by R. M. Koster
Marta came to me when I was about an hour into my siesta. Warmth fumbling near me. “Hold me, Kiki.”
I let her snug her back against my chest.
“I’m sorry about before, Kiki. I believe you.”
“S’all right.”
“I was dreaming now, Kiki. I don’t know what, except it was of death.”
“No death here, Marta.”
My hand hung loosely on her flank, and she moved it to her breast. “Touch me, Kiki.”
I thought, Coño! ambushed while unarmed, but she wrinkled against me and moved my hand over her, and I knew I had strength and love to spare, for Marta, and for Mouche that night, and for any targets of opportunity that popped up in between or after, for all the sweet, lovely women life blew my way, and love to spare for Mito and Olguita, for Elena and the kids she’d give me, strength and love to pour out for all Tinieblas and bury death forever.
Ñato, for his part, had a talking crocodile who, like himself dressed nattily in a fawn sport coat and a pink silk shirt buttoned at the neck and dark glasses. They sat drinking rum and Coca-Cola in the bar of El Opulento. The man from Miami, who had just checked in, wanted to shower, rest a while; Ñato and his crocodile passed the time buying each other drinks.
The crocodile complimented Ñato on his sang-froid. “Those gringos like a take-charge guy,” he said. “It wouldn’t have done to let on that the deal’s gone sour, much less tell him. You were smooth as silk out there, baby. You’ve got a real pair of balls.”
“And when he finds out?” Ñato was close to tears.
“He won’t find out. Kiki will come through, and the syndicate will never know there was a hitch.”
“You don’t know Kiki,” Ñato whined. “He’s a real prick. He used me for years, and now he’s going to be President, and he doesn’t need me any more, and he’ll ruin my big chance just from spite.”
Ñato told the crocodile how Kiki had abused him, how it was Kiki’s fault Ñato was an orphan, how Kiki had run out on Ñato when they were doing so well in the gun business, how, because of Kiki, he’d gone into drugs and got hooked on cocaine. “He only cares about himself,” said Ñato.
“Don’t believe it,” said the crocodile. “He likes you. He’s your friend.”
But Ñato shook his head and sulked.
Then Kiki Sancudo spoke to Ñato out of the Wurlitzer organ. The force of Kiki’s voice trembled the surface of Ñato’s drink and tinkled glasses behind the bar:
“Who saved you from a beating in Piraeus, Ñato? Who got you out of Greece when you were broke? Who gave you a piece of the Costaguana gun trade and stood up to Memo when he pulled his highjack? Who hid you from the French police? Who fixed you a clean passport and slipped you across the border? Who always took care of you when you were in jams?”
“You did,” whined Ñato, “but now you’re against me.”
“Don’t doubt me, Ñato,” Kiki boomed from the Wurlitzer. “Don’t doubt me, and don’t try to figure me out!”
“You were testing me, weren’t you, Kiki? That was it, wasn’t it?”
“Don’t bother yourself with why, Ñato. Just trust me.”
“See?” said the crocodile. “What’d I tell you? All you’ve got to do is take Don Vito to him before the rally.”
“Ah, ho!” said Ñato, slapping the table so that the waiter turned to stare at him. “Ah, ho!” grinning behind his shades. “I knew Kiki wouldn’t let me down!”
So Ñato and his crocodile had a drink in celebration while Don Vito enjoyed his shower and Marta kissed me, smiling, and wrapped herself in her robe and went back to her room. Then, for the very last time in all my life, I got up from bed on my own power and stretched before the mirror, admiring my fine, hard body, and, having more strength than I knew what to do with, dropped naked to the floor for push-ups. Then I washed and dressed myself for the last time, thinking nothing special of it at all, and tied my own shoes and buttoned my own shirt, and went in to watch Elena dress, for there were people downstairs, and I wanted us to go down together,
“Giovanni Alfonso,” I said, zipping her dress. “After your father and my brother. Giovanni Alfonso Sancudo. Born in the palace just like his old man.”
“And if it’s a girl?”
“Elena. Elenita.”
“And if it’s triplets?”
“Harpo, Chico, and Groucho. Come on. You look good enough. I’m the star today, remember?”
Now, downstairs were Juanchi Tábano and Gonzalo Garbanzo, Armando Loza and Dr. Garibaldi Saenz, and Pedro Oruga, who’d flown down from Otán in his own Cessna, and Hunfredo Ladilla with his new wife, and Aquilino Piojo with Hunfredo’s old one, and Pablo Chinche, up from Selva Trópica, and Rosendo Salmón from Salinas, and Olga’s brother Edgardo Luciérnaga with his wife, and the Reverend Dr. Gladstone Archer, and the candidate for deputy who’d petitioned me that morning, and Alfonso with Mouche, and Marta with the same post-orgasmic glow she showed me in the library ten minutes ago, and several others, including one Jesús Maria Espino Amaro (“They call me Ñato”), who pushed up to Elena and me as we reached the bottom step, with a man who looked more like an accountant than a gangster, a round-shouldered, bespectacled man who tried not to gawk at Elena.
“This is him, Kiki,” said joyful Ñato. “This is Don Vito, just tell him ‘OK.’”
There was an audible hush. All eyes were on us, Alfonso watching nervously and Marta watching apprehensively and Elena watching in regal calm.
“I don’t know you,” I told Ñato in English. Then I pointed to him and looked about. “I don’t know this man.”
Ñato and Don Vito dissolved onto the tiles like two gouts of spilled grease, and Elena and I walked past them, into a garden of smiling faces.
46
Din of horns behind us, and Nacho’s Lincoln whooshes by. Glimpse of Alejo through the rear window, then another car, and another, and Alfonso swings out from the curb, wedging left hand and fender into the motorcade, and Jaime lurches after, rocking me against the door, then against the chest strap, and we are off down Bahía, gunning to keep up, with Carl swaying to his feet in the car ahead to sight his camera down the avenue, while Phil kneels backward on the front seat, clasping Carl’s waist, and pedestrians jerk their heads to peer at us through the gloom and drivers stare from cars we’ve elbowed to the right, as the long, honking line of cars is yanked with Alejo in his spring toward a last bite of power.
That day we walked. I was too charged with energy to wait while the plaza filled, and so I called my friends and teammates out. The sea was high that day, and as we gathered on the corner —a handsome group, fit for a racing meet or garden party—the west wind rolled a great swell, building, down across the bay and flung it to the sea wall. A roiling tower rose and boomed and glittered in the sun, and then it shattered, sighing salt mist across the avenue to brush our faces.
Now we knife in darkness, but that day we strolled, and the declining sun filtered among us through the palm fronds. Arm-in-arm with Elena I led them, all the E-string tension that had held me in the weeks of my campaign softened, and my pulse beating with the rhythm of the world. Each action of my life, acts that had seemed disordered blunderings when I reviewed them that foul night in prison, were now revealed as careful moves to shape me for this moment. I’d gorged my ego on the world around me, and the world had suffered for it. A sleeping man had had his head smashed so I might stand an equal to my father. Men had died in Costaguano to prove my courage and along Washington Avenue to show me I could lead. Olga had wept to sensitize my heart to love, and more, and more, and now poor Ñato had been publicly denied so that I might deny and slough all that was mean and greedy in my spirit. And I was ready now to give back all I’d grabbed. My life, the world itself, seemed planned and ordered, and I walked smiling toward that shimmering mirage.
Up on the Avenida Simón Mocoso offices were letting out, and clerks and secretaries crowded to us, and people clambered down from busses to mingle with us
, and businessmen called to me from their cars and pulled them to the curb to walk with us. Hands glanced in toward mine over other people’s shoulders, and eyes groped for my eyes, and I took them, feeling at once serious and gay, and said, “Yes, come along, come on with us.” I’d go five steps or ten, then stop to take somebody’s hand or greeting, and the whole avenue moved with me at that pace, while to the east, busloads of people were rocking in along the Vía Venezuela, and to the north others were rolling down the highway from the interior, and Ñato was sniffing up his last packet of courage and fumbling under socks and handkerchiefs for a pistol.
Now Alejo’s cortege slows, turning up from Bahía, and people lean from the sidewalk to squint darkly at us through the insulating sheen of uprolled windows, faces inquisitive, or frenzied, or angered as the guardias press them back; but that day I walked among them, they smiled. I was bringing them the fire of new life and had taken up their problems. I needed no protection.
Now I can see Alejo climbing from his car to strut along the corridor carved by policemen, looking neither left nor right as the mob howls its excitement. The streetlights gleam on sweatstreaked, shout-strained faces hot for blood and retribution like myself—Two guardias will bring him to the ranch—men yeasted in old hates and snarled to plunge toward violence, but that day I came in concord, stepping out into the square with the people all about me, all the people, rich and poor, light and dark, gathered for me and marching with me, opening a way for me and trooping in my wake, all bound as one, graced by my grace, while Ñato snaked his way among the crowd with death clasped in his pocket.
Now Elena unbuckles me while Jaime assembles my chair, and now he lifts me to it and settles me inside, and Elena rolls me down the corridor where Carl stands, spraying the crowd with his camera and dropping it to squeeze a burst at me, and someone to my left screams, “Venganza para Kiki!” and others take it up, “Vengeance! Vengeance!” I make my smile —Jaime will probe with the smeared barrel—hate-stuffed, maimed abortion trundling on rubbered wheels, but that day I strode proudly with my woman on my arm and all the country nested in my palm for me to mold it fresh.
Now they lift me, Jaime on one side, Alfonso on the other, up toward where Alejo and Nacho and the others sit, and the roars pound and eddy, and the faces leer and twitch, and the mob moans for its plunder—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. They turn and settle me beside Nacho, and I look out at the groom that folds in about the howling pack, but that day there was still sunlight as I mounted with Elena and the others, the whole land laved in the last glow of afternoon, and the people shouting gaily.
Now Elena sits down beside me and takes my handkerchief to wipe the spittle from my chin and asks, “Va bene, caro?” and I have strength enough to nod, and to my left Alejo rises and holds up his gaunt hands and lifts his dried death’s-head and rasps his ancient incantation—“I am Alejandro Sancudo. I have been your President. I will be your President again.”—his voodoo prayer to darkness and decay, but that day I stood up myself and raised my hands to weigh the people’s hope, and I was going to say, I was going to, I was…
“Are you all right, Kiki?”
But my brother Ñato, my double cleverly reversed, stood up behind me, a little to my left, and pierced my words with bullets, and skewered my life, and drained the power from my hands so that they dropped the people’s hope, and smashed my body, and broke my sex, and soured my soul, and…
“Kiki!”
Flashbulbs bursting in my brain, head lolling wildly, long donkey bray erupting from my throat. Nacho twists to stare at me in horror as Elena grasps my checks.
“Kiki!”
Grope for control along thin, overloaded circuits. Grope for control. Another one, another one could kill me. And then we’d… And then we’d never… And then he’d be safe.
“Kiki! Are you all right?”
Make myself nod. “Yes. Elena.” Lifting the words like weights.
“Are you sure?” Smooths my cheek. “I’ll make them stop. I’ll get you home.”
Shake my head. “All. Right. Now.”
Alejo ranting, and the mob howling back. Touch of grace gone from them forever. And from me. But there are other joys.
“Are you sure, Kiki?” dabbing my lips with the handkerchief.
“Yes, Elena. Fine now.” Make my smile. “We’re going to win.”
The gun will be blown free. Or Jaime will withdraw it. Then he’ll undo the cords and irons and put a 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 Ñato will scream for days.
December, 1968–November, 1970
R.M. KOSTER was born in Brooklyn and educated at Yale and New York Universities. He went to Panama as a soldier in 1957 and has lived there since. Besides The Prince, he has published four novels and one work of contemporary history, and has had parallel careers as a university professor, reporter, and political activist. His shorter work has been published in the New Republic, Harper’s, and Connoisseur, among others. His wife, Otilia Tejeira, has been a ballet dancer and human rights monitor. They have two children and three grandchildren.