The Feast of the Goat (49 page)

Urania caresses the old woman’s wrinkled, spotted hand.

“They’re horrible words, I know, things that shouldn’t be said, Aunt Adelina.” Her voice sweetens. “I never use them, I swear. Didn’t you want to know why I said those things about Papa? Why, when I went to Adrian, I didn’t want anything to do with the family? Now you know why.”

From time to time he sobs, and his sighs make his chest rise and fall. A few white hairs grow between his nipples and around his dark navel. He keeps his eyes hidden under his arm. Has he forgotten about her? Has she been erased by his overpowering bitterness and suffering? She is more frightened than before, when he was caressing her or violating her. She forgets about the burning, the wound between her legs, her fear of the bloodstains on her thighs and the bedspread. She does not move. Be invisible, cease to exist. If the weeping man with hairless legs sees her, he won’t forgive her, he’ll turn the rage of his impotence, the shame of his weeping, on her and annihilate her.

“He said there was no justice in this world. Why was this happening to him after he had fought so hard for this ungrateful country, these people without honor? He was talking to God. The saints. Our Lady. Or maybe the devil. He shouted and begged. Why was he given so many trials? The cross of his sons that he had to bear, the plots to kill him, to destroy the work of a lifetime. But he wasn’t complaining about that. He knew how to beat flesh-and-blood enemies. He had done that since he was young. What he couldn’t tolerate was the low blow, not having a chance to defend himself. He seemed half crazed with despair. Now I know why. Because the prick that had broken so many cherries wouldn’t stand up anymore. That’s what made the titan cry. Laughable, isn’t it?”

But Urania wasn’t laughing. She listened, not moving, scarcely daring to breathe, hoping he wouldn’t remember she was there. His soliloquy was discontinuous, fragmented, incoherent, interrupted by long silences; he raised his voice and shouted, or lowered it until it was almost inaudible. A pitiful noise. Urania was fascinated by that chest rising and falling. She tried not to look at his body, but sometimes her eyes moved along his soft belly, white pubis, small, dead sex, hairless legs. This was the Generalissimo, the Benefactor of the Nation, the Father of the New Nation, the Restorer of Financial Independence. The Chief whom Papa had served for thirty years with devotion and loyalty, and presented with a most delicate gift: his fourteen-year-old daughter. But things didn’t happen as the senator hoped. And that meant—Urania’s heart filled with joy—he wouldn’t rehabilitate Papa; maybe he’d put him in prison, maybe he’d have him killed.

“Suddenly, he lifted his arm and looked at me with red, swollen eyes. I’m forty-nine years old, and I’m trembling again. I’ve been trembling for thirty-five years, ever since that moment.”

She holds out her hands and her aunt, cousins, and niece see it is true: she is trembling.

He looked at her with surprise and hatred, as if she were a malevolent apparition. Red, fiery, fixed, his eyes froze her. She couldn’t move. Trujillo’s eyes ran over her, moved down to her thighs, darted to the bloodstained spread, and glared at her again. Choking with revulsion, he ordered:

“Go on, get washed, see what you’ve done to the bed? Get out of here!”

“A miracle that he let me go,” Urania reflects. “After I saw him desperate, crying, moaning, feeling sorry for himself. A miracle from our patron saint, Aunt Adelina.”

She sat up, jumped out of bed, picked up the clothes scattered on the floor, and, stumbling against a chest of drawers, took refuge in the bathroom. There was a white porcelain tub stocked with sponges and soaps, and a penetrating perfume that made her dizzy. With hands that barely responded she cleaned her legs, used a washcloth to stanch the bleeding, got dressed. It was difficult to button her dress, buckle her belt. She didn’t put on her stockings, only her shoes, and when she looked at herself in one of the mirrors, she saw her face smeared with lipstick and mascara. She didn’t take the time to wash it off; he might change his mind. Run, get out of Mahogany House, escape. When she returned to the bedroom, Trujillo was no longer naked. He had covered himself with his blue silk robe and held the glass of cognac in his hand. He pointed to the stairs:

“Get out, get out,” he said in a strangled voice. “Tell Benita to bring fresh sheets and a spread and clean up this mess.”

“On the first step I tripped and broke the heel of my shoe and almost fell down three flights of stairs. My ankle swelled up afterward. Benita Sepúlveda was on the ground floor. Very calm, smiling at me. I tried to say what he had told me to. Not a word came out. I could only point upstairs. She took my arm and walked me to the guards at the entrance. She showed me a recess with a seat: ‘Here’s where they polish the Chief’s boots.’ Manuel Alfonso and his car weren’t there. Benita Sepúlveda had me sit on the shoeshine stand, surrounded by guards. She left, and when she came back, she led me by the arm to a jeep. The driver was a soldier. He brought me to Ciudad Trujillo. When he asked: ‘Where’s your house?’ I said: ‘I’m going to Santo Domingo Academy. I live there.’ It was still dark. Three o’clock. Four, maybe. It took them a long time to open the gate. I still couldn’t talk when the caretaker finally appeared. I could only talk to Sister Mary, the nun who loved me so much. She took me to the refectory, she gave me water, she put wet cloths on my forehead.”

Samson, who has been quiet for a while, displays his pleasure or displeasure again by puffing out his feathers and shrieking. No one says anything. Urania picks up her glass, but it is empty. Marianita fills it; she is nervous and knocks over the pitcher. Urania takes a few sips of cool water.

“I hope it’s done me good, telling you this cruel story. Now forget it. It’s over. It happened and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Maybe another woman might have gotten over it. I wouldn’t and couldn’t.”

“Uranita, my dear cousin, what are you saying?” Manolita protests. “What do you mean? Look what you’ve done. What you have. A life every Dominican woman would envy.”

She stands and walks over to Urania. She embraces her, kisses her cheeks.

“You’ve really battered me, Uranita,” Lucinda scolds her affectionately. “But how can you complain? You have no right. In your case it’s really true that some good always comes out of the bad. You studied at the best university, you’ve had a successful career. You have a man who makes you happy and doesn’t interfere with your work…”

Urania pats her arm and shakes her head. The parrot is quiet and listens.

“I lied to you, Lucinda, I don’t have a lover.” She smiles vaguely, her voice still breaking. “I’ve never had one, I never will. Do you want to know everything, Lucindita? No man has ever laid a hand on me again since that time. My only man was Trujillo. It’s true. Whenever one gets close and looks at me as a woman, I feel sick. Horrified. I want him to die, I want to kill him. It’s hard to explain. I’ve studied, I work, I earn a good living. But I’m empty and still full of fear. Like those old people in New York who spend the whole day in the park, staring at nothing. It’s work, work, work until I’m exhausted. You have no reason to envy me, I assure you. I envy all of you. Yes, yes, I know, you have problems, hard times, disappointments. But you also have families, husbands, children, relatives, a country. Those things fill your life. But Papa and His Excellency turned me into a desert.”

Samson has begun to move nervously around the bars of his cage; he sways back and forth, stops, sharpens his beak on his claws.

“Those were different times, dear Uranita,” stammers Aunt Adelina, swallowing her tears. “You have to forgive him. He has suffered, he is suffering. It was terrible, darling. But those were different times. Agustín was desperate. He could have gone to prison, they could have killed him. He didn’t want to hurt you. Perhaps he thought it was the only way to save you. Those things happened, even though nobody can understand it now. That’s how life was here. Agustín loved you more than anyone else in the world, Uranita.”

The old woman wrings her hands, distraught, and moves in her rocking chair, overcome with emotion. Lucinda goes to her, smooths her hair, gives her a few drops of valerian: “Calm down, Mama; don’t upset yourself.”

Through the window that looks out on the garden, the stars twinkle in the peaceful Dominican night. Were they different times? Gusts of warm wind blow into the dining room from time to time, fluttering the curtains and the flowers in a pot that stands among statues of saints and family photographs. “They were and they weren’t,” thinks Urania. “Something from those times is still in the air.”

“It was terrible, but it let me learn about the generosity, the delicacy, the humanity of Sister Mary,” she says, sighing. “Without her I’d be crazy or dead.”

Sister Mary found solutions for everything, and was a model of discretion. From her first aid in the school infirmary to stop the bleeding and ease the pain, to her calling on the Superior of the Dominican Sisters, in less than three days, and convincing her to cut through red tape and grant Urania Cabral, an exemplary student whose life was in danger, a scholarship to Siena Heights in Adrian, Michigan. Sister Mary spoke to Senator Agustín Cabral (reassuring him? frightening him?) in the office of the director, the three of them alone, urging him to allow his daughter to travel to the United States. And persuading him as well not to see her again because of how disturbed she was after what happened in San Cristóbal. Urania has often wondered what face Agustín Cabral wore for the nun: hypocritical surprise? discomfort? confusion? remorse? shame? She never asked, and Sister Mary never told her. The sisters went to the American consulate to obtain her visa and requested an audience with President Balaguer, asking him to expedite the authorization that Dominicans needed to apply for in order to leave the country, a process that took weeks. The school paid her fare, since Senator Cabral was now insolvent. Sister Mary and Sister Helen Claire accompanied her to the airport. When the plane took off, what pleased Urania most was that they had kept their promise not to let Papa see her again, not even from a distance. Now, she was also grateful to them for saving her from the belated rage of Trujillo, who could have kept her confined on this island or fed her to the sharks.

“It’s very late,” she says, looking at her watch. “Almost two in the morning. I haven’t even packed yet and I have an early plane.”

“You’re going back to New York tomorrow?” Lucinda asks sadly. “I thought you’d stay a few days.”

“I have to work,” says Urania. “A pile of papers is waiting for me at the office, high enough to give you vertigo.”

“It won’t be like before, will it, Uranita?” Manolita embraces her. “We’ll write, you’ll answer our letters. Once in a while you’ll come for a vacation, visit your family. Won’t you, Urania?”

“Absolutely,” Urania agrees, embracing her in turn. But she isn’t sure. Perhaps, once she’s left this house, this country, she’ll prefer to forget this family again, these people, her past; she’ll regret coming here and talking the way she did tonight. Or maybe not. Maybe she’ll want to rebuild somehow the connection with these remnants of her family. “Can I call a cab at this hour?”

“We’ll drive you.” Lucindita stands up.

When Urania leans over to embrace her Aunt Adelina, the old woman clutches at her, digging her sharp fingers, curved like talons, into her. She seemed to have regained her composure but now she is agitated again, with an anguished look of astonishment in her sunken eyes, surrounded by wrinkles.

“Perhaps Agustín didn’t know,” she stammers with difficulty, as if her dentures were loose. “Manuel Alfonso could have deceived my brother, he was basically very naive. Don’t be so angry with him, Urania. He’s had a lonely life, he’s suffered a lot. God teaches us to forgive. For the sake of your mother, she was such a good Catholic.”

Urania tries to calm her: “Yes, yes, Aunt Adelina, whatever you say, don’t be upset, I beg you.” Her two daughters stand by the old woman, trying to soothe her. Finally she grows calmer and shrinks into her chair, her face contorted.

“Forgive me for telling you these things.” Urania kisses her on the forehead. “It was stupid. But it’s been burning in me for so many years.”

“She’ll be all right now,” says Manolita. “I’ll stay with her. You did the right thing by telling us. Please write, and call us once in a while. Let’s not lose touch again, Urania.”

“I promise,” says Urania.

She walks with her to the door and says goodbye as they stand beside Lucinda’s old car, a secondhand Toyota parked at the entrance. When she embraces her again, Manolita’s eyes are filled with tears.

In the car, on the way to the Hotel Jaragua, as they drive along the deserted streets of Gazcue, Urania is tormented. Why did you do it? Are you going to feel different, free of all the incubi that have sucked out your soul? Of course not. It was a weakness, a fall into the kind of sentimentality and self-pity you’ve always hated in other people. Were you hoping they’d feel sorry for you, pity you? Is that the satisfaction you wanted?

And then—sometimes it’s a cure for depression—she finally thinks of Johnny Abbes García. She heard the story years ago, from Esperancita Bourricaud, a colleague of hers at the World Bank who had been assigned to Port-au-Prince, where the former head of the SIM had settled after traveling through Canada, France, and Switzerland—he never set foot in Japan—in the golden exile imposed on him by Balaguer. Esperancita and the Abbes Garcías were neighbors. He went to Haiti as an adviser to President Duvalier. But, after a time, he began to plot against his new chief, supporting the subversive plans of Colonel Dominique, the Haitian dictator’s son-in-law. Papa Doc resolved the problem in ten minutes. In the middle of the morning, Esperancita saw about twenty Tonton Macoutes climb out of two vans and storm her neighbors’ house, guns blazing. Ten minutes, that’s all. They killed Johnny Abbes, they killed Johnny Abbes’s wife, they killed Johnny Abbes’s two young children, they killed Johnny Abbes’s two servants, and they also killed Johnny Abbes’s chickens, rabbits, and dogs. Then they set fire to the house and left. Esperancita Bourricaud needed psychiatric help when she returned to Washington. Is that the death you would have wanted for Papa? Are you filled with rancor and hatred, as Aunt Adelina said? She feels empty—again.