The Dissertation, page 44
part #2 of Tinieblas Series
Item—When assigned as secretary to the Archbishop of Tinieblas, he requested a parish in the interior.
Item—When posted to Belém, he moved in with a peasant family, organized a peasant cooperative, and spent most of his time at labor in the fields.
Item—When his parishioners were served eviction orders, he did not counsel them to render unto Genghis and seek reward in heaven but mobilized them to struggle for the land they worked.
In short, while others fondled altar boys or schnozzled down the sacramental wine, Padre Celso was ruled by a morbid craving for justice which he sought constantly to appease.
Shortly before 9:00 P.M. on 7th March, 1974, while Liz and I were bedding down in the Mituco Guest House (see note 25), an olive Veldtmaster (with a winch at the front and “GUARDIA CIVIL/ACCIÓN CÍVICA” stencilled in yellow on the doors above flaked Alianza handclasps) four-wheeled to the top of the dirt track below the orange-crate and flattened-tin-can hovel—property of one Nepo Delgado, campesino—where Padre Celso lived. On board were Major Lisandro Empulgueras, chief of the Fourth Military District; Sergeant Evaristo Tranca; Sergeants Martillo and Tenazas from the barracks at Otán; Private Punzón, driver. Martillo and Tenazas, who wore civilian clothes and weren’t known around Belém, got out and climbed up with a story: Someone (they didn’t bother to make up, a name) was hurt, yes, kicked by a mule and stepped on, and needed—what you call it?—unction. They brought Padre Celso down, grabbed him a few steps from the vehicle, told him if he yelled they’d take his hosts, shoved him in with Major Empulgueras, slammed the door, hopped the tailgate, and squatted in the back.
Padre Celso asked where they were taking him. Major Lisandro Empulgueras said that depended: would he be a good boy and stop causing trouble? Padre Celso pretended not to understand: they’d said a man was injured. Major Lisandro Empulgueras hawed and asked if Padre Celso thought that he, the military district chief, would traipse out to the bush for crap like that.
Padre Celso allowed that Major Empulgueras wasn’t known for the amount of time and energy he spent on errands of compassion. Major Lisandro Empulgueras warned Padre Celso not to show disrespect, boy. Padre Celso reminded Major Empulgueras to call him “Father.” Major Lisandro Empulgueras took Padre Celso’s ear and twisted so that Padre Celso’s head bent back toward the tailgate and said that Padre Celso was not his father. The major knew who his father was. Did Padre Celso think the major didn’t know his father? Given that syntax, Padre Celso couldn’t answer yes or no. Major Lisandro Empulgueras twisted; Padre Celso’s head bent back until he smelled the peppermint on Sergeant Tenazas’s breath. He told the major no, he didn’t think that; yes, the major knew his father. Major Lisandro Empulgueras released the ear and patted Padre Celso’s close-cropped head. That was good; he was a good boy.
All this time the Veldtmaster rocked down the dirt track like a trawler in deep swells. Now it stopped, and Private Punzón got out to switch the front wheels back for two-wheel drive. Padre Celso put his hand on the door handle. Sergeant Tenazas put his hand on Padre Celso’s neck. Padre Celso put his hand back in his lap.
When the Veldtmaster pulled out onto the high-crowned asphalt road, Padre Celso asked Major Empulgueras why they didn’t let him go. Major Lisandro Empulgueras poked Padre Celso in the ribs and said he’d been a bad boy, hadn’t he?—butting in and stirring people up and causing trouble. Tinieblas was a happy, well-run country where people ought to mind their own affairs, foreigners especially. If Padre Celso promised to behave, he could go home.
When Padre Celso did not reply but kept his eyes trained over Sergeant Evaristo Tranca’s shoulder out along the bug-clogged cones of light poked forward by the headlamps, Major Lisandro Empulgueras reminded him that the Fourth Military District comprised the province of La Merced, and Mituco, and the Pacific Ocean for two hundred miles out from the coast, and all the sky above that land and water, and that its chief had many things to do and all the power necessary to do them. He, Lisandro Empulgueras, could have had Padre Celso picked up anytime and taught harsh lessons in comportment and, if need be, deported from the province and the country—from this world, in fact. But he, Lisandro Empulgueras, was a reasonable man who understood that people make mistakes, a man who tried to do his duty, which was to run a tranquil district, without resorting to extreme solutions or showing disrespect to anyone, foreigners included. So he had gone out of his way to be both courteous and discreet, coming in person to ask the padre to behave, taking great care to keep their meeting secret, and bringing with him trusted men who didn’t see or hear, and hence would not remember, anything their major didn’t want them to.
Padre Celso looked on ahead over Sergeant Tranca’s shoulder and said, finally, that the major didn’t want a scandal, that he didn’t want him, Padre Celso, to lose his credit with the peasants, that he wanted to use him with the peasants.
Major Lisandro Empulgueras sighed and remarked to no one in particular that the trouble with most Costaguanans was that they were devious and, hence, attributed deceit to other people. Then he said it was no matter and asked Padre Celso if he’d be a good boy now, if he’d behave himself, if he’d cooperate with the authorities of the state, a state in which he was a guest, correct? and respect the principle of private ownership, a principle supported by the Church, wasn’t that so? and help avoid violence and disorder, which no one wanted, right? least of all Major Empulgueras and the Tinieblan Civil Guard—though both were well prepared to deal with violence if it came and to keep order—and get his pack of filthy, stinking peasant squatters off Don Kublai Manduco’s land.
Now, when Padre Celso left his home that night with strangers, he was apprehensive; and when they laid hands on him and told him not to yell, he was alarmed, and when he saw the Guardia vehicle, he was quite worried; and when he recognized Major Lisandro Empulgueras, with his neat brown-and-green camouflage uniform and his high-polished boots and his gold stars, he was afraid; and when the Veldtmaster rolled off along the high-crowned asphalt road toward Belém, where Major Empulgueras had his headquarters, his prison, and his basement interrogation chamber, he was terrified; and when the major mentioned casually—it was a matter of small novelty and consequence to him, after all—that he could have him killed, he was possessed by a deep, sphincter-loosening dread; but when he heard the major refer crudely to his peasants, he felt such an intense craving for justice that he forgot his fear and vulnerability and turned to look the major in the eye. Didn’t he see? It wasn’t Kublai Manduco’s land, it was theirs! They’d lived on it for years! They’d worked it! Their title was their sweat! And now they were organized in a cooperative and could farm properly. There was no reason for them to leave.
Major Lisandro Empulgueras raised both hands, tensed like a pair of claws, and held them under Padre Celso’s chin. Then he turned and clamped his hands onto the top of the front seat back on either side of Private Punzón’s neck and leaned forward, grinding his teeth and twisting his body like a man undergoing prostatic massage. At length he spread his hands and raised them an inch or so and, as though pressing on the inch or so of air between the seat-back and his palms, forced his shoulders back. Then, in the hoarse and halting voice of one showing heroic self-control, he told Padre Celso that he was not discussing anything. He was informing him that the peasants would depart, one way or another. Agitation and disrespect for law would cease, one way or another. He was asking him to behave, to be a good boy, to help out. He asked this for the good of all. The men with him were witnesses: he, Lisandro Empulgueras, was being reasonable.
But Padre Celso was stoned on justice and beyond the reach of human reason. He reminded Major Empulgueras that the Tinieblan Revolution had, supposedly, been organized to halt the exploitation of the people, that the Revolutionary Government had promised land reform and land titles to campesinos, that in his New Year’s speech General Genghis Manduco—
Major Lisandro Empulgueras seized Padre Celso’s shirt and yanked him down and forward so that the padre’s face pressed in the major’s lap. He advised Padre Celso not to talk to him about his general. He got his orders from his general. His general wanted Padre Celso to behave, to be a good boy, to stop making trouble, to clean up the mess he’d made. Now, was the padre going to behave? If he didn’t know how, the major would instruct him. What did the padre say?
Padre Celso twisted his face up from Major Empulgueras’s lap and told the major to take his hands off his cloth.
The major’s fists began to shake uncontrollably, bouncing Padre Celso’s face into the major’s lap. But then the Veldtmaster, which all this while had been rolling at moderate speed along the high-crowned asphalt road, slowed and pulled onto the shoulder and stopped, and when it stopped, so did the major’s fists. Then the major asked once more if Padre Celso was going to be good, and the padre, after some twisting of his face, replied that he didn’t get his orders from the major’s general.
Major Lisandro Empulgueras jerked his fists up and flung Padre Celso over to the right side of the Veldtmaster. He wiped his hands on his brown and green camouflage tunic as if there were something sticky on them, and opened his door and got out and shut the door softly behind him. He turned and stuck his head in through the window and, very softly, told the men inside to teach Padre Celso to behave. He stood and reached into a trouser pocket and pulled out a little brown-and-green camouflage beret and set it on his head at a brave and military angle. Then he strode off along the bug-clogged cone of light poked forward by the Veldtmaster’s left headlamp toward a sedan parked up ahead. As be did so, Sergeant Tenazas took a burlap sack from behind the rear seat and bagged it over Padre Celso’s head. Then he and Sergeant Martillo swarmed over the rear seat, pushing Padre Celso down onto the floor with his hands crumpled under him against the muddy rubber mat and his gut mashed by the hump of the drive shaft, and, not sparing him some prods and stomps, held him down with their feet.
At this point I got up and advised Padre Celso that his hour was over. Actually, what with the wealth of detail he’d included and the way he hopped about from his experience in this world to what he’d found out in the next, he’d already had some seven minutes extra, but I’d withheld my interruption until what seemed a natural break—more than the shrinks back at the Fasholt quackery would ever do. He gasped in astonishment: what did I mean? I meant, I said, that I had work to do. But didn’t I want to hear the rest? I told him, sincerely, that of course I did: it was a gripping tale, enlivened by topicality and the coincidence that I had glimpsed him on the very afternoon of his misadventure. But I ruled myself with a stern discipline. Compelling as it was, I could not let his story keep me longer from my work. I was pledged to Learning even as he had been to Justice, a situation that he, of all people, ought easily to comprehend. In any case, I pointed out, he’d said at the outset that he’d been murdered, so I supposed that was the denouement.
He sighed and shook his head, which was all gouted with blood from the scratches round his brow. “But your father said—”
“What about my father? Have you seen him? Where is he?”
“Let me go on.”
“Oh, no. Tell me right now. Speak, or I’ll exorcise you from this house! There’s not another person in this country who can even see you, much less hear your twaddle! Spit it out, damn you! What about my father?”
He smiled his sad smile and wrung his stigmata’d bands and said he pitied me. Then he told me that when he “died” there’d been a mix-up. He showed up at Reception in such awful shape that he was taken for an escapee from Victim and dispatched there forthwith. Before they got his papers straightened out, he met my father.
“In Victim?”
“On a long stretch, I’m afraid.”
“But why? What for?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know. He was more interested in hearing me than in telling me his troubles. Oh, I don’t know if it was me so much, but he cares a lot about this country. He told me to find you and tell you what they’d done to me and how they’re grabbing up the land. He said you’d do something about it.”
“Me?”
“Yes. He said to see his son, Carlos Fuertes.”
I smiled and sat down on my bed. “Well, that explains it. You’ve got the wrong son. My name’s Camilo. You want my elder brother. He’s the man of action in the family.”
“I see. How stupid of me. Six weeks wasted.” He sighed again and stood. “I’m sorry to have taken up your time; you’ve been most kind. Perhaps you will tell me where to find your brother.”
“I don’t know. No one has heard from him in years. But even if I knew, it wouldn’t help you much. You couldn’t possibly communicate with him. My mother’s tried a thousand times.”
“He doesn’t believe in spirits?”
“Worse. He won’t believe. At the least mention of anything beyond the material universe—religion, spiritism, what you will—he mobilizes all his intelligence and will to disbelieve.”
“And you? Can you do nothing for me, for your country?”
“Yes … I think I can. I can put your story in my notes. I think the information that you’ve given me about my father justifies that. Yes, I’ll give it a footnote.”
He smiled and nodded sadly. “Poor brothers. One can’t believe, the other cannot act.”
“Look, sir, Father, I’m trying to get the past arranged. I can’t afford to care about the present or the future.”
“I should say you can’t afford not to. But I understand. Thank you, in any case,” He made to go.
“Wait.” Seeping compassion wore away my will. “Come back again, say in a day or two. I’m not an activist, please understand, but we can have another session. Perhaps you will feel better.”
“Would you try to locate your brother for me? One never knows, I might be able …”
“All right. I’ll call my uncle. I’ll ask around. And you might ask after my father. “
“Agreed. Till later, then.” And he backed slowly through the wall.
I pulled the paper out of my machine and sat down at once to draft this note. I trust that it constitutes adequate proof of my good faith toward Padre Celso.
42. Scandalmongering
Remains a popular diversion in this disgusting little country. At least that is the conclusion I must draw from the phone call I received earlier tonight (Thursday, 2nd May, 1974) in which the string-activated voice of one of Mr. S. Heilanstalt’s discarded dolls tried to persuade me that Sig and my wife, Liz, have an adulterous connection. I’ve had such thoughts myself in moments of depression, and I confess I was on the way to being persuaded until my anonymous scandalmonger (who said she has a key to Sig’s apartment and received my congratulations thereon) claimed to have surprised Liz and Sig “fucking each other” (the phrase is Scandalmonger’s, not mine) on his couch last Friday evening. That proved the tale a fabrication, dreamed up, no doubt, in hope of procuring its authoress some revenge against a man who’d dropped her, for on that particular evening Liz had no need of adultery but was in fact the most satisfied woman in Christendom (see note 40), thanks to her own husband. Furthermore, a moment’s reflection (accomplished after I had set the phone receiver softly in its cradle) convinced me that Liz would scarcely betray me for Sig. Oh, no, my examiners! The tenth particle of an authentic genius, who can call spirits from the vasty deep (including that of Sofonias de Bisagra, main source for Chapter 9, who is waiting patiently while I complete this note), is worth a whole network of talk-show-blabbing scribblers, and Liz knows it.
It is distressing, nonetheless, to consider the anguish scandalmongering sows among the ungifted and frailly-ego’d.
43. Feet
As soon as the Veldtmaster began moving, Padre Celso began struggling. He almost made it to his knees and, during the attempt, experienced the fantasy that he would gain the door, fling himself out, survive the impact, elude his captors, reach the capital, and, with the blessing of the Archbishop and the support of the Church, so rouse the populace to righteous indignation that the dictatorship would fall and a regime of justice replace it. Then a boot-shod foot clubbed into the base of his spine, and a second boot-shod foot stomped on his shoulder, and a third boot-shod foot clamped on the back of his right knee, and a fourth boot-shod foot exploded down onto his neck, mashing it against the floor mat. The feet were followed by a weary voice advising him to “Calm down, cocksucker,” and, after a bit, Padre Celso grew calm.
It was not that he gave up. The feet had given him a new fix of justice. They might have been stomping other people, after all; instead they were occupied with him. In absorbing this admittedly minute portion of the world’s pain and degradation, and thus insuring that it was not distributed to others, Padre Celso felt be was advancing the cause of justice, and he was aware, as never before, of the purpose of his life. He was in fact so crazed with his sense of purpose that he would have felt deprived had he been turned loose. At first he adopted toward Sergeants Martillo and Tenazas more or less the attitude of the Caracas diplomatic corps toward General Genghis Manduco’s brother Mangu when the latter, who was then serving as Tinieblan Ambassador to Venezuela, got drunk at a reception and urinated into the Foreign Minister’s swimming pool: he decided to ignore the louts as beneath attention, much less his contempt. Then he took pity on them, for clearly they led pointless lives compared to his.
It would not, on the face of it, appear that to be crammed down on the floor of a vehicle under two pairs of boot-shod feet, with a burlap sack over one’s head and one’s neck pinned against the floor mat and one’s guts squashed by the hump of the driveshaft, is a situation particularly conducive to human dignity and freedom, but according to Padre Celso Labrador (who may be granted some authority on the matter), it’s not one’s situation that counts but rather one’s perception of it. In his case, he felt that he was where he ought to be, doing what he ought to do. In this manner he rode to Belém.
44. Lord Balfour
Item—When posted to Belém, he moved in with a peasant family, organized a peasant cooperative, and spent most of his time at labor in the fields.
Item—When his parishioners were served eviction orders, he did not counsel them to render unto Genghis and seek reward in heaven but mobilized them to struggle for the land they worked.
In short, while others fondled altar boys or schnozzled down the sacramental wine, Padre Celso was ruled by a morbid craving for justice which he sought constantly to appease.
Shortly before 9:00 P.M. on 7th March, 1974, while Liz and I were bedding down in the Mituco Guest House (see note 25), an olive Veldtmaster (with a winch at the front and “GUARDIA CIVIL/ACCIÓN CÍVICA” stencilled in yellow on the doors above flaked Alianza handclasps) four-wheeled to the top of the dirt track below the orange-crate and flattened-tin-can hovel—property of one Nepo Delgado, campesino—where Padre Celso lived. On board were Major Lisandro Empulgueras, chief of the Fourth Military District; Sergeant Evaristo Tranca; Sergeants Martillo and Tenazas from the barracks at Otán; Private Punzón, driver. Martillo and Tenazas, who wore civilian clothes and weren’t known around Belém, got out and climbed up with a story: Someone (they didn’t bother to make up, a name) was hurt, yes, kicked by a mule and stepped on, and needed—what you call it?—unction. They brought Padre Celso down, grabbed him a few steps from the vehicle, told him if he yelled they’d take his hosts, shoved him in with Major Empulgueras, slammed the door, hopped the tailgate, and squatted in the back.
Padre Celso asked where they were taking him. Major Lisandro Empulgueras said that depended: would he be a good boy and stop causing trouble? Padre Celso pretended not to understand: they’d said a man was injured. Major Lisandro Empulgueras hawed and asked if Padre Celso thought that he, the military district chief, would traipse out to the bush for crap like that.
Padre Celso allowed that Major Empulgueras wasn’t known for the amount of time and energy he spent on errands of compassion. Major Lisandro Empulgueras warned Padre Celso not to show disrespect, boy. Padre Celso reminded Major Empulgueras to call him “Father.” Major Lisandro Empulgueras took Padre Celso’s ear and twisted so that Padre Celso’s head bent back toward the tailgate and said that Padre Celso was not his father. The major knew who his father was. Did Padre Celso think the major didn’t know his father? Given that syntax, Padre Celso couldn’t answer yes or no. Major Lisandro Empulgueras twisted; Padre Celso’s head bent back until he smelled the peppermint on Sergeant Tenazas’s breath. He told the major no, he didn’t think that; yes, the major knew his father. Major Lisandro Empulgueras released the ear and patted Padre Celso’s close-cropped head. That was good; he was a good boy.
All this time the Veldtmaster rocked down the dirt track like a trawler in deep swells. Now it stopped, and Private Punzón got out to switch the front wheels back for two-wheel drive. Padre Celso put his hand on the door handle. Sergeant Tenazas put his hand on Padre Celso’s neck. Padre Celso put his hand back in his lap.
When the Veldtmaster pulled out onto the high-crowned asphalt road, Padre Celso asked Major Empulgueras why they didn’t let him go. Major Lisandro Empulgueras poked Padre Celso in the ribs and said he’d been a bad boy, hadn’t he?—butting in and stirring people up and causing trouble. Tinieblas was a happy, well-run country where people ought to mind their own affairs, foreigners especially. If Padre Celso promised to behave, he could go home.
When Padre Celso did not reply but kept his eyes trained over Sergeant Evaristo Tranca’s shoulder out along the bug-clogged cones of light poked forward by the headlamps, Major Lisandro Empulgueras reminded him that the Fourth Military District comprised the province of La Merced, and Mituco, and the Pacific Ocean for two hundred miles out from the coast, and all the sky above that land and water, and that its chief had many things to do and all the power necessary to do them. He, Lisandro Empulgueras, could have had Padre Celso picked up anytime and taught harsh lessons in comportment and, if need be, deported from the province and the country—from this world, in fact. But he, Lisandro Empulgueras, was a reasonable man who understood that people make mistakes, a man who tried to do his duty, which was to run a tranquil district, without resorting to extreme solutions or showing disrespect to anyone, foreigners included. So he had gone out of his way to be both courteous and discreet, coming in person to ask the padre to behave, taking great care to keep their meeting secret, and bringing with him trusted men who didn’t see or hear, and hence would not remember, anything their major didn’t want them to.
Padre Celso looked on ahead over Sergeant Tranca’s shoulder and said, finally, that the major didn’t want a scandal, that he didn’t want him, Padre Celso, to lose his credit with the peasants, that he wanted to use him with the peasants.
Major Lisandro Empulgueras sighed and remarked to no one in particular that the trouble with most Costaguanans was that they were devious and, hence, attributed deceit to other people. Then he said it was no matter and asked Padre Celso if he’d be a good boy now, if he’d behave himself, if he’d cooperate with the authorities of the state, a state in which he was a guest, correct? and respect the principle of private ownership, a principle supported by the Church, wasn’t that so? and help avoid violence and disorder, which no one wanted, right? least of all Major Empulgueras and the Tinieblan Civil Guard—though both were well prepared to deal with violence if it came and to keep order—and get his pack of filthy, stinking peasant squatters off Don Kublai Manduco’s land.
Now, when Padre Celso left his home that night with strangers, he was apprehensive; and when they laid hands on him and told him not to yell, he was alarmed, and when he saw the Guardia vehicle, he was quite worried; and when he recognized Major Lisandro Empulgueras, with his neat brown-and-green camouflage uniform and his high-polished boots and his gold stars, he was afraid; and when the Veldtmaster rolled off along the high-crowned asphalt road toward Belém, where Major Empulgueras had his headquarters, his prison, and his basement interrogation chamber, he was terrified; and when the major mentioned casually—it was a matter of small novelty and consequence to him, after all—that he could have him killed, he was possessed by a deep, sphincter-loosening dread; but when he heard the major refer crudely to his peasants, he felt such an intense craving for justice that he forgot his fear and vulnerability and turned to look the major in the eye. Didn’t he see? It wasn’t Kublai Manduco’s land, it was theirs! They’d lived on it for years! They’d worked it! Their title was their sweat! And now they were organized in a cooperative and could farm properly. There was no reason for them to leave.
Major Lisandro Empulgueras raised both hands, tensed like a pair of claws, and held them under Padre Celso’s chin. Then he turned and clamped his hands onto the top of the front seat back on either side of Private Punzón’s neck and leaned forward, grinding his teeth and twisting his body like a man undergoing prostatic massage. At length he spread his hands and raised them an inch or so and, as though pressing on the inch or so of air between the seat-back and his palms, forced his shoulders back. Then, in the hoarse and halting voice of one showing heroic self-control, he told Padre Celso that he was not discussing anything. He was informing him that the peasants would depart, one way or another. Agitation and disrespect for law would cease, one way or another. He was asking him to behave, to be a good boy, to help out. He asked this for the good of all. The men with him were witnesses: he, Lisandro Empulgueras, was being reasonable.
But Padre Celso was stoned on justice and beyond the reach of human reason. He reminded Major Empulgueras that the Tinieblan Revolution had, supposedly, been organized to halt the exploitation of the people, that the Revolutionary Government had promised land reform and land titles to campesinos, that in his New Year’s speech General Genghis Manduco—
Major Lisandro Empulgueras seized Padre Celso’s shirt and yanked him down and forward so that the padre’s face pressed in the major’s lap. He advised Padre Celso not to talk to him about his general. He got his orders from his general. His general wanted Padre Celso to behave, to be a good boy, to stop making trouble, to clean up the mess he’d made. Now, was the padre going to behave? If he didn’t know how, the major would instruct him. What did the padre say?
Padre Celso twisted his face up from Major Empulgueras’s lap and told the major to take his hands off his cloth.
The major’s fists began to shake uncontrollably, bouncing Padre Celso’s face into the major’s lap. But then the Veldtmaster, which all this while had been rolling at moderate speed along the high-crowned asphalt road, slowed and pulled onto the shoulder and stopped, and when it stopped, so did the major’s fists. Then the major asked once more if Padre Celso was going to be good, and the padre, after some twisting of his face, replied that he didn’t get his orders from the major’s general.
Major Lisandro Empulgueras jerked his fists up and flung Padre Celso over to the right side of the Veldtmaster. He wiped his hands on his brown and green camouflage tunic as if there were something sticky on them, and opened his door and got out and shut the door softly behind him. He turned and stuck his head in through the window and, very softly, told the men inside to teach Padre Celso to behave. He stood and reached into a trouser pocket and pulled out a little brown-and-green camouflage beret and set it on his head at a brave and military angle. Then he strode off along the bug-clogged cone of light poked forward by the Veldtmaster’s left headlamp toward a sedan parked up ahead. As be did so, Sergeant Tenazas took a burlap sack from behind the rear seat and bagged it over Padre Celso’s head. Then he and Sergeant Martillo swarmed over the rear seat, pushing Padre Celso down onto the floor with his hands crumpled under him against the muddy rubber mat and his gut mashed by the hump of the drive shaft, and, not sparing him some prods and stomps, held him down with their feet.
At this point I got up and advised Padre Celso that his hour was over. Actually, what with the wealth of detail he’d included and the way he hopped about from his experience in this world to what he’d found out in the next, he’d already had some seven minutes extra, but I’d withheld my interruption until what seemed a natural break—more than the shrinks back at the Fasholt quackery would ever do. He gasped in astonishment: what did I mean? I meant, I said, that I had work to do. But didn’t I want to hear the rest? I told him, sincerely, that of course I did: it was a gripping tale, enlivened by topicality and the coincidence that I had glimpsed him on the very afternoon of his misadventure. But I ruled myself with a stern discipline. Compelling as it was, I could not let his story keep me longer from my work. I was pledged to Learning even as he had been to Justice, a situation that he, of all people, ought easily to comprehend. In any case, I pointed out, he’d said at the outset that he’d been murdered, so I supposed that was the denouement.
He sighed and shook his head, which was all gouted with blood from the scratches round his brow. “But your father said—”
“What about my father? Have you seen him? Where is he?”
“Let me go on.”
“Oh, no. Tell me right now. Speak, or I’ll exorcise you from this house! There’s not another person in this country who can even see you, much less hear your twaddle! Spit it out, damn you! What about my father?”
He smiled his sad smile and wrung his stigmata’d bands and said he pitied me. Then he told me that when he “died” there’d been a mix-up. He showed up at Reception in such awful shape that he was taken for an escapee from Victim and dispatched there forthwith. Before they got his papers straightened out, he met my father.
“In Victim?”
“On a long stretch, I’m afraid.”
“But why? What for?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know. He was more interested in hearing me than in telling me his troubles. Oh, I don’t know if it was me so much, but he cares a lot about this country. He told me to find you and tell you what they’d done to me and how they’re grabbing up the land. He said you’d do something about it.”
“Me?”
“Yes. He said to see his son, Carlos Fuertes.”
I smiled and sat down on my bed. “Well, that explains it. You’ve got the wrong son. My name’s Camilo. You want my elder brother. He’s the man of action in the family.”
“I see. How stupid of me. Six weeks wasted.” He sighed again and stood. “I’m sorry to have taken up your time; you’ve been most kind. Perhaps you will tell me where to find your brother.”
“I don’t know. No one has heard from him in years. But even if I knew, it wouldn’t help you much. You couldn’t possibly communicate with him. My mother’s tried a thousand times.”
“He doesn’t believe in spirits?”
“Worse. He won’t believe. At the least mention of anything beyond the material universe—religion, spiritism, what you will—he mobilizes all his intelligence and will to disbelieve.”
“And you? Can you do nothing for me, for your country?”
“Yes … I think I can. I can put your story in my notes. I think the information that you’ve given me about my father justifies that. Yes, I’ll give it a footnote.”
He smiled and nodded sadly. “Poor brothers. One can’t believe, the other cannot act.”
“Look, sir, Father, I’m trying to get the past arranged. I can’t afford to care about the present or the future.”
“I should say you can’t afford not to. But I understand. Thank you, in any case,” He made to go.
“Wait.” Seeping compassion wore away my will. “Come back again, say in a day or two. I’m not an activist, please understand, but we can have another session. Perhaps you will feel better.”
“Would you try to locate your brother for me? One never knows, I might be able …”
“All right. I’ll call my uncle. I’ll ask around. And you might ask after my father. “
“Agreed. Till later, then.” And he backed slowly through the wall.
I pulled the paper out of my machine and sat down at once to draft this note. I trust that it constitutes adequate proof of my good faith toward Padre Celso.
42. Scandalmongering
Remains a popular diversion in this disgusting little country. At least that is the conclusion I must draw from the phone call I received earlier tonight (Thursday, 2nd May, 1974) in which the string-activated voice of one of Mr. S. Heilanstalt’s discarded dolls tried to persuade me that Sig and my wife, Liz, have an adulterous connection. I’ve had such thoughts myself in moments of depression, and I confess I was on the way to being persuaded until my anonymous scandalmonger (who said she has a key to Sig’s apartment and received my congratulations thereon) claimed to have surprised Liz and Sig “fucking each other” (the phrase is Scandalmonger’s, not mine) on his couch last Friday evening. That proved the tale a fabrication, dreamed up, no doubt, in hope of procuring its authoress some revenge against a man who’d dropped her, for on that particular evening Liz had no need of adultery but was in fact the most satisfied woman in Christendom (see note 40), thanks to her own husband. Furthermore, a moment’s reflection (accomplished after I had set the phone receiver softly in its cradle) convinced me that Liz would scarcely betray me for Sig. Oh, no, my examiners! The tenth particle of an authentic genius, who can call spirits from the vasty deep (including that of Sofonias de Bisagra, main source for Chapter 9, who is waiting patiently while I complete this note), is worth a whole network of talk-show-blabbing scribblers, and Liz knows it.
It is distressing, nonetheless, to consider the anguish scandalmongering sows among the ungifted and frailly-ego’d.
43. Feet
As soon as the Veldtmaster began moving, Padre Celso began struggling. He almost made it to his knees and, during the attempt, experienced the fantasy that he would gain the door, fling himself out, survive the impact, elude his captors, reach the capital, and, with the blessing of the Archbishop and the support of the Church, so rouse the populace to righteous indignation that the dictatorship would fall and a regime of justice replace it. Then a boot-shod foot clubbed into the base of his spine, and a second boot-shod foot stomped on his shoulder, and a third boot-shod foot clamped on the back of his right knee, and a fourth boot-shod foot exploded down onto his neck, mashing it against the floor mat. The feet were followed by a weary voice advising him to “Calm down, cocksucker,” and, after a bit, Padre Celso grew calm.
It was not that he gave up. The feet had given him a new fix of justice. They might have been stomping other people, after all; instead they were occupied with him. In absorbing this admittedly minute portion of the world’s pain and degradation, and thus insuring that it was not distributed to others, Padre Celso felt be was advancing the cause of justice, and he was aware, as never before, of the purpose of his life. He was in fact so crazed with his sense of purpose that he would have felt deprived had he been turned loose. At first he adopted toward Sergeants Martillo and Tenazas more or less the attitude of the Caracas diplomatic corps toward General Genghis Manduco’s brother Mangu when the latter, who was then serving as Tinieblan Ambassador to Venezuela, got drunk at a reception and urinated into the Foreign Minister’s swimming pool: he decided to ignore the louts as beneath attention, much less his contempt. Then he took pity on them, for clearly they led pointless lives compared to his.
It would not, on the face of it, appear that to be crammed down on the floor of a vehicle under two pairs of boot-shod feet, with a burlap sack over one’s head and one’s neck pinned against the floor mat and one’s guts squashed by the hump of the driveshaft, is a situation particularly conducive to human dignity and freedom, but according to Padre Celso Labrador (who may be granted some authority on the matter), it’s not one’s situation that counts but rather one’s perception of it. In his case, he felt that he was where he ought to be, doing what he ought to do. In this manner he rode to Belém.
44. Lord Balfour
