The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts (41 page)

As their pathway rose ever upward the plants changed. Already there was nothing growing here that would have been recognised in the emerald lushness of the jungle or on the expanse of the Mula basin. Up here there were long grasses, acacia, guinual and quishua trees, and delicate twisted shrubs with white flowers and silver-downed leaves that give off a delicious aroma when burned. Here and there, in places sheltered from the wind but not from the sun, stood firebushes, some of them twelve metres high, their scarlet flowers flaming brilliantly in exuberant drapes of blossom, and at one and a half thousand metres there were fragrant stands of cedar, constituting the little woods that the Indians call ‘jaguey’. High above there wheeled black vultures that the people thought were condors (until they saw a real one) and there were white alcamarini birds among the rocks on the sides of the slopes.

To the people these unaccustomed sights, these strange
plants, and the little vizcacha squirrels that ran chittering away from them, seemed to be miracles from another creation. And how cold was the water of the streams, so that when you drank it you developed a headache instantaneously and rubbed your temples, saying ‘Ay, ay, ay!’ with the pain, and making up your mind not to use it for washing your intimate parts until it was warmed a little.

They wondered at the small wild cattle that roamed free in the valley, so different from the huge ceibus that they had experienced hitherto, and which were raising a constant lowing as though passing messages to each other. Sometimes one of them slipped on the rocky paths, or when crossing a river, and then the people would have to reset its scattered or sodden load and bully it into rejoining the recua so that it could be tied back into the train. All day there were shouts of ‘Ay, mula!’, ‘Vamos, bribon!’ and the long drawn-out ‘Tscha-a-a-ah!’ to keep the beasts moving. For a little while a small wild bull followed the train, and those at the back nicknamed it ‘Nicolito’ and tried to persuade it to approach nearer, but it was wary, and turned away, standing on the top of a knoll to watch them go, so that afterwards they missed it with the same feeling that you feel when you say farewell to someone who under better circumstances could have been a friend.

The cats, who were still growing bigger all the time, gambolled amongst the rocks ambushing each other and rolling down inclines as they wrestled. Some of them were padding seriously beside the people they had adopted, and others were trying to creep up on the wild goats and birds that were too wily to be caught. The cats hated to wet their feet in the streams and rivers, and were especially afraid of the pongos, the white-water rapids; they would sit growling at the water whilst everyone passed over, and then pace anxiously along the bank as they receded into the distance. When at last the anxiety of losing their people grew too much, they would gingerly cross, raising their paws to shake off the freezing water at every step, and growling in their throats.

The biblical procession passed through a small settlement of
chozas where the people hid from them behind their doorways, and peeped out, confused and alarmed. ‘Shami,’ said Aurelio to one of them, in Quechua, ‘come here.’ Hearing his own tongue the man cautiously came out, and Aurelio exchanged greetings with him and asked where one might camp the night. The man, whose throat was hideously bloated from coto – a deficiency of iodine – seemed to be retarded and Aurelio obtained little sense from him, but he waved vaguely up the valley and said, ‘Beyond the campina.’

They passed through the campina, where the cholos were growing potatoes, barley, and alfalfa in small plots, and where sheep were grazing on the slopes above, and found themselves in a lunar world of volcanic tufa, and ash which swirled and choked them every time there was a gust of wind, ever stronger and colder as they ascended.

Already the snowcaps topped the mountains around them, and riding the updraughts the condor-vultures spread their enormous wings and circled at mighty altitudes in the hope of carrion below. Somewhere from the heights above a shepherd was playing music; it was the haunting, wistful music of the Inca people, who make the quena flute from the great hollow thigh-bones of the condor, and play yavari by blowing it inside the olla, the earthenware pot that causes the notes to echo and linger with pain, with longing, and with unbounded nostalgia.

Dolores’ little girl, Raimunda, was suddenly stung painfully by a mountain scorpion, the ubiquitous alacran, and her foot swelled up while she screamed and howled with both surprise and anguish. Dolores made the child hold her foot in the icy stream, and then Sergio took her on his back, where she clung, still crying, with her arms around his neck, and her foot throbbing and pulsing as though it contained an exploding sun.

They journeyed past some of the old mining works that had been producing gold, silver, quicksilver, and lead long before the conquistadors arrived with their rapacious souls of broken glass and chipped flint and who enslaved the miners after learning from them all their secrets, paying for it with their bones. Those who looked and knew what to see could still find
the beautiful Inca pots that used to be buried with the dead, and are consequently known as ‘huacos’. They were made of a pair joined together, carefully ornamented with intricate, grotesque and skilful mouldings. They could be made in the form of animals, or ducks, and given acoustic properties so that when you poured water from one to another the sound would imitate the animals, and if there were two ducks they would make the sound of ducks fighting, so that other ducks would become alarmed and join in the clamour. The art of making these whimsical and enchanting pots is lost, and now they are found only in graves and as shards amongst the ruins of that arcane civilisation.

One might also find by the streams long-discarded porongos, the gold pans over which people would squat tirelessly sifting the silt until only the bright specks of gold remained. Where there were lodes, farallons, one could still see the narrow entrances to mines, or the places where giant vertical seams had been ripped from the mountain sides, and perhaps there would be the ruins of the great kimbaletes, huge dinosaurial machines of granite where a rocking stone would crush the ore with water and quicksilver. Everywhere there lay great piles of discarded ore awaiting the greedy hands of some new conquistador.

In the streams one might still find the ingenious run-offs and channels of the gold-farmers, who knew how to extract by the force of their own motion the flakes of gold from the sediment, and perhaps nearby there would be the pieces of the clay guayra ovens for refining, which worked without bellows because their shape caught the wind.

But it was long since that the adventurers had gone, now that rich men made money by speculating with money and not having to do real work. It was long since that one had heard the eager question in Quechua, ‘Ori cancha?’ or risked the desconfianza of the suspicious Indians and the fatal onslaughts of armed ladrones who lived by parasitism on those that worked, and slunk away to kill each other over their gains. Nowadays, nobody arrived with a mule and a pick-axe to stake
his pertenencia and work his body to ruin either to die of exhaustion or to go home rich. Nowadays, people desecrated ancient graves, and left herbs under their heads at night so that they would dream where the gold was buried, and there were no more mad adventurers whose greed was jewelled with hardship and heroism.

When that evening the multitude made their encampment, Aurelio showed people how to catch freshwater prawns by damming the stream with stakes driven into the bed, through which willow twigs were wound. A hole was left in the middle and a basket held up against it so that the water flowed through, leaving the crustaceans in the bottom, to be patiently shelled and avariciously eaten.

The animals were hobbled and given the fodder that they had carried on their backs, and the people heated food over little fires, wishing that they had tents and ponchos. Some of them amused themselves by burning patterns in their gourds with heated knives, and others told stories or sang. Many were already beginning to shake and sweat and shiver with tercianas, the mountain fever as inevitable as it is inexplicable; it can lay a man out such that he feels he is about to die, but then an hour later he feels better than ever before and walks with a new sprightliness, only to find himself cast down again so that he never felt so ‘raquitico’ in all his life.

As the fires were lit and the lowering sun blazed crimson and scarlet off the snows of the peaks, the skies turned turquoise before they darkened. The cats, inveterately nocturnal, left to hunt, and when the stars were scintillating like diamonds in the cobalt and indigo cushion of the night they returned, bringing cui and ducks, vizcacha, and wild goats for the people to eat.

‘They are quite something, these gatos,’ people said, and ate with one arm around the animals, caressing their soft ears and cheeks. In the morning the cats would be the size of pumas, but that night they huddled together for warmth, cat and human alike, and the valley echoed gently with the sibilant reverberations of purring.

GENERAL RAMIREZ HAD
recently resumed his adolescent habit of biting his nails. He had just torn a thumbnail off with his teeth and had caused the root of the nail to bleed on one side. He was enjoying chewing the nail at the same time as comforting the wound by tucking his thumb under his fingers.

He was a worried man. He had lost a staggering amount of men and equipment in the internecine dirty war, and had begun to feel a steady diminution in his power and influence. He felt that even the President did not take him seriously any more, and now there was this business with General Fuerte to worry about, as well as there being still no decision as to who would be President after the coup.

If Asado had consulted him, he would have told him to ‘disappear’ General Fuerte, but Asado, acting without orders, had taken the General straight to hospital. Every day that the General remained alive would make it harder to get rid of him, but something had to be done all the same, because he was well known to be inflexibly fair and principled, and if he were ever let out he would undoubtedly become more than an embarrassment. Ramirez knew very well that Fuerte commanded a huge loyalty in his own forces, which would, if push came to shove, obey him rather than the High Command. Ramirez had arranged for General Fuerte to be released in a week and then
obliterated in a car crash, but now there was the news that Fuerte had somehow escaped from the Villa Maravillosa, and no one knew where he had gone. He had telegraphed Valledupar, but they had said that no, the General had not returned from leave yet, and yes, they would let him know when he returned.

General Fuerte took only two days to reach the capital from Valledupar, and on the first evening’s encampment had briefed the officers in these words:

‘Gentlemen, we have before us an important mission for which speed and efficiency are of the essence, and where surprise will be the key element. It has come to the attention of the Highest Authorities that certain renegade officers acting without orders have set up a concentration, torture and extermination camp in the old officers’ wing of the Army School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering. The establishment contains both civilian and military of all services who are being tortured to death in a manner which you will unfortunately see for yourselves. Our orders are simply to arrest the renegade officers and bring out the prisoners. Fortunately we can expect little or no armed resistance, but no one should hesitate to shoot to kill if that occurs.

‘No special tactics will be required; we will simply walk into the place and overwhelm them with numbers. I shall lead the men in, and your job will be to ascertain as rapidly as possible the layout of the place, neutralise all opposition with the minimum of bloodshed, and commence evacuation.

‘Gentlemen, you have been chosen for this mission because you are considered the best, most reliable, and most honourable troops in the country. The importance of this mission should be underlined for you by the fact that it is being led by a General and not by a Comandante or a Lieutenant-Colonel.

‘Gentlemen, I apologise for lack of details in the plan. Unfortunately the plan of the building has not been obtainable, but I want Number One Platoon to be responsible for guarding the renegades under close arrest. Number Two Platoon should concern itself with bringing out those prisoners who are unable
to move on their own and laying them as carefully as possible in the empty trucks. Number Three Platoon should gather together those who can still walk, and prepare them for the journey back to Valledupar, by which I mean that they should be washed, clothed and fed, using what can be found on the premises. The prisoners will be terrified and disorientated and you must ensure that they are treated gently, courteously, and calmly. Number Four Platoon will take responsibility for preventing the entry at the gate of anyone who is not driving a Ford Falcon. These latter should be allowed in and then arrested, with force if necessary. Needless to say, the platoon should also ensure that nobody leaves.

‘Gentlemen, you may dismiss to brief your platoons. Tell your men that the honour of the National Army is at stake and that I have every confidence in the Portachuelo Guards.’

The following evening the convoy halted in the wilderness of the Incarama Park and encamped in the gloomy ruins of El Escorial, next to the Temple of Viracocha. The General imparted to the officers revisions and improvements to his plans, and then went out to smoke a puro under the stars. Smoking puros was a habit he had picked up amongst the guerrilleros, and he began to cast his mind back over the months he had spent with them. He remembered with half a smile his fervent arguments with Father Garcia, and thought of something he should have said to him. He pictured himself saying, ‘There is nothing at all wrong with our laws and institutions and our constitution, which are all democratic and enlightened. What is wrong is that they are not enforced, by people who do not consider themselves bound by them.’ The General kicked a stone into a shrub and watched bats the size of hawks wheeling and veering among the ruins. He laughed to himself: ‘I have become a kind of guerrilla myself. I have soldiers who are not strictly under my command, I am acting without the permission of General Ramirez.’ He pictured his Commander-in-Chief in his imagination, and thought, ‘I never esteemed that man anyway. He is not a soldier, he is a politician. I wonder if Remedios would have praised what I am
doing. Or would she resent me for stealing her thunder?’ He returned to his bed-roll and lay turning over his plans in his head until he fell asleep to dream of Heliconius butterflies.