The two women sat by the fire with the others, and the sweet smell of charred meat reminded them that they had not eaten since that morning. Blanca knew all the tenants and had taught many of them to read in the little schoolhouse of Tres Marías, so they began to talk about the bygone days when the Sánchez brothers imposed their law on the region, when old Pedro García had ended the plague of ants, and when the President had been an eternal candidate, standing in the station to harangue them from the train of his defeat.
“And to think that one day he would be our President!” someone said.
“And that one day the patrón would have less say at Tres Marías than us!” another said, laughing.
They led Pedro Tercero García directly into the kitchen. The oldest tenants were standing by the door, guarding the entrance to the dining room where their former patrón was being held prisoner. Though they had not seen Pedro Tercero in years, everyone remembered him. They sat down at the table to have a glass of wine and recall the distant past, the days when Pedro Tercero was not a legend in the peasants’ memory but a rebellious boy in love with the daughter of his patrón. After that, Pedro Tercero picked up his guitar, rested it on his knee, shut his eyes, and sang with his velvety voice the song about the foxes and the hens. All the old people joined in the refrain.
“I’m going to take the patrón with me, friends,” he said slowly during a pause in the singing.
“That’s out of the question, son,” someone replied.
“Tomorrow the national guard’s going to show up here with a court order and carry him out like a hero,” Pedro Tercero said. “It will be better if I take him with me now, with his tail between his legs.”
They argued for a long while, and finally they led him into the dining room and left him alone with the hostage. It was the first time the two men had been face to face since the fateful day when Trueba had made him pay for his daughter’s virginity with an axe. Pedro Tercero remembered him as an angry giant with a snakeskin whip and a silver cane, at whose step the tenants trembled and whose thunderous voice and feudal arrogance made all of nature quake. He was surprised to find the resentment he had stored up over all these years melt away in the presence of this bent and shrunken old man who was staring up at him in fright. Senator Trueba had exhausted his rage, and the night he had spent tied to a chair had left him with a pain in all his bones and the fatigue of a thousand years in his back. At first he had difficulty in recognizing Pedro, but when he saw that he was missing three of the fingers on his right hand, he understood that this was the end of the nightmare in which he was immersed. They stared at each other in silence for several seconds, each thinking that the other was the very incarnation of everything most hateful in the world, but unable to find the old fire of hatred in their hearts.
“I’ve come to get you out of here,” Pedro Tercero said.
“Why?” the old man asked.
“Because Blanca asked me to,” Pedro Tercero replied.
“Go to hell,” Trueba said without conviction.
“Fine. That’s where we’re going. You’re coming with me.”
Pedro Tercero proceeded to untie his bonds, which had been wrapped around his wrists to keep him from pounding on the door. Trueba averted his glance to keep from looking at Pedro Tercero’s mutilated hand.
“Get me out of here without their seeing me. I don’t want the journalists to make fun of me,” Senator Trueba said.
“I’m taking you out the same way you came in, through the gate,” Pedro Tercero said, and he started walking.
Trueba followed him with his head bowed. His eyes were red, and, for the first time he could remember, he felt defeated. They crossed the kitchen and still the old man did not look up. They went through the house and followed the path that led from the main building to the outside gate, accompanied by a group of unruly children who skipped along beside them and an entourage of silent peasants who followed behind. Blanca and Alba were sitting with the journalists and guardsmen, eating roast pig with their fingers and drinking mouthfuls of red wine straight from a bottle that was being passed from hand to hand. When she saw her grandfather, Alba was troubled; she had not seen him so dejected since the day Clara died. Swallowing what was in her mouth, she ran to greet him. They hugged each other tightly and she whispered something in his ear, which apparently made Senator Trueba regain his dignity, for he raised his head and smiled with his old pride into the lights of the cameras. The journalists filmed him climbing into a black car with official plates, and people wondered for weeks what all the foolishness had been about, until other, far more serious events eclipsed all memory of the incident.
That night the President, who had acquired the habit of outwitting his insomnia by playing chess with Jaime, discussed the matter between two games, while his astute eyes, hidden behind thick lenses in dark frames, scrutinized his friend’s face for the least hint of discomfort, but Jaime continued to place his pieces on the board without saying a word.
“Old Trueba’s got his balls in the right place,” the President said. “He really should be on our side.”
“Your move, Señor President,” Jaime replied, pointing to the board.
In the following months, the situation deteriorated greatly, like a country at war. Spirits ran high, especially among the women of the opposition, who paraded in the streets pounding their empty pans in protest against the shortages in the stores. Half the population hoped to overthrow the government and the other half defended it, and no one had time to worry about work. One night Alba was astonished to find the streets in the center of the city dark and almost deserted. Garbage had not been collected all that week, and stray dogs were scavenging among mountains of waste. Telephone poles were covered with posters faded by the winter rains, and every available inch of space was filled with the slogans of the two opposing sides. Half the street lamps had been smashed, and there were no lights on in any of the buildings; the only illumination came from a few sad bonfires fed by newspaper and wooden planks, around which the small groups that stood guard in front of the ministries, the banks, and the offices were warming themselves, taking turns to make sure the gangs of the extreme right that roamed the streets at night did not jump them in the dark. Alba saw a van pull up before one of the public buildings. A group of young men in white helmets piled out, armed with buckets of paint and brushes, and proceeded to cover the walls with light-colored paint. Then they drew huge multicolored doves, butterflies, and bloody flowers, with hand-lettered verses by the Poet and appeals for the people to unite. These were the youth brigades, who thought they could save the revolution with patriotic murals and inflammatory doves. Alba went up to them and pointed to the mural on the other side of the street. It was stained with red paint and contained a single word printed in enormous letters: Djakarta.
“What does that mean, compañero?” she asked one of them.
“I don’t know,” he replied.
And none of them knew why the opposition had painted that Asiatic word on the walls; they had never heard about the piles of corpses in the streets of that distant city. Alba climbed on her bicycle and pedaled home. After the gasoline rationing and the public transport strike, she had unearthed this childhood toy from the basement as her only means of getting around. She was thinking of Miguel, and a dark foreboding gripped her throat.
It had been ages since she had gone to class, and time hung heavy on her hands. The professors had declared an indefinite strike and the students had taken over all the buildings. Bored with practicing the cello at home, she used the time when she was not sleeping with Miguel, strolling with Miguel, or talking with Miguel to work at the hospital in the Misericordia District, where she helped her Uncle Jaime and a few other doctors who continued to practice there despite an order from the school of medicine to stop work so as to sabotage the government. It was a Herculean task. The hallways were piled with patients who had to wait
for days, like a moaning herd, to be examined. The orderlies no longer brought supplies. Jaime would fall asleep with his scalpel in his hand, so busy that he often forgot to eat. He had lost weight and looked haggard. He was working eighteen-hour shifts, and when he could finally lie down on his cot, he was often unable to sleep. His mind raced at the thought of all the patients who were waiting for him, the lack of anesthesia, syringes, and cotton, and the realization that even if he could be multiplied by a thousand it would still not be enough, because it was like trying to stop a train with your bare hands. Amanda also worked in the clinic as a volunteer, both to be close to Jaime and to keep busy. In the exhausting days spent taking care of unknown patients, she regained the light that had illuminated her from within when she was young, and for a time she had the illusion of being happy. She wore a blue smock and rubber shoes, but when she was around him Jaime was convinced he heard the tinkle of the glass beads she used to wear. He was glad to have her there and he wished he loved her. The President appeared on television almost every night to denounce the ruthless war being waged by the opposition. He was very tired, and at times his voice would crack. People said that he was drunk, and that he spent his nights in orgies with mulattas flown in from the tropics to warm his bones. He announced that the striking teamsters were receiving fifty dollars a day from abroad to keep the country at a standstill. People responded that he was being sent coconut ice cream and Soviet arms via diplomatic pouch. He said that his enemies were conspiring with the generals to launch a coup d’état because they would rather see democracy dead than be governed by him. They accused him of telling paranoid lies and of stealing paintings from the National Museum to hang in his mistress’s bedroom. He warned that the right was armed and determined to sell the country to imperialism, and they replied that his pantry was stocked with breasts of fowl while the masses had to stand in line to buy the neck and wings of the same bird.
The day Luisa Mora rang the bell of the big house on the corner, Senator Trueba was in his study doing his accounts. She was the last remaining Mora sister. Reduced to the size of a wandering but completely lucid angel, she was in full possession of her indomitable spiritual energy. Trueba had not seen her since Clara’s death, but he recognized her by her voice, which still sounded like an enchanted flute, and by her perfume of wild violets, which, although somewhat tempered by time, was still noticeable even at a distance. As she entered the room, she brought with her the winged presence of Clara, floating in the room before the loving eyes of her husband, who had not seen her in several days.
“I’ve come to bring you some bad news, Esteban,” Luisa Mora said after she had settled into the armchair.
“Ah, dear Luisa! I’ve had enough of that,” he said, sighing.
Luisa told him what she had discovered in the stars. She had to explain the scientific method she had used in order to overcome the senator’s pragmatic resistance. She told him she had spent the past ten months studying the astrological charts of each important person in the government and the opposition, including Trueba himself. When she compared the charts, they showed that at this exact historic moment there would be a terrible sequence of events, bringing blood, pain, and death.
“I don’t have the slightest doubt about it, Esteban,” she concluded. “Terrible times lie ahead. There will be so many dead they will be impossible to count. You will be on the side of the winners, but victory will only bring you suffering and loneliness.”
Esteban Trueba felt uneasy in the presence of this unusual soothsayer, who had disturbed the peace of his library and upset his liver with her astrological rantings, but because of Clara, who was watching him out of the corner of her eye from across the room, he did not have the strength to send her away.
“But I didn’t come here to upset you with news that’s beyond your control, Esteban. I came to speak with Alba, because I have a message for her from her grandmother.”
The senator sent for Alba. The girl had not seen Luisa Mora since she was seven, but she remembered her perfectly. She embraced her gently so as not to crush the fragile marble bones, and anxiously inhaled a mouthful of her unmistakable perfume.
“I came to tell you to be careful, child,” Luisa Mora said after she had dried her tears. “Death is at your heels. Your Grandmother Clara is doing all she can to protect you in the Hereafter, but she sent me to tell you that your spiritual protectors are powerless when it comes to major cataclysms. She says it would be wise for you to take a trip, that you should cross the ocean. You’ll be safe there.”
At this point in the conversation Esteban Trueba lost his patience. He was convinced he was dealing with a crazed old woman. Ten months and eleven days later he would recall Luisa Mora’s prophetic words, when they took Alba away in the middle of the night, while the curfew was in force.
— THIRTEEN —
THE TERROR
The day of the coup the sun was shining, a rare event in the timid spring that was just dawning. Jaime had worked practically all night and by seven in the morning his body had had only two hours of sleep. He was awakened by the ring of the telephone. It was a secretary, her voice slightly agitated, who scared his drowsiness away. She was calling from the Presidential Palace to inform him that he should present himself there as soon as possible; no, the President was not ill; no, she was not sure what was happening, she had simply been instructed to call all the President’s doctors. Jaime dressed like a sleepwalker and got into his car, grateful that his profession entitled him to a weekly ration of gasoline; otherwise he would have had to go by bicycle. He arrived at the palace at eight o’clock and was surprised to see the great square completely empty and a large detachment of soldiers stationed at the gates to the seat of the government. They were in full battle dress, with helmets and guns. Jaime parked his car in the deserted square without noticing the soldiers who were motioning him not to stop. He got out of the car and was immediately surrounded.
“What’s this, compañeros? Have we gone to war with China?” Jaime smiled.
“Keep going. You can’t stop here. Traffic is prohibited,” an officer ordered.
“I’m sorry, but I received a call from the President’s office,” Jaime said, showing them his identification card. “I’m a doctor.”
They escorted him to the heavy wooden doors of the Presidential Palace, where a group of guardsmen were standing watch. They let him through. Inside the building, the commotion resembled that of a shipwreck. Employees were running up and down the stairs like seasick rats and the President’s private guard were pushing furniture against the windows and distributing pistols to those who were closest to him. The President came out to greet him. He was wearing a combat helmet, which looked incongruous with his fine sports clothes and Italian shoes. Then Jaime understood that something momentous was taking place.
“The Navy has revolted, Doctor,” the President explained tersely. “It’s time to fight.”
Jaime picked up a telephone and called Alba, told her not to leave the house, and asked her to warn Amanda. He never spoke with her again. In the next hour a few ministers and political leaders arrived, and telephone negotiations with the insurgents were begun in order to gauge the magnitude of the insurrection and to find a peaceful settlement. But by nine-thirty in the morning all the armed units in the country were under the command of officers sympathetic to the coup. In barracks across the country, purges had begun of all those remaining loyal to the Constitution. The commander of the national guard ordered his men at the palace to leave because the police had just joined the coup.
“You can go, compañeros, but leave your guns behind,” the President said.
The guardsmen were confused and ashamed, but the commander’s order was final. Not one of them dared to accept the challenge in the gaze of the Chief of State. They left their arms in the courtyard and began to file out with lowered heads.
One of them turned when he reached the door. “I
’m staying with you, Compañero President,” he said.
By midmorning it was clear that dialogue would not resolve the situation and almost everyone began to leave. Only close friends and the private guard remained behind. The President had to order his daughters to leave; they had to be removed forcibly, and they could be heard from the street calling his name. Some thirty people were left in the building, holding out in the drawing rooms on the second floor. Among them was Jaime, feeling as if he were in the middle of a nightmare. He sat down on a red velvet chair with a gun in his hand, staring at it blankly; he did not know how to use it. It seemed to him that time was moving very slowly. His watch showed that only three hours of this bad dream had passed. He heard the voice of the President speaking to the nation on the radio. It was his farewell.
“I speak to all those who will be persecuted to tell you that I am not going to resign: I will repay the people’s loyalty with my life. I will always be with you. I have faith in our nation and its destiny. Other men will prevail, and soon the great avenues will be open again, where free men will walk, to build a better society. Long live the people! Long live the workers! These are my last words. I know my sacrifice will not have been in vain.”
The sky began to cloud. Isolated gunshots were heard in the distance. At that moment, the President was speaking on the phone with the head of the uprising, who was offering him a military plane to leave the country with his family. But he was not the kind of man to become an exile in some distant place where he would spend the rest of his life vegetating with other deposed leaders who had left their countries on a moment’s notice.
“You were wrong about me, traitors. The people put me here and the only way I’ll leave is dead,” he replied serenely.
* * *
Then came the roar of the airplanes, and the bombing began. Jaime threw himself to the floor with everyone else, unable to believe what he was seeing; until the day before, he had been convinced that nothing like this would ever happen in his country and that even the military respected the law. Only the President was on his feet. He walked to the window carrying a bazooka and fired it at the tanks below. Jaime inched his way to him and grabbed him by the calves to make him get down, but the President replied with a curse and remained erect. Fifteen minutes later the whole building was in flames, and it was impossible to breathe because of the bombs and the smoke. Jaime crawled among the broken furniture and bits of plaster that were falling around him like a deadly rain, attempting to help the wounded, but he could only offer words of comfort and close the eyes of the dead. In a sudden pause in the shooting, the President gathered the survivors and told them to leave because he did not want any martyrs or needless sacrifice; everyone had a family, and important tasks lay ahead. “I’m going to call a truce so you can leave,” he added. But no one moved. Though a few of them were trembling, all were in apparent possession of their dignity. The bombing was brief, but it left the palace in ruins. By two o’clock in the afternoon the fire had consumed the old drawing rooms that had been used since colonial times, and only a handful of men were left around the President. Soldiers entered the building and took what was left of the first floor. Above the din was heard the hysterical voice of an officer ordering them to surrender and come down single file with their hands on their heads. The President shook each of them by the hand. “I’ll go last,” he said. They never again saw him alive.