The Iron Bridge: Short Stories of 20th Century Dictators as Teenagers (18 page)

His terror and paralysis will continue tomorrow evening, when his chair is pulled into a semicircle in the corner of
the room opposite Devdariani’s noticeably smaller discussion group. His back will recall the reverberating thud of Soso’s hand against it, and all the emptiness that thud implied. He will sit there in the circle, fumbling with the frayed cotton of his favourite shirt, beside Iremashvili and Vano Ketskhoveli, as gleeful Soso Djugashvili outlines the major points of Darwin’s
Descent of Man
. And when Soso condescendingly asks, with a good deal of mirth and mockery, “What have you learned today?” Kapanadze knows he will bow his head with the politeness he usually reserves for priests and inspectors and hear his own foreign voice echoing in reply, “That man’s instincts, which are often the same as animals’, but only differing in degree, make him quite susceptible to the same forces of nature as other creatures.” And Kapanadze will wonder:
Why this colourless tone, this perfect repetition of Soso’s dry phrasing, so diligently memorized and copied like a parrot? Is this how I sound? Am I really nothing other than a drum?
Kapanadze will never feel emptier. But then Soso’s yellow, tigrine eyes will be directed his way, and Kapanadze will feel a surge of real pleasure—base and simple pleasure, pure animal relief—because Soso, nodding and laughing and pointing at him, will say with glee: “Yes, Kapanadze! I think you’re finally catching the spirit of our collective!”

Rafael sits stiff and straight
before the Bunnell sounder, awaiting the evening’s final telegraph. It’s cooling outside, with a mild breeze rolling north across the hills from the Caribbean, but the thick stone building traps the island’s tropical heat. Although he wears a heavy coat and refuses to loosen his necktie, he does not sweat, nor does his posture slacken with fatigue. The nub of his fountain pen presses against his paper at the optimal angle for penmanship. The boy grins and waits. The message will come when it comes. No need to fidget or complain. He is capable of sitting motionless all night if it comes to that.

In the distance, lounging on the church steps in San Cristóbal’s main square, a man plays three breathy notes on his accordion. He stops, regroups, and plays the same notes again. The cicadas halt their screeching in wonder at the unidentifiable bird.

Rafael continues to wait. Five minutes, seven, ten—his pen never moves. When the main line relay fires, the local battery is engaged and the Bunnell sounder’s brass armature suddenly knocks off an audible series of dots and dashes. He jots down the code without hesitation. Señor Leger, who’s spent the past half-hour bent over his desk on the other
side of the municipal telegraph office, adjusting springs on a dysfunctional relay, now stands and approaches his young apprentice, peering over Rafael’s shoulder to read the Morse code message taking shape on the paper before him.

With a sharp memory and almost a year’s worth of experience, Rafael has no trouble converting the rapid code into letters and words virtually in tandem with their sending. The telegraph operator at Santo Domingo’s Hacienda Ministry is obviously an experienced sender, uniform with his dots and dashes and spacing between words. A good, clear transmission like this one makes Rafael’s job so much easier; he barely has to think. Only a small part of his brain registers the message’s content:
under order of president caceres stop begin construction of high road stop local labour required by min of hacienda velaquez stop
. Mostly, Rafael is concerned with the numbers of dots versus dashes in the transmission as a whole. It’s imperative that the former surpasses the latter. More dots per day is a good sign, a fortunate omen, and no oranges will need to be crushed to rectify the situation. More dashes, of course, is a bad portent and could be quite serious; for every three dashes in excess of dots, an unblemished orange will have to be crushed, its seeds removed and pocketed, sprinkled across Constitution Street or any number of locations, but only in the moonlight when no one’s watching. Even then, there’s still no guarantee the curse against him will be voided. Right now the day’s tally gives the dots a slim lead over the dashes, but it’s too precarious a lead to guarantee victory. This final message of the day could tip the
balance. Rafael’s heart thuds in his chest. It will come down to the last letters tonight.

With the message almost finished, Leger leans over the table and shakes his head. “Look at that,” he says, grinning with unrestrained pleasure. “Velázquez has done it.”

“Mmm,” mumbles Rafael, his pen still moving. His boss, who has been baking all day in his formal shirt, smells as ripe as an overworked donkey, but Rafael will not let himself be distracted by Señor Leger’s pungency or by the conspicuous wet patches stretching from his armpits down his flanks, no matter how disgusting. His mind is focused and racing:
dots plus seven, plus six, plus five, plus six, plus five, plus four, plus three
 …

“And it’s confirmed by President Cáceres.”

“Yes,” says Rafael. The body of the message is complete, but still there’s the sender’s initials, which will determine the entire day’s tally, since the dots retain only the slimmest of leads.

“Virtually guaranteed,” says Leger.

The sender’s signature taps into the relay, through the sounder.
Dash dot dash dot
. Pause.
Dash dot dot dot
. The sounder stills and the gentle clacking of the brass armature is replaced by silence.

JB
, writes Rafael. He flips the paper, glances at the table watch, marks his initials and the time, his posture still perfect, his brow and neck clear of perspiration, but his lip imperceptibly twitching with the excitement of the dramatic finish. He can hardly believe that the entire day’s tally has
come down to a final letter B, and that the dash and three dots signifying that letter confirmed a net plus advantage of two dots for the day. He presses his lips together and grins at the good omen.

Señor Leger picks up the completed message and rereads it to make sure he hasn’t been deceived, that the Minister of Hacienda for the Dominican Republic really did just order the construction of a high road from Santo Domingo to Azua, which will pass through San Cristóbal and guarantee numerous well-paid, local jobs for at least a year. “Cáceres is a real leader,” Leger declares, slapping the paper against the palm of his hand. “For once in this damn country, we’ve got an honest president.”

Rafael nods, but he isn’t listening to his boss. He’s busy rethinking his future in light of the good omen. Maybe he doesn’t have stomach cancer, which has been his vague worry for most of the past month, not that he’s shown any symptoms. This omen could mean good health, although it’s impossible to interpret its significance precisely. It might also denote a joyous event for this evening or tomorrow.

Leger takes the message across the room and files it into Juan Piña’s box. Half the telegraphs in this small rural office are destined for Señor Piña, the government’s informal contact in San Cristóbal, the man in charge of executing all state requests, including this present command to gather labourers for the road construction.

“You’ll probably take that new road to the capital in the spring,” Leger tells his apprentice. “By then the whole trip should take no longer than a couple of hours.” He removes
his suit jacket from its hanger and slips it over his damp shirt, pulling his cuffs out of the sleeves.

“Not necessarily,” says Rafael, who remains seated at the telegraph desk. “The journey will still be unpredictable without a bridge.”

“Yes, I suppose,” agrees Leger. “But a Haina bridge will come in due time. I wouldn’t put it past Cáceres and Velázquez to have one built by the end of next summer. That’s the kind of men they are.” He grabs his hat and an iron key ring from off a hook, and puts the hat on his head.

Now Rafael stands and straightens his tie, although it’s perfectly straight already and needs no adjusting. He runs his hands over his trousers. His back remains as stiff when he’s standing as it does when he’s sitting. His clothes are as clean and pressed as they were first thing this morning, before the heat set in. “Well,” he says.

Señor Leger smiles at the boy and wipes his brow with a handkerchief. “Good work, Trujillo. As usual.”

“Thank you, sir,” says Rafael, nodding and returning his boss’s smile.

“I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Yes. Nine o’clock.”

“I’m sure,” says Leger, smirking slightly, since the boy hasn’t been late even once in over a year.

“Good night, sir.”

Señor Leger opens the door for his apprentice and lets Rafael precede him into the dusty street. Outside, Leger pulls the creaky wooden door closed. He turns the key and shakes it once to ensure it’s truly locked. He faces Rafael and taps
his hat in parting. “Good night, then,” he says, slipping the key ring into his pocket.

They walk in opposite directions. Rafael’s commute is a straight shot down Constitution to the town’s main square, where his family’s big red house sits across from the Church of San Cristóbal. It’s a three-minute journey at most. But instead of heading home, Rafael turns off the main thoroughfare and walks towards Padre Ayala on a short, unnamed side street packed with ramshackle
bohíos
on either side. Each makeshift home is roughly constructed of stripped palm planks and cabbage-palm thatch roofs, and the shacks’ bright paint jobs of red, blue, green, and yellow do little to mask the essential poverty of their crowded inhabitants. Dark-skinned kids in torn trousers yell at each other in the street or run circles in concentrated pursuit of some fantastic end. Rafael kicks at the dust and searches for any metallic shine. Nothing here but tiny rocks. Smoke drifts up from an open kitchen behind an adjacent
bohío
and the air smells like roasted red beans. He turns down Padre Ayala.

Maybe Uncle Plinio will let me keep this tie
, thinks Rafael as he fingers its smooth silk and makes sure it’s still tight around his neck.
Or maybe he’s bought a new suit jacket for me
. Either addition to his wardrobe would be news good enough to befit the omen. But Rafael knows he can’t really predict it. The omen might have nothing to do with his clothing or his health. It might just signify that María waits for him by her house right now with the lascivious intent of leading him into the cornfield. No, omens cannot be predicted.

Rafael is enjoying his stroll in the cooling air, but he
would prefer to be trotting down Padre Ayala on his father’s pinto mare. It took him hours of practice in the tall sugar cane and along the bank of the Nigua River to master the art of riding with a perfectly flat back, given the horse’s jumpy gait and its frequent missteps. Walking down Padre Ayala can be dignified, of course, but it will always lack the gallantry that every girl, no matter how impoverished or dark skinned, adores and desires.
When a man travels by foot, he lacks chivalrous comportment, thinks this sixteen-year-old boy, which is the crucial component to success
.

Chivalry made the difference last summer, when Rafael started courting María. He presented himself as the perfect image of a man, stopping his father’s mare with a tug of the reins and a low grunt, dismounting in one fluid motion, and handing the astonished girl an overflowing armful of bougainvillea. The grand clatter of spurs on boots, the strut in his step, and the tilt of his hat—yes, a real caudillo. And now Rafael recalls María’s plump, dark ass, his delicate first touch as he recited some florid verse Uncle Teodulo had him memorize—yes, yes—and then his second, firm squeeze, delivered no later than midnight that night, as María lay sprawled on the dirt in the corn with her skirt hiked up, her panties by her ankles. María. So perfect. A dark indio’s sweet molasses skin. He has taken this detour onto Padre Ayala with the hope of spying her full frame through the front window of her family’s
bohío
.

Rafael rubs his fingers through his wavy, oiled hair, slowing his pace as he approaches the girl’s hut. Although the window is small and the daylight is beginning to wane, he
can distinguish a human form inside. He concentrates his energy into a penetrating stare, his eyes dark and full of purpose, a lecherous grin poking out from the corners of his otherwise tight mouth. His fingers tingle with anticipation. In the orange light of dusk, he can’t discern any features, but the person inside the little blue
bohío
could very well be his conquest. He slows and shortens his steps. The figure disappears behind the wall. Was that her, and has she seen him? The front door opens and the threshold fills with a large man’s frame—Fernando, María’s brother. He’s tall and fat, sporting a tapered and waxed moustache much like President Cácares’s, and he’s gnawing on a long root.

Rafael nods a perfunctory hello and quickens his step. This Fernando’s got murder in his eye.
My reputation precedes me
, the boy thinks, with considerable pride.
Hey, Fernando
, he wants to say,
put a fence around your sister if you don’t want her flowers picked
. Chuckling, the boy taps the thickening fuzz on his upper lip with three extended fingers and peeks over his shoulder to see the large brother, still in the doorway, glaring. Rafael resists laughing and maintains his composure. An impotent sibling is almost as good as a cuckolded boyfriend.