The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts

by Louis de Bernières

  Figueras continued to stare miserably at his boots, and continued to sweat copiously.

  ‘However,’ continued the Brigadier, ‘against my better judgement I have decided for the time being to give your previous reports the benefit of the doubt. I am not going to investigate them, yet.’ The Brigadier emphasised the ‘yet’. ‘And do you know why?’

  ‘No, Sir.’

  ‘Because, Colonel, I have found another reason for your inactivity during your camping holiday.’ He flicked through the pile of reports and drew one out. ‘This is from the Chief Medical Officer. Are you aware that homosexuality is, in the Armed Forces, cause for instant dishonourable discharge? I see from his report that you and your officers are already suffering from a variety of dishonourable discharges.’

  ‘Homosexuality?’ echoed Figueras.

  ‘Yes, Colonel, homosexuality! And before you protest that medical details are supposed to be confidential, let me read you section sixty-six, subsection five, clause ten, paragraph three of the Manual of Military Regulations, ratified by Parliament under the Armed Forces Act of 1933.’ The Brigadier picked up the book and turned to the page he had dog-eared. ‘The competent military medical authorities are obliged to report to commanding officers all details of a usually confidential nature, when in the opinion of the medical authorities military efficiency and discipline may be adversely affected by failing to report the same.’ The Brigadier put the book down and picked up the medical report. ‘It says here that all the officers of your battalion are suffering from the same two sexually transmitted diseases; one is common gonorrhoea, and the other is syphilis of the strain common around Barranquilla. The simple explanation for this, Colonel, is that you and your officers had congress with each other.’

  ‘Yes, Sir, that’s true,’ said Figueras, who thought that ‘congress’ was a kind of parliament.

  The Brigadier was astounded. ‘Then you admit that your holiday camp was for the purpose of homosexual orgies?’

  ‘Oh no, Sir. We had military councils and briefings every day, Sir. Sir, I didn’t know you could catch the clap by talking to each other.’ Figueras hung his head miserably.

  The Brigadier exploded with exasperation. ‘Colonel Figueras! You fail to understand me! I am saying that you and your officers, and it seems, Major Kandinski, spent your holiday sodomising each other, and that is why you all have the same diseases!’

  Colonel Figueras was shocked and horrified. He lost his fear and shame and cried vehemently, ‘I am not a maricon! Any man who calls me a maricon should not be afraid of death!’

  The Brigadier smiled for the first time at this outburst. ‘Then what, Colonel, is the explanation?’

  ‘Felicidad,’ said Figueras, spitting out the word.

  ‘Felicidad? Colonel, “happiness” does not give you the “clap” as you call it.’

  ‘No Sir, Felicidad was the girl’s name, the little whore! She seduced every one of us and told each one of us we were the only one. We were fooled, Sir.’

  The Brigadier nodded, and put his hands on the desk, leaning forward. ‘It seems, then, Colonel, that you and your companions were the victims of a nymphomaniac with a predilection for officers.’

  The Brigadier returned to the window and watched the soldiers drilling below. Figueras apprehensively watched the back of his head. Without turning round he said, ‘Colonel Figueras, my first instinct was to relegate you to the ranks for gross incompetence. However, I have had to take into account your past honourable record and the scandal to the reputation of the Army if you were court-martialled. So . . .’ the Brigadier turned on his heel and looked Figueras hard in the eye, ‘I am giving you one last chance. You will be passed fit for combat duty in three months, I advise you to take your military duties seriously, and to find yourself in the front-line of the fighting. I am putting all this on your record, and I will not remove it until I am assured that all this bungling was an exceptional case. You are dismissed.’

  Figueras saluted and said, ‘Thank you, Sir.’ He marched out as smartly as his figure would allow, and leaned back against the wall in the corridor.

  Figueras was still mopping his face with his handkerchief when the Brigadier returned to his desk to resume working on an intractable problem. Where was the Military Governor?

  23

  * * *

  THE UNOFFICIAL MONARCHY OF THE CATHOLIC KINGS

  FREEMASONS THROUGHOUT THE world are inclined to say ‘our society is not a secret society, it is a society of secrets’, and when they are not meeting for the purposes of their arcane rituals they raise money for charities and worthy causes. Each Lodge builds up its own distinctive character during the years of its existence, and often it attracts a membership which comes mostly from within one profession.

  There was one Lodge in the capital with links with the Vatican Bank whose members were drawn solely from within the upper echelons of the Armed Forces, and which raised money solely for causes like ‘Catholic Action Against Communist Subversion’ and ‘The Society for the Christianisation of Education’.

  Normally the branches of the military were jealous and possessive of their own prerogatives and regarded each other as rivals for power. The Navy, indeed, had become so worried about being removed from the centre of power that they had transferred their training establishments and headquarters from Puerto Del Inca on the coast to the capital (hundreds of kilometres inland) so that generations of seamen were trained to defend the territorial waters on dry land. The Lodge was the pivot of inter-service co-operation, because Admiral Fleta, General Ramirez, and Air Chief Marshal Sanchis were all members of it, and often after the rituals and initiations they would sit in the plush lounge rooms and discuss the state of the country, and how something must be done.

  The three men were ardent Catholics, strong believers in the Motherland, the Family, and in Law and Order; but all around them they saw atheism and Marxism, divorces, fornicating banner-waving libertarian students, striking workers ruining the economy, and a civilian government that did not dare to take strong action for fear of foreign opinion. It need not be said that all three of them favoured a military junta run on the principle of ‘one third each’ as there had been in Argentina, but they were also realists. It seemed quite possible that if the Democrats won the election in the United States the flow of dollars would cease in the event of a coup. But they also knew that whatever the monetary policies of the government were, the President would always give them all they wanted because he feared a military coup more than anything else in the world. Even so, they decided that the operation code named ‘Los Reyes Catolicos’ should be entirely secret, and that they should be an unofficial junta. First they would have to find loyal officers who would help them do the spadework of digging out the rank weeds of subversion. All of them set up similar systems doing the same things, and it is with regret that we find ourselves concentrating for the purposes of this narrative solely upon the idealistic efforts of the army.

  General Ramirez noticed that one of his ADCs, a handsome and rapidly rising star of the service, was particularly vehement and outspoken about the strategic importance of the Republic both in the inevitable war against the Soviet Union and the more immediate struggle against the atheist Marxists. Ramirez summoned the Capitan to his office, and the young man found himself faced by all three Chiefs of Staff.

  ‘Capitan,’ said the General, ‘am I right in believing that you would be prepared to fight and die, and even to use means which are against your Christian conscience, to preserve the Motherland and the National Way of Life?’

  ‘Yes, Sir,’ replied the Capitan, sensing promotion.

  ‘Good,’ said the General. ‘I suppose you are aware of the dangers we face from The Enemy Within?’

  ‘The Communists, Sir?’

  ‘Yes, Capitan, and all their fellow-travellers who are helping them to bleed the country to death. Capitan, I propose that you and all the men you recruit to work with you should be officially posted
to our strategic observation posts in the Antarctic.’

  The young man’s heart sank into his boots. This was not a promotion to his liking. ‘The Antarctic, Sir?’ he said, and he felt his left leg begin to shake behind the knee.

  ‘But of course we wouldn’t actually send you there. Instead you will go underground in this country. Capitan, you are to recruit and form independent cadres to root out subversives and subversion. The files of the Army Internal Security Service will be opened to you, and you will arrest, detain and question these subversives about what they know. You will be arresting people without warrants, without charges, and without legal process.’ The General raised his hands in a gesture of helplessness and exchanged resigned glances with Admiral Fleta and Air Chief Marshal Sanchis.

  ‘So you can see for yourself, Capitan, how serious the situation has become, and to what desperate means we have been driven.’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  The General continued: ‘Sometimes, Capitan, we in the military (and this is, Capitan, one of the lessons of history) are driven to adopt uncivilised methods in order to ensure that civilisation itself may continue to exist. It is the hardest burden to bear if one is a soldier, a terrible burden, and a terrible responsibility. Do you understand what I am saying, Capitan?’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘What I am telling you, Capitan, is that these enemies of civilisation must be taken out of circulation permanently, for the greater good of all.’

  ‘Permanently, Sir?’ echoed the Capitan.

  ‘Permanently,’ repeated the General. ‘However, we cannot allow under any circumstances the honourable name of the Armed Services to be besmirched by those who seek to undermine our efforts, and indeed, our very existence.’ The General paused for effect. ‘This means that officially your organisation does not exist. If it is exposed we will deny all knowledge of it and will take no responsibility. If you are exposed, Capitan,’ said the General, leaning forward on his elbows, ‘and the evidence is irrefutable, we will try you by court-martial for exceeding your duties and acting without orders, and you will be shot by firing squad.’

  The Capitan said nothing at all, and was contemplating hasty withdrawal when the General broke into his thoughts.

  ‘There will be at your disposal a liberal quantity of funds. You will submit accounts and reports to us which we shall immediately destroy. We will promote you with immediate effect to Colonel, and you will be put on special salary with allowances for hazardous work and unsociable hours. You will operate from the Army School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. We have emptied the officers’ wing, which has many small rooms suitable for temporary accommodation of prisoners, and other suitable facilities such as bathrooms. Is this all clear?’

  ‘Yes, General.’ The Capitan felt as though he were being steamrollered.

  ‘Good,’ said General Ramirez. ‘We have provided for you a small fleet of Ford Falcon motor cars, some painted in the colours of the State Telephone Corporation, and some in the colours of the State Oil Company. They have very spacious boots, Colonel.’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘Very well, Colonel. You will return to this office tomorrow at 11 a.m. precisely, and we will go into practical details. You are dismissed.’

  The new Colonel saluted smartly and marched from the room. Outside the door he removed his cap and went and sat in the lavatories for twenty minutes. Panic rose from his stomach and he seriously considered fleeing to Ecuador. But then he remembered the ‘liberal quantity of funds’ and the promotion, and he thought, ‘I’ll just see how it goes.’

  Inside the room Admiral Fleta asked General Ramirez a question. ‘Do you think you can rely on him?’

  ‘I think so,’ replied the General. ‘To begin with I am having him tailed by the Army Internal Security Service, and if he does not take his duties seriously he will be taken off them.’

  ‘And posted to Antarctica?’ asked Air Chief Marshal Sanchis. The other two laughed.

  The Colonel found it much easier than he had expected. He consulted the files of the Army Internal Security Service and found that there were two categories: ‘C’ for ‘Communistas’ and ‘SV’ for ‘Subversivos varios’. The Colonel was stupefied by the number of files. There were hundreds of thousands of them, and he thought, ‘Everything must be worse than I thought.’

  Being a military man, and therefore a lover of order and system, he decided to start at the beginning of A and simply work his way through. He decided to ignore for the time being everyone who was living outside the capital, and he photocopied the first fifty files and took them home. On his way he bought a very large office diary and a business pack of postcards. He bought a child’s printing set and composed the following standard message:

  Dear . . . . . . . . . .

  Please attend at the Security Wing of the Army School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering on the . . . . . . . . . . day of . . . . . . . . . .. 19 . . . .. at . . . . . . am/pm. Report to reception and wait. This is for the purpose of routine enquiries. If for any reason you cannot attend at the time stated please ring 47867132, so that alternative arrangements can be made.

  The next day he hired a secretary and delegated to her all the responsibility for arranging interviews, sending off the postcards and acting as receptionist. He spent the first week putting his office in order and practising his interview technique with the aid of a mirror and a tape recorder.

  In the second week the subversivos varios began to arrive and wait nervously in the waiting room, wondering what they had done wrong and what the interview was for.

  The Colonel would interview four people in the morning and four in the afternoon, except Friday afternoon when he would write his report to General Ramirez. He felt at the end of two weeks that he was getting nowhere, and he was already bored and frustrated.

  The interviewee would sit fidgeting nervously, and the Colonel would look up from the file at the student, or the housewife, or the social worker, or whoever it was and say, ‘It says here that during the playing of the National Anthem it was observed that you failed to stand up/continued talking/laughed disrespectfully,’ or he would find himself saying, ‘It was observed during a Trade Union Meeting that you laughed derisively at a joke about the Navy.’

  The frightened student/housewife/social worker would make lame/frightened excuses (‘I’d hurt my leg’, ‘the other person asked me a question’, ‘my boyfriend was tickling me’). The Colonel would frown very severely and sigh disapprovingly. The interviewee would become even more nervous, and the Colonel would stand up and walk around the room, and demand to know about subversion and subversives.

  The interviewee would look confused and say, ‘I do not know anything,’ and the Colonel would give them a stern lecture on their patriotic duty. Cowed and unhappy, the victims of his speeches would hurry away, and he would sigh and shake his head and think, ‘What was the point of all that?’

  He grew excessively irritable and began to lose his temper more and more quickly as his interviewees failed to provide him with anything interesting or exciting, but he managed to control himself until one day he interviewed a radical lawyer.

  The man wore round John Lennon glasses, he had greasy long hair, he had spots among his stubble, and the Colonel thought he probably had no muscles at all. The Colonel felt that irrational fear and hatred that most military men have of people whom they suspect are homosexuals. The man put the Colonel’s back up before he even spoke, with his bohemian necktie, his waistcoat from a charity shop, and his sandals.

  The lawyer came in and sat down without being asked, looked at the Colonel with a kind of contemptuous and expectant impertinence, and started to roll a cigarette.

  ‘You may not smoke in here,’ said the Colonel brusquely, ‘I detest it.’ Slowly and casually the radical lawyer put the cigarette to his mouth and lit it. The Colonel snatched it from between his lips and crushed it beneath his boot.

  ‘I hope you realise that I only came ou
t of curiosity,’ said the radical lawyer. ‘There is no law at all which says I had to come.’

  ‘I want to ask you some questions,’ said the Colonel. ‘This is nothing to do with the law. It’s a question of co-operation.’

  ‘And what happens if I don’t “co-operate”?’ asked the lawyer, lounging back in his chair.

  The Colonel did not answer. He picked up the file; it said, ‘The suspect makes a policy of defending in court anti-social elements and subversives.’

  ‘You defend left-wingers?’ asked the Colonel.

  ‘I have the right not to answer questions if my own lawyer is not present. In fact, if I have not been arrested or charged I don’t have to answer any questions anyway – I want to know your name, Colonel.’

  ‘You want to know my name?’ asked the Colonel incredulously. ‘You?’

  ‘My organisation finds the names of militarist pigs and we report their activities to the Human Rights Movement, and the UN of course.’

  The Colonel was stunned. ‘You called me “cochino”?’

  ‘Cochino,’ repeated the lawyer. ‘It is a word that applies to the type of Latino-Nazi of which you are a specimen. Nazi is spelt N–A–Z–I and cochino is spelt C–O–C–H–I–N–O if you want to write the words in your illegal report. I assume you’d like to learn to spell.’

  The rage and frustration of two weeks’ futile effort boiled over in the Colonel. He strode up to the lawyer and grasped him by the unbuttoned lapels of his waistcoat. He hauled him out of the chair and flung him against the wall, so that his head hit it with a crack.

  The lawyer groaned, recollected himself, and then sneered, ‘So force is the only language a pig understands?’

  The Colonel drew back his fist and crushed the man’s nose so that blood streamed down his chin. He wiped it with the back of his hand and said, ‘You prove my point.’

  ‘You have made no points,’ shouted the Colonel. ‘You are a disgusting little queer who thinks he’s important. You have called me a pig and a Nazi! What else would you call me?’