The House of the Spirits (49 page)

When the curfew was lifted for a few hours to enable people to go out and buy food, Blanca was amazed to see the stores filled with the products that during the preceding three years had been so scarce and that now appeared in the shopwindows as if by magic. She saw piles of butchered chickens and was able to buy as many as she wanted even though they cost three times as much as usual, since free pricing had been decreed. She noticed many people staring curiously at the chickens as if they had never seen them before, but few were buying, because they could not afford them. Three days later the smell of rotting meat infected every shop in the city.

Soldiers nervously patrolled the streets, cheered by many people who had wished for the government's defeat. Some of them, emboldened by the violence of the past few days, stopped all men with long hair or beards, unequivocal signs of a rebel spirit, and all women dressed in slacks, which they cut to ribbons because they felt responsible for imposing order, morality, and decency. The new authorities announced that they had nothing to do with actions of this sort and had never given orders to cut beards or slacks, and that it was probably the work of Communists disguised as soldiers attempting to cast aspersions on the armed forces and make the citizenry hate them. Neither beards nor slacks were forbidden, they said, although of course they preferred men to shave and wear their hair short, and women to wear dresses.

Word spread that the President had died, and no one believed the official version that he had committed suicide.

*  *  *

I waited until things had stabilized a little. Three days after the Military Pronunciamiento, I drove to the Ministry of Defense in my Congressional car, surprised that no one had come to invite me to participate in the new government. Everyone knows I was the Marxists' chief enemy, the first to oppose Communist dictatorship and to dare say in public that only the military could prevent the country from falling into the clutches of the left. I was also the one who made almost all the contacts with the high command of the military, who was the intermediary with the gringos, and who used my own name and money to buy arms. In other words, I had more at stake than anyone. At my age I was not interested in political power. But I was one of the few people around who could advise them, because I'd held many posts over the years and I knew better than anyone what this country needed. What could a bunch of temporary colonels do without loyal, honest, experienced advisers! Just make a mess of things. Or be deceived by those sharp characters who know how to turn this kind of situation into personal profit, something that's already happening. No one knew then that things were going to turn out the way they have. We thought military intervention was a necessary step for the return to a healthy democracy. That's why I thought it was so important to cooperate with the authorities.

When I arrived at the Ministry of Defense, I was surprised to see that the building had become a pigsty. Orderlies were swabbing the floors with mops, some of the walls were riddled with bullet holes, and crouched soldiers were running around as if they were in the middle of a battlefield or expected the enemy to drop from the roof. I had to wait nearly three hours to see an officer. At first I thought that in all that chaos they simply hadn't recognized me and that was why they were treating me with so little respect, but then I realized what was going on. The officer received me with his boots up on the desk, chewing a greasy sandwich, badly shaven, with his jacket unbuttoned. He didn't give me a chance to ask about my son Jaime or to congratulate him for the valiant actions of the soldiers who had saved the nation; instead he asked for the keys to my car, on the ground that Congress had been shut down and that all Congressional perquisites had therefore been suspended. I was amazed. It was clear then that they didn't have the slightest intention of reopening the doors of Congress, as we all expected. He asked me—no, he ordered me—to show up at the cathedral at eleven the next morning to attend the Te Deum with which the nation would express its gratitude to God for the victory over Communism.

“Is it true the President committed suicide?” I asked.

“He's gone,” he answered me.

“Gone? Where to?”

“He's gone to Hell!” he said, laughing.

I walked out onto the street feeling extremely disconcerted, leaning on my chauffeur's arm. We had no way to get home; there were neither taxis nor buses, and I'm too old to walk. Fortunately we saw a jeep full of policemen and they recognized me. I'm easy to spot, as my granddaughter Alba says, because I have the unmistakable appearance of an angry old crow and I always wear my mourning clothes and carry my silver cane.

“Get in, Senator,” a lieutenant said.

They helped us up into the jeep. The men looked tired and I could tell they hadn't slept. They told me they had been patrolling the city for the past three days, staying awake on coffee and pills.

“Did you meet any resistance in the shantytowns or slums?” I asked.

“Very little. People are calm,” the lieutenant said. “I hope things get back to normal quickly, Senator. We don't like this. It's a dirty business.”

“Don't say that. If you people hadn't acted, the Communists would have staged a coup themselves, and right this minute all of us here plus another fifty thousand people would be dead. I suppose you knew they had a plan for imposing their dictatorship?”

“That's what they told us. But where I live they've arrested a lot of people. My neighbors look at me with fear. The same thing happens to the rest of my men. But you have to follow orders. The nation comes first, right?”

“That's the way it is. I'm also sorry about what's going on, Lieutenant. But there was no other way. The regime was rotten. What would have happened to this country if you people hadn't taken up your arms?”

But deep down I wasn't so sure. I had a feeling things weren't turning out the way we had planned and that the situation was slipping away from me, but at the time I kept my doubts to myself, reasoning that three days are very few to put a country back together and that probably the vulgar officer who received me at the Ministry of Defense represented an insignificant minority within the armed forces. The majority were like the scrupulous lieutenant who had driven me home. I supposed that in no time at all order would be restored and that once the tension of the first few days had ebbed I would get in touch with someone better placed within the military hierarchy. I regretted not having spoken to General Hurtado. I held off out of respect and also, I must admit, out of pride, because he should have sought me out and not vice versa.

I didn't learn of my son Jaime's death until two weeks later, after our euphoria over the triumph had waned when we saw people going around counting the dead and those who had disappeared. One Sunday a soldier silently appeared at the house and went into the kitchen to tell Blanca everything he had seen in the Ministry of Defense and what he knew about the dynamited bodies.

“Dr. del Valle saved my mother's life,” the soldier said, looking at the floor, his helmet in his hand. “That's why I came to tell you how they killed him.”

Blanca called me in so I could hear what the soldier had to say, but I refused to believe it. I said he must have been confused, that it couldn't have been Jaime but someone else he had seen in the boiler room, because Jaime had no reason to be in the Presidential Palace the day of the Military Pronunciamiento. I was sure my son had managed to escape abroad by crossing some border pass or had taken refuge in some embassy, on the assumption that he was being looked for. Besides, his name had not appeared on any of the lists of people sought by the authorities, so I deduced that Jaime had nothing to fear.

A long time would have to pass—several months, in fact—before I understood that the soldier had told the truth. In my deluded solitude, I sat waiting for my son in the armchair of my library, my eyes glued to the doorsill, calling to him with my mind, as I used to call for Clara. I called him so many times that I finally saw him, but when he came he was covered with dried blood and rags, dragging streamers of barbed wire across the waxed parquet floors. That was how I learned that he had died exactly as the soldier reported. Only then did I begin to speak of tyranny. My granddaughter Alba, however, saw the true nature of the dictator long before I did. She picked him out from among all the generals and military men. She recognized him right away, because she had inherited Clara's intuition. He's a crude, simple-looking man of few words, like a peasant. He seemed very modest, and few could have guessed that one day they would see him wrapped in an emperor's cape with his arms raised to hush the crowds that had been trucked in to acclaim him, his august mustache trembling with vanity as he inaugurated the monument to the Four Swords, from whose heights an eternal torch would illuminate the nation's destiny—except that, owing to an error by the foreign technicians, no flame would ever rise there, only a thick cloud of kitchen smoke that floated in the sky like a perennial storm from some other climate.

I began to think I had been wrong to do as I had and that perhaps after all this was not the best way to overthrow Marxism. I felt more and more alone, for no one needed me anymore. I no longer had my sons, and Clara, with her habits of silence and distraction, seemed like a far-off ghost. Even Alba grew daily more remote. I hardly ever saw her in the house. She went by me like a gust of wind in her horrible long cotton skirts, with her incredible green hair like Rosa's, busy in all sorts of mysterious chores that she carried out with the complicity of her mother. I'm sure that behind my back the two of them were weaving every kind of intrigue. My granddaughter was in a state, just like Clara in the days of the typhus epidemic, when she took everybody else's suffering onto her own back.

*  *  *

Alba did not have long to mourn her Uncle Jaime's death. The needs of others were so pressing that she was forced to put her grief aside for later. She did not see Miguel again until two months after the coup, and she began to fear that he too was dead. Still, she did not look for him; he had given her strict instructions in that regard and besides, she had heard that his name was on the lists of those who had been ordered to appear before the new authorities. That gave her hope. As long as they're looking for him, he's still alive, she concluded. She tortured herself with the idea that they might capture him alive, and invoked the spirit of her grandmother to ask her to prevent that from happening. “I'd rather see him dead a thousand times over, Grandmother,” she begged. She knew what was taking place in the country, which was why she walked around with knots in her stomach, why her hands shook, and why, whenever she heard that someone had been taken prisoner, she broke out in a rash from head to foot, like someone with the plague. But there was no one with whom she could speak about these things, not even her grandfather, because people preferred not to know.

After that terrible Tuesday, Alba had to rearrange her feelings in order to continue living; to accept the idea that she would never again see those she loved the most, her Uncle Jaime, Miguel, and many others. She blamed her grandfather for what had taken place, but then, seeing him hunched in his armchair calling out to Clara and his son in an interminable murmur, her love for the old man returned and she ran to embrace him, running her hands through his white hair and comforting him. She felt that everything was made of glass, as fragile as a sigh, and that the machine-gun fire and bombs of that unforgettable Tuesday had destroyed most of what she knew, and that all the rest had been smashed to pieces and spattered with blood. As days, weeks, and months went by, what had at first appeared to be spared also began to show signs of destruction. She noticed that friends and relatives were avoiding her. Some crossed the street so as not to say hello to her, or turned away when she drew near. She imagined the word had spread that she was helping the victims of the persecution.

And it was true. From the very first days, the most pressing need was to secure asylum for those in danger of death. At first it almost seemed like fun, because it kept her from thinking of Miguel, but Alba soon realized it was no game. Everywhere there were posters reminding citizens that it was their duty to inform on Marxists and turn in the fugitives or else they would be marked as traitors and brought to justice. Alba miraculously rescued Jaime's car, which had survived the bombing and had been sitting for a week where he had parked it. She painted two large sunflowers on the doors with the brightest yellow she could find, to distinguish it from other cars and make her new job easier. She had to memorize the location of all the embassies, the shifts of the guardsmen who stood watch in front of them, the height of their walls and width of their doors. Word that someone needed asylum would reach her unexpectedly, often through a stranger who approached her on the street and who she imagined had been sent by Miguel. She would drive to the appointed place in broad daylight and when she saw someone motioning to her, recognizing the yellow flowers on her car, she stopped for a minute to let the man jump in. They never spoke on the way, because she preferred not to know his name. There were times when she had to spend the whole day with him, or even hide him for a night or two before finding the right moment to slip him into one of the more accessible embassies, climbing a wall behind the guards' backs. This system turned out to be more reliable than working out complicated arrangements with the nervous ambassadors of the foreign democracies. She would never hear another word about the person she had helped, but she retained forever their trembling gratitude and once it was over she breathed a sigh of relief that at least this time someone had been saved. Occasionally she had to do the same thing with women who feared being separated from their children, and no matter how much Alba promised them that she would bring their children to them afterward through the front door, knowing as she did that not even the most timid ambassador would turn her down, the mothers refused to leave their children behind, and even the children had to be thrown over the walls or slipped through the iron gates. Soon all the embassies were ringed with barbed wire and machine guns and it was impossible to continue taking them by storm; but then there were other needs to keep her busy.