Tyrant Memory

by Horacio Castellanos Moya

  I am going to bed; I can’t keep my eyes open any longer. I’ve left a note for Betito on the dining room table, asking him not to forget to come give me a good-night kiss.

  Sunday May 7

  They killed Juan’s son! The police fired into a group of boys as they were leaving his house and killed Chepito White. Betito was there, heaven forbid, with Henry, Flaco, and the rest of their friends. I thank God nothing happened to my son. Poor Chepito! He was only seventeen years old, what a terrible tragedy. That evil warlock! It’s not enough for him to kill his own comrades-in-arms, now he orders the slaughter of innocent children . . . Betito is very upset: he watched his friend bleed to death. My poor child. The things we are fated to see, Lord . . . When we heard the news, we all poured into the streets in outrage. The Whites are Americans, one of the best families in El Salvador; they say Ambassador Thurston has gone to demand the resignation of that murderer. I have rushed home to change into mourning clothes so I can attend the wake.

  (Midnight)

  The warlock must fall soon, very soon, unless he decides to kill us all! Father and his friends say it is a matter of hours now that the entire cabinet has tendered its resignation. That’s the least they could do. Not another soul could fit in the Whites’ house; when I went outside to get some air I couldn’t believe my eyes: thousand and thousands of people were filling several blocks in every direction, as if all the inhabitants of the city had come out to repudiate the general. Carlota and Luz María and I wandered around, taking it all in. All our friends and acquaintances were there, entire families, even babies; many couldn’t even make it into the Whites’ house, though they tried. The university students set up security to keep the crowd organized and avoid disturbances; they even protected the houses of the ministers in the neighborhood, like that of Don Miguel Ángel and Don Rodolfo Morales himself, where they say the agent was standing when he shot Chepito. The police have remained in their barracks, warlock’s orders. The burial will be tomorrow at ten in the morning; the whole country has come to a grinding halt. Uncle Charlie told us that Pan Am is cancelling all its flights. I spoke with my sister Cecilia from Carlota’s house: she said that people in Santa Ana are also furious and have taken to the streets, city employees have gone on strike, and tomorrow the city will shut down. Luz María told me that late this afternoon she went with some friends to the house of the manager of the railroads, an old friend of the family’s, to convince him that no trains should run to the interior of the country tomorrow; she said the man was dismayed by Chepito’s murder, impressed that young society ladies were so dedicated to the cause, and he assured them he will make sure the engineers don’t leave the station. When I got here, I met up with Chente; we hugged each other as if we were friends of the same age, as if he wasn’t as old as my children; I was so happy to see him safe and sound. These young people are so resilient; Betito didn’t want to come home, he said he was going to stay awake the whole night, with his friends, doing whatever there was to do. Don Leo brought me home. I must sleep a bit. María Elena told me Pati has been calling, very concerned. It’s too late now. I will call her early tomorrow, before I leave for the funeral.

  Monday May 8

  The warlock resigned! He announced it over the radio, at seven tonight, while thousands and thousands of us stood in the plaza in front of the National Palace, where we had gone en masse after Chepito’s funeral. I was with María Elena and Doña Chayito, next to the cathedral, when we heard the news. After embracing each other, surrounded by cries of joy and the cheering crowd, we left quickly for the Central Prison. There were droves of us gathering in front of the gates to demand the release of our family members. The prison guards were terrified; they took cover and said their chiefs weren’t there and they could not make any decisions. We didn’t cease with our demands, with slogans and chants, which were answered by the prisoners inside. There was a festive atmosphere; even the security guards were joking around and celebrating. Then Sergeant Flores appeared, he said he had just spoken on the phone with Colonel Palma, who said the prisoners would not be released until tomorrow, just as soon as the order signed by the new minister had arrived. Not one of us wanted to budge until our family members were released, but then I realized that the best thing would be to find Father so his friends would put pressure on the new minister. We went back to the plaza. We found Carmela, Chelón, and many other friends, all happy and celebrating. I ran into Chente, Fabito, and Raúl, who explained to me that negotiations to form a new cabinet will take all night, the strike will continue until the warlock leaves the country. I came home to call Pati and tell her what was going on, the poor thing was quite worried there in Costa Rica. I was about to pick up the handset when I got a call from Mila. My God, the woman was completely drunk! I hung up immediately because I have no desire for this joyous moment to be spoiled in any way. I told Pati that her father will come home tomorrow and her brother can now come out of hiding, wherever he may be, as soon as they declare the amnesty. God has answered my prayers!

  Part 2

  The Lunch (1973)

  SARPEDON: Nobody ever kills himself. Death is destiny.

  —Dialogues with Leuco, Cesare Pavese

  Old Man Pericles called at ten thirty in the morning. Carmela answered the phone: surprised to hear his voice, she invited him over to eat, telling him she was making a casserole he would love. A bit apprehensive, I took the handset: he told me he needed to talk to me; he wanted to know if it was a good time for me. I asked him where he was calling from. He said he was in the public phone booth in front of the hospital. I told him Carmela had already invited him, and he should come without delay. I wanted to believe his voice sounded as it always did: a stranger to dismay. When I hung up, Carmela questioned me by raising her eyebrows; I must have given her a look of resignation.

  I returned to the terrace and my rocking chair, where I spend my mornings, but I couldn’t take up my reading again. Old Man Pericles was barely two years old than me, and his time was coming. I felt uneasiness waft over me like a light breeze from the patio. I got up and stretched. Then I went to my studio, to my writing desk, and reread the notes I’d written at dawn. I was thinking that what I needed was a scarecrow to scare off the crows in my mind.

  A short while later, I thought I heard Carmela in the living room dialing the phone. I assumed she was calling María Elena, the Aragóns’ maid, the only person who now lived in the house with Old Man Pericles. Carmela whispered so I wouldn’t hear; I disapprove of her meddling in other people’s lives, fretting over the old man as if he were a defenseless child and not a seventy-five-year-old adult.

  It would take Old Man Pericles approximately forty-five minutes to get to the house. We live at the top of the mountain, across the street from the last bus stop, in front of the entrance to Balboa Park, which is bustling every Sunday with people who come up from the city. The house is small, but more than enough for two old folks like Carmela and I; the patio abuts the most heavily forested section of the park. The air is clean and the night sky is awe-inspiring. We’ve been living here almost fifteen years. It is true, the area is getting more and more crowded. There’s more noise: during the day, youngsters play on the street, and buses arrive and depart every twenty minutes. But at night, silence takes hold, broken only by the chirping of the crickets.

  Old Man Pericles would take a bus from Rosales Hospital to downtown, then get on the number 12 bus, which would bring him here. Once a month, at least, he came for lunch, whenever he was in the country — and not in jail or in exile, which fortunately he hadn’t been for the last year and a half. The last time was when he was stopped by customs at Ilopango Airport, interrogated, then immediately deported by plane to Costa Rica. The press said the authorities had prevented a well-known communist from entering the country and bringing money from Moscow to finance subversive activities. I told myself that some perverse fear must be eating away at people who can treat an old man this way.

  Once in a while, at
dawn, I still write a few lines in my diary, I jot down a verse, an aphorism; in the mornings, as the sun is rising, I draw, make sketches, sometimes just a few lines; toward evening, I like to pick up my brushes, stand in front of the picture window overlooking the park, and contemplate the swath of green that joins the deep blue. For more than fifty years such idleness has been my vocation. Old Man Pericles always said that no art makes sense; I never argued with him, though on one or another occasion a crack would show up in his hard shell, and he’d admit to having “sinned,” that is, written a few verses. Never, of course, would he have read them to me: he would say that this business of lifting up one’s tail feathers to display one’s rear end is only for peacocks, not leathery old birds. “Bitter ones,” I would answer, and he would just smile, because I’d reminded him that at the beginning he too had illusions, the muse of poetry had also tempted him, but he had succumbed to a different temptation, the one he called “the perfidious wench” — wretched politics.

  Carmela entered the studio, walked up to the desk where I was sitting and digressing; she placed her hand on my shoulder and offered me a glass of fresh watermelon drink. She also had not stopped thinking about Old Man Pericles. Fifteen days before he’d confided in us that he had just been diagnosed with lung cancer. We were sitting in the rocking chairs on the terrace, drinking coffee after lunch. And he said, without any preamble and without any particular emphasis, while smoking, that they had told him that morning at the hospital, the exam results in hand. “No return,” he said with a grin, words I remember precisely because they were the same two words he would use whenever he wanted to mock the possibility of the eternal return, an idea I sometimes liked to entertain.

  But the doctor had told him they could treat him to prevent the spread and that he should return in fifteen days for his first session. That’s why, as the sun was getting hotter and hotter, we waited to find out what was going on.

  “What could have happened, why did he leave the hospital so soon?” Carmela muttered behind me.

  I asked her if she had spoken to María Elena. She had been working for them forever, Haydée even brought her with them once when they went into exile in Costa Rica.

  “She told me she thought he was at the hospital. He left the house early this morning, carrying a bag with his pajamas and a few toiletries, ready to check in for his treatment. She was surprised when I told her he had called us and was on his way here.”

  “Maybe there was some delay,” I said.

  María Elena also told her that in the last few days Old Man Pericles had been even more withdrawn than usual, he ate little, and he barely left the house, spending all his time in his office with the door closed; his cough had gotten worse.

  It now feels as if I’ve always known him, because memory is deceptive and attaches itself capriciously to things. But it must have been around 1920, shortly before I married Carmela. Old Man Pericles was already married to Haydée, and Clemente was about three years old. Carmela and Haydée were classmates, neighbors, friends in the same club.

  As for Pericles, all I remember from those days was his military haircut, his upright bearing, his stern gaze, and his wrinkled brow, as if he were already old. He was a second lieutenant in the cavalry, a graduate of the military academy. He was following in the footsteps of his father, who was then a lieutenant colonel. He would, however, suddenly abandon his military career and enroll in the university to study law. As he would say, this was his first insubordination: the eldest son’s break from paternal authority. An insubordination against the military world of his father, which as the years passed, would become the central theme of his life. “They’d already passed me the baton when I saw the folly of continuing in that world,” he once told me. “That’s my story.”

  The moment I met Haydée, on the other hand, stands out perfectly clear in my memory. It was an afternoon at Carmela’s family’s house during our courtship: a slender redhead with milky-white skin, freckles, and green eyes, Haydée was sitting on the sofa holding a cup on her lap. Dazzled, I reminded myself she was Carmela’s best friend, the one I had heard so much about, the wife of Second Lieutenant Aragón, the mother of the baby my future mother-in-law was holding. A thought slipped past me: Haydée could have been the girl for me.

  Not even half an hour had passed since Pericles had called when there was a knock on the door. I told myself it was impossible for him to have gotten here so quickly, unless somebody had driven him. But it was Don Tobías, the postman. Twice a week he came to deliver mail to these last houses along the highway beyond which is the enormous park and, further on, the uninhabited highlands. He was a thin, short man with a narrow, Cantinflas-style mustache, and was perspiring; he had been delivering the mail in this area for five years. Carmela invited him in, as always, to have some fresh watermelon drink. The letter was from Maggi, our only daughter; Carmela opened it eagerly while Don Tobías was enjoying his refreshment, then she began to read it, some parts out loud. Maggi wrote about some late cold spells and the miraculous arrival of spring, about her companions at the convent in Maryland, the pastoral work she so much enjoys, and her recent trip to Baltimore.

  Don Tobías asked us if we’d heard the latest news: the authorities had learned that the big blue house at mile nine had been inhabited by a guerrilla group for several months. He said he couldn’t believe his ears when he heard it on the radio news that morning. He had not delivered any mail to that address that whole time; he delivered the utility, water, or telephone bills to a post office box; there was nothing unusual about that, many people in the neighborhood preferred to receive their personal mail in a box in the city, given how remote this area is. I told him we had also heard the news on the radio, and fortunately the house had already been vacated by the time the authorities burst in, and there were no victims to mourn.

  “Hard to believe the things that are starting to happen,” Don Tobías said as he handed the glass back to Carmela; he wiped off his mustache, thanked us, and said goodbye.

  Carmela read the letter again, then she handed it to me. I went back out to the terrace to sit down in the rocking chair. The temperature was rising; the dry season was in its final gasps, the earth was parched and the vegetation withered, and we still had at least a week to go before the first rains. At the end of the letter, under her signature, Maggi drew the same drawing she has been drawing ever since she was a little girl: the sun with a bird in the middle. She was about to turn fifty. I put the letter aside; I offered my gratitude to the invisible ones that my daughter was still alive. Clemente had been murdered a year before, and Old Man Pericles had taken it badly, very badly, even though he tried to convince himself of the contrary. Clemente, the eldest son, had died unreconciled with his father.

  One night, as he was leaving an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in the Centroamérica district of San Salvador, he was shot in the back. At first we thought it was a political assassination because the country was in the turmoil of the elections. Old Man Pericles was still in exile in Costa Rica; the authorities gave him permission to return. They never caught the culprit, and I assume the case has been shelved. According to hearsay, it was most likely a powerful military officer’s act of revenge for a cuckolding. From the time he was a young man, Clemente had had a knack for getting into trouble over women.

  A few days after the funeral, Old Man Pericles came over and confessed to being plagued by contradictory feelings: on one hand, his grief at Clemente’s death; and on the other, his blind rage, at him, the world, life. That’s when I told him that by some strange law that seems to follow a swinging, pendulum-like movement, children always position themselves at the opposite extreme of where their parents want them to be, and the more foolishly we try to determine their futures, the further they go from where we wish them to be. I’m the perfect example: I’m an agnostic, awash in esoteric ideas, always having disdained the emptiness of Catholic rituals and rejected the corruption of the Church, and I’ve had to accept that my onl
y daughter became a nun, out of her own free will and vocation.

  “The best proof, Old Man, that life makes decisions to spite us,” I told him.

  But Old Man Pericles was a hard nut to crack.

  “The difference, Chelón, is that you believe there’s something beyond this, an afterlife, that’s why you can forgive. I don’t,” he said.

  “You don’t believe in the afterlife or you can’t forgive?”

  “Neither . . . ,” he said, as if to settle the matter.

  “You still can’t forgive Clemente for not being like you?” I insisted. “Perhaps he simply broke from your concept of the world in the same way you broke from the colonel’s.”

  Old Man Pericles wrinkled his brow.

  I was tempted to tell him that sometimes what we most hate and never forgive in those around us is some hidden part of ourselves we neither recognize nor accept, but the old man just would have looked at me scornfully and asked where I had left my cassock.

  Old Man Pericles used to call Clemente “that blundering fool,” a way of mitigating his disappointment in his firstborn, for whom he’d had such high expectations. Clemente participated in the attempted coup against the dictator in April 1944. At the time, he was condemned to death by firing squad but miraculously managed to escape. So great must have been his terror that, from then on, he foreswore politics and for the rest of his life supported military governments.