“With your friend Henry Dearborn, the head of the mission the Yankees left us,” Colonel Abbes continued, sarcastically.
Astonishment silenced Agustín Cabral. What did he mean?
“The American consul, my friend?” he stammered. “I’ve seen Mr. Dearborn only two or three times in my life.”
“He’s an enemy of ours, as you know,” Abbes García went on. “When the OAS imposed sanctions, the Yankees left him here so he could keep on plotting against the Chief. For the past year, every conspiracy has passed through Dearborn’s office. And despite that, you, the President of the Senate, recently attended a cocktail party at his house. Do you remember?”
Agusín Cabral’s amazement increased. Was that it? Having attended a cocktail party at the house of the chargé d’affaires appointed by the United States when they closed their embassy?
“The Chief ordered Minister Paíno Pichardo and me to attend that cocktail party,” he explained. “To sound out his government’s plans. I’ve fallen into disgrace because I obeyed an order? I submitted a written report about the gathering.”
Colonel Abbes García shrugged his rounded shoulders in a puppet-like movement.
“If it was an order from the Chief, forget what I said,” he conceded, with a touch of irony.
His attitude betrayed a certain impatience, but Cabral did not leave. He was encouraged by the foolish hope that this talk might bear some fruit.
“You and I have never been friends, Colonel,” he said, forcing himself to speak normally.
“I can’t have friends,” Abbes García replied. “It would prejudice my work. My friends and enemies are the friends and enemies of the regime.”
“Please let me finish,” Agustín Cabral continued. “But I’ve always respected you, and recognized the exceptional service you render the nation. If we’ve had any differences…”
The colonel seemed to be raising a hand to silence him, but it was only to light another cigarette. He inhaled greedily and calmly exhaled smoke through his mouth and nose.
“Of course we’ve had differences,” he acknowledged. “You were one of those who fought hardest against my theory that in view of the Yankee betrayal, we had to approach the Russians and the Eastern bloc. You, along with Balaguer and Manuel Alfonso, have been trying to convince the Chief that reconciliation with the Yankees is possible. Do you still believe that bullshit?”
Was this the reason? Had Abbes García stabbed him in the back? Had the Chief accepted that idiotic idea? Were they distancing him so they could move the regime closer to the Communists? It was useless to go on humiliating himself before a specialist in torture and assassination who, as a result of the crisis, now dared to think of himself as a political strategist.
“I still believe we have no alternative, Colonel,” he affirmed, with conviction. “What you propose, and you’ll forgive my frankness, is an illusion. The U.S.S.R. and its satellites will never accept a rapprochement with the Dominican Republic, the bulwark of anti-Communism in Latin America. The United States won’t accept it either. Do you want another eight years of American occupation? We have to come to some understanding with Washington or it will mean the end of the regime.”
The colonel allowed his cigarette ash to fall to the floor. He took one puff after the other, as if he were afraid someone would take away his cigarette, and from time to time he wiped his forehead with the flame-colored handkerchief.
“Your friend Henry Dearborn doesn’t think so, unfortunately.” He shrugged again, like a cheap comic. “He keeps trying to finance a coup against the Chief. Well, there’s no point to this discussion. I hope your situation is resolved and I can remove your escort. Thank you for the visit, Senator.”
He did not offer his hand. He merely nodded his fat-cheeked face, partially obscured in a wreath of smoke, with the photograph of the Chief in grand parade uniform in the background. Then the senator recalled the quotation from Ortega y Gasset that was written in the notebook he always carried in his pocket.
The parrot Samson also seems petrified by Urania’s words; he is as still and mute as Aunt Adelina, who has stopped fanning herself and opened her mouth. Lucinda and Manolita are looking at her, disconcerted. Marianita doesn’t stop blinking. Urania has the absurd thought that the beautiful moon she sees through the window approves of what she has said.
“I don’t know how you can say that about your father,” her Aunt Adelina responds. “In all my days I never knew anyone who sacrificed more for a daughter than my poor brother. Were you serious when you called him a bad father? He worshiped you, and you were his torment. So you wouldn’t suffer, he didn’t marry again after your mother died, even though he was widowed so young. Who’s responsible for your being lucky enough to study in the United States? Didn’t he spend every cent he had on you? Is that what you call being a bad father?”
You mustn’t say anything, Urania. She’s an old woman, spending her final years, months, weeks immobilized and embittered, she’s not to blame for something that happened so long ago. Don’t answer her. Agree with her, pretend. Make some excuse, say goodbye, and forget about her forever. Calmly, without any belligerence at all, she says:
“He didn’t make those sacrifices out of love for me, Aunt Adelina. He wanted to buy me. Salve his guilty conscience. Knowing it would do no good, that whatever he did, he would live the rest of his days feeling as vile and evil as he really was.”
When he left the offices of the Intelligence Service on the corner of Avenida México and Avenida March 30, it seemed that the police on guard gave him pitying looks, and that one of them, staring into his eyes, meaningfully caressed the San Cristóbal submachine gun he carried over his shoulder. He felt suffocated, and somewhat faint. Did he have the quotation from Ortega y Gasset in his notebook? So opportune, so prophetic. He loosened his tie and removed his jacket. Taxis passed by but he didn’t hail any of them. Would he go home? And feel caged, and rack his brains as he came down to his study from his bedroom or went up again to his bedroom, passing through the living room, asking himself a thousand times what had happened? Why was the rabbit being pursued by invisible hunters? They had taken away his office at the Congress, and the official car, and his membership at the Country Club, where he could have taken refuge, had a cool drink, and seen from the bar a landscape of well-tended gardens and distant golfers. Or he could visit a friend, but did he have any left? Everyone he had called on the phone sounded frightened, reticent, hostile: he was harming them by wanting to see them. He walked aimlessly, his jacket folded under his arm. Could the cocktail party at Henry Dearborn’s house be the reason? Impossible. At a meeting of the Council of Ministers, the Chief decided that he and Paíno Pichardo would attend, “to explore the terrain.” How could he punish him for obeying? Perhaps Paíno suggested to Trujillo that at the cocktail party he had seemed overly cordial to the gringo. No, no, no. Impossible that for something so trivial and stupid the Chief would trample on a man who had served him with more devotion and less self-interest than anyone.
He walked as if he were lost, changing direction every few blocks. The heat made him perspire. It was the first time in many years he had wandered the streets of Ciudad Trujillo. A city he had seen grow, transformed from a small town in ruins, devastated by the San Zenón hurricane of 1930, into the beautiful, prosperous, modern metropolis it was now, with paved streets, electric lights, broad avenues filled with new cars.
When he looked at his watch it was a quarter past five. He had been walking for two hours, and he was dying of thirst. He was on Casimiro de Moya, between Pasteur and Cervantes, a few meters from a bar: El Turey. He went in, sat down at the first table. He ordered an ice-cold Presidente. It wasn’t air-conditioned but there were fans, and the shade felt good. The long walk had calmed him. What would happen to him? And to Uranita? What would happen to the girl if they put him in jail, or if, in a fit of rage, the Chief ordered him killed? Would Adelina be prepared to rear her, be her mother? Yes, his sister was a good, generous woman. Uranita would be another daughter to her, like Lucindita and Manolita.
He tasted the beer with pleasure as he turned the pages in his notebook, looking for the quotation from Ortega y Gasset. The cold liquid, sliding down his throat, produced a feeling of well-being. Don’t lose hope. The nightmare could disappear. Didn’t that sometimes happen? He had sent three letters to the Chief. Frank, heartfelt letters, baring his soul. Begging his forgiveness for whatever mistake he might have committed, swearing he would do anything to make amends and redeem himself if, by some inadvertent, thoughtless act, he had offended him. He had reminded him of his long years of service and absolute honesty, as demonstrated by the fact that now, when his accounts at the Reserve Bank had been frozen—some two hundred thousand pesos, his life’s savings—he was out on the street, with only the little house in Gazcue to live in. (He concealed only the twenty-five thousand dollars deposited in the Chemical Bank of New York, which he kept for an emergency.) Trujillo was magnanimous, that was true. He could be cruel, when the country required it. But generous, too, as magnificent as that Petronius in
Quo Vadis?
he was always quoting. Any day now he would summon him to the National Palace or to Radhamés Manor. They’d have one of those theatrical explanations, the kind the Chief liked so much. Everything would be settled. He would say that, for him, Trujillo had been not only the Chief, the statesman, the founder of the Republic, but a human model, a father. The nightmare would come to an end. His former life would rematerialize, as if by magic. The quotation from Ortega y Gasset appeared at the corner of a page, written in his tiny hand: “Nothing that a man has been, is, or will be, is something he has been, is, or will be forever; rather, it is something he
became
one day and
will stop being
the next.” He was a living example of the precariousness of existence as postulated in that philosophy.
On one of the walls in El Turey, a poster announced that the piano music of Maestro Enriquillo Sánchez would begin at seven o’clock. Two tables were occupied by couples whispering to one another and exchanging romantic looks. “Accusing me, me, of being a traitor,” he thought. A man who, for Trujillo’s sake, had renounced pleasures, diversions, money, love, women. On a nearby chair, someone had left a copy of
La Nación
. He picked up the paper, and just for something to do with his hands, leafed through the pages. On page three, a panel announced that the illustrious and very distinguished ambassador Don Manuel Alfonso had just returned after traveling abroad for reasons of health. Manuel Alfonso! No one had more direct access to Trujillo; the Chief favored him and entrusted to him his most intimate affairs, from his wardrobe and perfumes to his romantic adventures. Manuel was a friend, and he owed him favors. He might be the key.
He paid and left. The Beetle wasn’t there. Had he evaded them without intending to, or had the persecution stopped? A feeling of gratitude, of jubilant hope, blossomed in his chest.
The Benefactor walked into the office of Dr. Joaquín Balaguer at five o’clock, as he had every Monday through Friday for the past nine months, ever since August 3, 1960, when, in an attempt to avoid OAS sanctions, he had his brother Héctor (Blacky) Trujillo resign the Presidency of the Republic and replaced him with the affable, diligent poet and jurist, who rose to his feet and came forward to greet him:
“Good afternoon, Excellency.”
After the luncheon for the Gittlemans, the Generalissimo rested for half an hour, changed his clothes—he was wearing a lightweight suit of white linen—and tended to routine matters with his four secretaries until just five minutes ago. He walked in scowling and came straight to the point, not hiding his anger:
“Did you authorize Agustín Cabral’s daughter to leave the country a couple of weeks ago?”
The myopic eyes of the tiny Dr. Balaguer blinked behind thick glasses.
“Yes, I did, Excellency. Uranita Cabral, yes. The Dominican nuns gave her a scholarship to their academy in Michigan. The girl had to leave immediately to take some tests. The head of the school explained it to me, and Archbishop Ricardo Pittini took an interest in the matter. I thought this small gesture might build bridges to the hierarchy. I explained it all in a memorandum, Excellency.”
The diminutive man spoke with his usual mild amiability and a slight smile on his round face, pronouncing the words with the perfection of a radio actor or a professor of phonetics. Trujillo scrutinized him, trying to uncover in his expression, the shape of his mouth, his evasive eyes, the smallest sign, the slightest allusion. In spite of his infinite mistrust, he saw nothing; obviously, the puppet president was too astute a politician to allow his face to betray him.
“When did you send me that memorandum?”
“A couple of weeks ago, Excellency. Following the intervention of Archbishop Pittini. I told him that since the girl’s trip was urgent, I would grant her permission unless you had any objection. When I received no answer from you, I went ahead. She already had an American visa.”
The Benefactor sat down facing Balaguer’s desk and indicated to him that he should do the same. He felt comfortable in this office on the second floor of the National Palace; it was spacious, airy, sober, with shelves full of books, shining floor and walls, and a desk that was always immaculate. You could not call the puppet president an elegant man (how could he be with a miniature rounded body that made him not merely short, but almost a midget?), but he dressed as correctly as he spoke, respected protocol, and was a tireless worker for whom holidays and schedules did not exist. The Chief noticed his alarm; Balaguer had realized that by granting permission to Egghead’s daughter, he might have committed a serious error.
“I only saw your memorandum half an hour ago,” he said reproachfully. “It might have been lost. But that would surprise me. My papers are always in very good order. None of my secretaries saw it until now. So one of Egghead’s friends, afraid I would deny her permission, must have mislaid it.”
Dr. Balaguer’s expression changed to one of consternation. He leaned his body forward and partially opened that mouth from which there emerged soft arpeggios and delicate trills when he recited poetry, and high-flown, even impassioned sentences when he gave political speeches.
“I will carry out a thorough investigation to learn who took the memorandum to your office and to whom it was given. Undoubtedly I moved too quickly. I should have spoken to you personally. I beg you to forgive this mistake on my part.” His small, plump hands, nails trimmed short, opened and closed in contrition. “The truth is, I thought it a trivial matter. You had indicated, at the Council of Ministers, that Egghead’s situation did not extend to his family.”
He silenced him with a movement of his head.
“What’s not trivial is that for a few weeks somebody hid that memorandum from me,” he said curtly. “There is a traitor or an incompetent on the secretarial staff. I hope it’s a traitor, incompetents do more damage.”
He sighed, somewhat fatigued, and thought of Dr. Enrique Lithgow Ceara: had the man really intended to kill him, or had he simply made a mistake? Through two of the windows in the office he could see the ocean; big white-bellied clouds covered the sun, and in the ashen afternoon the surface of the water looked rough and agitated. Large waves pounded the irregular coastline. Though he had been born in San Cristóbal, far from the sea, the sight of foaming waves and the surface of the water disappearing into the horizon was his favorite view.
“The nuns gave her a scholarship because they know Cabral’s in disgrace,” he murmured in annoyance. “Because they think that now he’ll work for the enemy.”
“I assure you that is not the case, Excellency.” The Generalissimo could see that Dr. Balaguer hesitated as he chose his words. “Mother María, Sister Mary, and the head of Santo Domingo Academy do not have a high opinion of Agustín. Apparently he did not get along with the girl, and she was suffering at home. They wanted to help her, not him. They assured me she is an exceptionally gifted student. I was hasty in signing the permission, and I am sorry. More than anything else, I did it to try to ease relations with the Church. This conflict seems dangerous to me, Excellency, but you already know my opinion.”
He silenced him again with an almost imperceptible gesture. Had Egghead already betrayed him? Feeling himself marginalized, abandoned, with no responsibilities and no financial means, drowning in uncertainty, had he been pushed into the ranks of the enemy? He hoped not; he was an old collaborator, he had rendered good services in the past and perhaps could render them in the future.
“Have you seen Egghead?”
“No, Excellency. I followed your instructions not to receive him or answer his calls. He wrote me several letters, which you have already seen. Through Aníbal, his brother-in-law, who is at the Tobacco Company, I know he is very distressed. ‘On the verge of suicide,’ he told me.”
Had it been frivolous to put an efficient servant like Cabral to the test at this difficult time for the regime? Perhaps.
“We’ve wasted enough time on Agustín Cabral,” he said. “The Church, the United States. Let’s start there. What’s going to happen with Bishop Reilly? How long is he going to stay with the nuns at Santo Domingo and play the martyr?”
“I have spoken at length with the archbishop and the nuncio in this regard. I insisted that Monsignor Reilly must leave Santo Domingo Academy, that his presence there is intolerable. I believe I have convinced them. They ask that the bishop’s safety be guaranteed, that the campaign in
La Nación, El Caribe
, and the Dominican Voice come to an end. And that he be allowed to return to his diocese in San Juan de la Maguana.”
“Don’t they also want you to grant him the Presidency of the Republic?” the Benefactor asked. The mere mention of the name Reilly or Panal made his blood boil. What if the head of the SIM was right after all? Suppose they definitively lanced that focal point of infection? “Abbes García suggests I put Reilly and Panal on a plane back to their countries. Expel them as undesirables. What Fidel Castro is doing in Cuba with the Spanish priests and nuns.”
The President did not say a word or make the smallest gesture. He waited, absolutely still.
“Or allow the people to punish that pair of traitors,” he continued, after a pause. “They’re longing to do it. I’ve seen that on the tours I’ve made recently. In San Juan de la Maguana, in La Vega, they can barely control themselves.”
Dr. Balaguer acknowledged that the people, if they could, would lynch them. They were resentful of these purple-clad priests and their ingratitude toward someone who had done more for the Catholic Church than all the governments of the Republic since 1844. But the Generalissimo was too wise and too much of a realist to follow the rash, impolitic advice of the head of the SIM, which, if carried out, would have the most unfortunate consequences for the nation. He spoke without haste, in a cadence that, combined with his pure elocution, was extremely soothing.
“You’re the person in the regime who despises Abbes García most,” he interrupted. “Why?”
Dr. Balaguer had his answer ready on his lips.
“The colonel is a technician in questions of security, and he provides a good service to the State,” he replied. “But, in general, his political judgments are reckless. Because of the respect and admiration I feel for Your Excellency, I permit myself to entreat you to reject those ideas. The expulsion or, even worse, the death of Reilly and Panal would bring another military invasion. And the end of the Trujillo Era.”
Because his tone was so gentle and cordial, and the music of his words so agreeable, it seemed as if the things Dr. Joaquín Balaguer said did not possess the firm opinions, the rigor, that the tiny man on occasion—this was one of those times—permitted himself with the Chief. Was he going too far? Had he succumbed, like Egghead, to the idiocy of believing himself safe, and did he also need a dose of reality? A curious character, Joaquín Balaguer. He had been at his side since 1930, when Trujillo sent two guards for him at the small Santo Domingo hotel where he was living, and took him to his house for a month so that he could help him in the election campaign; he had as an ephemeral ally Estrella Ureña, the leader from Cibao, and the young Balaguer was his ardent partisan. The invitation and a half hour’s conversation were enough for the twenty-four-year-old poet, professor, and lawyer, a native of the shabby little village of Navarrete, to be transformed into an unconditional Trujillista, a competent, discreet servant in all the diplomatic, administrative, and political posts he had conferred on him. In spite of their thirty years together, the truth was that this person, so unobtrusive that Trujillo once baptized him the Shadow, was still something of a mystery to him, though the Chief boasted of having a bloodhound’s nose for men’s characters. He did, however, harbor the certainty that Balaguer lacked ambitions. Unlike the other men in his intimate group, whose appetites he could read like an open book in their behavior, their initiatives, and their flattery, Joaquín Balaguer always gave the impression of aspiring only to what he wished to give him. In his diplomatic posts in Spain, France, Colombia, Honduras, and Mexico, or in the Ministries of Education and Foreign Affairs, or in the Presidency, he seemed completely fulfilled, even overwhelmed by missions far beyond his dreams and aptitudes, and which, for that very reason, he strove resolutely to carry out. But—it suddenly occurred to the Benefactor—because of his humility the tiny bard and legal scholar had always been at the top, yet, unlike the others, and thanks to his inconsequentiality, he had never endured periods of disgrace. Which was why he was puppet president. In 1957, when a Vice President had to be chosen from the list headed by his brother Blacky Trujillo, the Dominican Party followed his orders and selected Rafael Bonnelly, the ambassador to Spain. The Generalissimo decided suddenly to replace that aristocrat with the insignificant Balaguer, using a decisive argument: “He has no ambitions.” But now this intellectual lacking in ambition, with his delicate manner and refined speech, held the highest office in the nation and allowed himself to rail against the head of the Intelligence Service. He would have to take him down a peg or two someday.
Balaguer remained motionless and mute, not daring to interrupt the Benefactor’s reflections, hoping he would deign to speak to him. He did, finally, without returning to the subject of the Church:
“I’ve always used formal address with you, haven’t I? The only one of my collaborators I call
usted
. Haven’t you noticed?”
The round little face blushed.
“I have, Excellency,” he murmured, shamefaced. “I always ask myself if you avoid
tú
because you have less confidence in me than in my colleagues.”
“I only realized it now,” Trujillo added in surprise. “And you never call me Chief, like the others. All the years we’ve been together, and you’re still something of a mystery to me. I never could discover any human weakness in you, Dr. Balaguer.”
“I am full of them, Excellency,” the President said with a smile. “But instead of paying me a compliment, you seem to be reproaching me.”
The Generalissimo was not joking. He crossed and uncrossed his legs, not moving his piercing gaze away from Balaguer. He passed his hand over his brush mustache and parched lips, and scrutinized him steadily.
“There’s something inhuman in you,” he said, as if the object of his remarks were not present. “You don’t have a man’s natural appetites. As far as I know, you don’t like women and you don’t like boys. Your life is more chaste than the nuncio’s, your neighbor on Avenida Máximo Gómez. Abbes García couldn’t find any mistress or girlfriend, and no whores either. Which means that sex doesn’t interest you. Or money. You hardly have any savings; except for the house where you live, you don’t own property, or stocks, and you have no investments, at least not here. You haven’t been involved in the intrigues, the deadly wars that bleed my collaborators dry, though they all plot against you. I had to force ministries and embassies on you, the Vice Presidency, even the Presidency. If I removed you now and sent you off to some damn little post in Montecristi or Azua, you’d go and be just as content. You don’t drink, you don’t smoke, you don’t eat, you don’t chase women, money, or power. Is that the way you really are? Or is it a strategy with a hidden agenda?”
Dr. Balaguer’s clean-shaven face flushed again. His soft voice did not falter when he declared:
“Ever since I first met Your Excellency, on that April morning in 1930, my only vice has been serving you. That was when I learned that by serving Trujillo I was serving my country. This has enriched my life more than a woman, or money, or power could have done. I will never find the words to thank Your Excellency for allowing me to work at your side.”
Bah, the usual flattery, the kind any Trujillista who was less well-read might have said. For a moment, he had imagined that the diminutive, inoffensive man would open his heart, as in the confessional, and reveal his sins and fears, his animosities and dreams. He probably didn’t have a secret life, or any existence other than the one everybody could see: he was a functionary, frugal, hardworking, tenacious, and unimaginative, who gave shape, in beautiful orations, proclamations, letters, agreements, speeches, and diplomatic negotiations, to the ideas of the Generalissimo; a poet who produced acrostics and odes to the beauty of Dominican women and the Dominican landscape that embellished poetic festivals, special anniversaries, Miss Dominican Republic pageants, and patriotic celebrations. A little man without his own light, like the moon, who was illuminated by Trujillo, the sun.