The Feast of the Goat (34 page)

He was lucid now and knew perfectly well what to do. He made the old woman lie down on the floor, behind the bed, against the wall, at the feet of St. Peter Claver.

“Don’t move, don’t get up no matter what,” he told her. “I love you very much, Aunt Meca.”

He had the .45 in his hand. Barefoot, dressed only in his regulation khaki undershirt and shorts, he hugged the wall and crept to the front door. He peered through the curtains, staying out of sight. It was an overcast afternoon, and in the distance he could hear a bolero. Black SIM Volkswagens filled the street. At least twenty
caliés
armed with submachine guns and revolvers were surrounding the house. Three men were at the door. One of them pounded it with his fist, making the wood quiver, and shouted at the top of his voice:

“We know you’re in there, García Guerrero! Come out with your hands up or you’ll die like a dog!”

“Not like a dog, no,” he murmured. As he opened the door with his left hand, he fired with his right. He managed to empty the clip of his pistol and saw the man who had urged him to surrender fall, bellowing, shot in the middle of the chest. But, annihilated by an untold number of bullets from submachine guns and revolvers, he did not see that in addition to killing one
calié
, he had wounded two others before dying himself. He did not see how his body was tied—the way hunters tie down deer killed in the Cordillera Central—to the roof of a Volkswagen, and how Johnny Abbes’s men, who were inside the Beetle, held on to his ankles and wrists and displayed him to bystanders in Independencia Park, through which his killers drove in triumph, while other
caliés
entered the house, found Aunt Meca where he had left her, more dead than alive, and shoving and spitting at her, took her to SIM headquarters, at the same time that a greedy mob, under the mocking or impassive eyes of the police, began to loot the house, making off with everything the
caliés
hadn’t stolen first, and after looting the house they destroyed it, tore down the walls, demolished the roof, and finally burned it until, at nightfall, there was nothing left but ashes and charred rubble.

When one of the military adjutants showed Luis Rodríguez, Manuel Alfonso’s chauffeur, into the office, the Generalissimo stood to receive him, something he did not do even with the most important people.

“How is the ambassador?” he asked with concern.

“Just fair, Chief.” The chauffeur put on an appropriate expression and touched his own throat. “A lot of pain, again. This morning he had me bring the doctor so he could give him an injection.”

Poor Manuel. It wasn’t fair, damn it. That a man who had devoted his life to caring for his body, to being handsome and elegant, to resisting the perverse law of nature that everything had to grow ugly, should be punished like this, where it would most humiliate him: in the face that had radiated life, grace, and health. He would have been better off dying on the operating table. When he saw him in Ciudad Trujillo after his operation at the Mayo Clinic, the Benefactor’s eyes had filled with tears. Manuel had been ravaged. And he could hardly understand him now that they had cut out half his tongue.

“Give him my best.” The Generalissimo examined Luis Rodríguez; dark suit, white shirt, blue tie, polished shoes: the best-dressed black in the Dominican Republic. “What’s the news?”

“Very good, Chief.” Luis Rodríguez’s large eyes flashed. “I found the girl, no problem. Whenever you say.”

“Are you sure it’s the same one?”

The large dark face, with its scars and mustache, nodded several times.

“Absolutely sure. The one who gave you flowers on Monday, for the San Cristóbal Youth Group. Yolanda Esterel. Seventeen years old. Here’s her picture.”

It was a photograph from a student ID, but Trujillo recognized the languid eyes, the mouth with the plump lips, the hair hanging loose to her shoulders. The girl had led the parade of students, carrying a large photograph of the Generalissimo, past the raised platform in the main park of San Cristóbal, and then came up on the dais to present him with a bouquet of roses and hydrangeas wrapped in cellophane. He remembered her plump, rounded body, her small breasts moving suggestively inside her blouse, her flaring hips. A tingling in his testicles raised his spirits.

“Take her to Mahogany House, around ten,” he said, repressing those fantasies that were wasting his time. “My best regards to Manuel. Tell him to take care of himself.”

“Yes, Chief, I’ll tell him. I’ll bring her there a little before ten.”

He left, bowing. On one of the six telephones on his lacquered desk, the Generalissimo called the guard post at Mahogany House so that Benita Sepúlveda would have the rooms perfumed with anise and filled with fresh flowers. (It was an unnecessary precaution, for the housekeeper, knowing he might appear at any moment, always kept Mahogany House shining, but he never failed to let her know ahead of time.) He ordered the military adjutants to have the Chevrolet ready and to call his chauffeur, aide-de-camp, and bodyguard, Zacarías de la Cruz, because tonight, after his walk, he was going to San Cristóbal.

He was enthusiastic at the prospect. Could she be the daughter of that school principal in San Cristóbal who recited a poem by Salomé Ureña ten years ago, during one of his political visits to his native city, and excited him so much with the shaved armpits she displayed during her performance that he left the official reception in his honor when it had just begun and took her to Mahogany House? Terencia Esterel? That was her name. He felt another gust of excitement imagining that Yolanda was the teacher’s daughter or younger sister. He walked quickly, crossing the gardens between the National Palace and Radhamés Manor, and hardly listened to what one of the adjutants in his escort was telling him about repeated calls from the Minister of the Armed Forces, General Román Fernández, who was at his disposal in the event His Excellency wished to see him before his walk. Ah, the call this morning had scared him. He’d be even more scared when he rubbed his damn nose in it and showed him the puddle of filthy water.

He entered his rooms at Radhamés Manor like a whirlwind. His everyday olive-green uniform was waiting for him, laid out on the bed. Sinforoso was a mind reader. He hadn’t told him he was going to San Cristóbal, but the old man had prepared the clothes he always wore to the Fundación Ranch. Why this everyday uniform for Mahogany House? He didn’t know. The passion for rituals, for the repetition of gestures and actions, that he’d had since he was young. The signs were favorable: no urine stains on his underwear or trousers. His irritation with Balaguer for daring to object to the promotion of Lieutenant Victor Alicinio Peña Rivera had faded. He felt optimistic, rejuvenated by a lively tingle in his testicles and the expectation of holding in his arms the daughter or sister of that Terencia of happy memory. Was she a virgin? This time he wouldn’t have the unpleasant experience he’d had with the skinny bitch.

He was glad he would spend the next hour smelling the salt air, feeling the sea breeze, watching the waves break against the Avenida. The exercise would help him wash away the bad taste most of the afternoon had left in his mouth, something that rarely happened to him: he had never been prone to depression or any of that bullshit.

As he was leaving, a maid came to tell him that Doña María wanted to give him a message from young Ramfis, who had called from Paris. “Later, later, I don’t have time.” A conversation with the tedious old penny-pincher would ruin his good mood.

Again he crossed the gardens of Radhamés Manor at a lively pace, impatient to get to the ocean. But first, as he did every day, he stopped at his mother’s house on Avenida Máximo Gómez. At the entrance to Doña Julia’s large pink residence, the twenty or so men who would accompany him were waiting, privileged persons who, because they escorted him every evening, were envied and despised by those who had not achieved that signal honor. Among the officers and civilians crowded together in the gardens of the Sublime Matriarch, who parted into two lines to let him pass, “Good afternoon, Chief,” “Good afternoon, Excellency,” he acknowledged Razor Espaillat, General José René Román—what concern in the poor fool’s eyes!—Colonel Johnny Abbes García, Senator Henry Chirinos, his son-in-law Colonel León Estévez, his hometown friend Modesto Díaz, Senator Jeremías Quintanilla, who had just replaced Agustín Cabral as President of the Senate, Don Panchito, the editor of
El Caribe
, and, almost invisible among them, the diminutive President Balaguer. He did not shake hands with anyone. He went to the second floor, where Doña Julia usually sat in her rocker at dusk. The aged woman seemed lost in her chair. As small as a midget, she stared at the sun’s fireworks display as it sank behind the horizon in an aura of red clouds. The ladies and servants surrounding his mother moved aside. He bent down, kissed the parchment cheeks of Doña Julia, and caressed her hair tenderly.

“You like the sunset a lot, don’t you, Ma?”

She nodded, smiling at him with sunken but still nimble eyes, and the tiny claw that was her hand brushed his cheek. Did she recognize him? Doña Altagracia Julia Molina was ninety-six years old and her mind must be like soapy water in which memories dissolved. But instinct would tell her that the man who came punctually to visit her every afternoon was someone she loved. She had always been a very good woman, this illegitimate daughter of Haitian immigrants to San Cristóbal, whose features he and his siblings had inherited, something that never failed to mortify him despite his great love for her. Sometimes, however, at the Hipódromo, the Country Club, or Fine Arts, when he saw all the aristocratic Dominican families paying him homage, he would think mockingly: “They’re licking the ground for a descendant of slaves.” How was the Sublime Matriarch to blame for the black blood that ran in her veins? Doña Julia had lived only for her husband, Don José Trujillo Valdez, an easygoing drinker and womanizer, and for her children, never thinking of herself, always putting herself last in everything. He constantly marveled at this tiny woman who never asked him for money, or clothes, or trips, or property. Nothing, not ever. He had to force everything on her. Congenitally frugal, Doña Julia would have continued to live in the modest little house in San Cristóbal where the Generalissimo had been born and spent his childhood, or in one of the huts where her Haitian ancestors had died of hunger. The only thing Doña Julia ever asked of him was compassion for Petán, Blacky, Peepee, Aníbal, his slow-witted, incorrigible brothers, whenever they did something wrong, or for Angelita, Ramfis, and Radhamés, who, from the time they were children, had hidden behind their grandmother to soften their father’s wrath. And Trujillo would forgive them, for Doña Julia’s sake. Did she know that hundreds of streets, parks, and schools in the Republic were named Julia Molina Widow of Trujillo? In spite of being adored and celebrated, she was still the silent, invisible woman Trujillo remembered from his childhood.

Sometimes he would spend a long time with his mother, recounting the day’s events even if she couldn’t understand him. Today he merely said a few tender words and returned to Máximo Gómez, impatient to breathe in the scent of the ocean.

As soon as he came out onto the broad Avenida—the cluster of civilians and officers parted again—he began to walk. He could see the Caribbean eight blocks away, aflame with the fiery gold of sunset. He felt another surge of satisfaction. He walked on the right, followed by the courtiers who fanned out behind him in groups that occupied the roadway and sidewalk. At this hour traffic was prohibited on Máximo Gómez and the Avenida, although, on his orders, Johnny Abbes had made the security on the side streets almost invisible because intersections crawling with guards and
caliés
eventually gave him claustrophobia. No one crossed the barrier of military adjutants a meter from the Chief. Everyone waited for him to indicate who could approach. After half a block, breathing in the perfume of the gardens, he turned, looked for the balding head of Modesto Díaz, and signaled to him. There was some confusion because the fleshy Senator Chirinos, who was next to Modesto Díaz, thought he was the anointed one and hurried toward the Generalissimo. He was intercepted and sent back to the crowd. For Modesto Díaz, who was very stout, keeping pace with Trujillo on these walks cost him a great effort. He was perspiring profusely. He held his handkerchief in his hand and from time to time wiped his forehead, his neck, and his fat cheeks.

“Good afternoon, Chief.”

“You have to go on a diet,” Trujillo advised. “Barely fifty and you’re breathing hard. Learn from me, seventy years old and in great shape.”

“My wife says the same thing every day, Chief. She fixes chicken broth and salads for me. But I don’t feel like eating that. I can give up everything except good food.”

His obese body could barely keep up with him. Modesto, like his brother, General Juan Tomás Díaz, had a broad face, flat nose, thick lips, and a complexion with unmistakable racial reminiscences, but he was more intelligent than his brother and most of the other Dominicans Trujillo knew. He had been president of the Dominican Party, a congressman, a minister; but the Generalissimo did not allow him to stay too long in the government, precisely because his mental acuity when expounding, analyzing, and solving a problem seemed dangerous, something that could puff up his pride and lead him to treason.

“What conspiracy has Juan Tomás gotten himself involved in?” He asked the question and turned to look at him. “You know what your brother and son-in-law are up to, I suppose.”

Modesto smiled, as if enjoying a joke:

“Juan Tomás? Between his estates and his businesses, his whiskey and the movies he shows in his garden, I doubt he has any time left for conspiracies.”

“He’s conspiring with Henry Dearborn, the Yankee diplomat,” Trujillo declared as if he had not heard him. “He should stop that bullshit; he went through a bad time once and he can go through another that’s even worse.”

“My brother isn’t fool enough to conspire against you, Chief. But even so, I’ll tell him.”

How pleasant: the sea breeze cleared his lungs, and he could hear the crash of waves breaking against the rocks and the cement wall of the Avenida. Modesto Díaz made a move to leave, but the Benefactor stopped him:

“Wait, I haven’t finished. Or can’t you take it anymore?”

“For you I’d risk a heart attack.”

Trujillo rewarded him with a smile. He always liked Modesto, who, in addition to being intelligent, was thoughtful, fair, affable, and unduplicitous. Still, his intelligence could not be controlled and used, like Egghead’s, the Constitutional Sot’s, or Balaguer’s. Modesto’s had an indomitable edge, an independence that could become seditious if he acquired too much power. He and Juan Tomás were also from San Cristóbal, he had known them since they were boys, and in addition to awarding him posts, he had used Modesto on countless occasions as an adviser. He had subjected him to rigorous tests, and he had always come through successfully. The first one came in the late forties, after Trujillo visited the Livestock Show for pedigree bulls and dairy cows that Modesto Díaz organized in Villa Mella. What a surprise: his farm, not very large, was as clean, modern, and prosperous as the Fundación Ranch. More than the impeccable stables and splendid cows, it was Modesto’s arrogant satisfaction as he showed his breeding farm to him and the other guests that wounded the Chief’s sensibilities. The following day he sent the Walking Turd, with a check for ten thousand pesos, to formalize the transfer of ownership. Without the slightest hesitation at having to sell his most prized possession at a ridiculously low price (just one of his cows cost more), Modesto signed the contract and sent a handwritten note to Trujillo expressing his gratitude that “Your Excellency considers my small cattle-breeding enterprise worthy of being developed by your experienced hand.” After considering whether those lines contained some punishable irony, the Benefactor decided they did not. Five years later, Modesto Díaz had another large, beautiful ranch in a remote region of La Estrella. Did he think it was so far away it would go unnoticed? Weak with laughter, he sent Egghead Cabral with another check for ten thousand pesos, claiming he had so much confidence in his cattle-raising talents that he was buying the farm sight unseen. Modesto signed the bill of sale, pocketed the symbolic sum, and thanked the Generalissimo in another affectionate note. To reward his docility, Trujillo subsequently granted him the exclusive concession to import washing machines and electric mixers, which allowed the brother of General Juan Tomás Díaz to recoup his losses.