Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord by Louis De Bernières Read Free Book Online Page A

poked her head out and was amazed. ‘Dio’, you would have no idea this was here, looking up from the road.’
    It was a large flat space with a pond in the middle, surrounded by trees stunted into extraordinary and evocative shapes. ‘Those trees look like little old men,’ she exclaimed.
    Anica laid the rug down and took all her clothes off in order to bask contentedly in the sunshine, and Dionisio did likewise in order to experience the sensation of freedom. The couple caressed and made love, and then Dionisio went to the edge of the water to look for crustaceans, because he had the idea of making a paella. But the water had a slimy appearance, and when he put his hand in to take a drink it felt greasy and thick. He bent down to smell it, and it stank of deliquescence. ‘I think there is a dead animal in here,’ he called to Anica. ‘The water is foul. I am not going to swim.’
    He found a few crustaceans and gathered them, but his feet became covered with the stinking mud, so he went and washed them in the little waterfall that fed the pond. ‘I think that the water seeps through the rocks into the cave,’ he said, ‘and that is why it is wet in there.’
    ‘Why does it not flow out over the road, then?’
    ‘Maybe it goes down a crack and comes out somewhere else.’
    He went and lay down next to Anica and tickled between her legs with a feather he had picked up. She squealed and sat up, and they had a mock fight. They spent the rest of the daylight basking in the sun, dozing, and walking amongst the trees, until it was time to go home and eat.
    The body of the young woman with her feet encased in concrete continued to rot at the bottom of the pond in Dionisio’s Garden of Eden, putrefying beneath the spot where it had been thrown casually from the helicopter. Her shoe, thrown out as an afterthought as the aircraft flew away, continued to lie undisturbed in the cave, having fallen through the hole in the roof just as Anica had supposed.
    As the two lovers slept, the former lover of the body in the pond was listening to the embarrassed explanations of the men at the roadblock. ‘Listen, boss, we had a man at the last house coming out of town, and he saw them go past, and that is the truth, boss. There are no turnings at all along there and there was nowhere they could have gone; nowhere, just like you said.’
    ‘OK chicos, so where did they go?’ said El Jerarca. ‘Make it a good explanation, OK?’
    ‘We waited an hour, boss, and then we thought maybe he has broken down in that old car of his, so we went and we looked for him. We drove up and down that route a hundred times, but we saw absolutely nothing of him, nothing. Then six hours later he comes driving back into town with a big smile on his face like he has just been made president. It is not good, boss, the man must be a brujo or something to pull a trick like that. I tell you it makes me nervous. Maybe he could turn me into a snake or something.’
    El Jerarca put his hands on his hips and went to the window to think. ‘You are right, chicos, there is something going on. You know those boys I sent after him?’ They nodded. ‘Well, they never came back. There was not a trace.’ The roadblockers caught each others’ glances as if to confirm with each other that truly this failure was no fault of theirs. ‘So what do we do, boss?’
    ‘There is one thing that never fails,’ said El Jerarca.

12
The Grand Candomble of Cochadebajo de los Gatos (l)
    MANY PEOPLE MISTAKENLY believe that Eshu is the Devil, probably because every other Orisha certainly corresponds to a Christian saint. Eshu corresponds to no one but himself, however, and as he is full of pranks and mischief, it is easy to believe that really he is the Lord of Hell.
    In fact, of course, Eshu is the only Orisha who knows past present and future without the bother of divination, he knows the cure for everything, and if his deeds sometimes seem malicious and arbitrary, then that is