The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts

by Louis de Bernières

  This scene from the vilest imaginings of Satan was almost anticlimaxed by the flechettes of the third gunship. The steel darts whined and whirred among the smouldering bodies and the few corpses that still stirred. They were superfluous as they transfixed and tore apart the blackened remains of the Indians.

  The helicopters passed over once more, and then passed back to land further up the valley. The soldiers pouring out of them fanned out and advanced in V-formation to the commands blown on the captain’s whistle. No one fired on them from the rocks and the trees, and the airborne troops began to relax.

  When they charged upon the village over the last hundred metres they were screaming and firing. But something made them falter in the last steps of their headlong rush. Gingerly they stepped amongst the charred and tortured remains. The loathsome stench of burning flesh mingled with the delicate scent of napalm. In the trees the parrots began to screech against the silence. The men looked at the corpses and saw and smelt a vision of the inferno of hell. One by one they staggered away to double over, to vomit, and when there was no more vomit or saliva, to retch.

  The Capitan saw the bodies of little children, and even recognised the outline in charcoal of one or two women. He went and looked into the huts and found the meagre possessions of Indians, but not the arms of terrorists. Outside he walked numbly among the bodies, his handkerchief over his nose and mouth in a vain attempt to exclude the noisome fumes. He went and sat away from the village, on a rock, and his men wandered like zombies, demented with horror.

  The Lieutenant came and sat next to the Capitan, and, his face contorted and pale, blurted out, ‘Mierda, Capitan, they were cholos. There were children, and women. Even dogs.’

  The Capitan did not reply. He bent forward and was sick between his feet. He buried his face in his hands and began to shake violently, uncontrollably.

  ‘Mierda,’ said the Lieutenant.

  The Capitan began to weep, and the tears flowed out between his fingers.

  21

  * * *

  HOW DONA CONSTANZA FALLS IN LOVE FOR THE FIRST TIME AND LOSES SEVERAL KILOS

  GENERAL FUERTE FELL into a profound melancholy during his captivity, but it was not the loss of his freedom that tormented him. As a military man he had never really known freedom anyway, bound up as he was with regulations and duties. To some extent he was oppressed by boredom, and the time hung heavily with him. He was cloistered in the same hut as Dona Constanza, but even though they had known each other before the events here related, they found that they had little in common, and were not affected by incarceration in the same way.

  What tortured General Fuerte was that he no longer knew what to think. The guerrilleros generally seemed to like him, and they brought him fruit or nuts to eat, and would slap him on the back and say, ‘Don’t worry, Cabron!’ Fuerte also grew to like them, against his will. Father Garcia, particularly, became close to him, and they would pass long hours in earnest conversation, sometimes becoming heated and vehement. Fuerte became infected by Garcia’s glorious vision of the world-to-be. He listened to Garcia lyrically describing his prognostications of an Arcadia where there were no more countries and therefore no possibility of war. Where there was a universal brotherhood of man sharing all things equally and where the means of production was owned by the people and produced what was needed by the many rather than what was wanted for the frivolities of the few. Garcia talked of the theology of liberation, where it was a part of loving one’s neighbour to fight for their freedom.

  Garcia talked also of the injustices suffered by the people, and told the General long horrific stories about cases he knew of brutality, greed and oppression.

  The General flinched inwardly when he heard all these things. He argued strongly with Garcia that all utopias breed misery, that the people who win revolutions are the worst possible people for running countries afterwards, that only a free market is flexible enough to supply the people’s changing needs, that it was a blasphemy and an obscenity to kill in the name of God (‘Your side does,’ replied Garcia), and that there would be no need for repression by the state if it were not for left-wing subversion and terrorism. ‘There would be no need for it,’ replied Garcia, ‘but it would still happen. It always has.’

  Both men appealed to experience, to the lessons of history, to the will of God, to reason, and neither man would give ground. But Fuerte was infected by Garcia’s visions of Eden, and like all infections it prickled and irritated and itched, and the more he scratched it the less it went away. Fuerte was a man philosophically at war with himself, and he became enmeshed and entangled in ifs and buts, in qualifications and exceptions, corollaries, definitions, oughts and shoulds and possibilities and rights and injustices. The two ideologies fought full-scale set-piece battles in his mind, and he drew further and further away from that clarity of vision which he had carried with him all his life. He looked back at that vision with regret and nostalgia, but also thought of it as a time of immaturity. Like all intelligent men who no longer know what to think, he sank into a depression so paralysing that he became estranged from himself.

  Dona Constanza was different. Nothing exciting or interesting had ever happened to her before, and she looked back on her life with a sense of wonder at so much time wasted in ennui and in being annoyed about little details. As a kidnap victim she felt like a protagonist of a wonderful melodrama enacted on a broad stage.

  To begin with she had been very fearful about being raped, or tortured, or starved, or treated like an animal, and she had existed for several days wide-eyed in a state of mortal terror. But she was fed, allowed to wash and to relieve herself, and Remedios and Gloria even called in to ask her if she wanted anything and showed her how to roll and fold pieces of cloth to use as sanitary towels. The guerrilleros turned out to be more conscientious servants than her mulatta maid at the hacienda, but she became inspired by the energy and enthusiasm of her captors and began to look around for something to do for herself.

  She found Fuerte and Garcia very boring, with their interminable political arguments, and so she sat outside the hut beside whoever was supposed to be guarding her. She watched the life of the camp. To begin with she found it very disgusting. The men spat copiously and relieved themselves brazenly in public against the trunks of trees; sometimes they waved their penises at her when they had finished, crossing their eyes and leering obscenely. She would look away disdainfully, but could not help glancing back out of the corner of her eye. People washed themselved naked and unashamed in the river, but eventually she grew embarrassed about being the only one clothed, and the only one dirty and stinking; she stripped her own clothes off and sidled coyly into the water. It was a very pleasant feeling. She found the variety of the men’s bodies quite fascinating; she had never seen so many naked men, only, in fact, ever having seen her hulking husband in the nude before. Against her will she found herself comparing and taxonomising their genitals. There were long thin ones with a heavy glans, like a donkey’s. There were short fat ones which nestled like an acorn in a cup. There were delicately tapered ones. There were ones with drooping foreskins, and some with none at all. Testicles, she decided, were generally alike, except the larger ones tended not to hang so low. She found herself observing their slim muscled bodies, and became aware that some of them contained eyes that surreptitiously observed hers in return.

  To begin with she loathed the coarse conversation of the men, and was horrified when she found that the women among the guerrilleros, whilst disapproving of the men’s conversations, indulged in exactly the same kinds of discourse amongst themselves. She listened to exaggerated tales of prowess, hilarious tales of humiliations, sorrowful tales of betrayal, and was one day amazed to find that she was laughing and smiling. She despised herself for a little while for letting her standards slip, but eventually she forgot to be ashamed.

  The healthy diet, the fresh mountain air, the sight of naked bodies and the ribald conversation all began to inflame Dona Con
stanza’s imagination. Her dreams began to become scenes of entangled limbs and uninhibited bacchanalia. People copulated and cavorted in improbable positions with superhuman gusto; sometimes her imagination’s eye panned across multitudes of heaving bodies, and sometimes it closed in and scrutinised in astonishingly vivid detail the minutiae of sexual delight. She would awake to find herself sweating, tingling, and moist, and lie there intoxicated with the furious ecstasies of lust.

  Dona Constanza began to lose the disfiguring roll of fat that childbirth and idleness had contributed to her body. As she grew more active she became as lissom and lithe as she had been when she was younger, and, as when she was younger, her eye began to rove among the young men around her.

  Dona Constanza lost her fat ultimately because she told Gloria that she was bored with doing nothing. ‘I would like to work,’ she had said, when what she meant was, ‘I want to go out and be with the men.’ Gloria told Remedios, and Remedios consented, warning her that she would be shot instantly the moment she tried to escape.

  ‘Escape?’ said Dona Constanza. ‘Where to? I don’t know the way home, and I am not going to go down into the jungle or up into the mountains on my own! I want to stay here!’

  ‘Do you?’ said Remedios. ‘Are you beginning to believe the same as us?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Constanza.

  Remedios was puzzled, but let her go to work anyway, after she had appointed someone to be personally responsible for guarding her. She cast her mind over all the numbers of the band and made her choice. The chances of Dona Constanza getting exactly the man she desired the most were exceedingly small, but the Gods smiled on her, and she was overjoyed to find herself more or less permanently in the company of Gonzago.

  Dona Constanza had never been so blithe in all her life, not since her children had departed for England to go to public school. She whistled and sang as she worked, she laughed and made jokes, she did her share of the cooking and washing, and she even impressed the guerrillas one morning by proving that she could still do a handspring. They began to refer to her as ‘Pajara’ (songbird), and although she was ten years older than most of them, many of the men among the guerrilleros began to find her desirable.

  Gonzago was twenty-five years old. He was not a tall man but he was slim and quick. When he laughed his white teeth and his one gold tooth would seem to sparkle, and his dark brown eyes would seem to go black. He had the face of a Mexican Romeo, but his hair was straight, black and thick, like an Indian’s. He had an air about him that Dona Constanza found impossible to resist.

  This soon became very clear to Gonzago, even though Dona Constanza tried and failed not to be too obvious. If he had a mark on his face Dona Constanza would flirtatiously remove it with her finger. If he cut himself she would fuss about him, tending the wound as though it were mortal, and if he was very hot she would wipe his forehead as she had done upon his return without the ransom money. Dona Constanza began to leave her shirt buttons undone so that Gonzago would get tantalising glimpses of her plump little breasts, and indeed he sometimes found it difficult to look into her eyes when talking to her, because his eyes always seemed to be drawn downwards. When the zip in her shorts sprang irreparably apart she just carried on wearing them. The other guerrilleros began to wink at him and make lewd gestures with their fingers as he passed by at Dona Constanza’s side, and they asked him questions like ‘When will the little pajara lay eggs?’ One day Gonzago had even caught Remedios smiling at him knowingly, and he had smiled sheepishly back.

  Gonzago was pleased about this, and Dona Constanza pleased him also. It was quite something for him to be thought to be having an affair with a Great Lady of the Oligarchy, and he also enjoyed her company. She was very merry and feminine, yet she worked harder than a man and was also very seductive. Gonzago found himself making love to her in his dreams in his hut, while she dreamed of making love to him in hers.

  They particularly liked to go off foraging together, because then there was no one else about. They would go off in search of guavas, papaya, lemons, yucca roots, mangoes and avocados, working together, but always feeling that spark of desire darting between them. She would look at him and his heart would race, he would look at her and she would tingle in her nipples; she would laugh and his penis would jump, so that he had to turn away to hide the bulge in his trousers; he would laugh and a churning lust would stir in her womb.

  But Gonzago was very shy. He did not know how to bring it all to a head. What does one do with a Great Lady of the Oligarchy? And the longer they waited, the more their desire mushroomed into a mighty roaring inferno waiting to blast away the doors of the furnace.

  It was Dona Constanza who found a way. One day at siesta time they were driven by the sun to find the shade of a great tree. They sat side by side with their backs against the trunk, taking great swigs of water from their canteens, and eating mangoes. Both of them were very soon dripping with sticky juice, and laughing about the mess. Wantonly, while looking into his eyes, Dona Constanza lasciviously licked her fingers, and his mischievous penis sprang rather self-evidently into life. Dona Constanza looked at the growing hillock whilst pretending not to. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘I will have to take a little sleep. May I use your shoulder as a pillow?’

  ‘By all means,’ said Gonzago.

  She laid her head on his shoulder and pretended to sleep. Gonzago furtively opened her shirt a little to see her breast. Dona Constanza moved her right leg over her left, and turned over, at the same time sliding down a little so that now her right leg was a little over his, and her head was nuzzling into his neck. Gonzago had to move because his tightening penis was painfully caught up in his underwear and was crying to be released. Dona Constanza moved her right hand innocently to a more comfortable position, which was, miraculously, inside his shirt over his left breast. Dona Constanza felt the nipple harden. Gonzago now not only had a penis weeping for liberation, but he also had pins and needles in his right arm where Dona Constanza was lying on it. He eased it from beneath her, exercised the fingers to bring back the blood, and began to tickle her neck and the lobe of her right ear. Dona Constanza breathed hotly on his neck, and licked it under the pretence of moistening her lips. At the same time she very gently began to stroke his chest with her right hand, teasing the hairs with her fingers. Her hand began to wander further afield, and lightly brushed over his belly. His penis was now in a torment of imprisonment, and he caressed her ear and neck with furiously renewed subtlety. The sleeping Constanza moved her hand very deliberately and dropped it disingenuously on to his trousers.

  As her grip tightened on his penis he let out a cry and as if by a signal pre-arranged they threw themselves upon each other with a fury unprecedented in the history of concupiscence. Gonzago thrust her breast into his mouth and ravished it with his tongue. Constanza, with one movement of her hand, sent the buttons of his trousers spinning away across the leaves and greedily gathered in her trembling fingers the tender fruit of her dreams. Gonzago gasped and knelt upright and astride her, kneading her breasts as she took his aching and ever-expanding penis in one hand and stroked his testicles with the other. Brutally Dona Constanza threw Gonzago over and pinned him down with her body. She kissed him furiously about the mouth and neck, her wet tongue darting and her lips throbbing. She began to rub her crotch on his thigh, and like the gentlemen he was Gonzago raised his knee a little to make it easier. Dona Constanza squealed wild little cries as she pivoted at the hips. Gonzago thrust his hand down her shorts and folded his fingers round her vulva, which was now pouring with such juice as to put any mango to shame. Her volley of squeals grew to new crescendos and she masturbated herself against his fingers with such rapidity that her squeals became one long squeal and she trembled and shook as though in a fit. Wild-eyed and dishevelled she sprang to her feet and threw herself upon Gonzago’s trousers. Grasping them at the waistband, she hauled with such force that Gonzago was dragged a full metre across the forest floor before Dona Constanza
triumphantly threw them aside and danced upon one leg and then the other to rid herself of her own shorts. Still wearing her unbuttoned shirt she bestrode Gonzago, and uttering a joyful yell she wiggled into position and plunged him into her as deep as it was possible to go. Both of them exploded simultaneously, and Gonzago and Constanza shouted and bellowed and thrust and gyrated until suddenly Constanza collapsed forward onto his chest. She let out a long moan of ecstasy and slid off him sideways, painfully bending his penis at the root.

  Gonzago was ashamed. ‘I did not mean to come so soon. I could not help it. No one has touched me for a long time.’

  ‘It does not matter . . . it does not matter . . . it does not matter . . .’ said Constanza, trying to catch enough breath to finish her sentence, ‘I have already come three times.’

  They fell asleep in the shade of the tree. Dona Constanza with her head on his stomach and her hand grasping protectively those parts she had coveted for so long.

  She awoke before he did. She opened her eyes to see that the one-eyed pink gentleman was looking back at her. Drowsily she began to play with it. She caressed it lightly and it stirred a little. She slipped her hand round it and cupped his testicles, and the penis stirred a little more. Caught up in this novel form of experimentation, she tickled the hairs of his perineum. The penis began to lengthen and straighten. She moved her right hand to cup his testicles, and she manoeuvred her left to massage his penis up and down. She touched the tip of it and it sprang as if in response to electric shock, so she tried it once or twice again. The penis was now hard and strong and the glistening end of it was right against the tip of her nose. She looked to check that he was still asleep and could not resist the temptation to try something she had only heard whispers about at school. Tentatively she flicked her tongue across the tip of it. It was not too bad: ‘It tastes of me,’ she thought. She flattened her tongue and rolled it around the end of the penis as though she was savouring a lollipop. She found the texture had a vulnerable quality about it. She licked it all the way up the shaft, first on one side, then on the other, and then up the middle. She looked up to check he was still sleeping and nestled between his legs to lick his testicles, tickling right behind them with the tip of her tongue. When she uncrossed her eyes she could see that the penis was visibly pulsing with his heartbeat. Against all her previous expectations and prejudices she realised that she was having a marvellous time. With one hand she caressed him, and she knelt over and took his penis fully in her mouth. At first she tried to see how deep it would go without choking her, and then she rolled her tongue deliciously around it as she moved her head up and down.