He met them three days later when he was rudely awakened in the middle of the night by a sharp kick in the ribs. He sat up with surprise and saw that he was encircled by four silhouettes, each of which featured the unmistakable shadow of a rifle.
‘And who are you, companero?’ said one of the silhouettes, in a voice that sounded as though spoken through broken teeth.
Federico began to tremble with both fear and excitement, but mostly the former. ‘I am Federico,’ he said, in a voice as clear and bold as he could manage. ‘And if you are the guerrilleros, I have come to join you.’
A torch clicked and shone unexpectedly in his face, so that he put up a hand to block its light from his eyes. One of the men stepped forward, grasped his hand, twisted it in a movement of the deftest violence and wrenched his arm up behind his back. Federico blenched with pain and blinked against the terrible light of the torch. He realised that there was a knife against his throat, and the thought came to him that these were not guerrilleros but the Army.
‘And if we are the guerrilleros, campanero, why should you want to join us?’ said the same voice, mockingly.
‘There is no need for cruelty,’ said another voice, softer than the last. ‘Can’t you see he is very young? Now tell us, little one, why you want to join us.’
‘The Army,’ said Federico, too terrified to speak a full sentence.
‘The Army?’ said the softer voice, puzzled. ‘What about it?’
‘You killed Uncle Juanito and the others, and you tried to rape Farides, and you killed my dog. Are you going to kill me too?’ Federico fought to choke back the tears of desperation and horror.
The silhouettes began to laugh. ‘Let him go now, Franco,’ said the softer voice, and he was abruptly released from the agonising half-nelson.
‘We are not the Army,’ said the voice, ‘and I am sorry about your uncle and the dog. You are too young to be with us, but we have taken your rifle to help us in the struggle. I will give you a receipt, and you will be recompensed after the victory.’
The torch shone on a notepad, and the man scribbled for a moment before tearing out the sheet of paper. He stepped forward and pushed it into the chest pocket of Federico’s shirt. As he did so, Federico lurched upwards, his fists flailing, screaming, ‘No! No! No!’ It was too much; he could not allow his father’s gun to be stolen. He hardly felt the blow on the back of his neck that knocked him unconscious on the forest floor.
When he awoke it was daylight and a man was crouching over him offering him coffee. ‘How is your neck, probrecito?’ said the man.
‘It hurts,’ said Federico, reaching behind him to feel the bruise that made it too painful to move his head.
‘Our Franco is not known for gentleness,’ said the man. ‘But we decided in-any case to keep you with us for a little time. We think it was brave what you did, and so we carried you here to see our leader, who will make a final decision. Drink this coffee and you will feel better.’
‘Where is my rifle?’ said Federico.
‘It’s right next to you!’ called the man, as he walked away, and Federico looked down and saw that it was. He put the battered tin mug to his lips and startled himself with the scalding of the liquid. He thought he would let it cool, so he put it down and looked around him.
He was in a small village consisting of huts made of brush but in a dilapidated state, apparently long abandoned by the Indians. They were arranged roughly in a circle around a central area in which chickens and goats wandered freely, and he saw that there were some more huts on either side of the path that led into and away from the tiny settlement. He himself was lying facing the largest hut, which had a curious arrangement of brushwood and sticks on the top, splayed out in the manner of the sun’s rays. He knew, somehow automatically, that it had once been a temple.
In the doorways of the huts and in the shade of the trees were groups of people in khaki fatigues. This was not exactly a uniform, because every guerrilla had added or taken away to suit his own fancy. One or two dressed simply in the manner of peasants, and some wore ponchos in the manner of Indians. Nearly everyone had a mochila, and all of them carried weapons. Some of them were industriously engaged in dismantling, cleaning and reassembling their guns, others were fast asleep with their sombreros over their eyes. Three men and a woman were playing at dice and two men nearby were ardently discussing conquests of the non-military variety. Altogether there must have been about thirty people, of whom about ten were, if you looked carefully, quite plainly women. Federico found this disquieting because he had not expected it.
He was just finishing the coffee when its provider returned. ‘Come Senorito,’ he said. ‘It is time to see our leader.’
Federico got up groggily, and the sun hit him like a falling wall when he stepped out of the shade, causing his head to throb. He crossed the little patch of earth that passed for a plaza, and where he kicked up the dust the chickens dived in straight afterwards in the hope of newly-revealed grubs. He was led into the temple hut, where the sudden cool darkness deprived him momentarily of sight. During the period of adjustment his companion vanished, and when he could see again he found himself standing in front of a woman seated behind a crude wooden table. She looked as though she was about twenty-seven years old, and was dressed entirely in khaki.
‘Vale?’ she said. ‘Well?’
‘I have come to see your leader,’ said Federico. ‘But I see he is not here.’ He looked about the room, ‘Am I to wait for him here?’
‘No need,’ said the woman, the corners of her mouth twisting ironically. ‘He is already in this very room. Perhaps you should look harder.’
Federico looked around again, saw nothing, and began to feel a kind of astonished confusion. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but . . .’
‘Your leader is a woman,’ she said. ‘If your sense of machismo is offended you may leave at once, but without your rifle, and with your testicles in your mouth.’
Deep shame came down upon the young boy and he hung his head bitterly. ‘I am very sorry, Senora,’ he said, ‘I just did not expect . . .’
‘Shut your mouth before you say anything stupid!’ she exclaimed. ‘I am not “Senora”, I am “companera”, and my name is Remedios. Now tell me why you are here.’
Federico recounted his story falteringly, and when he had finished, Remedios shook her head.
‘It is not enough to want revenge. I don’t want to fight alongside barbarians, it is barbarians against whom we fight.’
‘Why else should I fight?’ asked Federico, genuinely puzzled. ‘I want justice.’
‘They are not the same thing!’ she exclaimed. ‘I want you to remember what Guevara said, that all true revolutionaries are motivated by the profoundest feelings of love.’
‘I don’t understand!’ he said agitatedly.
‘Now look,’ she replied. ‘I suspect you of being ignorant and inexperienced, but you are young enough to learn. I also know that you are brave and persistent, which is good. Therefore I will provisionally accept you, and you will be taught everything in both theory and practice that you need to know, and I warn you that you will be fully extended both physically and mentally. Sometimes it will be torture. Goodbye for now. Garcia!’
The man who had brought him the coffee re-entered and led him out. On the way back to the shade the man said, ‘I suppose you are wondering why our leader is a woman.’
Federico made a noise in his throat that was intended to be noncommittal.
‘It is because,’ Garcia said, ‘she does not practise brutalities. We elected her when we realised that she had more brains and more balls than all of us put together.’
10
* * *
COMANDANTE FIGUERAS DISRUPTS A FIESTA
DONA CONSTANZA WAS caught for a moment between hispanic pride and a natural inclination to panic; it was not often she was confronted by a group of sweaty-looking uniformed ruffians asking strange questions. Tossing her head and looking at them di
sdainfully she found her dignity and said, ‘What Communists?’
‘What Communists!’ echoed Figueras. ‘If you “don’t know” where they are you must be one of them.’ He lowered his rifle and pointed it at Dona Constanza’s stomach.
She snorted and replied even more haughtily, ‘I am a Conservative and proud of it, and next time I see President Veracruz I shall personally inform him of your disgusting manners and violent temperament. Kindly don’t point that weapon at me.’
The Comandante was torn between fear and the temptation to ridicule. His instinct was to slap her down and humiliate her, but his common sense told him that someone who was so obviously rich and well-bred probably really did know the president. Dona Constanza glanced at his shoulder and said, ‘Your number is FN3530076. I have already memorised it.’
Figueras and Dona Constanza stared each other down, she with absolute contempt, and he with a growing conviction that he had already lost. Then one of his soldiers, a tubby and bleary-eyed man with a sadistic face, piped up with, ‘Let’s kill the rich bitch, Comandante.’
Figueras, profoundly grateful for the excuse to break his gaze away from Dona Constanza’s, whirled around and slapped the astonished soldier across the face. ‘How dare you suggest such a disgraceful thing?’ he roared. ‘You dishonour the National Army! You will be court-martialled unless you apologise at once!’ He brought the butt of his carbine down on the man’s foot and the soldier hopped up and down clutching it. ‘I am sorry Comandante,’ he said in an aggrieved and sulky voice. ‘It’s what we usually do.’
‘Infamy!’ bellowed Figueras with a wild glare in his eyes, which had more than a tinge of desperation in them. He turned to Dona Constanza, bowing and clicking his heels. ‘I apologise profusely, Senora,’ he said, and a little bead of perspiration ran down his temple and disappeared down into his collar. ‘However, I must ask you again, where are the Communists?’
‘There aren’t any,’ she said. ‘The army came in and killed a lot of people some time ago, including Juanito, who was my stable-man. They were supposed to be Communists but I have my doubts. What do Communists look like?’
Figueras wondered for a second if she was trying to be funny or was genuinely stupid. ‘Senora, we have received reports of gun battles and explosions in this vicinity.’
‘Then the reports are mistaken,’ she replied. ‘There have been no such thing.’
‘Nonetheless we are obliged to investigate. May we please set up our camp on your property? I assure you there will be no damage.’
‘Indeed there will not,’ she replied tartly, ‘or the governor will hear of it – I also know General Fuerte. You may use the field nearest the pueblo, and I will be obliged if you do not disturb the horses. They are most valuable.’
‘Perhaps,’ said the Lieutenant as they walked away, ‘she is in league with the Communists.’
‘She is an oligarch, and oligarchs are not Communists.’
‘Camilo Torres was an oligarch,’ said the Lieutenant.’
‘Camilo Torres was a priest,’ replied Figueras.
‘Then perhaps she is afraid?’
‘Somehow I doubt it,’ said Figueras, with feeling. ‘Lieutenant, take four armed men and question the people in the pueblo. You must return by dusk and report to me directly.’
The Lieutenant saluted with his usual lazy wave of the hand and departed shortly afterwards with a corporal and three nervous conscripts, all of whom had bayonets fixed and twitching trigger-fingers. They were startled twice by vultures, once by a steer, and once by a scarecrow in the maize field, which was holding a branch fashioned into the shape of a gun, so that by the time they reached the village, in which nothing was happening at all, they were all in urgent need of refreshment. The Lieutenant ordered them to search house-to-house and to ask questions; he himself went to the bar at the further end and drank two Inca-Colas and an Aguila. His men searched principally in the brothels and satisfied themselves that there were no terrorists even in the orifices of the whores, reporting back to the Lieutenant that, when asked if there were any armed ruffians in the district, they invariably received the reply ‘Ustedes solo’, or ‘Only yourselves’. They also reported that that very evening there began a two-day fiesta, a thing irresistible to any true-born patriot. This convinced them that there could not possibly be any guerrillas in the area, and it also convinced Figueras when they reported it back to him, so that he immediately ordered himself and all his men to attend it, for the sake of ‘enhancing public relations’.
The fiesta had been invented twenty years before by villagers anxious to commemorate the foundation of the community. As nobody knew when this had been, a brujo had been consulted who, by means of sacred herbs steeped in ron cana in the trepanned skull of a murderer, drunk by a clairvoyant mulatta, had established the exact date and the fact that it had taken place in the afternoon. The pueblo was three hundred and twenty-one years old.
Towards five o’clock in the evening there began a steady influx of campesinos from the surrounding countryside, all of them bearing machetes in leather-tasselled scabbards at their side. This was by no means a signal of hostile intent, for it is unknown for any peasant not to have one at his side at all times. Those on horse- or mule-back have shorter ones than those on foot; these former are often chromed and made of softer (and more easily sharpened) steel than the heavy-duty machete of the peasant on foot, which is never chromed. The machete is the indispensable all-purpose tool; they are sharpened assiduously on special boulders in the rivers until they are sharp enough both to shave with and to chop down trees. They are used to slaughter animals by decapitation, which is very quick and humane, and to clear ground of unwanted growth by a skimming motion flowing from the wrist. They are excellent for work amongst the sugar canes, and also in the banana plantations, where, once the fruit is ripe, you cut down the stems of the plants completely, since bananas are not grown on trees as most gringos seem to believe, but are in fact a giant species of grass. Machetes, when they are old and worn out or broken, are ground down on the stones to make all manner of knives.
Machetes are made mostly in Colombia, and these days the handles are, regrettably, made of Bakelite, whilst the elaborate Indian patterns in bright colours that are conspicuous on the scabbards are, on close inspection, revealed to be made of plastic stitched on with thin string. Foreigners are sometimes surprised to find that their souvenir machete bears the stamp of a company called ‘Collins’.
A further use of machetes was for fishing. The fiesta about to begin was largely a fish fiesta on account of the fact that the founder of the village was one Esteban the Fisherman. So it was that this evening the festivities began with a solemn procession down to the river Mula, which was mercifully still in an undammed state. Leading the procession of one hundred and fifty people was Pedro, carrying his Spanish musket and surrounded by his dogs. Pedro was naturally the leader because of his age, his mastery of sorcery, and because of his fearlessness; tonight at midnight he would drink ayahuasca in front of the whole crowd and in his trance he would meet with Esteban the Fisherman, who would divulge to him all that must be done in the following year.
Behind Pedro came two virgins, certified as such by a committee of women, bearing straw effigies of the Blessed Virgin, which would be cast in the river before fishing began. Behind these were Hectoro with the black glove still on his rein-hand, his revolver at his side, and his leather bombachos creaking on his legs as he walked. Today he felt awkward at being on foot, as he never left his mule or his horse except to eat or sleep or fornicate, and had even trained his men to make concrete and mortar in real gaucho style, by riding their horses backwards and forwards over the mix. No man, however, could be mounted on this procession, not even Hectoro, and so he walked, feeling foolish and vulnerable.
Beside Hectoro came Josef, who as ever was thinking about the ignominy of not having a proper funeral, and behind these two were Profesor Luis, Consuelo, Farides, and all the occupants of the
pueblo and its countryside, including the children, who chanted a repetitive song in order to charm the fish. Everybody, including all children above the age of ten, smoked a large puro cigar so that the air would be fragrant enough to repel evil spirits, and thick enough to materialise the good ones.
The procession passed the hacienda of Don Emmanuel, who was preparing an alcoholic guarapo made of pineapple skins, in order to treat the processors on their way home, and crossed the field to the Mula, which had this year swapped to its southern course during the rains. Here Pedro turned and raised his arms, and a silence fell on the crowd. To his right the sun began its sudden descent behind the hills, until its reddening rays struck the snow of the mountains opposite and the sky glowed and vibrated in the 360 degree sunset that strikes religion into the hearts even of animals and birds, who fall into a hush broken only by the ripple of water.
Pedro threw back his head and his arms, and, as though encircling all the holiness of the universe, began the long ululating chant. Against the stillness of the falling night the pagan enchantment of his voice stirred the crowd so that chills of fire ran from their loins to their spines, and each felt a glow of invisible light dance above their head. Many stood as though paralysed, with tears streaming silently down their cheeks, and others sank reverently to the earth, brought down on their knees by the incomprehensible and the numinous. Against the rapidly gathering darkness the figure of Pedro the Hunter began to grow; at first it seemed he was larger by a hand’s width, but then he seemed to be as tall as a horse. Soon he appeared as tall as a tree, and the people knew that he had assumed the form of a god. Summoned up from the stomach, the seat of emotion, Pedro’s voice issued forth from his throat, now echoing as a cavern echoes. Nobody understood the words in that forgotten language. They did not understand it, but they apprehended it; they apprehended the language of the ancient gods of Africa.