Read Online The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts by Louis De Bernières - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Louis De Bernières
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Ecuadorean provenance before we permit such a thing to occur.’
‘The permission,’ she rallied, her temper rising almost immediately beyond control, ‘is not yours or theirs to grant. I will do as I wish with the water on my land.’
‘I appeal,’ said Don Emmanuel, ‘to your highly-developed social conscience and to your concern for my nether parts.’
‘Your nether parts?’ she repeated with astonishment.
‘Indeed, Senora. In the dry season the Mula is the only water where I may rinse the dingleberries from my nether parts.’
‘Dingleberries!’ she exclaimed with mounting outrage.
‘Dingleberries,’ he said, assuming a professorial air, ‘are the little balls of fluff that appear in one’s underwear and sometimes entwine themselves in one’s pubic hair. Frequently they are of a grey colour and woolly texture.’
Dona Constanza oscillated between amazement and fury before remarking icily, ‘Indeed I should bear in mind your nether parts, as you call them, for I hear they often are found in the most unsavoury places.’
‘Indeed,’ said Don Emmanuel, ‘it is often most unsavourybetween one’s legs, which is their usual location, as a lady of your wide experience will doubtless know, and this is why I appeal to you . . .’
But Dona Constanza was already leaving, and Don Emmanuel was already aware that he had allowed himself to fail in his mission out of perversity. He rode home with a heavy heart.
So it was that under Don Emmanuel’s and Hectoro’s secret supervision Sergio and his men began to dig a canal, for Dona Constanza had absolutely refused to consider any of the more sensible and less disastrous alternatives, her one purpose now being to annoy Don Emmanuel.
They started to pretend to dig a very shallow canal from the swimming pool end with the intention of routing it the longest possible way. For three months Dona Constanza watched the peasants, their muscles gleaming with perspiration, slaving with enormous energy and achieving almost no progress with their picks and spades. When she saw that the canal was both too shallow and heading in the wrong direction she issued instructions to dig it deeper and to take the most direct route to the Mula. Sergio told her that the Mula was lower at that point and that ‘We cannot make the water flow uphill.’
‘Kindly do as I ask,’ was all she said.
So the canal was started again and dug about ten centimetres deeper at a prodigiously slow rate of progress. When it was half complete the rainy season began, the Mula flooded over its usual flood-plain, work ceased, and when the water had receded and the mosquitoes had disappeared, the canal was full of silt, small stones, and tree trunks. Not only this, but the Mula had diverted itself into its other bed two hundred metres further over, as it often did. In between the two beds was a huge outcrop of solid pink rock.
Dona Constanza was undeterred, but the campesinos were elated that she would continue to pay them at above the standard rate to work at a project that had no prospects of completion before the end of the world. When a further six months of toil had elapsed it became clear that Sergio hadfortuitously been in the right and the dry bed of the Mula was indeed too low even if it had carried any water. Dona Constanza instructed Sergio to dig the canal deeper, and reasoned that next year the Mula might change course back into its previous bed. Profesor Luis arrived with poles and pieces of string and calculated that at the swimming pool end, the canal would have to be four and a half metres deep, and at about the same time Sergio and his men discovered that beneath the depth of one and a half metres there were massive boulders of the same indestructible pink rock as the outcrop between the beds, at which point Dona Constanza had a brainwave.
The bulldozer took one month to arrive from Asuncion, two hundred kilometres away. It was not just that the machine was slow, which it was,
‘The permission,’ she rallied, her temper rising almost immediately beyond control, ‘is not yours or theirs to grant. I will do as I wish with the water on my land.’
‘I appeal,’ said Don Emmanuel, ‘to your highly-developed social conscience and to your concern for my nether parts.’
‘Your nether parts?’ she repeated with astonishment.
‘Indeed, Senora. In the dry season the Mula is the only water where I may rinse the dingleberries from my nether parts.’
‘Dingleberries!’ she exclaimed with mounting outrage.
‘Dingleberries,’ he said, assuming a professorial air, ‘are the little balls of fluff that appear in one’s underwear and sometimes entwine themselves in one’s pubic hair. Frequently they are of a grey colour and woolly texture.’
Dona Constanza oscillated between amazement and fury before remarking icily, ‘Indeed I should bear in mind your nether parts, as you call them, for I hear they often are found in the most unsavoury places.’
‘Indeed,’ said Don Emmanuel, ‘it is often most unsavourybetween one’s legs, which is their usual location, as a lady of your wide experience will doubtless know, and this is why I appeal to you . . .’
But Dona Constanza was already leaving, and Don Emmanuel was already aware that he had allowed himself to fail in his mission out of perversity. He rode home with a heavy heart.
So it was that under Don Emmanuel’s and Hectoro’s secret supervision Sergio and his men began to dig a canal, for Dona Constanza had absolutely refused to consider any of the more sensible and less disastrous alternatives, her one purpose now being to annoy Don Emmanuel.
They started to pretend to dig a very shallow canal from the swimming pool end with the intention of routing it the longest possible way. For three months Dona Constanza watched the peasants, their muscles gleaming with perspiration, slaving with enormous energy and achieving almost no progress with their picks and spades. When she saw that the canal was both too shallow and heading in the wrong direction she issued instructions to dig it deeper and to take the most direct route to the Mula. Sergio told her that the Mula was lower at that point and that ‘We cannot make the water flow uphill.’
‘Kindly do as I ask,’ was all she said.
So the canal was started again and dug about ten centimetres deeper at a prodigiously slow rate of progress. When it was half complete the rainy season began, the Mula flooded over its usual flood-plain, work ceased, and when the water had receded and the mosquitoes had disappeared, the canal was full of silt, small stones, and tree trunks. Not only this, but the Mula had diverted itself into its other bed two hundred metres further over, as it often did. In between the two beds was a huge outcrop of solid pink rock.
Dona Constanza was undeterred, but the campesinos were elated that she would continue to pay them at above the standard rate to work at a project that had no prospects of completion before the end of the world. When a further six months of toil had elapsed it became clear that Sergio hadfortuitously been in the right and the dry bed of the Mula was indeed too low even if it had carried any water. Dona Constanza instructed Sergio to dig the canal deeper, and reasoned that next year the Mula might change course back into its previous bed. Profesor Luis arrived with poles and pieces of string and calculated that at the swimming pool end, the canal would have to be four and a half metres deep, and at about the same time Sergio and his men discovered that beneath the depth of one and a half metres there were massive boulders of the same indestructible pink rock as the outcrop between the beds, at which point Dona Constanza had a brainwave.
The bulldozer took one month to arrive from Asuncion, two hundred kilometres away. It was not just that the machine was slow, which it was,
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