Tyrant Memory

by Horacio Castellanos Moya

  “Whereas this one, the man himself,” Jimmy says, gesturing with his thumb at Clemen, “the only thing he could do to make himself look like a sacristan was to act like a mongoloid, which is a cinch for him . . .”

  Mono Harris chuckles.

  “Eat shit . . . ,” Clemen says, without losing his sense of humor.

  “Tell him about the drunk . . . ,” Jimmy says, laughing.

  “This asshole came looking for a fight, and I punched him in the gut . . . Scared the shit out of him because he thought he was dealing with some dumb sacristan. So don’t go on about how you’re a better actor than me.”

  “You don’t even come up to here on me, look,” Jimmy says and makes a cutting movement with his hand at the level of his knees. Then he turns to Mono Harris and says boastfully, “One of the soldiers on the train wanted to confess to me.”

  “You’re kidding! That’s incredible! . . . A toast!”

  They toast and drink.

  “What did he confess?”

  “Nothing, in the end he held back, but here at the station he very politely helped me off the train,” Jimmy says, smiling.

  “I don’t believe it !” Mono Harris exclaims.

  “Yup,” Clemen interjects. “‘Thank you so much for everything, Father . . . ,’” he adds, imitating the chubby soldier, and letting out a laugh.

  “The soldiers knew you were coming here?” Mono Harris asks, suddenly wary.

  “Yeah, it was unavoidable,” Jimmy says. “But there’s no problem; they didn’t suspect us at all. And the idea is to get out immediately, as soon as we finish our drinks, if that’s possible.”

  “Which pilot is on duty?” Clemen asks.

  “Pepe Dárdano will be here in a few hours . . .”

  “Perfect!” Clemen exclaims.

  “I’m going to take off this cassock, I’m boiling hot,” Jimmy says.

  “Wait a minute, you plan to leave here by plane?” Mono Harris asks.

  They both nod.

  The expression on Mono Harris’s face has changed.

  “Where to?” he asks, frowning.

  “The American military base in Punta Cosigüina, in the gulf,” Jimmy answers.

  There’s an awkward silence. Mono Harris empties his glass.

  “There’s no problem,” Jimmy explains. “The general doesn’t have any planes. The pilots flew all of them into exile; my troops covered the last takeoff. So nobody can follow us . . . And the officers at the American base are my friends, and they’ll be waiting for us.”

  “The problem isn’t the arrival,” Mono Harris mutters, “it’s the departure.”

  “Why?” Jimmy asks.

  “There’s a National Guard post here at the hacienda, and everybody who flies out has to report to them, with their IDs. That’s the order.”

  Clemen and Jimmy look at each other, taken aback.

  “It can’t be . . . ,” Clemen stammers, his mouth suddenly parched.

  The three sit in silence.

  “There’s got to be another way,” Jimmy mumbles.

  Mono Harris leans over the table to pour himself another glass of whiskey; he looks increasingly concerned.

  “Anyway,” he says, “no pilot is going to want to take you. Whoever does it won’t be able to come back. If he’s caught, he’s a dead man.”

  “I’ll talk to Pepe and convince him!” Clemen shouts excitedly, as if he’d suddenly found the solution.

  Mono Harris turns to look at him, now very serious, and sits up in his chair.

  “I think,” he says, and takes a sip of whiskey before continuing, “the most prudent thing would be for nobody to know you’ve come here. Things are very ugly.”

  “We found out about the executions on the train,” Jimmy says.

  “They say the warlock is going to continue the executions, and you two are on the list of those sentenced to death.”

  Clemen, pale, swallows hard; he drinks down the rest of his second whiskey.

  “That’s why it would be best for us to leave right away,” Jimmy says. “Colonel Stuart is stationed at the base in Cosigüina; he was one of my instructors in Fort Riley. He knew about the coup, he gave us his support, and he told me that if I needed to retreat, I should go there.”

  The atmosphere has turned leaden.

  “I told you: there’s no way you can leave here by air.”

  “There’s no other runway nearby?” Jimmy insists.

  Mono Harris looks out the picture window: workers are loading bales of cotton onto a truck. He rubs his face with his hands, as if he had just woken up.

  “The problem isn’t the runway,” he says. “If we make that flight, we risk the pilot, the airplane, we get the whole hacienda in trouble, and the ones who have to pick up the pieces are us, the owners, Juan and I, and we’ve already got enough problems with the warlock. He’s got us in his sights. It’s only because we are American citizens that he hasn’t fucked with us.”

  “So?” Clemen asks, in anguish, squirming in his chair.

  “So, we have to find another way out of this,” Mono Harris says, pensively. “I’m not going to throw you to the lions . . . Let me make a phone call.”

  He stand up, shakes his head, and walks over to the telephone, on a table in the back of the room.

  “Don’t mention our names, the lines are being tapped,” Jimmy warns.

  “Of course not . . . Don’t worry.”

  Clemen has poured himself another glass of whiskey and is compulsively taking little sips.

  “You’re going to get drunk . . . ,” Jimmy scolds him.

  “Don’t fuck with me, you shit head, I don’t care if you are a bishop. What are we going to do now?”

  At that moment Mono Harris says hello to Don Mincho on the phone, tells him in English that there are some cattle buyers who are very interested in seeing the herd on the island, says he trusts them completely and that they are interested in staying at the house for a few days, is that possible?

  Jimmy and Clemen turn to look, their eyes narrowing.

  “Perfect,” Mono Harris exclaims before hanging up.

  He returns to the table; he empties his glass.

  “What happened?” Jimmy asks, rubbing his hands together.

  “Drink up and let’s go.”

  “Where?” Clemen asks nervously.

  “You, Jimmy, put on your cassock,” Mono Harris says, without paying any attention to Clemen’s question; he’s moving quickly, nervously. “You have to leave here exactly as you came: a priest and a sacristan.”

  “I don’t understand,” Jimmy says. “What’s your plan?”

  “I’m going to take you to Mincho’s island before those soldiers get back here looking for you. You’ll stay there a few days while we figure out a way to get you out of the country.”

  “Can we take the whiskey?” Clemen asks, picking up the half-full bottle.

  Mono Harris agrees with a nod.

  Clemen puts the bottle in this knapsack.

  “I’m going to pack you some clothes in another knapsack,” Mono Harris says, and he quickly disappears down the hallway leading to the bedrooms in the rear.

  “What do you think?” Clemen asks.

  Jimmy has put his cassock back on.

  “If we can’t leave by air, we’ll have to find a way by land or by sea,” he says as he walks over to the window; at the back of the parking lot he sees a soldier standing in the shade of an almond tree, talking to the tractor driver.

  Mono Harris returns with a knapsack.

  “Leave that bottle,” he tells Clemen. “I put a full one here in the knapsack.”

  “We can take both . . .”

  “No, you’d leave me with nothing. And I’m not going to town before tomorrow.”

  Clemen takes out the bottle and places it on the table.

  “If the soldiers come here asking for you, I’m going to have to say something,” Mono Harris says. “Did you tell them why you were coming here?”

>   “No,” Jimmy answers. “But if they’d asked me, I was planning to tell them I was sent here to check out the possibility of building a chapel.”

  “Perfect,” Mono Harris says as he approaches the hat rack.

  “I’m Father Justo and the mongoloid is called Don Tino,” Jimmy says, pointing at Clemen.

  Mono Harris takes a gun out of the cupboard and slips it under his belt.

  “You got another one for me?” Jimmy asks.

  Mono Harris points to the knapsack.

  “We’ll drive to the bay and from there we’ll take the boat to the island,” he says, as he walks to the door and takes some keys out of his pocket. “Along the way you’ll get rid of that cassock and turn into cattle buyers.”

  They emerge into the boiling breath of the afternoon.

  Haydée’s Diary

  Tuesday, April 11

  This morning in the cemetery they executed a young man named Víctor Manuel Marín. I didn’t know him, nor had I ever heard his name. They say he was one of the organizers of the coup, his brother is Lieutenant Alfonso Marín, one of the officers of the Second Artillery Regiment who held out against the counter-coup until the very end. Doña Chayito and Doña Julita, the mothers of Merlos and Cabezas, paid me a visit today; they brought me some delicious guava candy. Doña Chayito told me she knows the Marín family because Víctor Manuel worked at the Tax Collector’s Office, where her husband was the head accountant; she said the young man’s parents are devastated, especially because they discovered that he had been brutally tortured; they pulled out his nails, his teeth, and one eye, and they broke his arms and legs and had to prop him up on sawhorses so he could face the firing squad. According to Doña Chayito, Father León Montoya, who gave him extreme unction and visited his parents this morning to console them, confirmed that he suffered as much as Jesus on the cross. I shudder to think of it.

  Doña Chayito also told me they have met with the mothers of other political prisoners, including those sentenced to death, and they came to invite me to join them at one of their next meetings. But we couldn’t continue the conversation because Raúl and Rosita, my neighbors, dropped by. It turns out Raúl is a professor in the same department where Doña Chayito’s son, Paquito Merlos, as they call him, is studying, and he is two years ahead of Chente. As Pericles always says, the world is as small as a handkerchief. As she was leaving, Doña Chayito told me she’d call me tomorrow to see if I would like to join them.

  Wednesday April 12

  I have just discovered the worst of all infamies: Colonel Castillo, whom Mila is involved with and to whom she speaks so disparagingly of Clemen, was the special military prosecutor at the war council. Since yesterday I’ve been devoured by curiosity, and I didn’t stop till I revealed the treachery. The first thing I did this morning was ask María Elena to wheedle the colonel’s full name out of her cousin Ana; she remembered that when Mila is drunk she calls him Aníbal. The rest was easy, as I remembered having read in the official government newspaper that someone named Colonel Castillo had taken part in the trial. My insides are twisted in knots. I was so enraged I couldn’t control myself: I tried to call her at home and at her parents; it was fortunate I didn’t find her because I would have flown off the handle. Then I went to Mother to tell her what was happening; she was aghast. She asked me if I was absolutely certain; I told her it was highly unlikely for there to be two colonels by the name of Aníbal Castillo. She told me we should keep it to ourselves for now, we had to think very carefully about how we were going to handle the situation; she told me she would tell Father tonight, after they were already in bed, to avoid an intemperate reaction. When I told Carmela, she said perhaps the best thing that could come from such a bad situation would be for that woman to leave Clemen’s life for good, no matter how unforgiveable the treachery. But what about my grandchildren? No matter how hard I try, I have not been able to stop thinking about them: at moments I feel I’m spewing venom. I keep reminding myself that there is justice and that that Harpy’s time will come; then I feel remorse for harboring so much hatred. María Elena made me a mug of lime blossom tea.

  I have been making every possible effort to get them to let me visit Pericles, but all to no avail. It seems “the man” trusts no one and is finding conspiracies hatching even under his own desk. Not a single bureaucrat, moreover, wants to stick his neck out; they are all terrified of coming under suspicion. Father tried to speak to that Chaquetilla Calderón fellow, but his efforts yielded no results. My mother-in-law says I must be patient, for now, Pericles is safe at the Central Prison. This afternoon, I happened to run into Dr. Ávila, the minister of foreign affairs, in front of the Polyclinic: he was there to visit his mother, who recently suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, and I was there to visit Don Jorge. He looked haggard, seemed evasive, as if he were ashamed, and his tie was crooked. I mentioned my troubles and asked him to please intercede on my behalf so I could visit my husband; he begged me to understand that for the time being nothing could be done. Fortunately Don Jorge is beginning to react positively to the treatments and now has a better chance of pulling through.

  Betito has returned from Santa Ana. High school and university classes don’t resume till next Monday, by edict of the government, for fear of student protests, which anyway seem poised to erupt the moment they open the university, according to Chente, Raúl and Rosita’s son, who came by this afternoon to talk to Betito and tell him about the protests being planned; he says students continue to organize despite the curfew and martial law, and those at the medical school, supporters of Dr. Romero, are the most active. Chente is a short young man, very serious and diligent, and he’s full of curiosity; sometimes he comes to talk to Pericles. When we moved into this house, the poor thing fell in love with Pati, but she’s two years older and was already engaged to Mauricio. I suspect Betito is more deeply involved than I had thought. He asked me if I have any idea where Clemen might be hiding; I told him I neither know nor want to know, the fewer people who know the safer his brother is. “If I were Clemen, I’d already be in Guatemala,” he said proudly, then mentioned that he knows secret ways to cross the border in the area around Güija Lake, near his friend Henry’s estate. He told me his cousins in Santa Ana were excited about the coup, many people there think we need to make another big push to finally get rid of the Nazi warlock, that for the next coup the Americans will come and drag him out by his hair. I perceived in his words the enthusiasm of adolescence. I have pleaded with him to act with prudence.

  Doña Chayito called tonight to tell me that tomorrow she is hosting a wedding shower for Leonor, Doña Julita’s daughter, and that I am cordially invited, at three in the afternoon, but since it was organized at the last minute due to recent tragic events, I mustn’t worry about bringing a gift, and she gave me her address in the San Jacinto district, near the market. I was quite surprised, at first I didn’t understand, because I had not thought about them all day, but I was then quite impressed by her audacity. I told her I would definitely attend and would bring a delicious chocolate cake.

  I have never taken part in politics on my own initiative but have always gone along with Pericles, supported his decisions, trusting fully that he knew what he was doing and why he was doing it, always certain that my duty was to remain by his side. So it was when he decided to become the general’s private secretary after the coup d’état that brought him to power, or, two years later, when he accepted the embassy posting in Brussels, or when he decided to break with the government and return home, or when we had to go into exile in Mexico. I will attend the meeting at Doña Chayito’s place in the same spirit; as soon as I am able to speak with Pericles, I will tell him all about it and follow his dictates. I admire women like Mariíta Loucel, who fight in the front lines for their political ideals, but she is French and had a different education. My place is by my husband’s side.

  Thursday, April 13

  I asked Don Leo to take me to Doña Chayito’s house and pick me up an h
our and a half later; first we stopped at the Bonets’ patisserie to buy the chocolate cake. Today has been stifling hot. I wondered what I should wear; I didn’t want to call attention to myself. Fortunately, my life with Pericles has taught me how to adapt to different social milieus. As we drove up the hill toward the San Jacinto church, I had a strange sensation, a kind of dissociation, as if it wasn’t really me who was in that car. I arrived ten minutes late because I stayed chatting with Montse Bonet at the patisserie. Doña Chayito welcomed me with deference, even a bit of relief, or so it seemed to me, as if she had begun to wonder if I was really going to come. I apologized for my lateness and handed her the cake; she led me to an interior patio where Doña Julita, her daughter Leonor, and two other ladies she introduced me to were sitting around a table full of coffee and pastries. They were Doña Consuelo, the wife of Dr. Colindres, and a young and beautiful, though beleaguered, young woman dressed in strict mourning, named Mercedes, the wife of Captain Carlos Gavidia. It was cooler on the patio, thanks to the shade of two trees, a leafy mango and an avocado. I noticed a couple of gifts on the table; for a moment I wondered if this really was a wedding shower and if the political part hadn’t been simply the fruit of my fertile imagination. But soon Doña Chayito explained that Dr. Colindres was arrested after the coup because he belonged to Acción Democrática, the party led by Dr. Romero, and although at first he was held at the Black Palace, it is now believed he has been moved to the Central Prison; she then told me that Captain Gavidia was arrested a few days ago as he was attempting to cross the border into Honduras, near Chalatenango; Merceditas doesn’t know for certain where her husband is being held, though she believes he is still in the basement of the palace; and the captain’s younger brother, Lieutenant Antonio Gavidia, was executed by firing squad on Monday at the cemetery. I crossed myself, greatly dismayed, and gave my condolences to Merceditas, who immediately began to cry, quietly, with so much sorrow I felt my heart breaking. A third brother, Pepe, a civilian, was arrested by the police the very night the coup failed, she muttered, and they’ve heard nothing about him, either. Doña Chayito poured me a cup of coffee, and as I cut the cake, I told them about Pericles and Clemen; I had the impression this was not the first time the four of them had met. Then a servant came to say that someone was at the front door, someone she didn’t know. We all grew quiet and turned to look at Doña Chayito, who immediately stood up and went to the front door. I was nervous; my companions seemed even more so. All we could hear was a melodic bolero playing on the radio in the living room. I asked Leonor if she was really engaged and about to be married; she said she wasn’t, but if the police arrived or someone asked why we were meeting, she would say that she was engaged to Paquito Merlos, Doña Chayito’s son. Our hostess returned looking rather worried: she said it was a man claiming to be a soap salesman, and he was quite insistent that she let him in to show her his wares, but he looked to her like a police informer. I was quite surprised by Doña Chayito’s sangfroid. She went to the living room to turn up the volume on the radio. She then explained that the purpose of the meeting was to organize a committee of mothers and wives of political prisoners in order to pressure for the immediate release of our family members and prevent those found guilty of having participated in the coup from being executed. Doña Chayito is a very outspoken woman: she said several mothers and wives had met previously, but now we must put more effort into organizing ourselves; she indicated that Doña Consuelo will be in charge of maintaining contact with Acción Democrática and certain professional organizations, Merceditas with the families of the officers who have been sentenced to death, and Doña Julita and she with the university students and the employee unions; she asked me if I would agree to pursue contacts with the diplomatic corps. I told her I would gladly try. Doña Chayito then asserted that we must get to work drafting a communiqué demanding a general amnesty as well as the immediate release of all political prisoners. She went into the house to bring paper and a pencil. Doña Consuelo didn’t stop eating the chocolate cake and praising the Bonets’ patisserie; Doña Julita sat very quietly, somewhat absentminded, as she always is when I see her, as if she were Doña Chayito’s shadow, though I did manage to exchange a few words with her, during which I found out her husband is an engineer and works in the Ministry of Public Works, her son is also studying engineering, and the Cabezas and Merlos families are neighbors. Doña Chayito began drafting the communiqué on a piece of graph paper in a notebook; she had in hand a manifesto the university students had written, demanding the release of their fellow students and the end of the general’s dictatorship, and she copied it almost entirely, then added a paragraph asking for amnesty for those who’d received death sentences and wrote at the bottom the name of the Committee of the Families of Political Prisoners. She asked us if we agreed, we all said yes, except Doña Consuelo, who warned that the slogan “Long live the families of political prisoners!” imitating the university students, seemed inappropriate, and might make us sound like communists. Doña Chayito crossed out that sentence and said she would type up several copies, tomorrow morning she would send each one of us a copy, and we should make more copies to distribute to the sectors we were individually responsible for. Everyone agreed it was vitally important for me to get it to the American Embassy as quickly as possible. We drank tamarind juice, finished eating the pastries, and finalized the details; I learned that Doña Chayito and Doña Consuelo are both teachers at the Central Girls School. Doña Julita mentioned that she’d heard a rumor that they are going to allow visits to the Central Prison on Saturday. I didn’t feel the time flying by. Again someone was at the door: we were all frightened, but it was Don Leo coming to pick me up. I asked if anybody wanted a lift home; Merceditas, the poor thing, who had been rather withdrawn during the whole meeting, said she would be grateful. Before we said goodbye, Doña Chayito insisted on giving us bags of avocados, she said that tree produced fruit all year round.