The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman (6 page)

Perplexed, I exclaimed, ‘But I would rather marry you.’

‘And I would rather marry you as well, but it would be unfair.’

‘To whom? Your parents?’

She became agitated, and said, ‘O no, but I cannot explain that either just yet. But I promise that I will tell you tomorrow, I promise it.’

Bemused, I said, ‘Bueno, but you will come and live with me?’

She smiled coyly. ‘O yes, indeed.’

I leaned over and kissed her on the forehead, saying, ‘Now come to bed with me.’

She appeared to be absolutely shocked, and reiterated, ‘Bed?’

‘Yes, bed. Last night was so delicious that I have been unable to think of anything other than making love with you again.’

‘Last night? Again?’ She appeared to be perplexed.

‘Are you telling me that you have forgotten? Is this another of your little jokes?’

She remained motionless, and then said, ‘No, of course I have not forgotten, but is it not a little soon?’

I laughed at her innocence. ‘Come now, Ena, one can do it as often as one likes.’

She looked very dubious, pursed her lips, and said, ‘O, I do not think that I am ready yet.’

‘Yes, you are,’ I said, remembering the successful decisiveness of that man in
Gone With The Wind.
‘And if you are not, you very soon will be.’

That night Ena was quite different from the previous one, demonstrating once again her protean quality. She begged me repeatedly to be kind and simpatico, and at first seemed unable to relax, but eventually things proceeded just as sweetly as they had the night before. This time she stayed with me all night, waking me in the morning with a tinto, a lingering kiss, and the words, ‘I do love you.’

Come and live with me, and we will say those words each morning.’

‘I will come back this evening, and we can sort everything out. Right now, I am going to wash.’

She returned with her flesh glowing and her hair straightened out, and I said to her, ‘Querida, how did you manage to lose your virginity twice?’ I pointed to the second small blot of blood upon the sheet.

‘How odd,’ she exclaimed, but then added, ‘I was still a little sore from the first time, and I thought that I had not healed up. That is why I said that I was not ready.’ She was not looking at me, and I thought that she was trying to hide a smile and a blush, but I thought no more of it. I am no expert upon the technicalities of virginity, since a virgin these days is a very rare thing, and was quite outside my otherwise fairly extensive experience. I asked, ‘How does one get blood off sheets?’

‘O, just soak it and put salt upon it, or something.’

‘Well, it is not important. Perhaps I will keep it there for a keepsake.’

She patted me upon the cheek and said, ‘You will have all of me as a keepsake, and not only my blood.’

That night, two shadows detached themselves from the darkness, and walked arm in arm towards where I stood leaning against the jambs of my door. I had been having a mock wrestling-match with one of my cats, and was covered in dust because the animal had
decided that for once it would not let me win. I thought, ‘Now who has Ena brought with her?’ I realised that she was with another girl, and I speculated that she might have brought a friend with her.

But when they emerged into the light of the hurricane lamps I was transfixed with astonishment. Speechless, I sat down heavily and reached like an automaton for a cigarette. My hands were shaking so much that I dropped my fósforos on the floor, and sat there so ridiculously with the unlit cigarette dangling from my lips, that both the girls burst into giggles. At length one of them said, ‘Does this explain anything?’

‘Two?’ I asked, stupidly. ‘Two? There were always two?’

They both nodded, and the one on the right said, ‘I am Lena, and this is Ena.’

‘Say that you are not angry with us,’ said Lena in a wheedling tone of voice. She sat on the floor and rested her chin on my knee so that she could tease me by looking up at me in mock-penitence with those big brown eyes, and Ena came beside me and ruffled my hair. They then began the infernal double act which has been the bane and the joy of my life ever since. Lena said, ‘No, do not be angry. This all started as a piece of fun to tease the Mexicano. You know, everyone thinks that Mexicanos are stupid, so that it seemed to be a good joke.’

‘But,’ continued Ena, ‘we both liked listening to you, and then we both fell in love with you, and suddenly everything became very serious. And then it was too late.’

Lena added, ‘And part of the game was not to tell each other what had happened, to give you a chance to guess, but you never did.’

All I could do was repeat, ‘Two? Two?’ in an idiotic tone of voice, as everything suddenly became clear, and the secret of ‘Ena’s’ protean nature was revealed.

‘We have always shared everything anyway,’ said Lena.

‘We decided not to fight over you,’ added Ena.

‘And now you know why marriage would be a problem, so we are both coming to live with you. If you still want us to, of course.’

‘Two?’ I repeated, miserably, ‘How can I cope with two?’

‘We love you,’ said Ena. ‘And you love us,’ said Lena, ‘and we will try not to be jealous and have fights.’

They both nodded in agreement with each other, and said, ‘We promise.’

‘And do you promise,’ I asked, ‘not to get your own way all of the time just because there are two of you and only one of me?’

‘O no,’ laughed Ena, ‘this is a democratic city, and each of us has only one vote, so you will never win.’

‘You do not have a chance,’ said Lena. ‘And anyway, monogamy was an invention of men who wished to reduce the power of women over them. We intend to put that right.’ They began to giggle again.

‘What about your parents? I have no wish to be shot.’

‘They think that you are rich and famous, and in any case they do as we tell them. Profesor Luis taught us to read and to calculate, but they are ignorant, so really we are in charge of them, and they are our children.’

‘And the constitution of the city says that in matters like this you can do as you like. Hectoro has three wives, Dionisio Vivo has scores of them, and Consuelo and Dolores have every man in the town sooner or later, except that they are not going to have you.’

‘Ever.’

‘Or else.’

‘I am tired,’ announced Lena, ‘let us all go to bed.’

‘Me too,’ said Ena, pretending very archly to yawn. They laughed at me as I stood, rigid with trepidation, and I said, ‘I need a strong drink.’

It was one year later, and in fact we had all got married, because Father Garcia said that identical twins were made from a single split egg, and that therefore Ena and Lena were, scientifically speaking, and therefore in the eyes of God also, only one person. He also said that in his opinion, which was informed by personal encounters with angels, God did not really give a damn about how people organised their sexual lives, as long as all that they did was motivated by love in one of its infinitely varied forms.

I was walking with my friend Antoine, and was talking with him about these extraordinary events. I asked him, ‘How did they fool me? And how did no one else know either?’

He put his arm around my shoulder, and replied, ‘My friend, love has no eyes. You know, we all knew all of the time. On the one hand we were all very happy for you, and on the other hand it is always amusing to play jokes on Mexicanos.’

‘How did you know, you old goat? Come on, tell me.’

He tapped the side of his nose knowingly; ‘Around here everybody talks, and you know, cabrón, those two were not the only ones who used to sit up here and listen to your music. I come up a great deal myself, though I have to say that I think it is about time that you learned some new pieces. That is advice from a good friend, or maybe you will begin to lose your audience.’

‘A good friend?’ I exclaimed. ‘And anyway, I do not have much free time these days, with seven giant jaguars and two women to exploit my time and my goodwill all simultaneously.’

‘And soon you will have even less time,’ said Antoine.

I must have shown my puzzlement, because he added, ‘You mean that they have not told you? Always the last to know? How wonderful. But I am not going to be the one who tells you; you had better ask them.’

I managed to extract a confession from Ena and Lena that same evening, and I remember exclaiming, ‘What? Both of you at once? O, Santa Virgen.’

They nodded sweetly, and Ena took a cigarette, lit it, and put it into my mouth, saying, ‘We were going to tell you tomorrow.’

YOUR EMINENCE, WE
honour in this report your sapient decision to reconstitute the Holy Office in this land and to employ it upon the redoubtable task of examining in secret the state of belief of the nation. To this end one hundred monks of the order of St Dominic were dispatched to every corner, to the stupendous and forbidding heights of the Andean mountains, to the frozen and inhospitable altiplanos, to the torrid zones of the llanos, and to the sodden and unforgiving forests and jungles of the Amazonas. Not only did they penetrate to all these areas and the cities contained within them, they also fulfilled their instruction to examine not only the superstitions of the poor, the animism and polytheism of the savages amongst whom our devoted missionaries strive to bring the light of Christ, but also the educated middle and upper classes, infiltrating themselves even into the highest echelons of secular power. This they did by what Your Eminence has so aptly described as ‘Godly subterfuge’, it being clear that if they had not been disguised as vendors of bamboo whistles, mule traders, herbalists, clairvoyants, egregious Protestants, birdlimers, snake-catchers and chicken-sexers, they would not have had as much success in determining the real state of people’s hearts as they have in fact had. The report which you now find yourself examining is our condensation of these reports, which Your Eminence may examine in full and at his pleasure simply by requesting us to forward them to his palace.

We divide our report into three sections, beginning with the sorrowful matter of the spiritual health of our own clergy. We are
most sorry to report that if Your Eminence were to read through the reports of the proceedings of the Council of Evreux (1195), the Council of Avignon (1209), and the Council of Paris (of the same year), he would obtain a very accurate picture of what still obtains nearly one thousand years later in our own country.

There are priests who either sell indulgences, trade them for sexual favours, or grant them to the dying in exchange for their patrimony. We have come across the case of a bishop who sold the last joint of the little finger of St Teresa of the Infant Jesus to a pious widow (for fifty thousand pesos), when the real item in fact resides on public view in the cathedral of Bayeux in Normandy. This was the worst example of trade in relics, real and supposed. We have come across numerous samples of the True Cross which are plainly made of Brazilian rosewood, mahogany, Amazonian balsa, quebracha, and even painted clay. There are numerous shrouds of Christ displayed in various churches, there are nails from the hands and feet of Christ made of stainless steel (‘miraculously unrusted despite their antiquity’), there are thorns from the crown of Christ, taxidermised birds (all of them tropical), which have had the benefit of attending the sermons of St Francis of Assisi. There are bones of Christ (contrary to the doctrine of the Resurrection), and a priest in Santander displays a head of St John the Baptist which bears a startling resemblance to the shrunken heads made by the Cusicuari Indians and sold by them in profitable quantities to North American tourists. These are in addition to the relics of so-called ‘popular saints’, such as Pedro of Antiochia, who could produce frogs out of people’s hats and specialised in the blessing of mules and llamas. Many of these uncanonised ‘saints’ have a considerable priestly following, the worst case being that of a church dedicated to Lucia the Innocent, who is reputed to have given birth to twenty-two rabbits despite her virginity.

We have come across cases of monks gambling at dice for penances in monasteries in order to while away their idleness. In Santander several taverns have been opened by clergy, hanging outside of which can be seen signs depicting clerical collars, stoles, eucharistic ciboria and chalices, and even a paten upon whose stem can clearly be seen fauns in a priapic condition. In these ungodly establishments may be found their proprietors, usually in a state of inebriation at all hours of the day, with their vestments rolled up and tucked into their belts,
trading scatological stories with their customers and allowing the use of backrooms and cubicles for immoral purposes.

We have discovered that licentious living is rife. In one city it is widely known that nuns organise dissolute parties and wander the streets at night. Members of religious orders, both male and female, live in a state of open concubinage, the progeny of such unions being popularly known as ‘anticristos’, and on whose behalf much nepotism is exercised. We have uncovered gambling, drunkenness, and a great predilection for hunting and violent sports. There are two monasteries in Asuncion which regularly organise football matches between themselves. In these games the entire monasteries turn out, meeting at a place equidistant from each. The football is sometimes of the orthodox variety, but is sometimes another object, usually a calf’s head or a coconut. The object of the game is to be the first team to hurl the ball over the opposing monastery’s wall. There are no rules in this game; there is much kicking, punching, brawling, hairpulling, and a torrent of obscene language such as would disgust even a stevedore or one accustomed to work with the deranged. At the end of the game there is no one who has not shed blood or had his habit torn; the cost to the monasteries concerned in terms of replacement and repair can only be imagined. It can be considered a matter of relief that the contestants do not resort to the use of arms, since we have established that up to ten per cent of the rural clergy bear arms, ranging from small revolvers to sawn-off shotguns, which are easily concealed beneath their robes. This practise is partly an understandable reaction to the prevalence of brigandage, and partly a perverse enterprise in winning admiration for machismo, which in this country is acknowledged to be a cult all to itself.