Captain Pantoja and the Special Service: A Novel by Mario Vargas Llosa

Author:Mario Vargas Llosa [Vargas Llosa, Mario]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2011-03-04T00:00:00+00:00

God bless you.

[Signed]

COL. PETER CASAHUANQUI, PA

Chief, Borja Garrison (Marañón River)

Iquitos, 12 October 1957

My friend Pantoja:

Patience, like everything that is human, has its limits. I don’t want to insinuate that you are abusing mine, but any impartial observer would say that you are trampling on it. How else can you characterize the stony silence accorded all the friendly oral messages I’ve sent to you these last weeks through your employees Freckle, Chuchupe and Chino Porfirio? The matter is sadly simple: you have to understand and to learn once and for all to distinguish between those who are your friends and those who aren’t, otherwise, Mr. Pantoja—and pardon me for saying it—your flourishing business will come tumbling down. The entire city demands that I assail you and what all decent people in Iquitos consider an unprecedented scandal with no extenuating circumstances. You already know that I am a man of my times, prepared to see, to do and to know everything before I die, and capable, for the sake of progress, of accepting that in this beautiful land of Loreto, where I first saw the light of day, an industry such as yours is able to flourish. But even I, broad-minded as I am, cannot help but understand those who are shocked, who cross themselves and cry out to Heaven. At the beginning it was only four, Pantoja, my friend, but now twenty? thirty? fifty? And you bring and send these sinners by air and water throughout the Amazon. Be aware that people have gotten it into their heads that your business should be closed down. Families can’t sleep in peace, knowing that such an abscess of wantonness and vice is at such a short distance from their homes, in full view of their youngest daughters, and surely you have noticed that the great entertainment of all the children in Iquitos is going down to the Itaya to see the boat and the hydroplane with their multicolored cargo come and go. Just yesterday Father José María, the director of the College of St. Augustine, that little old man who’s as saintly as he is wise, commented on it to me, with tears in his eyes.

Accept the reality: the life and death of your millionaire business are in my hands. Until now I have resisted the pressures and I have limited myself, from time to time, to placating the citizenry’s anger somewhat, to launching discreet warnings; but if you persist in your lack of understanding and obstinacy, and if, before the end of the month, what is due me is not in my hands, there will be for your enterprise, as well as for its boss and the brains behind it, nothing less than a fight to the finish with neither piety nor compassion, and both of you will suffer the fatal consequences.

I would have liked to discuss these and many other things in a friendly way with you, Mr. Pantoja. But I distrust your character, its intemperance, those crude manners of yours;

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