The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzmán

by Louis de Bernières

  Mama Julia emerged immediately, however, and launched into such a critique of his sartorial state that he felt bludgeoned into allowing her to sit him in a chair and shore away his prophetic head of hair. ‘Ay, ay!’ she exclaimed. ‘It is disrespectful to Our Lord to look so much like him, and when are you going to settle down with a good plump woman and have children and a decent job? And you should wear a collar to hide those scars because no woman would want a man like that, and make sure she is from a respectable family. And why did you shave off your moustache when it was the one thing that looked distinguished about you? You could almost have passed for an officer, and some women like the tickle of a moustache when they are kissed, as long as it is not full of old food, which is very disgusting. And I do not care if you are famous, I am still your mother and I will have no disrespect, so stop smirking or I shall snip your ear and that will serve you right, and what is this I read in the paper that you have thirty women and squads of little bastards, forgive the word but what other word is there?’

  ‘Exaggerations and lies,’ replied Dionisio. Mama Julia paused in mid-flourish with a sceptical noise in the back of her throat, and then pointedly removed a very large hank of hair to indicate her disapproval. ‘Mama, you are taking too much off, I shall get very cold up there in the mountains with such a radical tonsure.’

  ‘Wear a hat,’ she said, ‘and why did you not tell us that you have written famous music? The first I know of it is when I hear it on the radio and then the Naked Admiral and his wife rush round saying, ‘Did you hear it?’ and wiping the tears from their eyes. Your father is very proud of you, God knows why, but if he has any sense he will never tell you. Stay still, I will not be blamed for making you bleed if you move, God help me with such a son, God knows why I love you, it is no easy thing for a mother these days. I want you to look at an ocelot I have that someone shot in the leg, and tell me what you think, and why is it that a man sees something beautiful and free and then desires to destroy it? Some things I will never understand.’

  At this point General Hernando Montes Sosa came in, said, ‘Ah, Dionisio,’ and walked out again. ‘He wants to talk to you later,’ explained Mama Julia.

  Dionisio still felt unequal to his illustrious father. The General had subverted the whole nation’s expectations of the military by getting his appointment as Governor of Cesar ratified by plebiscite, and then, when he was made Chief of the General Staff, by insisting that all military activity should be subject to civilian political control. On a more personal level, Dionisio remembered vividly an occasion when he was a bumptious adolescent and had implied that his father was past it. The General had raised a contemptuous eyebrow and said, ‘Give me your hand.’

  Dionisio had extended his hand and the General had gripped it, interlocking their fingers. ‘Now the other,’ and he had given his father the other hand. The General had said, ‘The first one on his knees is the loser.’

  Squaring himself up to enjoy the humiliation of his parent, Dionisio had smiled confidently and exerted first pressure. The General’s grip had tightened with excruciating force, and with a gladiatorial expertise his son’s wrists had been bent backwards and he had been ignominiously brought to his knees before his father. The General had let go and marched stiffly away, straightening the waist of his uniform, and Dionisio had slunk off to his room in order to tremble, alone with his well-deserved mortification. Since that day he had been in awe of the General, who always gave him a feeling of being an amateur human being. Possibly he had travelled so wide of his upbringing in order not to have to be compared with him.

  And so it was that he felt a little uncomfortable when, later that evening, he sat outside beneath the bougainvillaea of the reproduction of the Aristotelian peripateticon, and found that his father was actually confiding in him. The General said in his elegant Castilian, ‘I trust, young man, that you have found me to be a good father. I have recently wondered whether in the past I have somewhat disprized you.’

  Dionisio was greatly surprised, and replied tactfully, ‘You merely put me in my place.’

  ‘You mean I humiliated you?’

  ‘The most humiliating thing was that you were beyond emulation, Papa, and that is why perhaps I was so rebellious.’

  ‘What concerned me, Dio’, was that you seemed always to be rebelling against what seemed to me to be upright and good, but since the episode of your campaign against Pablo Ecobandodo and his coca thugs, I have understood that your rebellion was mainly against submission to mores and codes which, in the last analysis, are somewhat trivial.’ He paused for thought, and seemed to be admiring for a span the vast moon that was at that moment surging over the horizon. ‘When it came down to something truly essential, you risked assassination and danger in a manner that was heroic. We feared for you at the same time as we swelled with pride. Now what I want to know is whether you feel that in my life I have been the equal of my son.’

  For some reason tears came to Dionisio’s eyes and he found it hard to speak; he had never seen or heard his father in a mood of this quality before. ‘You seem to be speaking as though your life is over, you seem to be anxious to have a verdict upon it,’ Dionisio replied. ‘I think that you are not coming precisely to the point, Papa.’

  The General stood up and walked to the edge of the paving so that his back was turned. ‘Much of my life has been useless,’ he said. ‘I have been forty years in the Army, mainly doing very little of any consequence. It is only in the last ten years that I have found a role that justifies my salary, and all the rest is a blank that is filled with your mother and my children, and that is why I have asked you whether I have done well in that respect.’

  Dionisio contemplated the question and replied, ‘I have often thought about this, and I have come to the conclusion that everything that I am is owed to you. You were like a gun that fired me a long way off, but the aim was yours. If you are proud of me it is because your aim was true.’

  The General smiled. ‘I could have trusted you to come up with a metaphor that I would have understood. Did you know that a shell when it comes out of the barrel wobbles badly for the first part of its trajectory? And then it settles to a perfect arc? Perhaps your appalling behaviour when you were younger was your way of wobbling.’

  ‘Papa, I still think you are avoiding your real point. What brings this on?’

  General Hernando Montes Sosa said very simply, ‘Since I became Commander-In-Chief the risk of my assassination has multiplied almost to a certainty. I am contending with numerous groups of guerrillas, four coca barons, and the risk of insurrection caused by appalling government that is the direct consequence of the absence of that idiot, Veracruz. There are also elements of the patrician right wing that would dearly love to end our little flowering of democracy. That, my boy, is why my mood has turned to self-examination. I would wish to die having lived meaningfully and well, that is all.’

  Dionisio rose from his wicker chair and went to stand by his father. He put an arm around his shoulder and said sincerely, ‘Papa, when you die your place in the pantheon is assured. Your soldiers love you dangerously well, so that it is indeed lucky that you are not minded to perform a coup. My sisters love you so much that it is a wonder that they ever married. I love you, and even my jaguars desert me when I am here. No man who lives amid so much love has lived for nothing.’

  ‘You do not remember La Violencia, do you? No, you were only a little boy. I am afraid that it is about to happen all over again. Weak government, social chaos, perfect conditions for our proliferation of fanatics. Do you know what the Army did during La Violencia?’

  Dionisio shook his head.

  ‘It always arrived too late. We would go to the scene of an incident and find that the Conservatives or the Liberals had already been and gone, leaving behind them whole villages pillaged. Hundreds of bodies, not even the babies spared, not just killed, but tortured and hacked. It was an orgy of rape and sadism, and it proved to me that my countrymen are deepl
y sick with a morbidity of the heart. There was a bishop whose nickname was ‘The Hammer of the Heretics’ and he publicly encouraged the Conservative Catholics to go out and kill Protestants. And the Liberals, being secularist then as they are now, set out to kill priests and to violate nuns. That is the inferno which I foresee once more, and it makes my spirit bleed. Did you know that once the Inca sent to the Aymaras for their contribution towards the running of the empire, and they sent him their lice? Even before the Spanish it seems that our primary motive was contempt. In this land there is no tradition of toleration.’

  Dionisio looked at his distinguished father abjectly hanging his head with foreboding, and felt his stomach sink. ‘It seems to me that tolerance only ever prospers where people have grown weary of bogus certainties. With respect, that is why I rejected your faith and stopped going to mass.’

  The General laughed ironically and replied, ‘Between you and me, my faith is more of an instinct than a belief, but do not tell Mama Julia. Shall we take a little paseo?’

  Father and son strolled about the grounds, reminiscing about each occasion that had prompted Mama Julia to plant a tree in its commemoration, and the General said, ‘Do you remember Felipe? Anica’s brother in the Portachuelo Guards? He has just become the youngest colonel in the Army. And by the way, I have made the acquaintance of the British Ambassador.’

  ‘O, yes?’

  ‘Yes, and he is very curious to visit Cochadebajo de los Gatos because he wants to see a genuine ancient city. He is a great linguist, you know; he speaks Hindi and four African languages, and so they sent him here where he cannot use any of them. Very British, I understand, to do that. Do you think I could bring him?’

  ‘Of course, Papa,’ Dionisio replied, unmindful of the possible consequences.

  ‘We shall arrive at ten hundred hours on June the sixth,’ announced the General, and Dionisio knew that he would, because his father was the only man in the country who operated not ‘a la hora latina’, but ‘a la hora britànica’.

  34 Cristobal

  HIS EMINENCE LOOKED at the desk in his room and saw that it had become a rotten coffin through whose distorted boards there sprouted verminous cascades of ancient hair that waved like the tentacles of an anemone. There was no doubt that the grey wisps were growing apace and were winding about the furniture. A hank of it curled about his ankle and began to constrict it like a boa. He shouted, pulling his leg away, but the force reduced the casket to dust, and on the floor where his desk had been, there was now a cadaver watching him. The skin was shrunk over the bones like an Indian mummy, the hair was growing with the speed of a stream, and the amber teeth of the mouth smiled at him with contemptuous inanity.

  As sweat poured down his face and a wild panic siezed his heart, a small black snake slithered out of the mouth, flicked like a tongue that removes sauce from the lips at the end of a meal, and withdrew inside with a repulsively slow sinuosity.

  Shielding his eyes with his forearm somehow did not prevent him from seeing that the corpse was watching him. Shrieking at the top of his lungs did not shield him from the accusing curiosity of those bloodshot orbs with their black pinprick pupils.

  There was a dry crack as the jaws unseized themselves and spoke. It was a harsh voice, more of wind and water than of flesh: ‘Look.’

  Cardinal Guzman, shaking in all his body, raised his tearfilled eyes and looked. It seemed that his study had melted away to nothingness, and all the world was smoke. With his right hand clutching his throat and his left groping for something to lean against while he retched against the fumes, he reeled about the room searching for a doorway back to reality. But there was nothing beneath his feet but baked earth and sandy dust, and there was no air to breathe. He tripped over something soft and yielding, fell forward over it, and sprawled. He stood up slowly, staring at his hands that seemed to seep blood, and realised that he had just embraced a young woman who had been hacked and carved with a machete. How pretty was her face! Behind the grime and the caked blood he could see full lips, delicate teeth, and black eyebrows that arched like those of an Arabian beauty. But her throat was slashed and bubbling with her last breaths, and she was holding out a book to him. He took it, and she sank back to die. He looked at the book and knew without examining it that it was a missal, its dark cover embossed with a cross, its pages rimmed with gold leaf. The smoke cleared with a change of breeze, and he was in a ring of brushwood huts, all of them aflame. Somewhere in the distance there were the gleeful shouts of the perpetrators of carnage, and the abject pleas of victims on their knees. He turned to run, but came up against what was the wall, invisible to him in the turbulent ordeal of his nightmare.

  He staggered back, his hand to his forehead, and the Executioner came towards him. He saw the black hood with its glittering slits. His throat shrank at the sight of the colossal Negro whose naked torso was a knot of deep bronze muscle and proud sinew. He groped backwards, his hand once more seeking something to lean against, something with which to defend himself, but the Executioner stepped forward slowly, removing the sackcloth cover of the silver machete. ‘Pay me,’ said the Executioner, extending his left hand, ‘according to the custom.’

  The Cardinal looked down at the pink palm of that huge black hand, and noticed the craftsman’s delicately precise fingers, the fingers of a potter or a carpenter. He looked at the thick gold bracelet on the wrist that bulged with purple veins, and he looked up at the eyes behind the hood. What did the eyes mean? Was there not a message in them? Surely the gaze of eyes was meant to convey some information? But the hood gave away nothing but impassive and final judgement, and the eyes were nothing more accessible than distant stars. ‘Pay me,’ repeated the Executioner.

  ‘I have nothing,’ said the Cardinal, his voice breaking into fragments and cutting his throat like shards of glass.

  ‘Then give me your child,’ said the Executioner, raising the silver blade high above his head, and spreading his legs for the strike.

  Backing away, His Eminence felt the record player behind him, and was inspired in his mortal terror to try the one thing that always worked to drive away his demons. Sobbing with haste and desperation, his hands shaking and perspiring, he opened the lid of the player to fill the world with Beethoven, and there, revolving on the turntable, was the Obscene Ass, leering and gibbering. It cocked its head to look up at him, squawked with jubilation, removed the glistening glans of its penis from its mouth, wove it instantaneously and incomprehensibly into a lariat, and looped it about the Cardinal’s neck.

  His Eminence jerked back, but was drawn forward. His feet slipped beneath him, but still he was pulled, the demon working hand over hand to bring him in like a boat brought to harbour. He felt the soft muscular mass of the penis writhing and gripping, squirming and tightening, and his shrieks drowned in his throat as inexorably he found himself coming face to face with the Obscene Ass. Enveloped and enclosed in the foul breath of sulphur and pitch, his eyes closed tightly and his head turned away as far as could be reached. His Eminence lost the power to struggle. Tears coursed down his face with all the abandonment and desolation of utter defeat.

  ‘Poor ’ickle boy,’ gloated the Ass, ‘kissy, kissy,’ and the repellent creature inserted its tongue deep into the Cardinal’s mouth. He felt that prehensile organ writhe and search in his gullet; he felt it dip and dive, roll lasciviously about his own tongue and cheeks, and felt his mouth engorge with the sticky saliva that tasted of shit and sarsaparilla. Vomit rose from his stomach and added its bitter burning to the nausea that had overwhelmed him. The Obscene Ass pushed him away and greedily swallowed the vomit in heaving gulps.

  He fell back into the strong and patient arms of the Executioner. It was with gladness and sobs of relief that he felt the long silver blade draw slowly across his throat.

  Cristobal came into the room dragging a tattered toy dog on wheels that played the xylophone as it moved. He let go of the string and stooped over the recumbent body of the Cardinal.
He put his lips very close to the man’s ear and said, ‘Boo.’

  Cardinal Guzman stirred, groaned piteously, and tried to rise up from the floor. A string of adhesive saliva seemed to attach him to it, and he tried to wipe it away with the sleeve of his cassock. ‘You’ve been sick,’ observed Cristobal matter-of-factly. ‘Shall I fetch Mama?’

  He looked up at his small son standing there with an expression of innocent concern upon his face, and Cristobal added, ‘Why have you been crying?’

  ‘I had a terrible dream, Cristobal,’ replied the Cardinal, sitting up and wiping his eyes with his fingers. ‘It was the worst dream I ever had.’

  ‘But you weren’t asleep. You hadn’t gone to bed. My worst dream is that Mama leaves me in the market place and I get lost.’

  ‘You poor boy,’ said the Cardinal, stroking Cristobal’s tight mulatto curls. ‘I had my dream when I was awake because I am not very well.’

  ‘Is that why you threw everything around, Papa?’ asked the little boy, sweeping his hand grandly to indicate the broken furniture, the sheaves of strewn paper, and the record player that was lying on its side on the floor with the lid open.

  ‘Promise you won’t tell Mama. I’ll get into big trouble if she finds out about all the mess. Why did you call me “Papa”?’

  Cristobal smiled at his own cleverness. ‘Because I am allowed to call you “Father” and that means the same as “Papa”, doesn’t it?’

  A residual tang of bilious nausea glowed caustically in the Cardinal’s throat, and instinctively he went to open the window. He took a deep breath and was assaulted by the poisonous stench of the river. He recoiled and shook his head.