by Jeremy Scott
Flor believed that her and Rubi’s fall from grace was prompted by an item in a Haitian newspaper reporting on a state mission to the republic where all were impressed by their ‘elegance’. The piece applauded them as the best dressed, best educated, most popular couple in town. There was no mention of Trujillo, who resented the omission.
Soon after this Rubi, who is bored by his non-job, becomes involved in a speculative venture. ‘There was the matter of my dowry,’ Flor explains. ‘Both Rubi and I longed for some independence of our own, though neither of us had much business sense…’ There were always a number of dodgy entrepreneurs hanging around the Palace, seeking Trujillo’s approval to their various schemes. One of these was Felix Rexach, a Puerto Rican engineer who had done a deal with Trujillo on a project dear to the dictator’s heart.
At the bottom of El Condo in the heart of the Zona Colonial, the fortress of Santa Domingo looks down on the estuary of the Ozama River where it bends into the sea by a pocket beach choked with garbage. This is where the original harbour had been set up under the protection of the fortress’s guns. Then it was perfectly suitable for the shallow draught vessels of the period, but now Trujillo has a vision of turning it into a deepwater harbour capable of receiving cruise liners, and constructing a marina for the yachts of the super-rich he wishes to attract here.
Rexach had built a harbour in Puerto Rico and possessed the credentials for the job. He’d carved out an apparently successful life that included homes in Paris and the Côte d’Azur and a semi-famous wife known as La Môme Moineau (the Raggedy Sparrow), a Parisian nightclub chanteuse. In the restricted social life of the capital where everyone knows everyone else it was inevitable the Rexachs and Rubirosas became acquainted. French-speaking, travelled and sophisticated, the four are distinctive in this social wilderness. A bond forms between them in which Flor and Rubi spot an opportunity for themselves. Somehow they’ve learned of a second-hand dredge for sale in New Orleans. Rexach is schmoozed into agreeing to charter it for use in the harbour project if the Rubirosas buy it.
‘For once I gathered courage,’ Flor says. Choosing the moment, she asks her father’s permission to use her dowry for the purchase. He consents, but with the comment, ‘I don’t have much faith in either second-hand machinery or this investment.’
The dredge is acquired and towed to the island. It is old, rusty and not an imposing piece of equipment. Flor and Rubi are dismayed when they see it, nor is Rexach overly impressed. It is put on trial in the most difficult part of the harbour.
A private off-the-record life is impossible on the island. Where you go, who you speak to, what you say invariably is noted. Having no life worth the name of their own, the populace lives vicariously by gossip. It is soon whispered that Rubi and the Môme Moineau are having an affair. Rexach is early to pick up on it and he is sore. He has anyway by now acquired his own dredge, a larger and more modern rig. He informs Trujillo that Rubi’s dredge is inadequate; moreover a hazard, for its gas-powered engine risks blowing up and destroying the port.
Neither Flor nor Rubi can obtain a meeting with Trujillo to get a hearing. They are frozen out of the deal. Rubi demands from Rexach that he refund them the price of the dredge – and he refuses. The couple are stricken. The President is furious and their capital, the money they’d hoped would fund their escape, is gone. Beside himself in anger, Rubi acts on impulse.
The cobbled waterfront is an open market with stalls selling fruit, vegetables, flyblown meat. Carts with coloured awnings vend orange juice and peeled sugar cane; hawkers peddle cookies and small balls of salt. The over-ripe air is thick with the smell of sweat, shrill in the uproar of the ragged mob; all poor, malnourished, many defective, diseased, deformed. A blind woman begs, rattling a tin, eyes that are white scabs; a legless man goes by walking on his hands like a swinging egg.
The crowd parts to let through a splendid figure: Captain Rubirosa in the dress uniform of the Presidential Guard, wearing a revolver on his belt. He’s accompanied by the solid bulk of Kid Gogo, shoving a way to the quay where a launch is waiting, engine running. They step on board, the boat puts off with the two upright in the stern and chugs through the river’s sluggish flow, afloat with broken branches and debris, toward Rexach’s dredger at the construction site. The shallow water is discoloured by soot, sargasso weed, effluent and hundreds of dead fish in a wide stain spreading out to sea.
Their approach has been noted from the dredger. When Rubi comes aboard closely followed by his minder, Rexach is already on deck. The two march right up to him. ‘I leapt at him, grabbed him by the collar and shook him like a carpet,’ Rubi writes. ‘“Thief! If you continue waging war against me and don’t pay me right now what you owe me, I will destroy you!” He was terrified. He collapsed. He promised everything I wanted.’
It is an impetuous action on Rubi’s part. Later he will learn greater subtlety in the exercise of bluff. Very understandably, Rexach runs to Trujillo in high alarm. He’s been assaulted, threatened. Rubi will kill him, he can’t continue with the work.
Trujillo is not just a patron but a partner in this project and loyalty a commodity he receives not gives. There is no reason to worry, he assures Rexach, ‘Four officers of my Guard will accompany you and let Captain Rubirosa know what it will cost him if he touches one hair on your head.’
Trujillo never communicates his disfavour in person. The individual who transgresses is no longer acknowledged to exist, but the sentence is delivered by messenger. Always the same man, Flor says, a terrifying creature known as General ‘Magic Eye’ Alvarez, so named because the giant negro has one crude glass eye set in its own fixed stare. Magic Eye brings the news that their home and Rubi’s job are no more, that they are a shameless ungrateful pair no longer acceptable on the island.
Although her father lives less than a hundred yards distant across the lawn, no way can Flor reach him to appeal; ‘We had become non-persons.’ Their money is gone in the dredge, but Flor has jewellery. Rubi borrows where he can though with little success, his record with debts is not good.
They pack. Nothing in the house belongs to them, they take only what they can carry and board a plane to New York. ‘So we “deserted” Trujillo. To father, anyone who made a move independent of HIS wishes was a betrayer,’ Flor explains.
The couple arrive in Manhattan just before Christmas 1934. They don’t even own winter clothes and can scarcely speak the language. They are entirely unequipped for real life; they don’t possess a single marketable skill between them. They rent a room in a sleazy Broadway hotel. ‘It was a nightmare, as Rubi disappeared to play poker with Cuban gangster types while I waited in that dingy hotel room, watching the Broadway signs blink on and off. When he won we ate, when he lost we starved.’ And Rubi is less than supportive in these hard times. ‘He would come home at 6 a.m., his pockets stuffed with matchbooks scribbled with phone numbers of women. Angry, brutal, he shoved and hit me when we argued.’
A colony of expat Dominicans exists in the city. Headed by a Dr Angel Morales, it is made up of opponents to Trujillo who have fled the island, together with those family members who’ve managed to escape. Several have suffered imprisonment and torture under the regime; Trujillo’s daughter and son-in-law are emphatically not welcome in their community. There is also a well-staffed Dominican consulate (and spy centre) run by Flor’s uncle, but disgraced and expelled from the President’s favour, the Rubirosas are untouchables who cannot be invited. The couple are broke, cold, at odds with each other and friendless.
Their only contacts are Rubi’s three young cousins who have grown up in the city. ‘They were tough teenagers (when I saw West Side Story, it reminded me of them), good-for-nothings who had never worked.’ One of them is Luis Rubirosa, nicknamed ‘Chichi’, who gains his living from petty crime and boasts a police record for robbery and assault.
Flor is appalled by Rubi’s relatives, but he – who needs company and action to exist – continues to see Chichi. And his connecti
on to criminal low life does not go unnoticed. Trujillo may have cast out the couple but his nature compels him to keep tabs on them.
Then, when they are at their lowest point, redemption comes out of the blue: a cable from the Palace. They are pardoned and recalled from banishment. Even more astonishing, the summons includes the news that Rubi has been elected to the Dominican Congress.
They move back into their house above the capital, untenanted since they left it. And they are received again in the presidential mansion, though Flor’s welcome lacks warmth. Trujillo will never be able to forgive his daughter who defected from the destiny he’d planned for her. Anyway, he doesn’t do forgiveness.
She is demoralised by her father’s coldness. Shaken and humiliated by their months in New York, she yearns for affection, for the father who used to take her on his knee and call her ‘mi princesi’. But ‘that was the peculiar genius by which he ruled – by belittling people, making you feel insignificant, sapping your self-esteem.’
But once again they have a home and the appurtenances of wealth, even if they do not own these, and there is staff to look after them. Though they possess no capital of their own and no independence, Rubi now has a salary. His job is a sham, the Congress itself a charade where Trujillo makes his entrance to open proceedings wearing lifts, full uniform with plumed fore-and-aft hat, and presides over an assembly whose business is solely to approve his edicts. Its members are appointed and dismissed on whim, its function purely ceremonial.
Why, Flor wonders, has Trujillo recalled them? The answer comes quite soon, when Rubi announces that he’s off to New York on a ‘special mission’ for her father. He’s away for two weeks and when he returns he’s bearing a raft of presents for her. His spare suitcase is filled with new dresses and other gifts. She welcomes him back with delight.
On the day following Rubi’s departure from New York, Dr Morales (who had served as Interior Minister in the republic and later as Vice President of the League of Nations) presided at a meeting of Dominican exiles in Manhattan. Also present was fellow insurgent Sergio Boscome (son of a Dominican general killed in a 1930 shoot-out attempting to kill the new President Trujillo), with whom he shared an apartment on Hamilton Place. After the meeting, Morales went on to dinner, Boscome returned to their apartment. He was shaving in the bathroom when he heard the cries of their landlady. A man brandishing a pistol demanded to know where Morales was. When Boscome rushed into the living room, his face covered with lather, the assassin shot and killed him. The police investigation named Morales the intended target, and ten months later presented sufficient proof to a grand jury to indict Chichi for murder. But he had vanished from the city.
Back on the island, the successful mission has effected a rapport between Trujillo and Rubi that excludes Flor. The two men have become close and are off on a trip together when one night there is an insistent hammering on Flor’s front door. The servants are roused and she comes down to find Chichi in the hall explaining, ‘I had to leave the States because they are after me.’
He moves in with them – an inconvenient guest, for he has no money and behaves as though Rubi owes him. He bosses around the staff, shows no inclination to seek work and passes the time lounging by the pool ordering drinks. Flor is exasperated but Rubi is curiously reluctant to throw him out. One evening the couple comes home to find the problem has been solved. The servants explain that ‘strangers’ surrounded the house and took him away. ‘We never saw him again and my husband would not comment on the affair. When the New York police tried to extradite Chichi, the Dominican Government’s answer was ‘No such person exists.’
The junta of generals around Trujillo is chosen for its loyalty and ruthless capability to implement his will. He does not trust the old ‘aristocracy’ with positions of authority, the members of his cabal are effective but uncouth. Yet the various embassies that his vanity has led him to set up in foreign capitals require more than barbarians to represent the republic in the image he desires, and he is woefully short of personable candidates who know which fork to use at dinner. Rubi is named Secretary to the Dominican legation in Berlin.
This is 1936. Hitler has been Chancellor for three years and in that time has reordered the chaos of a humiliated bankrupt country execrated by the world and saddled with crippling reparations, transforming it into a thriving economy while purging all opposition to Nazi rule. He has reduced unemployment from six million to less than one and halved the crime rate; sales of clothing, furniture and household goods are up 50 per cent and the standard of living higher than it has ever been. The Führer has rekindled the national spirit and enjoys popularity close to worship.
Trujillo is an ardent admirer of both Hitler and Mussolini, and envious of what they have achieved. Once he’d complained to Flor about the smallness of the stage providence has granted him on which to display his talents, while Hitler has a seat at the high table and is an international player. The Führer’s army has just reoccupied the demilitarised Rhineland (formerly German territory) in defiance of the Peace Treaty, which imposed such ignominy upon the country, and Berlin is hosting the Olympic Games.
The feel-good factor in the population is close to hysteria. Their mood has been fanned into such heat by Joseph Goebbels, Minister for Propaganda. A weedy insignificant man with a club foot and accompanying grievance, he is a charismatic public speaker but, above all, a brilliant propagandist.† He also possesses a flair for the spectacular that matches Hitler’s own histrionic style. By means of choreographed displays, parades and the rituals of Nazi Party celebrations, he has been instrumental in creating the Führer myth. It is of course a help that the Propaganda Ministry enjoys absolute control of the media and the arts.
For a young couple on the make this is an expeditious moment to relocate to Berlin. Hitler is actively wooing the countries of Latin America with the aim of recruiting them into a natural alliance of dictators against both Bolshevism and Democracy. The couple are seated in Hitler’s box at the Olympic Stadium, invited to attend the Nuremburg Rally, and fêted by both Goebbels and Hermann Göring. It is the life both have long thirsted for, a milieu they’d met with in youth – though not on this level. Rubi, who has greater experience, learns fast but Flor, who sees it differently, is daunted. ‘Rubi and I were alike in so many ways, neither of us really good-looking, both mixed-up Dominicans in love with the high life, hungry for what money could buy, but unable to earn an honest living on our own. “The day I don’t have money,” Rubi vowed, “I’ll kill myself. I need it to live the way I want to live.”’
His work, as ever, is negligible. He fences, he rides, he parties. Of course they attend parades and receptions as a couple. But Flor has no German and not everyone speaks French; she is conscious that the ‘chic’ she was so admired for in the Caribbean is not seen in quite the same way here. ‘Rubi was cutting a swathe on his own, but what was I? How could I, still a provincial Dominican girl in her early twenties, unworldly, badly dressed, mousey, compete with Rubi’s women? My particular bête noire was a certain Martha, who had enchanted Rubi at an Italian winter-sports resort. Soignée, blazing with diamonds, she was everything I was not…’
One day a box is delivered, containing twenty-one magnificent red roses. ‘I assumed they were for me, until I saw the note addressed to Rubi, “For the twenty-one days we have loved each other.”’
She cries to Daddy: I hate this! Solve it, get me out of here! But she knows he’s a pitiless god with no heart left; her letter is strained and formal.
I have learned a little German and seen a lot of the country, and have admired the great work of Hitler. But nevertheless I’m not happy … They don’t invite us to their dances, and I don’t have the chance to meet anybody. If it isn’t too much to ask, I’d like you to transfer us to Paris … There, I’d have occasion to attend many conferences and get to know better the French literature that I like so well. Please let me know if you can comply with this request.
Daddy comes through
, but Paris provides no answer to Flor’s unhappiness. The cosmopolitan set she’d known at school here has long dispersed to their own countries. Rubi though is instantly at home: ‘As soon as I arrived in Paris invitations began pouring in. I was out every night, often alone. My wife objected … she could not keep up with me.’
It was hideously demoralising for Flor, not at all what she’d dreamed of, hoped for. She hadn’t even chosen to be Rubi’s wife, the part had been forced on her. For a while it had been the greatest fun while they played at being adults in their tropical villa, mixing the latest cocktails and practising routines to the latest records from America. They were both great dancers. In the capital’s one decent nightclub – where they were instantly recognised, of course – other couples often had stopped to watch them and applauded.
Now romance has gone there’s little that unites the couple. Though understandably depressed, Flor is realistic about the relationship (and surprisingly unembittered – they will continue to sleep together whenever their paths cross over the next twenty years, whatever their marital situation, and between them they racked up fourteen marriages). She says, ‘Our marriage hadn’t been a matter of love, or even sex. Like most Latin males, Rubi expected me to be the docile wife, waiting at home for him, no matter how much he dallied.’ She realises that a different relationship with him is not possible. Set in the Latin mould, he is what he is and no woman can change him. Their marriage is over and there is nowhere to go but home.
Meanwhile, back on the island Trujillo has continued to prosper. He has taken over much of the fertile land, redistributed some, but retained the best for himself. He personally controls both sugar cane and tobacco, the principal exports. He has put in roads, provided electricity and running water to the capital and instituted further work on the drains, though to little effect. Any word of personal criticism is ‘speaking against the republic’ and a criminal offence subject to arrest and torture. The country belongs to him body and mind, but a soaring ego knows no bounds; he has need of a cause for his people to march to, and a suitable group on which to focus any latent discontent.