The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzmán Page 13

  His Excellency sighed with resignation. ‘It has an inevitability about it. What is it this time, another message about nationalising the abattoirs? Really I cannot see the purpose of it. How is your dear wife and your pretty little French mistress, eh?’

  ‘They are both well and at each other’s throats as usual, boss, it was a mistake to put them both in the same house. Listen, the Archangel came to me, and do you know what he said? He said, “Everyone loves a stud.”’

  ‘“Everyone loves a stud?’” repeated his Excellency.

  ‘Yes, boss, he said just that, and then I realised; it’s God’s own truth. If we let it be known that you’re a stud, even at your age, everyone will vote for you, no horseshit.’

  President Veracruz bridled. ‘And what’s this “even at my age” got to do with it? I can assure you that all is in order.’

  ‘Proves my point, boss. You are a stud, and we should make capital out of it. We can put up posters “Vote for the Stud”, it’s a winner for sure.’

  His Excellency leaned back in his chair. ‘Garcilaso, it’s brilliant, but perhaps we could go for something a little more subtle, no? And please do not call me boss; how many times do I have to ask?’

  And so it was that ‘Eva Perón’ rang up the director of television news and current affairs, proposing a little deal. There was at that time a bill before the National Assembly called the ‘Elimination Of Bias In The Media Bill’, which His Excellency had dreamed up because he was convinced that all the media were either unreconstructed Communists or arrant Conservatives. He felt positively persecuted by the reportage in the news and in the exposé programmes such as Did You Know? and The World Today. His bill was designed to ensure that every time a case was made against him, one of his spokesmen should be consulted in order to balance it out. Almost everyone was opposed to the bill, and supported it at the same time. True, there were voices raised in defence of free speech and the ability of the public to judge for itself, but the real situation was that the Liberals were in favour of it because it would shut the Conservatives up in times of Liberal rule. But the Liberals were also opposed to it, because if the Conservatives should come to power they would undoubtedly use the measures of the bill to stifle Liberal criticism. The Conservatives supported and opposed the bill for the same kinds of reason, and no one was sure whether or not to vote for it in case the other side got elected.

  The one faction that utterly opposed the bill in any form were the media themselves, since it would be utterly impossible to make current affairs programmes that were forty-five mintes long and contained everybody’s point of view. Journalists regarded the whole thing as a cynical attempt at underhand censorship, designed to save the government from embarrassing revelations. Which of course it was.

  Eva Perón’s little deal was that the bill would be dropped ‘in view of concerns about the constitutional right of free speech’, in return for a documentary about His Excellency. She informed the director that the latter would be only too pleased to give him a list of potential interviewees. Meanwhile Emperador Ignacio Coriolano (or ‘Emperor Cunnilingus the Insatiable’, as he was more usually known) rounded up the many retired and active whores of his acquaintance, and briefed them thoroughly about what they could or could not say.

  Thus it was that the nation was simultaneously scandalised and thrilled to hear glowing tributes to His Excellency’s prowess, and was edified to discover that since his marriage this prowess had been solely at the service of Madame Veracruz, who spoke of it obliquely, coyly, and with a starry-eyed expression of gratitude and admiration. In this way His Excellency was able to play all at a stroke the family card, the defender of the constitution card, and the stud card. It remained only to play the patriotic card once more, bringing us back to the place where we began, with Dr Galico and his mistress Prepucia.

  To put it in short, His Excellency arranged for her body to be brought back from Paris and laid alongside the Doctor in the pantheon. The body arrived in a military transport plane flying the national flag in yellow for the sands of the sea, red for the blood of the nation’s martyrs, green for the forests, and blue for the sky. A guard of honour of mounted dragoons in shining cuirasses and thigh boots accompanied the gun carriage to the Presidential Palace, where His Excellency removed from the coffin the bottles of Chanel No. 5, the Napoleon brandy, the boxes of truffles, the book he had ordered describing the rituals of the Martinist Order, the Russian caviar, and the working model of a guillotine that chopped off the ends of cigars. He was placing the lid over the pathetic yellow bones and shrunken skin of Prepucia when he was summoned to the telephone to talk to His Eminence, Cardinal Dominic Trujillo Guzman.

  The Cardinal said simply, ‘Your Excellency, you cannot allow this sacrilege. The pantheon is hallowed ground, and the Church cannot permit that a man’s mistress should be buried alongside him and his legitimate wife. It cannot possibly be allowed. The woman was not even a Christian.’

  His Excellency, who had no time at all for the Cardinal, believing him to be little better than a scarlet-clad oligarch, brusquely told him, ‘Your Eminence, I cannot talk to you now, but I will ring you back as soon as I can.’ He put the telephone down and then asked for the Cardinal’s file from the office of the Interior Ministry Internal Security Service. It was duly delivered, and His Excellency perused it with some amusement before returning the Cardinal’s call.

  ‘Am I to understand,’ he asked, ‘that whereas the Church does not permit me to bury a man’s mistress in his grave, it does permit its dignitaries to have mistresses of their own and an illegitimate child or two? Am I correct in assuming that the Church permits embezzlement and nocturnal visits to brothels, admittedly in disguise? I seek your spiritual guidance, Your Eminence.’ There was a long silence, and then the Cardinal hung up.

  The funeral and burial were a magnificent success, mostly because a national holiday was declared that permitted the population to pour into the streets to cheer the gorgeous cortège, wave flags, become inebriated, and end up in the gutters and alleyways vomiting up the arepas and the empanadas that they had unwisely consumed along with the pisco. It was a winner, and not only for the stray dogs that cleared up the mess.

  President Veracruz was returned to office with an enormous majority for the third time, and yet the ballot boxes were filled in advance only with enough votes to make up for the eighty per cent who never bothered to vote. The country’s demographers noted with astonishment and perplexity that the number of votes was virtually the same as the number of registered voters, and agreed that times had changed indeed. The newspapers ingratiatingly led with the headline ‘Democracy Is Safe In His Hands’, and His Excellency decided to reward himself with a twenty-two month diplomatic tour of the world. He intended to find the tomb of Christian Rosencreutz, make love in the central chamber of the Great Pyramid (in order to rejuvenate himself), and in California he intended to have an operation that would enable him to achieve tumescence at will.

  It is very likely that if he had not paralysed the administration of the country by his absence, then the events recounted here would never have happened. True, he left the government to his cabinet, but they never knew what to do, and took to consulting the United States Ambassador, who from time immemorial had always been nicknamed ‘The Real President’. But no one in the country had the constitutional power to declare an emergency or to mobilise the Armed Forces, and the only guidance from His Excellency was a directive telegraphed from Italy that henceforth all citizens must wear a hat, so that they could doff it in the event of meeting him unexpectedly.

  19 Monsignor Rechin Anquilar

  ‘SHALL I WIPE that snot from your nose, Cristobal?’ asked the Cardinal, and the little boy replied, ‘No, it’s all right, I’ll eat it.’

  Before His Eminence could stop him, Cristobal had spread the mucus on the back of his hand and removed it with one efficient sweep of his tongue. ‘Yum,’ he said. ‘It’s salty.’

  ‘Cristobal, th
at is horrible, you really must not do it,’ remonstrated His Eminence, and the little boy reflected a moment. Ingenuously he raised his eyes and observed, ‘I saw a dog licking itself, that’s not very nice, is it?’

  ‘No it is not,’ said His Eminence, amused, ‘but they only do that because they have no sponges and soap.’

  ‘Or hands,’ said the little boy. ‘Mama says that if I am bad I will be reborn as a dog, and then I’ll have to lick myself, won’t I? What do you think it’s like?’

  ‘Mama should not tell you things like that. When you die you go to heaven if you have been good, and to hell if you have been bad.’

  Cristobal sent a toy car rattling across the polished tiles, and it collided with the leg of a table. ‘O Jesus,’ he exclaimed in his innocent treble. The Cardinal was shocked and raised his voice a little: ‘Don’t say that. God does not like people to call him when they don’t need to. One day you will call him and he won’t come because he is fed up with false alarms.’

  ‘Mama says it all the time. She said it when I had that accident and she had to change my clothes, and she says it when you ring the bell to ask for something.’

  His Eminence shook his head sadly, and Cristobal returned to his earlier topic. ‘When I die I want to be a hummingbird.’

  ‘Maybe God will let you be a hummingbird for some of the time when you get to heaven.’ He paused. ‘But you won’t get there at all if you keep saying bad things.’

  ‘Mama says that heaven would be boring. She says that all the interesting people go to hell.’

  The Cardinal raised his eyes to the heavens and instructed himself to have a word with Concepcion. ‘But if you go to heaven or hell you can’t come back as a dog or a hummingbird, can you? So you must have been wrong about that.’

  ‘You stay there for a bit, and then you come back as soon as there is a body waiting.’

  ‘Your mama says that?’

  Cristobal nodded sagely, and the Cardinal decided to change the subject. ‘Will you clear up all these toys now? I am expecting a visitor and I don’t want him to fall over and see all this mess. Put everything in a box and take it away.’

  The little boy stuck his lower lip out in protest, and His Eminence said, ‘That’s how Indians point, by sticking their lip out, did you know that? Come on, I’ll help.’ His Eminence got down on his hands and knees and fished toys out from under the chairs, passing them to his illegitimate but dearly beloved son. Cristobal played briefly with each one before putting it in the big wooden box that His Eminence kept in a corner, covered with a cloth. The Cardinal returned to his chair and pulled out a handkerchief from beneath his robes. ‘Come and sit on my knee a minute, Cristo’. Come and give me a hug.’

  Cristobal climbed up the Cardinal’s legs and kissed him wetly on the cheek. ‘Are you my papa?’ he asked. ‘Everyone says that you are, except you and Mama.’

  ‘I am your spiritual father,’ said His Eminence gently, ‘and I love you just as much as if I was your real father.’ He stroked the boy’s curls and squeezed softly at the back of his neck. ‘Will you tell Mama that her fish was delicious? And will you tell her that I would love some of her tea that is good for my stomach? And guess what I can see?’

  ‘What?’ asked Cristobal, following the line of his father’s finger. The Cardinal deftly wiped the boy’s upper lip with the concealed handkerchief and said teasingly, ‘I saw two horrible green slugs coming out of your nose, but now they are gone. What do you think of that?’

  Cristobal looked aggrieved. ‘Can I lick the handkerchief?’ he demanded.

  His father pulled a face and said, ‘Certainly not. Now go and play in the gardens, and don’t forget to tell your mama what I said about the fish and the tea.’ He patted Cristobal’s backside as he clambered down, and watched him run happily out of the audience chamber. He sighed and leaned back in his chair, intending to run over in his mind the things he was going to say to Monsignor Anquilar, but instead he thought about the sadness of being locked into a life that was nothing but unworthy compromise. In the distance he heard two gunshots that were the failed assassination attempt upon a visiting judge, and he went to the window. He spotted the group of pious widows before they spotted him, and he ducked back so that he would not have to bless them. The stench of urine was as bad as ever. There was a pall of smoke somewhere in the centre of the city where the coca cartels had blown up the police headquarters an hour previously, and he reflected upon the artistic way in which it blended with the first dark clouds of sunset. He practised what he was going to say when the press asked him to release a statement about these atrocities. All the usual words like ‘inhuman’ and ‘barbarous’ came to his mind, and he groped about for something more telling and original.

  Concepcion came in with the medicinal tea, and he turned and smiled, ‘Thank you, querida, just put it on the desk and I will come and drink it in a moment.’

  ‘Ahorita,’ said Concepcion, using the diminutive of the word ‘now’ that is used by everyone from mountainous regions. ‘You have to drink it very hot, or it is no use.’

  The Cardinal came to the desk and took a sip of the tea. It tasted exotic and bitter, but not unpleasant, and he took a deeper draught. ‘Where do you find this?’ he asked. ‘It’s not one of those barbarous country medicines is it?’

  Concepcion shot him a reproving glance and said, ‘Tchaa, I got it from the pharmacy,’ thinking that on this occasion a lie would be tactful. The tea was made of coca leaves, yague, a drop of copal resin, some of her own urine, and desiccated llama foetus, with a little bit of ordinary tea thrown in to disguise it. She had got the recipe from the brujo up in the favelas that the Cardinal was trying to get removed.

  ‘It does me good,’ said His Eminence, ‘you take good care of me.’

  ‘I love you,’ she said, and shrugged her shoulders to indicate that that explained everything. They smiled at each other for a moment, and she gathered up the tray and left. ‘She is like a cat,’ he thought.

  Very shortly afterwards, Monsignor Rechin Anquilar arrived, bearing a brittle smile and the gift of a missal inlaid with mother-of-pearl. As though by a flick of a switch, the Cardinal clicked out of his role as father and lover, and became every inch the primate. He grew stiffer, his movements more dignified and considered, and his smile more reluctant. He adopted a serious and apostolic air, and waved Mgr Anquilar to a seat with a balletic sweep of the arm and a slight bow. ‘How pleasant it is to meet you,’ he said, ‘I trust that you are well.’

  Mgr Anquilar nodded, and sat down without any discernible expression upon his face. ‘I am late,’ he said in his dry voice. ‘It was because of the traffic jams. There has been another bombing.’

  The Cardinal expected him to continue his explanation, to make lamentation about what terrible times we live in, or to say something more about the traffic, but Mgr Rechin Anquilar merely placed his hands upon his lap and looked at him in a vacant but direct fashion. His Eminence was to discover that Anquilar was taciturn and humourless.

  ‘Read this,’ said His Eminence, handing over the report of the Holy Office, ‘but ignore the scurrilous attacks on the Church and the pieces composed by Communists.’ His Eminence noticed that somehow Cristobal had left guava-jelly fingerprints upon it, and hoped that Anquilar would not notice and think it was him. He sat back and watched as the man read it carefully, flicking over the pages with the impatience of a man who is morally irritated. He took the opportunity to gather a first impression of he whom he was intending to appoint as the leader of the crusade of preaching.

  He was a man so angular that he seemed to be composed entirely of polyhedra, and had the kind of nose that people assume to be Jewish but which in fact is aristocratically Spanish. His black habit concealed a bony body, and fell about him in such a fashion that it seemed to be a part of him. His Eminence read again his accreditation; he was forty years old, had a doctorate in Canon Law and another in the Theology of St Thomas Aquinas. He had lectured in France an
d in Uruguay, and was a noted authority upon the ontological argument for the existence of God. He had successfully evangelised the population of the Island of Baru, but had seen his work overthrown by a catastrophic outbreak of influenza caused by the arrival of a new missionary from Holland, and he was widely notorious for his inflexible orthodoxy. His report upon the Baru Island fiasco had concluded with the words, ‘And so we find ourselves edified by the unshakeable belief that the islanders found their way to heaven earlier than they otherwise would have done, it being better for them to have died prematurely as Christians than at full term as heathens.’ Here was a man who would jump at the chance to transform the nation.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked His Eminence when Mgr Anquilar had reached the last lines of the report.

  ‘It is just as I would have expected,’ he replied. ‘The spiritual poverty of the people is everywhere evident.’

  ‘I want you to do something about it,’ said His Eminence.

  ‘My life is already dedicated to that task,’ said Anquilar. ‘I hope that you have not found me deficient.’

  ‘Far from it,’ said His Eminence, rattled by the man’s dusty voice and dry demeanour. ‘My plan is to mount a crusade of evangelisation that will bring the lost sheep back into the fold, and I want you to shepherd it. I would expect you to submit accounts, but beyond that you would enjoy great autonomy. I expect you to gather together a band of men of great faith and resourcefulness who would be prepared to endure hostility and ridicule in order to bring the people back to God, and to send them to the most obscure corners of the land to drive out the Devil, so to speak.’

  ‘So to speak?’ echoed Anquilar. ‘I take the Devil literally.’

  ‘Indeed, indeed,’ said the Cardinal. ‘Now, will you take on the job?’

  Mgr Rechin Anquilar reflected for a moment and then nodded. ‘I will do God’s will in the belief that it is transmitted via your office.’