He paused again, drew deeply on his cigarette, took a drink of whiskey. Only then did he seem to discover that Major Figueroa Carrión existed:
“Does the lieutenant know what the Chief expects of him?”
“He doesn’t need anybody to tell him, he has more brains than any officer in his class.” The major had the face of a toad, and alcohol had accentuated and reddened his swollen features. Amadito had the impression that their conversation was a rehearsed play. “I imagine he knows; if not, he doesn’t deserve his new stripe.”
There was another pause while the colonel filled their glasses a third time. He put in the ice cubes with his hands. “
Salud
” and he drank and they drank. Amadito told himself he liked rum and Coca-Cola a thousand times more than whiskey, it was so bitter. And not until that moment did he understand the joke about Juanito Caminante. “How dumb not to get it,” he thought. The cololnel’s red handkerchief was so strange! He had seen white, blue, gray handkerchiefs. But red ones! What an idea.
“You’re going to have greater and greater responsibilities,” said the colonel, with a solemn air. “The Chief wants to be sure you’re up to the job.”
“What am I supposed to do, Colonel, sir?” All this preamble irritated Amadito. “I’ve always obeyed the orders of my superiors. I’ll never disappoint the Chief. This is a test of loyalty, right?”
The colonel, his head lowered, was staring at the table. When he looked up, the lieutenant noticed a gleam of satisfaction in those furtive eyes.
“It’s true, for officers with balls, Trujillistas down to the marrow of their bones, you don’t have to sweeten the pill.” He stood up. “You’re right, Lieutenant. We’ll finish our little piece of business and celebrate your new stripe at Puchita Brazobán’s place.”
“What did you have to do?” It was a struggle for Salvador to speak; his throat was raw, his expression morose.
“Kill a traitor with my own hands. That’s how he said it: ‘And without your hands trembling, Lieutenant.’ ”
When they went out to the courtyard of La Cuarenta, Amadito felt his temples throbbing. Beside a large bamboo tree, next to the chalet that had been converted into a prison and torture center for the SIM, near the jeep they had come in, was another, almost identical jeep, its headlights turned off. In the back seat, two guards with rifles flanked a man whose hands were tied and whose mouth was covered by a towel.
“Come with me, Lieutenant,” said Johnny Abbes, getting behind the wheel of the jeep where the guards were sitting. “Follow us, Roberto.”
As the two vehicles left the prison and took the coastal highway, a storm broke, filling the night with thunder and lightning. The violent downpour kept them from speaking.
“Just as well it’s raining, even if we get wet,” the colonel remarked. “It’ll break the heat. The campesinos were praying for a little rain.”
He didn’t remember how long they drove, but it couldn’t have been very long, because he did remember that when he went into Pucha Vittini’s brothel after parking the jeep on Calle Juana Saltitopa, the clock on the wall of the foyer was striking ten. Everything, from the time he picked up Major Figueroa Carrión at his house, had taken less than two hours. Abbes García drove off the highway, and the jeep bucked and shook as if it were going to fall apart as they crossed a field of tall weeds and stones, followed closely by the major’s jeep, whose headlights lit the way. It was dark, but the lieutenant knew they were moving parallel to the ocean: the sound of the waves had grown so loud that it filled his ears. He thought they were near the small port of La Caleta. As soon as the jeep stopped, so did the rain. The colonel jumped down, followed by Amadito. The two guards were well trained: without waiting for orders they pushed out the prisoner. In a flash of lightning the lieutenant saw that the gagged man wore no shoes. During the drive he had been absolutely docile, but as soon as he touched the ground, as if finally aware of what was going to happen, he began to twist, to roar, trying to loosen the ropes and gag. Amadito, who until then had avoided looking at him, observed the convulsive movements of his head as he attempted to free his mouth, say something, perhaps plead for mercy, perhaps curse them. “Suppose I take out my revolver and shoot the colonel, the major, the two guards, and let him run away?” he thought.
“Instead of one dead man on the rocks, there’d be two,” said Salvador.
“Good thing it stopped raining,” Major Figueroa Carrión complained as he climbed out. “I’m soaked, damn it.”
“Do you have your weapon?” asked Colonel Abbes García. “Don’t make the poor bastard suffer any more.”
Amadito nodded, not saying a word. He took a few steps until he stood next to the prisoner. The soldiers released him and moved away. The man did not start to run, as Amadito thought he would. His legs would not obey him, fear kept him nailed to the weeds and mud in the field, where a strong wind blew. But though he did not attempt to escape, he continued moving his head, desperately, right and left, up and down, in a useless effort to get rid of the gag. He continued his choked roaring. Lieutenant García Guerrero put the barrel of his pistol to the man’s temple and fired. The shot deafened him and made him close his eyes for a second.
“Again,” said Abbes García. “You never know.”
Amadito, bending over, touched the head of the man sprawled on the ground—he was still and silent—and shot again at point-blank range.
“That’s it,” said the colonel, taking his arm and pushing him toward the jeep of Major Figueroa Carrión. “The guards know what they have to do. Let’s go to Puchita’s and warm things up.”
In the jeep, driven by Roberto, Lieutenant García Guerrero was silent, half listening to the conversation between the colonel and the major. He remembered something they said:
“They’ll bury him there?”
“They’ll throw him in the ocean,” explained the head of the SIM. “It’s the advantage of these rocks. On top, they’re sharp as knives. Down below, there’s an entrance to the sea, very deep, like a well. Full of sharks, waiting. They eat them in seconds. It’s really something to see. They leave no trace. Sure, rapid, and clean, too.”
“Would you recognize the rocks?” Salvador asked.
No. All he remembered is that before they got there, they had passed that small bay, La Caleta. But he could not reconstruct the entire route from La Cuarenta.
“I’ll give you a sleeping pill.” Salvador put his hand back on his knee. “You’ll sleep six, eight hours.”
“I haven’t finished yet, Turk. Be patient a little longer. So you can spit in my face and throw me out of your house.”
They had gone to the brothel of Pucha Vittini, nicknamed Puchita Brazobán, an old house with balconies and a dry garden, a place frequented by
caliés
, people connected to the government and the SIM, for whom, it was rumored, Pucha, a foulmouthed, good-natured old woman, also worked, having risen through the hierarchy of her trade to the rank of administrator and director of whores, after having been one herself in the brothels on Calle Dos, starting very young and achieving great success. She received them at the door and greeted Johnny Abbes and Major Figueroa Carrión like old friends. She grabbed Amadito’s chin: “What a sweetie pie!” She led them to the second floor and sat them at a table near the bar. Johnny Abbes asked her to bring Juanito Caminante.
“It took me a while to realize it was the whiskey, Colonel, sir,” Amadito confessed. “Johnnie Walker. Juanito Caminante. Easy, and I didn’t get it.”
“It’s better than any psychiatrist,” said the colonel. “Without Juanito Caminante I couldn’t keep my mental equilibrium, the most important thing in my work. To do it well, you need serenity, cold blood, icy balls. Never mix emotions with reason.”
There were no clients yet except for a little bald man with eye-glasses who sat at the bar, drinking a beer. A bolero played on the jukebox, and Amadito recognized the dense voice of Toña la Negra. Major Figueroa Carrión stood up and went to dance with one of the women whispering in a corner under a large poster for a Mexican movie with Libertad Lamarque and Tito Guizar.
“You have steady nerves,” Colonel Abbes García said approvingly. “Not all the officers are like you. I’ve seen lots of tough men fall apart at the critical moment. I’ve seen them shit themselves in fear. Because even if nobody believes it, it takes more balls to kill than to die.”
He poured the drinks and said, “
Salud
.” Amadito drank greedily. How many drinks? Three, five, he soon lost all notion of time and place. Besides drinking he danced with an Indian girl whom he caressed and took into a little room lit by a bulb covered in red cellophane swaying over a bed that had a brightly colored quilt. He couldn’t fuck her. “I’m too drunk, baby,” he apologized. The real reason was the knot in his stomach, the memory of what he had just done. Finally he found the courage to tell the colonel and the major he was leaving because he’d had too much to drink and felt sick.
The three of them walked to the door. There it was, waiting for Johnny Abbes, his black bulletproof Cadillac and his chauffeur, and a jeep with an escort of armed bodyguards. The colonel gave him his hand.
“Aren’t you curious to know who he was?”
“I prefer not to know, Colonel, sir.”
Abbes García’s flabby face stretched into an ironic smile as he wiped it with his fiery red handkerchief:
“How easy it would be if you could do these things without knowing who was involved. Don’t fuck with me, Lieutenant. If you jump in the water you have to get wet. He was in June 14, the younger brother of your ex-girlfriend, I believe. Luisa Gil, wasn’t it? Well, see you soon, we’ll do some more things together. If you need me you know where to find me.”
The lieutenant felt Turk’s hand on his knee again.
“It’s a lie, Amadito.” Salvador tried to comfort him. “It could have been anybody. He lied. To destroy you, to make you feel more involved, more of a slave. Forget what he told you. Forget what you did.”
Amadito nodded. Very slowly, he pointed at the revolver on his belt.
“The next time I fire that, it will be to kill Trujillo, Turk,” he said. “You and Tony Imbert can count on me for anything. You don’t have to change the subject anymore when I come to the house.”
“Heads up, heads up, this one’s coming straight toward us,” said Antonio de la Maza, raising the sawed-off barrel to the window, ready to fire.
Amadito and Estrella Sadhalá gripped their weapons too. Antonio Imbert started the engine. But the car coming down the Malecón toward them, moving slowly, on the lookout, wasn’t the Chevrolet but a small Volkswagen. Using its brakes, until the driver saw them. Then it made a U-turn and drove to where they were parked. It stopped beside them, its headlights off.
“Aren’t you going up to see him?” The nurse says at last.
Urania knows the question has been struggling to pass the woman’s lips ever since she came into the little house on César Nicolás Penson, but instead of asking the nurse to take her to Señor Cabral’s room, she went to the kitchen and fixed herself some coffee. She has been sipping it for the past ten minutes.
“First I’ll finish my breakfast,” she answers, not smiling, and the nurse lowers her eyes in confusion. “I need strength to climb those stairs.”
“I know there was trouble between you and him, I heard something about it,” the woman apologizes, not knowing what to do with her hands. “I was just asking. I already gave him his breakfast and shaved him. He always wakes up very early.”
Urania nods. She feels calm and confident now. Again she examines the decay around her. The paint on the walls has deteriorated, and the tabletop, the sink, the cupboard, everything looks smaller and misaligned. Was it the same furniture? She didn’t recognize anything.
“Does anyone come to visit him? Anybody in the family, I mean.”
“Señora Adelina’s daughters, Señora Lucindita and Señora Manolita, always come about noon.” The woman—tall, no longer young, wearing slacks under her white uniform—stands in the kitchen doorway and does not hide her discomfort. “Your aunt used to come every day. But since she broke her hip, she doesn’t go out anymore.”
Aunt Adelina was a good deal younger than her father, she couldn’t be more than seventy-five. So she broke her hip. Was she still so devout? She took communion every day, back then.
“Is he in his bedroom?” Urania drinks the last of her coffee. “Well, where else would he be? No, don’t come up with me.”
She climbs the staircase with the discolored railing where, she remembers, pots filled with flowers used to hang, and she can’t shake the feeling that the house has shrunk. When she reaches the upper floor, she notices the chipped tiles, some of them loose. This had been a modern house, comfortable, furnished with taste; it has fallen on hard times, it’s a hovel compared to the houses and condominiums she saw the night before in Bella Vista. She stops at the first door—this used to be his room—and before she goes in, she knocks a couple of times.
She is greeted by intense light that pours through the wide-open window. The glare blinds her for a few seconds; then she begins to make out the bed covered by a gray spread, the old bureau with its oval mirror, the photographs on the walls—how did he get hold of her graduation picture from Harvard?—and, finally, in the old leather chair with its broad back and arms, an old man in blue pajamas and slippers. He looks dwarfed by the chair. He has grown wrinkled and smaller, just like the house. She is distracted by a white object at her father’s feet, a small chamber pot, half filled with urine.
Back then his hair was black except for some distinguished gray at his temples; now the sparse hairs on his bald head are yellowish, dirty. His eyes were large, sure of themselves, masters of the world (when he wasn’t near the Chief); but these two slits staring at her are tiny, beady, frightened. He had teeth and now he doesn’t; he can’t be wearing his dentures (she paid the bill for them a few years ago), because his lips have collapsed and his cheeks are so sunken they almost touch. He has shriveled, his feet barely touch the floor. To look at him she used to have to raise her head, stretch her neck; now, if he were to stand up, he would reach her shoulder.
“It’s Urania,” she murmurs, approaching him. She sits on the bed, a meter from her father. “Do you remember that you have a daughter?”
There is internal agitation in the old man, movements of the pale bony hands with tapered fingers that rest on his legs. But the narrow little eyes, although they don’t move away from Urania, remain unexpressive.
“I don’t recognize you either,” Urania whispers. “I don’t know why I came or what I’m doing here.”
The old man has begun to move his head, up and down, down and up. His throat emits a long, harsh, strangled moan, like a lugubrious song. But in a few moments he is calm again, his eyes still fixed on her.
“The house used to be full of books.” Urania glances at the bare walls. “What happened to them? Of course, you can’t read anymore. Did you have time to read back then? I don’t remember ever seeing you read. You were a busy man. I’m busy too now, maybe even more than you in those days. Ten, twelve hours in the office or visiting clients. But I make time to read a little every day. Early in the morning, watching the sun come up behind the Manhattan skyscrapers, or late at night, looking at the lights in those glass beehives. I really like it. On Sundays I read for three or four hours, after
Meet the Press
. The advantage of being single, Papa. You knew that, didn’t you? Your little girl was left behind to dress the saints. That’s what you used to say about unmarried women: ‘What a failure! She never caught a husband!’ Neither did I, Papa. Or rather, I didn’t want to. I had offers. At the university. At the World Bank. At the office. Just think, a boyfriend may still turn up. At the age of forty-nine! It isn’t so terrible being an old maid. For one thing, I have time to read instead of taking care of a husband and children.”
He seems to understand, to be so interested he doesn’t dare move a muscle in case he interrupts her. He sits very still, his narrow chest rising and falling rhythmically, his tiny eyes focused on her lips. Outside an occasional car passes, and footsteps, voices, snatches of conversation approach, rise, fall, and are lost in the distance.
“My apartment in Manhattan is full of books,” Urania continues. “Like this house when I was a girl. Law, economy, history. But in my bedroom, only Dominican books. Testimonies, essays, memoirs, lots of histories. Can you guess the period? The Trujillo Era, what else? The most important thing that happened to us in five hundred years. You used to say that with so much conviction. It’s true, Papa. During those thirty-one years, all the evil we had carried with us since the Conquest became crystallized. You’re in some of those books, an important figure. Minister of Foreign Affairs, senator, president of the Dominican Party. Is there anything you weren’t, Papa? I’ve become an expert on Trujillo. Instead of playing bridge or golf, or riding horses, or going to the opera, my hobby has been finding out what happened during those years. It’s a shame we can’t have a conversation. You could clarify so many things for me, you lived them arm in arm with your beloved Chief, who repaid your loyalty so shabbily. For instance, I would have liked for you to tell me if His Excellency also took my mother to bed.”
She sees that the old man is shaken. His fragile, shrunken body has given a start in the chair. Urania moves her head closer and observes him. Is it a false impression? He seems to be listening, making an effort to understand what she is saying.
“Did you allow it? Resign yourself to it? Use it to further your career?”
Urania takes a deep breath. She examines the room. There are two photographs in silver frames on the night table. Her first communion, the year her mother died. Perhaps she left this world with a vision of her little girl enveloped in the tulle of that beautiful dress, with that angelic look. The other photo is of her mother: young, black hair parted in the middle, eyebrows tweezed, eyes melancholy and dreamy. It’s an old, yellowing photograph, slightly creased. She goes to the night table, raises the photograph to her lips, and kisses it.
She hears a car braking at the front door. Her heart skips a beat; without moving from her place, she can see, through the curtains, the sparkling chrome, the gleaming body, the flashing brilliance of the luxurious automobile. She hears footsteps, the doorbell chimes two or three times, and—hypnotized, petrified, not moving—she hears the maid opening the door. She hears but doesn’t understand the brief conversation at the foot of the stairs. Her madly beating heart is about to explode. Taps on the door. An Indian girl, wearing a maid’s uniform, her expression terrified, looks in the half-opened door:
“The President has come to visit you, señora. The Generalissimo, señora!”
“Tell him I’m sorry but I can’t receive him. Tell him Señora de Cabral does not receive visitors when Agustín is not at home. Go on, tell him.”
The girl’s footsteps move away, timid, indecisive, going down the staircase with the railing where flowerpots hang, ablaze with geraniums. Urania replaces her mother’s photograph on the nightstand and returns to the corner of the bed. Trapped in the chair, her father looks at her in alarm.
“That’s what the Chief did to his Minister of Education, early in his government, and you know all about it, Papa. What he did to the young scholar, Don Pedro Henríquez Ureña, a refined, genial man. He came to see his wife while Don Pedro was at work. She was brave enough to tell him she didn’t receive visitors when her husband wasn’t home. At the beginning of the Era it was still possible for a woman to refuse to receive the Chief. When she told him what had happened, Don Pedro resigned, left the country, and never set foot on this island again. Which is why he became so famous as a teacher, a historian, a critic, a philologist, in Mexico, Argentina, and Spain. Lucky for him the Chief wanted to go to bed with his wife. In those early days, a minister could resign and not have an accident, or fall off a cliff, or be stabbed by a madman, or eaten by sharks. He did the right thing, don’t you agree? His action saved him from becoming what you became, Papa. Would you have done the same thing or looked away? Like your hated good friend, your despised dear colleague, our neighbor Don Froilán. Do you remember, Papa?”
The old man begins to tremble and moan that macabre song. Urania waits until he settles down. Don Froilán! He would whisper in the living room, on the terrace or in the garden with her father, whom he came to see several times a day during the periods when they were allies in the internecine struggles among the Trujillista factions, battles the Benefactor encouraged in order to neutralize his collaborators by keeping them busy protecting their backs from the knives of enemies who were, in public, their friends, brothers, and fellow believers. Don Froilán lived in the house across the way; on its tiled roof there are, at this very moment, a row of half a dozen pigeons standing at attention. Urania goes to the window. It hasn’t changed much either, the house of that powerful man who was also a minister, senator, intendant, chancellor, ambassador, everything one could be during those years. Even Minister of Foreign Affairs, in May 1961, when the great events took place.
The house is still painted gray and white, but it too has grown smaller. An extension of four or five meters has been built on, out of harmony with the projecting pointed arch at the entrance in the style of a Gothic castle, where she often saw, on her way home from school in the afternoons, the elegant figure of Don Froilán’s wife. As soon as the woman saw her she would call: “Urania, Uranita! Come here, let me look at you, darling. What eyes, my girl! You’re as pretty as your mother, Uranita.” She would stroke her hair with carefully manicured hands, the long nails painted a deep red. Urania would feel so dreamy when those fingers moved through her hair and caressed her scalp. Eugenia? Laura? Did she have a flower name? Magnolia? She’s forgotten. But not her face, her snowy skin, silken eyes, regal figure. She always seemed to be dressed for a party. Urania loved her because she was so affectionate, because she gave her gifts and took her to the Country Club to swim in the pool, and, above all, because she had been her mother’s friend. She imagined that if she hadn’t gone to heaven, her mother would be as beautiful and aristocratic as Don Froilán’s wife. There was nothing attractive about him, however. Short, bald, fat: no woman would have looked at him twice. Was it the need to find a husband or self-interest that made her marry him?
This is what she asks herself in bewilderment as she opens the box of chocolates, wrapped in metallic paper, that the lady has given her, with a kiss on the cheek, when she came to the door of her house and called her—“Uranita! Come, I have a surprise for you, darling!”—after the girl climbed down from the school bus. Urania goes into her house, kisses the lady—she’s wearing a blue tulle dress, high-heeled shoes, enough makeup to go to a dance, a pearl necklace, jewels on her hands—opens the box wrapped in gift paper and tied with a pink ribbon. She looks at the luxurious chocolates, impatient to try them but not daring to—wouldn’t that be bad manners?—when the car stops on the street, very near the house. The lady gives a start, the strange kind of movement horses make suddenly, as if hearing a mysterious order. She has turned pale and her voice is urgent: “You have to go.” The hand resting on her shoulder twitches, clutches at her, pushes her toward the entrance. When she obediently picks up her book bag and is about to leave, the door opens wide: the overwhelming figure of the gentleman in a dark suit, starched white cuffs and gold cuff links projecting from the sleeves of his jacket, blocks her way. A gentleman who wears dark glasses and is everywhere, including her memory. She stands paralyzed, openmouthed, looking, looking. His Excellency gives her a reassuring smile.
“And who is this?”
“Uranita, Agustín Cabral’s daughter,” replies the lady of the house. “She’s just leaving.”
And, in fact, Urania leaves without even saying goodbye because she is struck dumb. She crosses the street, goes into her house, climbs the stairs, and from her bedroom she peers through the curtains, waiting, waiting for the President to come out of the house across the way.
“And your daughter was so naive she didn’t even wonder what the Father of the Nation was doing there when Don Froilán wasn’t home.” Her father, calm now, listens, or seems to listen, not taking his eyes off her. “So naive that when you came home from Congress, I ran to tell you about it. I saw the President, Papa! He came to visit Don Froilán’s wife, Papa! What a look you had on your face!”
As if they had just informed him of the death of someone he loved. As if he had just been diagnosed with cancer. He turned red, turned pale, turned red again. And his eyes, looking into the girl’s face again and again. How could he explain it to her? How could he warn her of the danger the family was in?