Read The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman Online
Authors: Louis de Bernières
The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman (46 page)
‘It will be the first female child of Dionisio who will not be called Anica,’ he said.
She nodded and invited him in, saying, ‘It will help to free him.’
‘And another thing,’ added Aurelio. ‘The girl will be born with a child in her womb, and this child will be born on a day before your daughter has ever known a man. But the father is Francesca’s baby who has yet to be born, who will be called Federico. Do you understand?’
Leticia nodded. ‘Oshun came to me in a dream as Nuestra Señora de la Caridad del Cobre. I will do as she said, and call the child Parlanchina.’
Sibila Retrieves Her Fallen Crown And Dons Her Robe Of Light
‘
O SAN NICOLAS
, who raised from the dead three children who had been pickled in a salting tub, O San Quentin, who spared a thief by causing the hangman’s rope to break, O Santa Rita, who four times performed the impossible, O San Cosmas and San Damian, who could be harmed neither by fire, air, water, nor by the cross, intervene with Our Lady and Our Lord, that she may be spared. Amen. And God forgive me.’
This was the prayer that I prayed many times in my house during that night when I could not sleep for my pain, for my terror, and for my betrayal of Sibila. I am not religious by nature, and my words were as empty in my soul as they were unheard by God, but I prayed because there was no other recourse. I knew all the time that it was an illusion to pray, but it passed the night as I huddled sleepless in my room that had been emptied even of the bed. I had seen a vision of Hell, such as each generation sees it. My parents saw just these things during La Violencia, and their parents saw just these things during the civil war. It was the same play with new actors, and I asked the same question as my parents: ‘What is wrong with us that we shit on paradise?’
I did not go near the church in the next few days because I knew that Sibila was there. I stayed in my house waiting for her to confess, be released, and come to see me. I practised the words that I would use to ask her to forgive me. I said them aloud, trying out the different ways, and I had nothing to eat, because they had taken even my food. But there was no knock upon the door. There was nothing except the silence of the afflicted, the squabbles of the vultures, the coarse jokes of the bodyguard, drunk in the street, the interminable chant of the priests in the plaza. There was nothing except the pain, which was like a hurricane roaring in my spirit.
Then after the days had passed there was the sound of chanting passing my house, and the priests went by, bearing candles and the green cross. I was already educated enough in their ways to know
that tomorrow there would be another auto de fe, and my heart jumped in my breast as I understood that very probably it would be the occasion when I would know what was to happen to Sibila.
That night I prayed my prayer again until I had said it so often that I thought, ‘Maybe I will weary the saints with my prayers, and they will concede to me what I ask,’ and I slept. I had a dream in which Sibila and I were lovers. It was a cruel dream, because when I awoke I was happy.
At the auto de fe all the surviving children of the village were brought out. They made the children swear to attend confession at Easter, Christmas, and Pentecost, and to remain orthodox of belief. It was pitiful to see the chidren, streaked with dirt, the tracks of tears upon their faces, bruised, hungry, and orphaned. The Monsignor was in purple again, and there was a great censer burning in order to drown the stench of death.
When the children were led away, a tractor arrived with a trailer behind it. It was Patarino’s tractor, and the trailer was piled high with bodies. They were not those of the newly dead. They were old and shrivelled, falling apart, with yellow bones and blackened skin. There was soil upon them, there were pieces of coffin plank, tufted pieces of scalp, hanks of brittle hair. Something connected in my mind, and I realised that they had dug up all the people that I had named as dead santeros, and perhaps many more besides. I could not help but look; there is something about the grotesquerie of death that fascinates. It was hard to make the connection between those caricatures of humans, and the friends and relatives that they used to be. I actually felt a kind of satisfaction that my own parents had died during La Violencia and had been left to rot on the hillsides. Who knows if it was the Conservatives or the Liberals who killed them? But at least I knew that they were not exhumed and thrown into this tangle of cadavers.
The Monsignor and his priests withdrew into the church, and I watched as the bodyguard dug a deep hole in the ground and set a post into it. They piled it about with brushwood and faggots, and they began to throw the bodies onto the heap, limb by limb. They made jokes, such as, ‘Ay, cabrón, how about this one for a dry fuck?’ and, ‘Ay, this one has no teeth. She was good for a blowjob, eh?’ They put one of their number on the lookout for the priests, and they
pulled all the gold teeth from the jawbones with pliers. They broke off the fingers to get at the rings. It made a desiccated sound, like the snapping of twigs, but you could see from the twisting and pulling that it was hard to break the tendons. Over the heap of bones they poured gasoline, and I knew for sure that they intended to burn heretics retrospectively, as if the dead had not already passed to judgement.
I had almost forgotten Sibila by this time. But then she was led out of the church behind El Inocente.
Perhaps I should explain that the priests themselves would not torture the prisoners or carry out sentences, and everything of a brutal nature was carried out by the bodyguard.
How can I speak of this? Did I tell you that the bodyguard were divided into clubs, and each club had its own methods? It seems that the ones who questioned Sibila were the Agatistas. That is to say that they recapitulated the sufferings of St Agatha. To me it is a blasphemy to do this, but I heard it justified. They said that to be a heretic was to insult the saints who had suffered for the true faith, and they inflicted the torment now upon those who truly deserved them, as an expiation. To me, this is a pretext.
Sibila was dressed in a black sanbenito painted gaudily with demons and flames, but it was soaked in blood. She could barely walk, and she was brought out leaning upon two of the bodyguard. Her eyes were half closed, her head lolled upon her chest, and with her arms around the shoulders of those two ruffians, her attitude reminded me perhaps of the deposition from the cross, and also of a Corpus Christi. Her hair fell forward about her face in the way that it used to do when she was concentrating on a book or making coffee, and I saw that blood was running down her legs to her ankles, forming dark pools in the dust of the street. She was all but dead. Believe me, my heart was bursting, but still I had no strength.
El Inocente stood before the table and gestured for silence. He preached a long sermon, of which I cannot recall a single word, but I can tell you that it was full of vileness, decorated and embellished to the point where one might almost believe that it was a noble speech. He read out a long list of those whose corpses were to be burned, and whose property was to be confiscated from their inheritors, so that there was no one in the village left with any possessions.
Then the Monsignor gestured to the bodyguard that Sibila should be taken, and I realised that they intended to burn her along with the corpses. They dragged her, trailing her feet, and there was a stream of blood behind her where she went. Do you know what happened to St Agatha? Her breasts were torn off with shears, she was rolled on broken shards, then on burning coals, and she died before they could burn her. But Sibila was alive, and she had suffered all those things. I began to weep, but my eyes were open; I was watching the consequences of my cowardice and treachery, and the consequence was that I was going to lose the one I loved in all the world.
The Monsignor went up to her as she stood bound amid the corpses and the stench of gasoline, and he said to her, ‘Do you abjure? If you abjure you will be mercifully strangled before you are burned. What faith do you embrace?’
Sibila raised her head, and for a second I was relieved that she had not died, because that is what I had been beginning to think. She said in a voice that was feeble but very clear, ‘I believe that the world was made by the Devil. I believe that when I am released I shall wear a robe of light and see the face of God. I believe that I was an angel.’ She looked him in the face and continued, ‘I believe that you were an angel.’
There was a peculiar emphasis in the way that she spoke the word ‘were’, an emphasis that seemed to imply that the legate was a soul lost forever. I know that he understood her because he was taken aback and did not know what to say. It was as though he had suddenly seen his own conscience in a mirror, and there was a long pause. Then he turned his back and walked away.
The men were lighting their torches when Sibila looked up for the last time, and she saw me. Her look struck me to the heart. It was not that she accused me with her eyes. It was that she saw my helpless tears, and pitied me. Sibila was feeling sorry for me, the one who least deserved her pity. I fell to my knees and clasped my hands so that she would know that I was begging to be forgiven, and she smiled as gently as if she had seen a child. It was a smile full of love, a smile with nostalgia in it, as though she were remembering me. She shook her head from side to side, as a parent reproves a mild misdemeanour, and I knew that she was saying to me, ‘Why did you underestimate me by thinking that I would pretend to confess? Did you think that I would not stand up for the truth?’
Do you think that I am a shallow man, that I should be telling you of my feelings when it was Sibila who endured so much? I felt a rending shame that for so long I had pretended to her that I believed in her ideas. I had loved her, but I had deceived her. Do you think that she knew all the time? Do you think that she forgave me? Do you think it is possible that she was happy to die because she foresaw a better life, that she confessed on purpose so that she could die? Was I the instrument of her torment, or was she thanking me for being the means of her release? Can anyone sincerely wish to relinquish life?
I know that I loved life, cripple though I am, and I know that I loved it simply because she was a part of it. An insanity overtook me, and I threw myself forward. I do not know what I intended to do, but I think I meant to do two contradictory things at once. I wanted to release her, to fight to the last moment, because suddenly all my courage returned. And because my courage had returned, I wanted to die beside her. It seemed to be all I had ever wanted, a consummation, as the poet said.
I ran forward, but I am a cripple, and one of the bodyguard warded me off with a rifle, so that I fell down, and at that point they threw the torches on the pyre, and the priests sang the Veni Creator.
When the crusaders left, having torched my village of Quintalinas de las Viñas, one of them threw something down to me. He said, ‘Hey, cripple, have a memento of your girlfriend.’ I looked at it and knew what it was, because the crusaders had the habit of removing the private parts of women and stretching them over their pommels as trophies. I took it and put it on the cinders with the rest of Sibila, and I followed the crusaders at a distance, which was easy because they were moving at the speed of the carts that were laden with our possessions. Do you know what I did? In the night I cut the throat of the crusader who had done that foul thing to Sibila.
They are planning to come to Cochadebajo de los Gatos, Señor Vivo; I often heard them talking about it. They were working their way across the countryside, keeping from the towns for the sake of self-preservation. Señor Vivo, you must help our poor people, because you killed El Jerarca and everywhere you are known as the Deliverer. Have pity on the people as Sibila pitied me.
Letters
(a)
My Dear Son,
I am writing this in a terrible hurry at the aerodrome in Valledupar. There is no telephone service to Cochadebajo de los Gatos, and I have no idea how long this letter will take to reach you, and I am in despair at being so much isolated from you under these terrible circumstances.
I have to tell you that your father has been the victim of another assassination attempt. He was picking mangos in the orchard when someone put two bullets in his body from close range. I do not know if it was the Communists or the Conservatives, or the Liberals, or a faction in the Army, or someone from the Navy or the Air Force, or if it was someone from the coca cartels.
The General came into the house and fell at my feet, and we are taking him in a military transport to a hospital in Miami where he stands a better chance than in our own hospitals, where the surgeons are qualified only in carving joints of meat and prescribing lethal doses of poison for cases of mistaken diagnosis.
He is in good spirits and is more worried about who will assume temporary command of the General Staff than he is about himself. La Prima Primavera is coming to look after the house and the wounded animals. I will let you know as soon as we return from Miami, and in the meantime, pray for us both.
Your loving Mama Julia.
(b)
Dear Minister,
I am writing to let you know that I have heard eyewitness accounts of untold savageries committed by a band of religious
fanatics who are terrorising the countryside on an arc that extends from the capital towards the mountainous regions of Cesar. It appears that they intend to finish their ‘crusade’ in this town of Cochadebajo de los Gatos from which I write.
It is imperative that immediate action be taken either by the police or the Armed Forces to end this terrorism, or else I foresee the possibility of yet another civil war inspired by religious intolerance. We in Cochadebajo de los Gatos have already made our preparations, but legal intervention by the state would be gratefully welcomed by us before I am obliged to resort to an exposé of governmental inaction in the pages of
La Prensa.
Yours With Respect, Dionisio Vivo.
Copies to: The Ministry of Defence
The Ministry of the Interior
(c)
Dear Señor Vivo,
We thank you for your letter concerning disturbances of a religious nature in the countryside. We have been aware for some time of rumours about this, but have been unable to substantiate them. Several villages have been discovered to be razed and entirely depopulated, and so we have been unable to discover whether this was due to wars between local caudillos, the Communists, or the coca cartels.
You will be aware that we cannot initiate military actions without a Presidential directive. His Excellency is at present embarked upon a diplomatic mission abroad, and so we are without legal recourse at present. You, above all others, will be aware that your own father, who is Chief of the General Staff, is in hospital in Miami, and we are doubly incapacitated from a military point of view, especially as we already have heavy commitments in Medio-Magdalena.
We have decided that the only legal action possible is to send a detachment of the Portachuelo Guards on a ‘live firing exercise’ in
that region. The commander of this ‘exercise’ will be confidentially briefed that he has the legal right of intervention, under the constitution, when this is requested by a local police commander in the interests of public safety. Accordingly we have appointed a ‘local police commander’ to accompany the exercise. The exercise will follow an itinerary from the capital to Cochadebajo de los Gatos. This is a vast tract of land, almost unknown to cartography, including swamps and forests, with only the most basic means of communication, and you will understand that from a military point of view the expedition is almost an impossibility.
I am afraid that this is the best that can be done within the legal framework that has been established between the Armed Forces and the executive for the protection of the democratic process. You will perceive for yourself that democracy is not always an unmitigated blessing when a strong hand is required.
You will be interested to know that, according to the office of Cardinal Dominic Trujillo Guzman, who is also in hospital, it is true that a ‘crusade of preaching’ has been authorised, but the office disclaims any knowledge of a crusade of medieval dimension and enthusiasm.
I wish your father, General Hernando Montes Sosa, a speedy and complete recovery from his wounds, and I trust that you will agree that we have done our best to deal with the matter that you have raised with us. I cannot emphasise too much that we are completely handicapped by the absence of His Excellency, President Veracruz, and many of us will no doubt be influenced by this during the next general election, which is at a regrettably distant date.
Please treat this communication as confidential, and, upon a personal note, may I say how much I have enjoyed listening to your musical palindromes on the radio? I have often speculated as to whether it would be possible to adapt one from Bach’s Prelude No. I in C from
The Well-Tempered Clavier.
I remain your humble and respectful servant,
Alfonsina Lopez,
For and on behalf of the Armed Forces and Civil Police Coordinating Committee.
(d)
My Dear Papa,
I have been desolated to hear from Mama that your worst fears have come true, and that at last one of the innumerable attempts upon your life has borne a bitter fruit.
I think that you should be reminded that you are the first Chief of the General Staff in the entire history of this country who has not been either a Fascist or a glorified caudillo, and therefore you have an absolute obligation to get well in a time so short as to be unprecedented in medical history.
The man who bears this letter will be of great help to you. Please treat him with absolute respect and hospitality, do not question anything that he tells you, submit to his treatments, however bizarre. I say this as a devoted son who in his time has had to obey many a paternal directive, and who on this occasion demands that the line of command be reversed for once. If you do as I say, I promise that I will keep my hair short for a year, and wear a suit whenever I am seen with you in public for the rest of my life.
Please extend my greetings to the British Ambassador when you see him, and tell him that his consignment of wellington boots continues to be much appreciated.
Your loving son,
Dionisio.
(e)
My Dear Son,
I write to you from my headquarters, sound in both body and mind, but infinitely perplexed.
In the first place, I understand from Alfonsina Lopez, the formidable lady who chairs the co-ordinating committee of the Armed Forces and the police, that you have seen fit to meddle in governmental business without the intervening neccessity of being elected and appointed to office. If you had not become the unofficial conscience of the nation through your splendid letters and articles in
La Prensa
, I would consider your letter to the Defence and Interior
Ministers to be blackmail. However, I am very glad that an ‘exercise’ has been inaugurated, and it is exactly what I would have done, given the absence of His Excellency. The capital is rife with talk of a coup, so great is the general disgust in governmental and military circles, but I am doing my best to circulate the idea of impeachment in order to reduce that very undesirable prospect.
Would you like to hear a story from your Papa, as in the old days? Good. Once upon a time there was a wounded general who had just returned from Miami, where he had been treated for gunshot wounds. He had been told to go home and convalesce, and was doing just that, sitting half asleep in a rocking chair beneath the beneficent shade of the bougainvillaea that grows exuberantly about the pillars and beams of the peripateticon, when there was an immense flutter of wings, a screech, and the scrape of talons clenching the joists overhead.
I looked up suddenly, hurting my wounds in the process, and thought that I saw a vast bird of prey sitting above my head, settling its wings into a comfortable position. But when I looked harder I saw a small Indian man in native dress sitting there instead. I do not know which sight would rightly be considered by an intelligent man to be more strange. My first thought was that it was another assassination attempt, and my second was that security about the house was still too lax.
The first hypothesis was confuted when the aforesaid Indian took a coca gourd from his mochila and began to prod and scrape inside it with a pestle, which he proceeded to suck with the air of a satisfied man. He caught my eye, and casually handed down a letter which, upon perusal, was revealed to be from my own unfathomable son. I read it with my eyebrows virtually at the back of my head, and with true Latin hospitality I invited the Indian down from his perch.
Adeptly he joined me at ground level, introduced himself as, ‘Aurelio, husband of Carmen, father of Parlanchina, and true friend of Dionisio, arriving to perform a cure.’
I have never had to take orders from an Aymara before, but if the rest of his people are like him, then I am very surprised that they lost to the Inca and then to the Iberians. He may be a small old man with a wizened face and fascinatingly sparse facial hair, but he has the natural authority of a General Bolivar winning a battle whilst
simultaneously in bed deflowering a virgin. Before I knew it he had me lying on the ground whilst he poked my stomach with his fingers and told me that I had been operated upon by ignorant butchers. He frowned and informed me that I still had a bullet inside me, and I told him that indeed a bullet was still in there because it was too close to the heart to render an operation upon it an acceptable risk. The Miami surgeons had told me that it had deflected upwards from a rib, and would present no great danger if left in place.
At that point Mama Julia came out, having seen me apparently prostrate beneath the hands of an apparent assassin. She ran up, ferociously brandishing a machete, and very shortly found herself tamely trotting away to fetch some rum and a cigar. I wish I had had the time to ask him how he managed to pacify her in such short order, because it has taken me over thirty years to achieve nothing of the kind.
Aurelio contemplated my stomach whilst blowing formidable clouds of tobacco smoke over it. He chanted in a low monotonous drone, swigged a mouthful of rum, and then blew it out suddenly in a very disconcerting jet of flame. Whilst I was still in a state of amazement at this trick, he abruptly dived at my stomach with his right hand, delved about in it up to his elbow, and then triumphantly produced a flattened and distorted piece of lead that looked exactly like a bullet that has been dug out of a sandbag.
I was turning this object over in my hand, when I heard the fluttering of wings once more and beheld no Indian where once an Indian had been. Instead there was a very impressive eagle arranging its feathers busily in the ceiba tree, whence it took off, circled high into the air, and disappeared in the direction of the cordillera. Your poor father looked down at his stomach and beheld his scars and stitches gone. Furthermore he later went for a medical examination and was bluntly informed that the evidence pointed ineluctably to the conclusion that he had never been shot. There was no bullet on the X-ray and there were no scars, so that I have had to send to Miami for photographs and medical certificates that prove that I am entitled to sick-pay, convalescent leave, and the medal for being wounded whilst on active service, of which I now have a growing collection.
Please thank your friend Aurelio for his remarkable treatment,
and in future kindly bear in mind the psychological injury that can be done to an old man when his comfortable understanding of the metaphysical order of the universe is suddenly and violently shattered by small indigenous characters acting under the instruction of his own son.
Mama Julia sends her love and asks me to ask you what you would do to treat a porcupine that angrily launches fusillades of quills whenever approached, however tentatively.
Your loving Father,
General Hernando Montes Sosa, whose son apparently thinks that he can appoint himself to the rank of Field Marshal.
