The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts (20 page)

They arrived just before dawn and selected a good spot in which to conceal themselves, with a clear view of the bridge and the road that crossed it.

The bridge was a simple ferro-concrete structure of the cheapest and most serviceable kind. It arched at either end and was supported by four concrete pillars, evenly spaced at intervals, which were set on piles sunk into the river bed. It had been built in the first place by a United Nations Team as part of a long-forgotten development aid project, and its original function had been to prevent the loss of vehicles incurred by foolhardy lorry-drivers attempting to ford the river during the floods brought on by the rainy season. Before the road from Valledupar to the capital was opened, the bridge had been on the main commercial arterial route from the sea-ports, and during the floods commerce had almost always come to a halt. But now it had fallen from its former glory and its users were mainly local people on foot or on horseback; and consequently it was in a very poor state of repair. The tarmac had been squashed up sideways by vehicles passing over it during the midday heat, and was badly oroken up. The original designers had not catered for the stupendous humidity and heat of the region so that now, twenty-five neglected years after its construction, the concrete was soggy and flaky, and huge lumps of it had fallen off into the river below. Additionally, the fierce current of the Mula, which in full spate was capable of carrying large stones hurtling along with it, had largely eroded the arches and pillars. Any heavy vehicles which had passed that way in recent times usually chose to ford the river as in former times, rather than risk the bridge, and, as in former times, the river now contained the rusty hulks of partly salvaged and pirated lorries.

Despite its ramshackle state the bridge still appeared from the middle-distance to be a dignified and imposing piece of architecture, and the locals were very proud of it since it was the only one in the whole area, and it was theirs. At either end of it was a notice which said ‘You are now crossing Chiriguana Bridge’. Also on the notice were graffiti detailing the states of
people’s hearts (‘Without Erendira There Is No Life’), political slogans (‘Down with the Oligarchy’), and extraneous information and exhortations (‘Juanito Fucks Donkeys’, ‘Come to Consuelo’s’).

Tomas, Gonzago and Rafael sorted out a system of watching the bridge by rota, one hour on, two hours off. During their time off the men would smoke, doze, toss pebbles at lizards, and converse. By midday all three of them were feeling the effects of having been trekking all night. It was also the time when the whole country stops for siesta, even in wartime. This was nothing to do with the ‘natural indolence’ imputed to Latins by the rest of the world; it was to do with not being able to breathe, not being able to move without pouring with perspiration, not being able to see anything (because of the sweat in one’s eyes, and because of the shimmering heat-hazes and mirages), and it was to do with not being able to touch anything outdoors for fear of being burnt. The whole nation would sink gratefully into torpor somewhere in the shade, and one had as little chance of being detected of misdeeds during siesta as one did under cover of darkness; even making love noisily during siesta would scandalise neighbours, not because it was making love, but because it was noisy and therefore anti-social when enervated people are trying to doze.

Tomas and Rafael slumbered in the shade, and Gonzago stared at the bridge for as long as his eyes could stand the glare of the wavering image. Then he would close his eyes and rest them on his arm until they stopped itching and hurting, and then he would watch again. The sweat soaked his shirt and then his trousers; a thirst rose in his throat as though he had half-swallowed a porcupine. The intervals between resting his eyes and watching became gradually longer and longer, and then Gonzago too fell into a profound sleep in which he dreamed guiltlessly that he was still watching the bridge.

All three of them had been obliviously asleep for two hours when they were brought back to wakefulness by what appeared to be the end of the world. First there was a rumbling which shook the earth and sent stones skittering about like demented
cockroaches. Then there was a roar like the voice of God and a rush of air that sucked their breath out of them and drew their straw sombreros high into the air. Then there was a mighty wind as the air rushed back into the vacuum and returned them, flat on their backs, into the position from which, bewildered, they had half arisen. They could see an enormous cloud of dust and smoke billowing out above where the bridge had been, and it advanced on them like a sandstorm in a desert. They hastily tugged their shirt-tails over their mouths and noses, only to be thrown to the ground by a furious hail of debris that seemed to appear out of nowhere. Rocks, stones, lumps of steel and concrete, water and mud descended on them at prodigious velocity and in enormous volume, until, half-buried, grievously bruised and wildly disorientated, they rose groggily from the detritus to take stock.

‘Mierda,’ said Gonzago.

‘Madre de Dios,’ said Rafael.

‘Hijo de puta,’ said Tomas.

The land about them was laid to waste in a small but extravagant apocalypse; bushes were uprooted and leafless, the ground was littered with little pieces of bridge. Amongst the stones a fish flapped its tail forlornly as it gulped for air; Gonzago hit it on the head and slipped it into his mochila. ‘For later,’ he said.

‘You two have a nose bleed,’ observed Tomas.

‘So do you,’ replied Rafael, and then he squinnied through the cloud of dust that had begun to settle around the area of the bridge. ‘My God, look at that!’

There was nothing left where the centre span of the bridge had been. Steel rods projected from the broken spars and the pillars leaned raggedly sideways, buckled and twisted. In the river was an overturned Army lorry, some distance from the bridge; it had clearly been vaulted all that distance by the explosion. From somewhere near the lorry there came a pitiful and haunting wailing; it was a soldier staggering out of the water carrying his amputated arm.

The three guerrillas saw with consternation amounting to
panic that the whole area of the bridge was crawling with soldiers. They were in complete confusion and disarray, but they could clearly see and hear the fat figure of Colonel Figueras ordering his men to fan out and search the area. Just as the three were about to turn tail and flee, they saw a jeep come tearing along the track, halting at the bridge only just in time. They saw a tall, dark-haired European get out and walk to the edge of the abyss, and stand there in amazement surveying the chaos.

‘That’s Don Hugh!’ exclaimed Rafael. ‘He must have brought the money.’

‘Well, we can’t go and get it from him,’ said Tomas.

‘Let’s go,’ said Rafael.

‘Let me shoot a soldier first,’ pleaded Gonzago.

‘If you can find your rifle in all this rubbish,’ replied Rafael. ‘Don’t be stupid. Let’s go before the bastards get us. God knows where the donkey is.’

They were not in the best condition for walking, still concussed from the blast, still confused and disorientated, but the fear of being caught by the soldiers spurred them to hurry despite their uncooperative legs and feet.

When they staggered into the camp six hours later they were a pitiful sight; they were coloured all over a uniform shade of grey from the paste of watery dust that had descended on them. Their clothes hung off them in rags, and all three were limping. Only their eyes shone forth whitely through the muck and grime, and all of them were caked in dark blood from the cuts they had sustained. Tomas’ forehead was oddly distorted by a huge bruise on one side. They lurched to the centre of the clearing and fell flat on their faces. When Remedios came out to question them they were sprawled out, fast asleep from shock and fatigue.

The camp was in uproar, agog to know what had befallen their three comrades, but Remedios ordered that the three men should be brought into the medical hut and cleaned up. Federico and Franco fetched water from the stream, and the men were undressed, washed, and reclothed without waking or
even murmuring. Dona Constanza, aware that her fate depended upon what had happened to Tomas, Rafael and Gonzago, went into the medical hut and tended them most solicitously, wiping their foreheads unnecessarily often with a wet cloth, and muttering little prayers for their health. She noticed with a sharp little pang how handsome Gonzago was, and how innocent he appeared in repose. She wiped his forehead more often than the others.

When they awoke at midday the next day Remedios questioned them rigorously despite their appalling headaches, and the fact that their bruises made it impossible for them to get up or even lift an arm. When Remedios had finished she summoned Dona Constanza. ‘It seems your husband arrived with the money but was unable to hand it over because the place where he was to deposit it was blown up. So we cannot shoot you yet. You have a remission.’

‘Yet?’ queried Dona Constanza. ‘Can you not just send to my husband to arrange another place?’

‘No,’ replied Remedios, gravely shaking her head. ‘It appears that we have a more immediate and pressing problem that takes priority. The Army have invaded the area. We must concern ourselves with that.’

Constanza looked puzzled. ‘I do not want to be pedantic, but an army cannot “invade” its own country.’

Remedios snorted. ‘Ours can. It frequently does.’

‘Oh,’ said Dona Constanza. ‘In that case may I have your permission to continue tending the wounded?’

‘Certainly,’ said Remedios. ‘For once in your life you can do something useful.’

With a light heart Dona Constanza returned to the medical hut, and wiped Gonzago’s forehead more often than the others’. He smiled painfully up at her. ‘Dona Constanza, there is a fine fish in my mochila; I would like you to have it, or it will grow rotten for nothing.’

ON A DAY
when he had smoked too many puros and drunk too much cane rum, the evening found Josef lying in his hammock beneath the bougainvillea whilst the crickets scraped and rattled in the scrubby hedgerows and a vast tropical moon rose high above the caracolee tree, where from time to time the howler monkeys whooped and cavorted like schoolboys on an unexpected holiday. In the distance he could discern the gruntings of the caimans who lay somnolent in the green waters of the spring, and whose eyes glowed red if ever he passed that way with a lantern. He had often thought of catching them and selling the skins so that women rich beyond his imagination in Paris or New York could have handbags, shoes and purses of ‘alligator skin’ that would cost several hundred times more than he would be paid for all the skins of all the caimans on the entire farm; but Josef was sentimental about the idle creatures, and did not care for the rich ladies of New York and Paris any more than he cared for the Army or the governor, and so he let them be, and instead flattened the heads of vipers and coral snakes with his machete – it was a rule never to cut off their heads, for it was said that they would still bite, and that the viper could still leap at you by flicking its jaws against the earth. In the village there was a man who had had his arm amputated with an axe because he had ignored this
advice, and because there were no doctors to administer antidotes and perform operations within three hundred and fifty kilometres. Unlike most others, Josef conscientiously refrained from killing boas, on the grounds that they ate rats, and he shot iguanas only for meat and not for wantonness. The remains he would throw in the river for the pleasure of seeing the waters boil with the little fishes competing for scraps and morsels. Sometimes he would shudder at the thought of being such scraps and morsels himself, and vowed that when he died he should be buried deep, in the proper place, and to this end he had already paid the priest, in instalments, the price of his burial in a box, not in a sheet. Often he had said, ‘I will never be eaten by wild pigs, ants, tigres, or fishes!’ and this had become a joke amongst his friends, who would shrug their shoulders and say, ‘Who cares? When you are dead, you are dead,’ or, ‘At least as food you might die more usefully than you lived!’

On this day Josef was indeed thinking of death, but not of his own. He was thinking firstly of the death of the insects that fizzled and spat in the flame of the lamp, of the singed, fuzzy little aliens that each morning he would sweep off the table, sweep off the stones, or scrape out of the lamp with a grubby finger and a pursing of the lips. He was thinking of how like the death of human beings this was, for with every death of every creature a whole universe dies too, and yet, strangely enough, no death really seemed to make much difference. ‘We are all insects,’ he would think, ‘but because I am this very insect which I am, I am the centre of everything,’ and he would roll that phrase ‘de todo’ about his mind until it appeared to mean so much that it was no longer intelligible.

He thought secondly, with sudden and startling clarity, ‘Perhaps we should shoot only the officers.’ He decided that in the morning he would relay this thought to Hectoro, Pedro, and the others, who were preparing for the return of the Army, now that people coming from Chiriguana had reported that the whole area was swarming with soldiers. Everyone in the village realised that the Army had returned with the intention of securing revenge for their previous humiliations, and everyone
was in a state of nervous anticipation, wondering what to do, and looking for solid leadership.

In fact the division of leadership fell fairly naturally into place. Consuelo the whore emerged rapidly as leader of the women and organiser of the children, and Dolores the whore emerged as her lieutenant. They supervised the storing of supplies in strategic caches, tore up old clothing in anticipation of the need for bandages, practised leaping from behind doorways, machete in hand, and squabbled with the men for being too proud and stupid to arm them properly with rifles. The women worked alongside the men to construct a rampart across the street topped with barbed wire stolen brazenly from Don Hugh’s finca. They slashed and burned the fields immediately surrounding the village so that the Army would have no cover for sneaking up, and they filled every available receptacle with water, both for drinking and for putting out fires.