Capitan Papagato, who was at that time just beginning his romance with the young and beautiful Francesca, changed the bambuco and vallenato records on the gramophone that Professor Luis had rigged up to his windmill, and managed to kiss Francesca a great many times in between. The last unbeliever, General Fuerte, who was thought to be dead but had in fact deserted the army, decided during the fiesta to collect observations about his countrymen with the same thoroughness and objectivity as he had always displayed in collecting information about his country’s butterflies and hummingbirds. He wandered about with a notebook, followed by his huge cat, collecting anthropological data about alcoholic consumption and patterns of promiscuity. He jotted down an exchange that he heard between Don Emmanuel and the voluptuous Felicidad.
Don Emmanuel had said, ‘I believe in that proverb that a man cannot make love to every woman in the world, but he ought to try.’ Felicidad had laughed her inimitably wanton laugh and replied, ‘A woman has more sense; she knows when she has found the best lover in the world, and she stays with him.’
‘You have never stayed with anyone.’
Felicidad smiled and said, ‘But no one can accuse me of not looking very hard.’
General Fuerte wrote down, ‘I have never really noticed before, while I was in the army, but truly this country is one huge bed of love.’
15 A Joke, Another Warning, And An Unexpected Bonus For Jerez
ANICA HAD BEEN plotting to give Dionisio a joke present ever since he had given her a perfume bottle which in fact contained a substance that smelled of dogfart.
She went to a crazy old Indian who earned a living by carving perfect representations of different kinds of turds out of clay, which he then glazed and fired, and sold on a tray not far from Madame Rosa’s. Then she went to a shop of medicines and bought a child’s fingerstall in transparent rubber. This she rolled up and placed in a tiny little box. On the box she wrote ‘Para mi Amigo pequeño’, and then she wrapped it carefully in green tissue.
She came round and stood in Dionisio’s room, and said, ‘Look, I have got you a present.’ By the way that she was trying not to smile, he knew that something suspicious was going on, and he said ‘OK, this is a joke?’ She grinned her huge grin despite trying not to, and said, ‘Open and see.’
He tugged at the wrapping, and found the small red box. ‘For my little friend,’ he read. Then he opened it and found what appeared to be an extraordinarily small condom nestling in the cotton wool. ‘Oh, bastarda, really it is not so small as that. You are a rat, and . . .’ but he was lost for words, and he pretended to pummel her in the stomach while she put her hands on her hips and laughed.
‘I do not mean it,’ she said.
‘No one has ever complained,’ he announced, pretending to be offended, and putting on a childish pout. ‘I have not either,’ she said, putting her arms around him, ‘I am very pleased with it.’
‘You should know,’ said Dionisio, ‘that all over the world every little boy is born with a measure in his sweaty little hand. Now you have destroyed my confidence.’
‘Well, now you should stop calling me “Bugsita” just because I have big teeth, OK? Listen, I nearly forgot, my father gave me a little note to give to you.’
He was astonished. ‘Your father?’ He took the envelope and opened it. It was written in a copperplate hand in brown ink, on very fine quality paper. There was no greeting:
I have heard that you are a very fine young man, albeit with some unusual opinions, and I have noted how much happier my daughter has been since she has known you. Most fathers would have intervened by now to forbid their daughter any further contact, because I am well aware that Anica is keeping unacceptably irregular hours, and is alone with you unchaperoned in a manner that a few years ago would have caused a great scandal.
However, I have tried to be a ‘modern’ father to my daughters, and I do not interfere with their free-will even though I disapprove of most of what they do and say and believe. I do not interfere because I suffered too greatly with the interference of my own family, who nearly prevented me from marrying Anica’s mother. I will not put myself between you, also, because it causes me great delight to see Anica happy for the first time since her mother’s death.
But I must warn you that certain people have approached me, and that I am certain that your life is imperilled. I tell you this in the strictest confidence, and you must not tell anyone under any circumstances that I have given you this information, not even Anica. As you are with Anica for much of the time, it goes without saying that I am terrified on her behalf in case she becomes an incidental victim of whatever is going to happen. I beg you for her sake to take care, and to cease to meddle in affairs which are beyond your power to comprehend in their entirety. She has told me about the time that you nearly killed two thieves who threatened you both, but you must know that physical courage will not be enough to save you from these people.’
‘What does it say?’ asked Anica. Dionisio fumbled in his mind for something that would put her off completely: ‘He wants to know my opinion as professor of Secular Philosophy on St Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God.’
‘Ay,’ she exclaimed. ‘That stinks. Please do not explain it to me.’
‘Please tell your father that I have noted very carefully what he says, and that I will think about it with the utmost seriousness.’
‘Listen, we have to go to Janita’s because my Norton is there, and I cannot make it go at all.’
Anica’s ‘Norton’ was a very old two-stroke moped to which some previous owner had fixed an incongruous fuel tank from an old Norton. It looked most bizarre, but it was very practical because the moped used almost no fuel and the tank was enormous, which meant that it hardly ever had to be filled up. Unaware that Jerez was still in the house, Dionisio took some tools, and locked the door as they left.
The two roadblockers were turning housebreaker. Similarly unaware that Jerez was still in the house, fast asleep after a night of heavy marijuana smoking, they broke down the front door with a crash. Jerez awoke with a jump, heard the men careering up the stairs, and with great presence of mind hid himself in his cupboard. The two men seemed to know which room was Dionisio’s, for they were in and out of it and back down the stairs in a flash.
When Jerez was sure that they were gone, he crept out of the cupboard and very carefully opened the door of Dionisio’s room, because he suspected the possibility of a bomb. There was only a sack on the bed, with a note pinned to it. It was a parody of the warning on the side of cigarette packets: ‘Las Autoridades Sanitarias advierten que: PARTICIPAR EN UNA CRUZADA PERJUDICA SERIAMENTE LA SALUD.’ In smaller writing it said, ‘Dinero, es mejor.’ Jerez read this to himself very slowly, out loud: ‘The health authorities advise that crusading can seriously damage your health. Money is better.’
Jerez felt the sack, and realised that it contained wads of banknotes. He opened the sack, and found that in it were more pesos than Dionisio could have earned in two entire lifetimes of teaching secular philosophy. He sat on the bed for an hour with his head in his hands, and could not think of a single reason why anyone should ever know that he had taken it. So he took it. He hid it in the same cupboard in which he had hidden himself.
It was Anica who pointed out that the door had been kicked off its lock, and Dionisio ran upstairs, fully expecting to find some kind of catastrophe. But instead he found Jerez with his feet on the table eating his way through a sancocho. ‘I am sorry about the door,’ he said, ‘I forgot my keys and I was desperate to get in for a shit.’
‘I always said we should hide a key in the garden,’ remarked Dionisio. He went to his room and, while looking for something else, found a few pesos under a book on the table. He came back with them triumphantly, and suggested that they all go and get some fried cassava and some Mexican burritos from the shop down the hill.
Later on, back at the house, Jerez came in and found the lovers wrapped in each other’s
arms on the couch. ‘You two never give up, do you,’ he said. ‘Do you never stop?’ Anica stood up and straightened her clothing, and Jerez said, ‘Would it not be funny if you two got married? You could put all your names together: “Montes Sosa Vivo Moreno.” It sounds good.’
Anica pulled a face, perhaps of pain, perhaps of pleasure, and said, ‘Who said anything about marriage?’ Dionisio began to think about it.
Jerez pretended that he had to go away for a long time on an assignment, and he disappeared with some of the bag of money. He went to Rio and Caracas and gambled some of it, and spent the rest on the highest-class and most expensive whores he could find. He returned with the most intractable cocktail of venereal diseases that the doctors at the clinic had ever encountered, and they forbade him to sleep with a woman for six months at the very least. He decided to wait until Dionisio was dead before he spent the rest of it. Like everyone else he believed that this would happen sooner rather than later.
So Dionisio never had the chance to test on himself his psychological theory of bribery, which was that anyone could be corrupted by being offered a sum that exceeded their annual income by a factor of ten, and he carried on writing the coca letters. But that night he noticed a turd on the stairs, and wondered how on earth a cat had got in.
16 Memos
(a)
FROM: Headquarters, Central Intelligence Agency.
TO: Headquarters, Central Intelligence Agency, Hispano-American Division
Please assess reality of recent threat by coca cartels to blow up all US nuclear installations near to civilian populations, and recent offer of one billion dollars on the head of the president unless the policy of extradition is discontinued.
(b)
FROM: The Office of His Excellency, President Veracruz
TO: Pablo Ecobandodo, Ipasueño
What contribution to the paying off of the National Debt may be expected in return for concessions on the part of the National Government?
(c)
Dear President,
Are you loco? We do what we want, and this isn’t Colombia. Go fuck yourself.
Pablo Ecobandodo.
(d)
FROM: Club Hojas
TO: Pablo Ecobandodo, Ipasueño
We regret that your application for membership of our prestigious club has been turned down by our admissions committee. We advise that you read a copy of La Prensa from the fifth of May of this year. There you will find a letter from Dionisio Vivo, now an honorary member of this club, in which he states clearly why ‘the oligarchy’ should not allow a fifth column to be formed within its ranks. The committee particularly regrets your threats of violence in the event of refusal, your offers of financial inducements, and your suggestion that the club should provide gratis the use of prostitutes to its members.
(e)
FROM: PE
TO: El Guacamayo and El Chiquitin
Arrange for Club Hojas to be blown up God’s own asshole.
Buy the land and build a new Club Hojas twice as big.
Don’t admit any members from the old club.
Get plenty of girls and put them in it.
Do it quick.
(f)
FROM: The Office of His Excellency, President Veracruz
TO: The Ministry of Agriculture
Is it true what Dionisio Vivo says in the letter of the twenty-sixth of June, that the rural economy has collapsed because of the coca trade and that we are now net importers of food? If so, please calculate the financial loss to the state revenue.
(g)
TO: Rodrigo
FROM: Me
Please deal with this memo from the president’s office. I can’t stand his Vivomania anymore.
(h)
FROM: The Office of His Excellency, President Veracruz
TO: The Ministry of Justice
Is it true what Dionisio Vivo says, that our murder rate is now almost as bad as Washington DC, and that this is because of the coca trade? Is it true that this is discouraging foreign investment and destroying the tourist industry?
(i)
FROM: The Ministry of Justice
TO: The Office of His Excellency, President Veracruz
Regrettably, Your Excellency, the answer to both your questions is ‘yes’. We beg you once more to declare a state of emergency.
(j)
FROM: The Office of His Excellency, President Veracruz
TO: The Office of The President of the United States of America
Please find enclosed a copy of a letter by the famous Dionisio Vivo, in which he argues that the coca trade in this country is the direct consequence of rural underemployment and general lack of industrialisation, as a result of which people can only achieve a decent standard of living by engaging in dishonest trading in coca. Please note that he conclusively argues that the solution to this problem lies in a massive programme of foreign investment in the creation of new industries that will give full employment at a decent wage. You will note that in his judgement an investment of a minimum of ten billion dollars will be necessary.
(k)
FROM: The Office of His Excellency, President Veracruz
TO: Pablo Ecobandodo, Ipasueño
His Excellency cordially invites you to an informal meeting at the Presidential palace at your convenience, in order to discuss matters of mutual interest.
(l)
FROM: Cordoba University, Department of Genetic Research
TO: His Excellency, President Veracruz
We wish to confirm with you that it really is your intention to get us to examine tissue from a large black cat, with a view to determining whether or not it really is your daughter.
(m)
FROM: The Office of His Excellency, President Veracruz
TO: The Ministry of Information
Please forward all files on Pablo Ecobandodo (El Jerarca) of Ipasueño to this office.
(n)
FROM: The Ministry of Information
To: The Office of His Excellency the President
His Excellency is to be reminded that he abolished this Ministry two months ago.
17 Mythologising And Making Love
DIONISIO SEALED THE envelope of his latest coca letter, addressed it, and took it down to the post-office, only to find that he had been pre-empted by the destruction of the latter. In the early morning a bomb had removed its front external wall, and a notice pinned to the broken doorjamb announced that the service would temporarily be relocated in the town hall. When he arrived there he found that the postmaster was going about his business with his usual inflexible sang-froid. ‘Hola, Dionisio, and how is the Pythagoras of Ipasueño?’
‘He is perturbed,’ he replied.
‘You should be; they did this to prevent you from posting your celebrated epistles to the intelligentsia and the powerful elite who govern us with so much enlightenment and humanity. I wish to thank you personally. This is far more salubrious and spacious than the old office, and the number of cockroaches is far less.’
Dionisio smiled and handed him the new letter. ‘Seriously, Dionisio, you should stop writing these. Local people are taking out bets on the precise date of your assassination, and the stakes are so high that there is a peril of one of them assassinating you himself just in order to win his bet.’
‘I think that people are saying these things out of a love for drama.’
‘And they say that several attempts have been made already, so you surprise me. They say that you have lived because you are a brujo and can make yourself invisible, amongst other things.’
Dionisio put his hand on the postmaster’s shoulder and said, ‘Vale, well you tell everyone that I am a brujo indeed, and that anyone attempting to reduce my lifespan will himself die instantaneously, OK? We will amuse ourselves by mythologising Dionisio Vivo, is that a deal?’
‘That would amuse me very much,’ replied the postmaster. ‘You have a deal. And I have a letter for you.’
Outside the
town hall Dionisio tore open the envelope and found that it was his very first piece of personal fan-mail. By some extraordinary omission it had occurred to no one in the media either visual or printed to request interviews, and so Dionisio had missed the opportunity to become a media star and appear on quiz shows. But all over the country, and completely without his knowledge, Dionisio Vivo societies had sprung up in which people met to discuss his opinions and fantasise about his appearance.
This is not as surprising as one might otherwise believe, because it was a country where all the television stars were foreigners in imported series, where almost no one could afford to buy books, and consequently one could not become lionised as an author. But it was a literate country, thirsty for knowledge and education, which were perceived by most as the most important rungs on the difficult ladder out of poverty. As a result, the country had what was probably the best collection of newspapers in Latin America, if not the world. There were vast numbers of quality local papers, and several highbrow papers which were read avidly and appreciatively even by those who in other lands would normally read the tabloids. It was one of the few countries in the world where journalists could build up the kind of fanatical following normally associated with rock stars. Dionisio’s impassioned letters in the most prestigious newspaper of all had, unbeknown to him, won him the status of a star in a country wearied and disgusted by the anarchy of the coca trade.