by R. M. Koster
40
That’s the way it will be, that way or the other way. Or simple pesticide without the poetry: hanging for example. Hang him and be done with him. Or drive a spike through his temples. Or bury him. Dig a hole and plant him; see if he sprouts. So many ways. Dostoevski’s father had his nuts crushed by peasants. Or so they say. Died of shock. Drape Ñato’s ballocks on an anvil and swat ’em with a sledge; if it doesn’t kill him try something else. Burning, say; I haven’t studied that. Pittsburg Phil Schwartz, a somewhat colleague of Ñato’s (since they both did work for the syndicate), tied a man—and no one’s found out who—to a tree and burned off his face and prints with a blowtorch. That would be scanned. Or douse him with gas and light him up, a Mississippi cook-out. Such game as Ñato may be roasted, seethed, broiled, or fried, oven-baked, or fricasseed. So many ways and only one Ñato, but I’ll find the right recipe.
Something to aim my mind at while the day seeps out through my bathroom louvers, while Jaime lifts me toward the bath towel spread out on my bed, while Elena rises from her own bath in a flutter of invisible attendant cupids, while Phil and Marta tremble in the thunder clap of love.
Or I can imagine Bolívar Plaza brimming with life, tides of people foaming up from the poor quarters, rivers of people flowing down from the bus station. Along the side streets and on the plaza’s rim men sway behind their braziers swabbing spice on smoke-fragrant meat chunks speared on sticks; old women crouch on produce boxes beside their trays of meat-filled yucca cakes, boys swing zinc buckets full of beaded beer and soda bottles. A band crammed on a truck back blares choruses of the old Acción Dinámica song. A bald electrician with sweat stains on his shirt tests the loudspeakers: “Dos, uno, cero, arriba Alejo!” In front of the Hotel Excelsior two guardias are frog-marching a pickpocket toward their van. The sky darkens; streetlamps go on; the square fills.
Or I can go to Nacho’s mansion where the flag-decked, dustcaked cars wait at the curb; where thirsty politicians jumble the salon and terrace, drinks in hand; where Alfonso arrives, cologned and talcumed, to huddle in the vestibule, still uneasy after all these years in the ambiance of his lost love Irene; where Alejo stands, pants dropped scowling, in the guest room, waiting for Furetto to squeeze him full of youth from a syringe of hormones and vitamins.
Still itching to be president. To seize his destiny, he would say, and perhaps he’s right. A drive to rule so deep only the stars could have forged it. With me the itch was chosen, not imposed; I gave it to myself. On the eighth night of my last stay in prison, when I came to lying in rat filth and my own vomit, too sick to move, unable to urinate, sure of more torment and a degrading death, I began to think about my life. I didn’t stay long at it. I passed out again, and since I wasn’t beaten the next day and began recovering strength and hope, I felt no further call to self-inspection. In fact I avoided the contemplative life for another year until Ñato Espino rubbed my face in it for good. But that night I considered my life and found it as unplanned and purposeless as any animal’s: some rash enthusiasms, some squandered gifts, some heady pleasures over-priced in pain, an accidental progress to a dingy end. That wasn’t odd, for the world was unplanned too. But I wasn’t responsible for the world, I was responsible for my life, and I groaned to have lived it so clumsily. I even envied Dmitri Látigo—not because he was in power and could turn his foes to bugs, but because his hate for me had lent his life some purpose while mine had had none. I thought such thoughts; then I lost consciousness. Later on I more or less forgot the interlude, which a self-dramatizing person might have called a Dark Night of the Soul. It sowed a seed of angst which sprouted a year later when I was on campaign and led to things which have convinced me that it’s riskier to hunt for meaning in your life than to run guns to Costaguana, but I wasn’t aware of that then. All I could say my hour of self-examination had left me was the hunger for a long-term goal, and when I was out of prison I remembered the glow I’d felt when people followed me and the stimulation offered when you grab for something other people want, and I put it in my mind to become president. Scarcely odd for a Tinieblan. Crassly common in fact. But it was the first distant mark I’d set myself since, twenty-some years before, I’d decided to get strong.
I took my glossy new ambition off to Miami and Paris and kept it combed and curried in a back stall of my mind. At night I’d let it out to prance, and on quiet mornings in my office with the taste of Marta still fresh on me. How pleasant to watch it trot across my desk; how good to hear it whinny. It gave me more paternal joy than Mito did when he learned to pa-pa. I’d watch it go through its gaits while Elena dozed beside me and a volume full of someone else’s glory drooped unread to my lap. I’d dream views of the course we’d run together, then thwack it back to stable lest it blow its wind untried. And no one knew I had it. It reared its pride in secret till I vaulted it and cantered off toward power.
Yet, though I kept it hidden, my ambition changed me. I grew more youthful in my step and smile; I felt flooded by an excess of energy, as though plugged in to some unlimited reserve. My strength returned more quickly than the doctors had thought possible, and with no special training grew beyond what it had been before I went to prison. That spring an open wrestling meet was held in Istanbul, and on a whim I went and won the free-style trophy in my weight class, pinning twelve opponents including the man who’d got the silver medal the year before at Tokyo. My early skill at handbalancing came back. One morning as I sat in my ambassadorial chair imagining campaigns and speeches, all unawares I gripped the chair arms and swung myself, legs tucked, into a handstand, and then stepped up onto my desk with my left palm and poised there, one-handed, still musing politics, until my secretary came in with the mail and squeaked me back to earth. I acquired puzzling mental gifts. Elena gave me a script to read, and I glanced through it and made a note or two and six weeks later found myself reciting it, lead parts and walk-ons, directions and suggested camera shots, to an amazed audience of Elena, Schicksal, and the author. I took up chess, a game I’d learned years before by hovering, invisible, at Uncle Erasmo’s elbow while he and Felix Ardilla slammed the pieces about the board and yelped taunts at each other, and brewed up such magnetic fields of concentration that I divined opponents’ strategies as though tapping their minds and watched my hand leap through successful lines of play twenty moves long without once giving it a conscious order. I recalled conversations between Alejo and my mother which I’d overheard from my cradle and quoted verbatim from books I’d read in grammar school. I received presentiments of the future. One midnight the phone rang, and, as I reached for it, I said aloud: “It’s Juanchi Tábano calling from Tinieblas; his son is hurt”; and, sure enough, the operator asked me to hold for an overseas call, and, after clicks and crackles, I heard Juanchi yell that his son had broken both legs in a car crash outside Cannes, and would I see he got the best doctors. In April I went to a reception at the Dominican Embassy, and some ribboned gorilla was thumping his chest about how stable his country was now that the generals were in power, and I heard myself laugh and whisper to one of the Venezuelans, “Let them talk; they’ll be up to their ass in gringos inside a month.” Strangest of all was the repose I felt in the midst of vitality, the sense of being ready, the knack for savoring the interim until my name was called. Women were more drawn to me than ever, but I was spared the wasp-sting thirst to gulp them all. Men also sought me out: artists and scholars welcomed me to their society; men hardened in the fires of war and commerce confided their cares to me, asked my counsel, proffered me favor. All year long my fine, streamlined life whistled downslope with the wind behind it, sun-flecked down through its alpine morning, toward the dark wood and Ñato’s bullets.
Ñato nursed his own ambition: a fief to hold for the gringo crime kings. In this dream he swiveled behind an immense desk in an office guarded by merciless gunmen. A murmur into an ivory phone, and clouds of powdered pleasure-death were wafted about the hemisphere; a nod and brothels rose; a shake and rivals
perished. Below, visible through the two-way mirror at his feet, a casino bulged with gaudy bettors, and each departing plane bore a courier with a satchel of cash for his numbered account.
So clear were Ñato’s visions of this paradise that he believed it attainable. After Castro de-gangstered Cuba, Ñato approached one of Meyer Lansky’s exiled men-at-arms and suggested the syndicate invest Tinieblas. Some months later three Sicilians appeared with funds for a casino at El Opulento and a dope franchise for Ñato. Then León Fuertes took office and nationalized the casino and expelled the Sicilians and formed a narcotics squad. Ñato thought León had cost him a dukedom. He was convinced that, with the right government, he could realize his dream. But Lansky would never have picked you, Ñato, even if I’d lived up to your hopes. You were never more than a beast of burden, fit to lug junk and bray for leavings. You were born a companion to spiders, to scutter through a sputum-lobbied world trailing a slime of fear. Your sewer universe is narrow, low, and dark, a haven for roaches lighted only where the deepest drift of mine plummets to graze it.
Our universes touched again that fall when a cocaine famine scourged the Côte d’Azur. Ñato left Ciudad Tinieblas for Lima at one o’clock in the morning aboard Hemispheric’s Flight 959, El Imperialista, the same flight that had carried Dmitri Látigo half a year before. He wore pointy black Mexican pumps and nylon stretch socks, beltless dark blue dacron-and-wool slacks, a marine-blue silk sport shirt buttoned at the neck, and a light blue Palm Beach jacket. His baggage contained four similar shirts in various pastel colors; his passport was visaed for Peru and France. During the flight he cheerfully but unsuccessfully propositioned all three tourist-class stewardesses. At a little before eight o’clock he debarked the aircraft, passed customs and immigration, taxied to the city, and checked in at a small hotel near the shrine of San Martín de Porres. He had coffee in the dining room, chatting with and unsuccessfully propositioning a vacationing Chilean dental assistant who was having breakfast at the next table. Then he walked to the offices of the Cagliostro Lines and booked a thirdclass passage to Marseilles on the Cola di Rienzo, arriving Callao that afternoon from Valparaíso and sailing the next evening for Guayaquil, Balboa, La Guaira, Barcelona, Marseilles, and Genoa. While ascertaining that the ship would have cargo space available for his car, he unsuccessfully propositioned a female clerk. Then he returned to his hotel, successfully propositioned an indian chambermaid, committed an act of darkness with her, did not get up to see her out, and slept all afternoon. That evening after dinner he received a blue envelope containing a parking lot stub, a set of car keys, and the registration papers (filed in his name) to a 1964 Leviathan Regal Imperator. At seven the next morning he assumed command of this machine and piloted it to Callao, stopping at every pump along the way. The tank was partitioned to accommodate one gallon of fuel and twenty-three of superfine Andean cocaine. Car and Ñato went aboard ship that afternoon; Cola di Rienzo cleared the breakwater at seven P.M.
During the first week of the voyage Ñato stained his blue silk sport shirt three times and his green silk sport shirt twice with spaghetti sauce and unsuccessfully propositioned a number of female passengers. He heard a great deal more than he cared to about pilgrimages to Rome from a Bolivian priest who shared his cabin and compensated by boring the priest with fabricated travels of his own. He played seven-card rummy with two undershirted Chilean mechanics bound for Volkswagen training in Germany, cheating steadily from Guayaquil to Balboa, getting caught halfway through the Panama Canal, whining to no avail as Pedro pinned his arms and Pablo kneed him roundly in the testicles. He hobbled moaning to his cabin and spent the next twenty-four hours in his bunk feeling sorry for himself. While the ship crossed the Caribbean he played double-deck solitaire in a dark corner of the lounge, pausing between deals to mine his nose with discreet industry and deposit his finds along the leg of his chair.
During the second week of the voyage he reached an understanding with a thirty-one-year-old Italian demi-vièrge, the secretary to a Caracas importer, who was returning to Brindisi to get married. They sambaed in the lounge and tussled on the fantail until he managed to assure her that he had no designs on her hymen. After that they spent four mornings playing with each other in his cabin while the priest said Mass for all passengers in the first-class lounge.
During the third week of the voyage French customs officials began probing Ñato’s dreams for cocaine. One morning a French policeman with drooping mustache and a blue kepi peered in through the porthole while his Italian friend was wristing him, and he went noodle-ish and thrust her out the door. His waiter, a French spy, put something in his food, and he developed diarrhea and cramps. The Mediterranean sun spilled an excess of light from horizon to horizon, flooding the crannies where a fugitive might hide, and in the night narcotics agents padded the companionway beyond his door and held stethoscopes to his bulkhead. After Barcelona he huddled in his bunk while the aroma of cocaine seeped from the soldered gas tank of his car and rose three decks to choke his cabin. The ship’s horn, blasting to the Marseilles pilot, so frighted him he fouled his sheets. He cuddled quaking in his mess till the priest went up on deck. He pulled the sheets off the bunk and wiped himself with them and stuffed them out the porthole. Then he did what he had promised himself and his capo he would not do: he pried off the heel of his Mexican shoe and took a packet from the hollowed-out leather and poured a little mound of white powder onto the back of his left hand and pressed his right nostril with the index knuckle of his right hand and held his left hand under his left nostril and sniffed himself full of courage, well-being, and good cheer.
At eight o’clock on the morning of September 5th Ñato Espino tangoed down the gangway of the Cola di Rienzo onto the Marseilles quay. Swinging his valise like a polo mallet, he headed for the bow of the ship, from which cars were being unloaded. In his path a stevedore bent to tie a shoelace, and Ñato leapfrogged over him, turned to flash him a grin, flipped him a Peruvian sol de oro, pirouetted five-hundred-forty degrees, tipped an invisible boater, and cakewalked toward his car, which was settling to earth ahead of him in a steel cradle.
“Belle voiture!” said a dockman, patting the Leviathan’s haunch.
“Formidable!” replied Ñato, bowing from the hip.
“Papiers,” said a customs man, approaching with clipboard.
“But of course,” said Ñato in English with a Chevalier accent, sweeping the registration from his jacket pocket.
While the car was being inspected, a man came by with a jerrycan of gasoline to moisten the tanks which had been drained upon loading. He regretted that he could only give four liters to each driver; Ñato assured him that was quite all right. The customs man licked a sticker and slapped it on the windshield. Ñato flung his bag into the front seat and leaped in after it. He fired the Leviathan’s engine, waved to the customs man, flipped the car into reverse instead of drive, stomped on the accelerator, whizzed backward, bashed thunderously into a steel hawser post, jammed the car into low, squealed forward past the chalk-faced customs man, zoomed through the gate trailing white powder, and rammed squarely into a motorcycle van full of fresh eggs.
Four hours later an inspector of the judicial police called on me at my embassy. Was I acquainted with a Tinieblan national named Jesús Maria Espino Amaro? Espino… Espino… Also known as Ñato? Ñato… Ñato… Did I know the man? It might come to me. Would the Ambassador have the kindness to notify the Quai des Orfèvres should Espino contact the embassy? Would the inspector have the kindness to reveal his interest in this citizen of my country? Very well: Espino was wanted for questioning in regard to the illicit traffic in narcotic stupeficants. He had escaped apprehension that morning in Marseilles and had been reported to have debarked an Air France flight at Orly. I noted the name carefully. I assured the inspector that the Republic of Tinieblas was eager to discourage crime on the part of its citizens and to cooperate with the authorities of all civilized nations, of which France was surely one of the most i
llustrious. I doubted that Monsieur Espino would show his face about the embassy but pledged to inform the Quai des Orfèvres immediately if he did. Then I showed the inspector to the door and let Ñato out of the closet.
He had crawled in a few minutes before the inspector, dripping fear across my rug, whining about his bad luck, pleading for sanctuary. It was the third time I saved him, and each time I might have looked away and saved myself. He was my other self, my mirror image, buffooned reflection of a prince. I loved the contest more than the prize; he dreamed of ease and feared the means to it. He was edgy where I was calm, grinning where I was grave, complaining where I was stoical, cowardly where I was valiant, clown where I was hero. And totally shameless. He’s bragged for years about the steel-nerved acumen with which he eluded the French police. I should have let him show it. I should have flung him out and let him save himself. That would have been a kindness beside what he did to me. Instead I stooped to save him. I hid him at the embassy. I gave him the extra suit of clothes I kept there. I issued him a fresh passport. And when he blubbered that he hadn’t nerve to boldface out of France, I smuggled him to Spain.
That was a fine lark, whisking Ñato ’cross the border. I grabbed a pair of ballet sprites as cover, and we left at dawn in my embassy Comanche with the diplomatic plates and the flags on the fenders. We stopped in Chartres for coffee and rolls and stayed half an hour to stroll the cathedral. Ñato whined about that: we might be seen; we ought to hurry, so I let him sniff what was left of his shoe packet, and he waxed gay and courageous. Down into the Loire country with me driving and Josette tucked alongside, Ñato in the back with his arm round Nicole. Lunch at Poitiers: fois gras, langouste, entrecôte, fromages, fruits; Chablis with the lobster, Lafitte with the beef, port with the cheese, Armagnac with our coffee. On to Bordeaux with a liter of brandy for the road; across the moorlands, flashing between the elms, with the girls and I singing “Chevaliers de la table ronde” and “Jeanneton” and “la Ballade du fier Ñato,” which I composed extempore to the tune of “Malbrouche s’en va t’en guerre” and whose refrains Ñato and Nicole punctuated with kisses. I knew an excellent restaurant at Biarritz, but Ñato, growing nervous, wished to get across the border as quickly as possible, so we stopped only long enough to stow him in the trunk under a lap rug, and swept down to Hendaye and passed French customs, and crossed the bridge to Irún and passed Spanish customs, courtesy diplomatique and cortesía diplomática, scarcely slowing the car and certainly not having to give Ñato the three-knock danger signal we’d agreed on. Then the girls suggested I let Ñato out, but I felt he deserved more durance for the grave crime of trafficking in narcotic stupeficants, so we pressed on to the outskirts of San Sebastián, where I knew a very decent inn. When we got out, I rapped three times on the trunk. Then we went in and had fish soup and shrimp Basque and half a chicken each and white Riojo wine—I stepping out between each course to slam the car doors and make gruff noises—until Nicole declared that if I didn’t let Ñato out at once, she would sleep with Josette, so we took our brandies and trooped out to the car, and when I opened the trunk, there lay Ñato, white with terror and marinated in piss, curled in a fetal lump with his lips drawn back and his rat-teeth gleaming.