The Feast of the Goat

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  She sits down again on the bed. Her father closes his eyes. Is he sleeping or pretending to sleep because of the fear you inspire in him? You’re giving the poor invalid a bad time. Is that what you wanted? To frighten him, inflict a few hours of terror on him? Do you feel better now? Weariness has overwhelmed her, and since her eyes are beginning to close, she gets to her feet.

  In a mechanical way she goes to the large armoire of dark wood that takes up one whole wall of the room. It is half empty. On wire hangers she sees a dark gray suit, yellowing like the skin of an onion, and a few shirts, washed but not ironed; two of them are missing buttons. Is this all that is left of the wardrobe of the President of the Senate, Agustín Cabral? He had been an elegant man. Meticulous in his person and dress, the way the Chief liked men to be. What had happened to his dinner jackets, his dress tails, his dark suits made of English worsted, the white ones of finest linen? The servants must have stolen them, the nurses, the impoverished relatives.

  Weariness is stronger than her will to stay awake. Finally, she lies down on the bed and closes her eyes. Before she falls asleep, she thinks that the bed smells of old man, old sheets, very old dreams and nightmares.

  11

  “A question, Excellency,” said Simon Gittleman, flushed from the glasses of champagne and wine, or, perhaps, emotion. “Of all the steps you have taken to make this country great, which was the most difficult?”

  He spoke excellent Spanish, with a very faint accent, nothing like the caricatured language full of errors and incorrect intonations mouthed by so many gringos who had paraded through the offices and reception rooms of the National Palace. Simon’s Spanish had improved a good deal since 1921, when Trujillo, a young lieutenant in the National Guard, was accepted as a student at the Officers’ Training School at Haina and had the Marine as an instructor; back then, he mouthed a barbaric Spanish peppered with curses. Gittleman had asked the question in so loud a voice that conversations stopped and twenty heads—curious, smiling, grave—turned toward the Benefactor, waiting for his reply.

  “I can answer your question, Simon.” Trujillo adopted the measured, hollow voice he used on solemn occasions. He fixed his eyes on the crystal chandelier with the petal-shaped bulbs, and added: “The second of October 1937, in Dajabón.”

  Rapid glances were exchanged among the guests at the luncheon given by Trujillo for Simon and Dorothy Gittleman, following the ceremony in which the former Marine received the Juan Pablo Duarte Order of Merit. When Gittleman expressed his thanks, his voice broke. Now, he tried to guess what His Excellency was alluding to.

  “Ah, the Haitians!” His slap on the table made the fine crystal goblets, platters, glasses, and decanters ring. “The day Your Excellency decided to cut the Gordian knot of the Haitian invasion.”

  Everyone had glasses of wine, but the Generalissimo drank only water. He was solemn, absorbed in his memories. The silence thickened. Hieratic and theatrical, the Generalissimo raised his hands and showed them to his guests:

  “For the sake of this country, I have stained these with blood,” he stated, emphasizing each syllable. “To keep the blacks from colonizing us again. There were tens of thousands of them, and they were everywhere. If I hadn’t, the Dominican Republic would not exist today. The entire island would be Haiti, as it was in 1840. The handful of white survivors would be serving the blacks. That was my most difficult decision in thirty years of government, Simon.”

  “We followed your orders and traveled the entire length of the border.” The young deputy Henry Chirinos leaned over the enormous map displayed on the President’s desk and pointed: “If this continues, there will be no future for the Dominican Republic, Excellency.”

  “The situation is more serious than you were told, Excellency.” The slender index finger of the young deputy Agustín Cabral caressed the dotted red line that moved in S curves from Dajabón down to Pedernales. “Thousands and thousands of them, working on plantations, in empty fields, in settlements. They’ve displaced Dominican laborers.”

  “They work free of charge, not for wages, but for food. Since there’s nothing to eat in Haiti, a little rice and beans is plenty for them. They cost less than donkeys and dogs.”

  Chirinos made a gesture and let his friend and colleague continue:

  “Talking to the ranchers and plantation owners is useless, Excellency,” Cabral explained. “They reply by patting their pockets. What do I care if they’re Haitians if they can harvest the cane and work for almost nothing? Patriotism won’t make me go against my own interests.”

  He stopped speaking and looked at Deputy Chirinos, who took up the argument:

  “All through Dajabón, Elías Piña, Independencia, and Pedernales, instead of Spanish all you hear are the African grunts of Creole.”

  He looked at Agustín Cabral, who resumed speaking immediately:

  “Voodoo, Santería, African superstitions are uprooting the Catholic religion that, like language and race, distinguishes our nationality.”

  “We’ve seen parish priests weeping in despair, Excellency,” young Deputy Chirinos said, his voice quavering. “Pre-Christian savagery is taking over the country of Diego Colón, Juan Pablo Duarte, and Trujillo. Haitian sorcerers have more influence than priests, medicine men more than pharmacists and physicians.”

  “The Army didn’t do anything?” Simon Gittleman took a sip of wine. One of the white-uniformed waiters quickly refilled his glass.

  “The Army does what the Chief orders, Simon, you know that.” Only the Benefactor and the former Marine were speaking. The others listened as their heads turned from one to the other. “The gangrene had moved very high. Montecristi, Santiago, San Juan, Azua, they were all teeming with Haitians. The plague was spreading and no one did anything. They were waiting for a statesman with vision, one whose hand would not tremble.”

  “Imagine a hydra with countless heads, Excellency.” Young Deputy Chirinos’s poetic turns of phrase were accompanied by extravagant gestures. “These laborers steal work from Dominicans who, in order to survive, sell their little plots of ground, their farms. Who buys the land? The newly prosperous Haitians, naturally.”

  “It is the second head of the hydra, Excellency,” young Deputy Cabral specified. “They take work from nationals and, piece by piece, appropriate our sovereignty.”

  “And our women too.” His voice thickened, and young Henry Chirinos gave off a whiff of lechery: his reddish tongue appeared like a snake between his thick lips. “Nothing attracts black flesh more than white. Haitian violations of Dominican women are an everyday occurrence.”

  “Not to mention robberies and attacks on property,” insisted young Agustín Cabral. “Gangs of criminals cross the Masacre River as if there were no customs, checkpoints, or patrols. The border is like a sieve. The gangs demolish villages and farms like swarms of locusts. Then they drive the livestock back into Haiti, along with everything they can find to eat, wear, or adorn themselves with. That region is no longer ours, Excellency. We have lost our language there, our religion, our race. It now forms part of Haitian barbarism.”

  Dorothy Gittleman barely spoke Spanish and must have been bored with this conversation regarding something that occurred twenty-four years earlier, but she nodded very seriously from time to time, looking at the Generalissimo and her husband as if following every syllable of what they were saying. She had been seated between the puppet president, Joaquín Balaguer, and the Minister of the Armed Forces, General José René (Pupo) Román. She was a small, fragile, upright old woman rejuvenated by the pink tones of her summer dress. During the ceremony, when the Generalissimo had said that the Dominican people would not forget the solidarity displayed by the Gittlemans during this difficult time, when so many governments were stabbing them in the back, she too had shed a few tears.

  “I knew what was going on,” Trujillo declared. “But I wanted proof, so there would be no doubts. I didn’t make a decision even after I received an on-site report from the Constitu
tional Sot and Egghead. I decided to go there myself. I traveled the length of the border on horseback, accompanied by volunteers from the University Guard. I saw it with my own eyes: they had invaded us again, just as they had in 1822. Peacefully, this time. Could I allow the Haitians to remain in my country for another twenty-two years?”

  “No patriot would have allowed it,” exclaimed Senator Henry Chirinos, raising his glass. “Least of all Generalissimo Trujillo. A toast to His Excellency!”

  Trujillo continued as if he hadn’t heard:

  “Could I allow what happened during those twenty-two years of occupation to happen again, allow blacks to murder, rape, and cut the throats of Dominicans, even in churches?”

  Seeing the failure of his toast, the Constitutional Sot wheezed, drank some wine, and began to listen again.

  “During the entire trip along the border with the University Guard, the cream of our youth, I examined the past,” the Generalissimo continued, with increasing emphasis. “I recalled the slaughter in the church at Moca. The burning of Santiago. The march to Haiti by Dessalines and Cristóbal, with nine hundred prominent men from Moca who died along the way or were given as slaves to the Haitian military.”

  “More than two weeks since we presented our report and the Chief hasn’t done a thing.” Young Deputy Chirinos was agitated. “Is he going to make a decision, Egghead?”

  They had both accompanied Trujillo on his trip along the border, with the hundred volunteers from the University Guard, and they had just reached the city of Dajabón, breathing more heavily than their horses. The two of them, despite their youth, would have preferred to rest their saddle-weary bones, but His Excellency was holding a reception for Dajabón society and they would never offend him. There they were, suffocating with the heat in their stiff-collared shirts and tunics, in the decorated town hall, where Trujillo, as fresh as if he had not been riding since dawn, and wearing an impeccable blue-and-gray uniform studded with medals and gold braid, moved among the various groups with a glass of Carlos I in his right hand, accepting their tributes. Then he caught sight of a young officer in dust-covered boots who burst into the flag-draped room.

  “You showed up at that gala reception, sweating and in your field uniform.” The Benefactor abruptly turned his gaze toward the Minister of the Armed Forces. “What disgust I felt!”

  “I came to make a report to the head of my regiment, Excellency,” General Román said in confusion, after a silence during which his memory struggled to identify that long-ago episode. “Last night a gang of Haitian criminals slipped across the border. Early this morning they attacked three farms in Capotillo and Parolí and stole all the cattle. And left three men dead.”

  “You risked your career, appearing before me in that condition,” the Generalissimo reproached him with retroactive irritation. “All right. It’s the straw that broke the camel’s back. The Ministers of War and Government, and all the military present, come here. The rest of you, please step aside.”

  He had raised his thin, piercing voice to a hysterical pitch, as he used to when he gave instructions in the barracks. He was obeyed immediately, in the midst of voices buzzing like wasps. The military formed a dense circle around him; gentlemen and ladies withdrew to the walls, leaving an empty space in the center of the room decorated with streamers, paper flowers, and little Dominican flags. A resolute President Trujillo gave the order:

  “Beginning at midnight, the forces of the Army and the police will proceed to exterminate without mercy every person of Haitian nationality who is in Dominican territory illegally, except for those on the sugar plantations.” He cleared his throat and his gray gaze moved around the circle of officers: “Is that clear?”

  The heads nodded, some with an expression of surprise, others with glints of savage joy in their eyes. They clicked their heels when they left.

  “Head of the Dajabón Regiment: detain and put on bread and water the officer who presented himself here in that disgraceful condition. Let the party continue. Enjoy yourselves!”

  On Simon Gittleman’s face, admiration mixed with nostalgia.

  “His Excellency never hesitated when it was time to act,” said the former Marine to the entire table. “I had the honor of training him at the school in Haina. From the first moment I knew he would go far. But I never imagined it would be this far.”

  He laughed, and amiable chuckles echoed him.

  “They never trembled,” Trujillo repeated, displaying his hands again. “Because I gave the order to kill only when it was absolutely necessary for the good of the country.”

  “I read somewhere, Your Excellency, that you ordered the soldiers to use machetes, not guns. Was that to save ammunition?” Simon Gittleman asked.

  “To sugarcoat the pill, anticipating international reaction,” Trujillo corrected him slyly. “If they only used machetes, the operation could appear to be a spontaneous action by campesinos, without government intervention. We Dominicans are lavish, we’ve never skimped on anything, least of all ammunition.”

  The entire table celebrated the witticism with laughter. Simon Gittleman as well. But then he returned to the same subject.

  “Is it true about the parsley, Your Excellency? That to distinguish Dominicans from Haitians you made all the blacks say perejil? And the ones who couldn’t pronounce it properly had their heads cut off?”

  “I’ve heard that story.” Trujillo shrugged. “It’s just idle gossip.”

  He lowered his head, as if a profound thought suddenly demanded a great effort of concentration. It hadn’t happened; his eyes were still sharp and they did not detect the telltale stain on his fly or between his legs. He gave a friendly smile to the former Marine:

  “Like the stories about the number of dead,” he said mockingly. “Ask the people sitting at this table and you’ll hear all kinds of figures. For example, you, Senator, how many were there?”

  Henry Chirinos’s dark face came to attention, swelling with satisfaction at being the first one the Chief asked.

  “Difficult to know.” He gestured, as he did when giving speeches. “It has been greatly exaggerated. Between five and eight thousand, at most.”

  “General Arredondo, you were in Independencia at the time, cutting throats. How many?”

  “About twenty thousand, Excellency,” replied the obese General Arredondo, who looked caged inside his uniform. “In the Independencia zone alone there were several thousand. The senator underestimated the number. I was there. No less than twenty thousand.”

  “How many did you kill personally?” the Generalissimo joked, and another wave of laughter ran around the table, making the chairs creak and the crystal sing.

  “What you said about idle gossip is the absolute truth, Excellency,” the rotund officer said with a start, and his smile turned into a grimace. “Now they blame everything on us. False, all false. The Army obeyed orders. We began to separate the illegals from the others. But the people wouldn’t let us. Everybody began to hunt down Haitians. Campesinos, merchants, and officials revealed their hiding places, and they hung them and beat them to death. They burned them, sometimes. In many places, the Army had to intervene to stop the excesses. There was a lot of resentment against them for their thieving and plundering.”

  “President Balaguer, you were one of the negotiators with Haiti following those events,” said Trujillo, continuing his survey. “How many were there?”

  The small, gray figure of the President of the Republic, half swallowed up by his chair, stretched his benign head forward. After observing the gathering from behind his nearsighted man’s glasses, the soft, well-modulated voice emerged, the one that recited poems at poetry competitions, celebrated the crowning of Miss Dominican Republic (he was always the Royal Poet), made speeches to the crowds on Trujillo’s political tours, or expounded on the government’s policies in the National Assembly.

  “The exact figure could never be determined, Excellency.” He spoke slowly, with a professorial air. “A pr
udent estimate is between ten and fifteen thousand. In our negotiations with the Haitian government, we agreed on a symbolic figure: 2,750. In this way, each affected family would, in theory, receive a hundred pesos of the 275,000 in cash paid by Your Excellency’s government as a gesture of goodwill and for the sake of Haitian-Dominican harmony. But, as you will remember, that is not what happened.”

  He fell silent, a hint of a smile on his round little face narrowing the small, pale eyes behind his thick glasses.

  “Why didn’t the compensation reach the families?” asked Simon Gittleman.

  “Because the President of Haiti, Sténio Vincent, was a thief and kept the money.” Trujillo laughed. “Only 275,000? As I recall, we agreed on 750,000 to make them stop protesting.”

  “That is true, Excellency,” Dr. Balaguer replied immediately, with the same calm, perfect diction, “750,000 pesos were agreed on, but only 275,000 in cash. The remaining half million was to be remitted in annual payments of 100,000 pesos over a period of five years. However, and I remember this quite clearly, I was interim Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, and I and Don Anselmo Paulino, who advised me during the negotiations, imposed a clause according to which the payments were contingent upon the presentation, before an international tribunal, of the death certificates issued for the 2,750 recognized victims during the first two weeks of October 1937. Haiti never fulfilled this requirement. And consequently the Dominican Republic was exempted from paying the remaining sum. Reparations never went beyond the initial remittance. Your Excellency made the payment out of your own patrimony, so that it did not cost the Dominican state a cent.”