The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman (51 page)

But Dionisio’s presence brought that of the state into focus, and he felt that the non-appearance of the Army, despite his appeal to the government, was a personal betrayal that also diminished him in the eyes of his fellow citizens. This redoubled the weight upon his shoulders of being the Deliverer, who could kill a man simply by touching him. He fell into a mire of self-doubt and fatalism, in which he knew on the one hand that he would be forced to go out on his own to drive away the crusaders, and on the other hand knew also that he might fail miserably and be killed. It seemed a very long time since, deified by his love for Anica and demented by her loss, he had gone out one morning and killed her murderer merely by touching him above the heart. ‘I am becoming an ordinary man,’ he repeated to himself, even though he had been told that when he had gone out
with the cats to confront the ‘English’, he had been seen to grow to twice his size.

With a heavy heart, he went to the perpetual council of war in the whorehouse. When he came through the door, the brothel fell silent. He nodded to those who caught his eye, and went to the table. ‘I have come to tell you,’ he informed them, ‘that I will go out and deal with them myself.’

‘Bravo, Dionisio,’ said Remedios, when the applause had died down, ‘we expected no less. Nonetheless, we have decided against it.’

‘There would be no satisfaction in it,’ said Hectoro. ‘If it had been a matter of inconveniencing us, and annoying us by wrecking the terraces, then perhaps we would say, ‘Why not?’ but now they have killed Don Salvador, who went out in peace to negotiate, and the whole thing has become personal.’

‘Each of us wishes to participate in driving them out,’ added Misael, ‘and to ask you to do it would be to cheat ourselves of the opportunity to be tall and strong. I too am a man, as is everyone here.’

‘I think that you are becoming confused,’ commented Remedios, raising her eyebrows laconically.

‘In that case,’ said Dionisio, who had now begun to feel disappointed, ‘I shall be at your service as you require it,’ and he sat down next to the shade of Josef, who was contemplating fixedly the glass that was always placed before him in his memory.

‘Now, what plans have we been able to come up with?’ asked Remedios, who had assumed the role of leader by an accidental process that was clear to no one, but which nonetheless appeared inevitable.

‘I had a plan,’ said Profesor Luis, ‘to disguise our tractors as dragons that belch fire. I thought we could drive them out at night with the lights on, painted like eyes, and I thought that we could put whistles on the exhaust so that they sound terrifying. But I have been unable to invent a flame-thrower with what I have available, and I can think of no way to protect the drivers from bullets.’

‘I had a plan,’ said Hectoro, ‘to deliver them some of Dolores’ Chicken Of A True Man. I thought of doing it in a huge cauldron, and sending it out as a peace offering. It has a delayed reaction, as
you know, and I thought that whilst they were running about clutching their throats and weeping with pain, we could come out and attack them. But then I realised that they would not eat it for fear of poison, and I thought, “What if I go out and eat some in front of them to prove that it is harmless?” but then I understood that they would shoot me down immediately before they ate it. Naturally I have no fear of death, but it occurred to me that I might be needed in the fight, and so I do not have this plan anymore.’

‘Do you have to come to these meetings mounted on your horse?’ demanded Consuelo the whore of Hectoro, puffing vehemently upon her cigar. ‘You do not know how stupid you look with your sombrero crushed into the ceiling. And I am tired of cleaning up the turds of your horse.’ She spat on the floor, disdainfully ignoring his baleful glare.

‘I had a plan to kidnap one of them at night. One who knows their plans,’ said Misael. ‘But then I thought, “What if he swallows the plans, and refuses to shit them out?” So I thought, “We should threaten to cut open his guts to get the plans,” and then he would shit himself, and we could get the plans like that.’

‘With respect, cabrón, that is a very stupid plan,’ said Pedro.

‘I know,’ said Misael, grinning so that his camouflaged gold tooth rendered his smile grotesque. ‘It came to me in a dream, and that is the only reason I mention it.’

‘It seems to me that we must come out and attack them,’ said Hectoro.

‘By God, I would like to slit their English noses,’ interjected the Conde Pompeyo Xavier de Estremadura. ‘I will take out all my soldiers, and we will hack them with our swords, pierce them with our pikes, blind them with our poignards, and leave their heads on spikes for the crows to feast.’ He slammed the table with his fist, so that those seated at it had to jerk backwards to evade the runnels of spilled liquor.

‘With respect, Conde, a frontal assault is likely to be bloody on our side, and leave them unscathed,’ said General Fuerte gently. ‘Such heroics would have no ingenuity, as Misael would say.’

‘We could do it at night,’ observed Hectoro, ‘but then we would be likely to kill each other by mistake. Not that I am afraid, but I would not like to kill my friends, unless it were a matter of honour.’

‘I favour an attack from behind,’ said the General. ‘It would be completely unexpected, and therefore very successful.’

A collective gasp of dismay arose from the company. ‘General,’ said Remedios, ‘we would have to go down to the plateau, and then find a way back up by another route to get behind them. It might take weeks, and none of us knows the way. We could get lost and die in the wilderness.’

‘We would have to go right up on the paramo before we could come down again,’ said Misael. ‘Have you ever been up there?’ The General shook his head. ‘It is so cold that one’s balls retreat into one’s body as far as one’s throat, so that one cannot swallow. One’s fingers become bananas. One’s hair becomes encrusted with ice. The wind blows from every quarter at once and slides inside one’s garments like the frozen fingers of a dead whore. The rain is sharper than knives and cuts the soul as deeply as the flesh. Sometimes it snows suddenly, and one is instantly buried, and sometimes the wind whips the snow from the peaks and one becomes blind. Sometimes one becomes blind from the light in any case, and the soroche comes down on you so that a terrible sickness strikes at the brain, leaving you reeling like a drunkard on the point of death from pisco, with your eyes popping from your head. At other times there are sudden mists that arrive from nowhere, and you breathe water, and you see not even your own hands before you, and all you do see are the shadows of the dead looming and lunging. We went through the paramo when we came to this place, and none of us wants ever to return.’

There was a lengthy and depressed silence as the people contemplated this familiar tale of the horrors of the paramo. Dionisio leaned forward. ‘What if there is someone who knows of an easy route? Aurelio knows these mountains like no one else. If we asked him to lead us, surely there would be no problem. The General’s plan is by far the best.’

‘You should compromise,’ said Josef, speaking with difficulty for the first time since his death. ‘Some should stay, and attack when the others come from behind.’

They all looked with astonishment at the slow smile that was spreading across the grey face of the immobile ghost that had become as much a fixture of the whorehouse as the empty bottles and the spittle on the floor.

Remedios raised her hand to speak. ‘Let us say that we adopt this plan, for the sake of argument. Nearly all of the women have children to attend to, so they should stay and defend the city. Most of the children are Dionisio’s, so therefore he too should stay. The leader of Dionisio’s women is Fulgencia Astiz, and she should stay here to lead them. I should go with the men because if I stay here I will argue with Fulgencia, and because I will prevent the men from doing anything stupid on the way. Also the Spanish soldiers brought back from the dead by Aurelio should stay here, because their long death has made most of them too stupid to do anything for very long, and the Conde should stay here to lead them, as is his right. When they hear gunfire, and see through the General’s binoculars that we are attacking the English from behind, they should issue out of the city and also attack.’

‘No one can withstand a campaign on two fronts,’ said the General. ‘Look at the examples of Napoleon and Hitler.’

‘Bolivar could have done it,’ said Profesor Luis.

‘Do you see Bolivar out there with the English?’ asked the General rhetorically, sweeping his hand in a dismissive gesture.

‘This marvellous plan is all very well,’ observed Pedro, sipping his aguardiente, ‘but where the hell has Aurelio been all this time?’

‘
IF YOU WISH
to attack them from the south,’ said Aurelio, ‘then you would have to go back down into the jungle, where you would be bitten and stung, the way would be slow, and the weight of your packs would dissolve you in sweat and curses. Then you would have to go to the high place from where we once watched the flood pouring out over the plain. From there you would follow the same way as our first journey to this place.’

‘Through the paramo?’ asked Misael, shuddering at the thought, and Aurelio nodded affirmatively.

Misael put his hands protectively over his nether region. ‘Let them not be frozen away,’ he exclaimed.

‘They will not have to be,’ replied Aurelio. ‘If you choose to approach from the north, you can merely go down to the plateau, go north to where the next valley comes down, and go up it. The slope is long and gentle. Near the top you may turn south up another valley that has a great torrent in it. It is another long but more difficult climb. Then at the end you may come over the ridge, and you will be over there.’ He pointed to the right-hand end of the valley. ‘I will come with you and show you the way.’

Aurelio had turned up inconspicuously, and had been found by Dionisio in the plaza, contentedly pounding the pestle in his gourd of coca leaves and lime. He had looked very surprised when reproached for his absence at a time of emergency, replying, ‘I was harvesting chicle and smoking my rubber. I only came back to be here when Leticia Aragon gives birth to Parlanchina. I have left Carmen alone in the jungle when I should be planting maize.’

So it was that the men and Remedios gathered all the supplies that they would require for a short and victorious expedition. Profesor Luis’ grand apparatus worked at night to lower down fifty mules, assorted armaments with ammunition, and the men themselves, leaving only the women, the Spanish conquistadors, and Dionisio Vivo. They leaned over the precipice to watch the expedition
wending its way along the lush plateau below. ‘Thanks be to God that the men have gone. We will have peace at last,’ said Consuelo, wiping a sentimental tear from her eye at the thought of all that virility going into battle. Doña Constanza waved vigorously at a tiny figure that she thought was Gonzago, and Gloria waved at a similarly minuscule one that she believed to be Tomás. Fulgencia Astiz shrugged her sturdy shoulders, and went up to the wall in the hope of finding someone in her sights that she could shoot. Her Santandereana soul was bristling with the pugnacious morbidity of her people, and as she lay down and adjusted her sights, she sighed with the satisfaction of true happiness. Her two children by Dionisio she sat beside her, so that they might learn at a precocious age the true intoxication and significance of death. The Spanish soldiers sat in the plaza, being harangued by the Conde in the name of the King of Spain, their vacant minds wandering away to distant campaigns, and becoming lost somewhere during the time of the foundation of the city of Ipasueño.

Down on the plateau the men already missed the practical and temperate climate of Cochadebajo de los Gatos, but were thankful that they did not have to descend into the jungle. They filled their mochilas with avocados, mangos, and papaya, and slaughtered two steers. The still-quivering flesh was cut into pieces that were wrapped in the leaves of palm, and handed out to each one as his ration for the expedition. Those who believed in such things drank the steaming blood from gourds, hoping thereby to acquire strength. Pedro poured blood over his own head and fixed white feathers in it as it dried in the sun, becoming inwardly, by this outward sign, quintessentially a warrior.

Through the verdant banana groves and orchards of guava they picked their way, past the irrigation canals that swarmed with fish and the larvae of mosquitoes, skirting the stewponds and rice fields, with their high banks and floodgates. Everywhere they saw as if for the first time the triumph of their own persistence and labour over the chaotic and disintegrating forces of nature, and everything that they saw strengthened their resolve to defend it even at the price of their own lives.

By evening they were half way up the first of the long valleys, and were already experiencing the milder air of a less exuberant clime.
They pitched camp on a raised and level spot, remembering from the past that to encamp at the bottom of a valley is to ask for a soaking in the event of rain. The rocks were stained red from iron, and high up on the valley walls were the abandoned mineshafts of the gold-loving Incas and the conquering Spanish. Below them stretched a prospect of palms, and above them there lay fallen rocks and spiny succulents unknown to botanical science, whose pink flowers seemed to be attended, every one, by quarrelsome hummingbirds defending their own tiny domain. They slept the night accompanied by the music of falling streams, the ache of their thighs obliterating the discomfort of stony beds.

The next day found them winding up the valley of torrential water. A thin mist of spume hung in the air, and in this place the hard hoofs of their mules slipped upon the watery rocks that glistened with the ears of fungus and yellow lichen, the film of green algae, and the absolute blackness of basalt. They followed an ancient path worn by feet that had not trodden those parts since before the time of Manco Capac, and they looked down upon the thunderous white flood, terrified by the mere fact of being able to understand why it was that one of the mules, stupefied and hypnotised, had leapt unprovoked into the abyss. They released their fear by whipping along the mules, with cries of ‘Burro, burro,’ that were lost in the rumble of water, and shouted with relief when it was time to turn and mount the ridge that would poise them for an attack upon the intruders who had despoiled their own valley and broken their abiding peace.