The Roar of Morning

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.

“Good. You’re an obedient man. So I expect you’re a good citizen too, aren’t you?”

“Certainly, captain.”

“A citizen who obeys all the laws of his country?”

“Of course, captain.”

“Ha, so we’re dealing with a model citizen. Tell me, have you got any cows?”

“Sí, capitán.”

“And goats?”

“Sí, capitán.”

“What do you do with those cows and goats?”

“I sell the milk, captain.”

“Who to?”

“To the co-operative depot in Pueblo Nuevo.”

“Who else?”

“No one else, captain. I have to deliver all milk to the depot.”

“Don’t you sell milk to your neighbours?”

“Neighbours? I haven’t got any near neighbours, captain. The nearest place, Sanchez’s. .”

“I mean your neighbours in the jungle!”

“In the jungle? I don’t understand you, captain.”

“No. of course you don’t understand me. But what about meat? Don’t you sell meat? Don’t you ever slaughter one of your cows?”

“Oh no, captain. I live on my cow’s milk. Later, when my young bull is fully grown and my cows start calving, I may be able to slaughter a cow now and then and sell the meat. I hope to live to see the day.”

“I hope so too. No, I’m sure of it. Before you die you’ll see your cows slaughtered. You mark my prophetic words!”

The interrogation continues for quite a while. Suddenly Captain Román has had enough and orders Fernando to go to his cow pen: “That’s where you belong, among the dumb animals!” A dozen soldiers climb onto the wall of the open pen and at Román’s command the automatic weapons start rattling. Then Fernando’s wife is raped five times and his daughter ten times. The two women are tied to their beds and the house is set alight. The farmer’s little house burns to the ground and the soldiers leave. A slender moon appears among the clouds and casts a faint light on the dismal scene. Only the front wall of the burnt-out farmhouse is still standing; occasionally there is a crackling sound from the smouldering ruins. In the pen the body of the peasant lies among his dead cows, some of which are still bleeding. The whole scene has the desolate air of the paintings of Sergio Etchechourry, the visionary artist who over a century ago immortalised the War of Independence, and particularly the struggle in the countryside, in scenes of ghastly devastation and death. The farmers in the wide plain of Tierra Baja learned their lesson. None of them would ever again take it into their head to supply meat, milk or eggs to the guerrilla camp in the jungle.

And I see a nineteen-year-old youth dressed in dark blue jeans, white T-shirt and trainers who, from the third-floor balcony of a house in the Calle Principal throws a grenade at a military vehicle which drives down the street every day at 12:03 pm carrying twenty men of the National Guard to the Los Reyes barracks. Either from youthful insouciance or from anxiety because he is carrying out his first terrorist attack, the man lobs the projectile with far too much force. The grenade sails right over the vehicle and explodes in the gateway of the school on the other side of the street, just at the moment when the children come rushing out. Seven boys and girls are killed instantly, thirteen are injured. The soldiers immediately cordon off the street and search the houses; the weeping culprit is caught. He keeps screaming that the grenade was meant for the military vehicle. Under torture at the barracks he reveals which group he belongs to, who sent him on the mission, and how he got hold of the grenade. The radio stations broadcast classical music for three days, occasionally interrupted by a new report of the confessions of the grenade thrower or an interview with the next of kin of the little victims. The funeral takes place on Sunday afternoon, and as the sad cortège crosses the Plaza del Sol, the two fountains spout water dyed red to symbolise the spilling of innocent blood. The following morning the grenade thrower’s head is displayed on the pinnacle of one of the fountains. The eyeless head hangs there until the skin has turned black. One morning it has gone and the Plaza del Sol is officially renamed the Plaza de los Niños.

And I see a Caribbean island with big hotels and white beaches newly replenished with shining sand. In a little house an old woman prays to her favourite saint for the safety of her son. He has been in Europe for a year; he likes it fine and is earning good money. It’s true he hasn’t sent any home, but she is happy with his cheerful letters, which she reads ten times over. But Europe is a very big island where rich people live. They have gold mines and apartheid and nuclear rockets they have borrowed from America and will fire at each other when they declare war. She has read all that with her own eyes in the morning paper. The gold mines have long, dark tunnels that reach the centre of the earth. But the Europeans don’t go down themselves, they send in black West Indians and Turks to extract the gold. From time to time, one of the tunnels caves in and buries many workers. That is why she is praying for her son. Her prayer is not heard. His body is fished out of a canal by the police and press reports say he was murdered by drug dealers. The story appears under splash headlines in her morning paper. The old woman never knew that the Pope had declared many years earlier that Santa Filomena was not a true saint.

And I see my garden gate swing open and Eugenio, once a schoolteacher and now the village idiot, enters. As he comes into the light I can see that he is not wearing his customary hat or the boots in which he keeps newspaper cuttings. His trousers are rolled up to just below the knee and I notice that he has six toes on his left foot. That is to say, above his little toe there is an appendage that looks very like a miniature toe. When he has come very close, he startles me by suddenly tumbling forward and standing on his head. With his head and hands on the ground and his legs flailing to keep his balance, he starts bellowing in the annoying, singsong way of children reciting a prayer or a poem: “A person could go old and grey with all that waiting! Who was it promised a land of milk and honey? That the blind would see? The deaf hear? A thousand-year land of plenty? Meanwhile, take pity on the rich — millionaires can be unhappy too — comfort the strong — tough guys also sometimes lose — forget the Third World — send consolation to the capitalists — and please don’t forget the white folks because of all those blacks. Ignore the sick, the prisoners, the lonely — award a title to a successful prostitute — increase the robber’s haul — give the terrorists a hand — democrats can stand on their own feet, so let’s do something for a fascist government. The conservationists, the disabled, the elderly and the homosexuals get quite enough attention as it is, so let’s give healthy people more vitality — turn all the water into wine again, drunks are the salt of the earth! All those kids who masturbate on the sly, give them exciting fantasies — and while we’re talking about children, let all the pompous schoolmasters suffocate in their sleep — or if that’s not possible, then let the Holy Ghost reveal the exam questions in advance. Let a notary win the jackpot in the lottery — bless all royal houses — give every prince a beautiful princess — give a bonus to every rapist — encourage the sadomasochists and the Christian Socialists too — let landslides and volcanic eruptions happen only in poor, densely populated regions — no more trains full of suntanned tourists must be derailed. Anoint those in authority — be particularly munificent to dictators, slave owners and the CIA — give bigger profits to drug dealers and more oil to the Arabs — give us a pope who is thirty, as well as thirty pieces of silver for everyone — strengthen the arm of the executioner — give the pyromaniac a steady hand — and don’t forget all the majorities. Organise a gigantic festival where smugglers and alcoholics, usurers and politicians, chain-smokers and tax dodgers, bank managers and atheists, environmental polluters and pornographers, plane hijackers and book reviewers, pickpockets and child molesters can win cups and gold medals!”

And I see my garden gate swing open a second time, and now it is the black trade union leader coming towards me. He used to be pugnacious and full of fire, but now he has grown older and more circumspect. He invites me to accompany him. We go to the city and enter a large jeweller’s shop. There is thick wall-to-wall carpeting that muffles our footsteps; all you can hear is the hubbub of customers and sales assistants. Silver, gold and diamonds gleam at us from all sides. We see showcases piled high with Swiss watches and others with huge, glistening diamond earrings, the kind that hang from the ears of Imelda Marcos, and glittering bracelets that might jingle on the skinny arms of Michèle Duvalier. In the wall cases we see exquisite porcelain figurines depicting tender scenes of little lambs and flowers, frail wenches and tubercular young men. Amid this serene beauty, the trade union leader gives me a dig in the ribs and winks. In his hoarse voice he shouts, “Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please.” Then he lets out a ferocious and deafening fart that makes the glass of the showcases shake and the little carillon on the shop front tinkle out of tune. The powdered and perfumed tourists, many fitted with pacemakers, rush outside and scream hysterically for taxis to take them to the airport, to the safety of New York and the decorum of Boston.

And I see a boy and his uncle going for a walk in the woods. “Nothing better than a day in God’s fresh air to give you a second wind and put fresh heart into you,” says the uncle. The woods are dense and silent.

“Won’t we get lost?” asks the boy.

“God is our compass,” is the answer. The boy is tired because he has to carry a basket full of oranges, large, hard biscuits and religious magazines. “Can’t we rest a bit?”

“That’s a good idea. Come on, let’s sit down by that big tree trunk.”

The uncle takes the basket and puts his arm round the boy’s shoulders, but with a quick movement the boy ducks underneath the arm and sits down on a boulder some way away. It is no longer silent in the woods. The boy hears the grating sound of wheelbarrows being pushed up and down, and further on there is the sound of a mill crushing stones. The trunks of the giant trees begin to expand sideways; they grow wider and wider until they touch each other and seal off a whole section of the woods from the rest of the world. The sound of the squeaking wheels, the mill and the pickaxes striking the ground grows louder. Next to him on the boulder sits a man staring patiently straight ahead, always at the same spot. He is as thin as a rake. The boy has never seen such a skinny adult before, but what fascinates him most are the large grey eyes, as expressionless as those of a blind man. The boy has the strange, mystifying sensation that the man is not in fact staring straight ahead, but that his gaze is focused backwards and inwards. “Hello, sir.” “Hello, boy.” The voice is flat and toneless, and as the man utters the two words he makes a gesture with his bony left hand as if ordering the din around him to stop. The boy thinks that he is perhaps the only person in the whole world who can hear the man, and he wants to get up and bring him an orange from his uncle’s basket. But he decides not to because he will be hurt if the man doesn’t accept the fruit. The man lights a cigarette, inhaling deeply and without pleasure. He wears prison clothes, the blue-and-white-striped overall open from neck to navel exposing his rib cage. The two rows of thin ribs are very pronounced and the indentations between them are dark in colour; there is a deep groove from his throat to just above his navel. “Your body is like Christ’s on the cross,” says the boy, but immediately regrets saying it. The man’s face is inscrutable. Is he annoyed or amused? I’d better say something else quickly, thinks the boy — but what am I supposed to talk about to someone who says nothing himself and perhaps can’t even hear what I’m saying? For all I know, he may be deaf. Deaf and blind, and so full of fear and uncertainty and terribly lonely. “I sometimes feel unhappy too,” he could have said to the man to comfort him, but what he actually says is, “There’s my perfect uncle. Do you see him over there by that big tree trunk? According to him, everything is sinful or leads to sin.” The boy is ashamed of having said that; the man probably found his words just as funny as his previous remark about his Christ-like body. “I want to change as quickly as possible and become a man with broad shoulders and strong arms and legs, and I shall grow a moustache.” The man has a cigarette end in his mouth and his thin lips move only when he blows out the smoke. Then the boy suddenly imagines that he hears words, spoken with the gasping voice of someone with a lung disease. The boy listens attentively, but cannot quite grasp the meaning of the words. “Happy expectations of the future and fond memories of the past are both treacherous things. We are all criminals: half of us are already in prison uniform, while the acolytes are still in white cassocks. One man does penance for his sins, another still carries his misdeeds covertly around with him. We don’t know what’s in store for us and later we will never know what happened to us. I too was once ten years old.” The man takes the cigarette end, no more than half an inch long, out of his mouth, pulls a new cigarette out of his breast pocket and lights it from the previous one. The boy observes him from the side. The man looks weak and emaciated, but at the same time wiry and tough; he has something about him of a wild animal that has just mauled and eaten a weaker creature. The boy feels that he must say something: “I wish you were my uncle.” He is shocked by his own words, not because of what he said, but because he addressed the man so familiarly — this man his uncle called a thug whose soul was doomed to burn in hellfire for all eternity.

Wait. . the old indju tree in my garden sighs and the cool night wind caresses its bony arms for the last time, lisping words of consolation. When in nine minutes’ time I am dead, when my heart no longer beats in my cold body and my soul is already in the hereafter, the watch on my wrist will go on ticking for hours.