by R. M. Koster
“I surrender,” he said, holding out his pistol, “to the superior weapons of a foreign force. I protest the unprovoked attack upon my country’s sovereignty. I have resisted to the best of my ability and demand to be treated as a prisoner of war.”
The brigadier waited for a translation from his aide, then shrugged his shoulders, took the pistol, put it on safety and handed it to his driver. “Tell him to get in the car.”
Alejo got in, and the brigadier after him, and the aide in the front seat beside the driver, and they drove as quickly as possible back to the Reservation and through Fort Shafter to Potter’s Field, where the gringo commander was waiting beside a plane whose motors were all warmed up, As Alejo climbed up the metal steps behind the brigadier’s aide, he turned and told the gringo commander, “I shall return,” beating Douglas MacArthur to the phrase by two months.
So that afternoon Alfonso and I did not go home to the palace, to the patio where the bronze faun pissed nonchalantly while I drilled BB’s into him; to the unused suite of rooms above the ballroom where Alfonso and I played a kind of hide-and-seek, creeping through the smothered blackness of closed doors and boarded windows to growl terrifyingly at one another; to the attic where one morning I caught Alfonso playing with himself and where, after some shame and much complaining that I was too young, he taught me; to the bedroom where, as I was too big now to sleep with a light or seek asylum in the neutral embassy of Edilma’s room, General Epifanio Mojón, his skin split and oozing from all those hours in sun and sea water, hulked in the shadows beside the window curtain; to the salon beside the Cabinet Room where, one night when an operatic thunderstorm extinguished all the electricity in Tinieblas and flung sheets of rain and lightning across the bay, a beautiful Peruvian woman whom my father held captive long enough for him to hurt and me to fall in love with played the guitar for us, holding its tawny neck against her ivory check and caressing its waist with alternate tenderness and passion, while the wind sang saetas and the candle flames danced farucas and great gouts of jealousy dripped from the curved rhythm to stain my face like sea spray. We went into exile at Uncle Erasmo’s. Aunt Beatrix had no room for Edilma, but I sent her my Christmas money to build a chicken coop in her village in Remedios and missed her more than Alejo missed his ministers and his decrees and his purple, green, and yellow sash. I missed her especially when I was badly thrashed by a classmate whose mother I had mentioned in the high and palmy days before Alejo fell, but as she was gone there was no one to take pity on me, and the next afternoon I began lifting weights at the Y.M.C.A. in the Reservation.
Alejo went to Paraguay, where over the years he collected Egon and Gunther and Furetto. The gringo commander died six weeks later in a plane crash on his way to a command in the Aleutian Islands. The brigadier drowned when a U-boat torpedoed the ship carrying him to England. The major who looked at me across the avenue was roasted to death inside a similar tank at the Kasserine Pass. The brigadier’s aide hanged himself with an electrical extension cord in Saint Elizabeth’s hospital, where he had been committed screaming that he was an Alaskan wolf four weeks after the night when, somewhere over the Bolivian Andes, the full moon shone through one of the C-47’s tiny windows and President Alejandro Sancudo ran amok, biting the captain so fiercely that two of his front teeth broke off in the former’s collar bone.
15
“Aren’t you hot?”
Alfonso pulls up beside me, then slides back, having given me a glimpse of the high-cut side vents and narrow pants of his stylish mohair. Always á la mode, Alfonso. Sends his tailor to the movies to copy Mastroianni’s suits.
The sun glares, but has not yet succeeded in making itself unpleasant. And I like to bake until I’m a bit uncomfortable, the better to enjoy the cool downstairs. No way to explain this to Alfonso, who scarcely understands my swinesong. I shake my head, but he has already seized the chair, turning it to wheel me back inside.
His question was rhetorical anyway. Alfonso enjoys a natural immunity to the feelings of others. He can make a project of a person—man to be molded, woman to be nailed—making carefully controlled experiments to discover melting point and tensile strength, but normally he doesn’t pay attention. He wants to talk, he feels warm, we will go inside. If I said, Look, animal, I’m comfortable here; if you want to talk, sit down! he would hang his head and say he’s sorry, suddenly and dumbfoundedly aware, as though it just came over the AP teletype, that there are other people on earth besides himself.
“I’m sorry about that Patria thing, Kiki,” he says over my shoulder as he trundles me along the hall. “Sons of whores don’t respect anything. I’m beginning to understand why that hack Cepillo goes around with a pistol stuck in his belt. Someone’s going to take a shot at him before this campaign’s over, and he’s too fat to miss. Apropos, I think you’d better keep an eye on that indian of yours.”
Why call Jaime “that indian”?
“… a disaster. It’s essential to represent Alejo to the gringos as a force for stability. No violence. And Cepillo’s not worth dirtying hands on. Terrible thing for Elena, though. And you too, Kiki.”
He wheels me around the corner and into the little study at the head of the stairs, leaves me in the middle while he closes the door and switches on the air conditioner. Then he sits down in the cane chair by the bookcase, looks at me with a sadness which is not becoming to him—Alfonso should be gay or harried, active in any case, not contemplative—presses the bridge of his nose with his left thumb and forefinger, smoothes his mustache, ending up with a tug at the little conquistador’s beard he added a couple of years ago to strengthen his chin, makes something between a smile and a grimace and says, “Ah, ho! Kiki, hombre, why don’t you and Elena get out of this shit?”
“If you want to converse, cal Marta.”
“What?”
“If. You. Want. To. Converse. Call. Marta.”
“No. I don’t want her here. I’ll talk, you listen,” and he tells me to take Elena and go back to California. Take Marta and Jaime and Edilma too if I want. And the film crew. Evening plane to Mexico. Don’t even stay for the rally.”
He has a big spread—half the issue at least—all ready for this afternoon’s Informe Trópico: how Pepe’s henchman (mine really, but become Pepe’s for campaign purposes) gunned me down in Bolívar Plaza four years ago today and how I’ve come back to Bolívar Plaza to lend my name and my sacrifice to the cause of democracy in Tinieblas. Sort of thing he can do better in a tabloid than in Correo Matinal, and it will hit the streets an hour or so before the rally. Picture of me being haltered with a medal at the 1952 Olympics. Picture of me carrying the flag into the Reservation in November 1964. Picture of Elena, the famous international artist who also believes in democracy in Tinieblas, a wonderfully efficient picture, taken at Hickory Hill the year before I met her, with a good profile of Jack and the back of Bobby’s head. Both were very big in Tinieblas even while alive and, being dead, are now even bigger. Their names linked to mine in the text along with King and Mboya. Sap of an editor wanted to mention Lumumba and Malcolm X, but Alfonso caught it. Small picture of Ñato, The Pampered Assassin, with a smaller one of Pepe opposite, Did He Give the Order? But before I can mention the spread, Alfonso says he can have it stopped. Better for me to be on the plane. I’d be taking a risk. My presence would increase the chance of violence.
“I know you’ve never cared about risks, but think of Elena. And if there’s trouble, Pepe could use it to his advantage. Maybe persuade Puñete to stop being neutral. People are saying Alejo will make you a minister or ambassador to Washington, and that sounds more like the old Alejo than the new Alejo. We’ve all worked very hard inventing a new Alejo, Kiki, but nobody knows what he’ll say this afternoon. He doesn’t know himself. You shouldn’t expose Elena. You shouldn’t expose yourself. Ay, Kiki, carajo!” eyes glazed with older brother’s sad, protective insolence, “I know how you must have felt with that Patria thing! Leave it, Kiki. You’ve been through enou
gh.”
I can turn my head fifteen degrees in both directions.
He nods. Pursed-lipped smile-grimace that makes him look like Uncle Erasmo. Gets out a cigarette—he wouldn’t think of offering me one—and says, “I knew it. When have you ever listened to advice? Especially mine. I told you to watch out for Ñato years before he shot you, but you wouldn’t listen.”
Oh, Fonso. You told me to watch out for everybody. Watch out for Duncan. Watch out for Angela. Watch out for Tolete, and we had the best gun operation in Latin America, if not the world. You even told me to watch out for Elena, though you wouldn’t admit it now. The only person you didn’t tell me to watch out for was a Panagra stewardess you fixed me up with in 1950, and she gave me the crabs.
“Don’t you care about Elena?”
“She. Gets. Worse. From. Gossip. Columnists.”
“I’m not talking about that. There could be a mess here. If not today, tomorrow. The Guardia could step in. If Puñete doesn’t double-cross us, the younger officers may throw him out. Five years ago he and Látigo got rid of Tolete.”
I can smile by hauling back the left corner of my mouth. “Don’t. Get. Scared. We’ll. Win.”
He stands and goes to the desk and stubs out his cigarette in the square ceramic ashtray and picks up the jade-handled paper knife which Olga, who liked giving me presents, bought for me to cut French books with, and scrapes under his left thumbnail. Never had dirt there in his life. Suppose a speck crept under by mistake, thinking it was someone else’s thumb, the manicurist would deal with it. He goes every morning at eight to the Hotel El Opulento barbershop to be shaved, shined, trimmed, and manicured. Eye-surgeon’s care exercised in snipping his beard and tweezing gray hairs from his crown. I see him holding a quarter-folded Miami Herald two feet off his port bow, unable to read for having to supervise the barber, the girl who ministers to his right hand, the Jamaican Negro at his feet.
“Maybe,” he says without looking at me. “But if we get in, can we stay in? Alejo’s been in three times and thrown out three times. To come this far he’s had to neutralize the Guardia. To stay in he’ll have to break it up, and the Guardia won’t let him stay in long enough to do that. Maybe they’ll be stupid. Puñete made a deal, maybe he’ll keep it. Maybe he and the others will let Alejo get rid of them one at a time. But it doesn’t look good for the long term.” Pursed-lipped side glance. “You don’t care about the long term, do you?”
I shake my head and he goes back to his nails.
“If they throw him out this time, before or after the election, we’ll all go with him. You know that, don’t you? It’ll be worse than ’52 this time. First jail, then exile.”
He shifts the paper knife to his left hand and goes to work on his right thumb. He’ll have to get to whatever he’s got to say without help from me. Working on the middle finger now. Here it comes.
“Pepe’s offered me the Social Security. Not for after he wins. Right now. I’ll have it for sixteen weeks no matter how the election goes.”
No need to explain the exciting things possible for the Director of Social Security. Fifty million inchados to manipulate, mortgages to distribute among eager builders, consignments of drugs to buy from competing salesmen. An active director can become secure in sixteen weeks.
“Should he win, the government will recondition the building and move the Ministry of Education into it.”
How can Alfonso resist? His poor building! Put it up on Washington Avenue six years ago and named it Edificio Petrolero to get the Hirudo Oil Company to take the top two floors. The flag-riot mob thought it belonged to gringos and set it on fire. Gutted from roof to lobby, and the banks won’t finance remodeling for fear of another riot. Worst thing is Alfonso has to drive by it every morning on the way to the paper.
“All I’d have to do is take the papers out of the campaign. Lots of foreign news in Correo and keep the tabloids full of stabbings and auto crashes. I suppose Pepe would make some capital out of Alejandro Sancudo’s own son taking a post in the Fuertes Administration. I think he’s got something for Nacho—a quiet deal with Nacho spending a little less without actually leaving the ticket. An insurance policy so that Nacho will be all right no matter who wins. That’s the mark of a political genius in this country. Now what I think Pepe’s ultimately after is getting me and Nacho to convince Lucho to go over with his TV station. Lucho’s got too much money to be bought, and he’s already been president, so it would have to be that farsighted men like Nacho and me think Pepe would be better for the country. That would take Alejo off TV. I began hearing rumors of this stuff yesterday morning, and Pepe sent Meco to me last night. I’m not going to do it, Kiki. I told Meco I’d think it over, but I’m not going to do it.”
“You. Do. What. You. Want. Fonso.”
“I’m not going to do it, Kiki. At least not before I talk it all over with Nacho. I don’t think I’d do it anyway. How could I do it? But I mention it so that you know that all kinds of things might happen. That’s why I say you ought to leave. Not even Alejo would blame you.”
“You. Do. What. You. Want.”
“Look, Kiki. What if Pepe turned Ñato over to Interpol?”
I can shake my head. “Ñato’s. Mine.”
“Coño, carajo! When are you going to stop fighting? You don’t care about yourself, but what about the rest of us?”
Poor Alfonso. He doesn’t mind betraying Alejo, but he doesn’t want to betray me.
“You. Do. What. You. Want.”
Which isn’t a release. To release him I’d have to give up, stop fighting, leave the country.
“We all want Ñato punished. The surest way would be to make a deal with Pepe. Pepe might win, you know. Or Ñato could get away before Alejo’s in control. I’m sure Pepe would make a deal. He’s only keeping Ñato like a counter to be played at the right moment; Meco said as much last night. He said, ‘The President sympathizes with the desires for personal vindication of certain members of the Sancudo family.’ You can’t expect him to bring Ñato to trial here. Ñato knows too much about everyone for that, you included. But if Pepe turned him over to Interpol, he’d spend at least fifteen years in a French jail.” Alfonso holds the paper knife in both hands near his sternum and looks sideways down at me like a pitcher wondering what to throw. “But that isn’t enough for you! You want to watch that indian torture him to death!”
Bravo, Fonso! Dumdum wedding and peritonitis honeymoon, because it’s too messy to cut him up with a chain saw, and too quick too. I might strap a cage full of starved rats to his belly. No. Just one rat. A big, strong one, though lean of course. Tripe’s a delicacy. Never cared for it myself, but I bet the rat would give Ñato three stars, gnawing his way to a gourmet dinner. Making me smile.
Alfonso’s check twitches, as though he had a film-clip of my thoughts. Then he flips the paper knife onto the desk and covers his face with his hands. “It’s all right,” he says through them. “I don’t blame you. Whatever you do to him it’s too good.”
He turns away, shoulders hunched. “Coño!” He drops his hands. “If the old hound had heard this conversation!” He turns around to smile at me, eyes swimming. “Making deals with Pepe Fuertes! In the middle of his last campaign!” Wide grin and sniffle. “He’d have an attack! And I’m supposed to be the good son, you the prodigal. You’re the one who got thrown out of college. Who borrowed the presidential yacht to smuggle whiskey. Who laid the presidential girlfriend in the presidential bed. I’m the one who never gave him any trouble. Now I’m ready to sell him out and you’re sticking with him.”
“Not. For. Him. Fonso. For. Me.”
“I know. But it’s still funny.” He shakes his head, still grinning. “God, what a lot of trouble you’ve given us all, Kiki. Me especially. How many times have I bailed you out, Kiki, one way or another? Remember the time you needed twenty-five hundred, in dollars, to pay off the Panamanian police? I had to sell a car. I know, I know. I’ll never regret it. You always said that. Phon
e calls from Olga at three in the morning, ‘Where’s Kiki?’ Holding her hand on nights when you were flying to Costaguana. When Erasmito broke his head, who took him to the hospital? Me. And now, when I’ve a chance to straighten everything out, you won’t let me. You know I can’t do it unless you leave.” His grin dissolves and he looks down at my slippers. “I think the real reason I want you to leave is that I can’t stand to see you like this.”
He springs up and smacks his left palm with his right fist. Another big grin. “Remember when you wrestled the captain at Cambridge? I was a senior at Harvard; you must have been a sophomore at Yale. That beautiful gringo with his blond hair and his sportsmanlike smile. You put him into one hold after another, all the ones that hurt, letting him struggle out of one thing to get him in something worse. Everyone was booing you. I happened to be sitting next to his parents, and of course I didn’t say you were my brother. When the ref warned you for choking him and let him rest for a minute, his father said to me, ‘I’m surprised Yale admitted an animal like that.’ Then you pinned him in a split scissors. What a degrading hold that is, legs spread and his asshole aimed at the gym skylight. Then you walked out of the gym and left him lying there.”
“I. Remember.” It was right after Easter vacation, and my mind was still scalding from the way Angela stood naked on the beach, laughing at the lump in my bathing suit.
“His name was McAndless or McAndrews or something. He was an officer of our class, vice president, I think. And that was his last bout. His farewell college try for dear old Harvard.” This phrase in English, with Alfonso laughing hard enough to cry, well, laughing and crying a little anyway. “God, Kiki, you really gave it to him!” Then, suddenly, his face goes tragic. Plucks a handkerchief from his breast pocket—foulard pattern, same as his tic—and wipes his eyes. “Whatever you do is too good.”