The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts (45 page)

Then they would lie together on the bed exchanging caresses until it was possible to proceed to the next phase, in which she would straddle his lap with her arms about his neck, endeavouring to stimulate solely by voluntary contractions of the vagina. She eventually became very adept at this, and they would be able to continue for two or three hours, gazing in complete silence into each other’s eyes until they were quite hypnotised, communing with their Higher Selves, attaining peaks of ecstasy, obtaining knowledge of God, imagining that they were Isis and Osiris, and strongly visualising a reduction in the national debt.

In this version of the rite they forbade themselves to achieve a climax or even to desire one, because this would make it possible to protract the ritual indefinitely, because it was good for building up magical energy, and because like that one could repeat the rite endlessly without become ennervated.

This procedure produced in them an extraordinary sensation of energy and well-being, and was so delicious and exalting that the President found himself neglecting affairs of state altogether and painting pictures of the angels that he had encountered in his hypnogogic visions. He was also very pleased with himself because being obliged not to reach orgasm
had cured him of the impotence caused by the old man’s terror of never coming at all. Nowadays he had to have a pre-arranged signal with his wife to prevent her skilful contractions causing him to be carried away on the wave’s crest.

Having perfected this mystical rite, they proceeded to the third degree, which was identical, up to a point, with the second. The difference was that after two or three hours the couple were to allow their massively pent up desires to explode simultaneously into cataclysmic climax, during the ecstacies of which they were to visualise as powerfully as possible the reductions of the national debt.

However, it was not quite as easy in practice as it was in theory. The first time they did indeed manage to incandesce with divine fire at exactly the same moment, but it was so overwhelming that they both forgot to visualise the ‘magical child’ of reducing the debt.

The second time the President arrived at his destination before his wife, and was too annoyed with himself to visualise properly. The third time he could not arrive at all, because he lost his concentration and his state of exalted bliss in trying not to repeat the fiasco of the second attempt.

On the fourth attempt, however, everything proceeded perfectly according to alchemical purpose and they sat entwined, quivering, trembling, and thrilling in mystical ecstacy for what felt like hours on the borderline between pleasurable pain and painful pleasure. They saw angels fanning them with their wings, the bed levitated itself into the air and revolved as it hovered, a window broke into shards with a sharp report, the door opened and closed of itself, they felt the kiss of God on their fevered brows, and they visualised with great clarity the vaults of the treasury overflowing with gold.

When it was over the bed returned gently to its proper position and the exhausted and inspired couple collapsed sideways in each other’s arms amid yelps and tormented gasps. ‘Daddikins!’ exclaimed the President’s wife. ‘O Daddikins!’ And they both fell into a blissful slumber that preceded many happy months of creating poltergeist effects, states of Holy Bliss, and vivid pictures of national solvency.

Every day His Excellency would call for a Treasury report and peruse it for signs of the birth of the magical child. He noted with satisfaction that a Caribbean hurricane had raised the price of bananas and tropical fruit, and that the coffee harvest had not been ruined by rains as in the previous year. He watched the debt gradually reduce itself to $50,000,000.

All the same he was not convinced that the alchemy was responsible for this limited result, and his faith in it, despite the assurances of the Foreign Secretary, was beginning to diminish. Then his expedition to find El Dorado returned to give him the happy news that their engineer had discovered a new deposit of emeralds in the Sierra whilst collecting birds’ eggs.

Having learned the lessons of history the President did not sell the commission to the North Americans, but set up a State Mining Company with government credit. In order to attempt to obviate the appalling and inevitable corruption and inefficiency that would result from such a project he decided to appoint a military officer of undoubted integrity and patriotism to run it. He had just sent the telegram to General Fuerte in Cesar when he received a cable from Valledupar that General Fuerte had been assassinated during the night.

Despondent and frustrated, he went to visit his wife, who had been in bed all day with stomach cramps which he thought must be due to their supernatural alchemical exertions. He was met in the corridor by his wife’s lady-in-waiting, who was screaming hysterically and crossing herself with the rapidity of a machine-gun and the fervour of Saint Catherine. Unable to get any sense out of her even by slapping and shaking her, he entered his wife’s chamber to find her cooing over a small furry black bundle that was suckling at her breast whilst pressing rhythmically against it with its paws.

She looked up as he entered and smiled coyly. ‘Look Daddikins,’ she pouted. ‘I did not even know I was pregnant, and I’ve just had a little baby. Isn’t it sweet?’

His hands behind his back, he bent over and scrutinised the new arrival. He straightened up and pursed his lips.

‘Are you sure that I am the father?’ he said. ‘It appears to be a cat.’

GENERAL CARLO MARIA FUERTE
had taken every precaution; he had immediately despatched the Portachuelo Guards back to their bases on the remote mountain borders, and had ensured that the Brigadier was the man who signed all orders and directives emanating from Valledupar. None the less, General Ramirez heard on the military grapevine, as one day he was bound to, that General Fuerte had reappeared in Cesar and had resumed his duties. He sent General Fuerte a telegram congratulating him on his recovery, and adding that he had personally dealt with the renegade officers who had imprisoned and mistreated him. Then he arranged for an assassination, to be blamed on the left wing, and wrote a letter to the
New York Herald
denouncing as forgeries the documents that they had been publishing. He drafted a resignation note to the President, re-read it many times as he wrenched off his nails with his teeth, and then tore it up.

General Fuerte knew what he should expect, and doubled the security around the base. However, he resented the curtailments to his own freedom, and still went on his walks with his huge cat (which could now only get one paw through the catflap) and sometimes with Capitan Papagato and his four cats.

The two men had grown to be good friends, despite their great differences in age and in rank. It was not just that both men
were besotted with their animals, nor that Fuerte was grateful that Papagato had cared for Maria and her improbable progeny. It was more that they both shared a kind of weariness and sensitivity.

General Fuerte had reached exactly that time of life when a man wonders whether his life has been worth anything, whether anything has been achieved, and whether he really wants to continue as he is. He had been wondering what he might have missed during his long love-affair and marriage to the Army, and whether there was not somewhere a fresher and better way of life with which to round off his days on earth.

Capitan Papagato on the other hand was twenty-eight years old, and was already feeling that youth had slipped away unnoticed, consumed by regulations, form-filling, drills, mess-days, mess-dinners, training periods with the Americans in Panama, and haranguing unwilling and illiterate conscripts. He was feeling unfulfilled, and was terrified of a life stretching forward relentlessly into a vacuum of shadows.

‘I have been thinking of resigning my commission, General,’ he said one day when they were out walking on the savannah.

‘Indeed?’ responded the General. ‘I too have been thinking of doing the same thing. I would like to disappear and start again somewhere.’

‘You surprise me, General; I thought you would want to stay forever, and would try to persuade me to stay as well.’

‘A few months ago that would have been my reaction, before my mission.’

‘Pardon me, General, but none of us know what that mission was. Are you able to divulge it?’

‘Unfortunately not, Capitan, it is highly confidential.’

They walked in silence, hands behind their backs like officers inspecting a parade. ‘Look!’ said the General. ‘A peccary!’

They watched the little animal saunter away at their approach, and the General said, ‘I intend to leave next week. I want to go on a long expedition to taxonomise the animals of the Sierra, as I have done with the butterflies and to some extent with the humming-birds.’

‘An expedition, General? Ah!’ The Capitan screwed up his courage. ‘Forgive the impertinence, General, but may I accompany you? I would be most interested.’

To the Capitan’s relief and surprise the General seemed very taken with the idea, ‘But you know, Capitan, that in the army one must give six months’ notice of resignation. To leave before then is desertion. I cannot condone a crime.’

‘Have you given six months’ notice?’ asked the Capitan.

‘No, I have to admit that I have not, but I have persuaded the Chief Medical Officer to pronounce me unfit for service, so I will cede command next Wednesday and receive confirmation of retirement in six months’ time. I am effectively a free man.’

‘General!’ exclaimed the Capitan. ‘Why not dismiss me?’

‘Dismiss you? What on earth for?’

‘Anything!’

‘The choice is insanity, homosexuality, dishonourable conduct, unsuitability for the service . . .’

‘Insanity, General, I choose insanity. After all I have four cats and have changed my name to Papagato!’

‘I will speak with the Chief Medical Officer,’ promised the General, ‘and he is required to interview you. I advise you to take your cats with you and talk gibberish.’

‘Oh, thank you General! Indeed I thank you!’

‘Think nothing of it, Capitan. I would welcome your company on my expedition; I do this for purely non-military and selfish reasons.’

The Capitan shook the General’s hand vigorously, his eyes flashing with good humour and delight. ‘I shall be quite insane for a week!’

‘Not so insane,’ replied the General, ‘that you forget to buy a burro and pack together all you need for the journey. Leave everything else with the Quartermaster, so that you can claim it later.’

On the following Tuesday night, having packed up all he needed into sacks for Maria to carry, the General left his quarters to take a little paseo in the town, dressed in civilian clothes and sporting a battered straw sombrero. This had been
his disguise for eavesdropping on conversations in bars, where he would hear the local populace complaining bitterly about the corruption of officials. He had dismissed many from office as a result of this simple expedient.

This night, however, corruption was far from his mind, and he was scenting in advance the balmy air of liberty. He had left a will bequeathing all his effects to the Patriotic Union of Ex-Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen, and the contents of his strongbox in the bank vault at Asuncion to the Library of Berkeley University, California, where he had once delivered a talk to the Department of Contemporary History on the subject of la Violencia. He was fully intending to leave a suicide note in his room, and had already composed it in his mind, ‘I cannot live with myself any more. I am going to drown myself.’ But later that evening, he was walking home when at the side of the road he stumbled over something yielding but heavy, and barely saved himself from falling. He pulled out his flashlight and passed the beam over the recumbent body. It was El Gandul, a local drunk whose idleness and scrounging way of life had also earned him the soubriquet of ‘El Cucarachero’. His real name was unknown, nobody knew where he came from, and twice before he had been injured from falling over in the road and sinking into an alcoholic stupor. This time something heavy had run over his head, squashing his face into the stones so that it was an unpleasant, bloody, and unrecognisable mess. The General noted that the indigent vagabond was just the right height and build, and pushed him into the bushes, hoping that he could return with a jeep before the body was found by dogs or vultures.

He carried the body into his quarters and undressed it, trying not to look at the ghastly disfigurement of the face. He dressed the body in his army issue underwear (khaki green, cotton, officers for the use of), which he never wore himself, and heaved it into his bed. That night he slept in a camp-bed on the porch, preferring rather to be bitten by mosquitoes than to share the house with the stiffening derelict alcoholic.

In the morning he went to the armoury and drew, on his own
authority, a delayed-timing explosive device, filling in in triplicate the requisite form. Under ‘intended use’ he wrote ‘counter-insurgency’. The device was equipped with a simple twenty-four-hour clock with a red arrow to point to ‘time of detonation’ and a white hour hand to be set in advance to the correct time. He read the instructions carefully:

Read these instructions
before
performing any operations on the device.

1. Check that button marked ‘set’ is pushed IN.
   
2. Set white hour hand to correct time.
   
3. Set red arrow to desired time of detonation.
   
4. Pull SET Button OUT. The device is now
   activated
   and should
   not
   be readjusted unless SET button is pushed back IN first.
   
5. Under no circumstances proceed in any order or manner other than here described.
   

The General set the device for three o’clock the following morning, and left it under his bed.

He set about packing his few possessions into Maria’s baggage sacks. He took two changes of clothing, two pairs of combat boots, his medals, ten packs of army-issue survival rations, water-sterilisation pills, mosquito repellent, binoculars, compass, revolver, army survey maps, a copy of his book
Picaflores de la Cordillera y de la Sierra Nevada
, several notebooks, washing things, towels, a camp-bed, a sleeping bag, a large water bottle, a crucifix given to him by his mother, and a new copy of W. H. Hudson’s
Idle Days in Patagonia
, which he had not read last time because he had forgotten to ask Father Garcia to give it back. Thinking that he had forgotten something essential, he turned his room upside-down until he had added to his baggage a first-aid kit, a machete, four boxes of ammunition, and a pair of scissors. He stood in the middle of his room wondering whether or not to steal his army rifle, and then unlocked the strong-box under his bed and took it out. He fetched the slide from the other strong-box in the living room,
and sat on his bed to assemble it. He oiled it carefully and pushed the slide back and forth to check its action. He took his pull-through, a roll of cleaning lint and a can of gun-oil, rolled them into a cloth, and put them in his baggage. He mounted a sling on the rifle and checked that it was comfortably adjusted.