“In spite of his betrayal, I was sorry when he died,” said Trujillo, with sincerity. “He was young, barely forty-six, he still had a lot to offer.”
“The decisions of the Divinity are ineluctable,” the President repeated, without a shred of irony.
“We’ve gotten off the subject,” Trujillo responded. “Do you see any possibility of settling things with the Church?”
“Not immediately, Excellency. The dispute has become poisonous. To be perfectly frank, I fear it will go from bad to worse if you do not order Colonel Abbes to have
La Nación
and Caribbean Radio moderate their attacks on the bishops. Only today I received a formal complaint from the nuncio and Archbishop Pittini regarding yesterday’s assault on Monsignor Panal. Did you read it?”
He had the clipping on his desk and he read it to the Benefactor, in a respectful manner. Caribbean Radio’s editorial, reproduced in
La Nación
, asserted that Monsignor Panal, the Bishop of La Vega, “formerly known as Leopoldo de Ubrique,” was a fugitive from Spain and listed in the files of Interpol. It accused him of filling “the bishop’s residence in La Vega with women before he turned his fevered brain to terrorism,” and now, “since he fears a legitimate popular reprisal, he hides behind pathologically religious women with whom, it seems, he enjoys unrestrained sexual relations.”
The Generalissimo laughed heartily. The things Abbes García thought up! The last time that Spaniard, who was as old as Methuselah, had a hard-on must have been twenty or thirty years ago; accusing him of fucking pious hags in La Vega was very optimistic; what he probably did was feel up the altar boys, like all those lecherous, faggot priests.
“The colonel sometimes exaggerates,” he remarked with a smile.
“I have also received another formal complaint from the nuncio and the curia,” Balaguer continued, very seriously. “Regarding the campaign launched on May 17 in the press and on the radio against the friars of San Carlos Borromeo, Excellency.”
He picked up a blue folder that held newspaper articles with glaring headlines. “Terrorist Franciscan-Capuchin monks” were making and storing homemade bombs in their church. Neighbors had discovered this after the accidental explosion of one of the devices.
La Nación
and
El Caribe
were demanding that the forces of law and order turn their attention to this den of terrorists.
Trujillo passed a bored glance over the clippings.
“Those priests don’t have the balls to make bombs. The most they do is attack with sermons.”
“I know the abbot, Excellency. Brother Alonso de Palmira is a saintly man, devoted to his apostolic mission and respectful of the government. Absolutely incapable of a subversive act.”
He paused briefly, and in the same cordial tone of voice he would have used in after-dinner conversation, laid out an argument that the Generalissimo had often heard Agustín Cabral make. In order to rebuild bridges to the hierarchy, the Vatican, and the priests—the immense majority of whom still supported the regime out of fear of atheistic Communism—it was indispensable that this daily campaign of accusations and diatribes end, or at least become more moderate, for it allowed their enemies to portray the regime as anti-Catholic. Dr. Balaguer, with his unfailing courtesy, showed the Generalissimo a protest from the U.S. State Department concerning the persecution of the sisters at Santo Domingo Academy. The President had replied by explaining that the police guard was there to protect the nuns against hostile acts. But, in fact, it really was harassment. For example, every night Colonel Abbes García’s men played popular Trujillista merengues over loudspeakers directed at the school, depriving the sisters of sleep. They had done the same thing earlier, at the residence of Monsignor Reilly in San Juan de la Maguana, and were still doing it in La Vega, to Monsignor Panal. A reconciliation with the Church was still possible. But this campaign was moving the crisis toward a complete rupture.
“Talk to the Rosicrucian and convince him,” Trujillo said with a shrug. “He’s the priest-hater; he’s sure it’s too late to placate the Church and that the priests want to see me exiled, arrested, or dead.”
“I assure you that is not the case, Excellency.”
The Benefactor paid no attention to him. He said nothing as he scrutinized the puppet president with penetrating eyes that disconcerted and frightened. The little lawyer normally resisted the visual inquisition longer than others, but now, after a few minutes of being stripped bare by an audacious gaze, he began to betray some discomfort: his eyes opened and closed unceasingly behind his thick spectacles.
“Do you believe in God?” Trujillo asked with a certain uneasiness: he bored into him with his cold eyes, demanding a frank answer. “In a life after death? In heaven for the good people and hell for the bad? Do you believe in that?”
It seemed to him that the diminutive figure of Joaquín Balaguer grew even smaller, crushed by his questions. And that behind him, his own photograph—in formal dress and wearing a feathered tricorn, the presidential sash crossing his chest next to the decoration he prized most, the great Spanish cross of Carlos III—grew to gigantic size inside its gold frame. The puppet president’s tiny hands caressed one another, as he said, like a person confessing a secret:
“At times I doubt, Excellency. But years ago I reached this conclusion: there is no alternative. It is necessary to believe. It is not possible to be an atheist. Not in a world like ours. Not if one has a vocation for public service and engages in politics.”
“You have the reputation of being very overly pious,” Trujillo insisted, moving in his chair. “I’ve even heard that you never married, and don’t have a girlfriend, and don’t drink, and don’t do business, because you made secret vows. That you’re a lay priest.”
The bantam executive shook his head: none of that was true. He had not made and never would make any vow; unlike some of his classmates at the Normal School, who tormented themselves wondering if they had been chosen by God to serve Him as shepherds of the Catholic flock, he always knew that his vocation was not the priesthood but intellectual labor and political action. Religion gave him spiritual order, an ethical system with which to confront life. At times he doubted transcendence, he doubted God, but never the irreplaceable function of Catholicism as an instrument for the social restraint of the human animal’s irrational passions and appetites. And, in the Dominican Republic, as a constituent force for nationhood, equal to the Spanish language. Without the Catholic faith, the country would fall into chaos and barbarism. As for belief, he followed the recommendation of St. Ignatius Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises: to behave as if one believed, miming the rites and precepts: Masses, prayers, confessions, communions. This systematic repetition of religious form gradually created the content, filling the void—at a certain point—with the presence of God.
Balaguer stopped speaking and lowered his eyes, as if ashamed of having revealed to the Generalissimo the rocky places in his soul, his personal accommodations with the Supreme Being.
“If I’d had any doubts, if I had waited for some sign from heaven before acting, I never would have raised this corpse,” said Trujillo. “I had to trust in myself, nobody else, when it was a question of making life and death decisions. At times I may have been wrong, of course.”
The Benefactor could tell by Balaguer’s expression that he was asking himself who or what he was talking about. He did not tell him that he had in mind the face of Dr. Enrique Lithgow Ceara. He was the first urologist he consulted—recommended by Egghead Cabral as an eminent physician—when he realized he was having difficulty urinating. In the early 1950s, Dr. Marión, after operating on him for a periurethral ailment, assured him he would have no more problems. But the same difficulties soon flared up again. After many years and an unpleasant rectal examination, Dr. Lithgow Ceara, putting on the face of a whore or an unctuous sacristan, and spewing incomprehensible jargon to demoralize him (“urethral perineal sclerosis,” “urethrographies,” “acinous prostatitis”), formulated the diagnosis that would cost him dearly:
“You should place your trust in God, Excellency. Your prostate is cancerous.”
His sixth sense told him he was exaggerating or lying. He was convinced of it when the urologist demanded immediate surgery. Too many risks if the prostate was not removed, it could metastasize, the scalpel and chemotherapy would prolong his life for a few years. He was exaggerating or lying because he was a quack or an enemy who was attempting to hasten the death of the Father of the New Nation, and he knew it absolutely when he brought in a famous physician from Barcelona. Dr. Antonio Puigvert denied he had cancer; the enlargement of that damned gland, brought on by age, could be treated with drugs and did not threaten the life of the Generalissimo. A prostatectomy was unnecessary. Trujillo gave the order that same morning and a military adjutant, Lieutenant José Oliva, made certain that the insolent Dr. Lithgow Ceara, with all his venom and bad science, disappeared off the Santo Domingo docks. By the way! The puppet president had not yet signed the promotion of Peña Rivera to captain. He descended from divine existence to the pedestrian matter of rewarding the services of one of the most able thugs recruited by Abbes García.
“I almost forgot,” he said, making a gesture of annoyance with his head. “You haven’t signed the resolution promoting Lieutenant Peña Rivera to captain for outstanding merit. I sent the file to you a week ago, along with my approval.”
The round little face of President Balaguer soured and his mouth tightened; his tiny hands twitched. But he regained his self-control and again assumed his usual tranquil posture.
“I did not sign it because I thought it a good idea to discuss this promotion with you, Excellency.”
“There’s nothing to discuss.” The Generalissimo cut him off harshly. “You received your instructions. Weren’t they clear?”
“Of course they were, Excellency. I beg you to hear me out. If my reasons do not convince you, I will sign Lieutenant Peña Rivera’s promotion immediately. I have it here, ready for my signature. Because it is a delicate matter, I thought it preferable to discuss it with you personally.”
He knew all too well the reasons that Balaguer was going to present to him, and he began to be annoyed. Did this nonentity think he was so old and tired he could disobey an order? He hid his anger and listened, without interrupting. Balaguer performed rhetorical miracles with soft-pedaling words and extremely refined tonalities to make the things he said seem less rash. With all the respect in the world he would take the liberty of advising His Excellency to reconsider his decision to promote, especially for outstanding merit, a man like Lieutenant Victor Alicinio Peña Rivera. He had so negative a record, one so stained with reprehensible actions—perhaps unjustly—that his promotion would be exploited by their enemies, above all in the United States, and represented as compensation for the deaths of Minerva, Patria, and María Teresa Mirabal. Although the courts had established that the sisters and their driver died in an automobile accident, overseas it was depicted as a political murder carried out by Lieutenant Peña Rivera, the head of the SIM in Santiago at the time of the tragedy. The President took the liberty of reminding him of the uproar caused by their adversaries when, by order of His Excellency, on the seventh day of February of the current year, he authorized, by means of a presidential decree, the ceding to Lieutenant Peña Rivera of the house and four-hectare farm which had been expropriated by the State from Patria Mirabal and her husband because of subversive activities. And the outcry had not ended. The committees established in the United States were still protesting, calling the gift of Patria Mirabal’s land and house to Lieutenant Peña Rivera payment for a crime. Dr. Joaquín Balaguer urged His Excellency not to give a new pretext to his enemies for repeating the charge that he protected murderers and torturers. Although His Excellency undoubtedly recalled it, he would take the liberty of pointing out that Colonel Abbes García’s favorite lieutenant was associated, in the exiles’ slanderous campaigns, not only with the death of the Mirabal sisters but with Marrero Aristy’s accident, and certain alleged disappearances. Under these circumstances, it seemed imprudent to reward the lieutenant in so public a manner. Why not do it discreetly, with financial compensation or a diplomatic post in a distant country?
When he stopped speaking, he kneaded his hands together. He blinked uneasily, sensing that his careful argumentation had failed, fearing a reprimand. Trujillo restrained the anger boiling up inside him.
“You, President Balaguer, have the good fortune to be concerned only with the best part of politics,” he said icily. “Laws, reforms, diplomatic negotiations, social transformations. That’s what you’ve done for thirty-one years. You’ve been involved in the pleasant, enjoyable aspects of governing. I envy you! I would like to have been only a statesman, a reformer. But governing has a dirty side, and without it what you do would be impossible. What about order? Stability? Security? I’ve tried to keep you away from unpleasant things. But don’t tell me you don’t know how peace is achieved. With how much sacrifice and how much blood. Be grateful that I’ve allowed you to see the other side and devote yourself to the good, while I, Abbes, Lieutenant Peña Rivera, and others kept the country in order so you could write your poems and your speeches. I’m sure that with your acute intelligence, you understand me perfectly.”
Joaquín Balaguer nodded. He was pale.
“Let’s not talk any more about unpleasant things,” the Generalissimo concluded. “Sign the promotion for Lieutenant Peña Rivera, have it appear tomorrow in
The Official Gazette
, and send him congratulations written in your own hand.”
“I will, Excellency.”
Trujillo passed his hand across his face because he thought he was going to yawn. A false alarm. Tonight, breathing in the fragrance of trees and plants through the open windows of Mahogany House, and seeing the myriad of stars in a coal-black sky, he would caress the body of a naked, affectionate, slightly intimidated girl with all the elegance of Petronius the Arbiter, and he would feel the excitement growing between his legs while he sucked the warm juices of her sex. He would have a big, solid erection, the kind he had in the old days. He would make the girl moan and give her pleasure and he would feel pleasure too, and he would erase the bad memory of that stupid, skinny little bitch.