The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzmán

by Louis de Bernières

  Worst of all, the Obscene Ass was there, with his donkey’s head and his donkey’s member which one minute was so erect that it bounced along the ceiling leaving a trail of glistening fluid, and the next was trailing flaccidly along the floor like some praeternatural gastropod from a cheap horror movie.

  His Eminence left the bed and rushed in a frenzy to the chapel, where he kissed the altar and fell upon his knees whilst the demons cavorted and gibbered even upon the Christus Rex that reigned upon the wall. ‘Munda cor meum,’ he prayed, ‘ac labia mea, omnipotens Deus, Qui labia Isaiae prophetae calculo mundasti ignito . . .’ And they shrieked and turned their backsides to him, farting sulphurously and contemptuously before disappearing amid a chorus of ‘Diabolus tecum, diabolus tecum’.

  After their gales of ribald laughter had faded into the furthest corners of the palace, His Eminence prayed for a very long time and, finally, by way of atonement, promised faithfully with his hand upon the reliquary that he would without fail use his office well to bring the light of the truth of the Church to the entire nation. He would send out the Dominicans to detect errors and defeat them with the aid of the copious logic of Saints Anselm and Aquinas, to evangelise the heathen, to save his own tainted soul by ensuring that before he died a million other souls would have been pointed heavenward with all the foolproof precision of a gringo missile.

  2 Ena And The Mexican Musicologist (1)

  SOMETIMES IGNORANCE CAN be most beneficial; were it not for my ignorance I would have nothing of what I have today, which in fact is considerably more than I ever could have expected, and is also considerably more than I deserve.

  In the first place, nothing of all this could have occurred if I had been a native of this country, rather than what I was, which was an itinerant and not very successful musicologist, specialising in folk-tunes of the Andes, which I used to collect and publish in anthologies. I think that the only people who bought them were probably superannuated Western hippies who formed groups, all dressed in ponchos and sombreros, which played in the student unions of West Coast universities and could not even pronounce a proper Castilian ‘o’ on the ends of words.

  I was travelling in this country looking for charango tunes that used the pentatonic mode, when I passed by a church in Ipasueño, where there was being held the funeral of a policeman. Out of curiosity I went and stood by the door, which is how I first heard the ‘Requiem Angelico’, which is now so famous that there is no need for me to describe it. It was being played by a small group of musicians playing mandolas, quenas, and the harmonium, and even in that form it moved the whole congregation to tears, myself not excepted.

  Assuming that the piece was traditional, I wrote it down immediately in my manuscript notebook with a feeling of the greatest excitement imaginable. As I travelled on through the sierras it fermented continuously in my mind, until one morning I awoke with an arrangement of it for string quartet almost wholly formed in my imagination. I wrote it down in a great hurry before it slipped away, and when I reached the capital I lost no time in posting it to my publisher in Mexico City.

  All the rest is history. The success it enjoyed there caused it to spread into the United States, whence it spread to France and the rest of Europe, where it became the theme of a Rumanian film that won at the Cannes Film Festival, probably only because of the music. The consequence of all this was that I became immensely wealthy because of the royalties, and you can easily imagine my alarm and distress when it transpired that the music was not traditional at all, but had been composed by the famous Dionisio Vivo of Cochadebajo de los Gatos. There was a spectacular panic in the legal department of my publisher, and eventually I travelled all the way to Cochadebajo de los Gatos with the company lawyer in order to sort out any problems before they arose.

  It was an horrifically arduous journey, taking four days through the sierras on muleback, and when we arrived at that extraordinary city populated entirely by eccentrics, it seemed at first that it had been a wasted journey. This was because Sr. Vivo himself had been quite unaware that his melody, and he himself also, were famous all over the world. He seemed to be very surprised, and had nothing more to say upon the subject than that we sould simply divide the proceeds half/half, since although he had composed the tune, I had made the arrangement. When he showed me his own arrangement I was astonished to find that it was in any case remarkably similar to my own, except of course that it was scored for different instruments. My lawyer jumped at the chance to come to so amicable an agreement, and Sr. Vivo even said that he did not mind if it was not retrospective, which meant that I could keep all the royalties that I had thencefar earned.

  Having spent some days in that wonderful city with its proliferation of tame black jaguars, its Inca buildings, and its population who practise the most enlightened and congenial religion I have ever come across, I fell ardently in love with the place and resolved to stay there despite its isolation from the rest of the world.

  I chose a small house on the edge of the city, and dug out the alluvial mud with the help of several cheerful characters who said that they came originally from Chiriguana, a settlement that was destroyed in a flood some years before.

  It was an ideal place for me, because I wanted fresh mountain air, space, privacy, a place where one could palpably feel the presence of ancient gods and the spirits of nature. But also it was a place where, when in the appropriate mood, one could find spectacular revelry and good humour.

  The house was merely an empty shell, but I chose it because it was on the sunny side of the valley, high enough to have a good view over the town, with a sufficient breeze to diminish the occasionally stupefying heat. It took me a good year to make the place inhabitable.

  The first thing that I did was to dig out the well at the side of the house, which had caved in on itself and was full of mud and rocks. I was helped in this by a Frenchman named Antoine, a man of considerable culture who had chosen to live here because he was attached to the people, with whom he had arrived in the original immigration. Like most Frenchmen, he was extremely fond of philosophising about women, and was married to someone called Françoise, who had apparently been cured of a foul cancer by indigenous methods.

  It took us two months to dig out the well and rebuild its walls, and at the bottom I found the skull of a baby, which I assume to have been left there as a sacrifice in times past. I keep this tiny skull on my bookshelf as my own Renaissance-style memento mori, and I frequently speculate as to the nature of the story of its tragedy. There was fortunately still water at the bottom of the well, and I remember that when I remarked to Antoine that it was strange that water should flow beneath the side of a mountain, he observed, ‘I can think of many stranger things.’

  We repaired the walls and roof of the house, and painted the rooms completely white so that they became suddenly clean, bright, and spacious. Antoine and I managed, at some danger to ourselves (I feel in retrospect), to install electricity by connecting up a cable to the faltering system invented by a teacher. This man was Profesor Luis, who had set up a row of windmills to generate power; this was perfectly adequate for lighting, but was somewhat feeble when high amperage was required, so that the electric cooker that I had flown in by helicopter turned out to be of more use as a storage cupboard.

  It often happens when setting up a house that one finds quite suddenly that there is an urgent need for some item overlooked during the last expedition. The track down from my house was a deeply pitted one that served as a watercourse each time that it rained, and although I have stabilised it since, it was to begin with only negotiable on foot or by mule, or by Antoine’s ancient three-wheeled tractor. This tractor had been half-buried in the mud of the flood at Chiriguana, but Sr. Vivo’s father, who is in fact General Hernando Montes Sosa, governor of Cesar, had it dug out and brought in slung under a vast helicopter gun ship, at his son’s request. It is commonly said in this country that General Sosa is the only member of the military hierarchy who ever does any
thing useful.

  There was at the far end of the town a tienda that sold goods brought in by mule-train from Ipasueño, and so every few days I would find myself rattling and bumping my way to it on Antoine’s formidable old tractor. This shop was owned by a middle-aged couple who left the running of it to their daughter, a girl of twenty or so years whose name was Ena, as I discovered by overhearing the father asking of her the price of a bottle of Ron Caña.

  Ena was small and strongly built; usually she wore a plain, faded blue dress, and her feet were always bare. Sometimes I used to think that her head was very slightly too large for her, but she had an appealing and serene face framed by her long black hair. She reminded me forcibly of a Greek girl with whom I had once been in love, for she had the same smooth and soft olive skin, and big brown eyes beneath eyebrows almost heavy enough to meet in the middle. On her forearms were the traces of soft black downy hair, which, to be frank, is something that has always driven me crazy, and her fingers were slim and elegant.

  The best thing about her, however, was her elfin spirit; she had an air of quiet amusement, a semi-concealed puckishness, an innocent devilry, that gave her the aura of having existed from all eternity, and of being able to see the funny side of virtually everything. I perceived that she had a streak of mischief in her, as was to be revealed when I discovered how it was that she had kept me for so long in ignorance.

  I had found in Sr. Vivo an inexhaustible library of Andean tunes, and he had also taught me to play the guitar, pointing out that it was a perfect instrument for arranging on, as it had the capacity for three different voices at once. It was my custom then, as it is still, to spend a part of every evening during and after sunset learning and practising new pieces sitting on the doorstep of my front door. The acoustics of the quiet air of the mountainside were absolutely perfect, and Antoine used to say that I could be heard clearly all over the town. ‘Listen,’ the people would say, ‘the Mexicano is playing again.’ Sometimes I would stop and hear the crickets setting up their own ragged symphonies, and, as I have unnaturally sharp hearing, I could listen also to the conversations of the bats.

  One evening I was playing ‘El Noy de la Mare’, which is a particularly lovely folk-tune from Catalonia. It is quite difficult to play because its variations are very subtle, and I still play it often to remind myself of the gratitude I feel for what it helped to bring about.

  I thought I saw a shadow move in the darkness behind the wall, and then disappear. I was puzzled, but thought no more of it, and began to play the arrangement for guitar of the ‘Requiem Angelico’ that Sr. Vivo and I had made between us. To me it seemed exquisitely tender, and I became wholly lost in it. When I had finished something made me look up, and again I saw a shadow move, except that this time it detached itself from the darkness and then came towards me. The tune had made me think of the earth goddess that they worship around here, Pachamama, and for some reason I momentarily felt an awed panic that it was Pachamama herself that I had evoked. But it was Ena.

  She stood before me, and I saw that her huge brown eyes were brimming with tears. We looked at one another in silence for a few moments and then, with all the natural grace of a little girl, she sat down cross-legged in front of me and said very gravely, ‘That was so beautiful. I have never heard such saudade. Please play it again.’

  ‘I do not play it too well,’ I said. ‘You should hear Sr. Vivo play it.’

  ‘Play it again,’ she said, ‘except for me this time, and not for whoever it was that you were thinking about.’

  I was a little startled at this, and I laughed at her percipience. But as I began to play it I realised that I wanted to play it especially well for her, and that I was trying too hard. I fumbled a few notes and then forced myself to stop thinking, so that I could enter into the music.

  When I had finished she reached forward with a wondering expression and tenderly brushed her hand across the strings. Then she leaned back and sighed very deeply. ‘I wish I could do that,’ she said at last.

  ‘Perhaps one day you will.’

  ‘No, never. For that one needs a lot of sadness. I do not have enough sadness.’ Then she laughed and cut me a sideways glance. ‘Now tell me, who is the one you were thinking of when you were playing before?’

  ‘She lives in Mexico City,’ I confessed, much to my own surprise. ‘She is younger than me, and older than you. Unfortunately she does not love me, and so . . .’ I shrugged, ‘. . . I play sometimes for someone who never hears.’

  ‘You should play only for those who listen, and love only those who love in return. That is what I would do.’

  ‘You are wiser than me, I think.’

  ‘Obviously. Now play me some Spanish ones, real Spanish ones, with duende and gracia.’

  The only variety of flamenco with which I was aquainted was the soleares, the solea, and soledades, because that was all that Sr. Vivo himself had learned when he had once visited Andalucia. One can play these pieces quite slowly, because their theme is the melancholy of solitude. I played four in a row, during which time she sat with her head cocked to one side watching my fingers attentively. At the finish she said, ‘Your hands are like spiders. I think that you should learn the tiple and the charango as well.’ Then she stood up and straightened her one blue dress, saying, ‘I think that I shall return tomorrow. This is a good way to break a paseo.’

  ‘Ena,’ I asked, ‘why is it that sometimes your parents call you “Ena” and sometimes “Lena”? I have often wondered.’

  She laughed lightly. ‘If that puzzles you, I will tell you. It is because when I was very little I could not say “Lena”, so I said “Ena” instead. So now I have both the names at once.’

  ‘A very simple explanation. Be careful how you walk, out on your own,’ I said.

  She glanced at me over her shoulder as she walked away, ‘Do not trouble yourself, this is not Mexico City.’ I watched her vanish into the darkness, turning to wave before she disappeared, and I was left alone with the cicadas.

  3 Of The New Restaurant And The New Priest

  HE ARRIVED ON the day when Dolores the whore was giving Doña Constanza her last lesson in the indispensable art of making chuño. At school Doña Constanza had learned only how to make canapés and vol-au-vents, these being the only skills appropriate to a lady of her oligarchic status, who would be presumed always to have teams of cooks at her beck and call. But now that she had demoted herself to the position of campesino’s lover, exiled forever to this settlement in the sierra, she was ashamed of her idleness and was embarrassed that Gonzago did all the cooking in their household.

  Dolores the whore, on the other hand, had learned to cater for squads of children by different fathers, and had decided to diversify her economic activities. ‘I am certainly forty years old or thereabouts, and all this squeezing and moaning has worn me out,’ she said. ‘And after all this time I deserve a break from constantly dripping. From now on I am a whore only on Friday and Saturday nights.’

  What gave her the idea of opening a restaurant was reading a book which she had bought from Dionisio in return for a bracelet that he intended to give as a present to Leticia Aragon. Dionisio had assured her that it was ‘un libro muy romantico’, and she had bought it in good faith, expecting it to be all about princes and princesses or perhaps a blonde and blue-eyed victim who is gallantly rescued by a Captain of the Dragoons who turns out to be her long-lost cousin, and so they can marry after winning with difficulty the permission of his parents, and do not have to elope after all.

  But it turned out that Dionisio’s conception of a ‘very romantic book’ was a little different from hers. She read it impatiently, chewing the soggy cigar between her teeth, and waiting for the entry of the princess. Being unused to literary effort, she did not know how to recognise which were crucial parts of the story, and found herself most fascinated by the incidental recipes. The book was Doña Flor And Her Two Husbands, and she decided to open her own restaurant, resolving to
call it ‘Doña Flor’s’.

  The enterprise was not without its difficulties. In the first place she was obliged to dig a new building out of the mud, which had by now drained itself very effectively and become adamantine. Her life as a whore had given her a great love of her freedom, but at this time she felt the lack of a helpmeet. ‘Ay, ay,’ she would say, ‘if only there were some man to come and dig,’ and she would mop the sweat from her face with the hem of her skirt before resuming her labours. She greatly regretted that her oldest sons had disappeared to look for diamonds in the jungle, that her two eldest daughters had traipsed away to Valledupar to take up their mother’s profession, and that the remainder of her brood were only old enough to carry away the bricks of spoil and could not help with the digging.

  But one day when she was working she sensed a presence behind her. Her heart leapt, and she turned and beheld Fulgencia Astiz. Dolores suffered from what in learned circles would be called an ‘abnormal surprise reflex’, and she stood paralysed with her arms outstretched and her mouth wide open. Everyone who knew her was used to this, and often the little children would creep up on her, bang a saucepan next to her head just to see her gaping, and then run away screaming with laughter before she could recover. But Fulgencia had never seen this before, and she was puzzled by this extraordinary reaction to her presence; it looked as though Dolores had been frozen in the act of being about to give her a hug, and she stepped back and left quickly.

  But later on Dolores sought Fulgencia out, and, to put it in short, they soon found that they had become friends. Fulgencia had been the leader of Dionisio’s women in Ipasueño; she was a Santandereana, and there was nothing she liked more than to become involved in heroic feats, preferably entailing the risk of death or, failing that, a little bloodshed. She was constructed in the good peasant fashion, with a broad flat face and high cheekbones. She wore her hair in the same manner as Remedios, in a black ponytail, and many a man had at one time or another realised by the force of her blows to the side of his head that she was a strong woman, not to be fooled around with. She fetched ten more women who had been in the camp with her at Ipasueño, and they dug out Doña Flor’s in no time at all, thatched it in two days, and buried a llama foetus in the floor to ensure the fecundity of Dolores’ new business.