The Feast of the Goat

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  “I always knew they were leeches.” The Generalissimo made a contemptuous gesture. “But they’re also our only hope. If the political situation changes in the United States, they can use their influence to have the sanctions eased or lifted. And, in the short term, they can get Washington to at least pay us for the sugar already received.”

  Chirinos did not look hopeful. He shook his head solemnly.

  “Even if the United States agreed to hand over what they’ve held back, it wouldn’t do much good, Chief. What’s twenty-two million dollars? Money for basic investment and the importation of crucial commodities for just a few weeks. But if you’ve made up your mind, I’ll inform Consuls Mercado and Morales to resume payments to those parasites. By the way, Chief. The funds in New York might be frozen. If the proposal of three members of the Democratic Party is successful, they’ll freeze the accounts of nonresident Dominicans in the United States. I know they appear as corporate accounts at Chase Manhattan and Chemical. But suppose the banks don’t respect our confidentiality? Allow me to suggest that we transfer them to a country that’s more secure. Canada, for example, or Switzerland.”

  The Generalissimo felt a hollow in his stomach. It wasn’t anger that produced acid, it was disappointment. In the course of his long life, he had never wasted time licking his wounds, but what was happening now with the United States, the country to whom his regime had always given its vote at the UN no matter why it was needed, that really upset him. What had been the point of giving a royal welcome and a medal to every Yankee who set foot on the island?

  “It’s hard to understand the gringos,” he murmured. “I can’t get it into my head that they’re treating me this way.”

  “I never trusted those jerks,” echoed the Walking Turd. “They’re all alike. You can’t even say that this harassment is Eisenhower’s fault. Kennedy is hounding us too.”

  Trujillo pulled himself together—“Back to work, damn it,” he thought—and changed the subject again.

  “Abbes García has everything ready to get that bastard Bishop Reilly out from behind the nuns’ skirts,” he said. “He has two proposals. Deport him, or have the people lynch him and teach a lesson to plotting priests. Which do you prefer?”

  “Neither one, Chief.” Senator Chirinos recovered his self-assurance. “You know my opinion. We have to soften the conflict. The Church is two thousand years old, and nobody has ever defeated it. Look at what happened to Perón when he challenged it.”

  “He told me that himself, sitting right where you are now,” Trujillo acknowledged. “Is that your advice? To bend over for those sons of bitches?”

  “You should corrupt them with gifts and concessions, Chief,” explained the Constitutional Sot. “Or maybe scare them, but don’t do anything irreparable, and leave the door open for a reconciliation. What Johnny Abbes proposes would be suicide. Kennedy would send the Marines in a heartbeat. That’s my opinion. You’ll make the decision, and it will be the right one. I’ll defend it with pen and tongue. As always.”

  The poetic flights that the Walking Turd was prone to amused the Benefactor. This latest one pulled him out of the dejection that was beginning to get the better of him.

  “I know,” he said with a smile. “You’re loyal and that’s why I appreciate you. Tell me, confidentially. How much do you have overseas in case you need to get out right away?”

  For the third time the senator became agitated, as if his seat had turned into a bucking horse.

  “Very little, Chief. Well, relatively speaking, I mean.”

  “How much?” Trujillo insisted, affectionately. “And where?”

  “About four hundred thousand dollars,” he admitted rapidly, lowering his voice. “In two separate accounts. In Panama. Opened before the sanctions, of course.”

  “That’s peanuts,” Trujillo admonished him. “With the posts you’ve held, you should have been able to save more.”

  “I’m not a saver, Chief. Besides, you know I never cared about money. I’ve always had all I needed to live.”

  “To drink, you mean.”

  “To dress well, to eat well, to drink well, and to buy the books I want,” the senator agreed, looking at the ceiling and the crystal lamp in the office. “Thank God, with you I’ve always had interesting work to do. Should I repatriate that money? I’ll do it today if you tell me to.”

  “Leave it where it is. If I need a hand when I’m in exile, you can help me out.”

  He laughed, in good humor. But as he laughed he suddenly recalled the scared little girl at Mahogany House, a compromising, accusatory witness who ruined his mood. It would have been better to shoot her, hand her over to the guards, let them raffle her off, or share her. The memory of that stupid little face watching him suffer reached all the way into his soul.

  “Who’s taken the most precautions?” he asked, hiding his distress. “Who has the most money overseas? Paíno Pichardo? Alvarez Pina? Egghead Cabral? Modesto Díaz? Balaguer? Who’s accumulated the most? Because none of you believed me when I said the only way I’d leave here was in a coffin.”

  “I don’t know, Chief. But if you’ll permit me, I doubt that any of them has much money outside the country. For a very simple reason. Nobody ever thought the regime could end, that we’d find ourselves obliged to leave. Who would ever think that one day the earth could stop moving around the sun?”

  “You would,” Trujillo replied sarcastically. “That’s why you took your miserable pesos to Panama, figuring I wouldn’t last forever, that one of the conspiracies might succeed. You’ve given yourself away, asshole.”

  “I’ll repatriate my savings this afternoon,” Chirinos protested, gesticulating. “I’ll show you the deposit slips from the Central Bank. Those savings have been in Panama a long time. My diplomatic missions allowed me to put something away. For cash outlays on the trips I make in your service, Chief. I’ve never padded the expenses the position required.”

  “You’re scared, you think what happened to Egghead might happen to you.” Trujillo was still smiling. “It’s a joke. I’ve forgotten the secret you told me. Come on, tell me some gossip before you go. Bedroom gossip, not politics.”

  The Walking Turd smiled with relief. But as soon as he began telling him that the talk of Ciudad Trujillo right now was the beating the German consul gave his wife because he thought she was cheating on him, the Benefactor became distracted. How much money had his closest collaborators taken out of the country? If the Constitutional Sot had done it, they all had. Was it only four hundred thousand he had tucked away? It had to be more. All of them, in the darkest corner of their souls, had lived in fear that the regime would collapse. Bah, they were trash. Loyalty was not a Dominican virtue. He knew that. For thirty years they had worshiped him, applauded him, deified him, but the first time the wind changed, they would reach for their daggers.

  “Who invented the slogan of the Dominican Party, using the initials of my name?” he asked unexpectedly. “Rectitude, Liberty, True Work, Morality. Was it you or Egghead?”

  “Yours truly, Chief,” Senator Chirinos exclaimed proudly. “On the tenth anniversary. It caught on, and twenty years later it’s on all the streets and squares in the country. And in the overwhelming majority of the homes.”

  “It ought to be in the minds and memories of Dominicans,” said Trujillo. “Those words summarize everything I’ve given them.”

  And at that moment, like the blow of a club to his head, he was seized by doubt. By certainty. It had happened. Dissembling, not listening to the praises of the Era that Chirinos had embarked on, he lowered his head, as if concentrating on an idea, focused his eyes, and looked, filled with anxiety. His bones turned to water. There it was: the dark stain covered his fly and part of his right leg. It must have been recent, it was still damp, at this very moment his insensible bladder was still leaking. He didn’t feel it, he wasn’t feeling it. A lashing rage shook him. He could dominate men, bring three million Dominicans to their knees, but he could
not control his bladder.

  “I can’t listen to any more gossip, I don’t have time,” he lamented, not looking up. “Go on and take care of Lloyds, don’t let them pay that money to Ramfis. Tomorrow, at the same time. Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye, Chief. If you’ll permit me, I’ll see you this afternoon, on the Avenida.”

  As soon as he heard the Constitutional Sot close the door, he called Sinforoso. He told him to bring another suit, also gray, and a change of underwear. He stood, and moving quickly, bumping into a sofa, he locked himself in the bathroom. He felt faint with disgust. He took off the trousers, shorts, and undershirt soiled by his involuntary urination. His shirt was not stained, but he took it off as well and then sat on the bidet. He soaped himself carefully. As he was getting dried he cursed once again the dirty trick his body was playing on him. He was waging war against many enemies, he could not constantly be distracted by his fucking bladder. He sprinkled talcum powder on his genitals and between his legs, and sat down on the toilet to wait for Sinforoso.

  His meeting with the Walking Turd had left him troubled. What he told the senator was true: unlike his hoodlum brothers, and the Bountiful First Lady, an insatiable vampire, and his children, parasites sucking him dry, he had never cared very much about money. He used it in the service of power. Without money he would not have been able to make his way at first, for he had been born into a very modest family in San Cristóbal, which meant that as a boy he had to get what he needed, any way he could, to dress decently. Later, money helped him to be more efficient, to remove obstacles, to buy, attract, or bribe the people he needed and punish those who interfered with his work. Unlike María, who, when they were still lovers, thought up the idea of a laundry for constabulary guards and since then dreamed only of hoarding money, he liked to give it away.

  If he hadn’t been like that, would he have given gifts to the people, those countless presents every October 24, so that Dominicans could celebrate the Chief’s birthday? How many millions of pesos had he spent over the years on sacks of caramels, chocolates, toys, fruits, dresses, trousers, shoes, bracelets, necklaces, soft drinks, blouses, records, guayaberas, brooches, magazines for the interminable processions that came to the Palace on the Chief’s birthday? And how many more on gifts for his compadres and godchildren at the collective baptisms in the Palace chapel, when, for the past three decades, once and even twice a week, he became godfather to at least a hundred infants? Millions and millions of pesos. A productive investment, of course. An inspiration, in the first year of his government, that came from his profound knowledge of Dominican psychology. To establish that relationship, to be compadres with a campesino, a laborer, a craftsman, a merchant, was to guarantee the loyalty of the poor man and poor woman whom he embraced after the baptism of his godchild and whom he presented with two thousand pesos. Two thousand when times were good. As the list of his godchildren grew to twenty, fifty, a hundred, two hundred a week, the gifts—due in part to howls of protest from Doña María and also to the decline in the Dominican economy following the Fair for Peace and Brotherhood in the Free World in 1955—had gradually shrunk to fifteen hundred, a thousand, five hundred, two hundred, a hundred pesos for each godchild. Now, the Walking Turd was insisting that the collective baptisms be suspended or the gift be symbolic, a loaf of bread or ten pesos for each godchild, until the sanctions ended. Damn the Yankees!

  He had founded enterprises and established businesses to create jobs and progress for the country and have the resources to give away presents left and right and keep the Dominicans happy.

  And with his friends, collaborators, employees, hadn’t he been as magnificent as Petronius in Quo Vadis? He had showered them with money, giving generous gifts for birthdays, weddings, births, jobs well done, or simply to show that he knew how to reward loyalty. He had presented them with pesos, houses, land, stocks, he had made them partners in his farms and enterprises, he had created businesses for them so they could earn good money and not plunder the State.

  He heard a discreet knock at the door. Sinforoso, with the suit and underwear. He handed them over with lowered eyes. He had been with him more than twenty years; he had been his orderly in the Army, and the Chief had promoted him to majordomo and taken him to the Palace. He feared nothing from Sinforoso. He was deaf, dumb, and blind regarding everything that had to do with Trujillo, and he had the sense to know that where certain intimate subjects were concerned, such as his involuntary urinations, the slightest betrayal would deprive him of all he had—a house, a little cattle farm, a car, a large family—and, perhaps, even his life. The suit and underwear, hidden in a bag, would not attract anyone’s attention, for the Benefactor was in the habit of changing clothes several times a day in his private office.

  He dressed while Sinforoso—husky, his hair in a crew cut, impeccably groomed in his uniform of black trousers, white shirt, and white jacket with gold buttons—picked up the clothing scattered on the floor.

  “What should I do with those two terrorist bishops, Sinforoso?” he asked as he was buttoning his trousers. “Expel them from the country? Send them to jail?”

  “Kill them, Chief,” Sinforoso answered without hesitation. “Everybody hates them, and if you don’t do it, the people will. Nobody can forgive the Yankee and the Spaniard who came to this country to bite the hand that feeds them.”

  The Generalissimo had stopped listening. He would have to reprimand Pupo Román. That morning, after receiving Johnny Abbes and the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and of the Interior, he had gone to San Isidro Air Base to meet with the heads of the Air Force. And he saw something that turned his stomach: right at the entrance, a few meters from the guard post, under the flag and seal of the Republic, a pipe was spewing out filthy black water that had formed a quagmire at the edge of the highway. He ordered the car to stop. He got out and walked to the spot. It was a pipe carrying thick, stinking sewage—he had to put his handkerchief over his nostrils—and, of course, it had attracted a swarm of flies and mosquitoes. The waste kept flowing, inundating the area, poisoning the air and soil of the leading Dominican garrison. He felt rage, burning lava flooding his body. He controlled his first impulse, to return to the base and curse the officers who were present and demand if this was the image they were trying to give to the Armed Forces: an institution overrun by stinking water and vermin. But he immediately decided that he had to take the warning to the head man. And make Pupo Román in person swallow a little of the liquid shit pouring out of that sewage pipe. He decided to call him right away. But when he got back to his office, he forgot to do it. Was his memory beginning to fail, just like his bladder? Damn. The two things that had responded best throughout his whole life were failing now that he was seventy.

  When he was clean and dressed, he returned to his desk and picked up the telephone that communicated automatically with Armed Forces headquarters. It did not take long to hear the voice of General Román:

  “Yes, hello? Is that you, Excellency?”

  “Come to the Avenida this afternoon,” he said, very curtly, by way of greeting.

  “Of course, Chief.” General Román sounded alarmed. “Would you prefer me to come right now to the Palace? Has something happened?”

  “You’ll find out what’s happened,” he said, slowly, imagining the nervousness of his niece Mireya’s husband, on hearing how dryly he spoke to him. “Any news?”

  “Everything normal, Excellency,” General Román said hurriedly. “I was receiving the routine regional reports. But if you prefer…”

  “On the Avenida,” he cut him off. And hung up.

  It cheered him to imagine the sizzling questions, suppositions, fears, suspicions he had put into the head of that asshole who was the Minister of the Armed Forces. What did they say about me to the Chief? What gossip, what slander have my enemies told him? Have I fallen into disgrace? Did I fail to carry out one of his orders? He would be in hell until the evening.

  But this thought occupied him for only a
few seconds, and once again the humiliating memory of the girl filled his mind. Anger, sadness, nostalgia mixed together in his spirit and kept him in a state of turmoil. And then it occurred to him: “A cure equal to the disease.” The face of a beautiful woman, exploding with pleasure in his arms, thanking him for the joy he had given her. Wouldn’t that erase the frightened little face of that idiot? Yes: he’d go tonight to San Cristóbal, to Mahogany House, and wipe away the affront in the same bed and with the same weapons. This decision—he touched his fly in a kind of exorcism—raised his spirits and stiffened his resolve to continue with the day’s schedule.

  9

  “What’s new with Segundo?” asked Antonio de la Maza.

  Leaning against the steering wheel, Antonio Imbert replied, not turning around:

  “I saw him yesterday. They let me visit him every week now. A short visit, half an hour. Sometimes the fucking warden of La Victoria decides to cut the visits to fifteen minutes. Just to be a son of a bitch.”

  “How is he?”

  How could someone be who, trusting in a promise of amnesty, left Puerto Rico, where he had a good job working for the Ferré family in Ponce, and returned to his country only to discover that they were waiting to try him for the alleged crime of a unionist that had been committed in Puerto Plata years earlier, and sentence him to thirty years in prison? How could a man feel who, if he had killed, did it for the regime, and was repaid by Trujillo’s leaving him to rot in a dungeon for the past five years?

  But this was not his answer, because Imbert knew that Antonio de la Maza had not asked the question out of interest in his brother Segundo but only to break the interminable waiting. He shrugged:

  “Segundo has balls. If he’s having a tough time he doesn’t show it. Sometimes he even gets a kick out of cheering me up.”