The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts (16 page)

Parlanchina stood for a moment in indecision, a terrible fear rising up in her belly, and then she ran after the cat.

Aurelio heard the explosion. He ran as fast as his dread and his sinking heart would allow, and he burst through the greenery and fell on his knees beside his beautiful child. His eyes were not prepared to see this, nothing in his whole life had prepared him for this.

Beside the shredded body of her beloved cat she lay. Through eyes blurred with grief and through heart leaden with horror he saw her in a welter of blood. He saw her long legs shattered and twisted and stripped and blackened even in the gore. He saw her soft belly torn open and its contents still pulsing.

But her face, her beautiful face, her face of an earthbound angel! It was untouched, it was perfect. He bent over, sobbing, and kissed her lightly on the lips. He felt a soft breath from her mouth and he jerked up, hope glimmering forlornly in his breaking heart. She opened her eyes, her huge glowing eyes, and she looked at him with the look of one who says farewell to an old love.

‘You will marry a god, little one,’ said Aurelio, tears streaming down his cheeks in spite of his upbringing. But he would not blink while she still looked into his eyes; he would blink when she could not look any more.

Her lips quivered and she moved her head a little to see a little better into her father’s eyes. A huge tear rolled out of the corner of her eye and trickled down towards her ear. It hung briefly like a raindrop and fell to earth. Softly, pleadingly, as though about to caress him, she murmured, ‘Papacito.’

Aurelio bent down and in her ear he whispered to her her real
name. When he moved upright Parlanchina was lying with her eyes wide open, astounded at her own death.

Aurelio lifted her broken body in his old arms and carried her home, his anger battling with his sorrow, his soul rebelling against the futility that is the delight of the gods, and blood soaking into his clothes. He laid the body before his threshold and called Carmen. She came out bearing a bowl of bananas, but when she saw the corpse she bent down and carefully placed them on the ground. She and Aurelio stood silently looking at each other over the body of their exquisite child. Aurelio gestured limply towards Parlanchina. ‘It is our little Gwubba,’ he said.

Aurelio dug two holes two metres apart, and two metres deep, and then he created a tunnel between them. In the tunnel he laid a bed of brush. Upon that he laid out her hammock, and the child he lay there to rest. In her arms he wrapped her beloved cat.

He filled in the grave and with the soil that was left he made a mound. In the mound he stuck straight twigs, and Carmen wove among them a potent symbol.

‘It is a terrible thing to die a virgin,’ said Carmen as she lay one night in her husband’s arms.

‘She died because of the love in her heart,’ said Aurelio. ‘And there will be lives lost because of it. I have sworn it, and the gods and the angels and Santa Barbara will hold me to it. I have finished with dogs.’

Carmen clutched him tighter. ‘Would you make other fathers weep? Go carefully,’ she whispered, and stroked his head. She had learned that men possessed a kind of obstinate stupidity that made them at once beast-like and god-like. She would not fight against it. Some things you cannot fight. You can only pick up the pieces, afterwards.

‘Tomorrow,’ said Aurelio, ‘I will go and tell the guerrilleros where the soldiers have hidden the sudden-death-by-thunder.’

AGAINST THE PRESSURE
of Franco and some others to shoot the General straight away, Remedios insisted on a properly conducted trial. Remedios appointed Father Garcia to defend the General, and appointed Franco to prosecute him. The verdict was to be delivered by a vote of the entire camp, and Remedios herself was to pass sentence in the event of the verdict being guilty.

The General, still dressed in his peasant clothes, looking old and weary, was brought out into the clearing. The guerrilleros lounged about on the grass, some of them unashamedly dozing, and Remedios had her table brought out from her hut. She seated herself before it, cleared her throat portentously, and rapped the table with the butt of her revolver. ‘The Court will come to order,’ she said. ‘The Court is in session. Franco, you will speak first.’

Franco arose, spat, and said, ‘The son of a whore commands the army in this area, and every one of us knows what that means. I shouldn’t need to tell you what has been happening around here, and it appears that the only one who pretends not to know is the commander. The army committed a massacre in Federico’s village, for example, just because they stopped the soldiers from raping a young girl, and, talking of rape . . .’ he turned furiously on the General . . .‘your soldiers even hold
down the little boys and girls and sodomise them!’ The General winced.

‘In this department, to my certain knowledge,’ continued Franco, ‘the Army have ransacked fifteen villages, one of them twice. They have murdered teachers, doctors and priests. I also know that they run profiteering rackets with marijuana and cocaine, we all know this. They steal as they please, when they please, and they commit regular brutalities so often and so cruelly that ordinary peasants like us, and intellectuals like Remedios, and even priests like Garcia are forced to fly their homes and take up arms.’ He pointed his finger furiously at the General. ‘And this is the man who is responsible for all this! Is it not obvious that he should die?’

The General was visibly agitated. Garcia spoke: ‘I think the General would like to say something.’

With quiet dignity the General said, ‘I know nothing of all this. I have always taken this kind of talk as idle propaganda and I still think so. I would like to hear from you all these stories, however, and if I am released I will undertake honourably to repair these wrongs, if they exist, and bring to justice those who committed them. I reformed the police force in Valledupar, and I would do the same with my soldiers. Let me say, I have always acted on the information I have received. It is not my fault if I received misleading information, you cannot blame me for that. It would break my heart if I were obliged to begin to have to believe that the Army, which is my life, and which I love, could have done these things.’

‘But it is not just the Army!’ interrupted Franco, still furious. ‘You are governor of all Cesar. You want us to believe that you are honourable and decent, but look around you! I will tell you things that every peasant knows! There is no justice unless you are rich, for nothing can be done in law without bribing judges and magistrates, and before them, the police, if you can find them. All over this department officials will do nothing without bribes, and even then they are idle and evasive! Everywhere you look there is poverty! Why? Because local officials divert all public funds into their own pockets! It is a national scandal that
lies heavily upon us with a weight of shame. Dishonesty is a way of life here, and you, General, are presiding over it! What can your decency and honour be worth before all of this? What can your life be worth?’

‘My life is worth nothing,’ replied the General. ‘I have toiled all my life for the motherland, and with God’s help I shall die toiling for it!’

‘You shall die because you have done nothing for it, strutting about in your fancy uniform, going to your dinner parties, writing books on butterflies while your people perish! You disgust me!’ Franco spoke with such scorn that when he had finished there was a long moment of silence.

‘Come now, Franco,’ said Garcia gently, ‘do you seriously expect the General to put right immediately four hundred years of custom? You know as I do, Franco, that this country was conquered by barbarians, greedy illiterates who destroyed ancient civilisations. Today we are governed by the families of those who descended from them, only they are not illiterate any more. In this country it has always been as you describe, a Christian country where God never shows his face, a country where He is ashamed to walk among us! All this is not the fault of the General. And who are you, Franco, to talk of justice? There is no justice even in this court! All of you want to see the General shot, and you will all say “guilty” when the time comes, even if you know in your hearts that he is a deluded innocent! Is that justice? In civilised countries one is tried by one’s equals. Which of us is equal to the General? He is a man of culture and honour, as all of us can see. According to the constitution of this country, which I admit is observed least frequently by the government, the General should be tried by a military court. Is this a military court? He should be tried by his equals. Are we generals? No, we are not.’

‘Remedios is our general, and we are all soldiers,’ replied Franco. ‘And the constitution means nothing, as we all know. I am talking not about what justice is in the law books which no one reads, I am talking about the justice of the heart, which we can all read.

‘And also, I want to say something else which is important to us. This dog Fuerte is a member of the government, appointed to direct the affairs of this department, without even being elected! Our government is the puppet of a foreign power . . . after all, where does the money come from? Who regulates the trade? We know who it is who does these things! Listen to my reasons. Our government works for foreigners, Fuerte works for the government, and therefore Fuerte works for foreigners. He works not for us, not for his motherland, but for the gringos. And what is the name of a military man who works for foreigners? It is “traitor”. And what is the penalty for traitors? It is death!’

Many of the guerrillas were pleased with this speech. ‘Bravo!’ called one of them. ‘To death,’ called another. General Fuerte signalled to Remedios that he wished to speak, and she nodded. Wearily he spoke.

‘You are mistaken. I have never worked for the Americans. It is the Americans who work for us. They give us money, more money than you can imagine, and they help us to build roads and bridges and hospitals that we could not otherwise build. I have been to America, many times, and I find people who are rich, generous, friendly, hospitable, decent and honest. The Americans are not our enemies, they are our friends. Powerful friends. This country would not run at all without their help.’

Remedios spoke. ‘I too have been to America, when I was a student. I saw things in the poor parts of American cities that make the favelas look civilised.’

‘The judge is not supposed to give evidence or venture opinions,’ said Garcia.

Remedios shot him a withering look, ‘I rule that my evidence is necessary and relevant.’

Franco said, ‘But what is the price we pay for this “help”?’ He spoke the word with the utmost sarcasm, and spat afterwards. ‘Sure, the gringonchos invest money, lots of it, but where are the profits? Where do they go? Do they go to the workers they employ? No, they do not. Do they stay in this country? No. So what happens? They take everything from us, and nothing is
returned. They are leaving us naked. How else do they “help”?’ He spat again. ‘They train our soldiers to kill those of us who want things to be fair. I have heard this, that the gringos have a camp where they train our soldiers how to resist torture. Why do they do this? Do the guerrilleros torture soldiers? No. So what happens? In fact our soldiers learn from the gringos how to be torturers, because they are told by the gringos about the many varieties of it. And why do they give us so much brotherly “help”? So we learn to depend on it, and then they can control us like a father controls a little boy. Our government and our oligarchy behave to the gringos like I used to to my mother when I wanted a piece of panela!’ He put on a baby voice, whining and cute, ‘Mamacita, mamacita, gimme some panela, please mamacita, I promise I’ll be good!’ The guerrilleros laughed, and General Fuerte smiled. ‘There is a little truth in your words,’ he said, ‘but it is better for the gringo to pay a hundred pesos a day to a hundred workers in a mine they have opened, than for one hundred men to earn nothing a day from a mine that has never been opened because no one thought of looking for one.’

‘Our government opens no mines because they sell all concessions abroad,’ rejoined Franco, ‘to get money. And why do they need money? Why do they have no money to open mines? Because all profits go abroad so that gringos can sit in the shade all day and grow huge backsides!’ The men laughed; gringos were famous for their fat backsides.

‘I want to speak,’ said one of them. Remedios nodded her permission.

‘I have a cousin in Bolivia. He works in the mines and he earns almost nothing, and he is dying from diseases of the lungs. He breathes like an old dog and he is thirty years old. He is poor because if they put up the price of tin, everything will be made of plastic instead. The foreigners catch us in such traps and we are poor forever.’

Remedios rapped her table with the butt of her revolver. ‘This court has wandered far from the point, which is whether or not the General is guilty of crimes against civilisation. It is
growing very hot, and we have talked a long time. I think it is time we came to a conclusion before we melt into lard. Do you have anything more to say, Franco?’

Franco shook his head. ‘I am tired of speaking. I have said everything.’

‘And you, Garcia, what do you say?’

‘Companeros,’ said Garcia, ‘there are two questions. One is whether General Fuerte is responsible for what has happened in this department, and the other is whether it is his fault. He is the governor, and so he is responsible. But I do not think it is his fault. If he did not know what was happening, it cannot be his fault, and so he is innocent.’

‘It is his fault because he should have known!’ blurted Franco angrily. ‘And how do we know that he did not know? We have only his word, which is worth nothing because he is afraid of death.’

General Fuerte could not contain himself. ‘I? I afraid of death! Senora Remedios, I will with your permission take your gun and blow my own brains out and you will see that I have not feared to tell the truth because I fear death! Give me your gun!’