Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord (11 page)

Señor Vallejo had at that time been a manager at the club. He was well-adapted to this metier by virtue of his colossal size, intimidating aspect, and his encyclopaedic knowledge of the occult. This latter was an asset insofar as those who thought of giving him trouble did not do so for fear of falling impotent, losing their hair, or developing ulcers on their nether parts, all of which feats he was reputed to be able to perform with astonishing ease and rapidity. Naturally, he and Señor Veracruz had come to know each other quite well, and the former had ended up as Foreign Secretary through the natural operations of elective democracy and political patronage. His Excellency owed him the colossal debt of having been instructed by him in the hermetic arcana of sexual alchemy, and Señor Vallejo owed His Excellency the debt of having been allowed to publish at public expense all those weighty occult tomes that had been dictated to him personally by the Archangel Gabriel.

‘OK, Lopez, what do you want?’ asked the President. ‘I hope it is important.’

Señor Vallejo sat down heavily and wiped his brow with a silk handkerchief. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘don’t go to the Club Hojas tonight.’

‘But I always go on Thursdays.’

‘You can’t, Your Excellency, I have had a message that it must be avoided.’

‘And who did this message come from, Lopez?’

Señor Vallejo, slightly bashfully, pointed to the ceiling.

His Excellency looked up at the ceiling with a puzzled expression, and furrowed his brow. ‘You mean you have a message from God? Are you serious?’

‘Of course not, Your Excellency, I would not tell you anything so stupid.’

‘I am glad to hear it, Lopez, I was fearing for your sanity. Who is it from, then?’

‘Gabriel.’

The President ran through his memory to try to think who Gabriel was, gave up, and asked, ‘Gabriel who?’

‘The Archangel Gabriel, your Excellency. He came from the Tenth Heaven specifically to warn me to warn you not to go to the Club Hojas.’

‘This Gabriel, why did he not tell me personally, and what did he look like? You know he could have been anybody, masquerading as an Archangel. I suspect you of credulity. Did you have him followed?’

‘Your Excellency, I know it was the Archangel: he had one hundred and forty pairs of wings, and he was clothed in linen. He had an illuminated feminine silver head, a purple slender neck, golden yellow radiant arms with huge biceps, a delicate slate-grey torso, epicene legs in sky-blue, sort of whirling and scintillating, and he had women’s blue feet. He was unmistakable, Your Excellency, and he distinctly told me – he has a lisp, you know – that you should not go to the Club Hojas.’

President Veracruz furrowed his brow ever more deeply, wondering, not for the first time, about the intellectual integrity of his Foreign Secretary. ‘Did you count all the wings, to know that he had one hundred and forty pairs?’

‘I knew that already, Your Excellency,’ confessed Señor Vallejo. ‘What clinched it was that he had a pair of scales in his hand and a horn slung across his shoulders. Also he always has clouds flowing across his face, with lots of flashes, like sheet lightning, and so I knew it was him.’

‘I see,’ said the President. ‘Well, I don’t know whether to believe you, but as I am a cautious man, and, as you know, not entirely narrow-minded about such things, I shall not go to the club. I shall also telephone the club and tell them to close tonight, just in case.’

The Foreign Secretary sighed and said, ‘I can’t tell you how pleased I am. If one ignores Gabriel’s messages, he becomes extremely unpleasant. I once did that, and for six months he gave messages consisting entirely of the most revolting obscenities.’

That night, El Jerarca had the Club Hojas blown into fragments, and sent a telegram to
La Prensa
to claim the credit. No one was killed, and one person was injured. This was Don Hugh Evans of Chiriguana, who had arrived very late, not having known that the club was closed for the evening. When he was twenty metres from the door the blast had sent him flying backwards, causing him to rick his neck upon colliding with a horse, which was itself miraculously unhurt by the huge Welshman’s unprecedented impact.

His Excellency sent for the Foreign Secretary’s security file, having concluded that he might have been warned not by Gabriel, but by someone inside the cartel who owed him a favour. But just in case, he burned four beeswax candles in honour of the Archangel, and, having lit them, he went to look up the word ‘epicene’ in the dictionary.

THERE WERE NONE
of the dark gods invited; neither Iku, who is death, nor Ofo, who is loss; not Egba who is paralysis, nor Arun, who is disease; not Ewon, who is incarceration, and not Epe, who is malediction. These were frightened away by the incense, by the feverish making of talismans, and by the fact that everyone had been obeying Olofi’s eleven commandments for an entire week.

It was evening in the city of Cochadebajo de los Gatos. Its ancient stones, stained by centuries of inundation, took on a gentle grey shade as the sun began its vertiginous descent behind the mountain, and people were taking gentle paseos and calling in on friends before the guemilere began. The enormous black jaguars, for which the city is famous, patrolled the streets and greeted each other nose to nose. Some of them were playfighting together in tangled heaps, knocking people over and terrifying the dogs and chickens. Others slept in odd places, as cats do; here was one stretched out on Pedro’s roof, and here was another, draped along a wall with all its feet in the air in a most undignified fashion. There was one at the foot of one of the jaguar obelisks that lined the ingress to the city, sharpening its claws on the carved stone and seeming to be wrestling with it. Some were calling in on their favourite humans, rubbing their musky cheeks on people’s thighs and cadging morsels to eat, and others were just sitting contemplatively, looking like Bast or Sekhmet, staring absently into the distance and occasionally blinking their eyes and yawning. These monarchic animals were completely tame, and were regarded by the inhabitants with a kind of friendly awe. Visitors to the city, however, were generally terrified of them, especially as the cats had an unerring intuition about who was scared of them, and used to go and try to sit on them and lick their faces with tongues like engineers’ files. This would lead to comical scenes of panic in such people, and Misael and many others were of the opinion that the animals did it solely for amusement. The people were justly proud of their felines, and believed that this was a city set apart on their account.

When the first playing of the bata drums began, the cats became restless, as though sensing the presence of the gods. They went towards the sound and ringed the courtyard of what had once been the palace of the lords, which today was to be the ileocha of the ceremony.

The three drums of differing sizes spoke to each other in their reverberating voices, and suddenly the world grew dark. The torches flared and guttered. The great Okonkolo drum spoke unvaryingly, and the Iya and Itotele drums questioned and answered, commented and invoked over the top of its relentless tempo. The whole night seemed to be full of no other sound beneath the constellations.

Summoned by the oratory of the drums, the people began to converge upon the ileocha. They made the genuflection before the drums and the altar, they listened to Sergio, who today was the invoker of the deities, and they began to dance. This dance is the bambula. It is a wild dance, the dance in which the Orishas descend into the bodies of their devotees, and one always knows when that has happened, because remarkable phenomena occur. People hate it when a god takes them over; it is not for nothing that they call it the ‘asiento’ when they are initiated, because it feels like being hagridden. One loses control and one’s soul flees the body to make space for the saint, so that afterwards people have to tell you what you did and what you said.

Sergio had before him on the table the skull of his twin brother Juanito; it had been well-cleaned by the termites in its grave before Sergio had dug it up, and one could clearly see the place on the temple where the fragment of army grenade had punched its way through to the brain all that time ago. Sergio hired out the head for sorcery, and he brought it along today because Juanito had always enjoyed a good candomble.

Sergio was invoking Eshu, because Eshu is the messenger of the Orishas; he fetches the Orishas, and without him no work can prosper. Before the altar was a head of Eshu, made of cowrie shells, and before the head was an offering of coconuts, a twisted forked branch, some scraps of smoked possum, and a whistle made of cana brava. There was also a large pot filled with black and red stones. Over the stones had been poured a brew of thirteen herbs, which included abre camino, pata de gallino, and itamo real. There was also goat blood, the blood of a mouse, and the blood of a black chicken. Some of this delicious and health-giving brew had been drunk in advance by those believing in the power of such omieros. For each of the Orishas who had been invited there was such a tureen filled with the correct stones and omiero, prepared especially by the initiates of each one, the sacrifices having been performed only by those who had received the initiation of the knife. The animals were slaughtered in the name of Oggun according to the ritual formula, ‘Oggun choro choro,’ for Oggun is the god of violence and of steel, and it is he who kills and not the wielder of the knife.

Sergio called upon Eshu in the language handed down by the slaves: ‘Ibarakou mollumba Elegua . . .’ His voice trembled and wavered against the night, rising into a wail. But nothing happened. Everyone knows, however, that Eshu is the Orisha of mischief, and no one doubted that he was present; he was merely pretending not to be. Sergio repeated the invocation ‘. . . Elegua kulona. Ibarakou Mollumba . . .’ And then Eshu arrived in style.

There was a very old man named Gomez who had only barely managed to survive the migration. He walked with a stick and talked with a wheezy whistle through the teeth. Yet here he was, foaming at the mouth and convulsing upon the packed earth, and here he was, leaping amongst the dancers and performing flamboyant handsprings, pinching backsides, tweaking noses, and jumping on the tables backwards.

‘Ache,’ cried the people in greeting, and Sergio also cried ‘Ache, Eshu, Ache. Tell the Orishas that we are prepared, and tell us, Eshu, what it is that you would give to the Deliverer.’

The body of Gomez arched and backflipped, and Eshu grinned his sly grin which always strikes the stranger as malicious. In a voice as deep as the rumbling of an avalanche he gave the reply, ‘
I will steal from him what he should not have, I will spare him from the accidents with which I feed Oggun, I will open up the roads for him
.’

‘Moddu cue,’ said Sergio, which is to say ‘thank you’, and Eshu disappeared, leaving Gomez in a puzzled heap upon the floor, until Eshu returned once more with the other saints and again made Gomez his horse, returning him to the indefatigable dance.

Felicidad’s dance became wild. She was an initiate of Chango, who is also Santa Barbara, and he is famous for his philanderings. Felicidad was beautiful, and today she wore Chango’s necklace, having alternately six red and six white beads, which matched her dress in Chango’s colours. She was whirling to the bata drums, her black hair whipping about her face, when Chango emerged from his wooden batea bowl full of thunderstones and ram’s blood, snail juice and palm oil.

Chango took over Felicidad with a terrible blow that sent her sprawling to the floor before he rose. ‘Ache,’ the people shouted, ‘Kabio, kabio sile,’ which is ‘Welcome to my house.’

‘Ache, Chango,’ said Sergio, ‘and what do you give to the Deliverer?’

Chango pointed his forefinger to the sky and said in his basso profondo voice, ‘
I give him my thunder, and I give him my bolt of lightning that is in my fingers
.’

‘Moddu cue, Chango,’ and he danced on in Felicidad’s frame, enjoying the party and eyeing up the women.

And now it was Leticia Aragon, who had strayed to Cochadebajo de los Gatos while following her vague itinerary towards Ipasueno. She had been here for several weeks and everyone already accepted her and her unusual ways. Already they would come to her when anything was lost, so that she could find it, and they would look into her face with puzzlement, trying to name the colour of her eyes, and wondering how it was that her hair was fine as cobweb.

When Oshun arrived and took possession of Leticia, her dance became like the flowing of a stream. The people crossed themselves because Oshun is not only Orisha of love, but is also Nuestra Señora de La Caridad del Cobre, decked out in copper and gold. Leticia was robed in yellow because Oshun is so particular about cleanliness that her clothes turn that colour from being washed every day in the river. Oshun is in love with Chango, and so she went to dance with him as he leapt in Felicidad’s body, offering him her honey, and showing him the red beads in her gold necklace that she wears for him. Oshun would not address the guemilere until she had tasted of the ochinchin which was prepared for her, the dense omelette made of cress and shrimps that had been skimmed from the streams of the cordillera.

‘Ache, Cachita,’ the people called, using her pet name, and Sergio asked his question, to which she replied, ‘
I give him the love of many of my sex, so that he will be consoled for she who shall be taken off, and I give him pleasures to redeem his sorrows
.’ And Oshun, being vain and proud of her beauty, threw off her clothes and danced naked amongst the crowd, sinuous and fluid, while the drums renewed the discourse of their conversation.

Sergio summoned her sister Yemaya. ‘Ache, Yemaya,’ and she too danced over to Chango in Francesca’s body, for although she was his mother she had had an affair with him without knowing who he was, and so their greeting was only a little like the embrace of a mother and a son. She also greeted her sister, whose children were in her care, swaying and circling like the waves of the sea. Her necklace was seven crystals and seven blue beads, and on her belt Francesca wore a representation of the crescent moon.
Yemaya gave the Deliverer many children who would always bear the mark of his paternity
.