“I already have, Colonel. I don’t even know if they’ve given him my letters. I took them to the Palace personally.”
Johnny Abbes’s bloated face distended slightly:
“Nobody would hold back a letter addressed to the Chief, Senator. He’s probably read them, and if you’ve been sincere, he’ll respond.” He paused, constantly watching him with his nervous eyes, and added, rather defiantly: “I see you’ve noticed the color of my handkerchief. Do you know the reason? It’s a Rosicrucian teaching. Red is a good color for me. You probably don’t believe in Rosicrucianism, you must think it’s primitive superstition.”
“I don’t know anything about the Rosicrucian religion, Colonel. I have no opinion in that regard.”
“Now I don’t have the time, but when I was a young man I read a lot about Rosicrucianism. I learned a number of things. How to read a person’s aura, for example. Right now yours is the aura of someone scared to death.”
“I am scared to death,” Cabral replied immediately. “For days your men have been following me constantly. Tell me, at least, if you’re going to arrest me.”
“That doesn’t depend on me,” said Johnny Abbes, casually, as if the matter were not important. “If I’m ordered to, I will. The escort is to discourage you from seeking asylum. If you try that, then my men will arrest you.”
“Asylum? But, Colonel, seeking asylum, as if I were an enemy of the regime? I’ve been a part of the regime for thirty years.”
“With your friend Henry Dearborn, the head of the mission the Yankees left us,” Colonel Abbes continued, sarcastically.
Astonishment silenced Agustín Cabral. What did he mean?
“The American consul, my friend?” he stammered. “I’ve seen Mr. Dearborn only two or three times in my life.”
“He’s an enemy of ours, as you know,” Abbes García went on. “When the OAS imposed sanctions, the Yankees left him here so he could keep on plotting against the Chief. For the past year, every conspiracy has passed through Dearborn’s office. And despite that, you, the President of the Senate, recently attended a cocktail party at his house. Do you remember?”
Agusín Cabral’s amazement increased. Was that it? Having attended a cocktail party at the house of the chargé d’affaires appointed by the United States when they closed their embassy?
“The Chief ordered Minister Paíno Pichardo and me to attend that cocktail party,” he explained. “To sound out his government’s plans. I’ve fallen into disgrace because I obeyed an order? I submitted a written report about the gathering.”
Colonel Abbes García shrugged his rounded shoulders in a puppet-like movement.
“If it was an order from the Chief, forget what I said,” he conceded, with a touch of irony.
His attitude betrayed a certain impatience, but Cabral did not leave. He was encouraged by the foolish hope that this talk might bear some fruit.
“You and I have never been friends, Colonel,” he said, forcing himself to speak normally.
“I can’t have friends,” Abbes García replied. “It would prejudice my work. My friends and enemies are the friends and enemies of the regime.”
“Please let me finish,” Agustín Cabral continued. “But I’ve always respected you, and recognized the exceptional service you render the nation. If we’ve had any differences…”
The colonel seemed to be raising a hand to silence him, but it was only to light another cigarette. He inhaled greedily and calmly exhaled smoke through his mouth and nose.
“Of course we’ve had differences,” he acknowledged. “You were one of those who fought hardest against my theory that in view of the Yankee betrayal, we had to approach the Russians and the Eastern bloc. You, along with Balaguer and Manuel Alfonso, have been trying to convince the Chief that reconciliation with the Yankees is possible. Do you still believe that bullshit?”
Was this the reason? Had Abbes García stabbed him in the back? Had the Chief accepted that idiotic idea? Were they distancing him so they could move the regime closer to the Communists? It was useless to go on humiliating himself before a specialist in torture and assassination who, as a result of the crisis, now dared to think of himself as a political strategist.
“I still believe we have no alternative, Colonel,” he affirmed, with conviction. “What you propose, and you’ll forgive my frankness, is an illusion. The U.S.S.R. and its satellites will never accept a rapprochement with the Dominican Republic, the bulwark of anti-Communism in Latin America. The United States won’t accept it either. Do you want another eight years of American occupation? We have to come to some understanding with Washington or it will mean the end of the regime.”
The colonel allowed his cigarette ash to fall to the floor. He took one puff after the other, as if he were afraid someone would take away his cigarette, and from time to time he wiped his forehead with the flame-colored handkerchief.
“Your friend Henry Dearborn doesn’t think so, unfortunately.” He shrugged again, like a cheap comic. “He keeps trying to finance a coup against the Chief. Well, there’s no point to this discussion. I hope your situation is resolved and I can remove your escort. Thank you for the visit, Senator.”
He did not offer his hand. He merely nodded his fat-cheeked face, partially obscured in a wreath of smoke, with the photograph of the Chief in grand parade uniform in the background. Then the senator recalled the quotation from Ortega y Gasset that was written in the notebook he always carried in his pocket.
The parrot Samson also seems petrified by Urania’s words; he is as still and mute as Aunt Adelina, who has stopped fanning herself and opened her mouth. Lucinda and Manolita are looking at her, disconcerted. Marianita doesn’t stop blinking. Urania has the absurd thought that the beautiful moon she sees through the window approves of what she has said.
“I don’t know how you can say that about your father,” her Aunt Adelina responds. “In all my days I never knew anyone who sacrificed more for a daughter than my poor brother. Were you serious when you called him a bad father? He worshiped you, and you were his torment. So you wouldn’t suffer, he didn’t marry again after your mother died, even though he was widowed so young. Who’s responsible for your being lucky enough to study in the United States? Didn’t he spend every cent he had on you? Is that what you call being a bad father?”
You mustn’t say anything, Urania. She’s an old woman, spending her final years, months, weeks immobilized and embittered, she’s not to blame for something that happened so long ago. Don’t answer her. Agree with her, pretend. Make some excuse, say goodbye, and forget about her forever. Calmly, without any belligerence at all, she says:
“He didn’t make those sacrifices out of love for me, Aunt Adelina. He wanted to buy me. Salve his guilty conscience. Knowing it would do no good, that whatever he did, he would live the rest of his days feeling as vile and evil as he really was.”
When he left the offices of the Intelligence Service on the corner of Avenida México and Avenida March 30, it seemed that the police on guard gave him pitying looks, and that one of them, staring into his eyes, meaningfully caressed the San Cristóbal submachine gun he carried over his shoulder. He felt suffocated, and somewhat faint. Did he have the quotation from Ortega y Gasset in his notebook? So opportune, so prophetic. He loosened his tie and removed his jacket. Taxis passed by but he didn’t hail any of them. Would he go home? And feel caged, and rack his brains as he came down to his study from his bedroom or went up again to his bedroom, passing through the living room, asking himself a thousand times what had happened? Why was the rabbit being pursued by invisible hunters? They had taken away his office at the Congress, and the official car, and his membership at the Country Club, where he could have taken refuge, had a cool drink, and seen from the bar a landscape of well-tended gardens and distant golfers. Or he could visit a friend, but did he have any left? Everyone he had called on the phone sounded frightened, reticent, hostile: he was harming them by wanting to see them. He walked ai
mlessly, his jacket folded under his arm. Could the cocktail party at Henry Dearborn’s house be the reason? Impossible. At a meeting of the Council of Ministers, the Chief decided that he and Paíno Pichardo would attend, “to explore the terrain.” How could he punish him for obeying? Perhaps Paíno suggested to Trujillo that at the cocktail party he had seemed overly cordial to the gringo. No, no, no. Impossible that for something so trivial and stupid the Chief would trample on a man who had served him with more devotion and less self-interest than anyone.
He walked as if he were lost, changing direction every few blocks. The heat made him perspire. It was the first time in many years he had wandered the streets of Ciudad Trujillo. A city he had seen grow, transformed from a small town in ruins, devastated by the San Zenón hurricane of 1930, into the beautiful, prosperous, modern metropolis it was now, with paved streets, electric lights, broad avenues filled with new cars.
When he looked at his watch it was a quarter past five. He had been walking for two hours, and he was dying of thirst. He was on Casimiro de Moya, between Pasteur and Cervantes, a few meters from a bar: El Turey. He went in, sat down at the first table. He ordered an ice-cold Presidente. It wasn’t air-conditioned but there were fans, and the shade felt good. The long walk had calmed him. What would happen to him? And to Uranita? What would happen to the girl if they put him in jail, or if, in a fit of rage, the Chief ordered him killed? Would Adelina be prepared to rear her, be her mother? Yes, his sister was a good, generous woman. Uranita would be another daughter to her, like Lucindita and Manolita.
He tasted the beer with pleasure as he turned the pages in his notebook, looking for the quotation from Ortega y Gasset. The cold liquid, sliding down his throat, produced a feeling of well-being. Don’t lose hope. The nightmare could disappear. Didn’t that sometimes happen? He had sent three letters to the Chief. Frank, heartfelt letters, baring his soul. Begging his forgiveness for whatever mistake he might have committed, swearing he would do anything to make amends and redeem himself if, by some inadvertent, thoughtless act, he had offended him. He had reminded him of his long years of service and absolute honesty, as demonstrated by the fact that now, when his accounts at the Reserve Bank had been frozen—some two hundred thousand pesos, his life’s savings—he was out on the street, with only the little house in Gazcue to live in. (He concealed only the twenty-five thousand dollars deposited in the Chemical Bank of New York, which he kept for an emergency.) Trujillo was magnanimous, that was true. He could be cruel, when the country required it. But generous, too, as magnificent as that Petronius in Quo Vadis? he was always quoting. Any day now he would summon him to the National Palace or to Radhamés Manor. They’d have one of those theatrical explanations, the kind the Chief liked so much. Everything would be settled. He would say that, for him, Trujillo had been not only the Chief, the statesman, the founder of the Republic, but a human model, a father. The nightmare would come to an end. His former life would rematerialize, as if by magic. The quotation from Ortega y Gasset appeared at the corner of a page, written in his tiny hand: “Nothing that a man has been, is, or will be, is something he has been, is, or will be forever; rather, it is something he became one day and will stop being the next.” He was a living example of the precariousness of existence as postulated in that philosophy.
On one of the walls in El Turey, a poster announced that the piano music of Maestro Enriquillo Sánchez would begin at seven o’clock. Two tables were occupied by couples whispering to one another and exchanging romantic looks. “Accusing me, me, of being a traitor,” he thought. A man who, for Trujillo’s sake, had renounced pleasures, diversions, money, love, women. On a nearby chair, someone had left a copy of La Nación. He picked up the paper, and just for something to do with his hands, leafed through the pages. On page three, a panel announced that the illustrious and very distinguished ambassador Don Manuel Alfonso had just returned after traveling abroad for reasons of health. Manuel Alfonso! No one had more direct access to Trujillo; the Chief favored him and entrusted to him his most intimate affairs, from his wardrobe and perfumes to his romantic adventures. Manuel was a friend, and he owed him favors. He might be the key.
He paid and left. The Beetle wasn’t there. Had he evaded them without intending to, or had the persecution stopped? A feeling of gratitude, of jubilant hope, blossomed in his chest.
14
The Benefactor walked into the office of Dr. Joaquín Balaguer at five o’clock, as he had every Monday through Friday for the past nine months, ever since August 3, 1960, when, in an attempt to avoid OAS sanctions, he had his brother Héctor (Blacky) Trujillo resign the Presidency of the Republic and replaced him with the affable, diligent poet and jurist, who rose to his feet and came forward to greet him:
“Good afternoon, Excellency.”
After the luncheon for the Gittlemans, the Generalissimo rested for half an hour, changed his clothes—he was wearing a lightweight suit of white linen—and tended to routine matters with his four secretaries until just five minutes ago. He walked in scowling and came straight to the point, not hiding his anger:
“Did you authorize Agustín Cabral’s daughter to leave the country a couple of weeks ago?”
The myopic eyes of the tiny Dr. Balaguer blinked behind thick glasses.
“Yes, I did, Excellency. Uranita Cabral, yes. The Dominican nuns gave her a scholarship to their academy in Michigan. The girl had to leave immediately to take some tests. The head of the school explained it to me, and Archbishop Ricardo Pittini took an interest in the matter. I thought this small gesture might build bridges to the hierarchy. I explained it all in a memorandum, Excellency.”
The diminutive man spoke with his usual mild amiability and a slight smile on his round face, pronouncing the words with the perfection of a radio actor or a professor of phonetics. Trujillo scrutinized him, trying to uncover in his expression, the shape of his mouth, his evasive eyes, the smallest sign, the slightest allusion. In spite of his infinite mistrust, he saw nothing; obviously, the puppet president was too astute a politician to allow his face to betray him.
“When did you send me that memorandum?”
“A couple of weeks ago, Excellency. Following the intervention of Archbishop Pittini. I told him that since the girl’s trip was urgent, I would grant her permission unless you had any objection. When I received no answer from you, I went ahead. She already had an American visa.”
The Benefactor sat down facing Balaguer’s desk and indicated to him that he should do the same. He felt comfortable in this office on the second floor of the National Palace; it was spacious, airy, sober, with shelves full of books, shining floor and walls, and a desk that was always immaculate. You could not call the puppet president an elegant man (how could he be with a miniature rounded body that made him not merely short, but almost a midget?), but he dressed as correctly as he spoke, respected protocol, and was a tireless worker for whom holidays and schedules did not exist. The Chief noticed his alarm; Balaguer had realized that by granting permission to Egghead’s daughter, he might have committed a serious error.
“I only saw your memorandum half an hour ago,” he said reproachfully. “It might have been lost. But that would surprise me. My papers are always in very good order. None of my secretaries saw it until now. So one of Egghead’s friends, afraid I would deny her permission, must have mislaid it.”
Dr. Balaguer’s expression changed to one of consternation. He leaned his body forward and partially opened that mouth from which there emerged soft arpeggios and delicate trills when he recited poetry, and high-flown, even impassioned sentences when he gave political speeches.
“I will carry out a thorough investigation to learn who took the memorandum to your office and to whom it was given. Undoubtedly I moved too quickly. I should have spoken to you personally. I beg you to forgive this mistake on my part.” His small, plump hands, nails trimmed short, opened and closed in contrition. “The truth is, I thought it a trivial matter. You had indicated, at th
e Council of Ministers, that Egghead’s situation did not extend to his family.”
He silenced him with a movement of his head.
“What’s not trivial is that for a few weeks somebody hid that memorandum from me,” he said curtly. “There is a traitor or an incompetent on the secretarial staff. I hope it’s a traitor, incompetents do more damage.”
He sighed, somewhat fatigued, and thought of Dr. Enrique Lithgow Ceara: had the man really intended to kill him, or had he simply made a mistake? Through two of the windows in the office he could see the ocean; big white-bellied clouds covered the sun, and in the ashen afternoon the surface of the water looked rough and agitated. Large waves pounded the irregular coastline. Though he had been born in San Cristóbal, far from the sea, the sight of foaming waves and the surface of the water disappearing into the horizon was his favorite view.
“The nuns gave her a scholarship because they know Cabral’s in disgrace,” he murmured in annoyance. “Because they think that now he’ll work for the enemy.”
“I assure you that is not the case, Excellency.” The Generalissimo could see that Dr. Balaguer hesitated as he chose his words. “Mother María, Sister Mary, and the head of Santo Domingo Academy do not have a high opinion of Agustín. Apparently he did not get along with the girl, and she was suffering at home. They wanted to help her, not him. They assured me she is an exceptionally gifted student. I was hasty in signing the permission, and I am sorry. More than anything else, I did it to try to ease relations with the Church. This conflict seems dangerous to me, Excellency, but you already know my opinion.”
He silenced him again with an almost imperceptible gesture. Had Egghead already betrayed him? Feeling himself marginalized, abandoned, with no responsibilities and no financial means, drowning in uncertainty, had he been pushed into the ranks of the enemy? He hoped not; he was an old collaborator, he had rendered good services in the past and perhaps could render them in the future.
The Feast of the Goat Page 27