by R. M. Koster
I held my palm out to Aguado’s aide-de-camp. “Give me your pistol.”
He stared at me for about two seconds, then unflapped his holster and put his little Browning in my hand. I pushed him aside gently and entered Aguado’s office. He was leaning back in his swivel chair, gazing at the ceiling. Only the desk lamp was lit, and with Wagner’s music swelling augustly the atmosphere of the room was properly funereal.
“Go home,” I said.
“What?” blinking at me.
I switched on the main lights. “Go home. I’m in charge now.”
A recent reference work, Monarchs, Potentates, and Strong Men, fails to list me among the numerous presidents of the Republic of Tinieblas; I can scarcely blame its compilers. During my half-hour’s occupation of the palace I levied no taxes, concluded no treaties, and signed no bills. I declared a war and ordered a mobilization, but Camilo Araña, Tinieblan Ambassador to the United States, declined to take my declaration to the White House and Colonel Tolete refused to send his men against the gringo tanks, though I offered to lead them personally. It was not so much that I lacked personal authority. I later learned that my call to Camilo caught him in bed with the daughter of a prominent member of the House of Representatives and that Colonel Tolete was in the process of being relieved of command by a group of his younger officers. I managed to clear the palace of such men who favored gringo intervention. I issued a statement, broadcast over Radio Tinieblas, Uncle Erasmo’s station, proclaiming myself President, denouncing both Canino and the gringos, and calling on all citizens to resist internal subversion and foreign attack. But my only real achievement came near the end of my administration when my secretary (until recently Bonifacio Aguado’s secretary) rushed into my office with word that the White House was on the line. I picked up the phone.
“Is this the President of Tinieblas?”
“Yes.”
“Hold on please.”
Then molasses began oozing through the international cable into my ear:
“Mistah Prezdent, Ah’m deeply distressed that citizens of ow two countries came to blows this afternoon, an even moe distressed at this grave threat to yo intunnel security an the freedom of ow hemisphere, an Ah wont you to know Ah’ll do evathin necessary to see that democratic govment doesn’t go undah down theah in yo little republic. Ah know you don’t have much of an army, an I think you made a wise decision requestin my assistance.”
“Mister President, we neither need nor want your assistance.”
“Now wait just a minute, Mistah Prezdent! My ambassadah just called an said he’d spoken with you an that you an he had made a deal.”
“Your ambassador spoke to the former President. The new President doesn’t make deals with gringos.”
“Down in Texas we don’t like the word ‘gringo.’”
I answered with my one phrase of Texan: “Fuck you, pardner.” Then I hung up.
But I had no time to congratulate myself, for Dmitri Látigo came in with a squad of civil guards and my term in office was over.
* * *
One of the marvelous things about Tinieblas is that every citizen, no matter how ignorant or unprepared, is convinced he can run the country better than whoever is trying to at the moment and, consequently, always has at least part of his mind occupied with how he and his friends might take power. Since the junior officers of the Civil Guard have little to do and, lacking wars, small hope of quick promotion, they dream of power constantly, more or less the way adolescents dream of screwing movie stars. When the risks disappear, they pounce. So since I had already sent Bonifacio home and gringo tanks were humping into the capital, a group of young officers led by Dmitri Látigo and Narses Puñete decided to take over the state. They relieved Aiax Tolete of command, promising him a seat on their junta, sent General Spear word that they would deal firmly with all communists, and dispatched troops to secure the means of communication, the ministries, and, of course, the palace. I think Puñete would have tried to make a deal with me, for he and Látigo lacked popularity while I had abundance. But Látigo hated me, and not only demanded I be imprisoned but came personally to drag me to La Bondadosa.
Dmitri Látigo’s father was the son of an Otán landowner and the only Tinieblan I know of to devote himself exclusively to literature. He wrote more than a dozen novels, none of which was ever published. At least he carried a number of fat copy books around with him wherever he went, claiming they were novels, and no one dared to doubt him publicly for fear he might begin reading aloud. His master was Dostoevski. He complained that his career had been thwarted by the lack of political persecution in Tinieblas, his inability to develop epilepsy, and his wife’s iron refusal to be unfaithful to him. He managed to lose most of his inheritance gambling, however, and he named his three sons Ivan, Dmitri, and Alyosha, and his daughter Grushenka. Impressionable children all, Ivan became a professor of philosophy, Dmitri an officer in the Guardia Civil, Alyosha a priest, and Grushenka the most affectionate girl in Tinieblas.
She was small, bright, pretty, good-natured, sly in a soft feline way, tender, calm, and loving, as adept at love as Angela though in no way fierce about it. She wasn’t the most beautiful girl in the country, but she got the best men. The French Ambassador, one of Malraux’s protégés, a war hero and a poet, was at the point of divorcing his wife over her a few years ago, and they say that León Fuertes was on his way to visit her when he got blown up. Two years before that, when she was nineteen or so, we spent some time together. That was just while I was divorcing Olga, before León took office and I went to Madrid. Perhaps she loved me or had hopes of respectability; perhaps it was all Dmitri’s idea, but he came up to me one afternoon as I was having a drink at the Hotel Excelsior and, in front of other men and very seriously, declared it was about time I announced my engagement to his sister. I’d had some drinks. Marriage wasn’t a very congenial topic to me at the time. It was annoying to be badgered in public. So I said that as I was in the process of divorcing one whore, it would be foolish for me to think of marrying another one. Látigo went white and reached for his pistol. I threw my drink in his eyes and broke his jaw. And for this, in his rancorous way, he hated me, and no doubt still does.
Látigo had his pistol out this time before he came through the door. “I arrest you in the name of the Provisional Military junta of the Tinieblan Civil Guard,” he said. “Why don’t you try to escape?”
“I’m too tired,” getting up from Bonifacio Aguado’s swivel chair and holding out my wrists for a sergeant’s handcuffs. “It’s been a fatiguing afternoon.”
Two soldiers shouldered me down the stairs, with Látigo right behind me, his pistol pointed at the back of my neck. My head hurt, but I managed to hold it high. An old palace chambermaid who watched them take me out to their truck told Time magazine that I looked just like Alejo when the gringos deposed him in 1942; but there was at least one significant difference: the blood on my clothes was my own.
It was my last stay in La Bondadosa and my most unpleasant. Látigo, who was a modern militarist, had me interrogated daily for the first week, trying to get me to admit collusion with Canino, whom neither the Guardia nor the gringos ever captured. His questioners used automobile radiator hoses and worked in relays, and as I’d been in poor shape when I went in—the gringo rifle butt had given me a concussion—I weakened quickly. Látigo would have put me in one of the coffins, but they were all filled with communists, and Puñete insisted that they get priority lest the gringos lose confidence in the new regime. Látigo was threatening to put me on the Costaguano Lie Detector—a kind of knitting-needle gadget which they stick up your ass and stab your prostate with—when Elena made the gringos make him stop torturing me.
She declared she was going to Tinieblas, with a field hospital outfitted at her own expense, to rescue her patriot husband and tend the victims of fascist repression and U.S. intervention. When Tinieblas refused her a visa, she swooped to Miami with a considerable entourage and set up at th
e Fontainebleau, holding twice-daily press conferences in the grand ballroom. These were orchestrated by Schicksal (who had one Elena Delfi picture in the first-run houses and another ready for release) and made the lead stories of every paper in the States and, of course, the network news coverage. For Miami Elena created a new role, a grand pastiche of Tosca, Antigone, and Saint Joan; in it she gave some of her most stirring performances. She attended Mass in the Cuban ghetto (black veil, deep eye shadow) accompanied by the widow of a butchered civil rights leader, a famous novelist, and two former White House aides. In one conference she appeared decked in rich jewels which she offered in my ransom; in another she clasped hands at the neck of a white surplice and appealed to His Holiness. She never mentioned Puñete or Látigo but accused Lyndon Johnson of persecuting me because of the way I’d ended our phone conversation (reported by Aguado’s nosy secretary to Lino, hence to Alfonso, hence to Elena). How strange that such a beeg, fat man should have such a teeny, leetle soul (thumb and forefinger held toward the camera two centimeters apart). She scoffed at the official declaration that U.S. troops had been ordered into Ciudad Tinieblas to protect American citizens: Mussolini had invaded Ethiopia, Hitler had invaded Poland, Stalin had invaded Hungary—no, that was Khrushchev, but it didn’t matter, all despots were the same—so of course Meester Johnson was bound to invade some leetle country, and send tanks to kill defenseless civilians, and engineer a military coup d’état, and ask the fascists to please put in jail and torture the man who had been rude to him, because you mustn’t be rude to people who have tanks, even if they invade your country. She held Johnson accountable for every hair on my head—which wasn’t too illogical as there were five thousand gringo troops in Ciudad Tinieblas with more pouring in from Guantánamo and the Canal Zone and Fort Bragg—and since she was a famous actress and very popular with Italian-American bloc voters, word was passed that I oughtn’t be too badly mutilated. I still had to worry about being shot while attempting to escape, however, and I was happy when they gave me a cell mate, Major Dorindo Azote, the only Guard officer who had refused to go along with the captains’ coup.
Puñete and Látigo were no longer captains, of course. They promoted themselves to major the morning after they took over, became lieutenant colonels the next week, and celebrated U.S. recognition of their regime by leaping to brigadier general. Then Látigo proposed a Christmas promotion for all ranks, and Puñete, who was afraid of being outbid in popularity, recommended two grades for enlisted men and three for officers. So they became full generals, and everyone expected the New Year to see them field marshals, with batons and new uniforms, for their insignia were large seven-pointed stars (a point for each province), and a regulation officer’s jacket could accommodate no more than four of these, and that not without some crowding. Puñete personally undertook to solve this problem, appointing a Council of Sartorial Advisers from the leading tailors and dressmakers of the country and working closely with them. It was, in fact, the only work he allowed himself. He would rise late, zoom to headquarters amid a cluster of motorcycles, and secrete himself in the atelier he had set up in Tolete’s former office, letting one modiste convince him of the functional efficiency of the Hungarian epaulet and another one extol the swash of the Brazilian tunic. After an hour or so of this and having briskly indicated directions for new research, he would remove to the permanent bacchanal he and his cronies had installed in Club de Oficiales. He might snatch an hour or two from his pleasures to review this or that unit, but in the main he left the tedious tasks of running the Guard and the country to Dmitri Látigo, who accepted them in the most magnanimous spirit of self-sacrifice. The two never lost a chance to declare toothily that they were bound as brother officers and comrades in arms by ties which transcended any mundane ambition or jealousy, until the most ignorant peasant in the farthest bog of Selva Trópica was aware that it was only a matter of time before one betrayed the other. Most Tinieblans expected it would be Látigo who got rid of Puñete, and we prisoners knew the date and hour when the garrison at Córdoba would turn its rifles on its illustrious inspector, the guardroom where he would be confined, and the name of the man—Sergeant Puñal, Dmitri Látigo’s personal bodyguard—who would string him up with his own belt to make it look like suicide. Since Puñete’s reverence for gringos was the only thing that kept Dmitri Látigo from having me tortured to death, I used every argument with the guard who brought the food and slop cans to have him take a message upstairs for me. He was aware that Látigo wanted me shown no favors, however, and I would never have succeeded without Azote, who, though ill-disposed toward my family and perfectly content to let either general destroy the other, finally agreed to intercede. On the morning before the scheduled inspection, General Narses Puñete received word that Elena was a bosom friend of Yves St. Laurent and could easily secure his collaboration on the new uniform. I was sent for immediately and managed to have the office cleared long enough to persuade Puñete that his life was in danger. He was capable of action when he felt like and had the confidence of General Spear, who suspected Látigo of communism because of his Russian first name. By midnight both Látigo and I were at the airport, he manacled and gagged for the plane to Peru, I shaved and suited for the plane to Miami.
38
“I’m sorry, Kiki.” Jaime mopes in the doorway. “I wasn’t alert.”
“My fault. Stupid to send you. You all right?”
“Yes, Kiki. I wasn’t worried. I knew you’d get me out.”
Nod. Make my smile. “I’m glad you’re back.”
“I saw him, Kiki.”
Nod.
“His mother called him. He came to the screen and looked at me. He was scared, Kiki.”
“Good.”
“Later he came out. When they had me handcuffed, when they were putting me in their car, he came out and yelled at me. He called me dumb indian. He said you’re finished, Kiki. That everyone knows it but you and me.”
“What did you say?”
“I didn’t say anything. If you’re finished, Kiki, why is he so scared?”
Smile. “Come. Push me inside. Quick bath.”
“All right, Kiki.”
“How’d he look?” as Jaime rolls me out into the hall.
“He looked all right, Kiki. A little fat.”
“Fat?”
“Well, you know, Kiki. As if he lives well.”
Nod.
“What’s the house like?” as Jaime comes out from opening the taps.
“It’s a nice house, Kiki.” He swings me to the bed to undress me. “They have a rosebush in front near the door.”
“A rosebush?”
“Yes, Kiki.” He pulls off my trousers. “All the houses are the same. Not big like this one, but all right, nice. His has a rosebush.”
Jaime hoists me in his arms and sidesteps to the bathroom cranes me down into the warm water.
“He lives well, you say?”
“Yes, Kiki.” He slips the washcloth glove on his right hand, holds my shoulder with his left hand. “It looks that way.” He looks away from my face and swabs my pasty flesh with the soaped cloth. “We’re going to kill him, aren’t we, Kiki?”
“Yes, Jaime. We’re going to kill him.”
39
They’ll bring him drugged, not to La Yegua—here. Marta will be gone, and Elena. Who’ll complain? and we’ll have the cellar ready for him. They’ll bring him at night, wrapped up in a rug, like Cleopatra.
Jaime will undress him and lay him out. We’ll have three tenfoot four-by-fours bridging two sawhorses. Jaime will drape him there and cinch him tight. Leather straps at his hips, chest, and naves; a belt for his ankles; a strand of telephone cord twining his wrists beneath the boards; another strand pulled around his head. Fit it between his lips, Jaime, and twist it tight. I don’t want him pleading. Groans and choked screams will do.
Then we’ll wait for him to waken. We’ll want the place well-lighted, and a mirror on the ceiling so he can watch. An
d the sawhorses low, the level of my knees. Instruments ready on the long worktable: the charcoal oven Franca broils meat on, Otilio’s machete with the blade-end plunged among the coals, a steel E-string with each end fitted to a wooden handle, the saw. Cauterization’s the key. Less mess, and he won’t bleed to death. We’ll start as soon as he comes to, before the drugs worn off completely. Mental pain’s worth more than physical, and I don’t want him dying of shock. He’ll open his eyes, and blink, and stare around wildly, and see himself in the mirror, and I’ll tell him—I’m sure he’ll understand if I speak slowly—that he’s in my cellar and we won’t be disturbed. Then we’ll get started.
Shall we geld him first? I don’t want the taste of it blurred by pain, but I think we should leave that for dessert. Right arm first and work in a circle. Jaime will take the saw—one of those electric hand numbers. Zizz! Go through a plank like butter. Jaime will take it and switch it on, nudge the blade into Ñato’s armpit. Muffled squeak, blood spurts, and the arm flops, swinging by the wristcord. Saw switched off, dropped on the table. Quick with the machete to sizzle the wound. Old Ñato will have probably fainted, and we’ll wait till he wakes up for the other arm.
We’ll trim him like a weeviled oak, Jaime. We’ll prune him like a poxed plum tree. Arms at the shoulder, legs at the hip, and when you’ve lopped his limbs and seared the sawings, you’ll loop the E-string around his parts and pinch them off. Flick your fists apart and snap the steel, and they’ll drop like clipped figs.
Then Jaime will pat Ñato’s new twat with the white-hot machete blade and undo the straps and lift him down into Neira’s zinc washtub. He’ll pile the arms and legs on Ñato’s stomach; he’ll clasp the parts into Ñato’s right hand. Then he’ll take Ñato over to that nice little house and leave him on his mother’s doorstep, beside the rosebush.