Free The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman by Louis De Bernières Page B

Cacho Mocho was brought in to lay his massive head against the rear beams and strain with all his power along with the people. When it was finally in place it was time for bringing relays of water in leather buckets from the river that flowed through the city and cascaded over the cliff, to mix the concrete and mortar that would hold the windlass in place, that would glue the cairns of rock set around the trestles of the base.
    At last the day of reckoning arrived and everyone gathered at the site of the greatest machine that anyone had ever seen. It was time for the squint-eyed ex-policeman and mayor to make a speech. He fired his pistol in the air to call for silence, and an expectant hush fell upon the crowd. He made good speeches, worth listening to.
    ‘Compañeros,’ he began, ‘when I married Profesor Luis and Farides in Chiriguana, I stated that a good man is like a good he-goat, full of machismo, and a good woman is like a good she-goat, full of gracia . . .’
    ‘With you everything is compared to a goat,’ interjected Sergio, and the members of the crowd nudged each other and laughed.
    ‘Nonetheless,’ he continued, ‘you will remember that I wished them the fertility of goats. What we see here is not the child of loins but of brains and sweat, the sweat being our own and the brains being those of our distinguished Profesor Luis, unsurpassable initiate of the mysteries of electricity and mechanical effects, educator of ourselves and of our children. Viva, viva Profesor Luis . . .’
    Here they echoed ‘viva’
con brio
, and the ex-alcalde raised his hands for silence: ‘How like a beautiful goat is this stupendiferous device. Witness its grace and machismo. See how the cage is like a head suspended between two soaring horns. See how it overlooks the precipice as a goat perches on a crag and contemplates the infinity of space. See how it has a rope that ties it to the windlass as a goat is tethered for milking. We have yet to see how this goat will bring abundance as we milk the fertile plain below, but be assured that infallibly this behemoth, this notable juggernaut, this leviathan of a monster of a mammoth, this exaggeration of an elephant, will bring to this magnificent and companionable city of cats a munificence of plenty such that it will be a pitiful child who does not here grow fat and strong. Let the gringos boast that they have gone to the moon; what grows there? Let us boast that we have gone to the plain. Viva Misael and his angelic inspiration; viva Profesor Luis and his synthetico-analytic intelligence, viva!’
    He bowed to the applause, and then Misael and Pedro drove Cacho Mocho onto the platform and closed up the side. ‘Buena suerte, Cacho Mocho,’ they cried, and the leaders of the city laid their hands to the windlass. It was enough to wind the heavy rope only four times around it to gain sufficient friction to set the cage in motion. It creaked loudly, and breaths were held, but then it slowly began the descent. Profesor Luis gazed over the edge, and after what seemed like an age dropped his hand as a signal that the mighty bull that had lent his strength to make the project possible had arrived at the bottom. A universal sigh of relief went up to the heavens, and then a new team took over to wind the cage all the way back up to the top.
    As a reward for Cacho Mocho they draped him with flowers and shut him into a corral full of heifers. As a reward to themselves they held a fiesta that continued day and night for a week. Many were the god-saints that attended and blessed the machine in dance and song, many were the jaguars splattered with unanticipated spouts of chichareekingvomit. Father Garcia summoned Sandalphon, archangel of earth, to be guardian in perpetuity of the great contraption. The False Priest blessed it with purportedly mystical gestures and the words, ‘
Non tam latera ecfututa pandas ni tu quid facias ineptiarum
,’ which is to say, ‘You would not display