The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman (29 page)

Ships travelling the mighty internal waterways of the Magdalena and the Paraná would ground themselves for days upon sandbanks caused by riparian deforestation, leaving the passengers with nothing to do except take pot-shots at manatees and caymans, fish for comelon with bits of string, and conduct short but intense affairs beneath the canvas of the lifeboats and in the gaps between the bulkheads. Sometimes all the alcohol would run out, and a collective hangover would settle upon those who believed in permanent inebriation as a protection against travel sickness, the stifling heat, and the relentless prickings of the mosquitoes.

It was true that some of the main roads along commercial routes had been macadamised and tarred, but the tarring always melted and caused discomfiting mirages which could force a driver to career off the road in the attempt to avoid Cartagena castle or an improbable
mustering of storks. In places where the tar was unwisely thick one could find oneself sloughing to a halt, axle-deep in a glutinous soup, and in places where the land had slipped it was possible to find oneself briefly airborne.

But the road to Valledupar from Ipasueño was the good old-fashioned kind that was levelled annually by bulldozer, and for the rest of the year was free to deform itself into a whimsy of potholes and ridges. In one place a bridge had flattened itself under the weight of an enormous lorry, and now the cars and trucks drove intrepidly across the roof of that lorry, which had conveniently settled to exactly the right height in the gully below. A system of planks and wooden beams now rested securely upon the Stricken vehicle, incorporating it into the structure in a masterpiece of economical improvisation.

So when Dionisio arrived in Valledupar two days late, no questions were asked; he had had to walk back to Ipasueño, find his car and his cats, and then weave his way down to the torrid plains before driving in a perpetual series of swerves to the town where his parents now lived. The journey had been filled with memories of Anica; here they had slung their hammock and made love beneath the stars, accompanied by the shrieks of monkeys and the metallic filings of crickets; here they had watched the little mechanical Negro of Puesto Grande sally from his niche and strike four o’clock upon the bronze bell outside the alcaldia; and here they had fed a cigar to a mammiferous goat and watched her contemplatively enjoying it.

The house was redolent of Anica as well. The spare room still smelled of her straw-like aroma, and at night it was possible to go in there when there was no moon and sense her waiting for him beneath the mosquito net, her eyes glowing with the anticipation and apprehension of love. Dionisio had therefore grown to understand that there was always some sadness in going home.

But Mama Julia and the General never seemed to change; they had not seemed to have grown older since he first remembered them. She still collected superstitions, tended wounded animals, and grew prodigious quantities of fruit. She still wore her hair in Carmen Miranda style, disapproved of her son’s appearance and his attitudes, and she still had a secret passion for Cesar Romero which manifested itself in her perfect memory for the events of each of his films. The General still combined rectitude with an appreciation of extenuating
circumstance, and had such a sense of history that to him anything new was merely a recapitulation of half a dozen ancient precedents. At the moment he was home from the capital, and was in the process of reading
The History Of The War Fought Between Athens And Sparta, By Thucydides The Athenian
in order to determine whether or not it could cast any light upon the struggle between the Armed Forces which he now commanded and the guerrillas, complete with their unholy alliance with the coca cartels and the paramilitary. He was greatly appreciating the funeral speech of Pericles, and did not come out to embrace his son until he had digested it.

Mama Julia emerged immediately, however, and launched into such a critique of his sartorial state that he felt bludgeoned into allowing her to sit him in a chair and shore away his prophetic head of hair. ‘Ay, ay!’ she exclaimed. ‘It is disrespectful to Our Lord to look so much like him, and when are you going to settle down with a good plump woman and have children and a decent job? And you should wear a collar to hide those scars because no woman would want a man like that, and make sure she is from a respectable family. And why did you shave off your moustache when it was the one thing that looked distinguished about you? You could almost have passed for an officer, and some women like the tickle of a moustache when they are kissed, as long as it is not full of old food, which is very disgusting. And I do not care if you are famous, I am still your mother and I will have no disrespect, so stop smirking or I shall snip your ear and that will serve you right, and what is this I read in the paper that you have thirty women and squads of little bastards, forgive the word but what other word is there?’

‘Exaggerations and lies,’ replied Dionisio. Mama Julia paused in mid-flourish with a sceptical noise in the back of her throat, and then pointedly removed a very large hank of hair to indicate her disapproval. ‘Mama, you are taking too much off, I shall get very cold up there in the mountains with such a radical tonsure.’

‘Wear a hat,’ she said, ‘and why did you not tell us that you have written famous music? The first I know of it is when I hear it on the radio and then the Naked Admiral and his wife rush round saying, ‘Did you hear it?’ and wiping the tears from their eyes. Your father is very proud of you, God knows why, but if he has any sense he will never tell you. Stay still, I will not be blamed for making you
bleed if you move, God help me with such a son, God knows why I love you, it is no easy thing for a mother these days. I want you to look at an ocelot I have that someone shot in the leg, and tell me what you think, and why is it that a man sees something beautiful and free and then desires to destroy it? Some things I will never understand.’

At this point General Hernando Montes Sosa came in, said, ‘Ah, Dionisio,’ and walked out again. ‘He wants to talk to you later,’ explained Mama Julia.

Dionisio still felt unequal to his illustrious father. The General had subverted the whole nation’s expectations of the military by getting his appointment as Governor of Cesar ratified by plebiscite, and then, when he was made Chief of the General Staff, by insisting that all military activity should be subject to civilian political control. On a more personal level, Dionisio remembered vividly an occasion when he was a bumptious adolescent and had implied that his father was past it. The General had raised a contemptuous eyebrow and said, ‘Give me your hand.’

Dionisio had extended his hand and the General had gripped it, interlocking their fingers. ‘Now the other,’ and he had given his father the other hand. The General had said, ‘The first one on his knees is the loser.’

Squaring himself up to enjoy the humiliation of his parent, Dionisio had smiled confidently and exerted first pressure. The General’s grip had tightened with excruciating force, and with a gladiatorial expertise his son’s wrists had been bent backwards and he had been ignominiously brought to his knees before his father. The General had let go and marched stiffly away, straightening the waist of his uniform, and Dionisio had slunk off to his room in order to tremble, alone with his well-deserved mortification. Since that day he had been in awe of the General, who always gave him a feeling of being an amateur human being. Possibly he had travelled so wide of his upbringing in order not to have to be compared with him.

And so it was that he felt a little uncomfortable when, later that evening, he sat outside beneath the bougainvillaea of the reproduction of the Aristotelian peripateticon, and found that his father was actually confiding in him. The General said in his elegant Castilian, ‘I trust, young man, that you have found me to be a good father. I
have recently wondered whether in the past I have somewhat disprized you.’

Dionisio was greatly surprised, and replied tactfully, ‘You merely put me in my place.’

‘You mean I humiliated you?’

‘The most humiliating thing was that you were beyond emulation, Papa, and that is why perhaps I was so rebellious.’

‘What concerned me, Dio’, was that you seemed always to be rebelling against what seemed to me to be upright and good, but since the episode of your campaign against Pablo Ecobandodo and his coca thugs, I have understood that your rebellion was mainly against submission to mores and codes which, in the last analysis, are somewhat trivial.’ He paused for thought, and seemed to be admiring for a span the vast moon that was at that moment surging over the horizon. ‘When it came down to something truly essential, you risked assassination and danger in a manner that was heroic. We feared for you at the same time as we swelled with pride. Now what I want to know is whether you feel that in my life I have been the equal of my son.’

For some reason tears came to Dionisio’s eyes and he found it hard to speak; he had never seen or heard his father in a mood of this quality before. ‘You seem to be speaking as though your life is over, you seem to be anxious to have a verdict upon it,’ Dionisio replied. ‘I think that you are not coming precisely to the point, Papa.’

The General stood up and walked to the edge of the paving so that his back was turned. ‘Much of my life has been useless,’ he said. ‘I have been forty years in the Army, mainly doing very little of any consequence. It is only in the last ten years that I have found a role that justifies my salary, and all the rest is a blank that is filled with your mother and my children, and that is why I have asked you whether I have done well in that respect.’

Dionisio contemplated the question and replied, ‘I have often thought about this, and I have come to the conclusion that everything that I am is owed to you. You were like a gun that fired me a long way off, but the aim was yours. If you are proud of me it is because your aim was true.’

The General smiled. ‘I could have trusted you to come up with a metaphor that I would have understood. Did you know that a shell
when it comes out of the barrel wobbles badly for the first part of its trajectory? And then it settles to a perfect arc? Perhaps your appalling behaviour when you were younger was your way of wobbling.’

‘Papa, I still think you are avoiding your real point. What brings this on?’

General Hernando Montes Sosa said very simply, ‘Since I became Commander-In-Chief the risk of my assassination has multiplied almost to a certainty. I am contending with numerous groups of guerrillas, four coca barons, and the risk of insurrection caused by appalling government that is the direct consequence of the absence of that idiot, Veracruz. There are also elements of the patrician right wing that would dearly love to end our little flowering of democracy. That, my boy, is why my mood has turned to self-examination. I would wish to die having lived meaningfully and well, that is all.’

Dionisio rose from his wicker chair and went to stand by his father. He put an arm around his shoulder and said sincerely, ‘Papa, when you die your place in the pantheon is assured. Your soldiers love you dangerously well, so that it is indeed lucky that you are not minded to perform a coup. My sisters love you so much that it is a wonder that they ever married. I love you, and even my jaguars desert me when I am here. No man who lives amid so much love has lived for nothing.’

‘You do not remember La Violencia, do you? No, you were only a little boy. I am afraid that it is about to happen all over again. Weak government, social chaos, perfect conditions for our proliferation of fanatics. Do you know what the Army did during La Violencia?’

Dionisio shook his head.

‘It always arrived too late. We would go to the scene of an incident and find that the Conservatives or the Liberals had already been and gone, leaving behind them whole villages pillaged. Hundreds of bodies, not even the babies spared, not just killed, but tortured and hacked. It was an orgy of rape and sadism, and it proved to me that my countrymen are deeply sick with a morbidity of the heart. There was a bishop whose nickname was ‘The Hammer of the Heretics’ and he publicly encouraged the Conservative Catholics to go out and kill Protestants. And the Liberals, being secularist then as they are now, set out to kill priests and to violate nuns. That is the inferno which I foresee once more, and it makes my spirit bleed. Did you know that
once the Inca sent to the Aymaras for their contribution towards the running of the empire, and they sent him their lice? Even before the Spanish it seems that our primary motive was contempt. In this land there is no tradition of toleration.’

Dionisio looked at his distinguished father abjectly hanging his head with foreboding, and felt his stomach sink. ‘It seems to me that tolerance only ever prospers where people have grown weary of bogus certainties. With respect, that is why I rejected your faith and stopped going to mass.’

The General laughed ironically and replied, ‘Between you and me, my faith is more of an instinct than a belief, but do not tell Mama Julia. Shall we take a little paseo?’

Father and son strolled about the grounds, reminiscing about each occasion that had prompted Mama Julia to plant a tree in its commemoration, and the General said, ‘Do you remember Felipe? Anica’s brother in the Portachuelo Guards? He has just become the youngest colonel in the Army. And by the way, I have made the acquaintance of the British Ambassador.’

‘O, yes?’

‘Yes, and he is very curious to visit Cochadebajo de los Gatos because he wants to see a genuine ancient city. He is a great linguist, you know; he speaks Hindi and four African languages, and so they sent him here where he cannot use any of them. Very British, I understand, to do that. Do you think I could bring him?’

‘Of course, Papa,’ Dionisio replied, unmindful of the possible consequences.

‘We shall arrive at ten hundred hours on June the sixth,’ announced the General, and Dionisio knew that he would, because his father was the only man in the country who operated not ‘a la hora latina’, but ‘a la hora britànica’.