Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord (3 page)

Dionisio was stroking Velvet Luisa’s perfect black thighs, and was teasing her by just drawing back with his ticklings when he reached the portals of the Gates of Heavenly Bliss. He was saying, ‘This has got to be something for me to be nostalgic about, because after today I don’t think I will be coming back. I’ve fallen in love, Luisa, and I think it’s going to be a big one, and when I am like this I don’t want to make love to anyone else.’

Luisa sat up, looking a little alarmed, and said, ‘Don’t do that; all the girls here will commit suicide. We all think that with you it is more like making love.’

Dionisio thought about it, and replied, ‘That’s because I love women more than anything else in the world. I have the suspicion that most men hate them, and that is why they treat them so badly. I think there are a lot of macho types out there who probably would really rather do it with a donkey or a little boy.’

In appearance Dionisio Vivo was stocky enough to reveal some of the Indian blood in his veins, but he had startlingly blue eyes. This was, curiously enough, the direct result of one of the Conde Pompeyo Xavier de Estremadura’s exploits in the sixteenth century. Dionisio had a full and sensuous mouth, olive skin, a black moustache, and the kind of luxuriant sideburns that are still common in that country. He was in general quite hairy about the body, and was still well-muscled as a consequence of a narcissistic obsession with his torso during his teenage years. Characteristically he would dress in blue, and it was true that all the girls in the whorehouse thought that he was wonderful both in and out of bed. Velvet Luisa was both jealous and curious. ‘Is it true that it is Anica Moreno that you have fallen in love with? Everyone is saying that.’ She gave him a searching look and toyed with one of his nipples so that he took in his breath sharply. ‘Yes, it is Anica,’ he said, ‘and tomorrow we are going to sleep together for the first time. It is all agreed between us.’

Anica Moreno was at that time only just twenty years old, and was governed chiefly by her sense of beauty. She had had very few experiences of a romantic nature, the first being at the age of thirteen, when she had masturbated a young man in the front of a Russian-made jeep while on the way to Cochadebajo de los Gatos to see the temple and the statues of the cats. At eighteen she had given her virginity to a married man who had pretended to be in love with her. This man worked for the Catholic Mission to Single-Parent Families, and he disowned her completely when she fell pregnant. She miscarried at three months, leaving no one any the wiser, and became a little inhibited sexually. Thus one could say that she had had her share of sorrows, especially as at the same time her beloved mother had died at an early age of an intractable cancer. This had affected her extraordinarily deeply, as indeed it had affected her father, a very mild and reticent man, conspicuously religious and humane, who had made a fortune in arms dealing.

Anica had some artistic talent which she expressed with refreshing naivety and simplicity in her drawings, preferring zig-zag patterns in bold colours. She was possessed with the absolute conviction that one day she would become renowned as a great artist, and although she was a soft and sentimental person who would not wish harm to her worst enemy, there was a determined portion at the core of her which got her into trouble as a child, and which was a mixed blessing in the time of her adulthood.

These two first met when artistic ambitions induced an interest in photography in Anica. She was slightly acquainted with one of the men with whom Dionisio shared his house. This man was Jerez, a character so worthless and irredeemable that no one ever thought of trying to reform him; they just accepted him as he was (with the exception of the Biggest Boa in the World, who hated to be puked up on). Consequently he had always led an equable and happy life, a fact which intimates how little justice there is in the world. He divided his time and his somewhat minimal energy between a very great many lonely and (to other men) undesirable women of indeterminate age and worn-out appearance. He scratched a living by taking photographs for the two local newspapers, and fancied himself as an artist in his craft. One of his less attractive foibles was to gatecrash private fiestas, and it was at one of these that he had met Anica and impressed her with the fact that he was a photographer. He had invited her to come and see him if her artistic interests should lead her in the direction of photography, though there is no doubt whatsoever as to his real hopes and intentions.

It so happened that she lived almost directly opposite to Dionisio and Jerez, and it was miraculous that hitherto none of them had met before. One day the thought came into her head that she might as well drop in on Jerez so that he could explain the more subtle mysteries of her new camera, which was the gift of her father on her twentieth birthday.

Dionisio was still in his work-clothes, and had his feet up on Jerez’ home-made coffee-table, whose top was attached to its base by no other force than gravity, when Anica knocked at the outer shutters of the hallway. Jerez answered the door and let her in.

When she came into the living-room Dionisio thought that she was the most striking woman he had ever seen. Some of the verses of the Song of Solomon sprang unbidden into his mind. She brought with her such an air of humour, self-confidence and gentleness that the house was lit up with her presence as though with a lamp. She put Dionisio instantaneously into such a fine mood that she was given a first impression of him that he was both handsome and jovial, when in fact he was very ordinary-looking and distinctly prone to periods of moroseness.

Anica Moreno was one hundred and eighty-four centimetres tall, and this alone would have made her striking. On this day she was dressed in dungarees of that emerald green which, curiously enough, astrologers associate with Venus. She wore a green and white striped tee-shirt, and old lilac espadrilles, with a spot of green sock showing through where the toes were worn away. This waifish touch alone would have melted the heart of any man. Her hair was strawberry blonde, a rare thing in those parts; it was short and spiky, an effect designed to reveal her artistic nature, and she had a high forehead above grey eyes the colour of a winter sea. Dionisio noticed that she had a very small mouth, but that when she grinned she revealed marvellous shiny white teeth that looked as though they would have spoiled her face if they had been only a fraction bigger. She wore a very large green plastic earring in one ear in the shape of an isosceles triangle.

He could tell that she was quite thin by her arms, whose forearm seemed thicker than the upper part, but he was struck by her gracefulness as she stood with her shoulders back, standing with all her weight on one leg, with the other bent at the knee in such a way that her toe was posed casually on the ground. He was reminded of a little girl at a confirmation. She was big-breasted, but she gave the impression of being embarrassed about this fact, since her breasts were always concealed beneath the shapelessness of her clothing. In fact it was true that she was embarrassed about them, not because of their volume, but because one of them was very slightly larger than the other, a fact indiscernable without close inspection.

Dionisio having been captivated by her charm and vivacity to such an extent that he began to ask himself whether he might have any luck with her, and Anica Moreno having had a woman’s thoughts about him, she left the house and did not reappear in it for three months.

After she had gone Jerez had said, ‘Lovely body,’ and Dionisio had grunted. The best thing about Jerez was that everything that he believed or said was either so crass or so gross that it made one feel either intellectual or virtuous by comparison.

‘I tried to seduce her once,’ said Jerez, ‘but she ran kilometres.’

How surprising, Dionisio had thought.

‘I am surprised,’ said Luisa, when Dionisio had confessed that it was indeed Anica that he was in love with. ‘She is so tall, and blonde hair on a mulatta looks strange to me. I am surprised that you have fallen in love with someone so . . . unusual.’

‘I would have fallen in love with you, but . . .’

‘I am a whore?’

Dionisio was embarrassed, but Luisa just smiled, and said, ‘I have no illusions.’ She leaned over him so that her pointed breasts that reminded him of missiles (he called them ‘Cupid’s Warheads’) caressed his chest deliciously. She whispered, ‘Make love to me for the last time, then, and make it slow, and make it last.’

He looked into her face and saw her expression. He stroked her cheek. ‘You are beautiful, Luisa. Please do not cry. Nobody knows the future.’

Dionisio read it through twice, and said aloud to himself, ‘Very funny, Ramon.’

DIONISIO WAS AWOKEN
by a bizarre tumult outside. He lay in bed waking up as slowly as possible, blinking his eyes and fighting off the urgent pressure in his bladder. He speculated drowsily as to what the noise could possibly be; there were furious croaks, screeches, flutterings, and a series of single knocks on the door that sounded like someone tapping very hard with their bunched fingernails.

He pulled the covers over his head to block it all out, but was forced to give up. He threw the cover aside, lay still for a moment, and then got out of bed and went to the window. He leaned out, but the racket was just outside his line of view, concealed by the creepers. He leaned out as far as he could, and saw to his astonishment that just in front of the door were two large vultures who appeared to be jumping up and down and knocking at the door, in between taking jabs at each other. He watched them with puzzlement, and then shouted ‘Shut up’ at them. They stopped jumping up and down for a minute and looked at him with an expression that looked like contempt, and then recommenced. ‘For God’s sake,’ he thought, and went downstairs.

When he opened the door the two birds were momentarily very surprised, and craned their necks to inspect him. They hopped backwards and croaked in protest, and he waved an arm at them and said, ‘Go on, go away. Let’s have some peace around here.’

At that point he discovered the cause of the fracas. He glanced sideways and discovered that there was a hand nailed to the door at chest height. At first he thought it was a model hand, because it seemed waxy and the bloodstains on it somehow did not seem to be the correct colour for blood. He was wondering who would play such a bizarre joke on him, and he touched the object. He took his hand away quickly because he immediately realised that it was not a model.

He looked at it closely. It was an olive-complexioned hand, plainly belonging to a man. It had ragged fingernails, and there was a scar, probably from a knife, across the back of it. Dionisio had the inconsequential thought that a man with fingers as long as that would have made a good pianist. The hand was covered with marks where the vultures had succeeded in pecking it, and between the thumb and forefinger a pen was held in place with rubber bands.

He went upstairs to telephone Ramon, and then telephoned the college to say that he would be late again. The Principal said, ‘Vale, this makes a change from dead bodies, only to get a bit of one. I will start off your class, and you get here as soon as possible. What are you doing with them?’

The Principle of Sufficient Reason,’ replied Dionisio. ‘Tell them to look it up in all the books and work out in what ways Leibniz’ version is different from Schopenhauer’s, OK?’

He went downstairs again because the vultures were once more leaping up and down and fighting with each other. Ramon shortly arrived in a car with the same young policeman as before. Ramon got out, stroking his stubble as usual, and stopped a moment to give Dionisio an ironic weary look. ‘Agustin,’ he said to the other policeman, ‘since we are likely to come here repeatedly, let me introduce you to Dionisio properly, except that I am going to start calling him Empedocles, who misguidedly threw himself into a volcano in order to prove that he was a god. I find that analogy very apt.’