The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts (18 page)

When they returned to the living room, Rafael, Tomas and Gonzago were all poring over the three-year-old copy of
Vogue.

‘They are strange women,’ said Tomas.

‘They are all skinny and they have no hair on their legs or in their armpits!’ remarked Gonzago.

‘Why would anyone want a book of pictures of white women who are obviously ill?’ demanded Rafael.

‘I would like to take this with me,’ said Dona Constanza, reaching over to take it.

‘You may,’ said Gloria. ‘Give it to her.’

‘Are you a doctor?’ asked Rafael, and Dona Constanza looked at him contemptuously.

‘No, I am cultivated.’

‘Like a field?’ asked Tomas, puzzled. ‘How?’

Dona Constanza was instructed to summon her maid, who was plainly terrified and could barely understand what she was being told. Gloria handed her the receipt and her eyes lit up. ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘you are appropriating the mistress and redeeming her after the revolution?’

‘Not quite,’ said Gloria. ‘You must give this to Don Hugh Evans without fail, or both he and Dona Constanza, and probably you, will be shot. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, Madam,’ said the maid tearfully, and she curtsied out of force of habit. Rafael giggled.

‘Come,’ said Gloria. ‘We have many miles to walk. It is cool now and we should be back by dawn.’

‘Walk?’ said Dona Constanza. ‘I cannot walk!’

‘Why not?’ demanded Gloria.

‘I have never walked. I would die in five minutes.’

‘You have never walked?’ said Gloria, astonished. ‘Well, you are going to have to.’ She prodded Dona Constanza in the back with her rifle, and the group filed out of the back door and passed beneath the bougainvillea above the terrace. The maid watched them go past the swimming pool, full as ever with algae and contented frogs, and saw them disappear into the dusk in the direction of the foothills. Then she ran back inside.

Don Hugh Evans returned twelve days later from the capital.
He was a very tall, dark-haired and distinguished-looking man of sturdy and athletic build, having used his extensive leisure time playing rugby at the Welsh and Irish Club, and playing tennis at the Club Hojas. As he drove through the village, scattering the chickens, he felt that the people were looking at him in an odd way, and he was still wondering why when he brought his Japanese jeep to a halt outside the hacienda. Inside he found the maid tearfully biting her lips and twisting her skirts as she anticipated the storm.

Don Hugh strode from room to room looking for his wife, and then came back into the hall. ‘Where is your mistress?’ he said. ‘Is she out riding?’

‘No, Sir,’ replied the maid, choking back her sobs. ‘The revolution came a week ago and took her away, Sir.’

‘The revolution?’ He took her by the shoulders, towering over her, and shook her. ‘For God’s sake, you mean she has been kidnapped?’

‘Yes, Sir. It was a week ago, Sir.’

Don Hugh stepped back and put his palm to his forehead. He wiped away a trickle of sweat. ‘Well, why in God’s name did you not tell me before, you stupid woman? Are you a complete cretin?’

The maid shrank back before his fury. ‘Only the mistress knew where you were, Sir. We went to Chiriguana with the receipt to use the telegraph but the station was destroyed by the revolution months ago, Sir.’

‘Christ in Heaven!’ shouted Don Hugh. ‘What receipt? Tell me what receipt?’

‘The one they made Dona Constanza write to you, Sir.’ The maid was by now sobbing bitterly and barely capable of speech.

‘Well, where is it, woman, show it to me!’

‘Oh, but Sir, I cannot. We spent it.’

‘You spent it? What do you mean you spent it, you disgusting mulatta bitch?’ Don Hugh advanced upon her, his eyes darting fire and his hand raised to strike her.

‘Please, Sir,’ pleaded the cowering maid, ‘we could not contact you so it was no use. We could not tell the police because
the revolution said they would kill you and my mistress if we did. So we spent it.’

‘How in God’s name can you spend a receipt, for Christ’s sake?’

‘It was one hundred and twenty-two words, Sir. We bought a lot of things and had a fiesta in the village for three days, Sir.’ Her eyes lit up at the memory for an instant, and she looked coyly up at Don Hugh. ‘Everyone got very happy, Sir.’

‘Oh did they?’ he yelled. ‘And who has the receipt now. Tell me before I twist your head off!’

‘Oh Sir, it is in the provisions shop in Chiriguana. Please do not hurt me.’

Don Hugh put one huge hand around her neck and suspended her ten centimetres above the floor against the wall. ‘When I get back, you half-breed moron, I am going to tear you into fragments and feed you to the vultures!’

He dropped her and turned on his heel. Back in his jeep, he set off with a screech of tyres and stopped for neither man, chicken nor dog until he arrived outside Pedro’s Grandiosa Tienda de Ultramarinos in Chiriguana. He kicked out at the chickens as he went in and marched up to the proprietor, who, sensing great peril, nipped smartly round the back of the table.

‘Can I help, Sir?’ he asked unctuously. ‘Ron cana? Aguardiente? Avocados? Anticonceptivos?’

‘I want the receipt, now. Come on, the receipt!’ demanded Don Hugh, snapping his fingers in the man’s face. ‘The receipt, or you are a dead man!’

‘The receipt?’ said the shopkeeper, puzzled. ‘What receipt?’

‘The one for one hundred and twenty-two words!’ shouted Don Hugh. ‘Give it to me!’

‘But it was spent in my shop, so it is mine,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘So you can’t have it. And anyway, I have already spent it myself.’ He dodged Don Hugh’s attempt to grab his collar. ‘I bought something substantial from the policeman.’

‘The policeman!’ exclaimed Don Hugh in astonishment. He turned, and in his rage and frustration he kicked out at a stack of guavas, sending them careering across the floor and further
startling the chickens. The dog who had been dozing by the door slunk out with his tail between his legs, whining.

‘Where the fuck is the policeman?’

‘He’s gone away. He went to Valledupar, but he said he would be back in four days.’

Don Hugh returned to his hacienda blind with fury, cursing the country that could have its policeman take four day’s unofficial leave and for no good reason. When he arrived he found that the maid had already disappeared forever. Not having one inkling how to cook, he despatched Sergio under threat of dismissal to find a cook by that evening. Sergio set off about his mission good-naturedly and returned with Consuelo the whore. ‘Oh my God!’ was all that Don Hugh could say, and soon found out that Consuelo was over-generous with pimienta sauce. His mouth and throat on fire, he threw her out of the hacienda and spent four days alternately drunk and apoplectic with rage and indignation before driving at horrendous speed back to Chiriguana.

The policeman, a bloated, bleary-eyed pig of a man with cross-eyes and a scar across his nose, was milking a goat in his kitchen when Don Hugh arrived. Five minutes later Don Hugh emerged still shaking with fury and this time agog with disbelief. For one hundred and twenty-two words, the policeman had bought the use of all the whores in the puteria as often as he liked for six months.

When Don Hugh entered the brothel, which was easily the best appointed building in the whole pueblo, he was instantly set upon by half a dozen gaily chattering girls of all different shapes and sizes making salacious suggestions. Don Hugh bellowed and threw them off. Just after he did so the Madame appeared; she was a huge mulatta as tall as Don Hugh, and possibly half as heavy again. The sight of this formidable lady had a calming effect upon the desperate husband, and in a voice that was almost controlled he asked if he could have the receipt for one hundred and twenty-two words.

‘No, Senor,’ she said, ‘it is mine, why should you have it?’

‘Then let me read it. The life of my wife depends upon it!’

‘Very well, Senor, but if you try to steal it Felicidad will shoot you.’

In the corner of his eye he saw that an innocent looking whore of about fifteen was very expertly aiming a revolver at him.

‘I will not steal it, just let me read it!’ Don Hugh was pleading.

Slowly the gigantic mulatta lifted the hem of her taffeta skirt, and from the top of her bulging thigh she took the receipt. Don Hugh took it from her and read it. He sank slowly onto a chair and buried his head in his hands. It was already too late.

Dumb with disbelief he stumbled back out into the sunshine only able to think about one thing. It was completely irrelevant, but it was all he could think of. He called back in on the policeman. ‘What was the substantial thing that the shopkeeper bought from you? I’d just like to know.’

The policeman looked up from his milking. ‘It was my niece from Valledupar. The man’s a paedophile; it is really disgusting.’

Don Hugh passed the shop on the way back to his jeep. There was a skinny little girl of twelve piling up cassava, and as he walked by she caught his eye with a saucy, coquettish glance before she turned away.

‘My God,’ he thought, ‘truly this country of mine is a sink of abominations.’

He was already nearly home when he heard a huge explosion. He stopped the jeep and looked back, to see a monstrous cloud of dust and debris ascending into the sky over Chiriguana. Unable to resist his curiosity, he turned the jeep around and sped back.

La Estancia

Ma chère Maman,

I am writing to you with the heaviest of hearts, for it seems that if anything can go wrong, it assuredly will. Everything, in fact, is going so badly that I am thinking seriously of putting an end to my seemingly futile endeavours and coming home to France, where at least I know that a warm and loving family awaits me, though who knows what kind of job I can take there after fifteen years of farming in the tropics?

To begin with, ma chère Maman, Françoise is terribly ill. Her health was never good at the best of times, but the heat and humidity of this place has so enervated her and depleted her resources that every mosquito bite seems to turn into an ever larger and more intractable sore. Believe me, I have tried everything. First I tried lemon juice because its acidity makes it antiseptic; it stings formidably but I have always found it effective on my own cuts and tropical ulcers. Secondly, I tried the purple ointment which I use on the cattle; this stings even worse, but is also useless. Then, and this shows the measure of my desperation, I brought in the local hunter, who is a brujo, a kind of witch doctor. His name is Pedro, very tall and grizzly, and he has a huge reputation locally for his powers. They say he
is in communication with angels, and he knows spells that he calls ‘secretos’.

Now, Maman, I know what you are thinking, that this is plain diabolism, and that as a good Christian and a Catholic I should heartily excoriate it, but truly this place can drive one to such extremes of helplessness and desperation that one’s choices are taken away.

Anyway, Pedro came by and laid his hands on Françoise’s neck and looked very hard into her eyes. He whispered something into her ear which she did not understand even though her Spanish is, as you know, quite fluent, and then he came to see me privately. He told me that there is a lot more wrong with her than ulcers. As if I did not know already!

At about the same time I found some antibiotic powder in a cupboard that was three years out of date and sprinkled it on her wounds. She was better in a week! Perhaps I will never know whether it was the powder or the secrets of Pedro that cured her, or perhaps it was both – in this country reason does not apply to anything.

It also does not apply to Françoise. You must know, Maman, that I am more convinced than when I last wrote to you that she has cancer. Her breasts are now more discoloured, deformed, and grotesque than ever. I cannot describe the obscenity that now disfigures her once beautiful form. I also believe that the cancer has spread to her kidneys, as she is beginning to urinate blood and she is permanently exhausted. She is as pale and insubstantial as a ghost in this country where everyone else is deep-roasted by the sun!

But there is nothing I can do! She believes only in ‘natural’ medicines and in her faith-healer back in Toulouse who cured her of migraines fifteen years ago. I have tried earnestly to persuade her to let me take her to a doctor in the capital, or even to her faith-healer in Toulouse, but she steadfastly refuses. Instead she has written to him to heal her from a distance, since she says that that is perfectly feasible. The man has sent me a bill for ten thousand francs already! As you know, Maman, my farm brings me in the equivalent of twenty francs a day, which
makes me a very rich man by local standards, but a pauper by the standards of France. The fact is that I cannot possibly pay the man, quite apart from the sheer difficulty of going hundreds of kilometres to a town where I can actually arrange an international money order.

The hunter told me that the only cure for cancer that he knows is to eat a freshly-killed coral snake raw. Imagine! And you have to do it every week! These snakes are lethally venomous and people kill them on sight, so they are not as common as they once were. Nevertheless, I offered rewards for live coral snakes and I now have a couple of months’ supply in a large wooden crate. We killed the first one and Françoise did manage to eat it at great pain to her conscience, as she has now been a vegetarian for many years. She said it was not as vile as she had anticipated and the cancer did seem to retreat. However, she has refused to eat any more snakes as she says that she has to stick to her vegetarian principles, and to be honest, Maman, I think that really she wants to die.

After all, she only came out here to be with me on the rebound, so to speak, and we never found the kind of happiness we might have had the right to expect from a marriage. She misses not being able to do her pottery; I did build her a pottery recently but we cannot find any clay and we cannot possibly fuel a kiln either. She also finds the peasants unspeakably crude and venial. I got used to it long ago and adapted to it, and she does not like that either. Also the humidity of the rainy season reduces her to abject misery. To make matters worse a rift has come between us over matters of the body. I am so repelled, and she is so humiliated and ashamed by her condition that all marital congress ceased long ago, at about the time of her last miscarriage.