HONKY IN THE WOODPILE Page 19

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The cheering for Lorreo died raggedly away a moment later as a single figure, dressed mostly in red paint to indicate a wound in the chest but weighed down with a huge combined mask and head-dress, came reeling into the arena. The spot which had been on Lorreo flashed away to catch the new arrival.

  Drums began. A line of menacing pursuers rushed out from the dressing-room door.

  The figure, running—or rather staggering—on its own elongated shadow, darted this way and that, and at every turn was confronted with an armed man who pantomimed another stab at his body.

  Meantime the drummers and singers filed around into a horseshoe shape and stopped.

  Suddenly the armed men closed in, and stabbed and stabbed at their captive, until he was done for and they left him sprawling in a welter of red on the ground and faded into darkness.

  Then, from the performers’ seats, the rest of the troupe jumped up and came running, pantomiming dismay and horror. Some of the women knelt around the corpse, while others produced bags full of herbs and magical objects, and the men stood guard in a circle, beating off feigned attacks from the men who had committed the “murder”.

  Chanting rose, at first soft, then louder and faster, and the ceremony of bringing the zechazu back to life began.

  A dancing ring around the corpse, men and women alternately. A new chant, more vigorous, more spirited. A fire burst out; it had been brought, ready-soaked with kerosene, on a big metal tray lined with asbestos.

  The zachea supervising the ceremony cast powders into it, and its flames turned blue, green, orange, blood-red.

  Authentic? Well… reasonably. The most spectacular elements had admittedly been isolated and re-combined. But it didn’t have to hold the attention of the audience for long.

  Just as well. Some of the foreign visitors who had secured tickets for this big affair had already seen the tarted-up version of the zechazu ritual, and were expressing their disappointment at having a man as the corpse instead of a pretty naked girl.

  On the other hand, the Madrugadans were murmuring and sometimes shouting approval, because this was a hell of a lot closer to the real thing than one usually found, and what was more it had been carefully choreographed so that it was structured like a ballet.

  “It’s starting, I think,” Elspeta said quietly as the singers from Cayachupo chanted the proper accompaniment to the revivification, and I braced myself.

  “Now?”

  “Yes, now.”

  She jumped back from me with a shrill eldritch cry. Ordinarily at this point the guy playing the zechazu would get up stiffly, shambling like a Frankenstein monster. I didn’t. I leapt to my feet and echoed her shout, then spun around and ran to the dais opposite the presidential box where microphones stood ready for the use of the singers who were interspersed among the full-scale group performances. I prayed that the chunk of that five-thousand dollar bribe which we’d diverted to the technicians handling the sound equipment had been big enough.

  Apparently, yes. At least the front center mike was live when it wasn’t supposed to be. Merely brushing my hand against it made echoes ring.

  I looked out over the startled crowd, paying particular attention to the party in the presidential box and their immediate neighbors. From Don Amedeo on down they seemed to be fidgeting, sweating—to judge by the white handkerchiefs I saw flashing over black brows—and in general behaving in a manner very puzzling to their foreign friends. I saw the admiral who had been on the boat to Aragon in the section surrounding the US Ambassador’s party… and incidentally noticed that Gilbert was also there, one dark face in an island of whites.

  There was no sign of Dolly.

  Fair enough. I leaned to the mike and started to intone what Elspeta had taught me, what had never been heard before by any foreigner present and probably not by most of the Madrugadans, either. Certainly they hadn’t heard it in its current form, because we’d made some substantial alterations.

  I recited the Commination of Don Sábado.

  “The Lord of the Day before the Day of the Lord!”

  The singers picked that up and repeated it as an antiphon, swaying in rhythm with the drums which were now so insistent that a good half of the audience were stamping their feet: “The Lord of the Day before the Day of the Lord!”

  “You have taken your neighbor’s goods! You shall burn with fever and run mad among the people!”

  “The Lord of the Day…”

  “You have taken the wives and daughters of your neighbors! Your genitals shall rot with disease!”

  “The Lord of the Day…”

  I saw startled expressions everywhere as that made its impact.

  “You have killed and murdered! Justice will seek you out!”

  There was a definite stir in the presidential box now. I saw someone hurry out of it and run up a flight of steps to where a nurse in a white cap was waiting under an exit sign.

  “You will try to escape, but you cannot hide from truth!”

  I was going to have to cut this short; everything depended on perfect timing.

  “I will take a piece of meat! I will give it a name!”

  The crowd were beginning to be caught up in the fever of it now; I heard our singers reinforced by a block of the audience, apparently the gang of Lorreo’s fans under the press box. Up there, the Minister of Culture was talking urgently with an aide, obviously very put out by these unexpected events.

  “I shall bury it by the road for the maggots and worms!”

  Speaking of Lorreo… Well, because it was inevitable, we’d planned for it. Good as my ear for accents was, within moments of my starting to speak it would have become clear I wasn’t Madrugadan, and there were people here who could recognize my voice. Sarita Redón had apparently just done so, and was delighted, as I saw when I glanced around, hampered by my immense mask. She whispered something in Lorreo’s ear, and his reaction was the complete reverse of hers. He looked horrified and tensed as though about to take to his heels.

  Without breaking the rhythm of my chanting I said softly, “Mauro!” Promptly he slipped out of the group on the floor of the arena, along with two equally tall and strong companions.

  In the same breath I went on, “Cursed be the Sabatano who enslaves his fellow-man!”

  Under Elspeta’s shrill leadership the singers altered their response; it became, “The maggots shall have him, and the worms!”

  That took the crowd aback, but the next one shook them even more.

  “Cursed be the garzo who keeps us poor and sick!”

  “Yes, yes!” A yell from the block of Lorreo’s fans; I saw some of them jump to their feet and wave in wild approval. Up by the presidential box there were police running back and forth, and in the press box I saw the Minister of Culture shouting at a phone which seemingly was declining to reply.

  “Cursed be Moril who burned the hospital of the poor!”

  “YEA-AY-AY-AYYY!” A colossal wave of sound, as though the weight of years of oppression had been instantly lifted. It lasted so long I had to wait before I had the chance to fit in my next line. During the pause I glanced behind me again.

  Lorreo, shaking like a leaf, had tried to sneak away, but Mauro and his friends had closed on him and were holding him physically down in his seat. Sarita couldn’t understand what was wrong with him; to her, as I could tell from the enormous grin she wore, this was the best thing that had happened for ages.

  Someone had sent a message to the police and soldiers on crowd-control duty; I could see knots of them assembling at the entrances while frantic officers briefed them. I might be shot at any moment to shut me up. I’d have to hurry.

  The audience now had divided into three clear sections: the general public, who were joining in the chanted responses and laughing like hell; the foreigners, who didn’t know what in the world was going on—although I saw that Gilbert had left his seat and was whispering frantically in the US Ambassador’s ear; and the garzos…
to whom something very peculiar indeed was happening.

  “Cursed be Don Amedeo, who starves his people and grinds them down!” I intoned.

  The response this time was wavering, as though that was going an inch too far. Okay, another switch in the chanting.

  I said very firmly to the mike, “Criné!”

  It came back from the singers in the arena at maximum volume: “Criné! Criné! Criné! Criné!” The drums took up the new rhythm: bam-bah, bam-bah, bam-bah, and so did the feet of the audience.

  “Listen, you leeches,” I said to the mike. “Listen, you bloodsuckers, you parasites, you thieves, you murderers, you torturers, you rapists, you garzos, you Sabatanos. The curse of El Cristo Negro is upon you and you—shall—go—insane!”

  I flung up my arm dramatically to the presidential box.

  Don Amedeo had been listening okay. He couldn’t have helped it; there were more than sixty loudspeakers still in circuit with my mike. But I wasn’t exactly banking on the co-operation he gave us. Within ten seconds of my last echoing shout he rose from his chair and screamed, and moaned, and threw himself across the front rail of the box, and kicked at the people who rushed to help him.

  Not that there were many of those. Precisely the same thing happened to his Minister of Justice, and then his Minister of Finance, and then one of the leading garzos, a property-owner, and then Don Amedeo’s wife, and then…

  It was what you might call shotgun treatment, but with luck there wouldn’t be anyone affected who was genuinely not guilty of crimes against the Madrugadan people.

  I tore off my mask and head-dress and leaped down from the dais. Rushing to where Mauro and his friends were still standing guard on Lorreo, I brushed aside his delighted praise—because the crowd was chanting madly, “Criné! Criné!”—and bent to confront the singer.

  “Here’s your chance,” I said softly. “The only chance you will ever get, Judas Lorreo, to make good your treachery. Go to that mike and sing Rafé Ponza’s song of revolution!”

  Lorreo stared at me as though at a ghost. His mouth worked, but no sound emerged. I glanced around. There was a terrific commotion at the far end of the stadium now, and soldiers and police were pouring into view from all the entrances, guns levelled, yelling for the crowd to quiet down. But it wasn’t going to be that easy to shut these people up. There was a riot brewing. Something flew through the air as I watched; a coxa-bottle aimed at the soldiers.

  “Come on!” I blasted, and seizing him by the ear I literally dragged Lorreo to the mikes. Mauro followed with the guy’s guitar, while the two other men barred the way of anyone who might try to interfere.

  I felt rather sorry for Sarita. She had heard what I said to her lover, and she had folded up like a flower at sundown. Now she was just sitting there, rigid, frozen.

  To the nearest mike I said, “Lor-r-reo!”

  But it wasn’t live. I ran to another, and that wasn’t either. Only the mid-center front mike was switched on. I hadn’t wanted to go to it without my mask; too many people could recognize me, and a spot still played on it which would make me an easy target. Still, there was no alternative. Shadowing my face with my hand, I said to it, “Lor-r-reo!”

  At once his loyal fans caught the name and repeated it, integrated with the chant of “Criné!” It was more than he deserved, but he might as well make himself useful…

  Trembling, mouth leaking a trickle of saliva, he looked at me beseechingly as Mauro forced him to loop the sling of his guitar around his neck. He was as reluctant as though it had been a hangman’s noose.

  “You heard me!” I muttered. “It’s either this, or face a court-martial when Ponza takes over the country. Don’t be afraid of Don Amedeo any more. He’s done for.”

  “I…” He stared across the stadium. By this time all the government ministers, all their wives, their mistresses, their sons, their relations the rich garzos, were screaming and flailing the air as though to drive off imaginary devils, and the people not affected were panicking towards the exits, cursing the police they found blocking their path.

  All bar one. One guy was coming the other way, fighting through the boiling mass of people, and the moment he got himself a clear line of fire—

  “Do it!” I screamed at Lorreo. “Or I’ll tear you apart with my bare hands!”

  He gulped a great gasp of air, struck a chord on his guitar, and with a shaking voice launched into the song. The crowd knew it okay. Within seconds there were ten thousand throats blasting it out in unison, and mingled with the music there were cheers for Jesús Lorreo the singer of the people, who had come forward to take his stand with them against the tyrants.

  That was the point at which Gilbert Quentin made his literally fatal mistake.

  Having recognized me, having tried to get others to pay attention only to find that everybody nearby was suddenly mad with imaginary terrors, he had ploughed a way to the front of the presidential box, intending to take care of me personally.

  But the moment he drew the pistol he was wearing in a shoulder-holster, a crazed Sabatano who cared for nothing but the fact that here was a man usurping the cherished Sabatano right to carry a gun in that particular fashion… shot him in the back of the head.

  As though the bang had been a signal, a rasp of submachinegun fire followed. The slugs cut Jesús Lorreo nearly in half, and the arm of his guitar completely, so that the shiny end of it with the tuning heads and the strings and a bit of the belly still attached went soaring up in the spotlight.

  There was silence one heartbeat long.

  Then there was a scream. Of fury. The song resumed, far louder than before, and the people of Madrugada took out after the killers of their favorite like hungry wolves.

  “All right,” I said to Elspeta as I grabbed her arm. “Run like hell!”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Naturally, when almost without exception the four hundred most influential people in a country of under six million suffer simultaneous and irreversible psychotic breakdowns, including the president, all members of his cabinet bar one, the heads and heirs of all the wealthiest families, the archbishop, the director of the national broadcasting service, about four out of five of the generals, plus a miscellaneous collection of foreign dignitaries… when a hundred and fifty key members of the political police and a hundred-odd hand-picked army officers are physically torn apart or cut to ribbons with broken bottles… when the House of Deputies and every police station in the capital are set on fire by angry mobs… a considerable power-vacuum is created.

  Luckily for Madrugada there was someone ready to fill it.

  It took nearly four months to mop up the last trace of resistance from the American-trained Rangers on Petty Madrugada; they were supplied at first with arms and ammunition from the naval base, of course. But when desertions hit thirty per cent the authorities realized they were arming their opponents and quit cold. We’d won long before then, though. We’d managed to get hold of the tapes of the president’s birthday celebration which were being made for later broadcasting to the rest of the country, and as soon as we’d seized the radio stations we put them on the air… uncensored. One of Don Amedeo’s screams came over particularly well.

  The submerged nine-tenths of the population who had so efficiently been kept superstitious and ignorant were immediately ready to accept a leader who had been proved to enjoy the special favor of El Cristo Negro…

  “You can’t really blame Lorreo,” I said as Fierro and I stood on what had been Don Amedeo’s private quay on the garden island of Aranjuez, waving goodbye to a party of schoolkids from Lastilas who had come to look it over—in Moril’s phrase, “by personal invitation of His Excellency”. Except that Fierro was refusing to answer to that title; it had such bad associations. Moreover the island wasn’t private any more. It had been re-named the Madrugadan Botanical Park, and declared the property of the people.

  “True,” Fierro said somberly. “And he paid. But what a fool I was! I could have seen th
e truth—I should have! Only I was so devoted to the native traditions of Madrugada, I couldn’t bear to picture them being exploited by our enemies. I recall how fervently I denied to you in London that anything Carlos did could have set the people against him. So I suspected Praxas, knowing from personal experience what pressures could have been put on him, while all the time the right answer was under my nose… Still, I agree with your view. A man who believes sincerely he’s been cursed isn’t apt to behave in a rational manner. What made you suspect him so quickly, though?”

  “No single thing. An accumulation of minor points. The scent from his guitar-case, which I found again at the geraba on Aragon and again in his penthouse home. Then there was his guitar itself, ornamented with what I at first took to be mere decoration, but which I realized later was badoan symbolism. And of course the wall in his penthouse dedicated to Don Sábado, which might have passed as a mere collection of Madrugadan folk-artefacts had it not been for the smell in the air, the bitter herbs burned to keep away evil spirits. There was a charm tied to one of the towers of the Ocean Bridge; it included the same plants I found later at Cayachupo, though I didn’t know it at the time.”

  Fierro nodded, staring after the boatload of kids.

  “Also I noticed how he crossed himself before singing one of Rafé’s songs,” I went on. There had been news of Rafé; his recovery was complete, and he was going to become the new Minister of Education.

  “As though he were frightened?”

  “Yes, precisely. And that didn’t fit. His recordings of Rafé’s songs were still on sale. If it was true that he was backed by a multi-million-dollar American record company so rich that the garzos could not afford to offend it, he should have been able to thumb his nose at the Sabatanos and sing any song he cared to.”

  “It was foolish of him to be so vain,” Fierro sighed. “Instead of insisting that his records remain on sale as a condition of his co-operation, he’d have done better to take equivalent pay and cover up by complaining privately about the ban.”