by R. M. Koster
They entered smiling, full of congratulations. Pledges of support and helpful suggestions (deviously contrived, cunningly veiled) as to how the new head of government should proceed. To promote the national welfare, of course, of course, though each was only after his own advantage. Mandragon let them mill and chum about him, grinning and nodding like a perfect moron, while white-jacketed waiters passed them drinks and tidbits. Then he begged them to take their places at the table, confessed his ignorance of the exact state of the nation, and hoped they might inform him, one by one, each on the area of his responsibility. First was Don Ignacio Hormiga, the minister of finance. As he opened his mouth, Mandragon punched up SHAME. Don Ignacio at once resigned and began confessing.
His cabals, intrigues, schemes, conspirings, plots; his disloyalties to the former governments he’d served in; the minor accommodations he’d made with the late dictatorship; the swindles he’d swung during his days as a banker—the sort of compromises and corner-cuttings that few men of affairs live very long without making, none of which had bothered him much before but which now made him writhe with shame and feel unworthy. He even confessed that his wife, his lovely Irene (God rest her soul!), had been outrageously unfaithful to him, a new lover every month for twenty-five years—not much of a revelation in itself since everyone at the table had been to bed with her (excepting, of course, Your Worship, Mr. Prime Minister), since all the world knew of Irene’s flagrant fuglings, but (the point was) Don Ignacio had known also, had looked the other way, had put up with them, in a manner scarcely befitting a Tinieblan, much less a minister of state. He would have confessed even more, but Dr. Armando Loza, the minister of planning and development, interrupted to tender his own resignation and confess his own shame. (Don Ignacio did in fact continue, but in a low stammer drowned by Dr. Loza’s wails, and then, since he’d resigned and no one was listening, got up and left the room and, still confessing, wandered out among the journalists in the hallway, clutching them by the lapels of their jackets, spilling the rest of his shame into their notebooks.)
Dr. Loza confessed his schemes against Doña Angela, and the intrigues he’d begun concocting against Your Worship, and went on ungarbaging his heart without restraint. Of fantasies mainly. Armando Loza was an intellectual, and what he’d done (padded the bibliography of his thesis, for instance) was small compared to what he’d daydreamed of doing. Turning Tinieblas into the ideal state, for example, which naturally involved murdering half the populace and enslaving the other half for generations. He had shameful daydreams aplenty and could have gone on all night confessing them, but licentiate Edgardo Luciérnaga interrupted him. He gaveled Loza’s bleatings to a murmur by leaning forward and, bashing his smooth, shiny forehead three, four, five times on the smooth, shiny surface of the table. Then he resigned and spewed out his own shame, even bed-wettings that plagued his adolescence, while Loza, still murmuring, got up and wandered out.
One by one the ministers resigned. Minister after minister made his confession. As much as he could there at the conference table, the rest to the reporters waiting outside. All the while Mandragon grinned and nodded. Later he collected the reporters—against their will really, since all had juicy stories to write and file—and announced that he would appoint a new cabinet, but only after due consideration, and for the present would handle all the portfolios himself.
At ten the next morning he received the deputies, the fifty-three honorable members of the chamber. Who were more than ever aware of their own importance, or (as they put it to themselves and to each other) of the grave responsibilities to the republic it was their sad lot to bear in these troubled times. With a president suddenly dead at the start of his term. With his successor handing control to some kind of mystic. With the cabinet resigning on masse in an orgy of breast-beating. They were the only stability left in the country. The Tinieblan people were singularly fortunate to have elected levelheaded representatives.
Who’d put things back in place, no doubt of that. Who’d settle things down and govern—after all someone had to. By calm, considered steps, no hasty action.
The deputies bustled about harumphing at each other till they were shown into Mandragon’s presence.
Mandragon chose not to overawe them by rising ceilingward. He received them already levitated, cushion and all. He spoke no welcome, made no introduction, but at once began describing the new Tinieblas that his regime would midwife into being—a land without want or conflict, a land of ease and frolic, where every man was a prince, every woman a queen. As he spoke a dawny aura rosed the ballroom. A carpet of fleecy cloud billowed the floor. It fluffed soothingly about the deputies’ ankles, then took body and lifted them, till they all sat in the air at Mandragon’s level. The deputies smiled like little children.
It was all, Mandragon told them, perfectly simple. They themselves could bring it to pass. They had only to vote Dred Mandeville a refuge. Then the billions would come pouring in. No Tinieblan need work unless he cared to. Ticamalans and Costaguanans would be imported to do the bothersome, degrading jobs. Dred’s billions would be invested in Tinieblas, and every citizen would have a share.
At these words each deputy was instantly convinced that the best shares would go to the people he represented, or into his own pocket if he happened (like some) to be the greedy sort. They looked at Mandragon and saw the new Tinieblas. Each fashioned it according to his whim, and each believed in it completely.
Mandragon gentled them down and then dismissed them. The deputies rushed from the palace, rushed to the chamber, and unanimously voted Dred Mandeville citizenship. Then they threw themselves into a celebration that lasted until dawn the next day.
It was just as well they enjoyed themselves while they could. Money poured in all right, but not a cent was actually invested. Every drop of those squeezings went to Angela. For the moment, though, everyone was happy. That evening Mandragon went on a nationwide hookup and told everyone about the new Tinieblas. As he spoke, images of peace and plenty played in each listeners and viewer’s mind. Everyone visioned the future he most longed for, and everyone believed it was on the way. Level-headed skeptics jubilated. Gristled cynics beamed and wept for joy. Then Mandragon made a progress round Tinieblas, to glut his hollowness on the people’s praise.
For almost a year now since the lifting of the drought and the fall of Genghis, rumors about Mandragon had been circulating. His isolation had fostered them to legend. Actual deeds (which were marvelous enough) had been refashioned in the public mind into prodigies even more marvelous and more in line with people’s yearnings, which tended mainly toward material wealth. Mandragon, they said, had multiplied the herds of Otán ranchers, had given Remedios planters three harvests a year. Mandragon had fed an entire tribe of Selva Trópica Indians from one 10-pound sack of beans. It sat on the porch of the chief’s house, and everyone went and scooped out all the beans he wanted. Six months had passed, and the sack still wasn’t empty. Mandragon had added five zeros to the bank balance of a widow in Bastidas, and when the honest woman pointed out the change, said it must be an error, the manager assured her that the funds had been duly transferred from Lebanon and were on hand in her name. Others had been millionaired in the same manner. Mandragon had tapped the Manducos’ secret hoards and redistributed their thievings to those who’d suffered most under their rule. And more tales in this vein, so when Mandragon emerged from his Otán isolation (and from his three hothouse weeks with Angela in the palace), prime minister of the nation, head of the government, with the paradise blueprint of the new Tinieblas—the whole land to be suddenly greasy with un-worked-for wealth—the people ascribed the coming blessings to him and abandoned whatever they were doing and flocked to pay their benefactor homage.
Down from the jungled hills, up from the llanos. On foot, in buses, horseback, muleback, burroback. To every town along Mandragon’s route. In Córdoba, La Merced, and Belém people slept in the streets because the houses and patios couldn’t contain the floo
d. On the night before Mandragon arrived in Puerto Ospino the alameda there was carpeted with sleeping pilgrims so that one might have walked from one end to the other without stepping on ground, and in Angostura, where it downpoured, the Guardia commander had to open his jail in response to public outcry so that some of the little children could sleep in the cells. The population of Bastidas quintupled. All the adjacent hinterland emptied out. Indians, peasants, peons; cane-choppers, copra-choppers, banana-choppers; ancients, adults, toddlers, infants in arms.
More remarkable even than the crowds was the spirit that attended Mandragon’s progress, that traveled two or three days ahead of him and hit whatever spot he meant to reach next. All business stopped and everybody feasted. Townspeople feasted each other and invited in the pilgrims from the countryside. Huge quantities of foodstuffs were prepared, much more than could be consumed despite the influx. Every house had a permanent feast in progress, and almost-full platters were dumped and the food thrown out so that new servings could be heaped upon them. People gave away personal possessions, pressed heirlooms on casual acquaintances and strangers. Merchants gave away their trade stocks, cantinas served free drink, ranchers butchered their herds and held mass barbeques. Why not? Everyone was soon going to be rich. Everyone tried to get rid of as much as he could on the unconscious conviction that the more he got rid of now the richer he’d be. As quickly as possible. The sooner everything was gotten rid of, the sooner the new Tinieblas would arrive.
Besides food and drink, love also was in abundance. Sexual restraints dissolved in a way not seen even during carnival, and suddenly every man had plenty of women, every woman had plenty of men. People made love at whim with whoever they felt like—out in the open if that was where the urge struck them; under the table while other people ate. No man begrudged another his wife or his daughter. No woman felt the slightest twinge of jealousy if one of her gossips pleasured her husband or her son. It was as if everyone had decided that the more love was made the sooner the new Tinieblas would be born.
Yet along with this exuberance went austerity. When people weren’t feasting, they fasted. When they weren’t making love, they put on sackcloth. Smeared their brows with ashes, raked their fingernails across their cheeks. To mortify the flesh and cleanse the spirit. To make themselves worthy to behold the new Tinieblas. Wherever Mandragon stopped, the throngs that greeted him displayed this strange blend of penitence and rejoicing, and without any prompting, from one frontier of the republic to the other, people took up a new reckoning of time, counting this as the Year One and beginning the calendar with the day of Mandragon’s nationwide address, with the revelation of the new Tinieblas.
Mandragon went by car (in the huge, open-topped, Hochgesäss Kaiserwagen despotmobile that General Manduco had ordered and then never ridden in for fear of being snipered), with swarms of Guardia cyclists fore and aft but at the slowest snail-crawl they could manage without tipping over. At every town, however small, he stopped and got down, glutting on the people’s adulation. He mingled with the homagers, let them cheer him; let them hold babies up to see him, and reach in to touch his garments, and kneel down to slobber kisses on his bare feet. At Mandragon’s approach people dropped in spontaneous seizure and began prophesying the new Tinieblas, each according to his personal vision but always along the theme of unworked-for wealth. Some fell to the ground at the sound of his escort’s sirens and lay as though dead, without pulse or movement, while strange voices spoke from their open, immobile lips. Of silken hammocks on ivory verandas. Of bejeweled wondercars juggernauting down golden freeways. Children shrieked about icecream glaciers. Indians who scarcely knew Spanish articulated words that they themselves didn’t understand. Mandragon’s presence brought mass hysteria.
Which, in turn, drugged him to illuminate ecstasies. He built mirages of the new Tinieblas on the horizon: mile-high pink marble skyscrapers with silver domes; golden freeways flashed with jeweled wondercars. He projected full-color visions across the sky. And these acts intensified the frenzy vortexed about him.
Sometimes, though, the throng would abruptly fall silent, would draw back from Mandragon in deferential awe. Mandragon would proceed then at stately paces, head high, face somber and severe. Pace by pace down the gap that opened before him, the sky grown suddenly dark and crackled with lightning. Through the death-silent town, back to his car. And then drive slowly off. The mournful wail of his escort floated behind him. All his progress round Tinieblas was touched with this strange blend of wild license and solemn dignity.
In this way the Tinieblan people received Mandragon, and hailed him as their savior, and paid him homage. And Mandragon glutted on it and stayed hollow. But in every part of the country there were minorities (always small, sometimes three people in a whole town) who didn’t accept the dream of the new Tinieblas, who didn’t believe. For the most part these people stayed home and kept their mouths shut, but believers nonetheless grew aware of them, noticed they didn’t feast or make love in public, or give away their prize possessions, or share their wives. Believers missed these people at the orgies of praise and deference that greeted Mandragon—or, rather, later on they thought of Doña Fulana and old Mengano and realized they hadn’t been there. Then they’d go and smoke the heretics out. A certain number didn’t have to be questioned but went around telling folks they were crazy. The whole thing was an idiot delusion. Nobody gets anything for nothing. The world just doesn’t work that way. The first reaction was almost always amazement: What was wrong with Mengano, why couldn’t he see? But this gave way very quickly to anger and hatred, as if the coming of the new Tinieblas (on which believers would serenely stake their lives) was somehow threatened, might even be ruined, if someone doubted. So that unbelievers were insulted and abused. Some were beaten up, some were driven out. Some were murdered. And those who weren’t injured were sneered at and lorded over and terrorized.
A person here and there, sometimes a family. Sometimes a tough old matriarch and all her kin. Sometimes a priest and a fragment of his congregation—though most of the priests were quick to accept Mandragon and find ways to square Scripture’s revelation with his. (With the revelation he was peddling to the country. He didn’t believe it—except during brief terms of illuminate ecstasy, when his worshipers’ hysteria got to him. He knew that all the squeezings would go to Angela, that no one was going to be a prince or a queen.) The only large concentration of unbelievers was Mandragon’s tribe. Not that they’d renounced him: much the reverse. They doubted the coming of the new Tinieblas because they clung to Mandragon’s original prophecies.
Mandragon stayed two nights in Santander, the provincial capital. While he was there, the chief of the military district, Major Bartolomeo Chuzo, asked an audience and spoke to him about his tribe.
“About your people, señor Primer Ministro. We’re doing our best to protect them, but it’s not easy. A few of them got roughed up the other night.”
“What people?”
“Your people, Your Worship. The ones you brought in last year.”
“Major, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Your bunch of kids, señor Primer Ministro. In the pasture over by the Remedios line. They say there’s not going to be any new Tinieblas, and that makes folks angry. We’re doing our best, but some of your people got hurt.”
“My people are the people of Tinieblas. I have no others, Major.”
“Do you mean, señor Primer Ministro, that you’ve given up that bunch?”
“Major, I still don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Very good, sir! I understand, sir! I read Your Worship’s meaning loud and clear! And if Your Worship will pardon me a private opinion, I think you’ve done the patriotic thing. I take it, then, sir, that Your Worship does not wish us to make any special effort on that bunch’s behalf.”
“You serve the Tinieblan state and people, Major. All are equal here before the law. No one has any right to special treatment, certa
inly not those who doubt this country’s future.”
“Sí, señor! Entendido!”
Major Chuzo saluted and withdrew. Mandragon’s tribe was scattered on the wind. Their error was in keeping faith. Mandragon had forgotten all about them.
Mandragon drew his progress out four weeks. He inched around the country, pushing mass hysteria before him. He glutted on the people’s adulation. He approved their rage of penitence and license, let it infect him, intensified it by his acts. The new Tinieblas was coming, was on its way. The frenzy spread before him from province to province, until only the capital remained calm. People there heard reports from the interior and wondered at them, but went about their ordinary business in a mood of slightly puzzled optimism. They too knew that the new Tinieblas was coming, but the fever of it hadn’t struck them yet.
The government idled along. The Guardia commandants shared their terror with their subordinates, passed as much of it as they could along to them, so that all the plots and intrigues ceased immediately. For the rest, they kept order in the normal fashion. At the ministries officials continued standing policy and put off consideration of new matters until the head of government’s return, chastened by the example of their former chiefs to curb their ambitions and tend to official business. As for the deputies, they had voted a recess, had returned to their districts, were feasting and fasting along with everyone else.
At El Opulento the undead corpse of Dred Mandeville tottered among the flickering data screens, spoke by phone, sent messages by telex, ran his empire. And responded readily to Angela’s squeezes. Issued stock options to her, transferred funds, and (for the big wads, for the superswindles) set up huge Tinieblan investment trusts with the president of the republic as their executor. So that his satraps didn’t get suspicious but admired and respected him all the more. The old creep was clearly in charge down there in Spickburg, getting himself naturalized overnight and now evidently swinging all sorts of sweet deals in cahoots with the president. And picking up lots of PR bennies too by developing an underdeveloped nation. That’s what you call it these days when you take advantage of cheap boogie labor. Getting some decent press for once in his life. Mandeville money flooded into Tinieblan banks. And drained out just as fast, went sluicing through, on its way to Angela’s secret accounts, but she said it was going to purchase heavy industry and would soon flow back in the form of a steel mill from Japan, a Canadian shipyard, an oil refinery from Texas. An entire automobile plant was coming from Germany—to use the steel from the Japanese mill, of course. In sixty-seven oceangoing freighters. Machinery was being loaded in Hamburg right now. Angela squeezed pelf from her pet zombie, and waited expectantly for Mandragon’s return.