The Orchids

  El Presidente’s mother was named Juanita. She had already borne seven children, four of whom had died, one of them under suspicious circumstances having to do with a cliff.

  But on to the Official History:

  For three days Mary fought for the life of El Presidente. And it is reported by those present at this momentous occasion that her son was delivered into the world wholly clean of any blood or tissue, so that he emerged from the womb without taint or blemish. It is also reported that the sun broke over the ridge at the precise moment of his birth, coming a full three hours before the accustomed sunrise and bathing the surrounding countryside in a gentle, embracing light.

  El Presidente’s life is full of trinities. He is three days in the birthing. The sun rises three hours early on the day of his nativity. No special attention is drawn to these facts in the Official History. Its subject, after all, is no ordinary vulgarian.

  To continue:

  The birth of El Presidente was celebrated by all the village. This was not the usual custom in the southern provinces, but from the beginning the native intuition of the peasantry was made manifest. Men who seek only after reason will be dumbfounded by the world. But men who sense its mysteries will be rewarded with understanding.

  And so El Presidente was born into a land in which intuition triumphed over inquiry, in which faith shackled sense, in which knowledge was seen as the handmaiden of confusion.

  The Leader, when he ascended, drew up millions in his train, driving them into the cloud of his mythology with the power of a great machine, so that they became annealed to him, a part of his fiery workings, enmeshed in the warp and woof of his person and intent. And surely if his origins were less auspicious than those recorded for El Presidente, the perverse majesty of his end dwarfs all those feeble pretenders who have followed him seeking to emulate, to surpass.

  But now let us pass El Presidente’s allegorical debut and move toward his divinely ordained development:

  Nurtured among the idyllic surroundings of the southern provinces, El Presidente reveled in the beauties of nature and their profound import. From the start, he seemed possessed by nature. Among the peasants, he was known to be one who could divine the mysteries of wind and water. He could predict the coming of rain and once saved his village from a terrible storm by confronting the rampaging elements with his own body and demanding their retreat.

  Thus, in the Republic, nature is both good and evil, an animated spirit that both conserves and debauches. Those “possessed by nature” are good, perhaps divine, but only if they can overcome nature’s Manichean aspect, harness its schizophrenic drive toward both redemption and destruction. El Presidente, by piercing into the mystical heart of nature, enslaved it. In the Republic, to know a thing is to conquer it.

  And again:

  From earliest youth, then, El Presidente was regarded with awe by the simple people of the village. They came to him with their problems and he endeavored to acquaint them with the facts of their existence. No easy task in the southern provinces.

  And what are these facts of existence which it is no easy task to teach in the southern provinces? The Official History enumerates them:

  Satan coils under every shrub.

  All things must serve the common good.

  A people who do not believe in their own destiny will not have one.

  Sheep herds should not be kept less than one kilometer from human habitation.

  Darts is a game for fools.

  Thus enlightened, the southern provinces flourished. But it was the destiny of El Presidente to depart them. And so he embarked upon that journey which would take him to his own, private destiny. He traversed the southern districts in search of revelation. According to the Official History, he was assailed periodically by “blinding lights” and “burning rivers.” Once, to test himself, El Presidente fought a lion with his bare hands, finally strangling it to death. Much is made of this in the Official History, even though there are no lions in this hemisphere.

  Here in the Republic, no witnesses are permitted. Those who appeared pale-faced and withered before the press to tell of El Presidente’s mortal combat have since been swallowed up by earthquakes or entombed in landslides. The entire village of El Presidente’s birth was mysteriously erased by what the Official History calls “a band of wicked and hideous marauders.” A picture is presented as proof. Amid the smoking ruin of the village, a single uniformed soldier can be seen standing absently over the body of an eviscerated woman. Under a looking-glass the insignia on the soldier’s sleeve is clearly visible, a large red A encircled by a field of blue. Company A was a unit under the exclusive command of El Presidente.

  The facts are not significant in the Republic. But there are realities upon which only the satirical can shed light. Thus Casamira, exiled poet of the Republic, writes his sardonic Official History with a pen dipped in vitriol. He is made of equal parts, mockery and vituperation. Sometimes I see him in a dream sitting among the imagined ruins of El Presidente’s palace. He is clothed in smoke, but with a look of unutterable peace. He leans back on a fallen column, propping himself casually on his elbows. A smile of complete satisfaction plays upon his lips, suggesting the totality of his triumph. He closes his eyes slowly as the wind shakes the banana trees.

  THE LEADER believed that history stopped with him. His greatest tactical mistake was his inability to subdue his own cosmic egotism. Because of that, he attempted to accelerate history so that his titanic dreams could be accomplished within the pinched scale of a single human life, his own. This form of individualism is so severe that it is no longer aware of its own dreadful whimsy. Here is an epic compression, Napoleonic in its strenuousness and awesome in its sweep, a juggernaut of self that endeavors to move not with the insufferable lethargy of evolution, but with the girded power of passionate and unalterable human motive. Of all forms of cowardice, the Leader most despised the timidity of time. And the greatest achievement of his delusion lay in convincing us that we could stoke the engines of history with such force and momentum as actually to bring it to its termination while we lived. To see paradise in one’s own lifetime, to see the triumph of the species, the final actualization of existence, to sit upon the blazing, uplifted tower of our completedness, to ride for one glittering moment at the pinnacle of that ultimate creation of all man’s effort and resource — that was the dream he offered, the apotheosis of romance.

  From the rooted dreariness of individual life and the recent humiliations of national history he extracted the necessary substance with which to forge his ideal and himself, and which he then joined together in the musty arenas of our minds. At El Caliz, where the searing light seems to boil the river, it is easy to comprehend the process as it presents itself in the graven image of the superficial. Scholars bending feverishly beneath the green shades that glow within their studies have seen as much and called it explanation. But for those who were actually ingested into the infernal workings of his machine, those for whom memory is either misery or accusation, the judgments of scholarship are as futile and unenlightening as the shards of bat bone Esperanza uses to divine the rain.

  And so we must look again and again and again, becoming as we do scholars of monstrosity.

  Look again, then, and see the little boy standing in the park, his stomach recoiling from the detestable smell of sugar cookies.

  • • •

  My father stood up and grasped my hand limply, as if touching something that defiled him, as if my hand were some pornographic device that repelled him, but to which he was inseparably attached.

  “Where are we going?” the little soldier asked.

  “Home,” my father said.

  “So soon?”

  “Home,” he repeated.

  At home we sat in the dining room under the small brass chandelier, which seemed to twinkle irreverently in the gloom. My father made delicate incisions in the wurst and forked the pieces glumly into his mouth. My mother bustled about obliviously,
and I suddenly saw her as my father always had — a large, flabby woman who cared nothing at all for great ideas or events and for whom national defeat could be rendered wholly meaningless by a flick of the wrist and a disgruntled groan.

  “Dessert?” she asked, and when I did not reply, she plopped a sodden piece of strudel onto my plate. Its smell reminded me of sugar cookies. I pushed it away.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “You don’t want strudel?”

  “Not tonight,” I said. I dropped my hands into my lap.

  “Perhaps he’d like to have a sugar cookie,” my father mumbled without looking at me.

  I felt a wind blow through me, scattering my insides like bits of soiled tissue paper.

  “Are you sick?” my mother asked.

  My father looked up from his plate. “Leave him alone and go about your business.”

  My mother shrugged and began gathering the dishes. When she had finished, she marched silently into the kitchen.

  “You want to be like her, Peter?” my father whispered.

  “No, Father.”

  “What, then?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? What kind of answer is that?”

  I turned my eyes downward. Hearing him sit back in his chair, I knew he was still looking at me and that what he saw disgusted him.

  My mother strode back into the dining room and pinched my cheek. “Maybe you’d like to go to the cinema tonight,” she said cheerfully.

  “Cinema?” my father roared. He banged the table with his fist. “You ass, don’t you know what has happened today?”

  My mother turned toward him, aghast.

  My father leaped from his chair. “Get out of my sight!”

  My mother stepped back and raised her hands as if protecting her face from blows.

  “Get out of this house,” my father shouted. “I don’t care where you go, but get out of my house!”

  “Martin,” my mother said helplessly, “are you all right?”

  “Get out,” my father bawled. His eyes looked like small red bulbs.

  My mother glanced at me timidly.

  “Get out!” my father screamed. “Get out of here this minute!”

  My mother rushed out of the room, hiding her face in her hands. A few moments later I heard her close the front door.

  My father bent over the table and raked his bald head with his hand.

  I sat frozen in my chair. I had never in my life seen such passion. He raised his head and seemed to gather himself together slowly.

  “I will not endure such insults,” he said threateningly. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “I will not endure it.”

  I nodded fearfully.

  He began to weep softly. He lowered his head to the table again, cradling it in one elbow and gently hitting the surface of the table with his hands. They were soft, muffled blows and each seemed to me like a moan.

  I stood up and thrust out my chest. “I will not endure it either,” I said loudly.

  My father did not look up.

  “Father? I will not endure it either.”

  My father drew his head up slowly.

  I assumed the strong, firm-jawed look of the soldiers in the war posters. “I will not endure it,” I repeated.

  My father stared at me coldly. “You are nothing to me,” he said.

  I felt my chest cave in.

  “Nothing, Peter,” my father said evenly, “nothing to me at all.”

  “Father … I …”

  “Sugar cookies,” my father said bitterly. “Strudel. Cinema.”

  I could not bear the intense reproach in his eyes. I turned away and watched the wind rustle through the ivy that clung to the sides of the window.

  “There is nothing now,” I heard my father say grimly. “Nothing.”

  His chair grated across the floor as he pushed himself away. I wanted to fall at his feet, to beg his forgiveness for whatever crimes I had committed against him. But for some reason I was immobile, and I think now that it was shame that held me in place, that clawed at my ankles, holding my feet against the floor.

  For a moment he did not move. Without turning from the window, I knew that he was staring at me, and I wanted to turn to him if for no other reason than to offer my face for his blows. But his agony was like a wall between us.

  Finally I heard him turn and leave the room. Sitting in place, I could hear his feet scraping up the carpeted steps to his little law office on the second floor. Then, a few moments later, I heard the pistol shot. It sounded like the cracking of a twig, nothing more. I ran upstairs. He was seated in a dark red wing chair, one leg crossed primly over the other, his head tilted slightly to the side, as if he were simply a tired middle-aged shopkeeper who had fallen asleep by the fire.

  I RISE from my chair and walk through the door to my office. In the Camp I had only a monkish cell in which to sleep. But here I have a spacious compound of several buildings and enjoy the luxury of a private office. The office is filled with mementos from my past. Some are on display: a lovely crystal vase, a stethoscope, a commendation from El Presidente, and the little riding crop I used to crack against my boot. Some things are hidden in my desk drawer: a battered tin box and a machine pistol. The aging Casanova of Schnitzler’s beautiful invention whiles away the hours remembering the inanity of his conquests and regretting that never in his life had he been loved, or even taken seriously, by a woman of intelligence. As I review my mementos I have but one regret: that there is not a single one among them for which I have any genuine affection.

  Dr. Ludtz knocks softly and politely at the door of the office. He has said that he does not think it healthy for me to spend so much time alone. But that is a lie. He fears that I am composing my memoirs and that his own name might find a place within them. Each time he enters my study he casts his eyes about suspiciously, hoping to discover the protruding edge of some unfinished manuscript, even though he cannot imagine a man actually writing the words I would have to write in order to detail my life.

  “Come in, Dr. Ludtz.”

  Dr. Ludtz smiles as he enters. “Ah, you’re here then. Why so much time spent in this office, my dear friend?”

  “The ventilation is pleasant.”

  Dr. Ludtz nods, pretending satisfaction with my answer. “The ventilation, yes.” He glances at the empty chair in front of my desk. “May I?”

  “By all means.”

  He sits down and looks at the ceiling fan slowly turning above his head. “Excellent for ventilation.”

  “Yes.”

  He turns back toward me, his eyes carefully searching over the cluttered bookshelf behind me. “Have you read anything of note recently?”

  “It is getting more difficult for me to read now,” I tell him. “I think my eyes are dimming slightly.”

  Dr. Ludtz looks at me sadly. “Perhaps you’re overtired. Working so much in this office, that must be quite taxing, don’t you think?”

  I do not reply.

  “And the arthritis?” Dr. Ludtz asks gently. “Is that any better?”

  “Arthritis does not cure itself, Dr. Ludtz.”

  Dr. Ludtz shakes his head. “No. That is true. But it is bearable, I hope.”

  “Bearable. Yes.” I have often wondered what Dr. Ludtz’s bedside manner was like before he became a doctor for the Special Section. I expect that it was gentle, kindly, utterly proper. Those large, beefy hands must have stroked the small pink cheeks of thousands of children before they became familiar with electroshock devices. We all have ironic histories, I suppose, but history has made some a good deal more ironic than others.

  Dr. Ludtz watches me sadly. “Ah, the natural shocks that flesh is heir to.”

  I smile indulgently. “You must learn to speak outside quotation from time to time, Dr. Ludtz.”

  Dr. Ludtz looks slightly scolded. “But wi
th learning one discovers that everything one might say has been said better by someone else, don’t you agree?” He turns away and rests his eyes on the river. “It’s very calm today. Perhaps we could get Alberto and Tomás to take us rowing on the river. That would be relaxing, don’t you think, Dr. Langhof?”

  In the Camp he relaxed by lounging on his bunk blowing smoke rings at the ceiling. It became one of his obsessions to blow ten of them in a series, one after the other, like boxcars.

  “I’m afraid I cannot join you,” I tell him.

  “May I ask why, my dear friend?”

  “I am in the middle of preparations.”

  Dr. Ludtz blinks and stares at me worriedly. “Preparations for what?”

  “For El Presidente’s visit.”

  Dr. Ludtz looks relieved. “Ah, yes. I see.” He smiles contentedly. “I suppose it will be a lavish affair, as usual.”

  “El Presidente prefers it lavish.”

  Dr. Ludtz leans forward. “He must be treated with the greatest deference.”

  “Yes.”

  Dr. Ludtz smirks. “An esteemed visitor.”

  “Indeed.”

  He chuckles gently. “Tell me, Dr. Langhof, have you heard of the visit Hölderlin made to Goethe?”

  “In Weimar?”

  “Yes, Weimar. But have you heard the story of what passed between them?”

  “Tell it, if you like.”

  “Well, Hölderlin was only a young poet at the time,” Dr. Ludtz begins, “and of course Goethe was the old master. As you might imagine, Hölderlin had dreamed of this visit for quite some time. He expected an exalted conversation to pass between them. Such was not the case, however. In fact, the interview was very disappointing. For you see, Hölderlin found that all he could talk about in Goethe’s presence was the superiority of the plums he had eaten on the train between Jena and Weimar.” He laughs loudly. “The absurdity! Can you imagine?”