The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts (7 page)

So much for what the General loved; what he loathed was
Communism, which to him was a word so broad and hazy of definition that one might describe it as meaningless. That is, to him a Communist was anyone who wished to rock the boat so much that people fell out of it or got splashed. To a peace-loving and contented man, who loved his country and found life to be unfailingly interesting, random assassinations and economic sabotage seemed both brutal and stupid. ‘Why,’ he would ask, ‘if they are for the people, do they blow up bridges and railways built for the benefit of the people? Why do they slaughter their patrones so that all the fincas go to ruin through mismanagement? Why do they not work for change from within, rather than try to impose it from without, by violence?’

The problem, of course, was twofold. One was that like even the guerrillas themselves, the General knew next to nothing of what the theory of Communism was. It did not worry him that the ideology was atheist for example, because he had no sympathy for the church himself, and it did not worry the guerrillas either, who still prayed to the angels before battle and asked spirits for advice on tactics. It did not worry him that the guerrillas wanted land-reform, because he thought that that would be a good thing. What worried and angered him was that his soldiers were being shot at by ruffians with foreign weapons and bushy beards, who spoke only in slogans.

He also knew that Communism was the opposite of the American system, and it was the American system that he wanted for his country; good highways, a good diet, a car for everyone, new hospitals, political stability. He had been to the USA and found the people decent, honourable and hospitable, and he therefore dismissed as irritatingly crass propaganda all the stories he had heard about CIA shenanigans, about the way that for every two pesos lent three pesos went out as interest, about US corporations sucking out the resources of the country. It did not seem to him at all credible.

What he did believe, however, was what he read in the newspapers, what he heard from high-ranking officers, government ministers and his acquaintances among the US military about what slavery the Communists wished to impose
upon the free world. And why should he not believe this? No one had ever given him any reasons to believe otherwise, and this leads us on to the second half of our twofold problem.

This was, that being a general removed him as a matter of course from the front line; that is, he had no reason not to believe in the literal truth of reports sent in by people such as Capitan Rodrigo Figueras. As far as he was concerned there was no evidence that such men were not strictly honourable and competent, and even if there were any evidence he always had to consider the possibility that it was Communist propaganda. He had been told that the Communists frequently murdered the peasants in order to blame it on the military. Additionally, coming as he did from a respectable family in Cucuta, he had seen the poverty and humiliation of others with his own eyes but never with his heart, as he had never experienced them himself. Consequently, he had no clear idea of the very personal reasons that guerrillas came up with for taking up arms.

Neither, as it happens, did the few Cuban agitators and military experts who had slipped into the country to infiltrate the labour movement and the bands of guerrillas. They came over with their heads full of ideals and theories about armed propaganda, the dictatorship of the proletariat, jungle tactics and the opiate of the masses, only to be baffled, amazed and disgusted by the guerrillas’ superstitions, unclarity of purpose, habit of going home for harvests and fiestas, inability (or rather, refusal) to organise, lack of interest in theory of any kind, and their odd reasons for fighting (the patron would not lend me fifty pesos, the patron shot my dog, in Venezuela they are paid better, I want to be able to go to France and they will not give me a passport because I have no birth certificate which means I have not yet been born and I want the right to be born). Most often, however, the guerrillas were fighting because some were too rich and everyone else too poor, and because they had become victims in some way of the Army’s random hooliganism. It was enough for them to know what they were fighting against; they did not need advice about what they were fighting for, or how to set about it.

General Carlo Maria Fuerte did at least know what he was fighting for, but today he was planning his leave, a very easy matter for him since he was in charge of all dispensations in the area. He was going to take a donkey, his military pack full of provisions, his service revolver for protection, his binoculars and his camera, to look for humming-birds in the Sierra. In his pocket, to put himself in the right mood, was a copy of Hudson’s
Idle Days in Patagonia.

DON EMMANUEL MAY
have been the obvious and logical choice as emissary to Dona Constanza, but he was a long way from being the best. This was because, ever since someone had told him in an ‘old-boy-just-a-word-in-your-ear’ manner that his Spanish was unacceptably vulgar, especially in his choice of adverbs, adjectives and common nouns, he had adopted a style of speech when talking to influential and respectable people which consisted partly of his customarily outrageous bluntness, and partly of that elaborate courtesy which one finds in medieval romances. The not entirely unintended effect was that of extreme sarcasm, and his reputation as an outstanding boor was thereby greatly enhanced, more especially as he never tried to abandon or modify his peasant’s accent.

His customary mode of conveyance was an unfortunate bay horse with a white blaze on its forehead that had earned it the unromantic name of ‘Careta’. The beast was unfortunate firstly in that, although Don Emmanuel was a fit and strong man, he had a very large belly as tight as a drum which contributed an unreasonable quantum of extra kilos to the horse’s load. Secondly the horse was a pasero, which in this case does not mean a ferryman but a horse which has been carefully trained not to trot but to move at a steady, undulating lope. This was the one pace at which Don Emmanuel never rode it, so it had
not only a sagging back, but also the depressed, irritated and frustrated air of a natural artist whom financial straits have reduced to taking a job as a bank clerk. The horse always breathed in hard when its master tightened its cinturon, and would stop in the middle of the river in order to exhale so that the girth would loosen and Don Emmanuel would fall off sideways. Don Emmanuel was very proud of his horse on account of this trick, and always quoted it as irrefutable proof that a horse can have a sense of humour. However, he took to waiting for the horse to breathe out before tightening the cinturon, and Careta became probably the only horse in the world to have discovered for itself some of the techniques of Hatha yoga.

Don Emmanuel rode his dispirited pasero through the only street of the pueblo, raising little plumes of dust that were caught up and whirled away by the dancing dust-devils, and wishing ‘Buena’ dia’!’ in the customary nasal drawl to everyone he saw. He passed the three brothels with concrete floors, the little shop that sold machetes, alcohol, contraceptives, and the huge avocados that little boys stole from his own trees; he passed a small field of maize, Profesor Luis’ creaking little windmill that generated electricity, and turned left up the track to Dona Constanza’s hacienda, all the while thinking of things he could say to irritate her.

Dona Constanza looked out of her window, where she had been reading a copy of
Vogue
that was already three years old, and witnessed his arrival with a fascinated mixture of dread and excitement. She watched him tie his horse to the lemon tree, his torso bare and his trousers hanging from halfway down his buttocks, and challenged herself to remain cool and dignified in the face of this impending trial of her patience.

Her maid, an unprepossessing and clumsy mulatta who affected oligarchic manners, ushered him into Dona Constanza’s room and waited to be dismissed.

‘Dona Constanza,’ said Don Emmanuel, ‘it is a sign of the exquisite times in which we live that a lady’s maid may be as lovely as her mistress!’

The maid flushed with pleasure, and her mistress flinched visibly. ‘Don Emmanuel, you are as charming as ever. Now, as I am very busy, as you see, perhaps you would tell me the purpose of your visit?’

Don Emmanuel made a show of scrutinising the degree of her industriousness and bowed, removing his straw sombrero with a flourish, ‘Madame will forgive me for not perceiving her busyness. It is a sign of the highest breeding to be able to be busy whilst appearing idle to the uninformed observer.’

Her mouth tightened and her eyes flashed before she regained her composure. ‘Senor is full of signs today. Now what is the purpose of your visit?’

‘It has come to my ears, dear lady, that you intend to divert with a canal the very river which waters my land and that of the campesinos in order to replenish your piscina. I must say, as I know you appreciate frankness, that I and the local people will be fucked, buggered and immersed in guano of the finest Ecuadorean provenance before we permit such a thing to occur.’

‘The permission,’ she rallied, her temper rising almost immediately beyond control, ‘is not yours or theirs to grant. I will do as I wish with the water on my land.’

‘I appeal,’ said Don Emmanuel, ‘to your highly-developed social conscience and to your concern for my nether parts.’

‘Your nether parts?’ she repeated with astonishment.

‘Indeed, Senora. In the dry season the Mula is the only water where I may rinse the dingleberries from my nether parts.’

‘Dingleberries!’ she exclaimed with mounting outrage.

‘Dingleberries,’ he said, assuming a professorial air, ‘are the little balls of fluff that appear in one’s underwear and sometimes entwine themselves in one’s pubic hair. Frequently they are of a grey colour and woolly texture.’

Dona Constanza oscillated between amazement and fury before remarking icily, ‘Indeed I should bear in mind your nether parts, as you call them, for I hear they often are found in the most unsavoury places.’

‘Indeed,’ said Don Emmanuel, ‘it is often most unsavoury
between one’s legs, which is their usual location, as a lady of your wide experience will doubtless know, and this is why I appeal to you . . .’

But Dona Constanza was already leaving, and Don Emmanuel was already aware that he had allowed himself to fail in his mission out of perversity. He rode home with a heavy heart.

So it was that under Don Emmanuel’s and Hectoro’s secret supervision Sergio and his men began to dig a canal, for Dona Constanza had absolutely refused to consider any of the more sensible and less disastrous alternatives, her one purpose now being to annoy Don Emmanuel.

They started to pretend to dig a very shallow canal from the swimming pool end with the intention of routing it the longest possible way. For three months Dona Constanza watched the peasants, their muscles gleaming with perspiration, slaving with enormous energy and achieving almost no progress with their picks and spades. When she saw that the canal was both too shallow and heading in the wrong direction she issued instructions to dig it deeper and to take the most direct route to the Mula. Sergio told her that the Mula was lower at that point and that ‘We cannot make the water flow uphill.’

‘Kindly do as I ask,’ was all she said.

So the canal was started again and dug about ten centimetres deeper at a prodigiously slow rate of progress. When it was half complete the rainy season began, the Mula flooded over its usual flood-plain, work ceased, and when the water had receded and the mosquitoes had disappeared, the canal was full of silt, small stones, and tree trunks. Not only this, but the Mula had diverted itself into its other bed two hundred metres further over, as it often did. In between the two beds was a huge outcrop of solid pink rock.

Dona Constanza was undeterred, but the campesinos were elated that she would continue to pay them at above the standard rate to work at a project that had no prospects of completion before the end of the world. When a further six months of toil had elapsed it became clear that Sergio had
fortuitously been in the right and the dry bed of the Mula was indeed too low even if it had carried any water. Dona Constanza instructed Sergio to dig the canal deeper, and reasoned that next year the Mula might change course back into its previous bed. Profesor Luis arrived with poles and pieces of string and calculated that at the swimming pool end, the canal would have to be four and a half metres deep, and at about the same time Sergio and his men discovered that beneath the depth of one and a half metres there were massive boulders of the same indestructible pink rock as the outcrop between the beds, at which point Dona Constanza had a brainwave.

The bulldozer took one month to arrive from Asuncion, two hundred kilometres away. It was not just that the machine was slow, which it was, nor that the roads were appalling, which they were; it was simply that the driver was easily bribed into doing all sorts of lucrative little oddjobs along the way, especially as he revelled in the people’s admiration for the awesomeness of the feats that his beloved machine could perform with magical ease. He gave free demonstrations to interested knots of people who never tired of seeing trees pulled over to no purpose, and huge fearsome bulls dragged along by a rope around the horns despite their having their hooves firmly planted against the soil and all their muscles straining. Halfway to the pueblo he had to turn back to Asuncion to fetch more diesel.

When the bulldozer finally arrived it immediately began to make triumphantly easy work of the canal, so much so that Don Emmanuel became alarmed and took to leaving bottles of aguardiente near the machine every evening. He also told Sergio to tell everyone in the village to be very generous every time the driver came into it after dark. The driver took on a haggard and bilious mien, work began later and finished sooner, and Dona Constanza threatened the man with imprisonment, which was hardly an idle threat, since all magistrates without exception would find someone guilty of something in return for a gratuity. Doing one’s civic duty was therefore both an honourable and profitable burden, and posts
were eagerly sought and sedulously canvassed for with the aid of banknotes, usually in the form of US dollars.