Free Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord by Louis De Bernières Page B

where almost no one could afford to buy books, and consequently one could not become lionised as an author. But it was a literate country, thirsty for knowledge and education, which were perceived by most as the most important rungs on the difficult ladder out of poverty. As a result, the country had what was probably the best collection of newspapers in Latin America, if not the world. There were vast numbers of quality local papers, and several highbrow papers which were read avidly and appreciatively even by those who in other lands would normally read the tabloids. It was one of the few countries in the world where journalists could build up the kind of fanatical following normally associated with rock stars. Dionisio’s impassioned letters in the most prestigious newspaper of all had, unbeknown to him, won him the status of a star in a country wearied and disgusted by the anarchy of the coca trade.
    But it was also a superstitious country, a country where it was possible to believe every religion all at once, where devout Catholics could pray to Oxala, practise santeria, and attend spiritualist seances with a clear conscience. One simply selected from one’s gamut of beliefs whichever one was appropriate for whichever occasion.
    And so clairvoyants and mediums were hired to give detailed descriptions of the new journalistic superstar to portrait painters, and some members of the Vivo societies with natural psychic powers and artistic inclinations even painted his portrait themselves. There was a general consensus that he was a white man with a beard and long brown hair with the gentle eyes of a doe and the hint of a nimbus about his head. There developed a fashion for portraying him with a scarlet heart in his breast that bled for his country, and so he became a kind of crossbreed between Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin. The proliferation of these societies caused a boom in commissions for the artistic world, and an unprecedented increase in the circulation of
La Prensa,
which helped towards rebuilding its offices in bombproof British granite and bullet-proof glass. There was such a demand that when a society for expatriates in Paris was inaugurated,
La Prensa
even contemplated opening an office there to receive enquiries and requests for back issues.
    As was to be entirely expected, a fair number of the members of these societies were the kind of young women who in general find their vocations in cloisters. That is to say, they nourished their powerful but sublimated libidos upon fantasies about a distant, unattainable, and idealised man who would haunt their dreams and give them actual verbal messages during their seraphic raptures. For these women who knew that they were too base to pursue their divinity in the flesh there existed an admirable substitute in the postal service. There were others, however, who like the Mary Magdalen of unbiblical myth yearned for him with such hyperbolical ardour that they reported to their friends that they were able to reach stupendous orgasms without even touching themselves. For these it became their unrelenting intention to offer themselves to him in the flesh and, if possible, to bear his child. The phenomenal efforts of concentrated visualisation that these women performed gave rise to numerous and bizarre psychic effects, such as that reported by a virgin of Antiochia, Leticia Aragon, who had purportedly nearly suffocated in a shower of white feathers.
    Dionisio opened his first fan-letter, and found inside it a dog-eared photograph of a plump mulatta who was offering him her favours gratis in return for a lock of his hair and travelling expenses. He read it several times with disbelief, and began to compose in his head a tactful refusal. When he got home he found Anica waiting on the doorstep, and he showed her the letter. She read it, torn between jealousy and amusement, and then told him that she had come round because she had had the idea that it would be good to take a