The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts (8 page)

When the driver returned to his former diligence and the pink boulders began to be piled up in the river to redivert it, Hectoro began an heroic campaign of covert sabotage. Don Emmanuel ordered Pantagruelian quantities of ron cana and aquardiente from the little shop and Hectoro ensured that it found its way into the fuel tanks of the bulldozer along with small quantities of sugar dissolved in water.

On the first morning the bulldozer started perfectly on the unsullied fuel that was left in the lines. After a minute or two, however, the engine raced, then backfired several times, releasing puffs of pure white smoke into the air from the exhaust, and then became marvellously erratic. There were periods of pre-ignition, periods of spectacular explosions like gunfire, and periods of total stoppage which would find the perplexed and frustrated driver tinkering for hours with the fuel pump, which he believed to be faulty, bleeding fuel lines which he believed to be full of air, and, his mouth stinging with diesel, kicking the massive tracks and shouting with rage until, his face buried in his hands, he would sit with his back to the machine, a picture of pure dejection. Eventually he would throw back his head, look at the sky as if for aid and inspiration, rise slowly to his feet and climb into his cab, where he would sit grim-faced before turning the key. The machine would fire, operate briefly, backfire, race, and cut out, whereupon the whole pantomime would begin anew, watched by audiences of washerwomen with baskets of laundry on their heads and cigars in their mouths who would say ‘Whooba!’ softly at every explosion, and ‘Ay, ay, ay!’ every time the machine stopped. Having watched the driver tinkering and cursing for a while they would turn as though unanimously and walk off in a line, to pound their washing on the largest flat stones in the river, singing rhythmic songs of forgotten meaning which are probably still sung in West Africa.

Needless to say, work progressed with wondrous slowness and infinite pains. When the canal seemed to be roughly right to
the naked eye the driver took the first opportunity to jerk his explosive way back to Asuncion, where his much-abused machine slowly recovered its health with transfusions of unadulterated diesel, and where the driver slowly recovered his erstwhile good humour, taking once more to pulling over trees and dragging bulls. However, like a man who has once found himself impotent, he never quite regained his faith in himself and his powers.

There were unexpected and terrible consequences of this lighthearted but essential sabotage. It was not that it had not succeeded, because it did – the river was not diverted, and the canal was still dry – nor was it that the driver was psychologically somewhat battered.

What had happened was that word had spread around the area that there were many explosions coming from near the pueblo, which sounded like gunshots and bombs and shells. Further away there arose rumours that there actually were gunshots, bombs and shells going off in the pueblo, and by the time these stories reached Valledupar they had been elaborated into graphic accounts of skirmishes and even pitched battles between ‘the Cubans’ and the beleaguered peasants, who at this very moment were being tortured, raped and pillaged without pity. General Fuerte being on leave, searching for humming-birds, Brigadier Hernando Montes Sosa sent a company of men by truck, armed to the teeth and twitching with nervous fear, to defend their country and their democracy.

Thus it was that Comandante Rodrigo Figueras found himself once more at the scene of his humiliation, but with three times the number of men and different insignia on his epaulettes. The first thing anyone knew about it was when Dona Constanza answered the door to be confronted by an unpleasant, lecherous-looking, surly character with greasy hair, a revolver, and a large number of soldiers at his back.

‘Where are the Communists?’ he demanded.

DON HERNANDEZ ALMAGRO MENDEZ,
descendant of conquistadores and owner of inconceivably vast tracts of land exhausted and enfeebled by overgrazing and familial irresponsibility, found himself inclined to acquire a little more land. The barren scrub where now there grew only a few eucalyptus had once been virgin jungle smelling of spices, draped with orchids and lianas, glittering with metallic morpho butterflies, reverberating to the cough of the jaguar, creeping with giant mugale spiders, and echoing after sunset to the eerie crowing of the night hawk.

Then the Mendez family had arrived and enslaved the Indians, who were set to work under the lash and the sword to destroy their former homes by fire until the whole forest was consumed by an inferno whose orange glow could be seen in the sky after dark far away in the Sierra. It is inconceivable how many creatures perished in the conflagration; afterwards there lay among the charred stumps of the trees the calcined remains of tapirs, of armadilloes, of capybara, of garapu stags, of three species of ant-eaters, of leguan lizards, of peccaries, of sloths, of capuchin monkeys, of coati raccoons, and of frogs that could call with a sound exactly like a child weeping.

No sooner had the great pall of white ash descended on the land than the captive Indians were set to cultivate it. Many died
of diseases, of malnutrition, of cruelty; the remainder died by hunger-strike, or escaped the packs of dogs and the horsemen to take their chances with the hostile clans of headhunters in what jungle was left beyond the encomienda. To replace the Indians, the Mendez family brought in Negros from West Africa who were more easily resigned to servitude.

The land was worked for bananas, tobacco, cotton, and cattle, but it failed completely in a few years as the fragile soil was swept into the rivers by the torrential inundations of the seasons of rains. Deep gulleys grew apace in the fields as the waters carved them out in horrifying flash floods which swept away cattle and houses alike and eventually reduced the former Eden to bare rock and infertile packed earth which supported only scrub grass and a few herds.

In places the jungle began to reclaim the land; it crept slowly and unsurely, unable to recreate in centuries that which it had lost in a few days, but sending out tendrils and feelers, creating tongues of verdure where once more there were bromelias, piassaba palms, and situlis with their exquisite crimson flowers. The Mendez left the farm alone, for they had gone to live in perpetuity in the capital, leaving the management to enganchadores who hired jornaleros and macheteros to work hard but without commitment to grow what little could be grown and to keep count of the cattle.

The enganchadores adopted the usual method for not paying the workers; they would sell them the basics of life – food, tools, leather, horses, fake medicines made of seawater and chicken blood – and ensure that the campesinos always owed more than they earned. Enormous debts that were never to be paid off were inherited by sons and passed on in turn to their children, and there was an agreement amongst all latifundistas that they would never employ a peon who still owed money to his patron. In this way generations of the same families passed their protected but impoverished lives on the Vida Tranquila Hacienda.

Centuries later, Don Hernandez, who had been speculating on government bonds with great success, decided that it was
time to put his money into minerals; and gold in particular, with a little coffee cultivation as a back-up. He knew that in the highlands beyond and above the Vida Tranquila he could grow the very finest Arabica beans for the connoisseur market in Europe and North America, and he also knew that beyond and above that there were a great many Inca mines which, if reopened, might yield a viable amount of ore. He hired a French engineer to examine these old workings, who came back with favourable reports, but who said that the mountains were still populated by Aymara Indians who were likely to be hostile to any industrial activity.

Don Hernandez decided to go ahead in any case, and his workforce first went into action to erect fences way up into the hills and clear them for the coffee planting. This part of the plan went perfectly smoothly, but it was not quite so simple to fence off the mountains above; one cannot drive stakes into solid rock in neat lines over peaks and chasms, even if one does have a property deal signed by a government official. Eventually Don Hernandez was obliged to reconcile himself to having piles of stone erected at intervals around the periphery of his property, and to allowing free passage to travellers. But he was possessed of the fixed idea that he had to get rid of the Indians, whom he regarded as lower than the animals and far more dangerous.

He sent bands of ruffians on forays to burn the Indian settlements and to hound the cholos off the land, even though they were officially protected by the Indian Protection Agency, and even though he had not a shred of legal justification for evicting them. Having moved their villages two or three times, the Aymaras naturally began to defend themselves, and very soon there was irregular warfare taking place all over that part of the Sierras which put an end to several centuries of peace. Don Hernandez’ bands of thugs were showing every sign of losing this war when he struck on the idea of laying mines bought on the sly from the quartermaster at Corazon Military Depot, and spraying the Aymaras and their crops with concentrated pesticides and herbicides from a crop-dusting aeroplane.

When the people found themselves not only living in a
plantless wilderness, but also coughing up blood, becoming covered with blisters, going blind, and being blown up by the ‘sudden-death-by-thunder’, they moved away at last, and some of them, Aurelio included, wandered far away for ever.

Aurelio, although only a boy of fourteen, travelled southwards among the upper slopes of the foothills, staying in many pueblitos, working a little here and there. Often he was cold and hungry, shared caves with wild bulls, and risked his life following the goat-trails around the vertiginous sides of mountains. He knew neither where he was going nor what he intended to do, until one day he climbed high on an eastern slope and looked out over the jungle below.

As far as the horizon in all directions the rolling verdant forest stretched, unbroken. He had heard from his people that only Indians lived there, and others could not survive. He had heard that the jungle Indians are bad people, who kill without quarter, who collect people’s hands and heads, and who speak strange tongues. He had heard of the poisonous snakes and plants, the white and black rivers teeming with vicious fish, of the enormous floods in the rainy season that made it necessary to build homes on platforms, and of the fevers that burned a man’s body so terribly that his soul would flee to avoid being burned up with it.

But from where he stood the forest appeared enticing and secure. It seemed a place of indescribable peace, richness and anonymity, where death, when it came, would not come by aeroplane or by bombs hidden in paths. And it did not matter to him if he became lost, for he did not know where he was going.

He followed a stream down through the chasms, the quebradas, the ravines, the valleys, until at last he came within sight of the forest itself. It began gently enough, with a steady increase in the density of vegetation, and the astonishing activities of the humming-birds, those tiny creatures that jungle Indians call ‘living sunbeams’. He saw a flock of the jewelled little birds darting among some blue passion flowers beneath a magnificent aguache palm, when a hawk descended in circles, seeking prey. The humming-birds fled, with the exception of one, who uttered
a tiny, shrill squeak and threw itself into the attack. Had it been able to cope with such a minute enemy that could fly in any direction at lightning speed the great hawk would have been able to kill it outright with one peck of its beak, one contraction of its talons, or one beat of its wings. But the humming-bird annoyed it so much by flitting about its head and jabbing at its eyes that the hawk suddenly soared upwards and left. The little speck of a victor settled itself on a twig and emitted a belligerent squeak of triumph, to be joined once more by its friends coming out of hiding. Aurelio always remembered this incident, and always the memory would make him smile.

Aurelio soon found that there was no way through the forest. He was obstructed at every step by giant lianas that twisted high into the trees, by swathes of fleshy orchids, by plants that oozed white poison, by plants whose stench caused migraines, by insula ants whose bite made him ill for five days, by scolopendra, whose bites nearly killed him and made him ill for weeks, by branches whose touch raised blisters on his hands, by impassable tauampas swamps, by thick clumps of cana brava bamboo, by sapoeira, by razor-sharp fucum palm that cut deep gashes in his flesh which became infected, by swarms of stinging mutuca flies, by the cuts of piassava; by the whole forest and everything in it. That is, he discovered for himself what all jungle-dwellers know, that it is best to follow the waterways, where the dangers are almost as terrible but where progress is more rapid.

By the time that he discovered this, he was already ill with fevers and with hunger, for he had not yet learned to cover himself with anatto and urucu to keep off insects, his skin was not thick like a jungle Indian’s, and he had exploded for himself the myth that in the forest food practically presses itself into one’s mouth. He did not know yet that anything eaten by toucans, macaws, and capuchin monkeys could also be eaten by humans, he had no weapons for the hunt, made fire only with great difficulty, but he caught fish and shrimps in the same way as his people had in the mountains, not yet having acquired the methods of the jungle.

Having given up the attempt to hack his way into the dense foliage, he journeyed along the stream, skirting around the falls, rapids, and cataracts, wading along the bed when it was not possible to jump the rocks or follow the banks. Then one day when the stream was joined by two others and broadened out into a river, he noticed caimans on the banks, and he trod on an arraia. The sting of the ray, so valuable as an arrowhead but so vicious in the flesh, made him fall backwards in the water and crawl to a sand bank, where he sat clutching his foot, rocking with pain and sweating with stoically suppressed terror as the caimans watched him from the fringes of the banks. When he looked into the eyes of these animals, especially when they glowed at night, he appreciated why the Indians of the forest believed them to be the origin of fire.