At that time, an attempt was being planned in Moca, during a visit by Trujillo to the land of the De la Maza family, on one of the trips through the country that he had been making since the condemnation by the OAS and the imposition of economic sanctions. A bomb would go off in the main church, consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and a rain of rifle fire would fall on Trujillo from the balconies, terraces, and clock tower as he spoke on the platform erected in the atrium to a crowd gathered around the statue of St. John Bosco, partially covered by heartsease. Imbert himself inspected the church and volunteered to hide in the clock tower, the most dangerous place in the church.
“Tony knew the Mirabals,” Turk explained to Antonio. “That’s why he’s so upset.”
He knew them, though he couldn’t say they were friends. He had occasionally met the three sisters, and Minerva’s and Patria’s husbands, Manolo Tavares Justo and Leandro Guzmán, at the meetings at which the June 14 Movement was organized, taking the historic Trinitaria de Duarte as their model. The three women were leaders of the small, enthusiastic, but disorganized and inefficient organization that the repression was destroying. They had made an impression on him because of the conviction and boldness they brought to an unequal and uncertain struggle, Minerva Mirabal in particular. It happened to everyone who met her and heard her give opinions, hold discussions, offer proposals, or make decisions. Though he hadn’t thought about it earlier, after the killing Tony Imbert told himself that until he knew Minerva Mirabal, it had never occurred to him that’ a woman could dedicate herself to things as manly as planning a revolution, obtaining and hiding weapons, dynamite, Molotov cocktails, knives, bayonets, talking about assassination attempts, strategy, and tactics, and dispassionately discussing whether, in the event they fell into the hands of the SIM, activists ought to swallow poison to avoid the risk of betraying their comrades under torture.
Minerva spoke about these things, and about the best way to engage in clandestine propaganda pr recruit university students, and everyone listened to her. Because of her intelligence and the clarity with which she spoke. Her firm convictions and eloquence gave her words a strength that was contagious. And she was beautiful as well, with black hair and eyes, delicate features, finely drawn nose and mouth, and dazzling white teeth that contrasted with the bluish cast of her skin. Very beautiful, yes. There was something powerfully feminine in her, a delicacy, a natural flirtatiousness in her movements and smiles, despite the somber clothing she wore to meetings. Tony did not recall ever seeing her in makeup. Yes, very beautiful, but—he thought—none of the men would ever have dared to pay her one of those compliments, say one of those playful, witty things that were normal, natural—obligatory—for Dominican men, especially if they were young, and united by the intense brotherhood created by shared ideals, illusions, and dangers. Something in Minerva Mirabal’s self-assured presence kept men from taking the informal liberties they allowed themselves with other women.
By then, she was already a legend in the small world of the clandestine struggle against Trujillo. Which of the things they said about her were true, which were exaggerated, which invented? No one would have presumed to ask her, no one wanted to receive that deep, scornful look or one of those cutting replies with which she sometimes silenced an opponent. They said that as a teenager she dared to rebuff Trujillo himself by refusing to dance with him, and for that reason her father was deposed as mayor of Ojo de Agua and sent to prison. Others suggested that it was more than a rebuff, that she had slapped him because while they were dancing he fondled her and said something obscene, a possibility that many rejected (“She wouldn’t be alive, he would have killed her or had her killed on the spot”), but not Antonio Imbert. From the first time he saw and heard her, he did not doubt for a second that if the slap wasn’t the truth, it could have been. It was enough to see and hear Minerva Mirabal for only a few minutes (talking, for example, with icy naturalness about the need to prepare activists psychologically to resist torture) to know she was capable of slapping even Trujillo if he showed a lack of respect. She had been arrested several times, and stories were told about her fearlessness, first in La Cuarenta, and then in La Victoria, where she went on a hunger strike, withstood solitary confinement on bread and worm-infested water, and where, they said, she was savagely mistreated. She never spoke of her time in prison, or about the torture, or about the calvary her family had lived since it was known she was an anti-Trujillista: they had been hounded, had their few goods confiscated, and been placed under house arrest. The dictatorship allowed Minerva to study the law so that when she finished—a well-planned vengeance—it could deny her a professional license—that is, condemn her to not working, to not earning a living, to feeling frustrated in the prime of her youth, having studied five years for nothing. But none of that made her bitter; she went on tirelessly, encouraging everyone, an engine that would not stop, a prelude—Imbert often told himself—to the young, beautiful, enthusiastic, idealistic country the Dominican Republic would be one day.
He was embarrassed as he felt his eyes filling with tears. He lit a cigarette and took several drags, blowing the smoke toward the ocean, where moonlight glimmered and played. There was no breeze now. Occasionally, the headlights of a car appeared in the distance, coming from Ciudad Trujillo. The four would sit up straight, crane their necks, tensely scrutinize the darkness, but each time, when the car was twenty or thirty meters away, they discovered it wasn’t the Chevrolet and slumped back in their seats, disappointed.
The one who controlled his emotions best was Imbert. He had always been quiet, but in recent years, since the idea of killing Trujillo had taken possession of him and, like a hermit crab, fed on all his energy, his silence had intensified. He had never had many friends; in the last few months, his life had been bounded by his office at Ready-Mix, his home, and his daily meetings with Estrella Sadhalá and Lieutenant García Guerrero. Following the death of the Mirabal sisters, clandestine meetings had practically ceased. The repression crushed the June 14 Movement. Those who escaped withdrew into family life, trying to go unnoticed. From time to time a question would torment him: “Why wasn’t I arrested?” Uncertainty made him feel ill, as if he were guilty of something, as if he were responsible for how much others had suffered at the hands of Johnny Abbes while he continued to enjoy his freedom.
A very relative freedom, it’s true. When he understood the kind of regime he was living under, the kind of government he had served since he was a young man, and was still serving—what else was he doing as manager at one of the clan’s factories?—he felt like a prisoner. Perhaps it was to rid himself of the feeling that all his steps were controlled, every path he took and all his movements tracked, that the idea of eliminating Trujillo took hold so firmly in his consciousness. His disenchantment with the regime was gradual, long, and secret, beginning much earlier than the political difficulties of his brother Segundo, who had been even more of a Trujillista than he. Who around him had not been a Trujillista for the past twenty, twenty-five years? They all thought the Goat was the savior of the Nation, the man who ended the caudillo wars, did away with the threat of a new invasion from Haiti, called a halt to a humiliating dependency on the United States—which controlled customs, prohibited a Dominican currency, and approved the budget—and, whether they were willing or not, brought the country’s best minds into the government. Compared to that, what did it matter if Trujillo fucked any woman he wanted? Or swallowed up factories, farms, and livestock? Wasn’t he increasing Dominican prosperity? Hadn’t he given this country the most powerful Armed Forces in the Caribbean? For twenty years Tony Imbert had said and defended these things. That was what turned his stomach now.
He couldn’t remember how it began, the first doubts, conjectures, discrepancies that led him to wonder if everything really was going so well, or if, behind the facade of a country that under the severe but inspired leadership of an extraordinary statesman was moving ahead at a quickstep, lay a grim spectacle of
people destroyed, mistreated, and deceived, the enthronement, through propaganda and violence, of a monstrous lie. Drops falling tirelessly, one after the other, boring a hole in his Trujillism. When he was no longer governor of Puerto Plata, deep in his heart he stopped being a Trujillista; he had become convinced the regime was dictatorial and corrupt. He told no one, not even Guarina. The face he showed the world was still Trujillista, and even though his brother Segundo had gone into exile in Puerto Rico, the regime, as a demonstration of its magnanimity, continued to give positions to Antonio, even—what greater proof of confidence?—in the Trujillo family enterprises.
It had been this malaise of so many years’ duration—thinking one thing and doing something that contradicted it every day—that led him, in the secret recesses of his mind, to condemn Trujillo to death, to convince himself that as long as Trujillo lived, he and many other Dominicans would be condemned to this awful queasy sickness of constantly having to lie to themselves and deceive everyone else, of having to be two people in one, a public lie and a private truth that could not be expressed.
The decision did him good; it raised his morale. His life stopped being a mortifying duplicity when he could share his true feelings with someone else. His friendship with Salvador Estrella Sadhalá was like a gift from heaven. With Turk he could talk freely against everything around him; his moral integrity, the sincerity with which he tried to accommodate his behavior to the religion he professed with a devotion Tony had never seen in anyone else, made Salvador his model as well as his best friend.
Shortly after they became close friends, Imbert began to frequent clandestine groups, thanks to his cousin Moncho. Although he left the meetings with the feeling that these girls and boys were risking their freedom, their futures, their lives but would not find an effective way to fight Trujillo, the hour or two he spent with them after arriving at a strange house—a different one each time, taking a thousand detours, following messengers identified with different code names—gave him a reason for living, cleared his conscience, and centered his life.
Guarina was dumbstruck when finally, so that some calamity would not take her completely by surprise, Tony began revealing to her that, contrary to all appearances, he was no longer a Trujillista and was even working in secret against the government. She did not try to dissuade him. She did not ask what would happen to their daughter, Leslie, if he was arrested and sentenced to thirty years in prison, like Segundo, or, even worse, if they killed him.
His wife and daughter did not know about tonight; they thought he was playing cards at Turk’s house. What would happen to them if this failed?
“Do you trust General Román?” he said hurriedly, to force himself to think about something else. “Are you sure he’s one of us?” Pupo Román, married to Trujillo’s niece, was the brother-in-law of Generals José and Virgilio García Trujillo, the Chief’s favorite nephews.
“If he weren’t with us, we’d all be in La Cuarenta by now,” said Antonio de la Maza. “He’s with us as long as we meet his conditions: he has to see the body.”
“It’s hard to believe,” Tony murmured. “What does the Minister of the Armed Forces stand to gain from this? He has everything to lose.”
“He hates Trujillo more than you and I do,” replied De la Maza. “And so do many of the men at the top. Trujillism is a house of cards. It’ll collapse, you’ll see. Pupo has commitments from a lot of men in the military; they’re only waiting for his orders. He’ll give them, and tomorrow this will be a different country.”
“If the Goat comes,” Estrella Sadhalá grumbled in the back seat.
“He’ll come, Turk, he’ll come,” the lieutenant repeated one more time.
Antonio Imbert sank again into his thoughts. Would his country wake tomorrow to find itself liberated? He wanted that with all his strength, but even now, minutes before they would act, it was hard for him to believe. How many people were in the conspiracy besides General Román? He never wanted to find out. He knew about four or five, but there were many more. Better not to know. He always thought it crucial that the conspirators know as little as possible so as not to put the operation at risk. He had listened with interest to everything Antonio de la Maza told them about the commitment the head of the Armed Forces had made to assume power if they executed the tyrant. In this way the Goat’s close relatives and the leading Trujillistas would be captured or killed before they could unleash a series of reprisals. Just as well that his two boys, Ramfis and Radhamés, were in Paris. How many people had Antonio de la Maza talked to? At times, in the endless meetings of the past few months to revise the plan, Antonio had let slip allusions, references, half-spoken words that suggested there were many people involved. Tony had taken caution to the extreme of cutting Salvador off one day when he began to say in indignation that he and Antonio de la Maza, at a meeting in the house of General Juan Tomás Díaz, had argued with a group of conspirators who objected to bringing Imbert into the plot. They didn’t think he was safe because of his Trujillista past; somebody recalled the famous telegram to Trujillo, offering to burn Puerto Plata. (“It will follow me to my death and beyond,” he thought.) Turk and Antonio had protested, saying they would put their hands to the fire for Tony, but he would not allow Salvador to continue:
“I don’t want to know, Turk. After all, why would people who don’t know me ever trust me? They’re right, I’ve worked my whole life for Trujillo, directly or indirectly.”
“And what do I do?” replied Turk. “What do thirty or forty percent of Dominicans do? Aren’t we all working for the government or its businesses? Only the very rich can allow themselves the luxury of not working for Trujillo.”
“Not them either,” he thought. The rich too, if they wanted to go on being rich, had to ally themselves with the Chief, sell him part of their businesses or buy part of his, and contribute in this way to his greatness and power. With half-closed eyes, lulled by the gentle sound of the sea, he thought of what a perverse system Trujillo created, one in which all Dominicans sooner or later took part as accomplices, a system which only exiles (not always) and the dead could escape. In this country, in one way or another, everyone had been, was, or would be part of the regime. “The worst thing that can happen to a Dominican is to be intelligent or competent,” he had once heard Agustín Cabral say (“A very intelligent and competent Dominican,” he told himself) and the words had been etched in his mind: “Because sooner or later Trujillo will call upon him to serve the regime, or his person, and when he calls, one is not permitted to say no.” He was proof of this truth. It never occurred to him to put up the slightest resistance to his appointments. As Estrella Sadhalá always said, the Goat had taken from people the sacred attribute given to them by God: their free will.
In contrast to Turk, religion had never occupied a central place in the life of Antonio Imbert. He was Catholic in the Dominican way, he had gone through all the religious ceremonies that marked people’s lives—baptism, confirmation, first communion, Catholic school, marriage in the Church—and he undoubtedly would be buried with the sermon and blessing of a priest. But he had never been a particularly conscientious believer, never been concerned with the implications of his faith in everyday life, never bothered to verify if his behavior complied with the commandments, as Salvador did in a way that he found debilitating.
But what he said about free will affected him. Perhaps this was why he decided that Trujillo had to die. So that he and other Dominicans could recover their ability to at least accept or reject the work they did to earn a living. Tony did not know what that was like. Perhaps as a child he knew, but he had forgotten. It must be nice. Your cup of coffee or glass of rum must taste better, the smoke of your cigar, a swim in the ocean on a hot day, the movie you see on Saturday, the merengue on the radio, everything must leave a more pleasurable sensation in your body and spirit when you had what Trujillo had taken away from Dominicans thirty-one years ago: free will.
10
At the sou
nd of the bell, Urania and her father become rigid, looking at each other as if caught in some mischief. Voices on the ground floor and an exclamation of surprise. Hurried steps coming up the stairs. The door opens almost at the same time that they hear an impatient knock, and a bewildered face peers in; Urania immediately recognizes her cousin Lucinda.
“Urania? Urania?” Her large protruding eyes examine her from top to bottom, from bottom to top, then she opens her arms and walks toward her as if to verify whether or not she is a hallucination.
“It’s me, Lucindita.” Urania embraces the younger daughter of her Aunt Adelina, the cousin who is her own age, her classmate at school.
“Uranita! I can’t believe it! You’re here? Let me take a look at you! What’s going on? Why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t you come to the house? Have you forgotten how much we love you? Don’t you remember your Aunt Adelina, and Manolita? And me, you ungrateful thing?”
She is so surprised, so full of questions, so curious—“My God, girl, how could you spend thirty-five years—thirty-five, right?—without coming home and seeing your family? Oh, Uranita! You must have so much to tell us!”—that she doesn’t give her time to answer her questions. That’s one way she hasn’t changed much. Even as a little girl she chattered like a parrot, Lucindita the enthusiastic one, the inventive and playful one. The cousin she always liked best. Urania remembers her in her dress uniform, white skirt and navy-blue jacket, and in the everyday pink-and-blue outfit: an agile, plump little girl in bangs, with braces on her teeth and a smile on her lips. Now she is a stout matron, her face taut and smooth with no sign of a facelift, wearing a simple flowered dress. Her only adornment is a pair of long, flashing gold earings. Suddenly she interrupts her affectionate questioning of Urania, goes over to the invalid, and kisses him on the forehead.