“Stop,” Salvador ordered. “Before they kill you too.”
He crossed himself and got out of the cab, holding up his hands to indicate to the men with submachine guns and pistols in the Volkswagens that he would offer no resistance. They put him in handcuffs that bit into his wrists and pushed him into the back seat of one of the Beetles; the two caliés who were half sitting on him gave off a stink of sweat and feet. The car pulled away. Since they were on the road to San Pedro de Macorís, he assumed they were taking him to El Nueve. He made the trip in silence, trying to pray, saddened because he could not. His head was a seething, noisy, chaotic place where nothing was still, not a thought, not an image: everything was popping, like soap bubbles.
There was the famous house, at kilometer nine, encircled by a high concrete wall. They crossed a garden and he saw a comfortable country estate, with an old chalet surrounded by trees and flanked by rustic buildings. They shoved him out of the Beetle. He walked down a darkened hall lined with cells that held clusters of naked men, and they made him go down a long staircase. An acrid, sharp odor of excrement, vomit, and burned flesh made him feel faint. He thought of hell. There was hardly any light at the bottom of the stairs, but in the semidarkness he could see a line of cells with iron doors and little barred windows, crowded with heads struggling to see out. At the end of the cellar they tore off his trousers, shirt, underwear, shoes, and socks. He was naked, and still wearing handcuffs. The soles of his feet felt wet with a sticky substance that covered the rough flagstone floor. They kept shoving him and forced him into another room that was almost completely dark. They sat him down and fastened him into a shapeless chair lined with metal plates—he shuddered—that had straps and metal rings for his hands and feet.
For a long time nothing happened. He tried to pray. One of the men in shorts who had tied him down—his eyes were becoming used to the darkness—began to spray the air, and he recognized the cheap perfume called Nice that was advertised on the radio. He felt the cold of the metal plates against his thighs, buttocks, back, and at the same time he was sweating, almost suffocating in the sultry atmosphere. By now he could make out the faces of the people crowded around him; their silhouettes, their odors, some facial features. He recognized the flabby face with the double chin, the deformed body with its prominent belly. He was sitting very close to him, on a bench between two other people.
“It’s shameful, damn it! A son of General Piro Estrella involved in this shit,” said Johnny Abbes. “There’s no gratitude in your fucking blood.”
He was about to say that his family had nothing to do with what he had done, that his father, his brothers, his wife, certainly not Luisito and little Carmen Elly, none of them knew anything about this, when the electrical current picked him up and flattened him against the straps and rings that held him down. He felt needles in his pores, his head exploded into little fireballs, and he pissed, shat, and vomited everything he had inside. A bucket of water revived him. He immediately recognized the other figure to the right of Abbes García: Ramfis Trujillo. He wanted to insult him and at the same time plead with him to release his wife and Luisito and Carmen, but his throat produced no sound.
“Is it true that Pupo Román is part of the plot?” asked Ramfis’s discordant voice.
Another bucket of water returned his powers of speech.
“Yes, yes,” he said, not recognizing his own voice. “That coward, that traitor, yes. He lied to us. Kill me, General Trujillo, but let my wife and children go. They’re innocent.”
“It won’t be that easy, asshole,” Ramfis replied. “Before you go to hell, you have to pass through purgatory. You son of a bitch!”
A second electrical discharge catapulted him against his bonds—he felt his eyes popping out of their sockets, like a frog’s—and he lost consciousness. When he came to, he was on the floor of a cell, naked and handcuffed, in the middle of a slimy puddle. His bones and muscles ached, and he felt an unbearable burning in his testicles and anus, as if they had been flayed. But the thirst was even more agonizing: his throat, tongue, and palate were like fiery sandpaper. He closed his eyes and prayed. He could, with intervals when his mind went blank; then, for a few seconds, he was able to concentrate again on the words. He prayed to Our Lady of Mercy, reminding her of the devotion with which he had made the pilgrimage, as a young man, to Jarabacoa, and climbed to Santo Cerro to kneel at her feet in the Sanctuary devoted to her memory. Humbly he implored her to protect his wife, and Luisito, and Carmen Elly from the cruelty of the Beast. In the midst of the horror, he felt grateful. He could pray again.
When he opened his eyes, he recognized his brother Guarionex lying beside him, his body naked and battered, covered with wounds and bruises. My God, they had left poor Guaro in a terrible state! The general’s eyes were open, looking at him in the dim light that a bulb in the hallway allowed to filter through the little barred window. Did he recognize him?
“I’m Turk, your brother, I’m Salvador,” he said, dragging himself over to him. “Can you hear me? Can you see me, Guaro?”
He spent an infinite time trying to communicate with his brother but did not succeed. Guaro was alive; he moved, moaned, opened and closed his eyes. At times he made bizarre remarks and gave orders to his subordinates: “Move that mule, Sergeant!” And they had kept the Plan secret from General Guarionex Estrella Sadhalá because they considered him too much of a Trujillista. What a surprise for poor Guaro: to be arrested, tortured, and interrogated because of something he knew nothing about. He tried to explain this to Ramfis and Johnny Abbes the next time he was taken to the torture chamber and seated on the Throne, and he repeated it and swore it over and over again, between fainting spells brought on by the electrical currents, and while they flogged him with those whips, the “bull’s balls,” that tore off pieces of skin. They did not seem interested in knowing the truth. He swore in God’s name that Guarionex, his other brothers, certainly not his father, none of them had been part of the conspiracy, and he shouted that what they had done to General Estrella Sadhalá was a monstrous injustice that they would have to answer for in the next life. They did not listen, they were more interested in torturing him than in interrogating him. Only after an interminable period of time—had hours, days, weeks passed since his capture?—did he realize that with a certain regularity they were giving him a bowl of soup with pieces of yuca, a slice of bread, and jugs of water into which the jailers spat as they passed them to him. By now nothing mattered. He could pray. He prayed in all his free and lucid moments, and sometimes even when he was asleep or unconscious. But not when they were torturing him. On the Throne, pain and fear paralyzed him. From time to time a SIM doctor would come to listen to his heart and give him an injection that revived him.
One day, or night, for in the jail it was impossible to know the time, they took him out of the cell, naked and handcuffed, made him climb the stairs, and pushed him into a small, sunlit room. The white light blinded him. At last he recognized the pale, elegant face of Ramfis Trujillo, and at his side, erect as always despite his years, his father, General Piro Estrella. When he recognized the old man, Salvador’s eyes filled with tears.
But instead of being moved at seeing the desolate creature his son had become, the general roared in indignation:
“I don’t know you! You’re not my son! Assassin! Traitor!” He gesticulated, choking with rage. “Don’t you know what I, you, all of us owe to Trujillo? He’s the man you murdered? Repent, you miserable wretch!”
He had to lean against a table because he began to reel. He lowered his eyes. Was the old man pretending? Was he hoping to win over Ramfis and then beg him to spare his life? Or was his father’s Trujillista fervor stronger than his feelings for his son? That doubt tore at him constantly, except during the torture sessions. These came every day, every two days, and now they were accompanied by long, maddening interrogations in which they repeated, a thousand and one times, the same questions, demanded the same details, and tried to
make him denounce other conspirators. They never believed he did not know anyone other than those they already knew about, or that no one in his family had been involved, least of all Guarionex. Johnny Abbes and Ramfis did not appear at those sessions; they were conducted by subordinates who became familiar to him: Lieutenant Clodoveo Ortiz, the lawyer Eladio Ramírez Suero, Colonel Rafael Trujillo Reynoso, First Lieutenant Pérez Mercado of the police. Some seemed to enjoy passing electric prods along his body, or beating him on the head and back with blackjacks covered in rubber, or burning him with cigarettes; others seemed disgusted or bored. Always, at the beginning of each session, one of the half-naked bailiffs responsible for administering the electric shocks would spray the air with Nice to hide the stink of his defecations and charred flesh.
One day—what day could it be?—they put in his cell Fifí Pastoriza, Huáscar Tejeda, Modesto Díaz, Pedro Livio Cedeño, and Tunti Cáceres, Antonio de la Maza’s young nephew, who, in the original Plan, was going to drive the car that Antonio Imbert eventually drove. They were naked and handcuffed, like him. They had been in El Nueve the whole time, in other cells, and received the same treatment of electric shocks, whippings, burnings, and needles in the ears and under the nails. And they had been subjected to endless interrogations.
From them he learned that Imbert and Luis Amiama had disappeared, and that in his desperation to find them, Ramfis was now offering half a million pesos to anyone facilitating their capture. From them he also learned that Antonio de la Maza, General Juan Tomás Díaz, and Amadito had died fighting. He had been kept in isolation, but they had been able to talk with their jailers and learn what was happening on the outside. Huáscar Tejeda had heard from one of his torturers, with whom he had become friendly, about the conversation between Ramfis Trujillo and Antonio de la Maza’s father. The son of the Generalissimo came to inform Don Vicente de la Maza, in prison, that his son had died. The old caudillo of Moca asked, without a tremor in his voice: “Did he die fighting?” Ramfis nodded. Don Vicente de la Maza crossed himself: “Thank you, Lord!”
It did him good to see that Pedro Livio Cedeño had recovered from his wounds. Nigger felt absolutely no rancor toward Turk for shooting him in the confusion of that night. “What I can’t forgive any of you for is not killing me,” he joked. “What did you save my life for? For this? Assholes!” The resentment all of them felt toward Pupo Román was very deep, but nobody was happy when Modesto Díaz said that from his cell on a higher floor, he had seen Pupo naked, handcuffed, his eyelids sewn shut, being dragged by four bailiffs to the torture chamber. Modesto Díaz was not even the shadow of the elegant, intelligent politician he had been all his life; he had lost many kilos, had wounds over his entire body, and wore an expression of infinite despair. “That’s what I must look like,” thought Salvador. He had not looked in a mirror since his arrest.
He often asked his interrogators to allow him a confessor. At last, the jailer who brought their meals asked who wanted a priest. They all raised their hands. He had them put on trousers and brought them up the steep staircase to the room where Turk had been insulted by his father. To see the sun and feel its warm touch on his skin renewed his spirit. Even more so when he confessed and took communion, something he thought he would never do again. When the military chaplain, Father Rodríguez Canela, asked them to join him in a prayer in memory of Trujillo, only Salvador kneeled down and prayed with him. His companions, disconcerted, remained standing.
From Father Rodríguez Canela he learned the date: August 30, 1961. Only three months had gone by! To him it seemed as if this nightmare had lasted for centuries. Depressed, debilitated, demoralized, they spoke little among themselves, and conversations always revolved around what they had seen, heard, and experienced in El Nueve. Of all the statements his cellmates made, the one indelibly etched into Salvador’s brain was the story told by a sobbing Modesto Díaz. For the first few weeks he had been in a cell with Miguel Ángel Báez Díaz. Turk remembered his surprise on May 30 when this individual appeared in his Volkswagen on the San Cristóbal highway to assure them that Trujillo, with whom he had walked along the Avenida, would come, which was how Salvador learned that this powerful man among the Trujillista faithful was also part of the conspiracy. Abbes García and Ramfis, infuriated with him because he had been so close to Trujillo, were present for all the sessions of electric shocks, beatings, and burnings inflicted on him, and ordered the SIM doctors to revive him so the torture could continue. After two or three weeks, instead of the usual plate of foul-smelling corn mush, a pot with pieces of meat was brought to them in their cell. Miguel Ángel Báez and Modesto gulped it down, choking, eating with both hands until they were full. A short time later the jailer came in. He confronted Báez Díaz: General Ramfis Trujillo wanted to know if eating his own son didn’t make him sick. From the floor, Miguel Ángel insulted him: “You can tell that filthy son of a bitch for me that I hope he swallows his tongue and poisons himself.” The jailer started to laugh. He left and came back, and from the door he showed them the head of a boy, holding it up by the hair. Miguel Ángel Báez Díaz died a few hours later, in Modesto’s arms, of a heart attack.
The image of Miguel Ángel recognizing the head of Miguelito, his oldest son, obsessed Salvador; he had nightmares in which he saw Luisito and Carmen Elly decapitated. He would scream in his sleep, annoying his cellmates.
Unlike his friends, several of whom had tried to end their lives, Salvador was determined to resist until the end. He had reconciled himself with God—he prayed day and night—and the Church forbade suicide. Besides, it wasn’t easy to kill oneself. Huáscar Tejeda made the attempt with a tie he stole from one of the jailers (who kept it folded in his back pocket). He tried to hang himself but failed, and because he tried, his punishment intensified. Pedro Livio Cedeño tried to get himself killed by provoking Ramfis in the torture chamber: “son of a bitch,” “bastard,” “motherfucker,” “your slut of a mother La Españolita worked in a whorehouse before she was Trujillo’s girlfriend,” and he even spat on him. Ramfis did not fire the shots he longed for: “Not yet, not so fast. That’ll come at the end. You have to keep paying first.”
The second time Salvador Estrella Sadhalá learned the date, it was October 9, 1961. They had him put on trousers, and again he climbed the stairs to the room where the sunlight hurt his eyes and brought joy to his skin. Ramfis was there, pale and impeccable in his uniform of a four-star general, with that day’s El Caribe in his hand: October 9, 1961. Salvador read the large headline: “Letter from General Pedro A. Estrella to General Ramfis, son of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo.”
“Read this letter your father sent me.” Ramfis handed him the paper. “He talks about you.”
Salvador, his wrists cut by handcuffs, grasped El Caribe. He felt vertigo and an indefinable mixture of revulsion and sadness, but he read the entire letter. General Piro Estrella called the Goat “the greatest of all Dominicans,” boasted of having been his friend, bodyguard, and protégé, and alluded to Salvador with vile epithets; he spoke of “the felony of a son gone astray” and of “my son’s treason when he betrayed his protector” and his own family. Worse than the insults was the final paragraph: his father thanked Ramfis, with bombastic servility, for giving him money to help him survive the confiscation of the family’s property because of his son’s participation in the assassination.
He returned to his cell sick with disgust and shame. He did not hold up his head again, although he attempted to hide his demoralization from his companions. “It isn’t Ramfis, it’s my father who has killed me,” he thought. And he envied Antonio de la Maza. What luck to be the son of a man like Don Vicente!
A few days after that cruel October 9, when he and his five cellmates were moved to La Victoria—they were hosed down and the clothes they were wearing when they were arrested were returned to them—Turk was a walking corpse. Not even the possibility of having visitors—half an hour, on Thursdays—and hugging and kissing his wife, Luisito, and Carmen E
lly, could melt the ice that had formed around his heart after he read General Piro Estrella’s public letter to Ramfis Trujillo.
In La Victoria the torture and interrogations stopped. They still slept on the floor but were no longer naked: they wore clothes sent to them from home. The handcuffs were removed. Their families could send food, soft drinks, and some money, with which they bribed their jailers to sell them newspapers, give them information about other prisoners, or carry messages to the outside. President Balaguer’s speech at the United Nations, condemning the Trujillo dictatorship and promising democratization “while maintaining order,” brought a rebirth of hope in the prison. It seemed incredible, but there was a burgeoning political opposition, with the Civic Union and June 14 operating in the light of day. Above all, his friends were encouraged to learn that in the United States, Venezuela, and elsewhere, committees had been formed to demand that they be tried in a civil court, with international observers. Salvador made an effort to share the optimism of the others. In his prayers, he asked God to give him back his hope. Because he had none. He had seen the implacable expression on Ramfis’s face. Would he let them go free? Never. He would carry his revenge through to the end.
There was an explosion of rejoicing in La Victoria when it was learned that Petán and Blacky Trujillo had left the country. Now Ramfis would go too. Balaguer would have no recourse but to declare an amnesty. Modesto Díaz, however, with his powerful logic and cold analytical method, convinced them that their families and attorneys had to mobilize in their defense, now more than ever. Ramfis would not leave before he had exterminated his papa’s executioners. As he listened, Salvador observed the ruin that Modesto had become: he was still losing weight and he had the face of a wrinkled old man. How many kilos had he shed? The trousers and shirts his wife brought swam on him, and every week he had to make new holes in his belt.
The Feast of the Goat Page 42