Guano Page 10

  But to meet the strange character, he would first have to escape from Valparaíso. Opportunities to run off – already limited in Simón’s optimistic flights of fancy – were near zero once he came back down to the ground. Crossing a footbridge during exercise time, he could catch a glimpse over the walls of the fleet’s masts pitching; an optical illusion turned the barbed wire and the parapets into sails. But soon a branch or a cloud would restore perspective – creating a sad, distant realm – and dash hope.

  Simón observed, analyzed and questioned his jailer, who doubled as a manservant. A banal name, Ramón, for an average, disappointed man,. They ended up fraternizing: I would love to visit Madrid. The city is overrated. My wife is mad at me. It’s far worse to be alone. Once they patted each other on the shoulder. Simón wound up telling him his story: their meeting, the war being waged and his own smaller skirmish. Ramón felt sorry for him. He was reminded of the romance he never had, but that he had dreamed of from age twelve to sixteen. Most men expect someone else to act for them in areas where they lack expertise, be it politics, or clock-making, or love. Ramón felt he was finally getting his chance, by proxy, to express his emotions and – in a flight of fancy – to write. So he found some paper. Write that letter, go on – I’ll make sure it gets to her. Simón hesitated. Confinement makes you soft, and to keep stirring up all these feelings? No, such melancholy. I mean, it’s not as though we’re orphans.

  Ramón swore he wouldn’t say another word until Simón had written the letter right in front of him, and signed it, and polished it. As polished as the lady you describe.

  Were her nipples really so hard they could make a sword quiver?

  So Simón withdrew inside himself for a few days. He tried to find a letter in there. He had to look higher, lower, in the middle of his chest. He wanted to express his feelings. To find the exact, singular words that Montse would understand. He sweated over it. Since the future was uncertain – what with prison, the war and Ramón’s good will – Simón wanted to promise nothing, hope for little and express only his feelings stripped bare of fiction.

  In short, he wanted to add words to his silences in Callao.

  But he went back and forth between what he wanted to do and fawning: I put my arm around your waist, I long for your mouth, you smell like exotic flowers. He wanted the impossible, a raft. He said too much, your ankle. He crossed out words.

  Then one evening when he was thinking back to the theatre, the menu, their walk and Montse’s hair, it all came together. He got up to put down on paper the words that were jostling around inside him, but as if in slow motion, clear and right and soft as slow tears that the eye lets fall after they have rested a time on the eyelashes.

  It was a short, simple letter. A beautiful letter. It said what men couldn’t manage to say – women either, as a matter of fact. Not you. Not me.

  13

  Simón learned the fine art of waiting. Since writing the letter, he had found new ways of twiddling his thumbs: clockwise, counterclockwise, alternating, revolutionary. Hope was his only true escape. Ramón had promised to come up with a plan. Something safe.

  Night watchmen lingering over a cigarette near the west wall, a sergeant passed out from too much wine at nine o’clock, a small boat in the port to reach the Spanish fleet. And for the road, cookies made by his wife. Something comforting.

  But the smell of the cookies always ended up waking the sergeant or attracting the smokers. Conversations dragged on. Oh, how lucky to have a wife, damn Ramonito and his epicurean ways, and before you knew it Simón was asleep in his cell. The cigarette break was over. They would wait until tomorrow, next week and, without saying it, for destiny to point the way.

  It did more than just point. The Chilean government first gave them the finger by refusing to open its ports to ships from neutral nations having dealings with the Spaniards. Spain gave the finger back; Chilean policy was completely insane.

  What an insult! Núñez cried. It’s like a child not playing fair. We will burn Valparaíso to the ground. We will bombard them, you’ll see. Come come, the Americans weighed in, let’s try to stay calm, come on, let’s not get carried away. War goes where it will, Núñez said at last.

  Spain didn’t have to ask for Chile’s hand in marriage, but a modicum of restraint, diplomacy oblige. At the very least, Hugh Judson Kilpatrick, Washington’s ambassador to Chile, insisted, let’s not destroy an entire city.

  All I see is a village, Núñez replied.

  Realizing that Spain would not back down, Kilpatrick asked the captain of the American fleet opportunely anchored in the port to threaten the Spaniard. His name was John Rodgers.

  Listen, Mr. Núñez, it’s nothing personal. It’s just that we’re trading and …

  Enough, interrupted Núñez, who was no more familiar with him than with Boston. I will be forced to sink the American ships. And even if we have only one ship left afloat, I will bombard Valparaíso.

  He added that he and the queen preferred honour and no ships to ships and no honour. It was his sound bite for the history books.

  A little bird told Simón that the wings of destiny would soon help him sweep aside the prison walls – or at least the newspapers did.

  The destruction of Valparaíso began on January 31, 1866. Ecuador had declared war on Spain the night before. Simón read about it in a dispatch. The article, between patriotic outcry and a call for an alliance among South American republics, didn’t explain the reasons for the decision very clearly. But Simón knew that Admiral Núñez would waste no time in responding.

  Night fell on the squares, streets and houses. Then shells fell on them. The Chilean merchant fleet, anchored in the port, was destroyed. Whistler, on board an American ship, had just painted it the evening before, thinking that Ecuador joining the war wouldn’t change anything, reflecting that, all the same, the merchant fleet was exposed in the extreme, and he added a lantern here, a mast there – a little masterpiece in ochre and blue that depicted the frightened shadows of the ships quivering in the water.

  Ramón was complaining. Running was no longer his forte, even less so zigzagging under exploding projectiles. He announced that a section of the west wall had fallen, that there would be rocks to climb and the half-buried limbs of two or three guards to look away from. The boat waited near the worm-eaten wooden dock in the port. Worm-eaten wood, you say, not worm-eaten iron or stone. And don’t forget the letter; keep it close to your heart.

  Thank you, Ramón, I won’t forget.

  Good. Just tell your artillerymen comrades to spare my house.

  And he unlocked the cell.

  Here’s a pistol, just in case.

  They walked, playing the part of guard and prisoner. They crossed the long yard. Cannons and guns powdered the night. Once they arrived at the opening in the west wall, they discreetly shook hands.

  That’s where their friendship ended.

  Simón ran toward the port. Even more than the shells, he had to avoid people seeking refuge outside the city. Women were crying. Husbands were calming them by slapping them across the face. A few dead were lying primly on the ground. Their faces couldn’t be seen, nor could their blood. They were positioned neither too close together nor too far apart, sustaining the distress: a body appeared just as the last one was forgotten. They all looked alike.

  In fact, it could have been the same extra who, once Simón passed, got up and ran, taking a shortcut and lying down further along his path. A question of budget.

  Simón finally reached an alley that sloped down toward the ships. Behind him, the bombardments hung butterflies of flames in the far-off hills. They were growing in number, calling out to one other, the first acting as a beacon to the rest, which quickly settled around it.

  At the end of the alley were two smiling eyes. A child was playing with a dead dog. The guts formed the roads and the teeth made the mountains. Simón didn’t dare shoo the child away for fear of alerting the Chilean troops. He rushed into a dange
rous back alley that he thought would lead to the port’s square. He looked back once. The child had discovered the body of a man. The eyes formed the ponds.

  Simón finally reached the docks. Ahead of him the scene had changed to one of amputated masts and eviscerated hulls. The Chilean merchant fleet seemed clenched in pain, and the moon, which was full, seemed delighted. From the distant sea rose puffs of smoke as if from pipes, floating up in compact white balloons, which dissipated slowly, finally dying on the spindles of stars. Spain was shelling to its heart’s content.

  There is poetry to this war, Simón thought. It will last. As long as art can be created from it, it will last. And he took another look at the painting come to life. The fleet was a little too far off, a bit diffuse in the smoke. He would have changed the composition, if only to save him squinting, and rowing. My arms are already sore. Art should at least be accessible.

  The decrepit dock was guarded by two sailors whose wrinkles made them twins. They had been handed weapons and given orders to let no one sail. They were afraid of spies escaping – I mean, sure why not – or panicked citizens giving themselves up to the enemy. Keep an eye peeled, gentlemen. Indeed one of them had only one left.

  Simón approached with the stealth of a storybook assassin: hugging the walls, disappearing in the shadows. Once he arrived near an empty stall that smelled like fish, he loaded his pistol.

  He wondered how he would reach the boat. He wondered how he would get around the men and other similar things. How was it possible for a stall to stink this much?

  He wouldn’t be able to hide out there for very long.

  A projectile crashed headlong into the port square. The Spanish ballistic strategy consisted of sweeping the city, starting with the peaks and ending with the toes. In fact, they decided to tickle them (a second shell hit a pile of rowboats) and keep tickling until it turned to pain (a flowerbed took a third hit), until no one was laughing anymore.

  Simón had to do something.

  He got up and pointed his gun at the sailors. Still reeling from the bombardment, they didn’t take the overture very well. And yet it was fairly conventional, and they should have understood it instinctively. Weapons dropped for lives spared. Those words in a different order.

  Thinking instead that it was a landing, the sailors raised their weapons. The words swine and Spaniard were heard and then they started firing. They missed Simón, putting holes in the stall. They did their best to camouflage themselves behind large fishing nets to reload. One of their heads stuck out above a cable and another’s ass from behind a barrel.

  Simón thought about life and death, his and theirs. He wanted to see Montse again, and time was of the essence. Troops had been alerted. A shell had just landed in the alley where the child was. The child.

  Since the child was probably buried under the rubble, nothing mattered anymore. Certainly not the lives of the two old men shooting at him. The child’s death excused the rest, veiling any crime behind a darker injustice that would obliterate the rest of it, Valparaíso, Peru, everything, his hopes, everything again, his love – well, almost everything.

  Simón rushed the old men who were still reloading their weapons, tearing the cartridges from each others’ hands, explaining to each other how to do it. Simón positioned himself behind the first one, killing him with a bullet to the head. The second one looked at him with his one black eye. Fear had hung a wet star in it.

  He should have begged for mercy; instead, he took his knife out of his old boot. Instinct kills as many as it saves. Simón stuck his pistol in the hollow of the dark pupil. There was very little kickback. The eyes became symmetrical, two craters, one smoking, the other already extinguished. The body dropped onto the nets.

  Simón quickly found the boat Ramón had prepared; cookies wrapped in a newspaper was the confirmation. He rowed at a steady pace. Once past the remains of the Chilean fleet and a few bodies impeding his progress, he let the surf rock him and nibbled on a cookie. He rested. His head was killing him.

  He asked himself whether he had killed for a woman.

  Basically, he believed, people always kill for a love somewhere.

  To see people again.

  14

  Simón’s explanations kept being interrupted by explosions; between cannonballs, he managed to make it understood that he was a lieutenant. He was hoisted aboard the Villa de Madrid, then left to his own devices. They would bring him to the captain soon, after the operation. The captain was occupied with his spyglass and adjusting aim, you see.

  Simón roamed the deck a little. His aching muscles limited his journey to as far as the nearest crate; he sat down. The lack of sleep was making him hallucinate an opera set: ropes, smoke, sails and stars. The cannons were the tenors, the whistling projectiles the sopranos. Sailors were walking around fearlessly, taking over from one another on cards and cannons. They knew that they were the only ones singing. Valparaíso, defenceless, stage right, was silent.

  The Spanish solo continued. It was knocking the city senseless, and it was slumping like a tired spectator. Simón leaned his elbows on the ship’s railing, curious. He saw that Valparaíso on fire was no more than rippling gash, like bright lips in the night.

  A pale stroke of light under a large black door.

  That sort of thing.

  Something to keep the artists busy.

  The pointlessness of it! Núñez was fuming. A small, insignificant village like Valparaíso. Once the merchant fleet was condemned to the depths, there was nothing more strategic about this attack. They were sending a message, of course, they had been repeating it for hours; the Chileans had probably understood it by now or had had their eardrums split.

  Núñez scratched his sideburns. He had to think.

  He gave the order to cease fire.

  He shut himself in his cabin.

  Pinzón had hit the economy in vain – the economy was the arm – and he had hit the population – the population was the legs. The thing was to hit the heart.

  Yet it was a naval battle, and ships were what would carry the day. The navy would be the sinews; victory would be found on the sea. They had to beat the enemy in naval combat. Once vanquished, it would retreat to a few strongholds and look out at an ocean now out of reach. The ships of the Spanish armada would dot the water like ominous little islands in motion. Like a barrier reef on which their boats would sink. So there could be no world without Spain. And then he would restore the honour Pareja had lost.

  As a matter of fact, Núñez thought, an allied fleet was approaching. Spies and natives had told him. Its ships were anchored in the Chiloé Archipelago, alongside Abtao Island. Five ships, one of them an old friend: the Virgen de Covadonga, captured by the enemy. An attack, victory, Peruvians swimming with the fishes. A statue, one can only hope.

  Núñez went out on deck. He breathed, in long inhales, held his breath, waiting till he had to exhale. That felt better. Morning was breaking. He didn’t want to think anymore. He scratched his sideburns. In the air, he could hear Valparaíso crackling and warming the entire bay. The clouds looked like marshmallows.

  The natives hadn’t lied.

  The new president of Peru, Mariano Ignacio Prado, was trying to prove that he was a man of action rather than contemplation. They had applauded his investiture speech: unlike his predecessor Pezet, the only theatre he would care about would be the theatre of operations.

  He had immediately ordered the frigates Apurímac and Amazonas to head to Abtao Island. They were to join the corvettes Unión and América and then attack the Spanish fleet. They wanted to engage the enemy, someone to blame, results. They wanted people dancing in the streets.

  A schooner, until recently Chilean, the Virgen de Covadonga, would escort them. The ship still hadn’t been to the Philippines or seen any mail.

  But there was a bit of a setback: the currents dashed the Amazonas against a rock and eviscerated her. This was followed by a ballet of men in the water, between the planks, their
bodies drifting, their legs rippling like mops and their arms clutching barrels: like a painting by Géricault.

  They feared the octopus below, with its poisonous suction cups, the strange bird-like beak, the ink that Satan writes with. They had to force themselves to think of what the barrels could hold: wine, fresh water, a stowaway. Then they kept their minds busy with a Pater Noster or a Hail Mary.

  Quite a few were fished out of the water, and the rest were officially missing, giving their families hope that they were spending a dream life on a desert island or were rescued by mermaids.

  Although they were sinking their own ships and others were being stolen from them, the Spaniards were at least trying to avoid the reefs. The Villa de Madrid and Reina Blanca successfully kept their course and sighted Abtao on February 7, 1866. As a result of his new ambition, Núñez had given the order to break up the blockade of Valparaíso and go say hello.

  They entered the strait beyond which the allied fleet was anchored. The fleet politely came to meet them. A lot of numbers followed.

  Spain opened fire at three in the afternoon, trying to reach the enemy over 1,600 metres away. The Peruvian/Chilean fleet returned fire. With surprising precision, it almost hit the Castilian hulls. The renegade Virgen de Covadonga (Chile) even hit the Reina Blanca (Spain) over 600 metres away. It was Spanish built, the Spaniards explained, hence its performance and good looks. They didn’t pay any attention to Simón, who pointed out its ineffective firing at point-blank range during the battle of Papudo. Cannonballs that couldn’t hit an elephant.

  That was a case of bad weather, my dear man. Grey on grey, you know. Whereas today the sun casts a shadow.

  Whatever.

  Finally two lines of ships squared off against each other. The Spanish line was rather short. They saluted the intention. They fired. The ships eventually dispersed and filled with smoke. They looked like floating cauliflowers. They spun around, sped up and slowed down, formed and reformed pairs. The North Wind was the gentleman dancer’s arms. They searched for it to get back in step. The small ships had white skirts of sails and smoke over their heads. At around five o’clock, drunk from the wind, no one really knew what they were doing anymore.