Riley was equally disgusted with the local bourgeoisie. He thought it was a disgrace to live in opulent mansions, be served by an army of servants, and travel to Europe every year, when ninety percent of the island was illiterate and lived at a level of poverty that would have horrified people in Kansas. In the Sunflower State, where cattle, wheat, and sorghum were the main sources of income, land was distributed a lot more fairly. There were no throngs of peasants in rags who worked in the fields for a few cents a day.
Every time he drove out of the city to the countryside, Riley was shocked by what he saw. The peasants lived in thatched-roof huts and languished without work during the “dead time,” the months between harvests when the sugarcane fields lay fallow. So Riley tried to make the local sugar planters pay their workers better salaries. He also set out to force the huge American sugar mills like the South Puerto Rico Sugar Company to do the same. But the businessmen banned together and defeated his efforts in Washington. Riley became despondent; he stopped driving out to the hills to see how he could help the starving peasants and rarely left the Governor’s Palace, just as his predecessors had done. Francisco Oller, the famous Puerto Rican painter, did a portrait of him around that time—now unfortunately lost—in which Riley is standing on the ramparts of La Fortaleza in a plain black suit, his fair hair blowing in the wind, and a sad look in his eyes. A few months later President Harding ordered Riley to leave the island.
Governor Winship was very different from Governor Riley. He had been a planter himself in Virginia and got along splendidly with the local hacendados. He enjoyed cockfights, paso fino horses, roast pork, and green bananas pickled in onion and garlic. In spite of being a Protestant, he was frequently asked to be godfather to the children of the local gentry and often suggested picturesque names for them, half English half Spanish, such as Benjamin Franklin Pérez Cometa or George Washington Cerezo Nieves. He had faith in tourism and, to promote it, commissioned a photographer to do an album of the island’s natural wonders, paying for it with his own money. When the album finally came out, it was an instant success—especially on the mainland. The photographer obeyed Winship’s orders and captured the island in all its splendor: there were angel-hair waterfalls, cotton-candy clouds, sugar-white beaches, cows pasturing up and down velvet-green hills—and not a single starving peasant to mar the beauty of the landscape. Everyone who saw it thought the United States had done well in acquiring a Caribbean island that looked like Switzerland but where everybody spoke Spanish and ate rice and beans.
The year 1937 was a fateful one for the island. When the Nationalist terrorists intensified their attacks, trying to intimidate the United States into making Puerto Rico independent, Winship was approached by the local sugar-mill owners and other well-to-do citizens, and was asked to put a stop to the bloodbath. Arrigoitia was among the citizens who visited Winship at the Governor’s Palace, and he later told Quintín about it. Bombs were going off all over the city, and at night one could hear machine-gun bursts, fired from black Oldsmobiles with “Nationalist hoodlums” at the wheel, as the official news report put it. Statehooders, Autonomists, and those who believed in independence had been playing at make-believe politics for years when Pedro Albizu Campos appeared in their midst, dressed in black and spewing fire and brimstone, like the Devil himself.
Governor Winship never did things by halves, and when he realized what was happening, he put Nationalists and independence sympathizers all in the same boat. The Nationalist Party was outlawed. People who wanted the island to acquire independence by peaceful, democratic means were also placed on the subversive list and hunted down mercilessly.
The governor invited his longtime friend, Elisha Francis Riggs, to visit him at the Governor’s Palace. “Up to now,” he told him, “patrol officers here only know how to direct traffic; they’re not prepared to fight a gang war. The local police force has to undergo a total reorganization. I want it to become part of our armed forces—and I need someone who has my utmost confidence to put this into effect. I believe you’re the right person for the job.”
Riggs was a war hero; he’d been decorated during the First World War and was chief of operations for the Russian field mission in Petrograd. He accepted the post and was most effective: he armed the police force with the latest artillery weapons and trained them at Fort Buchanan, a new military camp. He was so successful at turning them into professional soldiers that a year after his arrival he was gunned down by the Nationalists on Sunday as he was coming out of church.
Winship was incensed, but he kept his anger under control. A few months later he summoned Arístides Arrigoitia to the Palace. They were sitting out on the terrace at La Fortaleza, accompanied only by an aide and two of Winship’s bodyguards. “The Nationalists who murdered Colonel Riggs are still on the loose,” Winship said icily. “I’ll make you chief of police if you promise to catch them.” Arrigoitia looked at him in surprise. There had never been a Puerto Rican chief of police before. But he took the offer to be a proof of confidence and he was flattered; the governor evidently considered him a friend.
“Puerto Ricans are loyal American citizens, and we’re just as upset about Riggs’s assassination as you are,” he said to Winship energetically, getting up from his chair to give his words more emphasis. “What happened was your fault; we wouldn’t have any of these problems if we were a state. Congress is taking too long to decide our status.” Winship’s bodyguards, alarmed by Arrigoitia’s excitable stance, slid their hands under their jackets, but Winship signaled them to ease up. Arrigoitia excused himself and sat back down sheepishly. A servant offered him a mint julep; he took it from the tray with a trembling hand.
The sun was just setting on the bay and a white passenger ship sailed silently before them, about to pass through El Morro’s channel. Winship looked out toward the blue hills of Cataño, surrounded by lush cane fields. “I’m a lover of the land, Arrigoitia; and your island is very fertile. I admired it from afar, when I lived on my tobacco plantation in Georgia, and I still do. I feel I did the right thing in accepting President Roosevelt’s appointment as governor. We can teach your people to take care of the land: how to make it more productive with modern methods. But you’re a different country from us. It’ll be much better for you if you stay as you are, enjoying the protection of the American flag but keeping your own personality. To do that, we must fight terrorism together. That’s why I’m offering you the appointment of chief of police.”
Arrigoitia felt discouraged, but he didn’t want Winship to see that. He said he’d think about the offer and politely took his leave.
When Arrigoitia left, Governor Winship commented to his aide: “These people understand each other better than we understand them. I have a feeling that appointing an honest Puerto Rican to be chief of police is going to be the solution to our problems with the Nationalists.”
Don Esteban Rosich heard about Governor Winship’s offer, and he told Arístides: “Don’t accept. You’ll be pitting brother against brother. You’ll never be able to live it down.” But the governor’s offer was too big a temptation for the ex-salesman from La Traviata. He thought it the perfect chance to prove to Winship that he could trust Puerto Ricans, that they were loyal American citizens, so he took the job.
During the next few months Arrigoitia had to hunt down a specific number of Nationalists a day, put them in prison, and let Governor Winship have a count. These expeditions made him unpopular, but Quintín’s family refused to believe the ugly rumors that were circulating. On Easter Sunday, the Nationalist Liberation Army announced that it was going to hold a march in Ponce and that they would be unarmed. Pedro Albizu Campos was in jail, and the march was supposed to be a peaceful protest against his sentencing. The Nationalist Party was officially banned, but Ponce’s mayor was a liberal, and he told the Nationalists they could hold their march if they were respectful of the law. He issued them a permit. Governor Winship was immediately suspicious and ordered an investigation. His spi
es furnished him with contrary facts: the long-awaited Nationalist revolution to bring down the colonial government was to begin that day.
When Easter Sunday arrived, Chief of Police Arrigoitia was ordered to stop the demonstration, and he traveled from San Juan to Ponce to carry out the command. The Nationalists purposely sent their youngest cadets to march, as well as nurses and old men. Arrigoitia telephoned Governor Winship, who was dug in with a group of officers near the hill town of Villalba to wait for the coup, and told him the evidence furnished by his agents was all wrong. There were no bazookas, rifles, or machine guns in sight in Ponce, he said. But the governor didn’t believe him. He insisted the Nationalist terrorists had sent their women and children to the fake parade as a cover. Armed men were probably hiding on the rooftops or in the branches of Ponce’s many trees. There might even be terrorists hiding under the manholes in the streets of the town.
Early that morning the cadets started to arrive from all parts of the island. They stood four abreast, in military formation, down the middle of Marina Street. The men wore black cotton shirts and white pants and the nurses wore white uniforms with a red cross on their caps. Some of the cadets carried wooden rifles on their shoulders—they trained with them in their makeshift military camp—and others carried fake swords hanging from their waists. Chief Arrigoitia deployed his police troops, and the two armies faced each other across twenty feet of pavement for over an hour. Ponce’s mayor realized a bloodbath was imminent and announced on the loudspeaker that he was canceling the permit to hold the march, but the cadets pretended not to hear.
Arrigoitia then went behind his troops to tell the governor over the field telephone that everything was under control but that he thought it was a mistake to prevent the march. The governor told Arrigoitia he was a jackass and that it wasn’t his job to think: his orders were to get the job done. Arrigoitia went back to the front lines and ordered the captain of the Nationalist troops to move out, but he refused to budge.
Many of the cadets couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen years old, and they looked straight at Arrigoitia, as if daring him to fire. The fake arms made them look even more like unruly children playing at war. Arrigoitia began to perspire and swore several times under his breath. “This absurd mission had to be in Ponce, the hottest town on the island,” he grumbled. “You could fry an egg on the pavement right now, and my uniform is soaked.”
Arístides couldn’t bear it any longer. His heart racing, he went over to one of his aides and told him to take his place at the head of the troops. He walked down Marina Street and entered the Chapel of the Servants of Mary. He was a friend of the nuns at the convent; it would be a good place to lest. It was quiet inside; a single votive candle glimmered in a red vase that hung from a silver chain, and several nuns were kneeling in prayer before the Holy Sacrament. Arístides sat down on a bench and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he wasn’t sure how much time had gone by. It was so peaceful that for a moment he thought what was going on outside was a nightmare. The white sphere of the Sacrament, exposed in a monstrance surrounded by golden rays, gazed at him serenely and seemed to be saying, “What will all this matter thirty, fifty, a hundred years from now, Arístides? Why are you in such anguish? Kneel in front of me and entrust me with your suffering.”
Arístides took off his white cap with the golden eagle on it, knelt, and began to pray. Gradually he calmed down; the governor’s insult didn’t sting so much anymore. He still had hopes that at the last moment someone would give way—either the cadets or Winship, and that nothing would happen. Shooting children wasn’t going to solve anything, especially on Easter Sunday, a day of peace.
As the pressure eased, his mind began to wander, and he looked around the beautifully decorated chapel. He admired the white orchids the nuns had gathered in vases around the Tabernacle. They were his favorite flowers because they made him think of Madeleine. The delicate froth on the lip of the blossoms reminded him of the golden down on her mound of Venus. Governor Winship was single, maybe that was why he was so stern and cold-blooded. He was a lot like Pedro Albizu Campos. Both were fanatics in the service of a cause, and it was so much more pleasant to serve a beautiful lady.
When Arístides Arrigoitia walked out of the chapel, his aide was waiting for him at the door, holding a yellow telegram in his hand: Governor Winship’s order to attack the Nationalist cadets. Arístides walked to the front of the line of his men and gave the command to fire.
14
Tosca the Soothsayer
SEVENTEEN PEOPLE DIED IN Ponce, mostly teenagers, and dozens of demonstrators were wounded. The island’s press was ordered to protect the governor’s public image and Chief of Police Arrigoitia was blamed for the decision to open fire on the unarmed cadets.
Don Esteban Rosich was ninety, and he never recovered from having his son-in-law publicly accused of murder. A few months later he had a heart attack and died. Madeleine took his body back to Boston on one of the Taurus Line steamships. She was fifty-three, and for a long time she had debated whether to go back home or not. Now that her father was dead, she finally made up her mind. She would never come back to the island—and I never got to know her, except through Quintín. She spent the rest of her life in her family’s brownstone on the North End.
Arístides Arrigoitia lived by himself in the country house in Guaynabo. He could not stand the white orchids in the nursery at the back of the garden, and one day he dowsed the plants with gasoline. Then he went back into the house, took his white gala uniform out of the closet, and his white jacket with the gold epaulets and his cap with the eagle on it, and put them alongside the orchids. Then he set fire to the whole thing. As he walked away from the blaze, he thought he heard Madeleine cry out, lamenting as she always had that God had condemned her to be as frail as an orchid when she had a soul as sturdy as a man’s.
His loneliness was a torment to him. He had broken with his longtime friends because Madeleine didn’t speak English, and once she was gone, her friends—the couples with whom they played bridge every Friday evening—never called back. After the Ponce incident, people looked at him as if he were a monster. Even Governor Winship refused to see him at the Governor’s Palace. He was officially accused of ordering the attack, and was tried and found guilty. Soon after that, he was dismissed as Chief of Police. Fortunately, he wasn’t sent to prison. He was from too good a family for the law to be applied literally, so he was put under house arrest. After the first year of the sentence, he was able to slip out of the house often, in spite of his detention officers’ surveillance.
Arístides put the Guaynabo country house up for sale and asked the parole authorities to let him move to a smaller house in Puerta de Tierra, the barrio where he was born. He sold the Taurus Line and put all the money in Rebecca’s name; he could live well enough on social security. Rebecca had two children and the money would permit her to be independent of Buenaventura if she ever needed to be.
Puerta de Tierra was where the main gate to the citadel of Old San Juan had once stood, and part of the city walls. They had been torn down a hundred years earlier to make way for Ponce de León Avenue, and a lower-middle-class barrio sprang up in the area. Arrigoitia liked living there; it reminded him of Quevedo’s famous sonnet “Miré los muros de la patria mía, si un tiempo fuertes, ya desmoronados” (I looked upon my county’s bastions, once proud and strong and now fallen into ruin), and he would meditate on the fate of empires. If the Spanish empire had fallen despite its might, something similar might happen to the United States one day. He would be terribly sorry to see it; he still admired the U.S. enormously. But then what had happened to him wouldn’t seem so shameful.
Arístides began to take long walks around Old San Juan. He had always loved the city, and now it was all he had left. His hair had turned almost completely white; he let it grow long and stopped shaving, so people wouldn’t recognize him. Every day he walked up Fortaleza Street and bought the newspaper from the ve
ndor at the corner of González Padín, where the sea breeze was as stiff as on the deck of a sailboat. The sidewalk was steep, and walking up its slant gave one the feeling of rolling through waves. The wind blew his hair about and invigorated him as if he were setting out on a trip. He cut across Plaza de Armas, where there were always beggars sitting on the edge of the Fountain of the Four Seasons, and doled out a few quarters from his pocket. Then he walked up Cristo Street and entered El Morro fort. There he truly felt at ease—he loved to sit on the ground and watch the children fly their kites like colorful pieces of glass set against the sky; he petted the dogs which came up to smell his baggy pants and unkempt shoes.
He went down to the Paseo de la Princesa to watch the sun set over the boats of the old fishermen who still ventured out into the bay every day at five in the morning and came in at eight with their catch. Usually there wasn’t much to sell—a couple of red snappers; a spiny chapín, good for only one empanadilla; a black moray eel, still staring ferociously with its beady eyes. The endless traffic of huge ocean liners coming into the bay had done away with most of the fish, and the beach was dotted with plastic bottles, disposable diapers, and all sorts of trash. But Arrigoitia didn’t look down at the polluted beach at his feet; he gazed toward the horizon, where the sea melted into the sky and you could set out in any direction you pleased. At the water’s edge there was nothing to hold you back; nothing to remind you that you had lost everything and that people laughed at you wherever you went.
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