EIGHT
There has never been a night so perfect for undergoing a cleansing baptism. Or for dying. Surely it must have been here on my terrace, sitting on the same paving slab, that Baudelaire, thoroughly depraved and hell-bent on destroying his health, stinking drunk but blessed with an inner clarity, was moved to create that unsurpassed line:
With neither smile nor tear do I disturb
the calm at which I gaze. .
When in fifteen minutes’ time a last jolt brings to an end all life on earth, there will be nothing left, no evil or beauty, and eternal calm will descend. I spend the remaining minutes staring straight ahead in melancholy exhaustion.
And I see the German with the red beard who called on me a few months back. He trained as a paediatrician, but is now a famous anthropologist who visits the remotest corners of South America on strange assignments from scientific institutions in Europe. He tells me he once saw a group of boys playing football with an old tin can. On the next expedition he took with him twelve brightly coloured rubber balls which he distributed to children. He gave away the last ball in a native village close to the source of the Pauchua River, to a group of small boys wandering around naked. Each of them had a protruding navel longer than the little penis dangling from his abdomen. The ball passed from hand to hand. The boys sniffed it and held it to their ears. They shook it, stroked it, tapped it and squeezed it. The last boy took a quick lick and with a bashful laugh returned it to the red-haired Übermensch. The boys did not know what a ball was. They had never heard of football.
And I see other children. Little girls trudging the streets with jute sacks on their backs, rummaging through dustbins for discarded bottles they can hand in at the lemonade factory for a few cents each. Boys of eight with grey-rimmed eyes who chew certain leathery leaves that they know dull the hunger and make them pleasantly light-headed. A little boy sitting by the roadside stubbornly trying to blow up into a balloon a condom he has found in an open sewer. Children with permanently tear-stained faces and children who never cry, children with huge suspicious eyes, others with empty, watery ones. Children with scabby sores on their heads, hands and feet; with eternally snotty noses; with open wounds and oozing boils and hair that has never been combed. Children who scratch incessantly, who go round with dried shit on their buttocks and thighs, constantly pursued by flies. A boy sitting hunched on a step in the sweltering afternoon sun, hugging his chest because he has the shivers.
And I look up to the summit of the Andes, to where, just below the dwelling of the real god, the god of South America dwells in his palace of blue ice on 23,390-foot Aconcagua, from where he can survey the whole continent. Each morning, after he has made the sun rise, he commands his angels to unbolt the heavenly gates of the palace and lower the ivory drawbridge so that he can stride out along the cloudy walls of his palace and glance down dutifully at the silver shimmer of sunlight on the mountain ridges and at the suffering below. But after a few hundred years these morning walks start to disturb him and his gentleman-in-waiting notices that each day he returns from his stroll more depressed. The faithful servant becomes even more concerned when a member of the angelic host guarding the ramparts tells him he has heard the god muttering, “Sadness and guilt pierce my heart,” and that another sentry heard him whisper, “All misery ceases when one no longer knows that misery exists.” One evil day, the god looks down on his domain and sees the profound sorrow that fills the valley below, the deceit that clings to the trees and the impotent rage that lies buried in human hearts. He hears the lamentation that drifts up the slopes from the poor, of whom there will never be a shortage in the land, from the eternal prisoners and those who have disappeared without trace. On that day, all the benevolent spirits that inhabit the palace shudder at their master’s lament on the ramparts: “If this wall were not a cloud of floating ice crystals I would throw myself on my back and look skywards for ever. Or I would turn on my stomach and bury my face in the grass.” The gentleman-in-waiting, whose task it is to please the Lord of Heaven in everything, hastily summons the other four archangels — the chief footman, the vizier, the wine steward and the stable master — to a meeting. This emergency meeting of the palace council is a long and busy one. The following morning, when the golden gate is opened and the god ventures wearily outside to be irritated by the glittering interplay of sun and snow and by the suffering down below, his youngest page approaches diffidently yet respectfully down an azure corridor and, genuflecting, offers him a crimson-lacquered golden casket. The god, taken by surprise, opens the casket: nested on a snow-white satin cushion embroidered with silver doves is a pair of spectacles, its lenses set in diamond frames and thinly coated with lead on both sides. He carefully puts on the glasses and finds it hard to suppress a smile. He puts out his hand and says to the page, “Lead me to the ramparts.” When he arrives at the walls, he looks down and allows a smile to appear on his lips. “They’re rather heavy on the nose,” he tells the page in a kindly voice, “but I shall never take them off again.” He gropes for the boy’s head, bends down and bestows a grateful kiss on the cheek of the perplexed cherub.
And I see four armoured trucks containing a hundred and fifty soldiers smash through Fernando’s wooden gate and drive into his yard. They stop outside the little house. Fernando and his wife wake with a start. Their daughter comes charging into their room and flings herself into her mother’s arms. Fernando pulls the blinds halfway down: “Dios mío, the soldiers are here.” Rattling off some quick prayers to the patron saint of farmers, mother and daughter get dressed. Fernando doesn’t need to: he always sleeps in the same worn khaki trousers he wears during the day, their frayed legs not quite reaching his ankles. He doesn’t put a shirt on, but dons his broad-brimmed hat as protection against the evening dew. “Whatever happens, you two stay inside. Understood?” His authoritative tone makes the fear in the women’s eyes fade a little, for they recognise in his words the same self-confidence they have always admired in this taciturn, hardworking husband and father. “God go with you,” whispers his wife, and his daughter is about to say something too when they hear the pounding of rifle butts against the front door. Fernando quickly closes the bedroom door behind him. In the kitchen he stops for a moment and looks through the gloom at the pots and pans hanging on the wall, the massive sink under the pump and the barrel of drinking water in the corner. “My God,” he groans, “I’m taking leave of the things in my house.” He hurries out. He is caught in the light of scores of torches and shields his eyes with his hands. He is a pathetic spectacle, with his half-length trousers, his broad-brimmed hat, his skinny rib cage and his hairy armpits glistening with beads of anxious sweat. “He’s still sweating!” he hears someone shout. “He’s sweating from every pore,” screams someone else. “Perhaps he was screwing that old whore of his.” “His old prick hasn’t been up to that for ages!” “Then he must have been licking her, the dirty swine.” “But not his wife’s twat, the filthy slob was at his daughter’s virgin slit!” Fernando is scarcely able to think: these aren’t people, they’re a bunch of animals. He considers praying, not to his patron saint, but directly to God. He has often criticised the exaggerated piety of his wife, who is constantly lighting candles and making novenas to obtain some favour. God and his saints don’t concern themselves with everyday matters, he would say; they mustn’t be pestered with trifling problems. They are there for the times in your life when you really need help, such as marriage or death. And for disasters such as fire, earthquake or floods. But Fernando cannot pray now, as he needs to devote all his attention to what is happening around him. There are moments when God abandons one of his own, he says without moving his lips. The lord and master of heaven and earth has deserted him, and in his place a short, fat figure approaches. Made omnipotent by the hundred and fifty soldiers around him, this man is now lord and master over the lives of Fernando and his wife and daughter. He comes mincing towards Fernando, who, lit by the torches, stands on the steps of his house like an actor in the spotlight. “I am Captain Román. Good evening, Fernando Pirela.” “Good evening, mi capitán.” Fernando is amazed that his voice does not shake. It quickly dawns on him that the captain addressed him by name and that the soldiers know he has a wife and daughter; so they haven’t come bursting in here on an off chance. “Fernando, it isn’t polite to hold your hands over your eyes when you’re talking to someone.” Fernando drops his hands. The beams of several torches are now being directed at his face and he cannot keep his eyes open. “Nor is it right, Fernando, to keep your eyes shut when you’re talking to someone.” Fernando blinks and half-opens his eyes. He cannot see Román, the soldiers or the night at all; just the yellow globes of the torches dancing before his eyes. “Fernando. Do I have to look up to you?” He squats down. This is a relief, as he is not sure whether his legs will carry him for much longer. “Christ! Look at the balls on that one!” shouts one of the soldiers. “It’s a wonder he can still walk with those swollen bollocks!” Another soldier joins in: “I bet his wife’s black and blue from all that humping between her thighs!” With a motion of his hand Captain Román silences his men. “No, Fernando, you mustn’t squat when I’m talking to you. Don’t you think it’s more polite to the military authorities to kneel?” The peasant fights back a momentary impulse to leap on Román and tear him apart with his bare hands and teeth. The soldiers will gun him down and it will all be over. But what will happen to his wife and daughter then? He sinks to his knees.