You begin finding out all about it in the students’ whispered exchanges of gossip, fantasies, and exaggerations mixed with realities, behind the sisters’ backs, during recreational periods, believing and not believing, attracted and repulsed, until, at last, the earthquake occurs at school, in Ciudad Trujillo, because this time the victim of his papa’s darling boy is one of the most beautiful girls in Dominican society, the daughter of an Army colonel. The radiant Rosalía Perdomo, with the long blond hair, sky-blue eyes, translucent skin, who plays the part of the Virgin Mary in Passion plays, shedding tears like a genuine Mater Dolorosa when her Son expires. There are many versions of what happened. Ramfis met her at a party, saw her at the Country Club, at a festival, looked her way at the Hipódromo, and he besieged her, called, wrote, and made a date with her for that Friday afternoon, after the practice that Rosalía stayed for because she was on the school’s volleyball team. Many classmates see her when she leaves—Urania doesn’t remember if she saw her, it’s not impossible—and instead of taking the school bus she gets into Ramfis’s car, which is waiting for her a few meters from the door. He isn’t alone. Papa’s darling boy is never alone, he is always accompanied by two or three friends who celebrate him, adulate him, serve him, and prosper at his expense. Like his brother-in-law, Angelita’s husband Pechito, another good-looking kid, Colonel Luis José León Estévez. Was his younger brother with them? The homely, stupid, unattractive Radhamés? No doubt. Were they already drunk? Or do they get drunk while they do what they do to the golden, snow-white Rosalía Perdomo? Surely they don’t wait until the girl begins to bleed. Later they conduct themselves like gentlemen, but first they rape her. Ramfis, being who he is, must have been the one to deflower the exquisite morsel. Then comes everybody else. Do they go by age or by closeness to the firstborn? Do they gamble on the order? How would they have done it, Papa? And at the height of their fun, the last thing they expect, a hemorrhage.
Instead of throwing her in a ditch somewhere in the countryside, which is what they would have done if instead of being a Perdomo, a white, blond, rich girl from a respected Trujillista family, Rosalía had been a girl with no name and no money, they behave with consideration. They take her to the door of Marión Hospital, where, fortunately or unfortunately for Rosalía, the doctors save her. And also spread the story. They say poor Colonel Perdomo never recovers from the shock of knowing that Ramfis Trujillo and his friends happily violated his beloved daughter, between lunch and supper, as if they were killing time watching a movie. Her mother, devastated by shame and grief, never goes out again. She isn’t even seen at Mass.
“Is that what you were afraid of, Papa?” Urania pursues the invalid’s eyes. “That Ramfis and his friends would do to me what they did to Rosalía Perdomo?”
“He understands,” she thinks, falling silent. His father’s gaze is fixed on her; at the back of his eyes there is a mute entreaty: be quiet, stop opening wounds, digging up memories. She doesn’t have the slightest intention of complying. Isn’t that why you’ve come to this country when you swore you’d never return?
“Yes, Papa, that must be why I’ve come,” she says so quietly her voice is barely audible. “To give you a bad time. Though with the stroke, you took your precautions. You tore unpleasant things out of your memory. And my, our, unpleasantness, did you erase that too? I didn’t. Not for a day. Not a single day in thirty-five years, Papa. I never forgot and I never forgave you. That’s why when you called me at Siena Heights or at Harvard, I would hear your voice and hang up and not let you finish. “Uranita, is that you…?” Click. “Uranita, listen to me…” Click. That’s why I never answered any of your letters. Did you write a hundred? Two hundred? I tore them all up or burned them. Pretty hypocritical, those little notes of yours. You always talked in circles, in allusions, in case other eyes saw them, in case other people learned the story. Do you know why I could never forgive you? Because you were never really sorry. After so many years of serving the Chief, you had lost your scruples, your sensitivity, the slightest hint of rectitude. Just like your colleagues. Just like the whole country, perhaps. Was that a requirement for staying in power and not dying of disgust? To become heartless, a monster like your Chief. To be unfeeling and self-satisfied, like the handsome Ramfis after raping Rosalía and leaving her to bleed in the doorway of Marión Hospital.”
The Perdomo girl did not return to school, of course, but her delicate Virgin Mary face continued to inhabit the classrooms, halls, and courtyards of Santo Domingo Academy, the rumors, whispers, fantasies that her misfortune provoked lasted for weeks, months, even though the sisters had forbidden them to mention the name of Rosalía Perdomo. But in the homes of Dominican society, even in the most Trujillista families, her name was mentioned over and over again, an ominous premonition, a terrible warning, above all in houses with girls and young ladies of marriageable age, and the story inflamed the fear that the handsome Ramfis (who was, moreover, married to a divorced woman, Octavia—Tantana—Ricart!) would suddenly discover the little girl, the big girl, and have a party with her, one of those parties that the spoiled heir had regularly with whatever girl he wanted, because who was going to challenge the Chief’s oldest son and his circle of favorites?
“It was because of Rosalía Perdomo that your Chief sent Ramfis to the military academy in the United States, wasn’t it, Papa?”
To the Fort Leavenworth Military Academy in Kansas City, in 1958. To get him away from Ciudad Trujillo for a couple of years, because, they said, the story of Rosalía Perdomo had irritated even His Excellency. Not for moral reasons but for practical ones. This idiotic boy, instead of becoming knowledgeable about affairs and preparing himself as the Chief’s firstborn, devoted his life to dissipation, to polo, to getting drunk with an entourage of bums and parasites and doing clever things like raping the daughter of one of the families most loyal to Trujillo and causing her to hemorrhage. A spoiled, pampered boy. Send him to the Fort Leavenworth Military Academy in Kansas City!
Hysterical laughter overcomes Urania, and the invalid, disconcerted by this sudden outburst, shrinks as if wanting to disappear inside himself. Urania laughs so hard her eyes fill with tears. She wipes them away with her handkerchief.
“The cure was worse than the disease. Instead of a punishment, the handsome Ramfis’s little trip to Fort Leavenworth turned out to be a reward.
“It must have been funny, wasn’t it, Papa? This little Dominican officer comes for an elite course of study in a select class of American officers and shows up with the rank of lieutenant general, dozens of medals, a long military career behind him (he had started at the age of seven), an entourage of aides-de-camp, musicians, and servants, a yacht anchored in San Francisco Bay, and a fleet of automobiles. What a surprise for all those captains, majors, lieutenants, sergeants, instructors, professors. He came to Fort Leavenworth to study, and the tropical bird displayed more medals and titles than Eisenhower ever had. How should they treat him? How could they permit him to enjoy such prerogatives without discrediting the academy and the U.S. Army? Could they look the other way when every other week the heir apparent would escape spartan Kansas for boisterous Hollywood, where, with his friend Porfirio Rubirosa, he went on millionaire’s sprees with famous actresses, which the scandal sheets and gossip columns were thrilled to report? The most famous columnist in Los Angeles, Louella Parsons, revealed that Trujillo’s son gave a top-of-the-line Cadillac to Kim Novak and a mink coat to Zsa Zsa Gabor. At a session of the House of Representatives, a Democratic congressman estimated that those gifts cost the equivalent of the annual military aid that Washington graciously supplied to the Dominican Republic, and he asked if this was the best way to help poor countries defend themselves against Communism, the best way to spend the American people’s money.
“Impossible to avoid a scandal. In the United States, not in the Dominican Republic, where not a word was published or spoken about Ramfis’s diversions. But up there, say what you like, there is such a thing as public opinion and a free press, and politicians are crushed if they expose a weak flank. And so, at the request of Congress, military aid was cut off. Do you remember that, Papa? The academy discreetly informed the State Department, which even more discreetly informed the Generalissimo that there wasn’t the remotest possibility that his boy would complete the course, and since his service record was so deficient, it was preferable for him to withdraw rather than suffer the humiliation of being expelled from the Fort Leavenworth Military Academy.
“His papa didn’t like it at all when they treated poor Ramfis so badly, did he, Papa? All he did was sow some wild oats and look how the puritanical gringos reacted! In retaliation your Chief wanted to remove the American naval and military missions, and he called the ambassador to register his protest. His closest advisers, Paíno Pichardo, you, Balaguer, Chirinos, Arala, Manuel Alfonso, had to perform miracles to convince him that a break would be enormously prejudicial. Do you remember? The historians say you were one of the men who kept relations with Washington from being poisoned by Ramfis’s exploits. But you were only partially successful, Papa. From that time on, after those excesses, the United States realized that this ally had become an embarrassment and it was prudent to find someone more presentable. But how did we end up talking about your Chief’s dear boys, Papa?”
The invalid raises and lowers his shoulders, as if saying, “How do I know? You tell me.” Did he understand, then? No. At least, not all the time. The stroke didn’t completely wipe out his ability to comprehend; it must have been reduced to five or ten percent of normal. That limited, impoverished brain, moving in slow motion, was surely capable of retaining and processing the information his senses perceived, at least for a few minutes or seconds, before it clouded over again. Which is why his eyes, his face, his gestures, like that movement of his shoulders, suddenly suggest that he is listening, that he understands what you are saying. But only in fragments, spasms, flashes, without any sequential coherence. Don’t kid yourself, Urania. He understands for a couple of seconds and then he forgets. You’re not communicating with him. You’re still talking to yourself, as you’ve done every day for more than thirty years.
She isn’t sad or depressed. She is saved from that, perhaps, by the sun coming in the windows and illuminating objects with a brilliant light, outlining them in all their detail, exposing defects, discolorations, age. How shabby, abandoned, and old the bedroom—the house—is now, of the once powerful President of the Senate, Agustín Cabral. What made you think of Ramfis Trujillo? She has always been fascinated by the strange directions memory takes, the geographies it creates in response to mysterious stimuli and unforeseen associations. Ah, yes, it has to do with the piece you read in
The New York Times
the night before you left the United States. The article was about the younger brother, the stupid, ugly Radhamés. What a report! What an ending. The journalist had made a thorough investigation. Radhamés had lived, penniless, for some years in Panama, engaged in suspicious activities, nobody knew exactly what, until he vanished. The disappearance occurred the previous year, and none of the efforts of his relatives and the Panamanian police—his small room in Balboa was searched, and his meager belongings were still there—turned up any clues. Until, finally, one of the Colombian drug cartels let it be known in Bogotá, with the syntactical pomp characteristic of the Athens of America, that “the Dominican citizen Don Radhamés Trujillo Martínez, a resident of Balboa in our sister Republic of Panama, has been executed in an unnamed location in the Colombian jungle after unequivocally demonstrating dishonorable conduct in the fulfillment of his obligations.”
The New York Times
reported that for years a derelict Radhamés had apparently earned his living serving the Colombian Mafia. Wretched work, no doubt, judging by the modest circumstances in which he lived: acting as a gofer for the bosses, renting apartments for them, driving them to hotels, airports, brothels, or, perhaps, acting as an intermediary for money laundering. Did he try to steal a few dollars to make his life a little better? Since he was so short on brains, they caught him right away. They abducted him to the forests of Darién, where they were lords and masters. Perhaps they tortured him with the same kind of ferocity used by him and Ramfis in 1959, when they tortured and killed the invaders of Constanza, Maimón, and Estero Hondo, and in 1961, when they tortured and killed the people involved in the events of May 30.
“A just ending, Papa.” Her father, who has been dozing, opens his eyes. “Whoever lives by the sword, dies by the sword. It was true in the case of Radhamés, if he really did die like that. Because nothing has been confirmed. The article also said that there are those who swear he was an informant for the DEA while he worked for the Colombian mafiosi, and that for services rendered, the agency changed his face and put him under their protection. Rumors, conjectures. In any event, what an ending for the darling children of your Chief and the Bountiful First Lady. The handsome Ramfis killed in a car accident in Madrid. An accident, some say, arranged by the CIA and Balaguer to stop the firstborn, who was conspiring in Madrid, prepared to invest millions to recover the family fiefdom. Radhamés transformed into a poor devil murdered by the Colombians for trying to steal the dirty money he helped to launder, or for being an agent of the DEA. And Angelita, Her Majesty Angelita I, whose lady-in-waiting I was, do you know where she is now? In Miami, brushed by the wings of the divine dove. A born-again Christian. In one of the thousands of evangelical sects driven by madness, idiocy, anguish, fear. That’s how the queen of this country has ended up. In a clean little house in very bad taste, a hybrid of gringo and Caribbean vulgarity, devoted to missionary work. They say she can be seen on the street corners of Dade County, in Latino and Haitian neighborhoods, singing hymns and exhorting passersby to open their hearts to the Lord. What would the Heroic Father of the New Nation say to all that?”