“I know you have been a good colleague,” the Benefactor declared. “Yes, ever since that morning in 1930. I sent for you at the suggestion of Bienvenida, my wife at the time. A relative of yours, wasn’t she?”
“My cousin, Excellency. That lunch decided my life. You invited me to accompany you on your election campaign. You did me the honor of asking me to introduce you at meetings in San Pedro de Macorís, the capital, and La Romana. It was my debut as a political speaker. At that moment, my destiny took another direction. My vocation had been literature, the classroom, the lecture hall. Thanks to you, politics came to the forefront.”
A secretary knocked at the door, asking permission to enter. Balaguer consulted the Generalissimo with a glance, and gave his authorization. The secretary—well-cut suit, small mustache, hair smoothed with brillantine—brought in a memorandum signed by five hundred seventy-six prominent residents of San Juan de la Maguana, requesting “that the return to this prelature of Monsignor Reilly, the felonious bishop, be prevented.” A commission led by the mayor and the local head of the Dominican Party wanted to deliver it personally to the President. Would he receive them? Again he consulted the Benefactor, who nodded.
“Ask them to be good enough to wait,” Balaguer said. “I shall receive those gentlemen as soon as I finish my meeting with His Excellency.”
Could Balaguer be as devout a Catholic as people said? Countless jokes circulated about his bachelorhood and the pious, intense manner he adopted at Masses, Te Deums, and processions; he had seen him come up to take communion with his hands together and his eyes lowered. When he built the house where he lived with his sisters, on Máximo Gómez, next to the nuncio’s residence, Trujillo had the Walking Turd write a letter to “The Public Forum” that ridiculed their proximity and asked what kind of relationship existed between the diminutive lawyer and the envoy of His Holiness. Because of his reputation for piety and his excellent relations with the priests, he entrusted him with designing the regime’s policy toward the Catholic Church. He did it very well; until Sunday, January 24, 1960, when the Pastoral Letter from those bastards was read in every parish, the Church had been a solid ally. The Concordat between the Dominican Republic and the Vatican, which Balaguer negotiated and Trujillo signed in Rome, in 1954, provided formidable support for his regime and his own presence in the Catholic world. The poet and legal scholar must have suffered because of this year-and-a-half-long confrontation between the government and the crows. Could he really be so devout? He always maintained that the regime had to get along with the bishops, the priests, the Vatican, for pragmatic, political reasons, not religious ones: the approbation of the Catholic Church legitimized the actions of the regime to the Dominican people. What had happened to Perón must not happen to Trujillo: Perón’s government began to crumble when the Church turned against him. Was he right? Would the hostility of those eunuchs in cassocks be the end of Trujillo? Before he let that happen, Panal and Reilly would be fattening the sharks at the bottom of the cliffs.
“I’m going to say something that will please you, Mr. President,” he said abruptly. “I don’t have time to read the bullshit intellectuals write. All those poems and novels. Matters of state are too demanding. Even though he’s worked so many years with me, I’ve never read anything by Marrero Aristy. I didn’t read
Over
, or the articles he wrote about me, or his
Dominican History
. And I haven’t read the hundreds of books dedicated to me by poets, playwrights, and novelists. I haven’t even read the stuff my wife writes. I don’t have time for that, or for seeing movies, or listening to music, or going to the ballet or to cockfights. And I’ve never trusted artists. They’re spineless and have no sense of honor, they tend to be traitors and are very servile. I haven’t read your verses or essays either. I barely opened your book on Duarte,
The Christ of Liberty
, that you sent to me with such an affectionate dedication. But there’s one exception. A speech you gave seven years ago. At the Fine Arts, when you were inducted into the Academy of the Language. Do you remember it?”
The little man had turned even brighter red. He radiated an exalted light of indescribable joy:
“ ‘God and Trujillo: A Realistic Interpretation,’” he murmured, lowering his lids.
“I’ve read it many times,” said the high-pitched, mellifluous voice of the Benefactor. “I know whole paragraphs by heart, like poems.”
Why this revelation to the puppet president? It was a weakness, and he never gave in to them. Balaguer could boast about it, feel important. Things weren’t going so well that he could afford to to lose another collaborator in so short a time. It reassured him to recall that perhaps the greatest attribute of this puny little man was that not only did he know what was advisable but, even more important, he ignored what was inadvisable. He would not repeat this, in order not to earn the homicidal enmity of the other courtiers. Balaguer’s speech had moved him deeply and often led him to wonder if it might not express a profound truth, one of those unfathomable divine decisions that mark the destiny of a people. That night, the Benefactor had paid little attention to the opening paragraphs of the address read by the new academician, dressed in a cutaway coat worn with little flair, from the stage of the Theater of Fine Arts. (He wore tails too, as did all the men in the audience; the ladies, glittering with jewels and diamonds, were in long dresses.) It seemed like a summary of Dominican history starting with the landing of Christopher Columbus on Hispaniola. But he began to be interested when, in the educated words and elegant prose of the speaker, a vision, a thesis, started to emerge. The Dominican Republic had survived more than four centuries—four hundred thirty-eight years—of countless adversities, including buccaneers, Haitian invasions, attempts at annexation, the massacre and flight of whites (only sixty thousand remained when it declared its emancipation from Haiti), because of Divine Providence. Until now, the task had been assumed directly by the Creator. But in 1930, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina had relieved God of this arduous mission.
“ ‘A bold, energetic will that supports, in the march of the Republic toward the fulfillment of its destiny, the protective benevolence of supernatural forces,’” Trujillo recited with half-closed eyes. “ ‘God and Trujillo: here, in synthesis, is the explanation, first, of the survival of the nation, and second, of the present-day flourishing of Dominican life.’”
He opened his eyes and gave a melancholy sigh. Balaguer, made even smaller by gratitude, listened in rapture.
“Do you still believe that God passed the baton to me? That He delegated to me the responsibility of saving this country?” he asked with an indefinable mixture of irony and interest.
“More than I did then, Excellency,” replied the delicate, clear voice. “Trujillo could not have carried out his superhuman mission without transcendental help. You have been, for this nation, an instrument of the Supreme Being.”
“Too bad those asshole bishops haven’t heard the news,” Trujillo said with a smile. “If your theory is true, I hope God makes them pay for their blindness.”
Balaguer was not the first to associate divinity with his work. The Benefactor recalled that the law professor, attorney, and politician Don Jacinto B. Peynado (whom he had made puppet president in 1938, when the massacre of Haitians had resulted in international protests against his third reelection) had placed a large luminous sign on the door of his house: “God and Trujillo.” And then identical signs began to be displayed on many homes in the capital city and in the interior. No, it hadn’t been the words but the arguments justifying that association that had struck Trujillo as an overwhelming truth. It wasn’t easy to feel the weight of a supernatural hand on his shoulders. Reissued every year by the Trujillonian Institute, Balaguer’s speech was required reading in schools, and the central text in the Civics Handbook, used to educate high school and university students in the Trujillista Doctrine and composed by a trio of men he had selected: Balaguer, Egghead Cabral, and the Walking Turd.
“I’ve often thought about that theory of yours, Dr. Balaguer,” he confessed. “Was it a divine decision? Why me? Why was I chosen?”
Dr. Balaguer wet his lips with the tip of his tongue before answering:
“The decisions of the Divinity are ineluctable,” he said unctuously. “What must have been taken into account were your exceptional talent for leadership, your capacity for work, and, above all, your love for this country.”
Why was he wasting time on this bullshit? He had urgent matters to attend to. And yet, it was very strange, he felt a need to prolong this vague, reflective, personal conversation. Why with Balaguer? Within the circle of his collaborators, he had shared the fewest intimate moments with him. He never invited him to the private suppers in San Cristóbal, at Mahogany House, where the liquor flowed and excesses were sometimes committed. Perhaps because, in that entire horde of intellectuals and writers, he was the only one who had not yet disappointed him. And because he was famous for his intelligence (although, according to Abbes García, a dirty aura surrounded the President).
“I’ve always had a low opinion of intellectuals and writers,” he repeated. “On the scale of merit, the military occupy first place. They do their duty, they don’t get involved in intrigues, they don’t waste time. Then the campesinos. In the bateys and huts, on the sugar plantations, that’s where the healthy, hardworking, honorable people of this country are. Then the bureaucrats, entrepreneurs, businessmen. Writers and intellectuals come last. Even below the priests. You’re an exception, Dr. Balaguer. But the rest of them! A pack of dogs. They received the most favors and have done the most harm to the regime that fed and clothed them and showered them with honors. Those Spanish refugees, for example, like José Almoina or Jesús de Galíndez. We gave them asylum and work. And from groveling and begging for handouts they moved to writing slander and lies. And Osorio Lizarazo, that Colombian cripple you brought here? He came to write my biography, praised me to the skies, lived like a king, then went back to Colombia with his pockets full and became an anti-Trujillista.”
Another of Balaguer’s virtues was knowing when not to speak, when to become a sphinx before whom the Generalissimo could permit himself to vent his feelings. Trujillo fell silent. He listened, trying to hear the sound of the metallic surface, with its parallel foaming lines, that he glimpsed through the windows. But he could not hear the murmur of the ocean, it was drowned out by the noise of car engines.
“Do you think Ramón Marrero Aristy betrayed us?” he asked abruptly, turning toward the quiet presence, the other participant in the conversation. “Do you think he gave information to that gringo from
The New York Times
so he could attack us?”
Dr. Balaguer never failed to be surprised by Trujillo’s sudden compromising and dangerous questions, which trapped other men. He had a solution for these occasions:
“He swore he did not, Excellency. With tears in his eyes, sitting right where you are sitting, he swore to me on his mother and all the saints that he was not Tad Szulc’s informant.”
Trujillo reacted with an irritated gesture:
“Was Marrero going to come here and confess he had sold out? I’m asking your opinion. Did he betray us or not?”
Balaguer also knew when he could not avoid taking the leap: another of his virtues that the Benefactor recognized.
“With sorrow in my heart, because of the intellectual and personal esteem I felt for Ramón, I believe he did, that he was the one who talked to Tad Szulc,” he said in a very low, almost inaudible voice. “The evidence was overwhelming, Excellency.”
He had reached the same conclusion. During thirty years in government—and before that, when he was a constabulary guard, and even earlier, as an overseer on a sugar plantation—he had become accustomed to not wasting time looking back and regretting or celebrating decisions he had already made, but what happened with Ramón Marrero Aristy, that “ignorant genius,” as Max Henríquez Ureña had called him, that writer and historian for whom he had developed real affection, showering him with honors, money, and posts—columnist and editor of
La Nación
and Minister of Labor—and whose
History of the Dominican Republic
, in three volumes, he had paid for out of his own pocket, sometimes came to mind and left him with the taste of ashes in his mouth.
If there was anyone for whom he would have put his hands to the fire, it was the author of the most widely read Dominican novel at home and abroad
—Over
, about the La Romana sugar plantation—which had even been translated into English. An unshakable Trujillista; as editor of
La Nación
he proved it, defending Trujillo and the regime with clear ideas and bold prose. An excellent Minister of Labor, who got along wonderfully with unionists and employers. Which is why, when the journalist Tad Szulc of
The New York Times
announced that he was coming to the Dominican Republic to write a series of articles about the country, he entrusted Marrero Aristy with the task of accompanying him. He traveled everywhere with Szulc and arranged the interviews he asked for, including one with Trujillo. When Tad Szulc returned to the United States, Marrero Aristy escorted him as far as Miami. The Generalissimo never expected the articles in
The New York Times
to be an apology for his regime. But he also did not expect that they would expose the corruption of the “Trujillista satrapy,” or that Tad Szulc would lay out with so much precision the facts, dates, names, and figures regarding properties owned by the Trujillo family and the businesses that had been awarded to relatives, friends, and collaborators. Only Marrero Aristy could have given him the information. He was sure his Minister of Labor would not set foot in Ciudad Trujillo again. He was surprised when he sent a letter from Miami to the paper in New York, refuting Tad Szulc, and even more surprised when he had the audacity to return to the Dominican Republic. He came to the National Palace. He cried and said he was innocent; the Yankee had eluded his watchful eye and talked in secret to their adversaries. It was one of the few times that Trujillo lost control of his nerves. Disgusted by his sniveling, he slapped him so hard that Marrero Aristy lost his footing, finally stopped talking, and stepped back, horrified. The Benefactor cursed him, calling him a traitor, and when the head of the military adjutants killed him, he ordered Johnny Abbes to resolve the problem of the corpse. On July 17, 1959, the Minister of Labor and his chauffeur drove over a precipice in the Cordillera Central on their way to Constanza. He was given an official funeral, and at the cemetery Senator Henry Chirinos emphasized the political accomplishments of the deceased and Dr. Balaguer delivered a literary eulogy.