And Danilo, waving the orchid, responded in an incredibly firm voice, “It’s me, auntie, your nephew Danilo.” A few tense seconds of waiting passed, and then the door opened slowly, allowing the old woman to show her mistrustful eye and study the visitor’s appearance. The yelling came right away, “Lord in Heaven above! Kid, it’s you! I haven’t seen you for years!”
The door opened completely and Danilo melted into a hug with that feeble body that smelled of castor oil and he felt a long, cold kiss on his ear that turned his stomach. She was ugly, wearing a house dress buttoned up to the neck and the skin of her arms and face appeared to be made of onion peel.
“Lord in Heaven above! Lord in Heaven above!”
“Aunt, auntie, you’re looking so well!”
“I’m an old lady about to kick the bucket. But you, son, you’ve become a man. The last time I saw you was at your mother’s wake.”
“I remember.”
“You’ve let me down, Danilo. You don’t even visit on my birthday. I bet you’ve forgotten the date on which your poor aunt was born.”
“Honestly, yes I have, auntie. But I haven’t completely forgotten you. I still remember how much you like orchids, and I bought you this one at the cemetery flower shop.”
“It’s so beautiful! I’ll put it in the refrigerator with some aspirin so it lasts several weeks.”
She turned around with the orchid in hand and Danilo had time to scan the apartment. There were cactus plants of various kinds in every corner. And there were cats, many cats dispersed among the sofas and armchairs. The whole house smelled like cat piss. But, his aunt was already back, was already asking about old relatives, as silent as he was, who didn’t even call on the telephone. She came with the enormous family photo album and took a seat on the sofa, next to Danilo.
“Do you want some crème de vie?”
“No, auntie, I don’t drink alcohol.”
“Just like your mother, may she rest in peace. Nevertheless, she was luckier than me; she got a husband. Just look, look at the photo of your mother when she was fifteen years old. Wasn’t she pretty? Now look at me, always closing my mouth so no one would see my cavity-ridden teeth. And this one is grandma Salvadora, and that one is grandpa Papito, and here’s your aunt Patria, who married the mailman, and here . . .”
At that moment, Danilo brought his hand to his stomach and made a grimace.
“What’s wrong? Are you ill?”
“Diarrhea, auntie. For the last week, I’ve had diarrhea.”
“Then go to the bathroom, child. Don’t lose any time.”
She took him by the hand and quickly led him to the toilet, warning him to use the least amount of paper possible and to flush when he was done. Danilo nodded in agreement to everything with an expression of extreme pain. When he was alone in the bathroom, he went directly to the sink and started frantically tapping the tiles. One of them sounded hollow and was nearly loose. It was the tile. The treasure tile. Danilo took a nail clipper out and began to carefully scrape the corners of that tile.
“Damn!” He thought. “This is going to be easier than I expected.” He stuck an edge of the nail clipper through a gap and soon the tile was in his hands, clearing the way to the treasure. Danilo plowed his hand in and started to feel around in the hole. From outside, he heard his aunt’s voice again, who asked him solicitously,
“All better, son?”
“Almost, auntie.”
“I have toilet paper for you here, it must’ve run out. Can I come in?”
“Not now, auntie. I’m on the toilet.”
“That’s nonsense. Have you already forgotten that I bathed you until you were 15 years old? I’m coming in. You’re like a son to me.”
Danilo didn’t have time to stand up. His aunt came in at the moment he was taking his hand out of the hiding place with a thick pile of 100 note bills.
“Thief!” His aunt yelled, bringing her hands to her head. “You’re nothing more than a vulgar and repulsive thief. Leave that money where it was!”
“Aunt, auntie . . . forgive me. I need three thousand pesos. It’s a matter of life or death.”
“Leave! Leave this house or I will call the police!”
“Three thousand, beloved auntie. I’ll pay you back in a month.”
“Earn it by working for it, you rat. Break your back.”
Danilo walked over to her and took her by the shoulders.
“Auntie, you have to understand . . .”
“I don’t understand anything. Police! Police! There’s a thief in this house!”
Danilo shook her forcefully by the shoulders, but he couldn’t help the fragile woman from escaping from his hands and falling to the floor, knocking her head on the edge of the bathtub with a resounding thump. Immediately, blood ran down her head and her dentures fell out of her mouth.
“Aunt! Auntie!”
Danilo kneeled down before her and tried to revive her by tapping her face. He spent a few minutes doing so, until he understood that his aunt would never recover from that fall. He took her pulse and knew she was dead. He tried to close her eyes, but these were looking lifelessly at some undefined point on the wall. There was no time to lose. Danilo forgot about the old woman and filled his pockets with bills and jewelry. He had to leave quickly. He was no longer Danilo the teacher, or even Danilo the thief. He was Danilo the murderer, and that, under Cornelio Rojas’s government, carried the price of the firing squad.
In two steps, he was at the door of the house. He opened it, very carefully, and when he saw there was no one on the stairs, he started to run down the steps toward the street.
Ferryman, ferryman . . . you’re to blame. Although perhaps the real culprit was Cornelio Rojas whom he ran into on the street, looking at him with grave eyes from a street mural.
It was already too late to see the ferryman. So he would wait until morning, taking refuge in some dark place where the police wouldn’t find him. He walked. He walked like a madman through the elegant neighborhood of Los Molinos, looking for the right place to spend the night. The noise of a police siren made him enter the doorway of a large, seemingly uninhabited colonial house. Then it started to rain. A cold, abundant rain, that made him back up against the wall of the house and lean against a slimy door where, inexplicably, there were no Cornelio Rojas posters. Since he was still getting wet, he got closer to the door and noticed that it opened slowly. The siren of another patrol car made him open the door wider and enter on the tips of his toes into a large, high-ceilinged house where in years past some bourgeois family, one of the hundreds who had left the country after Cornelio’s arrival, had lived. He lit a match. The house smelled like dried shit, but in the middle of the living room was a velvet sofa that, although moth-eaten, was still a good place to rest. He laid down on it. He was so tired that he immediately fell asleep. He dreamt about the ferryman. He dreamt that he was at last escaping the country and sailing through a calm sea to an island of peaceful black people. He didn’t know how long he was there, sleeping. But when he woke up, the sun was already coming through the window and a disheveled woman was standing in front of him, watching him with curiosity.
“Forgive my trespassing,” Danilo said. “I didn’t know there was anyone in this house. I’ll leave.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” the woman said. “You have to go up to the second floor to see Mr. Coro.”
“Is that an order?”
“Absolutely,” the woman said, brandishing an old, rusty machete. “It’s easy to come in here, but leaving is a big problem. Come with me.”
Danilo rubbed his eyes with his fists and stood up, smoothing out his shirt.
“I’ll say again that I’m sorry. I didn’t know that this house . . .”
“This house has an owner,” the disheveled woman said. “Follow me so you can meet him.”
Danilo followed the woman up a spiral staircase covered in dust and rat droppings, and both stopped before a gray door. The disheveled woman
gave three light taps, and from inside the room, came an energetic voice that said, “Come in, Cossack.”
Danilo and the woman went in. It was also a bare room,
except in the middle was an ordinary desk behind which sat a puny man, wearing suspenders despite being shirtless, and looking aimlessly at the new arrivals from behind round, black glasses.
“Is this our new guest?” The little man asked the disheveled woman.
“It is.”
“You slept for twelve hours, my friend. I’ve been waiting for you since six in the morning. I’m Mr. Coro, and I’m blind because a bandit took out my eyes. But I prefer to tell that story another time.”
Coro turned his head toward the disheveled woman and
ordered, “You can leave, Cossack, leave me alone with this gentleman . . .”
“Danilo Castellanos, at your service. I’d like to take this occasion to ask your forgiveness for having dared enter your house. I was truly exhausted.”
“Besides, the police are looking for you,” Coro said.
“That’s not true,” Danilo denied. “I’ve never had problems with the police.”
“Do you believe in chiromancy, Mr. Castellanos?”
“I’ve never thought about it.”
“Let’s see, come closer, give me your hands. Through your hands, I will know everything you were, are, and will be.”
Danilo Castellanos gave his hands over to the little man, and he felt him begin to study them with his fingers.
“An intellectual,” Coro started to say. “You have no children, no wife, no house. And I maintain that you are being pursued by the police. Now I’d like to know: for political reasons?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Danilo was obstinate. “I’ve never had any problems with the law.”
It was then that the little man’s squalid hands grabbed his wrists and began to squeeze with such pressure that Danilo fell to the ground whimpering like a child.
“Who are you, brute?” Cora said with a suddenly sinister voice.
“I am Danilo Castellanos, history teacher at Simón Bolivar high school, I am running from the police because I fear I killed my aunt.”
“A vulgar criminal!” Coro exclaimed, releasing him at once, his face full of contempt. “That’s not what I need in my bunker. I want political men. Do you understand? Principled people who are always ready to give their lives for their homeland. But you are a vulgar old-lady murderer.”
“It’s not like that,” Danilo clarified. “I didn’t kill her with my hands. I accidentally pushed her and she hit her head against the bathtub. In reality, I’m a thief.”
“Thieves won’t overthrow Cornelio Rojas. You’re not useful to me, either.”
“In all truth, I’ve never stolen. I only did so to get three thousand pesos and to hire a boat to leave the country. That’s a political act.”
“Leave the country? That’s something rats do. This is a crucial time when you, more than ever, must stay in the country and fight the dictatorship. Everyone wants to leave the country! No one is capable of mustering up the courage to blow the tyrant’s brains out like Brutus and Zeno of Elea did in their time. Those were men. Real men. Would you fire against Cornelio Rojas if you had him in front of you?”
Danilo hesitated before responding.
“I’ve never killed anyone. But the tyrant, I think I would.”
“You’ll have time enough to prove it,” Coro said with a prophetic air. And then he called, “Madame!”
A very beautiful woman, dressed in a see-through negligee, appeared from behind a closet door.
“What do you think of this, Madame?” Coro inquired.
The Madame studied Danilo’s appearance for a while. Then she asked, “Is your penis short or long?”
Flushed, Danilo responded, “Average. I’m an average guy.”
“We don’t admit anyone here who has less than seven inches.”
“That’s what I have.”
“Do you have money?”
“No.”
“You’re lying.”
Then the woman called out, “Whitey!” And through a side door, came an ugly, heavyset man with a garrote in his hands.
“Check him, Whitey.”
It was like being on a butcher counter. The big man took Danilo as if he were a ragdoll, and turned him over, felt him all over, took off his clothes, and proceeded to examine them with extreme meticulousness. In the back pocket of his pants, he found the roll of bills, a gold locket, a pocket watch, also gold, and some diamond earrings. He put everything in front of Coro and, after bowing, took his spot in a corner of the room.
“Was there money, Madame?” Coro asked.
“A fortune!” The woman exclaimed, feeling the booty with lecherous hands. “More than nine thousand pesos in bills and about five thousand in jewels.”
“A gift from God,” Coro opined. “That means our bunker will be able to survive for many more months. Regarding Mr. Danilo, let him stay. He doesn’t have the nerve of an assassin, but perhaps he’ll be infected by the spirit of combat that exists in this house. Let the others come!”
The Madame left the room and quickly returned with a small troop of two men and two women. There was the elusive Melanio Webster, whom Coro introduced as the future minister of propaganda after the fall of Cornelio Rojas. At Coro’s insistence, that unimportant-looking little man demonstrated what he did daily in dark movie theaters, public bathrooms, deserted alleyways, and vacant plazas where there was no one watching. His art consisted of wetting a rubber stamp in a small pillow soaked in red ink, and sticking it on any surface until the slogan “Death to Cornelio Rojas” was left imprinted. He had never been caught, but if that should ever happen, he had a cyanide pill as a precautionary measure in his pocket to avoid humiliating blows and brutal interrogations. Then Coro introduced Manzano the poet, a black man dressed in an old frock coat, which despite its being ripped and wrinkled he wore with great dignity. He would become head of the country’s union of writers and artists, after the fall of Cornelio Rojas. According to Coro, that black man was as good as Rilke and had written more than two hundred battle hymns, cursing Cornelio Rojas and extolling Coro. He also made us a succinct demonstration of his virtues, singing admirably in a tenor’s voice:
“Through lands of gold, I’ve walked without sorrow
and everywhere I found people that be
in their entirety, completely free,
paying homage to Hermenegildo Coro.”
The third person Coro introduced was Nefertiti, a teenager with a sensual face, dressed in a shiny cloak that covered her from the neck to her feet. She was an exotic dancer in the capital’s clandestine bars and was famous for moving her hips and gyrating her body with more dexterity than Josephine Baker. Many men had offered her their fortunes to spend a night with her, but that young girl rejected money — for handing herself over, her only condition was that the man must have the courage to join the conspiracy to kill Cornelio Rojas. As soon as they heard that, the most braggadocio of men would quickly distance themselves from her and would never proposition her again. She was, therefore, a virgin. Although when it came to masculine genitals, she had been an expert with her mouth since the age of eleven. She also gave a brief demonstration of her art, removing her cloak slowly and dancing a few steps completely nude before Danilo’s bulging eyes.
“That’s enough!” Coro grumbled from his desk, bitter because his blindness prevented him from seeing the magnificent show.
“Get dressed and go to the foyer to await orders.”
Nefertiti put on her cloak quickly and left the room, but not before going over to Coro and giving his thigh an electrifying caress.
“My big, big boy,” she said in his ear. “Your every word is sacred to me.”
And she left. Coro remained in his chair, his shoulders slumped, looking toward the ceiling with an expression of intense sadness.
“Cossack . . . ,” he then s
aid: “Go see what Cornelio Rojas is doing right now.”
The disheveled woman took a compact from between her breasts, and opened it with the utmost care. Then, she took out a cotton ball that she wet with saliva, and rubbed it three times over the oval-shaped mirror. After a few seconds of complete concentration, the woman informed him:
“Now, I see Cornelio Rojas on a luxurious yacht, surrounded by young, semi-clad women, who are fighting among themselves to put lotion on his thighs and shoulders and to comb his beard.”
“The vile man!” Coro said, in a rage. “That yacht should’ve been mine. Those women belong to me. He stole everything from me! This revolution was mine, mine. Do you understand, Mr. Danilo Castellanos? I was the strongman who was going to come to power thirty-two years ago. Cornelio Rojas was no more than a lady-in-waiting to whom I transmitted my wisdom and political projects from a little plaza set beside the University’s law school. Back then, I wasn’t blind. It was enough for me to stare firmly at men for them to obey me without hesitation. I already had a clandestine army of fifty young men willing to die for me. I had already developed the plan to attack the presidential palace and execute President Estrada. The date for the action had been set. And one day, Mr. Castellanos, when I was alone in that same little plaza, pondering the final touches of our attack, a masked son of a bitch — surely Cornelio Rojas himself — came out from behind some trees and, with two fingers as hard as nails, took my eyes out in one blow. I was left blind. Do you understand, Castellanos? Blind!” As he said this, Coro removed his dark glasses and showed Danilo his horrible, empty sockets that still oozed blood.
“Afterwards . . . ,” he continued, in a serious voice, “history continued on its course. From the hospital where I was, I found out a coup d’état had been carried out. President Estrada had been killed. People were out in the streets cheering for the young, courageous men who had overthrown the Yankee puppet. And the leader of the revolution was none other than that lady-in-waiting Cornelio Rojas. Since then, thirty years have passed. Thirty years of him giving my speeches, enacting my laws, applying my foreign policy, doing at last all that I had taught him on those calm afternoons in the little University Plaza. Today Cornelio Rojas is a God while the train of history has rolled over me, crushing my bones.”
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