Before it got dark, Don Leo drove us to my house to pick up some clothes so we could spend the night here, and to lock up all the doors and windows, in case any robbers thought to take advantage of the chaos; I put my diary and my rosary in my overnight bag; I left a note on the table in case Betito or Pericles showed up. María Elena helped her Aunt Juani prepare dinner; Juani has been working for Mother for twenty-five years, and the poor thing suffers terribly from varicose veins. After dinner I spent some time in the kitchen where the servants eat: María Elena was talking about how, when the coup began, she was going for the third time to see the movie Flor Silvestre, with Dolores del Río and Pedro Armendáriz, in which a poor young peasant girl marries the son of a rich landowner, but now she’ll never be able to see it again because the movie surely burned up in the Teatro Colón. It was so touching to hear her. I returned to the living room; Mother suggested we pray a rosary. But just then the phone rang: it was Clemen. I asked him if he was alright, if he knew anything about his father; I told him about my futile efforts to get to the Central Prison. He told me right now all efforts were focused on the assault on the Black Palace, where the general has taken refuge, first the beast must be finished off in his lair then there would be time to go to the Central Prison; he said he was spending the night guarding the station, and if he heard anything about his father he would call me immediately. I asked him what was going on there. He told me not to worry, they would level the Black Palace at the latest tomorrow, he said everything would have been easier if that idiot Lieutenant Mancía had captured the general on the highway to the port, which was the plan, but he had slipped out of their hands, in disguise and in a private automobile, the sneaky devil. Clemen spoke excitedly, his voice hoarser than usual; I assumed he’d been drinking whiskey and smoking for many hours. I wanted to ask him about my father-in-law, but we got cut off.
After praying the rosary, well-nigh unable to give it my full attention because of all the emotions churning inside me, I went to my bedroom. Now that it is night, the planes have stopped dropping bombs, the heavy artillery fire has also stopped, though from time to time and with certain regularity, there are flurries. Dr. Romero, who has been proclaimed the civilian leader of the coup, announced on the radio that the forces opposing the general will cease their attacks during the night to avoid innocent casualties; he made an appeal to the population to join the democratic movement; he confirmed that General Marroquín and Colonel Tito Calvo are leading the military rebellion; they are half brothers, and dislike my husband. Then the transmission ended.
I’m going to lie down for a while, just to rest, I’m so distressed I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep; I want to believe everything will turn out well, that the general will be defeated, and Pericles will be freed any moment, but at the same time I fear the worst — I have terrible premonitions.
(Midnight)
Father arrived a little before ten. I had already fallen asleep; the noise in the living room woke me up. He arrived with friends. Soon I got out of bed and was listening to their reports about the latest events. Father heard about the coup while he was still at the finca; he was taking a siesta when Don Toño, the foreman, woke him up to tell him what he was hearing on the radio. He went immediately to the coffee-processing plant and the other warehouses to make sure everything was in order and to warn the security guards to remain very vigilant, there has been a coup d’état, and criminal elements would take advantage of the anarchy. Then he went to Santa Ana, to my sister Cecilia’s house, where he met with his coffee-growing colleagues to find out who was leading the movement and figure out how to lend them support; the local military detachment has joined the uprising, according to Father. Then he decided to return to San Salvador. Some of the men warned him it would be better to remain where they were for the night, it was already getting dark and the roads would be dangerous. But Father is stubborn, and once he makes a decision nobody can get him to change his mind. He said he’d had no problems leaving Santa Ana, but when he got to San Juan Opico he encountered the first checkpoint, then another as they approached Santa Tecla, and lastly entering the capital; at each checkpoint it took him a long time to convince the soldiers to let him pass. It’s obvious Father had been aware of the possibility of a coup but knew nothing about the details or the exact date; he’s vexed they didn’t inform him. He was quite enthusiastic about Clemen’s participation in the seizure of the radio station. “Finally, he’s decided to do something worthwhile,” he said. Mother does not share his opinion, she thinks it imprudent to expose oneself so openly; she said that if the coup fails, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Father asked me if Captain Ríos Aragón, who’d been mentioned as the commander of the troops that had taken over Ilopango Airport, is Jimmy, Clemen’s cousin; I said, yes, he is, he’s the eldest son of Angelita, Pericles’s first cousin.
Juan White, Güicho Sol, and my Uncle Charlie were quite frantic, pacing around the room, whiskey glasses always in hand, complaining about how useless the military is, wondering how they could possibly have let the general slip out of their hands, and the pilots were even worse, instead of bombing the Black Palace, they dropped the bombs two blocks away, destroying the Teatro Colón and all the shops in the vicinity. Mother piped up and asked if the Casino had also been destroyed; they told her it hadn’t been; fortunately, it was untouched. Güicho said it seems the leaders of the coup don’t really want to carry out the assault but instead only scare the general, as if they could possibly win like that, only the faint of heart would be foolish enough to suspend the assault at night, when they should be delivering the coup de grâce to the Black Palace and finishing that Nazi warlock off once and for all. Güicho said he doesn’t trust General Marroquín, the commander of the First Infantry Regiment, which is leading the charge on the palace. Then I thought about why General Marroquín might have called Pericles on Friday night: why would he have wanted to contact him when it’s common knowledge my husband is in jail? Father wondered to what extent the American Embassy supports the coup. Güicho said he had spent some time that afternoon with the ambassador, and there would be no support or any statement of support until the outcome became known. Juan is livid because he hoped the American troops would come to the support of the rebels. After drinking another couple of shots of whiskey, Juan and Güicho left. Only then did Father ask me if I had been able to speak to my father-in-law; I told him I hadn’t, the telephone lines to Cojutepeque are out, but undoubtedly the colonel is beside himself because of Clemen’s participation in the coup. I expressed my anxiety about Pericles’s situation. He told me that we should immediately mobilize all our contacts to get him released, taking advantage of the opportunity, now that the general is under siege and on the verge of being overthrown. But he couldn’t get in touch with either Chaquetilla Calderón or Judge Molina, president of the Supreme Court, or Don Agustín Alfaro, the director of the coffee-growers’ association, who they say is inside the garrison of the First Regiment with the rebels. He told me he can’t understand why Clemen hasn’t persuaded any officers to go with a contingent of troops to the Central Prison to liberate his father and the rest of the political prisoners.
I’ve returned to my bedroom to rest for a while. Father is still out in the living room with his friends, drinking whiskey by candlelight, discussing the latest rumors, going over the names of the officers involved in the coup. I keep thinking about how worried Pati must be, how she’ll hear about all this so suddenly and not be able to get in touch with any of us; Betito is at the beach with his friends, perhaps without the slightest idea what is going on. And I think about Pericles, how uncertain things must be at the Central Prison, where, after all, God has seen fit to keep him safe, because if he had been at the Black Palace he would be at the mercy of the general’s fury. I will pray for this Holy Monday to be a good day, when at long last the spell that warlock has cast over our country and over all our lives will be broken.
Holy Monday, April 3
&nb
sp; Today feels like the longest day of my life. I’m amazed I still have the strength to sit here and write, to consign to paper some of the events that are burning inside me as nothing ever has before. The coup failed. My fears became reality: the general took control again, the rebel officers surrendered, Clemen is in hiding, Pericles is still in prison in a very precarious situation, isolated, without any possibility of receiving anything from the outside world. I am home, unable to sleep, tormented by my fears; Betito is sleeping at his friend Henry’s house. Fortunately, the electricity and the telephone have been working normally since noon. Pati has called twice, the poor thing is in so much anguish, she even offered to get on a plane to come help me; I’m afraid all this stress will affect her pregnancy. I’ve also spoken to my mother-in-law, who told me with great sadness that if Clemen gets caught he is a dead man. Two plainclothes policemen have been watching the house since dusk; María Elena saw them when she came back from buying tortillas. In the streets, chaos and panic reign supreme.
Where, dear God, is my poor Clemen now? I have told myself not to think about him, that I must take him out of my mind or the anxiety will destroy me; I keep repeating to myself that there is nothing I can do for him, only God and fate can save him now. The last time we spoke was at one in the afternoon; I managed to get in touch with him at the radio station. He told me they had not lost hope that the infantry and artillery regiments could launch a decisive assault against the Black Palace, though he admitted that a defeatist attitude was beginning to take hold, many with him there at the station had begun to talk about the embassies where they would seek asylum if the coup failed. I asked him what he would do if that happened. He told me he still didn’t know, he was weighing his options, but I shouldn’t worry. He sounded exhausted, almost like a zombie; I assumed he had barely slept and that the excitement and the alcohol had taken their toll. By this time Father and his friends had already given the coup up for lost, he said the rebel officers had been remarkably idiotic: negotiating on the telephone with the Nazi warlock, trying to force him to surrender, when precisely the opposite was really going on — the general was the one tightening the screws on them. By then I had already found out that my father-in-law had publicly announced his full and unconditional support for the general and had angrily condemned Clemen’s actions.
So, the entire city is on tenterhooks, there’s no end to the rumors and hearsay: Colonel Tito Calvo was driving a tank through the streets bragging about how they were going to demolish police headquarters with cannon fire; the pilots had dropped bombs on purpose on the block of the Casino and the Teatro Colón because they didn’t really want to finish off the general, just give him a scare; the ambush of the general failed because the general had infiltrated the ranks of the rebel officers; many vagrants have been killed by gunfire in the vicinity of Parque Libertad; the Nazi warlock has made a pact with the devil, he conducted a black mass in the basement of the palace and will now execute all those who plotted against him; troops from Cojutepeque and San Vicente are marching to the capital from the east and have the support of the people along the way, and they have already taken back the garrison at the Ilopango Airport.
One horrible rumor is that the general lashed out yesterday against poor Don Jorge. They say that once he felt safe in the palace, the first thing he did was order Don Jorge to be tortured; he was then taken out of his cell and executed in the street, where his body was left as a warning to the rebels. It appears they shot Don Jorge and left him for dead, but he somehow managed to survive. Horrific. I’ve called his house to talk to Teresita, his wife, but the line is dead. I pray to God, please, make this be only a rumor.
I tried to get to the Central Prison early this morning, but the same checkpoint that stopped me yesterday was there again today. This afternoon, when it was already evident the rebels had lost, I attempted again, and finally I managed to get through. But it did me no good. Soldiers were surrounding the prison, still afraid of an assault by the rebel forces. I was carrying the basket of food for Pericles; I approached the casemate to ask them to call Sergeant Flores. In vain. Several groups of prisoners’ families were standing around outside; the guards had told them that everything was fine inside the prison, no visits were allowed until further notice, and they should leave, take themselves out of harm’s way. I recognized the mother of Merlos, one of Pericles’s cellmates; her eyes were red from crying, she was drying them with a handkerchief. I feared the worst. I was alarmed and asked her what had happened. She said she was afraid the general would now decide to execute the political prisoners, take his anger out on them. It was the same fear eating away at my insides. I told her what I tell myself: this cannot happen, her son and my husband are innocent, they have been locked up, they have had nothing to do with the plot, played no part in the coup, and had no responsibility for it. Then, when I stopped talking, an image of Clemen struck me full force. She saw it in my face, for she immediately said to me, “Let us pray to God that your son escapes.” I was on the verge of collapsing, crying my heart out right there in the middle of the street, in front of the guards who were watching us and the rest of the families; I felt a huge lump in my throat and two tears fell out of my eyes and down my cheeks. But I managed to control myself. I hastily said goodbye to Doña Chayito, that’s Merlos’s mother’s name, turned around, and made my way back home. After so many years with Pericles I have learned to hold back my tears. But what I didn’t let out in the street, I did at home, in my bedroom behind closed doors, until I felt that I didn’t have a single tear left inside me and that my husband was watching me, frowning severely.
A few minutes after three this afternoon, Father called the house to tell me the rebels had just surrendered. “That warlock broke the backs of those spineless sissies,” he said bitterly; he told me a white flag was flying over the barracks of the First Infantry Regiment. “The elation lasted less than twenty-four hours,” he said. I didn’t know where he was calling from, but I could hear his friends shouting in the background, they were surely drinking and bewailing the turn of events. He told me we now had to find a hiding place for Clemen, help him escape. He asked me if I had spoken to him in the last few hours. I recounted to him the conversation we’d had at one in the afternoon. Then he suggested that Betito stay with them, Mother was hoping he’d spend the night there, the worst thing would be if the warlock’s henchmen decided to take it out on him that his brother had participated in the coup; I told him Betito is at his friend Henry’s house, and he will stay there where he is safe. Father insisted I remain at home, in case Clemen called again. It wasn’t Clemen who called, though, but rather his wife, Mila; it was the third and last time I spoke to her today; she was completely out of her wits, ranting on and on, a whole litany of complaints, insulting Clemen for his total lack of responsibility. She said that neither she nor the children should have to pay the price for that exhibitionist getting mixed up in such stupidity just to impress his secretary at the station, whom she said is his lover. I “turned off the lights,” as Pericles calls it, when one’s mind simply departs from where it doesn’t want to be and doesn’t hear what it doesn’t want to hear, until I heard Mila say that if the general condemns my son to death, he deserves it. “You are talking nonsense, Milita, and you are going to regret it,” I said, and immediately asked her if she had spoken to Clemen in the last few hours. She answered that that “you-know-what” hadn’t called since noon, but that she had taken that opportunity to rub his face in how stupid she thinks he is, just look at what he’s done, even getting his own grandfather, Colonel Aragón, in trouble; she said she told him she’s going to ask for a divorce once everything settles down. I didn’t say a word: it never rains but it pours.
Tyrant Memory Page 4