Guano Page 5

  The news reached the Spanish fleet anchored in the Mexican port of Manzanillo. Simón was resting his elbows on the ship’s railing looking out over the bay. The indigo water soaked up the sun, which barely reverberated to tan the skin or blind the eyes.

  It was one of the times in the day when Montse came to him. Although that was pretty much any time. In the free time after his reports and fabrications. Simón’s mind always welcomed her as she was and as he made her.

  1. As he made her: his memory had taken a few years off her lips, made her eyes stormier. Her voice remained a whisper, with no rise in tone, as if she were talking to him with her head on a pillow. She smelled like honey, a dose of sweetness that soothed him, and pepper, a dose of spice that excited him.

  2. As she was: the bosom – a dose of spice – the hair, the spark.

  Simón turned his thoughts to her daily. They were few enough of them, but each one lingered. He imagined their life together. Sometimes even their children’s lives. Sometimes he set his fantasies in Spain, sometimes America, less often Peru – so many settings, all of which turned into the bedroom, eventually.

  Montse existed more fully for Simón in her absence. The anticipation of a reunion is often sweeter than the reunion itself, because you picture yourself saying everything that needs to be said, doing everything that needs to be done – after a painful wrench when the distance is created, the redeeming advantage is that you can’t be rebuffed. You’re no longer afraid to express yourself – how would you put it? – to allow everything you want to say to emerge from within – a flight of lyricism, a dissonant serenade – not squelching any desires or holding back any thoughts, with everything advancing the cause – enthusiasm (fake), poetry (plagiarized), singing (off-key) – with every answer from the object of your affection being yes (invented).

  This is how Simón kept the image of her alive from one dream to the next. He had grown accustomed to this image the way you grow accustomed to your wife, seeing her without passion, your heart bathed in peace, your head filled with tenderness, comfort and shared memories. Sometimes he caught himself worrying that he might see her again, for fear that his beautiful fabrication would disintegrate in front of his eyes. Because part of his soul remembered the turbulence in her eyes, the fire in her hair – the danger. It remembered the vortex that Montse inhabited, which his mind had calmed in reconstructing her. His feelings were safe from the flesh-and-blood woman.

  All was calm on the ships.

  Half-asleep men handled the rigging; others created the illusion of being alert by making intermittent rounds, zigzagging from a starting point to nothing at all, just because. Pinzón left them to it. He was working in his cabin with his captains, shouting, knitting his eyebrows, pointing to a chart decorated with arrows and red circles that were spreading.

  At last he said that the situation was serious – not overly serious, but serious enough. He had received some information, initially hearsay, but which he was able to correlate with a piece of gossip. Then there was plenty of corroboration, from drunks, of course, but lots of drunks. Rumour plus rumour equals fact.

  There had been shore leave the night before, and the men had felt they should go into town. Simón had gone drinking with his shipmates. They had had a lot to drink; him not so much. This is how it went: he had taken care of a drunken sailor, then the same sailor again, then a friend of the sailor who was the ship’s boy. Gradually, he had become the official saviour of anyone drowning in the bottle. A lifebuoy, the one on whom you threw yourself as the waters of your stupidity were rising. In the absence of a nurse, it fell to him. He eventually started to take the role seriously. Because it was nice to have responsibilities that gave your life meaning, a sense of nobility. So you drink less, you rise to the role, and you forget to have fun.

  And in this sort of scenario, the party can start to drag on.

  To amuse himself, Simón talked to the locals – bar owners and purveyors of services. Everyone was talking about the Spanish blood spilled in Peru. They mentioned one death, sometimes two. Always Spaniards. We thought it might interest you, you know, compatriots. Five pesos, or six – it was a small price to pay for information from the brother of the Mexican ambassador to Chile, all of it true, I swear.

  When he returned, Simón repeated all of this to Admiral Pinzón, who made inquiries with officials and the locals. Nothing could be confirmed but the rumours. Certain details had even been added to the story: an organ severed, Inca vengeance, lascivious Peruvian police.

  At around two o’clock in the afternoon, Pinzón had had enough. He sent the captains back to their ships and went out on deck.

  He called for his men.

  The captains did the same.

  And on each boat simultaneously, they announced that they would be turning around, would be turning around, be turning around. In truth, they weren’t really in synch. Pinzón had started late, at once uncertain and passionate about his decision, and wanting to find a bit of shade from the sun. He was also angry about the idea of backtracking. They had already seen the Central American coast and, frankly, it was nothing to write home about.

  But it was such an insult, for Spain, for Spain!

  The men listened as much to the speech being made on the other ships as to Pinzón’s. It was well written, down to the last comma, and it was patriotic. It worked well without the silliness of the repetition. It was as if a parrot were hiding under a pile of canvas and rehearsing, half-smothered.

  They finally understood the crux of the message: Peru had offered them the affront they had been waiting for. The scientific expedition was over, except perhaps when it came to medicine and ballistics. They would not be seeing San Francisco.

  On deck, Simón thought of the letter he had not yet been able to start. He had spent so many hours rolling the pen between his fingers without putting it to paper, or doing so unconvincingly: prone, thrown, hurtled, dropped, but with the tip, no. He wouldn’t need to write it now. Maybe deep down he had always known that they would be seeing Peru again. Maybe he had been anticipating this news even more than all of Spain had.

  What a disgrace for our country! What an insult! the parrots cried. And Simón barely managed to arrange his face into the appropriate anger.

  It didn’t take as long for the news to anger Callao. The brother recounted the horror upon his return. He was looking for someone to seek redress from, someone to blame, someone to be brought to justice, consequent hangings. Others calmed him down, explaining that it was an unfortunate incident, that the instigator had been punished by the police, his wife had too, several times. Was she rotting in jail? She would rot all right, make no mistake about it, after giving birth and the adoption, naturally, the worst jail with the worst guards. Guards so sinister you couldn’t tell them from the criminals.

  Montse was reading when her brother burst into her room. He was muddy (murdering a carpet) and bloody (here lies the bedding). He tracked dirt over fabric that would never recover. He explained almost the whole story, then asked her to talk about her books, right away, about her projects. It would take his mind off things.

  Montse offered up theories about trauma, childhood, dreams and insomnia. They talked about possible worlds, those in our heads and the one before our eyes. The brother talked again about what he had seen: the spitting, the violence, the blood-soaked crepes. He didn’t dare mention his father’s penis.

  Do you really think that world was in my head, Montse?

  No, she said. Our heads create more beautiful worlds than that. He told her that he hoped with all his heart that she was right. And that he was afraid to say what he saw in his head now. When I close my eyes, I see that world again, do you understand? And it seemed to him he would no longer be able to look at the world before his eyes much at all, even when it was calm, even when it was beautiful. He would have liked to ram a pretty panorama into his head, but it wouldn’t fit; it resisted. He was confused. The ugliness in his head was there all the time, a
nd it was knocking. It wanted to come out.

  Then he told her that it was as if it were going to escape and take over his life, and that the outside world would become the inside world. Like that, everywhere, like that.

  And Montse, who was afraid, pretended to listen to him. She took refuge in her thoughts. Finally, she asked him if he remembered the Murcia bell tower.

  That evening, Montse put on a long black dress that covered her up to her neck and flattened her bosom. For the first time she wore a mantilla, which barely sparked when it came into contact with her hair. She didn’t cry, but her eyes were clouded over. It was as though the sparkle, the stars, the mosquitoes’ daredevil acrobatics had disappeared.

  6

  On November 13, 1863, the fleet saw Callao again. Slow progress on the sea gave them a chance to explain the situation to Madrid and let all of Europe know about the new manoeuvres. And to send Simón’s latest reports, which told of a particularly strong cheese and much weaker wordplay. The ship’s men even had enough time to grow weary of their rage and nearly forget about it. Headwinds had these sorts of discouraging effects.

  But finally they arrived.

  The sailors noticed the calm in Callao. The brazenness of unpunished laziness. Its docks dipping in the water like toes in the Pacific. And the flag flying at the top of the hill – not the Spanish flag.

  They felt provoked once again. They found the rage they had misplaced. And Pinzón didn’t make them feel any more forgiving by pointing out that the women of the town hadn’t even come down to the port. No hankies, no goodbyes last time. It was no Chile, as they say.

  There was no welcome party this time either. Pinzón hurried to disembark from the Resolución, even helping to put the gangway in place. He headed toward city hall, his head bent, eyebrows so knit that they touched and formed a bouquet of soot in the middle of his forehead. Dark ideas proliferated at that very spot. Simón could barely keep up with him, and the captains, who had once been young, abandoned the race. They would catch up; they would read about it in the report.

  Along the way, they encountered a welcome party that was assembling. Under the mayor’s direction, they were trying to pin rosettes on hats and untangle banners. Once they spotted Pinzón, a trumpet struck up the Marcha Real. It was quickly silenced by his look, and a bit by the jostling as they cut a path through the Peruvians. Admiral, said the mayor, to what do we owe the honour? What a nice … you seem a bit …

  I need to see Mr. Pezet, Pinzón said.

  He continued on his way, pursued by Simón, then the mayor, then a banner, then the trumpet player.

  Pinzón finally went into city hall, chose the roomiest armchair in the entrance hall and plopped himself down in it. Simón stood near the rhododendron. Between sentences, he wondered if Montse ever came here, calculating his chances of running into her. Without knowing it, he increased them tenfold.

  Well, Pinzón said, where is Pezet?

  He’s on tour, the mayor explained, on a presidential tour. He greets people, goes to the theatre.

  Still the same play? Pinzón asked.

  The question made things awkward. Yes, well, yes; he had very much enjoyed the one from the other night. Do you recall? Pinzón said that he did; it was hard to forget such a turkey, such a royal turkey. Not a bird native to Spain.

  Out of the corner of his eye Pinzón looked at Simón, who was taking notes.

  He continued, pushing, demanding that Pezet put an end to his tour. The real world needed him. In any case, it needed him a lot more than did Juanita, who seemed perfectly happy with Alessandro. For once the president’s fantasies could come second to country.

  Pinzón immediately asked Simón to strike out the word country. The land would be better, or the people, perhaps his duties. They would see. Fine, the mayor allowed. We’ll alert President Pezet.

  Very good.

  But you should know that he is in Tarapoto, the City of Palms.

  And?

  The mayor explained that a dispatch would take time, as would reading it, the trip, his arrival … time.

  We’ll wait here, Pinzón answered, his eyebrows doing the pileof-coal thing again.

  The mayor acquiesced but suggested it might not be necessary to sleep here, on the sofas. It would be better to return to the ships. No matter, no matter, Pinzón repeated.

  Then he asked if the palm trees in Tarapoto were really that pretty. They must be since the city was nicknamed for them. That’s something. What exactly is it about them? The mayor said that they were truly magnificent, tall and strong. The wind rustled their leaves, mimicking the sound of the sea, a rough sea, a storm. Oh, said Pinzón. Yes, said the mayor, a real squall. When you close your eyes, there are more storms in Tarapoto than in any port city in the Americas. Oh, Pinzón said again, you haven’t seen Salamanca. I was referring to the Americas, the mayor said, the Americas. You’re talking about Europe. But you haven’t seen Salamanca, Pinzón said.

  They were quiet. They waited.

  The captains, who had lost their way, joined the threesome. They didn’t know how they got lost, but they did know how they got found. A trumpet player had guided them, a good Samaritan. He played the Marcha Real rather well. They had listened to be polite.

  Hours passed; the mayor excused himself at the end of one of them.

  Gentlemen, my family.

  The sun was setting when they decided to head back to the ships. They were hungry and tired. Their eyes, which periodically counted the ceiling tiles, spent longer and longer hidden behind eyelids; pins and needles invaded their hands, which tapped sword hilts to keep them at bay. They grew pensive. The smile of a woman left behind came to them, or fantasies of the woman they had never met, the One, who would surely come along, otherwise there was the fear of dying alone. It must have been the place that conjured such mythical creatures. So empty and calm it summoned wild thoughts. The silence, combined with the effects of the journey, the things they had seen, too much space. It mustn’t be easy living in the Americas all the time, and it being the only place you could roam. Did they resign themselves to never seeing it all? Did they ever get used to their own insignificance, to the incredible vastness that reduces men to nothing?

  No.

  Let’s go, Pinzón said. He was feeling suffocated; this would take some time. Pezet wanted to say goodbye to his palm trees and his turkey first.

  On the way back, the admiral asked Simón not to mention this retreat. You should say that we waited, not sleeping; that’s more realistic, more determined, more Spanish. And our resolve is worthy of the fabrication. There is no point in exhausting ourselves right away. We will exhaust ourselves when fatigue is no longer an option.

  Pezet never came. His tour was bringing him glory, and Juanita was weakening. He also loved the palm trees of Tarapoto. So he sent an envoy, Manuel Ignacio de Vivanco, the general. The stylish one.

  The meeting took place a few days after the fleet’s arrival, in the office of the mayor, who, for the cause, had graciously agreed to slip out. Pinzón asked the captains to wait in the entrance hall. He preferred the nobility of the duel, a steely face-to-face confrontation; it was a question of honour. So they went back to the ceiling tiles they had started counting the other day, counting the floor tiles when those ran out, and contemplating their lives.

  But not you, Pinzón said.

  Not me? Simón asked.

  Well, yes, you.

  The admiral wanted him in the meeting; Simón would dispassionately record what each one said and would give each a copy of the interview. A witness, it was customary; well, customary for a certain era, and this subcontinent was stuck in another century, so one had to adapt.

  Vivanco smoothed his moustache, rolled one of its points between his fingers – pause – understood nothing, but didn’t let it show, and then, saying to himself, These damn Spaniards, accepted.

  You will take notes, Pinzón said.

  I will take notes, Simón said.

  Ev
erything in the office was either beige or brown: a brown globe, a beige love seat, brown books, and at one end of the room, there was a large window striped with brown Venetian blinds, which filtered the beige light. The mayor’s family portrait filled an entire section of the wall. The wife looked chubby, the child too, as did everything else in the portrait: the ottoman, the cushion, the canary. They blended in with the blandness of the mayor’s chair, made of brown padded leather, a plumpish piece of furniture as wide as it was high, which unfortunately had survived the closing of a club, much to the chagrin of the aesthetes, and had run aground here after an auction. Vivanco sat in it, wondering whether he should lie down in it – pause – finally seeking comfort in an in-between position sometimes seen among opium addicts – further pause – and ending up sitting stiffly at right angles at the edge of the chair, so as not to surrender the propriety of discomfort, which was inevitable at any rate.

  This made him look tall and skinny, as if deformed by the portrait or the armchair, a distorting effect that made Simón worry that he appeared just as absurd. Vivanco invited Pinzón to sit across from him. Pinzón declined, fearing he too would be the victim of visual distortion, concerned that the ottoman would narrow his jawbone and foil the effect of his sideburns, but above all he was angry enough to grant no further civilities. The past few days, spent ruminating and brooding, had made him impatient, and he wanted them to get to the point.

  He nonetheless accepted the cigar that was offered to him, a Cuban.