“I’d say she’s probably taken off for the capital. She wanted to find a job as a servant, like her older sister,” said Ramírez.
“Without money and half naked, Lieutenant? Don’t you find that a little strange?”
“The kid was half nuts.”
“May I speak with her brother, Pradelio Ranquileo?”
“No. He’s been transferred to a different military command.”
“Where?”
“That is confidential information. We are in a declared State of Emergency.”
Irene realized that she would not learn anything more by following this line of questioning, and as it was still early she drove to the village with the idea of questioning people there. She wanted to find out what they thought of the military in general and of Lieutenant Ramírez in particular. On hearing her questions, however, people turned their heads without answering and scurried away as quickly as possible. Years of authoritarian regime had established discretion as the basis for survival. While a mechanic patched one of the tires of her car, Irene went into an inn near the plaza. Signs of spring were everywhere: in the nuptial flight of the thrushes, the self-satisfied strutting of hens followed by a string of chicks, the quivering of young girls beneath their cotton dresses. A pregnant cat wandered into the inn and, with dignity, curled up beneath Irene’s table.
At various times in her life, Irene had experienced strong intuitions. She believed she could read the signs of the future, and imagined that the power of the mind could determine certain events. That is how she explained the appearance of Sergeant Faustino Rivera at the very place she had chosen to eat. When she told this to Francisco later, he expounded a simpler theory: the inn was the only restaurant in Los Riscos and the sergeant was thirsty. Rivera was sweating as Irene watched him enter, walk to the counter, and order a beer; she immediately recognized the Indian features—the high cheekbones, oblique eyes, taut skin, and large, even teeth. He was in uniform, and was carrying his cap in his hand. She remembered what little she’d heard about him from the mouth of Digna Ranquileo, and decided to use it to her advantage.
“Are you Sergeant Rivera?” she asked.
“At your service, ma’am.”
“The son of Manuel Rivera, the one with the harelip?”
“The same. What can I do for you?”
From that moment the conversation flowed freely. Irene invited Rivera to drink his beer at her table, and as soon as he was seated with another beer in his hand, he was putty in her hands. By the third glass, it was evident that the soldier did not carry his alcohol well, and Irene directed the conversation to the channels that interested her. She began by flattering him, saying that he had been born to occupy posts of responsibility, anyone could see that; she herself had noticed it in the Ranquileos’ house when he had controlled the situation with the authority and cool head of a true leader; he had been energetic, efficient, not at all like that officer Ramírez.
“Is your lieutenant always so reckless? I mean, that shooting! It scared me to death.”
“He didn’t used to be like that. He isn’t a bad man, I swear it,” replied the sergeant.
He knew him, he said, like the palm of his hand, because he had served under his command for years. Just out of Officers’ School Ramírez had all the virtues of a good military man: he was trim, uncompromising, trustworthy. He knew all the rules and regulations by heart; he had no patience for imperfection; he demanded a serious attitude on the part of his subordinates; he reviewed the shine on their boots and pulled on their buttons to see that they were firmly attached; and he was obsessive about hygiene. He personally checked the cleaning of the latrines, and each week he lined up his men in the nude to examine them for venereal diseases and lice. He inspected their private parts with a magnifying glass, and any infected men had to undergo drastic remedies and infinite humiliation.
“But he didn’t do it out of meanness, señorita. He wanted to teach us to be decent. I think in those days the lieutenant had a good heart.”
* * *
Rivera remembered the first execution as clearly as if he were seeing it today. It had happened five years ago, a few days after the military takeover. It was still cold, and it had rained all night; the skies had opened and washed the world, leaving the barracks bright and clean and smelling of moss and moisture. By dawn, the rain had stopped, but everything was softened in the haze of its memory, and small pools of water glittered among the cobbles like slivers of glass. The firing squad was assembled at the far end of the patio, and two strides before them, deathly pale, stood Lieutenant Ramírez. The prisoner was brought in between two guards, who were holding him up by the arms because he couldn’t stand on his own two feet. At first Rivera hadn’t realized what bad shape he was in; he’d thought the man was a coward, like others who, after running around out there committing their subversive acts and fucking up the whole country, swooned when the time came to pay for their sins; but then he got a better look and saw that this was the guy whose legs they’d crushed. The guards had to support him between them to keep his feet from bumping over the cobblestones. Faustino Rivera looked at his superior and read his thoughts. During nights of guard duty, they had talked man to man, forgetting differences in rank and analyzing the reasons for the military uprising and its consequences. The country had been divided by anti-patriotic politicians who were weakening the nation and turning it into easy prey for enemies from the outside, Lieutenant Ramírez had said. It is the first duty of a soldier to protect the nation’s security; that’s why they’d seized power, to make the nation strong again, and, in passing, to do away with their internal enemies. Rivera rejected the idea of torture; he considered it the worst of the dirty war they were all engulfed in; it wasn’t a part of his profession; it hadn’t been a part of his training; it turned his stomach. It was one thing to rough up some hoodlum a little in the course of a routine interrogation, but it was something else again to torture a prisoner systematically. Why did the bastards clam up? Why didn’t they talk in their first interrogation and save themselves all that pointless suffering? In the end they either confessed or they died, like this fellow they were getting ready to execute.
“Detail! Attennnn . . . !”
“Lieutenant,” whispered Faustino Rivera, then only a corporal first class.
“Position the prisoner against the wall, Corporal!”
“But, Lieutenant, he can’t stand up.”
“Then sit him down!”
“Where, Lieutenant?”
“Well, bring a chair, goddammit,” and the lieutenant’s voice had cracked.
Faustino Rivera turned to the man at his left, repeated the order, and the man departed. Why don’t they pitch the prisoner on the ground and shoot him like a dog before it gets light and we can see everybody’s face? Why drag it out like this? the corporal thought, uneasy because the patio was getting lighter by the second. The prisoner raised his eyes and looked at each of them with the astounded expression of the dying; he paused when he came to Faustino. He undoubtedly recognized him, because once they’d played soccer on the same field, and there he was now standing in the middle of icy pools of water, holding a rifle in his hands that weighed a ton, while the prisoner lay on the ground waiting. At this point the chair arrived and the lieutenant ordered them to tie the prisoner to the chairback because he was swaying like a scarecrow. The corporal stepped toward him with a kerchief.
“I don’t want a blindfold, soldier,” said the prisoner, and the corporal hung his head, ashamed, wishing the officer would get on with it and give the order to fire, wishing this war would hurry up and get over, wishing that things would get back to normal and he could walk down the street in peace, greeting all his countrymen alike.
“Reaaaaady! Aiii . . . !” commanded the lieutenant.
Finally, thought the corporal. The man who was about to die closed his eyes for an instant but opene
d them again to look toward the sky. He was no longer afraid. The lieutenant hesitated. He’d been pale as a ghost ever since he’d heard about the execution. An old voice from his childhood had been pounding in his brain, the voice of some teacher or his confessor in the school for priests, perhaps: All men are brothers. But that isn’t true; any man who goes around spreading violence is no brother of mine, and the nation comes first, everything else isn’t worth shit; and if we don’t kill them, they’ll kill us. That’s what the Colonels say: Kill or be killed, this is war, these things have to be done, pull up your pants and don’t tremble, don’t think, don’t feel, and above all don’t look at the man’s face, because if you do, you’re fucked good and proper.
“Fire!”
The volley jolted the skies and echoed and re-echoed in the icy patio. A startled pigeon flew away. The smell of gunpowder and the noise seemed to linger for an eternity, but slowly the silence returned. The lieutenant opened his eyes: the prisoner was sitting straight and serene in his chair, looking at him. There was fresh blood on the shapeless mass of his pants legs, but he was alive, and his face was ethereal in the dawn light. He was alive, and waiting.
“What’s going on here, Corporal?” the officer asked in a low voice.
“They shot at his legs, Lieutenant,” replied Faustino Rivera. “All the boys are from around here. They know each other, they’re not going to kill a friend.”
“So what happens now?”
“Now it’s up to you, Lieutenant.”
Mute, the officer finally understood. The firing squad stood watching the dew evaporating off the cobbles. The prisoner, too, was waiting at the far end of the patio, unhurriedly bleeding to death.
“Didn’t they tell you, Lieutenant? Everyone knows.”
No. No, they had not told him. In Officers’ School they had prepared him to fight against neighboring nations, against any son of a bitch who invaded their sovereign territory. They had also trained him to wage war against common criminals, to pursue them mercilessly, hunt them down like dogs, so that decent men, women, and children could walk the streets with a light heart. That was his mission. But no one had told him he would have to beat a bound man to a pulp to make him talk, they had not taught him anything about that; and now the world was spinning backward and he had to walk over and administer the coup de grâce to that poor bastard who was not even complaining. No. No one had told him.
Surreptitiously the corporal nudged the lieutenant’s arm, so the squad would not see their leader’s vacillation.
“Your revolver, Lieutenant,” he whispered.
The lieutenant removed his revolver from its holster and walked across the patio. The dull echo of his boots on the cobblestones rumbled in his men’s guts. Now the lieutenant and his prisoner were face to face, looking in each other’s eyes. They were the same age. The officer raised his arm, aiming at the temple, holding the revolver with both hands to control his shaking. The bright light of day was the last thing the condemned man saw as the shot penetrated his brain. Blood spurted over his face and chest, splashing on the officer’s clean uniform.
The lieutenant’s sob hung in the air, reverberating with the gunshot, but only Faustino Rivera heard it.
“Chin up, Lieutenant. They say it’s the same in war. It’s hard the first time, but then you get used to it.”
“Go fuck yourself, Corporal!”
The corporal was right, and as the days and weeks went by it had been much easier to kill for the nation than to die for it.
Sergeant Faustino Rivera stopped talking as he mopped the sweat from his neck. In his drunken haze, he could barely see Irene Beltrán, but he could tell that she was good-looking. He glanced at his watch and sat up straight. He’d been talking with this woman for two hours, and if he wasn’t already late for his guard duty, he would tell her a few things more. She knew how to listen, and was interested in his stories—not like a lot of prissy girls who turn up their noses the minute a man gets a few beers under his belt; no sir, a real dish, that’s what she was; a good body and some ideas in her head, though maybe a little bit scrawny; he liked a woman with big tits and broad hips, something to grab onto at the moment of truth.
“He wasn’t a bad man, the lieutenant, señorita. It was later he changed, after he was put in command and didn’t have to account to anyone,” Rivera concluded, straightening his uniform and rising to his feet.
Irene waited until his back was turned before stopping the tape recorder hidden in the purse she had left lying on a chair. She threw the last pieces of meat to the cat, thinking about Gustavo Morante, wondering whether her fiancé had ever had to cross a patio with a revolver in his hand to give the coup de grâce to a prisoner. Anguished, she forced those thoughts from her mind, trying to recall Gustavo’s smooth-shaven face and clear eyes, but all that came to her mind was the profile of Francisco Leal as he bent over the desk beside her: the black eyes shining with understanding; the boyish grin when he smiled; the different mouth, thin-lipped, hard, when he saw evidence of man’s cruelty to man.
* * *
The Will of God Manor was ablaze with lights; the drapes in the salons were opened wide, and music filled the air; it was visiting day, and relatives and friends of the elderly guests were arriving on their missions of mercy. From a distance the ground floor resembled an ocean liner that had mistakenly dropped anchor in the garden. The hosts and their visitors were strolling around the deck, enjoying the cool evening, or taking their ease in the lounge chairs on the terrace, like tarnished ghosts, spirits from another day, some murmuring to themselves, some making idle chatter, others perhaps recalling years long gone by or searching their memories for the names of their fellow residents or absent children and grandchildren. At that age, reviewing the past is like being deep within a labyrinth: at times the fog makes it impossible to recognize a place, an event, a loved one. The uniformed nurses moved about silently, tucking blankets around feeble legs, distributing nightly pills, serving tea to the residents and cool drinks to their guests. From invisible speakers came the youthful chords of a mazurka by Chopin that did not have the slightest relation to the measured internal rhythms of the inhabitants of the home.
The dog Cleo leaped with joy when Francisco and Irene entered the garden.
“Be careful, don’t step on the forget-me-nots,” Irene warned her friend as they boarded the ship and she led him toward the voyagers from the past.
Irene’s hair was pulled back into a knot that bared the curve of her neck; she was wearing a long, simple cotton dress, and for the first time since Francisco had known her, she had removed her jangling copper and brass bracelets. Something about her puzzled Francisco, although he could not say what it was. He watched her as they circulated among the old people; she was smiling and friendly with them all, especially the ones who were in love with her. Each one lived in a present suffused with nostalgia. Irene pointed out the hemiplegic who dictated his letters to her because he could not hold a pen in his rigid fingers. He wrote to childhood friends, to sweethearts long gone, to relatives dead and buried for decades; Irene never mailed those heartbreaking letters, to prevent his disappointment on receiving the letters returned and marked “Not at this address.” She fabricated replies and mailed them to the old man to spare him the pain of knowing he was alone in the world. Irene also introduced Francisco to an addled old fellow who never had visitors. His pockets were stuffed with spicy treasures that he guarded with his life: faded pictures of blooming young girls; sepia-tinted postcards hinting of a thinly veiled bosom; a darling leg exhibiting a garter of ribbon and lace. Then they came to the wheelchair of the wealthiest widow in the land. She was wearing a rumpled dress, a shawl consumed by time and moths, a single white First Communion glove. Dangling from her chair were plastic bags filled with trinkets, and on her knees rested a box of buttons that she counted and recounted to be sure that none was missing. A bemedaled Colonel intervened to t
ell them in asthmatic whispers that cannon shot had pulverized the lower half of that heroic woman’s body. Do you know she has a heavy bag of gold coins she earned fair and square for being nice to her husband? Can you imagine, young man, what a dolt he must have been to pay for what he could have had free? I always counsel my recruits not to squander their pay on whores, because women happily spread their legs at the mere sight of a uniform. I say that from my own experience—I still have more than I can handle. Before Francisco could untangle any of these mysteries, a tall, very thin man with a tragic face approached them and asked about his son, his daughter-in-law, and their baby. Irene spoke to him privately, and then led him to a group engaged in animated conversation, and stood beside him until he seemed calm. Later, she explained that the old man had had two sons. One had left the country to live on the far side of the globe; his only communication with his father was through letters that were increasingly more distant and cool, because absence is as great an enemy as the passing of time. The other son had disappeared, along with his wife and a baby only a few months old. The old grandfather had not been blessed with losing his reason, and the minute they turned their backs he was out on the street looking for his children. Irene wanted to replace his tormenting speculations with the certainty of grief, and she assured him she had proof that his children were no longer alive. He would not, however, give up hope that someday he might find the child, since there were rumors of babies that had been saved through the traffic in orphans. Some already given up for dead had appeared suddenly in faraway countries; some had been adopted by families of other nationalities; others had been located in charitable institutions after so many years they did not even remember having had parents. With compassionate lies, Irene had succeeded in preventing his slipping out every time the garden was left unguarded, but she could not prevent him from wasting his dreams in hopeless torment, or his life in meaningless inquiries and the expectation of visiting the graves of his loved ones. Francisco also met a parchment-and-ivory couple sitting rocking in a wrought-iron love seat; they barely knew their own names but had had the good sense to fall in love in spite of the stubborn opposition of Beatriz Alcántara, who considered it an intolerable breach of decent behavior. Who ever heard of a pair of doddering old fools sneaking around stealing kisses? Irene, in contrast, defended their right to this last happiness, and wished all the guests the same luck; love would save them from loneliness, the cruelest sentence of old age. So leave them alone, Mama. Don’t look at the door that she leaves open every night, don’t put on that face when you find them together in the morning. Of course they make love, even though the doctor says that at their age it’s impossible.