BOOKS
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hope for the future, Ribeiro says, for the land still produces such
greatness. At the same time he is most splendidly our most barbarous
past, and in our worst dreams of the future he is the steel and leather
fellow who sublimely as a cow stares in at us through barbed wire.
In Vargas Llosa's comic novel, Pantoja, captain in the Peruvian
army, is sent to the backcountry city of Iquitos to implement a special
service for soothing the troops' Iust so set to boiling by the jungle heat,
spicy foods, and the incredibly beautiful women of Iquitos. With
dedication and probity, Pantoja, an officer whom the term "regular
army" fits perfectly, sets out to develop a complex and elaborate
operation which will provide the men with special service on a regular
basis. His beloved wife and mother accept the hardship of living off–
base, and they believe his lie that he is involved in covert operations
(their teddy bear Panta a spy!), hence his plain clothes, his jockey cap,
his hangovers, his odd hours. Later, when the Special Service is in full
swing, deploying by sea and air forty of Iquitos's finest and most
patriotic strumpets, the enterprise scandalizes the city, and the strain of
his work, already tremendous, pushes Pantoja to his limits as an
officer. Paralleling Pantoja's success and rise to prominence is the rise
to fame of Brother Francisco, a fanatic whose worship consists of
crucifying frogs, rats-and bigger game.
Vargas Llosa distances the reader from the characters and their
action by telling more than half of the novel through military reports,
newspaper items, and radio broadcasts. In the chapters where he uses
scenes of dialogue, the author distractingly jolts the reader back and
forth between several scenes occurring simu ltaneously. These devices
do not conceal but heighten the fact that the novel's plot is skimpy and
the pace slow.
The book's satire of the military's mindless adherence to proce–
dures and the pitiful slaves to which this reduces men is linked with
another satiric motif, contrasting the love tied up in crucifixions with
the love a woman gives a man, a theme which apparently still needs
arguing in Peru ..
Getulio and Pantoja bring about their own downfalls by simply
doing their jobs too well. Their commanders are befuddled by political
problems which they further fuddle by sending these dauntless men to
solve.
Sergeant Getulio
and
Captain Pantoja and the SPecial Service
praise the strength, courage, and faith of men who are made fools by
the fools who command them. Vargas Llosa's execution of this theme
is more suavely and p leasantly carried off, perhaps, but Ribeiro's is
bolder and more from the heart.
JERRY BUMPUS
