for my attack. I shook her hand warmly, thanking her in Spanish, and shooed her out of the police station effusively. I was a white middle-aged European who had been attacked, she was a dark-skinned Paraguayan who had not been attacked: it would be all too easy for the police to chuck her in the cells. Wisely, she vanished down the stairs, and I turned to the two policemen and said, ‘I wish to make a denuncia for armed attack and robbery in Calle Iturbe, Asunción, today, ten minutes ago, on me, a foreign journalist and friend of the British Ambassador.’ I said this very calmly and politely, and called them ‘ustedes’ and ‘señores caballeros’. Form, politeness, dignity and graciousness are highly valued in Spanishspeaking countries. As are cojones, machismo and what Hemingway, who knew Spain well, called ‘grace under pressure’. You got nowhere becoming excited, shouting or weeping with Hispanic people – you lost their respect, that was all.
The two policemen indicated to a table and chair in the courtyard garden. Behind the table sat a desk sergeant in uniform. He was in shade, the complainant’s or suspect’s chair was in full sun. Sol y sombra – sun and shade. Not just the bullfight and the bullring, but all Hispanic life can be divided into these two absolutes. One sits in the shade, the other in the sun. Now, it was my turn to sit in the sun, who for virtually all my life had sat in the shade. I stood beside the chair and asked the sergeant very politely if I might sit down, with his permission. He gave it. In front of him sat a large, old-fashioned metal office typewriter, with three sheets of paper, carbon between them, already gripped in the roller. I repeated my desire to make a denuncia. ‘Name?’ said the sergeant, ‘Age? Address? Profession?’ He had taken in my head wound and bloodstained clothes, but said nothing about them. We carried on as if there was nothing amiss. I was still bleeding, though with less force now I was seated. The sun was behind me, hot on my neck and head. I managed to extract my passport from my money belt to supply him with number, date of issue and all the rest of it. I also extracted the British Ambassador’s visiting card. There was a slight pause after the first page had been typed up and new paper was threaded into the machine.
‘This is the personal card of His Excellency the British Ambassador,’ I said in Spanish. ‘He is a personal friend of His Excellency President Macchi. His Excellency the British Ambassador is a good personal friend of mine, and he asked me to present his card to any officer and caballero of the distinguished and honourable Paraguayan police, if the necessity should occur, asking that his office be informed immediately if I needed any assistance.’ I don’t really speak very good Spanish, but at some subconscious level I must have prepared this little speech in advance, for out it trotted with a life and fluency all of its own. The sergeant took the card from my bloodstained hand and looked at it closely. It had its desired effect. He handed it back to me carefully, and said, ‘There’s a cold water tap over there, you can go and wash your face.’ He indicated off to the right of the courtyard with a slight inclination of his head. I put the card down between us on the table: it was still in play, not yet finished – maybe a trump, but maybe just a joker.
This concession of the water tap was a major advance, however. The sergeant had admitted my wound without my ever mentioning it, or asking for any favours concerning it. This showed that I had dignity and cojones, and that my honour as a man was still intact. These are vital matters in Latin countries and I knew it. ‘Muchas gracias, señor,’ I said politely, and in no hurry strolled over to the concrete sink, and risking the water, splashed some over my face and rinsed off my hands. Blood was still coursing down my face – there was nothing I could do to stop it: the wound needed stitches. The newspaper wad had become soaked and I had discarded it. On my way back to the chair in the sun I noticed that against the far wall of the courtyard a man lay sprawled out on a concrete bench, as if in sleep, deep in the shade. I sat down again and we continued the denuncia. A subtle shift had taken place in the interview. The questions were no longer tinged with either aggression or hostility: they were neutral, and that was an advance, too.
We went through what had been stolen. I made light of it. I explained about the sacrificial wallet. There had been 100 dollars in local currency and a few low denomination US dollar bills. The camera would only have been worth perhaps US$150 at the most. It had been an amateur attack. In Colombia, where these things are carried out with professionalism, the muggers take their victims at pistol point to a secluded part of a park and force them to strip off completely, taking away all the clothes and shoes, for they know money and credit cards will be hidden away in them. I didn’t tell this to the sergeant, of course, for reasons of national pride. As in Eastern Europe, in South America comparisons are always invidious.
After the second sheet of paper was completed, the sergeant said to me: ‘You can move your chair into the shade, it will be more comfortable.’ I thanked him, and did so. I was now no longer a suspect or a coño, but a real person. We continued with our question and answer session for perhaps another hour and a half. These things take their time and no one is in a hurry in Paraguay, except escaping muggers. From time to time in these leisurely proceedings I would be instructed to go and wash my face again at the tap, when the dripping or splashing of my blood on the table threatened to get on the sergeant’s paperwork. The sprawled figure on the bench had not moved all this time: I realized after my second journey to the tap that he was, in fact, dead, was resting just where he had been laid down by whoever had brought him in. That would have been me, but for fate, chance and a lucky break. I had avoided death by the narrowest of margins. A gunshot in the centre of town would have attracted the police very quickly, which was why the punk with the gun had not shot me – that and robbing a dead or wounded man is harder than one who co-operates with you. And the punks hired the pistols and ammunition. If they used bullets they had to pay for them. A tap on the noggin cost nothing.
The British Ambassador’s visiting card still sat on the table where I had left it. It was still a pregnant bit of kit, with a neat red thumb and fingerprint indented on it in my blood. The sergeant could still see it, was aware of it. It was a reminder that I was well connected, that it would not be in his interest to just have me thrown in the cells to await events, as could easily have happened. Great detail about the make of camera, age, cost, value, and the denominations of the banknotes was required by the sergeant. This might have been normal: it might also have been that the sergeant did not want me putting in any complaints afterwards that my denuncia had not been taken seriously. While this was going on the patrol cars had been out scouring the streets for pairs of young street punks, one of them in a blue shirt – for such was my description. Pairs of such suspects – always in plentiful supply – were dragged in off the streets and brought before me for possible identification. They all looked exactly the same. ‘He lies like an eyewitness’ is an old Russian saying, and now I understood the truth of this myself. I was the eyewitness and I could never have recognized my attackers. I wasn’t even sure about the blue shirt, though I didn’t tell the cops that. ‘El golpe avisa’ as the Spanish say – the blow lets you know. I was certain that I didn’t want to get involved in any year-long court cases against two-bit street kids whom I couldn’t even identify properly. ‘It’s not them,’ I told the police, time after time, after examining the
suspects closely. They were led away and yet more hauled in. I had a hunch I was getting the deluxe, VIP police service. If I had identified two of the kids I had few doubts that confessions would soon be beaten out of them.
In the end, when we were done, and I had signed everything in triplicate, the sergeant said, ‘What can we do for you now, señor?’ This was the first time I’d been granted the honorific. I picked up the Ambassador’s card and put it away carefully: it had worked its magic. ‘I would be grateful for a lift back to the Gran Hotel, if you have a patrol car going in that direction, please,’ I asked. I didn’t feel up to walking, frankly. The sergeant nodded, and orders were given. I thanked him for his help and courtesy, and made my way in a dignified fashion down the steps again, an embodiment, I surely hoped, of grace under pressure: Papa Hemingway would have been proud of me. When Sigmund Freud was deported from Vienna after the Anschluss by the Nazis the Gestapo were very careful to act ‘correctly’ towards such a famous man. As he was about to leave, they asked him, politely, if he would write them a short testimonial, to prove he had not been mistreated. Wordlessly, he wrote on one of his visiting cards: ‘I can recommend the Gestapo to anyone,’ and signed it ‘Sigmund Freud’. The Gestapo took this at face value, apparently, not understanding Freud’s irony. The Paraguayan police have a poor reputation: however, I have to say, with no irony at all, they treated me with complete fairness and even-handedness. Some might claim that the offer of a glass of water, perhaps the attentions of a nurse or medical orderly, even an aspirin might have gilded the lily somewhat, but I would not be one of them. Without irony, I could certainly recommend Asunción’s Finest to anyone who has been attacked, but I’d advise them to keep their cool and have an Ambassador’s visiting card on hand, just in case.
The squad car outside was a modified pick-up truck. The back was full of fairly hard-looking cases in uniform, armed with an assortment of sawn-off shot guns, automatic rifles and the usual array of low-slung pistols in gunslinger holsters. This was a real death-squad vehicle and no mistake. Room was made for me in the front, squeezed in with three cops. ‘Where to?’ the driver asked. ‘Gran Hotel, off Avenida España,’ I said. The cops had just been told by radio to collect me and drop me off – they didn’t know the details, so I was quizzed on what had happened. ‘Calle Iturbe? That’s outrageous,’ commented the driver. ‘Right in the centre of town in broad daylight.’ One of the other cops asked me where I was from. ‘London, England,’ I said, as they would have heard of these. ‘And can this happen in London?’ asked the driver, with an aggressive tone. ‘Yes, absolutely, it happens there every day, señor,’ I replied calmly, and completely accurately. ‘It can happen to anyone and in any capital city in the world.’ All the cops in the front nodded sagely at this, and were pleased, too. They were evidently glad all this mayhem was not just afflicting them. The lads in the back were curious about whom they had picked up and why. The information was relayed back to them. ‘¡Calle Iturbe … Iturbe!’ they all echoed. It was definitely a cheeky hit, of that they were all in accord.
Our arrival at the Gran Hotel caused a sensation. Ignoring the guard with the machine-gun at the gate, we swept in regardless, billowing up dust and high drama. A small offshoot of the Makká Indian tribe who sold bows and arrows around town had established themselves on the steps leading into the hotel whilst I had been away on my travels. From here they tried in a half-hearted fashion to sell craft artefacts to the hotel guests, and waved these in a desultory fashion at whoever left or arrived: doubtless they paid a percentage of their takings to the management for the privilege. They saw the cop car approaching them now up the drive at a rapid rate, laden with armed and angry-looking uniformed hombres in the back: the Indians jumped up as one with a yell, and vanished into the shrubbery, running as fast as they could. You don’t mess with the Paraguayan police and they knew it. The armed guard at the gate had evidently radioed to the hotel that trouble was approaching. I could see inside through the large glass doors a fearful conclave of desk staff peering out at the death-squad vehicle, but very wisely not coming outside to see why it was here. I clambered out, thanked my driver sincerely and wished the whole patrol a ‘Buenas tardes, señores caballeros’ and gave them a smart salute, standing to attention. They gave me a ‘Buenas tardes a usted también, señor’ and saluted me back. I stood to attention as they drove away down the drive, then walked slowly inside the hotel. It was the least I could do for them.
This was, even for Asunción, a fairly spectacular arrival by any standards. I was ushered inside by the desk staff with cries and whispers of – ‘¡Oh! ¡oh! ¡oh … señor! ¿Qué pasa, señor, qué pasa?’ I explained in brief. More ‘Oh’s from the gathering and an ‘Ah!’ from the senior desk manager, Señor Umberto. ‘¿En Iturbe? – en el interior!’ he gasped. Iturbe is a town a long way away up-country as well as a street in the capital. I disabused him of his error. I was still bleeding, though much less fiercely now, just a trickle, but I knew I still looked a mess.
The general manager and owner, Señor Horst, until now an invisible figure to me, was summoned and appeared. He was all sympathy. I was aware that all around me horrified whispers were going on among the gathered staff, the maids, waiters and cleaners who had assembled to look at me. The Gran Hotel is the Dorchester, Savoy and Ritz of Asunción, the true sanctum sanctorum of rich, establishment Paraguay, all of this rolled into one: and now one of their sacred passengers, a foreigner to boot, had been attacked and robbed, in broad daylight, in the middle of town, on a Sunday morning. Galileo’s deeply unwelcome news about the movement of the heavenly planets had caused no less a stir in Rome than this derangement in the natural order of things did at the Gran Hotel.
Had I been to the police to make my denuncia, Señor Horst now asked me urgently. I told him I had, that all the paperwork had been completed, and that I had to return there in two days to collect a copy of the denuncia, which would have by then been typed up, for my inevitable insurance claim. Señor Horst sighed a visible sigh of relief. ‘I will send one of our best men with you when you go. It’s always best to have a witness. We know people in the Seventh Precinct station.’ Then he added softly, ‘You did absolutely the right thing in going to them first of all. Now what do you need?’ he asked, one hand on my arm in sympathy. ‘A cup of Indian tea,’ I replied, and this was brought forthwith.
‘I would advise against going to any hospital,’ said Señor Horst, for reasons he didn’t need to spell out. ‘We have a qualified nurse here who will look at your head.’ The hotel had its own water wells and electricity generators, also, in case things got bad: in Paraguay you just never knew – there might be another revolution and chaos tomorrow – the wise were prepared. The 20-foot brick walls which completely surrounded the property were not there for decoration or effect.
So, while I sipped my lemon tea, a young female Paraguayan nurse disinfected my scalp wound with alcohol, put in half a dozen stitches with sterilized cotton thread, and sponged off the caked blood from my face and hair, a great deal of which had become matted and had to be cut off. The bleeding stopped: the wound started to sting, and I felt it for the first time. I began to get a headache, which did not leave me for several days. While doing this for me, she deplored the wave of violence washing over the capital. ‘Necesita la mano dura,’ she said – a strong hand is needed – and she cut the air with the side of her free hand to reinforce the point. Oviedo evidently had another firm supporter in her. ‘It never happened when Stroessner was in power,’ she remarked several times. ‘We need the firm hand back again.’ All over Paraguay millions of people were thinking exactly the same.
Nineteen
El Día de la Virgen de la Merced
All over the country there were celebrations to mark the Day of the Virgin of Mercy. In the prisons, priests and even bishops in mitres gave the sacraments to prisoners: 31 convicts were confessed and another 30 baptized, Ultima Hora reported – not exactly a huge religious wave of enthusiasm gi
ven the many Paraguayans in chokey. There were, however, pages of photographs of these religious ceremonies among the pious cons. There were two missing, of course – the little bastards who had robbed and magnassaulted me.
There were complaints, too, from the priests about conditions in some of the schools in the poorest barrios. The children frequently came to classes without having had any breakfast because their parents were so poor: that or many of the dads had drunk the takings of last night’s heist already, so no chipá for the nipper. Once, the teachers said, the state had provided dried crackers – panini – for the starving infants to take the edge off their hunger pangs before they settled down to studying the stupor mundi that had been the Paraguay of López and Madama. Now there was no money for such luxuries, for the state was broke. It was hardly surprising young kids became street robbers: if you are starving you will steal to eat. There was no suggestion by the priests or teachers that the Church should do anything to feed the starving children. In the photos the priests and bishops were all Europeans, white, and plump with good health and wholesome food. Providing for the poor was someone else’s job, not theirs. The Church collected money from the poor, did not dish it out to them. The Virgin of Mercy gave spiritual succour, not nutritional. ‘What must I do to be saved?’ the Centurion asked Jesus. ‘Give all you own to the poor and follow me,’ replied the Master. The Centurion made an excuse and left, as indeed I would have done, and virtually everyone else over the last two millennia has. No text from the Gospels had ever been more ignored by those who over the years have claimed to call themselves Christians. ‘Christianity cannot be said to have failed,’ observed George Bernard Shaw, ‘for it has never even been tried.’ Jesus himself remarked that ‘The poor will always be with you’, a text quoted by conservatives at do-gooders to absolve themselves from any remedial action.
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