Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Louis de Bernières

  Dedication

  Title Page

  PART ONE

  1 President Veracruz Summons The Minister of Finance

  2 The Cravate

  3 Ramon’s Letter

  4 Dionisio Renounces Whores Out of Love For Anica

  5 The General’s Letter

  6 Ramon Leaves A Warning Note

  7 Dionisio Is Given A Hand

  8 How El Jerarca’s Helicopter Turned Into A Deepfreeze

  9 Knives

  10 The Justice Minister Resigns

  11 The Disappearance

  12 The Grand Candomble of Cochadebajo de los Gatos (1)

  13 Two Cholitas

  14 The Grand Candomble of Cochadebajo de los Gatos (2)

  15 A Joke, Another Warning, And An Unexpected Bonus For Jerez

  16 Memos

  17 Mythologising And Making Love

  18 El Jerarca And His Excellency The President Fail To Arrive At An Historic Compromise

  19 Fortuity

  20 The Grand Candomble of Cochadebajo de los Gatos (3)

  21 Dionisio Gets A Nocturnal Visit

  22 His Excellency Is Saved By The Intercession of The Archangel Gabriel

  23 The Grand Candomble of Cochadebajo de los Gatos (4)

  24 Anica’s Journal (1)

  25 El Jerarca

  26 Leticia Aragon (1)

  27 Medicine

  28 Las Locas(1)

  29 Valledupar

  30 His Excellency’s Alchemical Assault

  31 Guacamole Sauce And The Naked Admiral

  32 The Firedance (1)

  33 The Mausoleum

  34 Hope Is When Army Officers Are Democrats

  PART TWO

  35 Anica’s Journal (2)

  36 Nueva Sevilla

  37 The Firedance (2)

  38 Rain

  39 Leticia Aragon (2)

  40 Foreboding

  41 The Firedance (3)

  42 Sacrifice

  43 The Firedance (4)

  44 University

  45 Pedro The Hunter

  46 The Womb of Pachamama

  47 The Firedance (5)

  48 Anica’s Last Mistake

  49 Another Statistic

  50 Leticia Aragon (3)

  51 The Firedance (6)

  52 Las Locas (2)

  53 The Firedance (7)

  54 The Ring

  55 Ramon

  PART THREE

  56 Extraordinary Events In Ipasueño

  EPILOGUE

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Dionisio Vivo, a South American lecturer in philosophy, is puzzled by the hideously mutilated corpses that keep turning up outside his front door. To his friend, Ramon, one of the few honest policemen in town, the message is all too clear: Dionisio’s letters to the press, exposing the drug barons, must stop; and although Dionisio manages to escape the hit-men sent to get him, he soon realises that others are more vulnerable, and his love for them leads him to take a colossal revenge.

  About the Author

  Louis de Bernières’ works include seven novels, a short story collection and a radio play. His 2008 novel, The Partisan’s Daughter was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award, and his most recent work, Notwithstanding: English Village Stories, was published in 2009. An international best-seller, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin won the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Best Novel in 2004.

  ALSO BY LOUIS DE BERNIÈRES

  The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts

  The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman

  Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

  Sunday Morning at the Centre of the World

  Birds Without Wings

  Red Dog

  A Partisan’s Daughter

  To the Honoured and Respected Memory of

  Judge Mariela Espinosa Arango

  Assassinated by Machine-Gun Fire in Medellin,

  on Wednesday 1 November 1989

  Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord

  Louis de Bernières

  Part One

  For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;

  The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;

  The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

  The Song of Solomon

  1 President Veracruz Summons The Minister of Finance

  EVER SINCE HIS young wife had given birth to a cat as an unexpected consequence of his experiments in sexual alchemy, and ever since his accidental invention of a novel explosive that confounded Newtonian physics by losing its force at the precise distance of two metres from the source of its blast, President Veracruz had thought of himself not only as an adept but also as an intellectual. His speeches became peppered with obscure and recondite quotations from Paracelsus and Basil Valentine; he joined the Rosicrucians, considering himself to be a worthy successor to Doctor John Dee, Hermes Trismegistus, Sir Francis Bacon, Christian Rosencreuz, and Eliphas Levi. He gave up reading his wife’s women’s magazines, from which he had previously derived most of his opinions, and took up reading La Prensa. He usually ignored the domestic news, since he knew that most of it was supplied by his own Ministry of Information, and was therefore probably fiction, turning instead to the foreign news, and then to the letters page. This latter was the forum in which the nation’s intellectual elite and its coterie of the powerful and the wealthy expressed their opinions, and just recently His Excellency had become an avid reader of the frequent letters from Dionisio Vivo, which were always about the coca trade. He read the latest of the coca letters and made a note on his pad that Señor Vivo should be awarded the Gold Condor Medal for Gallantry, and then crossed it out, remembering that it could only be awarded to military personnel. He substituted a memorandum that a new order of chivalry should be created for civilians, and decided to call it The Order of Hermetic Knights. His secretary was later to misconstrue this instruction owing to his lack of faith in the President’s ability to spell and his own inability to read the latter’s handwriting, and this explains why there is now an Order of Knights Hermit with its own coat of arms, which has never had any members except President Veracruz himself, who had automatic membership of all orders of chivalry, a privilege voted him by a grateful congress after the Los Puercos war.

  His Excellency became irritated by constant interruptions from the telephone, his personal secretary, his wheedling wife, and the large black cat that he had never become used to thinking of as his daughter, and retired with La Prensa to the presidential lavatory. He turned off the loudspeaker in there which played Beethoven in order to drown out the rumblings and explosions of the foremost intestines of the Nation, and sat down on the pedestal to read the letters page, mentally making a note to get some kind of heating coil installed in the seat.

  His Excellency was still, after all these years, obsessed with the problem of the budget deficit. It was true that at last the insatiable greed of the military for stupendous and apocalyptic weapons had been curbed; it was also true that prices for coffee and tin were not too bad these days, and, best of all, the emerald mines were producing well. But it was also a fact that the country had never recovered from the backfiring of the ‘Economic Miracle’ which had demolished the industrial base in the time when Dr Badajoz was Minister of Finance. Nor had the capital ever regained solvency after the pharaonic construction spree of its former Mayor, Raoul Buenanoce. To make things worse, the government-spon
sored expeditions to discover El Dorado had all failed, having consumed perplexing amounts of cash in the process, and the President’s alchemical experiments had yielded up only some very interesting paranormal phenomena and a great deal of sexual ecstasy. His Excellency regarded his consequent rejuvenation and spiritualisation as an unmitigated bonus, but he was tormented nonetheless by the intractable manner in which the economy always failed to arrive anywhere near the targets set by even his own most pessimistic projections. He came to the conclusion that none of his lackeys could be trusted, and decided to believe only what he read in the press. Sitting on the lavatory in the presidential suite, he made two decisions. One was to abolish the Ministry of Information, and the other was to summon the Minister of Finance in order to demand from him an explanation about a point that Dionisio Vivo had just made in his most recent coca letter. He flushed the lavatory out of habit, even though he had done nothing to disturb its fragrant waters, and went to his office to make a telephone call.

  Emperador Ignacio Coriolano, known (because of rumours about his private life rather than because of its similarity to his name) as ‘Emperor Cunnilingus the Insatiable’, arrived at five o’clock in the evening. He was a man of fastidious dress but poor hygiene, who had for several years borne upon his shoulders the heavy responsibility of reducing the preposterous burden of the national debt, without ever having been given any means by which to do so. He spent his days with his head in his hands poring over documents which only proved the impossibility of his task, and his evenings obliterating his sense of inadequacy in the arms of certain tractable ladies whose fees he set down to ‘personal expenses’, thereby adding to the nation’s overdraft.

  He arrived to find that His Excellency the President of the Republic was attired in a dressing gown of Persian silk, but that this rich garment had slipped a little and was indiscreetly revealing a presidential testicle. In the interview that followed Señor Coriolano found this a severe obstacle to clear thought.

  ‘Good evening, boss,’ said the Minister of Finance, extending his hand. His Excellency shook it, frowned, and said, ‘How many times do I have to tell you that you must address me as “Your Excellency”? One of these days you will shame us both in public.’

  ‘Sorry, boss, it’s difficult to forget the old days. You know, sometimes I still think that you and I are still selling canned beef in Panama. Those were the days, eh, boss?’

  His Excellency cast his mind back and repeated. ‘Those were the days.’ Then he picked up his copy of La Prensa and said, ‘I want you to listen to the new letter from Dionisio Vivo, and then give me some explanations.’ He read:

  ‘“Not so long ago the Colombian Government received the humiliating offer of the paying off of the ten billion dollar national debt in return for total freedom from government intervention in the drug trade. Naturally, and to its credit, it refused . . .” Now what I want to know, Emperador, is why they have never made a similar offer to us.’

  ‘Our debt is too big even for them, boss, and I guess they couldn’t afford to pay off two debts at once, so they chose the smaller.’

  President Veracruz made a rueful expression, and then said, ‘Now listen to this: “I oppose those who claim that the coca trade is indispensable to our national budget. It is estimated that the coca mafia earns some ten billion dollars per annum. Of this, nine billion apparently finds its way via Switzerland and other countries into investment in legitimate European and United States industries. The one billion that finds its way back again leaves the country immediately because it is spent on luxury foreign goods destined to embellish the palaces of the caudillos. It is very clear, then, that the destruction of the coca trade would be positively beneficial to our balance of payments.” Now tell me, Emperador, why is it that this philosophy professor knows more about all this than you do? You have always told me that without a blind eye to the coca trade this country would go to the wall. What is the truth of the matter?’

  The Finance Minister glanced again at the disconcerting testicle, and shuffled his feet. ‘Those statistics were published only last month, and I had omitted to inform you of them. They derive from a source in the United States, were reported in the New York Herald Tribune, and then were repeated in our own press, I believe.’

  ‘But are they true, Emperador, are they true?’

  Señor Coriolano flushed, and said, ‘I believe they probably are, I am afraid, boss. We have been operating on a false assumption for a very long time.’ He looked at the President’s face, and then back at the floor. ‘I meant to tell you, but circumstances made it difficult, you know there is a lot at stake, and . . .’

  His Excellency folded up the newspaper and slapped it down on the table with a disgusted expression. ‘Listen, Emperador, I am not naive, and I know very well that practically everyone is getting a cut, especially if they are a Minister of State. I will tell you something unofficially, OK? You can take as much from them as you like, but don’t ever give them what they want in return, and always tell me everything you know, OK? From now on we don’t turn a blind eye, because the solvency of the Republic is at stake and it is driving me crazy trying to run a bankrupt country, you understand? When I leave office I intend to go down in the history books not only as the man who won the Los Puercos War, but also as the man who put this place in the black for the first time in forty years.’

  The Minister of Finance looked back wryly. ‘That would be a greater miracle than the parting of the Red Sea, boss, but I too would like to see it.’

  His Excellency raised his eyebrows and remarked, ‘And if I catch you out withholding information or giving me lies, I will have you investigated, and that could mean a firing squad, my friend, if it turns out to be treachery.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  President Veracruz dismissed his Minister and rang up the offices of La Prensa to ask for all back copies which contained Dionisio Vivo’s coca letters, and went to call in on his wife’s chamber.

  She was in a negligée, sprawled across her bed, feeding Turkish Delight to the huge black cat. His Excellency took in the touching scene and said, ‘The naughty little schoolgirl is feeding my bonbons to the cat again: I think she wants a spanking.’

  ‘Oh Daddikins,’ she pouted, ‘be sweet, and let me off this time.’

  ‘Just a little spanking, then.’

  Later on, in bed, His Excellency furrowed his brow and said resentfully. ‘Why do you suppose that the coca people have never offered me any money? How come they bribe everyone else?’

  ‘Oh Daddikins, don’t worry about it,’ she replied, kissing him on the forehead, and thinking about her bank account in Panama.

  2 The Cravate

  DIONISIO AROSE RELUCTANTLY from his bed, went to the window to see what kind of day it was, and went to the telephone to ring the police.

  After two wrong numbers a voice full of disenchantment on the other end of the line said, ‘Police.’

  ‘Ramon, is that you? This is Dionisio from the Calle de la Constitucion. Listen Ramon, I have another Colombian cravate in my front garden. Can you come and take it away? It is my third one this year.’

  ‘Okay, Dionisio. Can you keep the vultures off it until we get there? It will make identification easier for us.’

  ‘If I shoot them will you take their bodies away as well?’

  ‘You know it is bad luck to shoot vultures,’ said the policeman. ‘Just scare them off.’

  Dionisio laughed. ‘You know I do not believe in stuff like that. If I were superstitious I would lose my job and my credibility.’

  ‘You once said to me, Dionisio, that today’s science is tomorrow’s superstition. Maybe also today’s superstition is tomorrow’s science. Think about it.’

  Dionisio snorted and said, ‘God save us from philosophical policemen. You are supposed to be brutal and stupid.’

  ‘You do not believe in God, either,’ retorted the policeman, ‘so he cannot save you from me. Escuchame, I will come up and take awa
y your cravate. Keep the vultures off.’

  ‘Claro,’ said Dionisio. ‘Goodbye, and see you in a while.’

  Dionisio rummaged through his washing basket and dug out the cleanest of his dirty clothes. He got dressed and went downstairs to look at the corpse. It was a crumpled young man in a blue but now bloodstained shirt. He had no shoes, fashionable trousers, a cowhide belt, and a face of such mixed ancestry as to be unclassifiable. His black hair was thick with cheap shiny gel, and his tongue protruded grotesquely through the slit in his throat. Dionisio remembered how he had vomited and retched the first time he had seen this, and reflected that it was frightening to become inured to it so quickly. He bent down and brushed away some of the ants that were crawling over the man’s face and going in and out of his mouth, and then he threw a stone at the vulture that landed noisily and clumsily in the pine tree. ‘Hijo de puta,’ he shouted at it in a sudden fury, and then realised that he must be more upset than he had thought. He looked at his watch and saw with resignation that he was going to be late for his lecture again, and wondered whether the principal would believe again the same bizarre excuse of a body in the garden. He sat with his back to the trunk of the tree and irritated the vulture by tossing stones at it until Ramon arrived with another officer. They put on yellow kitchen gloves as they came through the gate.

  ‘Hola,’ said Ramon, ‘another fine start to a perfect day.’

  Dionisio smiled at this old classmate who had made the incomprehensible choice of becoming a policeman despite the horror of his friends. They all called him ‘cochinillo’ to his face, but he took the tease in the spirit in which it was meant, and usually gave as good as he got. ‘How is my little Socrates?’ he asked.

  ‘I am a little tired of all these Colombian cravates,’ replied Dionisio, smiling weakly. ‘Why do they always dump them in my garden, and not someone else’s?’

  ‘Either,’ said Ramon, ‘they think that you need a little excitement, and are very charitably providing it, or else they are giving you a little warning. I favour the latter hypothesis myself.’