The Prince
Page 2
“Please, Kiki! For the love of God! On the life of my mother, I didn’t mean to do it. I lost my head, Kiki. You know I’ve always been impulsive, never cool like you. I didn’t know what I was doing until too late. And, Kiki, you had me crazy. You pushed me too far. You didn’t treat me correctly. Let me go now, Kiki. You won’t regret it.
“Why don’t you say something? Why don’t you answer? Stinking cripple! Faggot! What do you do now, give your hole to Jaime?
“You won’t get away with it. I have friends. They’ll make you wish you died four years ago.
“You can do what you like, you and your husband. I’ll show you what it is to be a man!
“I’ll show you! I’ll show you! For the love of God, Kiki¡ For my mother, don’t kill me! Let me go!”
Jaime will take out his revolver and unload it. He’ll cut off the sight with a hacksaw. No, take the sight off with a grindstone and buff the barrel smooth. Then he’ll take one round and grind down the slug till it’s flush with the cartridge case. I don’t want any bullet tunneling up to hit the heart or cut the aorta, just the blast in his guts, burnt powder and splintered lead to bring him peritonitis in two or three days.
Jaime will poke the barrel in a jar of vaseline. I want Ñato to see that, and he’ll say, “What are you going to do to me?”
“You don’t look well, Ñato, so we’re going to take your temperature.” If I speak very slowly, he’ll understand.
That’s the moment I want to watch, before Jaime starts, after Ñato knows. Guesses but can’t bring himself to believe it. I want to watch him turn into an insect. I’ll stipulate that they give him a bath and a shave and a haircut before they deliver him so he will look as human as possible at the start. I’ll have them go to his house and pick up one of the silk shirts he likes to wear buttoned al the neck with no tie and a pair of his made-to-measure beltless slacks, so that he’ll look his own natty self with his little mustache and brilliantined hair. Powdered and perfumed for his wedding night is how he’ll be, and I won’t miss the look on his face when he sees the vaseline.
When I nod, Jaime will open Ñato’s pants and pull them down as far as they’ll go. He’ll probe with the smeared barrel. I expect there’ll be a lot of twisting and thrashing about, perhaps a few “Hijos de puta!” for Jaime and me, snarled between clenched teeth, but how much will Ñato be able to do in his ribbons and bows?
“Keep knocking till he opens, Jaime,” and Patient Jaime will find the strait gate and the narrow way.
Now, when the trigger guard rests against the base of his spine, will he curse or cry? He’ll cry, mourn himself and moan, “No, no, no.” I’ll nod, and there will be a dull pop, a seismic bulge in Ñato’s belly, a rainbow arc from heels to shoulders and pig squeals stabbing at the ceiling.
I suppose the gun will be blown free. In any case, Jaime will withdraw it. He will undo all the cords and irons, put the pillow under Ñato’s head and dress him neatly. Then he’ll bring a chair to wait with me for Ñato to regain consciousness. With any luck he’ll last for days.
2
That’s the way it’ll be. That way or some better way. I’ve time to think about it. There are so many details to arrange that a fitting execution often seems more trouble than Ñato’s worth, and I decide to have Jaime give him a simple bullet in the brain. Or strangle him with a coat hanger, or cremate him, or break his bones with a sledge, and it works back up into something elaborate, lengthy, and picturesque. Composing and revising while I wait for sleep, or during the day as I sit in my wheelchair, or, as now, when I wake early. A new method comes to me, or some small fact springs to mind making what I had supposed to be a sound plan impractical or unsatisfying. Then I begin anew. Right now a lead suppository seems the medicine for Ñato, but I won’t rest complacent. When the thrill of creation has faded, I’ll go over each detail, consider alternative prescriptions, compose, and revise.
When one spends as much time as I do on a single problem, it is impossible to conceal it completely from those nearby. I don’t babble about my plans, but my household is generally aware—and I hope he is too—that I intend to chastise Ñato for so magically changing me into a vegetable with his nine-millimeter autoloading wand. They also suspect my deep contentment that President Fuertes protects instead of persecutes Ñato, thus reserving me the pleasure of a personalized revenge. Jaime agrees with me. Edilma, whose crooked claws can diaper me again now, thanks to Ñato, as they did almost forty years ago, understands, though I think she would rather Ñato were officially tried and punished. My wife Elena would have me dream of some miraculous cure, nerve transplants, say, that will have me up on skis again, though after seeing me poked and tickled by the diplomaed superquacks of three continents, even she has lost hope. Marta says I’m obsessed and considers this dangerous. In accord with her forced declination from mistress to secretary, she thinks I ought to have stayed in California and dictated my memoirs. Sound plan on the face of it, for writing is a compensation for life. And she assumes the tender lips of metaphor could leach me of all hate. But though I have been exiled from my body—strength, motion, sex, and other valuables, confiscated at the frontier—I refuse to give up living, which for me is action. It would be no substitute to add to the knowledge of bananaland politics, peeling back the foreskin of ignorance from some university department of Greaseball Affairs; or to compile an annotated record of my best games with the brilliancies marked with exclamation points—six thousand M-2 carbines fianchettoed from their New Orleans warehouse to a hardware deposit in Tinieblas, for example; an apparent blunder which, after a few quiet moves, reveals itself a masterly positional posting for their diagonal plunge into Costaguana; or to take up pussiography and map out my plowings in ten thousand dry humps of the mind, to end up like poor Casanova (“For me the age of miracles is over”) dipping limply with a pen where I can no longer put a penis; or to keen poetically over my loss; or, worst of all, to pick at the scab of the past: If I had done this, if I had said that; if I’d given Ñato his due and recognized him as a dangerous coward instead of a harmless one I’d be whole now; if I’d had the patience to teach him how to shoot or taken him campaigning with me in the interior, where there’s no decent hospital, I’d be safely dead. No. I am perfectly right in being obsessed; it gives me the will to action. I shall help my father beat Pepe Fuertes and take delivery of Ñato Espino and treat him to a spectacular agony—say, impalement on a greased .38.
3
Something to think about as I watch the day creep through the louvers into my bedroom. I wake early from very active dreams. This morning I was riding a bay mare through a field some distance from Penonomé in the Republic of Panama, the very field which several years ago I planted in red pot marijuana. I merely rode through the field at a trote, admiring the crop and savoring the sun on my face. But as in most of my dreams, I was immediately aware that I was dreaming, for I could not reach up to wipe the sweat and dust from my neck. I went on and enjoyed the dream as best I could, but I was already planning Ñato’s execution when my eyes opened.
I have the use of two fingers. Not complete use, but I can raise the index and middle fingers of my left hand a good three centimeters. I can turn my head fifteen degrees in either direction, open and close my eyes, roll them with bold abandon. I cannot bite, not even the hand that feeds me, but can mush soft morsels. I learned all this in a year, and also to stand firm at the sphincters until Jaime comes to put me on the pot, but in the last three years I have not been able to learn anything more.
I can make noises which are more or less intelligible to those who study. A scholar like Marta can translate my grunts and hisses. Jaime and Edilma grasp requests. Elena can interpret social conversation, but she lacks patience. Grabs the first clear phrase to gloss on; warps it into something of her own. Her directors make the same complaint, but they can cry “Cut!” and start over. I grunt denial, try to shake my head, but she purrs on. Marvelous voice that a famous androgyne has likened to the caress
of a panther’s tongue, but not what the paraplegic said. The cripple didn’t mean that. The dribbling basketcase didn’t have it on his impacted mind, and he hoists the corner of his mouth into what he does for a smile while rage kicks against the backs of his eyeballs. Strains for control. Seeks special powers lest head flop and eyes goggle. Begs bowel and bladder stage no protest demonstrations. Persuades his mouth to smile.
I can smile by hauling back the left corner of my mouth.
4
So with all these abilities I have returned to the independent and sovereign Republic of Tinieblas, which occupies a slice of the lost continent of Central America first touched by Palmiro Inchado de los Huevos. All the Spanish adelantados were crazy. Inchado believed himself possessed by devils and spent insomniac nights on deck. Just before dawn on November 28, 1515, the helmsman heard him cry, “Jesus of the Great Power, free me from this darkness!” (“Jesús del Gran Poder, líbradme destas tinieblas!”). Then Inchado jumped into the sea. His shark-surgered head was found washed up on a beach in what is now the Reservation.
Inchado’s men didn’t stay, but other Spaniards came some years later and founded a colony which stood three hundred years. Then Bolívar cockadoodledooed outside Lima, and when the echo reached Tinieblas, the governor slunk off to Cuba with his garrison, leaving the creole gentlemen—merchants and lawyers of the capital, ranchers and planters of the interior—to declare independence and proclaim a republic founded on the rights of man. They formed an assembly, drafted a constitution, and chose Simón Mocoso President.
Meanwhile Bernabé Sancudo, younger son of a Malaga notary, emigrated from Spain to Santo Domingo, where he became a hide factor.
When Mocoso’s term was up, Julio Canino was elected President of Tinieblas by the free vote of male landowners and was immediately overthrown by General Isidro Bodega, who proclaimed a state of siege, dissolved the assembly, suspended the constitution, and remained president for eighteen years. Then Bodega died of gastroenteritis after a banquet of fried cuttlefish and was succeeded by Adriano Mosca and Manuel Grillo and Francisco Piojo, all within four months, whereupon a junta was formed, which convoked an assembly, which drafted a new constitution, which provided for elections under a liberalized suffrage, and the people elected Justo Canino, Julio’s nephew. But Justo Canino was overthrown by General Epifanio Mojón, who proclaimed a state of siege, dissolved the assembly, and suspended the constitution.
Meanwhile Nicanor Sancudo, Bernabé’s younger son, had immigrated to Cuba, where he dealt in tobacco.
General Mojón was President of Tinieblas for seven years. At first he suppressed the pamphlets of his opponents; later he confiscated their property; still later he put them in prison. All this time General Mojón, who had been a slim young artillery lieutenant at the Battle of Ayacucho—he is the only general in Tinieblan history who actually took part in a battle—and was still quite trim when he seized power, grew fatter and fatter until he could no longer sit a horse and his eyes were like thumb prints in soft dough. Also he began to smell, a sweet smell like gladiolas left overnight on a grave during the rainy season. When he was very fat and very smelly, he ordered two crosses set up opposite the President’s Palace on the mud flats which reach out three hundred meters from the sea wall at low tide. They were tall enough so that the cross pieces hung a meter or so above the water at high tide, and on the following Saturday morning Don Justo Canino and Licentiate Jorge Washington Chinche, who had been Caníno’s Vice President, were taken out there from the prison where they had been for almost two years, and chained to the crosses.
The idea was for the sharks to eat them when the tide came in, and General Mojón ordered his noon meal to be served on the awninged balcony of the palace, so he might watch and listen. Numerous members of the Canino and Chinche families were there also, by General Mojón’s invitation, not on the balcony, however, but below on the sea wall, and of course there were many other spectators because it was at that time a unique entertainment, even in Tinieblas. But the tide came in, and no sharks arrived, so when it started to go out again, General Mojón ordered his Mexican aide-de-camp to let some of Don Justo’s blood down into the water, but if he killed him, he would take his place on the cross.
The Mexican had a muzzle-loading rifle made in the United States, and he laid it on the parapet of the balcony and knelt down behind it and allowed for windage and distance—the range was about one hundred twenty meters—and shot Don Justo through the palm of his left hand. At first it didn’t seem that any blood would come—Don Justo was pretty thin after two years in General Mojón’s prison—but then some did begin to dribble out of the wound and fall into the water, which was a little below the level of Don Justo’s belt. Several sharks arrived presently, cutting around the crosses with their dorsal fins, and suddenly Don Justo let out a terrible scream, and then another, and Licentiate Chinche screamed as well, though some say he called out “Cabrónnnnnnnnn!” toward the balcony, and their heads strained back against the crosses and then flopped forward onto their chests, while the sharks lunged as far as they could out of the water to snatch steaks and chops.
Many of the spectators left then, but the families of the eaten men stayed on till dark at General Mojón’s invitation. As the tide went out they could see Don Justo and Licentiate Chinche down to the fifth rib or so, and below that skeletons, though as the activity of the sharks subsided, buzzards flapped down to the arms of the crosses to restore symmetry.
The bones hung there for a week, then were replaced by men from the prison. This went on every Saturday until there were no more political prisoners and common criminals were used. After the first time there was no trouble attracting sharks; they even cruised around the crosses during the week.
Then, for the seventh anniversary of his regime General Mojón decreed that each of the seven provinces of Tinieblas would send two virgins to the capital for use on the crosses, and their parents would have special seats on the balcony, four seats set aside each day for those whose daughters the sharks would cat, and instead of chains they would be hung on the crosses with ribbons of the finest silk, and the girls would be naked, and two of them would be eaten every day for a week, and there would be no work at all in any part of the country so that the populace might come to the capital and celebrate. This decree went out a month before the anniversary, but the provincial governors had difficulty procuring the virgins. It seemed there were none in the entire republic, even little girls of twelve and thirteen had, their fathers said, been debauched and were not fit to serve in the celebrations of General Mojón’s rise to power. So General Mojón sent his Mexican aide-de-camp with a company of troops to get the daughters of the most prominent men in each province, and while some hid and others committed suicide or were murdered by their fathers, the Mexican returned on the appointed day with fourteen nubile girls.
The Mexican aide-de-camp was master of ceremonies and personally stripped the girls and tied them to the crosses with silken ribbon in the national colors of purple, green, and yellow. The first pair were from the Province of Otán, where General Mojón had been born. One of the girls wept and tried to hide her breasts and triangle with her hands, and the Mexican cuffed her smartly on the ear to get her quiet. This drew a hiss from the spectators and even some mumbling from the battalion of soldiers whom General Mojón had stationed on the sea wall to keep order, but the Mexican got both girls up the ladders and onto their crosses without further trouble, and the tide came in precisely as predicted and the sharks, of course, with it. There was a sizable crowd, for while the citizens of the capital were used to seeing men eaten by sharks on Saturdays, naked virgins were another story, and besides General Mojón had installed a string quintet on his balcony along with the parents of the girls and dignitaries of his government, and then there were many people from the provinces who had never seen a human being, male or female, dressed or naked, eaten by sharks.
So it went that week. General Mojón had the table of tides pu
blished on wall posters throughout the town, and one by one the provinces of the republic honored the president: Otán, Remedios, La Merced, Salinas, Tuquetá, Selva Trópica, and, finally, Tinieblas. And on the seventh day, when the seventh pair of virgins went to the crosses, there was a larger crowd than ever, for these were daughters of the capital itself, and one of them was Blanca Mariposa del Valle, the most beautiful girl in the whole country and daughter of Dr. Diogenes Mariposa, who had been eaten the week after Don Justo Canino, and Liria del Valle de Mariposa, whose brother Licentiate Dantón del Valle had been eaten too. And when the Mexican aide-de-camp went to strip Blanca Mariposa, she waved him back disdainfully and drew her white frock over her head herself and stood with her hands cupped under her lovely breasts. And the crowd wept, and the soldiers gnashed their teeth, and the colonel of the battalion ordered his men to train their rifles on the balcony, and General Mojón was deposed.
Then Blanca and the other girl were brought back from the mud flats, and General Mojón and his Mexican aide-de-camp were chained to the crosses, though a kind of seat had to be built on to General Mojón’s cross, for he was so fat his arms wouldn’t hold him. The tide came in, and with it the sharks, and they began eating the Mexican aide-de-camp as soon as they could reach his feet, but none of them would bite General Mojón. The tide rose and fell and rose again, and the sharks swam round and round General Mojón’s cross, but none of them would touch him, used as they were to human flesh and hungry too, for the Mexican was a short wiry man with little meat on him. General Mojón went mad from fear and sunstroke, and people on the sea wall could hear him raving all night long. The next morning he died; by noon his flesh was rotting off him, but the buzzards wouldn’t eat him either, so at low tide that evening a group of men went out and chopped down the crosses and buried them, with General Mojón and the Mexican’s skeleton still on them, there in the mud.