Tyrant Memory

by Horacio Castellanos Moya

  “Is it five thirty or a quarter to six?” he asks. “I wasn’t paying attention. Jimmy . . .”

  “Leave me alone . . . ,” Jimmy says, without moving or opening his eyes. “You’re a real pain in the ass . . .”

  “Don’t be so pigheaded, you’re not going to be able to sleep. Anyway, the priest will be back any minute now.”

  “He told me he’d try to get here by six,” Jimmy explains. “You slept off your hangover all nice and cozy at the American consul’s house, so you’re pleasantly rested. But I spent the night out in the open, don’t forget . . .”

  “What? Weren’t you at the Novoa’s house by the lake?”

  Jimmy sits up, rubs his eyes, and looks at Clemen with irritation.

  “The worst part is that you’re a deaf pain in the ass . . . I never said I slept at the Novoa’s; I told you that Lieutenant Peña and I managed to break through the blockade of enemy troops and escape from the Ilopango Airbase in the late afternoon, then we walked for three hours through the coffee fields to the lake, then hid out near the Novoa’s vacation home until very late at night, always on guard to make sure that nobody took us by surprise, that nobody would even know we were there. Only then did I go to the caretaker’s, whom I’ve known for years, and asked him not to make any noise or tell anybody we were there, and to help us cross the lake. We left in a canoe at three in the morning. Now you understand why I haven’t slept?”

  “Nice guy, that caretaker. Hope he doesn’t rat on you . . .”

  “It won’t matter now.”

  “What if they find the canoe?”

  “What stupid things you think of . . . Is that why you woke me up?”

  “I have a feeling I know that Cayetano Peña . . .”

  “He’s brave, that lieutenant, determined, without him I wouldn’t have been able to get through the blockade . . . I got out of the canoe in Candelaria and walked for two hours toward Cojutepeque; he kept going all the way to the other side of the lake, where he has a friend, near San Miguel Tepezontes.”

  “I hope he made it . . . ,” Clemen says and gets up again, bent over, his neck pressing against the perpendicular ceiling. “And I hope that goddamn priest gets here, my bladder’s about to explode.”

  “That ‘goddamn priest’ is the person who’s saving our necks. Maybe you could learn to show a little more respect.”

  “Don’t start giving me one of your sermons,” Clemen says, pressing his hand against his genitals. “I’ve known Father Dionisio for as long as I can remember.”

  Jimmy has lain back down on his mat; he takes the folded shirt out from under his head and puts it over his face, covering his eyes.

  “What I don’t understand is what the hell you, a cavalry captain, were doing at Ilopango Airbase, instead of leading your troops against the barracks where your general was taking cover. That’s why things turned out the way they did, everything was badly organized, you people did everything ass backwards.”

  Jimmy doesn’t move.

  “Be thankful I’m exhausted,” Jimmy mumbles. “If not I’d smack you for being such an ass. The air force doesn’t have its own troops, and we went to protect the airbase, it’s as simple as that.”

  Clemen has sat down, his knees bent; his legs are moving around restlessly.

  “Maybe there’s a can somewhere I can piss in,” he says, looking around.

  “What a pig. You’ll stink the place up. Don’t you realize there’s no circulation in here.”

  “This is no joke. I can’t hold it any longer,” Clemen says as he crawls over to the corner where the junk is.

  “Keep your voice down, they’re going to hear us,” Jimmy urges.

  Clemen rummages anxiously around through the broken furniture, the rusty pieces of iron, the moldy clothes.

  “Don’t make so much noise.”

  “Fuck you, stop giving me orders. All you military bastards know how to do is give orders.”

  “Stop making so much noise, you dimwit. You’re putting us in danger,” Jimmy insists, still lying down, not moving, his folded shirt covering his eyes.

  “Look what I found!” Clemen exclaims with excitement, lifting up an empty paint can.

  “What is it?” Jimmy asks without budging.

  “A can I can piss in . . . ,” Clemen says as he returns to his mat.

  “That’s disgusting, you’re not going to . . .”

  Suddenly, a pile of junk falls to the ground with a loud crash.

  Jimmy jumps up; his head hits the ceiling.

  “Moron!” he spits out between clenched teeth, furious, and starts to come at him threateningly.

  “It was an accident . . . ,” Clemen says apologetically with a whine, lifting his hands to protect himself.

  At that very instant, in the midst of that tense silence, they very clearly hear someone’s footsteps running from the back of the house.

  “We’ve been discovered,” Jimmy mumbles, still furious, sitting down on his mat. “Let’s see how you explain your stupidity to the priest.”

  Clemen brings his fists to his temples and rubs them, pressing hard, his face twisted in pain and his eyes closed, as if his head were about to explode.

  “I don’t even have to pee anymore,” he says as he pushes the can away and lies down on the mat.

  “What are we going to do?” Jimmy wonders out loud, now looking worried.

  “What?”

  “What if the girl got frightened and has decided to go out and tell someone?”

  “I don’t think they’d go out without the priest’s permission.”

  “I’m not so sure. They might even think it’s the Devil,” says Jimmy as he puts on his white undershirt.

  “You think?”

  “Put yourself in their place: a whole ton of weird noises coming from the roof over the prayer room, over the altar.”

  Jimmy buttons up his olive-green shirt and starts to put on his boots.

  “You’re right,” Clemen says, smiling, now confident again. “They must be scared shitless . . . But what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to go down and tell them we’re doing some work for the priest, repairs, and that they shouldn’t be afraid.”

  “What if there’s someone with them who’s not to be trusted?”

  Jimmy stops to think for a few seconds. Then he takes his watch out of his pocket.

  “It’s five to six,” he says.

  “If you want, let’s both go down, then I can take a leak. But Father Dionisio means what he says, and he made it very clear I wasn’t to go down until he got back.”

  “He told me the same thing,” Jimmy says, indecisively.

  “We don’t want him to get angry and throw us out.”

  “I don’t think he ever would.”

  “Because you don’t know him. Let’s wait five more minutes, and if he doesn’t come, we’ll go down.”

  Jimmy lies down so he can press his ear against the crack in the wooden floor.

  “We’ll wait,” he says, “but if I hear one of the girls about to leave, I’m going to go down and stop her.”

  He moves over to the loose floorboard that covers the entrance to the loft.

  “Let’s keep quiet, then,” says Clemen in a circumspect tone of voice.

  “That’s what I say: keep your mouth shut.”

  The light abruptly turns gray, as if the setting sun had been obscured by a cloud or some foliage; a flock of parrots make a racket as they fly over the house.

  “Soon we won’t be able to see anything,” Clemen says.

  Jimmy reaches for the edges of the board he’ll have to lift in an emergency; he turns and gives Clemen a scornful look, but Clemen doesn’t notice.

  “We were left in the dark like this at the radio station,” Clemen continues, “from one minute to the next they cut our electricity and, that was that, the party was over . . .”

  “Shh . . . ,” Jimmy demands silence.

  “I don’t see how they could ha
ve forgotten to send troops to take over and defend the power station.”

  Jimmy looks at him in disbelief, then anger.

  “You participated in planning the coup,” Clemen continues. “There wasn’t anybody with enough sense to think of taking over and defending the power station?”

  “Are you going to shut up once and for all?” Jimmy mutters.

  “Don’t worry, if the girls haven’t gone out yet they’re not going to, the priest forbids them from going out without permission. They’ll wait and tell him about the noise.”

  Clemen sits down and grabs his genitals again.

  “That was a major fuckup, but it wasn’t ours, it was yours, the civilians,” Jimmy says. “None of you thought you’d need electricity to keep the station running . . .”

  “I can’t hold it anymore,” says Clemen, reaching for the empty can. “I’m going to take a leak.”

  “You’re a pig.”

  “I don’t have time for niceties.”

  On his knees and with his back to Jimmy, Clemen has unzipped his pants and is peeing into the can; as the stream starts to flow, he lets out two short farts.

  “Sorry . . . ,” he says, looking relieved.

  Jimmy shakes his head back and forth in disbelief. Then he puckers up his face in a look of disgust and covers his nose with his palm.

  They hear distinctly the front door opening.

  Jimmy grabs the edges of the board, ready to lift it; Clemen hurries to pull his pants up.

  “I’m here, girls, and so is Doña Chon!” Father Dionisio exclaims in his hoarse voice and his Castilian accent. “Come get the tamales!”

  They hear the flip-flops slapping against the floor, a greeting, the priest giving his blessing to Doña Chon, and the door closing.

  “Father, Doña Ana brought you some cheese a while ago.”

  Clemen and Jimmy remain still and alert, the latter without removing his hand from his nose.

  “Which Doña Ana, my child? There are several.”

  “From the pharmacy, Father.”

  “How nice, because we are going to have two guests for dinner. But how many times have I told you not to open the door to anybody when I’m not here.”

  “I’m sorry, Father . . .”

  “I don’t want it to happen again. Tomorrow I’m going to hear your confession, because the Devil always has his way with you girls.”

  Mockingly, Clemen makes an obscene gesture with his right middle finger into a hole made with his left thumb and index finger.

  “Father . . .”

  “Yes?”

  The voices sound as if they are right beneath them.

  “There are some animals up above . . .”

  “Where, my child?”

  “There, in the roof, Father, in the prayer room . . . We heard some loud banging.”

  “Some rats must have gotten in. We’ll put out some poison. Don’t you worry, my child. Go back to your sister and help her fix dinner. And stay in the back, in the kitchen, until I call you. Don’t disturb me.”

  “As you wish, Father.”

  The flip-flops walk away. The door to the prayer room has been closed. A moment later they hear a light tapping under the floor of the attic.

  “Come down,” the priest says.

  Jimmy picks up the board, climbs down through the hole, resting his feet on the wardrobe, then jumping onto the floor; Clemen follows behind him, being very careful; first he places the can on the wardrobe, then jumps down.

  “What’s that?” the priest asks, curious.

  “I was pissing my pants, Father. Forgive me. I couldn’t hold it any longer. Luckily I found this can.”

  Jimmy makes a face of disapproval.

  “You have no self-control, Clemen. Take it to the bathroom . . . Make sure the girls don’t see you from the kitchen.”

  Father Dionisio is a tall, hefty, ruddy old man with a gray beard, bulbous nose, and knitted brow.

  “Come to my room and I’ll give you some clothes,” he says.

  Clemen goes to the bathroom while the other two enter Father Dionisio’s room. The priest opens a wardrobe, takes out a shirt, a pair of trousers, and a pair of shoes, and says to Jimmy:

  “We’re about the same height. They’ll be a bit roomy on you, but nothing noticeable. Try on the shoes, those boots of yours stink like the Devil, they’ll scare people away.”

  Clemen enters with the empty can.

  “You are the same size as the colonel. I brought you two changes of clothes and a pair of shoes,” the priest says, pointing to a brown paper bag on the floor.

  Jimmy has already quickly changed his clothes, as if he were getting ready to leave right away; Clemen asks the priest if he brought any cigarettes.

  “Look inside the shoes,” the priest says.

  Jimmy anxiously asks him what he’s heard about the situation.

  “I’ll tell you soon. It’s terrible.”

  Clemen has finished getting dressed; he picks some matches up from the priest’s nightstand and lights a cigarette.

  “Father, please forgive me,” says Clemen, “but is there any chance for a beer, a shot of something, anything?”

  Jimmy turns around and looks at him in astonishment.

  “Let’s go to the prayer room. Then I’ll get something for you.”

  After closing the door and gesturing to them to have a seat on one of the benches, the priest speaks quietly and in a grave voice: the coup has been completely defeated, most of the rebel officers are in the hands of the dictator, there’s no news of the civilians who took part, the National Guard is patrolling the roads and conducting searches on the least suspicion; everybody is terrified.

  “But we’re safe here, aren’t we, Father?” Clemen asks.

  “You are not safe anywhere, my son.”

  “I’ve got to get out of the country,” Jimmy says. “If the general gets his hands on me, I’m a dead man.”

  “We are too far away from the border,” the priest says.

  Then he tells them that the head of the National Guard in Cojutepeque is an old enemy of the colonel, and even though the colonel is the governor of the province, he wouldn’t be surprised if the chief were keeping an eye on the colonel, knowing that Clemen participated in the coup and might try to seek protection from his grandfather.

  “We must find somewhere else to hide you, farther away from the city.”

  “But here on the outskirts, nobody would suspect anything,” says Clemen, swallowing hard and taking a few final deep drags off the cigarette.

  “The head of the Guards is shrewd, and a lout,” the priest says and points to the plate under the candlestick where he can stub out his cigarette. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he suspected me because of my friendship with your family, and took advantage of my absence during Mass to come and search the house.”

  “I have plans to leave as soon as possible,” Jimmy says.

  The priest turns to him in surprise.

  “Very good, son. You’ll tell me all about it while we eat dinner, anxiety stimulates my appetite,” the priest says as he gets ready to open the door, then adds, “This will be your last meal down here. From now on you must remain above, I’ll leave your food on the wardrobe, and you can come down at dawn and at night, once the house is all locked up, to take care of your business.”

  “What about the girls?”

  “Don’t worry about them. They are my goddaughters. They talk only to people I give them permission to talk to, and they never go out without me. I will forbid them from coming into the prayer room. And they won’t know you are here. Anyway, they spend most of their time in the back of the house, in the kitchen, the washroom, and their quarters.

  The priest goes out onto the patio and claps several times, his signal that dinner should be served; Jimmy and Clemen pass into the dining room and sit down across from each other at the rectangular table.

  “The refreshments, Father?” Clemen asks.

  “All in due
time, son,” the priest says.

  He opens a cabinet and takes out a bottle of rum; Clemen’s face lights up. The priest pours out three glasses and sits down at the head of the table.

  Two girls, just barely adolescent, short and thin and with indigenous features, enter the dining room carrying plates of food. They say “good evening” but keep their eyes down, not daring to look any of the men in the face. They place beans, rice, fried plantains, cheese, cream, and tortillas on the table.

  “What if someone knocks on the door while we’re eating?” Jimmy asks, worried, once the girls have left.

  “Everybody in the congregation knows not to disturb me during dinner.”

  “What about the National Guard?” Jimmy insists. “Is there a back exit through the patio?”

  The priest, who at that moment was helping himself to some plantains, suddenly looks at him with fear; Clemen gulps down his whole glass of rum.

  “You would climb into the loft immediately and without making a sound,” the priest says after recovering his composure. “But I don’t think they’ll come tonight; they’re only now getting organized. Eat quickly, then go up.”

  Nervous, but without saying another word, they eat their fill.

  “What’s the plan you mentioned, my son?”

  “To go east as soon as possible, Father. My idea is to reach the Gulf of Fonseca. I have a couple of friends at the American base there.”

  “The roads are all blocked,” the priest explains. “National Guard soldiers are patrolling in pairs and the regional forces are everywhere, demanding documents from anybody they don’t know, and they check the names against the list of coup participants that was wired to all the command bases in the country this morning. Your names are on that list, that’s what the colonel told me.”

  “May I pour myself another one, Father?” Clemen asks; from the look on his face it’s clear he is undergoing a panic attack.

  “Last one . . . Otherwise you’ll have to relieve yourself in the middle of the night.”

  “We have to find a way for me to leave,” Jimmy says.

  “For you to leave together,” the priest says, still with his mouth full.

  Jimmy and Clemen look at each other in surprise.

  “I don’t want to leave, Father,” Clemen says.

  “And I don’t want him coming with me,” Jimmy adds.