The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman (16 page)

Agustin and Dionisio went to Madame Rosa’s whorehouse to take a couple of drinks and reminisce about the old times when bodies kept appearing in Dionisio’s garden when Ramón was still alive, when Anica was still alive. Then Dionisio went up to the cemetery and sat for a while by Ramón’s grave, talking to him as though he were there. He placed one of the white flowers upon it and then went to visit Anica. He saw that the glass across the smiling photograph
was cracked. He kissed the end of his fingers and touched them to the image. He placed two white flowers there, and then returned to Madame Rosa’s to see Velvet Luisa, because he needed someone to embrace and to understand his emptiness.

DR GALICO WAS
the father of the nation; his influence could everywhere still be felt, the presence of his ghost was palpable and pervasive. He alone had gone against the grain at the time when the leaders of the newly independent states were trying to outdo each other in the Europeanisation of themselves and their lands. It is commonly said that the Latin American is more European than a Spaniard, because a Spaniard is a Spaniard before he is a European. And the same goes for a Frenchman, who is French before anything else, and the same goes for all the other peoples of Europe. Latin Americans see Europe from the outside, as a whole, and so they are able to be true members of that continent without even visiting it.

But not Dr Galico, the foremost indigenist of his time. He encouraged the learning of Indian languages, and permitted no foreign trade of any kind, his aim being self-sufficiency and the avoidance of foreign economic domination. During his entire dictatorship of thirty-one years, three months and twelve days, not a single citizen left the country and only four foreigners came in, on condition that they never tried to leave. A botanist who tried to escape was hung from a tree in front of the palace and shot at until he fell to pieces small enough to be consumed by vultures without the necessity of further rending the remains.

No historian has ever been quite sure as to whether or not Dr Galico was an enlightened benefactor or a criminal lunatic, but this was never an obstacle to his posthumous elevation to national hero. Most national heroes of all countries have been criminal lunatics. He had the distinction of having beaten General Belgrano in battle, at dominoes, and at arm-wrestling, and had banned the study of the philosophy of William of Ockham on the grounds that there is no reason why there should not be limitless unnecessary multiplication of entities.

It so happened that Dr Galico had taken an Indian mistress as
consolation for the religiously inspired reluctance of his wife, who would only co-operate on his saint’s day. This Indian woman soon picked up as many airs and graces as a woman in her position does, and effectively became first lady of the nation. Dr Galico’s impulsive use of his absolute power saw to it that even the cream of society swallowed their scruples and treated her with supreme respect and deference, not daring to refuse her invitations to come and bathe naked in the river before watching a corrida involving so many bulls that the streets flowed with blood for two days afterwards, permanently changing their colour in the process.

When Dr Galico died and had been safely interred in a soldier’s coffin, society turned against Prepucia (so nicknamed on account of her preferred shape of hat) and she was forced to flee in ignominy across the frontiers. She found her way to Paris on board a ship in which the sailors exacted a cruel fee for her passage, and died there a pauper’s death. Her bones were to be found in the cemetery at St Sulpice, and it was this fact that supplied His Excellency with an inspiration on that afternoon after the Conservatives had pipped him to the post in the anti-gringo stakes and he had been furious for three days. He too could play the patriotic card.

The very first thing that he did was to announce that he intended to change the refereeing decision in the World Cup, that had seen the national team knocked out in the second round. The Hungarian referee had spotted a handball designed to deflect a goalbound shot, and had awarded a penalty which duly landed in the net. Everyone in the entire world had witnessed the blatant attempt at cheating on their televisions; that is everyone except the loyal citizens of this country. A mood of aggrieved outrage swept across the land, girls wept, soldiers committed suicide, and stones hailed through the windows of the Hungarian Embassy. It was on this tide of bad feeling that President Veracruz surfed to his first patriotic
coup de maître
, by announcing that he personally was going to organise a mass petitioning of FIFA in order to have the decision reversed. Accordingly his party workers scoured the country from the depths of the jungle to the tips of the sierra, collecting signatures and marks, and in party offices until late at night the faithful forged further inventive signatures which upon close scrutiny would have revealed that many citizens were called Ronald Reagan, Princess Diana, Nikita Khrushchev,
Luciano Pavarotti, Donald Duck, Chairman Mao and Bugs Bunny, living at such addresses as Bishop’s Pussy, South Fork, Tiananmen Square, and the Sydney Opera House.

Conservatives defected in droves to the Liberal Party when the cubic metre of signatures was delivered to the Headquarters of FIFA by the Ambassador to the United Nations. Demonstrators took to the streets of the capital to shout ‘Viva Veracruz’ and to wave placards depicting him in the classic pose of the statues of Dr Galico, with one hand behind his back and the other clenched upraised in defiance of the world. His Excellency arranged for a debate very late at night in the National Assembly to discuss foreign policy with respect to Andorra, and sent out letters to every Liberal representative ordering them to be there without fail. As anticipated, no Conservatives arrived at all, and an emergency motion was passed unanimously, awarding His Excellency the title of ‘The National Personification’ for his championing of the nation’s footballing honour.

The next thing that he did was to announce that henceforth his wife would be banished from the palace in working hours. On the television news he was seen explaining to the political correspondent that his love for his wife was so great that he found that her presence in the palace comprised a major temptation to be distracted from the business of state, and Madame Veracruz was seen explaining that, much as it grieved her to be parted from her spouse for even one minute of the day, she was consenting to the arrangement in the interest of good government. Naturally she continued to live in the palace, sit on her husband’s knee feeding him with Turkish delight in exchange for favours for her friends, and draw him away at odd hours in order to experiment in sexual alchemy; but His Excellency had succeeded nonetheless in playing simultaneously the statesman card and that of the happy family man.

His Excellency was wondering what ploy he could implement next before he worked his masterstroke, when the Foreign Secretary arrived, excited and out of breath. ‘Your Excellency,’ he exclaimed upon bursting into the Presidential office, ‘I have received a communication . . .’

‘From the Archangel Gabriel, Garcilaso?’ His Excellency put down the book he was reading about the sexual magic of the Order of
Oriental Templars. He was on the section concerning the homosexual practises of the secret degree, and his eyebrows had practically reached the back of his head.

‘How did you know?’ asked Lopez Garcilaso Vallejo, setting down his massively muscular bulk in the revolving chair normally occupied by the secretary.

His Excellency sighed with resignation. ‘It has an inevitability about it. What is it this time, another message about nationalising the abattoirs? Really I cannot see the purpose of it. How is your dear wife and your pretty little French mistress, eh?’

‘They are both well and at each other’s throats as usual, boss, it was a mistake to put them both in the same house. Listen, the Archangel came to me, and do you know what he said? He said, “Everyone loves a stud.”’

‘“Everyone loves a stud?’” repeated his Excellency.

‘Yes, boss, he said just that, and then I realised; it’s God’s own truth. If we let it be known that you’re a stud, even at your age, everyone will vote for you, no horseshit.’

President Veracruz bridled. ‘And what’s this “even at my age” got to do with it? I can assure you that all is in order.’

‘Proves my point, boss. You are a stud, and we should make capital out of it. We can put up posters “Vote for the Stud”, it’s a winner for sure.’

His Excellency leaned back in his chair. ‘Garcilaso, it’s brilliant, but perhaps we could go for something a little more subtle, no? And please do not call me boss; how many times do I have to ask?’

And so it was that ‘Eva Perón’ rang up the director of television news and current affairs, proposing a little deal. There was at that time a bill before the National Assembly called the ‘Elimination Of Bias In The Media Bill’, which His Excellency had dreamed up because he was convinced that all the media were either unreconstructed Communists or arrant Conservatives. He felt positively persecuted by the reportage in the news and in the exposé programmes such as
Did You Know?
and
The World Today.
His bill was designed to ensure that every time a case was made against him, one of his spokesmen should be consulted in order to balance it out. Almost everyone was opposed to the bill, and supported it at the same time. True, there were voices raised in defence of free speech
and the ability of the public to judge for itself, but the real situation was that the Liberals were in favour of it because it would shut the Conservatives up in times of Liberal rule. But the Liberals were also opposed to it, because if the Conservatives should come to power they would undoubtedly use the measures of the bill to stifle Liberal criticism. The Conservatives supported and opposed the bill for the same kinds of reason, and no one was sure whether or not to vote for it in case the other side got elected.

The one faction that utterly opposed the bill in any form were the media themselves, since it would be utterly impossible to make current affairs programmes that were forty-five mintes long and contained everybody’s point of view. Journalists regarded the whole thing as a cynical attempt at underhand censorship, designed to save the government from embarrassing revelations. Which of course it was.

Eva Perón’s little deal was that the bill would be dropped ‘in view of concerns about the constitutional right of free speech’, in return for a documentary about His Excellency. She informed the director that the latter would be only too pleased to give him a list of potential interviewees. Meanwhile Emperador Ignacio Coriolano (or ‘Emperor Cunnilingus the Insatiable’, as he was more usually known) rounded up the many retired and active whores of his acquaintance, and briefed them thoroughly about what they could or could not say.

Thus it was that the nation was simultaneously scandalised and thrilled to hear glowing tributes to His Excellency’s prowess, and was edified to discover that since his marriage this prowess had been solely at the service of Madame Veracruz, who spoke of it obliquely, coyly, and with a starry-eyed expression of gratitude and admiration. In this way His Excellency was able to play all at a stroke the family card, the defender of the constitution card, and the stud card. It remained only to play the patriotic card once more, bringing us back to the place where we began, with Dr Galico and his mistress Prepucia.

To put it in short, His Excellency arranged for her body to be brought back from Paris and laid alongside the Doctor in the pantheon. The body arrived in a military transport plane flying the national flag in yellow for the sands of the sea, red for the blood of the nation’s martyrs, green for the forests, and blue for the sky. A
guard of honour of mounted dragoons in shining cuirasses and thigh boots accompanied the gun carriage to the Presidential Palace, where His Excellency removed from the coffin the bottles of Chanel No. 5, the Napoleon brandy, the boxes of truffles, the book he had ordered describing the rituals of the Martinist Order, the Russian caviar, and the working model of a guillotine that chopped off the ends of cigars. He was placing the lid over the pathetic yellow bones and shrunken skin of Prepucia when he was summoned to the telephone to talk to His Eminence, Cardinal Dominic Trujillo Guzman.

The Cardinal said simply, ‘Your Excellency, you cannot allow this sacrilege. The pantheon is hallowed ground, and the Church cannot permit that a man’s mistress should be buried alongside him and his legitimate wife. It cannot possibly be allowed. The woman was not even a Christian.’

His Excellency, who had no time at all for the Cardinal, believing him to be little better than a scarlet-clad oligarch, brusquely told him, ‘Your Eminence, I cannot talk to you now, but I will ring you back as soon as I can.’ He put the telephone down and then asked for the Cardinal’s file from the office of the Interior Ministry Internal Security Service. It was duly delivered, and His Excellency perused it with some amusement before returning the Cardinal’s call.

‘Am I to understand,’ he asked, ‘that whereas the Church does not permit me to bury a man’s mistress in his grave, it does permit its dignitaries to have mistresses of their own and an illegitimate child or two? Am I correct in assuming that the Church permits embezzlement and nocturnal visits to brothels, admittedly in disguise? I seek your spiritual guidance, Your Eminence.’ There was a long silence, and then the Cardinal hung up.

The funeral and burial were a magnificent success, mostly because a national holiday was declared that permitted the population to pour into the streets to cheer the gorgeous cortège, wave flags, become inebriated, and end up in the gutters and alleyways vomiting up the arepas and the empanadas that they had unwisely consumed along with the pisco. It was a winner, and not only for the stray dogs that cleared up the mess.

President Veracruz was returned to office with an enormous majority for the third time, and yet the ballot boxes were filled in advance only with enough votes to make up for the eighty per cent
who never bothered to vote. The country’s demographers noted with astonishment and perplexity that the number of votes was virtually the same as the number of registered voters, and agreed that times had changed indeed. The newspapers ingratiatingly led with the headline ‘Democracy Is Safe In His Hands’, and His Excellency decided to reward himself with a twenty-two month diplomatic tour of the world. He intended to find the tomb of Christian Rosencreutz, make love in the central chamber of the Great Pyramid (in order to rejuvenate himself), and in California he intended to have an operation that would enable him to achieve tumescence at will.