The House of the Spirits

  Jaime went downstairs with the others. Soldiers had been stationed on each step of the broad stone staircase; they seemed to have lost their senses. They kicked and beat those coming down the stairs with the butts of their guns, as if possessed by a new hatred that had just been invented and had bloomed in them in the space of a few hours. A few of them fired their guns over the heads of those who had surrendered. Jaime received a blow to his stomach that made him double up in pain, and when he was able to stand his eyes were full of tears and his pants moist with excrement. The soldiers continued to beat them all the way into the street, where they were ordered to lie facedown on the ground. There they were trampled on and insulted until there were no more Spanish curse words left; then someone motioned to one of the tanks. The prisoners heard it approach, shaking the pavement with its weight like an invincible pachyderm.

  “Make way, we’re going to run the tank over these bastards!” a colonel shouted.

  Jaime looked up from the ground and thought he recognized the man; he reminded him of a boy he used to play with at Tres Marías when he was a child. The tank snorted past, four inches from their heads, amidst the hard laughter of the soldiers and the howl of the fire engines. In the distance they could hear the sound of war planes. A long while later they divided the prisoners into groups, according to their guilt. Jaime was taken to the Ministry of Defense, which had been transformed into a barracks. They made him walk in a squatting position, as if he were in a trench, and led him into an enormous room filled with naked men who had been tied up in lines of ten, their hands bound behind their backs, so badly beaten that some could hardly stand. Rivulets of blood were running down onto the marble floor. Jaime was led into the boiler room, where other men were lined up against the wall beneath the watchful eye of a pale soldier who kept his machine gun trained on them. There he stood motionless for a long time, managing to stay erect as if he were sleepwalking, still not understanding what was happening and tormented by the screams coming through the walls. He noticed that the soldier was watching him. Suddenly the man lowered his gun and came up to him.

  “Sit down and rest, Doctor. But if I tell you to, stand up immediately,” he said softly, handing him a lighted cigarette. “You operated on my mother and saved her life.”

  Jaime did not smoke, but he savored that cigarette, inhaling as slowly as he could. His watch was destroyed, but his hunger and thirst led him to believe that it was night. He was so tired and uncomfortable in his stained trousers that he did not even wonder what was going to happen to him. His head was beginning to nod when the soldier came over to him again.

  “Get up, Doctor,” he whispered. “They’re coming for you now. Good luck!”

  A moment later two men walked in, handcuffed him, and led him before an officer who was in charge of interrogating the prisoners. Jaime had seen him on occasion in the company of the President.

  “We know you have nothing to do with this, Doctor,” he said. “We just want you to appear on television and say that the President was drunk and he committed suicide. After that you can go home.”

  “Do it yourself. Don’t count on me, you bastards,” Jaime said.

  They held him down by the arms. The first blow was to his stomach. After that they picked him up and smashed him down on a table. He felt them remove his clothes. Much later, they carried him unconscious from the Ministry of Defense. It had begun to rain, and the freshness of the water and the air revived him. He awoke as they were loading him onto an Army bus and sat him down in the last seat. He saw the night through the window and when the vehicle began to move he could see the empty streets and flag-decked buildings. He understood that the enemy had won and he probably thought about Miguel. The bus pulled into the courtyard of a military regiment. They took him off the bus. There were other prisoners in the same condition. They tied their hands and feet with barbed wire and threw them on their faces in the stalls. There Jaime and the others spent two days without food or water, rotting in their own excrement, blood, and fear, until they were all driven by truck to an area near the airport. In an empty lot they were shot on the ground, because they could no longer stand, and then their bodies were dynamited. The shock of the explosion and the stench of the remains floated in the air for a long time.

  * * *

  In the big house on the corner, Senator Trueba opened a bottle of French champagne to celebrate the overthrow of the regime that he had fought against so ferociously, never suspecting that at that very moment his son Jaime’s testicles were being burned with an imported cigarette. The old man hung a flag over the entrance of his house and did not go outside to dance because he was lame and because there was a curfew, but not because he did not want to, as he jubilantly announced to his daughter and granddaughter. Meanwhile, hanging on to the telephone, Alba was attempting to get word on those she was most worried about: Miguel, Pedro Tercero, her Uncle Jaime, Amanda, Sebastián Gómez, and so many others.

  “Now they’re going to pay for everything!” Senator Trueba exclaimed, raising his glass.

  Alba snatched it from his hand and hurled it against the wall, shattering it to bits. Blanca, who had never had the courage to oppose her father, did not attempt to hide her smile.

  “We’re not going to celebrate the death of the President or anybody else!” Alba said.

  In the pristine houses of the High District, bottles that had waited for three years were opened and the new order was toasted. All that night helicopters flew over the ­working-class neighborhoods, humming like flies from another world.

  Very late, almost at dawn, the phone rang. Alba, who had not gone to bed, ran to answer it. She was relieved to hear Miguel.

  “The time has come, my love. Don’t look for me or wait for me. I love you,” he said.

  “Miguel! I want to go with you!” Alba cried.

  “Don’t mention me to anybody, Alba. Don’t see any of our friends. Destroy all your address books, your papers, anything that has to do with me. I’ll always love you. Remember that, my love,” Miguel said, and he hung up.

  The curfew lasted for two days, which to Alba seemed an eternity. On the radio they played martial music, and on television they showed only landscapes from around the country and cartoons. Several times a day the four generals of the junta appeared on the screen, seated between the coat of arms and the flag, to announce various edicts: they were the new heroes of the nation. Despite the order to shoot anyone who ventured outside, Senator Trueba crossed the street to attend a celebration in his neighbor’s house. The hubbub of the party did not concern the soldiers patrolling the streets because it was a neighborhood where they expected no opposition. Blanca announced that she had the worst migraine of her life and locked herself in her room. During the night, Alba heard her rummaging in the kitchen and concluded that her mother’s hunger must have overcome her headache. Alba spent two days walking around the house in circles in a state of sheer despair, going through the books in ­Jaime’s tunnel and on her own shelves and destroying anything that might be compromising. It was like a sacrilege. She was sure that when her uncle returned he would be furious with her and lose all trust in her. She also destroyed the address books with her friends’ phone numbers, her most treasured love letters, and even her photographs of Miguel. Indifferent and bored, the maids entertained themselves throughout the curfew by making empanadas; all, that is, except the cook, who wept nonstop and anxiously awaited the moment when she would be able to go out and join her husband, with whom she had been unable to communicate.

  When the curfew was lifted for a few hours to enable people to go out and buy food, Blanca was amazed to see the stores filled with the products that during the preceding three years had been so scarce and that now appeared in the shopwindows as if by magic. She saw piles of butchered chickens and was able to buy as many as she wanted even though they cost three times as much as usual, since free pricing had been decreed. She noticed many peopl
e staring curiously at the chickens as if they had never seen them before, but few were buying, because they could not afford them. Three days later the smell of rotting meat infected every shop in the city.

  Soldiers nervously patrolled the streets, cheered by many people who had wished for the government’s defeat. Some of them, emboldened by the violence of the past few days, stopped all men with long hair or beards, unequivocal signs of a rebel spirit, and all women dressed in slacks, which they cut to ribbons because they felt responsible for imposing order, morality, and decency. The new authorities announced that they had nothing to do with actions of this sort and had never given orders to cut beards or slacks, and that it was probably the work of Communists disguised as soldiers attempting to cast aspersions on the armed forces and make the citizenry hate them. Neither beards nor slacks were forbidden, they said, although of course they preferred men to shave and wear their hair short, and women to wear dresses.

  Word spread that the President had died, and no one believed the official version that he had committed suicide.

  * * *

  I waited until things had stabilized a little. Three days after the Military Pronunciamiento, I drove to the Ministry of Defense in my Congressional car, surprised that no one had come to invite me to participate in the new government. Everyone knows I was the Marxists’ chief enemy, the first to oppose Communist dictatorship and to dare say in public that only the military could prevent the country from falling into the clutches of the left. I was also the one who made almost all the contacts with the high command of the military, who was the intermediary with the gringos, and who used my own name and money to buy arms. In other words, I had more at stake than anyone. At my age I was not interested in political power. But I was one of the few people around who could advise them, because I’d held many posts over the years and I knew better than anyone what this country needed. What could a bunch of temporary colonels do without loyal, honest, experienced advisers! Just make a mess of things. Or be deceived by those sharp characters who know how to turn this kind of situation into personal profit, something that’s already happening. No one knew then that things were going to turn out the way they have. We thought military intervention was a necessary step for the return to a healthy democracy. That’s why I thought it was so important to cooperate with the authorities.

  When I arrived at the Ministry of Defense, I was surprised to see that the building had become a pigsty. Orderlies were swabbing the floors with mops, some of the walls were riddled with bullet holes, and crouched soldiers were running around as if they were in the middle of a battlefield or expected the enemy to drop from the roof. I had to wait nearly three hours to see an officer. At first I thought that in all that chaos they simply hadn’t recognized me and that was why they were treating me with so little respect, but then I realized what was going on. The officer received me with his boots up on the desk, chewing a greasy sandwich, badly shaven, with his jacket unbuttoned. He didn’t give me a chance to ask about my son Jaime or to congratulate him for the valiant actions of the soldiers who had saved the nation; instead he asked for the keys to my car, on the ground that Congress had been shut down and that all Congressional perquisites had therefore been suspended. I was amazed. It was clear then that they didn’t have the slightest intention of reopening the doors of Congress, as we all expected. He asked me—no, he ordered me—to show up at the cathedral at eleven the next morning to attend the Te Deum with which the nation would express its gratitude to God for the victory over Communism.

  “Is it true the President committed suicide?” I asked.

  “He’s gone,” he answered me.

  “Gone? Where to?”

  “He’s gone to Hell!” he said, laughing.

  I walked out onto the street feeling extremely disconcerted, leaning on my chauffeur’s arm. We had no way to get home; there were neither taxis nor buses, and I’m too old to walk. Fortunately we saw a jeep full of policemen and they recognized me. I’m easy to spot, as my granddaughter Alba says, because I have the unmistakable appearance of an angry old crow and I always wear my mourning clothes and carry my silver cane.

  “Get in, Senator,” a lieutenant said.

  They helped us up into the jeep. The men looked tired and I could tell they hadn’t slept. They told me they had been patrolling the city for the past three days, staying awake on coffee and pills.

  “Did you meet any resistance in the shantytowns or slums?” I asked.

  “Very little. People are calm,” the lieutenant said. “I hope things get back to normal quickly, Senator. We don’t like this. It’s a dirty business.”

  “Don’t say that. If you people hadn’t acted, the Communists would have staged a coup themselves, and right this minute all of us here plus another fifty thousand people would be dead. I suppose you knew they had a plan for imposing their dictatorship?”

  “That’s what they told us. But where I live they’ve arrested a lot of people. My neighbors look at me with fear. The same thing happens to the rest of my men. But you have to follow orders. The nation comes first, right?”

  “That’s the way it is. I’m also sorry about what’s going on, Lieutenant. But there was no other way. The regime was rotten. What would have happened to this country if you people hadn’t taken up your arms?”

  But deep down I wasn’t so sure. I had a feeling things weren’t turning out the way we had planned and that the situation was slipping away from me, but at the time I kept my doubts to myself, reasoning that three days are very few to put a country back together and that probably the vulgar officer who received me at the Ministry of Defense represented an insignificant minority within the armed forces. The majority were like the scrupulous lieutenant who had driven me home. I supposed that in no time at all order would be restored and that once the tension of the first few days had ebbed I would get in touch with someone better placed within the military hierarchy. I regretted not having spoken to General Hurtado. I held off out of respect and also, I must admit, out of pride, because he should have sought me out and not vice versa.

  I didn’t learn of my son Jaime’s death until two weeks later, after our euphoria over the triumph had waned when we saw people going around counting the dead and those who had disappeared. One Sunday a soldier silently appeared at the house and went into the kitchen to tell Blanca everything he had seen in the Ministry of Defense and what he knew about the dynamited bodies.

  “Dr. del Valle saved my mother’s life,” the soldier said, looking at the floor, his helmet in his hand. “That’s why I came to tell you how they killed him.”

  Blanca called me in so I could hear what the soldier had to say, but I refused to believe it. I said he must have been confused, that it couldn’t have been Jaime but someone else he had seen in the boiler room, because Jaime had no reason to be in the Presidential Palace the day of the Military Pronunciamiento. I was sure my son had managed to escape abroad by crossing some border pass or had taken refuge in some embassy, on the assumption that he was being looked for. Besides, his name had not appeared on any of the lists of people sought by the authorities, so I deduced that Jaime had nothing to fear.

  A long time would have to pass—several months, in fact—before I understood that the soldier had told the truth. In my deluded solitude, I sat waiting for my son in the armchair of my library, my eyes glued to the doorsill, calling to him with my mind, as I used to call for Clara. I called him so many times that I finally saw him, but when he came he was covered with dried blood and rags, dragging streamers of barbed wire across the waxed parquet floors. That was how I learned that he had died exactly as the soldier reported. Only then did I begin to speak of tyranny. My granddaughter Alba, however, saw the true nature of the dictator long before I did. She picked him out from among all the generals and military men. She recognized him right away, because she had inherited Clara’s intuition. He’s a crude, simple-looking man of few w
ords, like a peasant. He seemed very modest, and few could have guessed that one day they would see him wrapped in an emperor’s cape with his arms raised to hush the crowds that had been trucked in to acclaim him, his august mustache trembling with vanity as he inaugurated the monument to the Four Swords, from whose heights an eternal torch would illuminate the nation’s destiny—except that, owing to an error by the foreign technicians, no flame would ever rise there, only a thick cloud of kitchen smoke that floated in the sky like a perennial storm from some other climate.