Butterfly Winter (20 page)

“These Americans are of a very strange morality,” Julio remarked to Esteban. “They insist for some reason on being married, then can’t wait for the game to end each night of the season so they can rush out and break every marriage vow they have ever made as well as several of the Ten Commandments.”

“In most cases the flesh is weak,” said Esteban, scarcely looking up from the Latin text he was reading.

“But it makes no sense,” said Julio.

“What makes you think religion is supposed to make sense?” said Esteban. “Those who insist on sense, logic, or justice in religion, must of necessity be nonbelievers.”

“Then why do you choose to affiliate yourself with something that lacks sense, logic, and justice?”

“Faith,” said Esteban. “I believe that God is good. It makes my life easier.”

“But how can you believe God is good, when the world all around you is brimming with unnecessary suffering, that makes your very statement a lie?”

“Faith,” repeated Esteban dreamily.

“I can’t argue with that,” said Julio. “I don’t mean to imply that you are right, only that I can’t argue with what you say.”

But Julio, who was born with intelligence instead of faith, couldn’t accept that it was all right for the God-fearing American ball players to whore, and drink and gamble in their free time, while their families languished at home, while it was unacceptable for him to bring his true love to America to live with him.

He remembered a discussion he had had with a thick-boned, brawny outfielder.

“What are you, some kind of heathen?” the man had said, parroting the manager, when Julio mentioned his longing to hold Quita in his
arms, after he had managed to get a phone call through to Courteguay and found out that Quita was pregnant.

“So, when are you gettin’ married?” the outfielder had said.

“We have no plans to marry,” said Julio. “I will stay with Quita forever. While you … how many times have you been married?”

“Four times,” said the outfielder, “and every last one sanctified by the Lord. I should introduce you to the Rev. Queeg. He’s pastor of the One True Church of God’s Redemption and Reaffirmation in my home town of Dothan, Alabama. Five minutes alone with you and Rev. Queeg would have you givin’ up your godless ways and on your knees praying to the Lord for forgiveness.”

“I think not,” said Julio. “When do you pray for forgiveness? It seems to me you manage to break most of the tenets of your religion every day.”

“Hell,” said the outfielder, “God’s a good ole boy. Long as you ain’t a heathen He ain’t about to give you any trouble. Hell, God knows a man can’t go short for but a day or two without it doin’ him serious physical damage. Nobody’s goin’ to fault a man for keepin’ the temple of his body in first-class physical condition.”

The outfielder smiled piously, showing that he actually believed everything he had just said.

S
hortly after Julio left for the United States and the new baseball season the political stability that Courteguay had enjoyed for several years came to an end. The Old Dictator, who had been in power so many years people had forgotten his name, was overthrown by the head of his Secret Police, a Dr. Lucius Noir. The Old Dictator’s name and his official title, El Presidente, had become synonymous. Some history books explained that he had been born Juan Barrios, become Col. Barrios, then General Barrios, and finally El Presidente.

To Courteguay as well as the outside world, Dr. Noir was an unknown quantity. The international press barely noticed or acknowledged that the government in Courteguay had changed. Courteguay was poor and not strategically located militarily. The Old Dictator had been in power long enough that Courteguay had become one of the most stable unstable minor nations in the world. But the press barely commented on that either.

In a statement issued on Courteguayan radio, which began as a 500-watt station in San Barnabas (after someone had pointed out that there were perhaps one thousand radios in Courteguay, and
American intelligence couldn’t pick up such low wattage, the
CIA
in the guise of foreign aid increased the wattage to 2,000 so they could freely monitor every word), Dr. Noir said that, “El Presidente grew tired of the burden of leadership and called upon me, as his closest advisor, to form a new government, which, after due deliberation, I have agreed to do.

“The transfer of power has been accomplished peacefully. El Presidente, who served Courteguay with wisdom and distinction, now plans to spend his declining years in retirement on his country plantation.

“El Presidente has asked me to convey his gratitude to the members of the International Press, and to the people of Courteguay, and asks that you wish him well in his retirement.”

Dr. Noir was dressed in enamel-white military garb accentuated by an ice-blue, diagonal sash, and many medals. He also wore a white surgical mask, which made his speech difficult to understand.

“The mask,” an aid in equally beautiful costume explained, “is necessary because Dr. Noir suffers from chronic asthma, and has, at last count, forty-seven allergies. He is, unfortunately, severely allergic to all eleven national flowers of Courteguay: bougainvillea, hibiscus, red and white plumeria, bird of paradise, orchids, poinsettias, Anthurium, lehua, vanda orchids, and ginger. The very touch of these flowers makes welts rise on Dr. Noir’s skin as if he has been scalded.”

The International Press was not very interested in the new President’s medical problems, though the fact that he had once attended chiropractic college in America did raise a few eyebrows. But that was about all. The International Press Corps in Courteguay were made up of reporters with serious personal and attitude problems, ones who had perhaps attempted to organize unions, or had refused to take early retirement when requested, or had an inordinate fondness for alcohol and drugs that went beyond the usual.

Noting the round, white mask which covered Dr. Noir’s face from chin to just below his eyes, a Syrian correspondent suggested to an Israeli reporter that perhaps the good doctor was wearing a yarmulke on the wrong portion of his anatomy. They were separated by a
three-hundred-pound reporter from Gambia who had once played tackle for Notre Dame.

The Old Dictator had indeed been in failing health. His last year in power he did away with the Republic Day Parade, when the military marched smartly through San Barnabas, machetes flashing in the sun, to Bougainvillea Square in front of the Presidential Palace, where El Presidente traditionally delivered a rousing speech praising the workers, freedom, baseball, motherhood, sugarcane, and mangos, while condemning the guerrillas in the hills, Haiti, capitalism, and, depending on how much military equipment had or had not been received in the last year, the United States.

WELL INTO HIS FINAL TERM
of office El Presidente married the woman he had lived with for twenty-seven years, and after the marriage remained more and more in the palace with his wife, who now wore housecoats and let her greying hair hang loose, quite unlike the days when he was guerrilla leader and she stood by his side dressed in army fatigues, a bandoleer’s hat at a rakish angle, ammunition belts forming a heavy cross on her chest.

El Presidente ate custards and worried about his bowels, the loyalty of his staff, and his personal safety. He distrusted his generals and had heard rumors of the ambitions of Dr. Noir, the American-educated colonel who wheezed like a cold wind whenever he breathed.

“Colonel Noir will at least not be able to sneak up on me and murder me in my sleep,” the Old Dictator joked.

DR. NOIR DID NOT SNEAK
into the Old Dictator’s bed chamber himself. He spotted a fourteen-year-old boy in the palace who had a certain gleam in his eye—the same gleam Dr. Noir saw when he stared into the mirror of a morning. The boy’s job was to feed the cockatoos, parrots, and birds of paradise and clean their cages.

He had the boy brought to his office in the palace annex.

“If you had three wishes, what would they be?” Dr. Noir demanded. “Quickly, now, I will give you only one minute to answer.”

The boy, who had a stocky body with bow legs, and a wide, stupid face the shape of a pail bottom, blurted the first things that came to his mind.

“A washing machine for my mother; a green felt hat; a silver portable radio this big,” and he spread his stubby hands to indicate a length of thirty inches or so.

“Be here tomorrow night at 10:00
P.M.
,” said Dr. Noir. “Speak to no one of this, not even your mother. If you do I’ll have you both killed.” The boy stood stupidly in front of Dr. Noir, but his eyes glowed.

“Are you right or left handed?” asked Dr. Noir.

“Right,” the boy stuttered, after considering the question for several seconds.

Moving from behind his desk Dr. Noir seized the boy’s left hand and with one deft motion, first dislocated, then fractured the boy’s left little finger.

The boy screamed in pain.

“If you speak even one word of our meeting I will personally treat every joint in your body the same way,” hissed Dr. Noir. “Now get out!”

THE BOY APPEARED AS SCHEDULED
the next evening. A marvelous snow-white washer sat in front of Dr. Noir’s desk; it was round and chubby as a baker, and its chrome parts sparkled under a white light-bulb Dr. Noir had had installed specifically for this occasion.

The hat, furry as a caterpillar, and parrot-green in color, rested on the machine lid.

The radio, cheap and garish, gleamed brighter than any thirty pieces of silver. Dr. Noir turned the radio on. It brought in a Miami station playing something that sounded like garbage can lids being slammed together, while in the background a chorus of demons wailed in everlasting pain.

The boy stared rapturously at the items.

He reached out to touch them.

“No!” shouted Dr. Noir, then coughed furiously because of the sudden expulsion of air.

“You must earn these gifts,” he said.

“I will do anything,” said the boy.

“I know,” rasped Dr. Noir, smiling, his cheeks expanding on either side of his mask. He reached under his desk and produced a machete, the blade thin and blue as a razor, sharpened until it could cut a sheet of paper as it floated midair, silently, as if the paper were part of the air itself.

“You know where El Presidente and his wife sleep?”

The boy grew pale, but nodded, his eyes enlarging.

“Two swings of your weapon will do it. Then all this is yours,” and he smiled again, one of the few times Dr. Noir had smiled twice in one day, the white orb of his mask seeming to wear an expression of cunning.

Years later a young American movie producer would remember stories he had read of Dr. Noir, and use him as the model of a harsh-breathing villain extraordinaire, in a series of space-adventure movies which made the young American producer’s name, and the actor who portrayed him, into household words.

“I can’t,” the boy stuttered. “I do not need these,” and he backed a step away from the gleaming presents.

“You have no choice. You have no reason to be here at the palace tonight. I’ll simply call my guards, say you made an attempt on my life with this machete, and they will kill you. But not of course until I amuse myself a little,” and he stared at the boy’s swollen and bandaged finger.

“After the deed is done,” he went on, “go home and rest well. These prizes will be on your doorstep in the morning,” and Dr. Noir waved the boy from the room.

The boy picked up the machete. He swung it once, halfheartedly. It made no sound as it sectioned the air.

The boy and Dr. Noir each kept their bargain. The bodies of El Presidente and his wife vanished, the way bodies tend to do in unstable political climates.

The boy, after being unable to eat for a couple of days, and after awakening in the night screaming like a loon on more than
one occasion, took pleasure in how his mother adored her washing machine, donned his green felt hat, shouldered his wailing radio, and, in his first full day on the street convinced three girls, none of whom had ever given the hatless, radioless boy a second glance, to have sex with him.

Dr. Noir, after announcing El Presidente’s retirement, observed a three-day period of personal mourning for El Presidente, after which he announced his first official edict as new president of the Republic of Courteguay. He banned baseball as a subversive, capitalistic, nonproductive pastime, and proclaimed soccer as the National Game of Courteguay.

S
hortly after Dr. Noir seized power in Courteguay, after those in government most loyal to El Presidente, the Old Dictator, had vanished as if they had never existed, after Dr. Noir had promoted each member of his elite group of secret police to lieutenant and given them dazzling uniforms of ebony and white, an emissary was sent to the jungle to deliver a message to General Bravura, the exiled guerilla leader.