Tyrant Memory (10 page)

(Dawn)

I just dreamed that Clemen was hiding at Father’s finca,
in a shed in the middle of the coffee fields; in my dream, Don Tilo, María
Elena’s father, led the soldiers there, and they burst in on my son. I woke up
in a cold sweat at the very moment he was fleeing under a hail of bullets. I
haven’t been able to shut my eyes again.

Good Friday, April 7

Still no news. The opposition newspapers are still shut
down; not even the two that support the general appeared today. The radio
stations are broadcasting only Holy Week programming, as if nothing
extraordinary were happening, and when there is a brief news report, it consists
of a litany of praises for the general and accusations and threats against his
adversaries.

This morning I went to the Polyclinic: Don Jorge remains in critical
condition. Several journalists were visiting; they all asked after Clemen and
Pericles, all showed great concern. Mingo and Irmita also came. Everyone’s right
in asserting that nobody is safe any longer, for if the general dared to
perpetuate such brutality against Don Jorge and has gotten away with it with
total impunity, the same could happen to anybody. Don Jorge is not only the
owner of the newspaper, he also belongs to one of the country’s best families.
It’s true, he is rather rebellious, and sometimes irascible, and he does
frequently insult the general and make fun of him, but nobody deserves to be
tortured and shot down in the street like a rabid dog. I thank God Pericles has
always shown restraint, in his columns he has criticized the political measures
taken by “the man,” but he has never attacked him personally; he knows him well,
he was his private secretary for two years, he knows how spiteful and implacable
he can be, hence he has always been circumspect when recounting his experiences
during that period. As I was saying goodbye to poor Teresita, a delegation from
the American Embassy was coming to visit. Mingo and Irmita offered to take me to
my mother’s house. According to Mingo, the general will not execute either
General Marroquín or Colonel Tito Calvo: the first because they are old friends,
and in the last analysis, he surrendered to him; the second because he was not
captured in front of the embassy, as I was told and many were led to believe,
rather he managed to enter the foyer where Ambassador Thurston was meeting with
others from the diplomatic corps, none of whom offered to give him asylum, at
which point Mr. Thurston convinced him to turn himself in after speaking on the
phone with the general to request he show mercy. “If the ambassador turned him
over to the general, he can’t shoot him,” Mingo said; I hope this is true, and
may he also pardon Clemen and all the others who have been accused. When we
arrived at Mother’s house, I invited them in to stay and have lunch with us, try
the delicious cod and the jocotes in honey, but they had a family
engagement.

Mingo also confirmed that Mariíta Loucel has disappeared; they say
she is neither at her house nor at her finca. Now I understand she must have
known about the coup, that’s why Jimmy, Dr. Romero, and even Clemen went to see
her; that’s why they were speaking French, so the general’s spies wouldn’t
understand. I never would have thought she could be so audacious. I hope she
managed to leave the country. Nor is anything known of Dr. Romero’s whereabouts;
perhaps they fled together. Pericles says that Mariíta would have been a great
poet if she hadn’t devoted herself to so many things at once, for she wants to
excel as a businesswoman, a defender of women’s rights, a landowner, and a
politician. The poem of hers I like best is called “You Are Mad, I Suspect,” I
even know it by heart. I love it when Pericles recites it to me in his deep
voice:

Write no more poems, you say? You
are mad, I suspect
as if such a thing were nothing to request.
I
can never please you, try as I will.
As if you’d asked death to no
longer kill.
As if you’d wished the babe in my womb
to remain
forever as if in a tomb.
My verse is the offspring of a homicidal
pain.

It’s a beautiful poem, though of course I prefer the ones Pericles
has written for me. A little while ago, surrounded by the silence of this somber
night, I reread them and felt so wistful . . . The ones he wrote when he was
courting me bring back so many memories, but I am more moved by those he wrote
during the first year of our marriage. There are many of them, I’ve realized,
now that I have gone over each one, written with green ink on marble-colored
sheets folded carefully and duly sealed. It’s so vivid to me, how each time he
gave me one he would repeat that it was a gift for me alone, nobody else should
read it, and they should never be published, each poem is something exclusive,
personal, between him and me. This idea is so deeply ingrained in me, I would
not even dare to transcribe one into this diary; it would be a betrayal of
him.

I spent all afternoon and part of the night with Mother. We
joined the Holy Burial procession for a spell, then returned home. The Club, the
Casino, and the Círculo Militar remain closed by order of the general; neither
parties nor family gatherings are allowed without prior authorization; a bit
more and they’ll forbid the processions. The secret police have been given carte
blanche; they are everywhere, listening, spying, even at today’s procession,
where they were easily recognizable and it was all people could do not to jeer
at them, they were so indiscreet; the ones keeping watch on the house are still
there, prowling around. “The man” must be very frightened; we are more so.

María Elena came to tell me that this has been the saddest Good
Friday of her life; I feel the same way. She went to the procession as well,
with her cousin Ana, who has to sleep alone at Clemen’s house every night, with
the doors locked, trembling with fear, terrified that the police will burst in
and rape her. Poor dear. I told María Elena to suggest that she come sleep with
her here, but she says that Mila won’t allow the house to be left alone. And I
don’t have the strength to take the chance of my daughter-in-law being rude to
me.

Holy Saturday, April 8

I had a terrible shock this afternoon before leaving for
the procession of the Virgin: the colonel showed up at the house without
warning. My father-in-law comes to San Salvador under only extraordinary
circumstances usually related to his work; at seventy years old, he says
traveling aggravates him, puts his nerves on edge. He came to attend a meeting
of regional leaders called by the general. He was here for about fifteen
minutes, sitting in Pericles’s rocking chair on the porch facing the patio. I
was on my guard, watchful, knowing the colonel doesn’t pay courtesy visits; he
came solely for the purpose of telling me something. He accepted the glass of
tamarind juice I offered him; Nerón came to lie down at his feet. He asked after
Pericles; I told him that he is well, that tomorrow I will be able to see him
again. He bewailed Clemen’s “stupidity,” that’s what he called it, and said I
should pray to God they don’t capture my son; I told him we should all pray for
that. He said he would like to be able to do that, but God no longer listens to
his prayers. Nerón got up and went out to the patio, suddenly, as if he smelled
danger in the air. Then, with no further ado, he came right out with it: the war
council will meet, and Clemen will most likely be sentenced to death. I felt as
if I had been stabbed in the chest; I was in shock. Then I reacted: I told him
my son is a civilian, and war councils are for trying military officers. Not if
the charge is treason, he muttered, clearing his throat. I told him what I had
heard about the offers of amnesty, the guarantees of mercy. “You, more than
anybody, Haydée, know how the general reacts in these situations,” he said
categorically. Then I remembered the final days of January 1932, when Pericles
would return exhausted from the Presidential Palace, very late at night, and
recount his conversations with “the man” regarding the fates of Martí and the
other leaders of the communist revolt who would soon be executed. “It’s them or
us,” I murmured, my voice shaking, because those were the words the general had
used when Pericles asked him if he was going to reconsider the sentence. My
father-in-law took a sip of his tamarind drink. I asked him, horrified, if he
would participate in the council, if that’s why he had come to the city. He told
me he wouldn’t, it wasn’t his duty for he did not belong to that particular
organizational structure of the army, nor did the general need to have him
undergo a loyalty test of that kind. I asked him if he could do anything to
prevent that sentence; he barely even bothered to shake his head. He stood up
with some difficulty and said he had to go. As we walked through the living
room, I asked him when the council was going to convene; he said he did not know
exactly, but soon, very soon, once the holy days were over. I watched him walk
to his car, he looked older, with the stiffness of somebody long accustomed to
hiding his sorrow. I managed to reach the sofa, where I collapsed, I was a
wreck, the tears welling up, forming a lump in my throat. María Elena came to
comfort me, she must have guessed what I had just heard.

Father returned to the city late in the afternoon: he said a group
of soldiers had come to the finca on Wednesday looking for Clemen; they
interrogated the workers, entered the manor house, searched the entire property,
then spent the night in a nearby hamlet, where María Elena’s family lives; the
next morning they came back and scoured the entire property with a fine-tooth
comb, asking about caves or possible hideouts. They found nothing, but they
threatened the peons. Father told me that several acquaintances who participated
in the coup have crossed the border into Guatemala, also some of his fellow
coffee growers are on the lam, afraid of the Nazi warlock’s rage. I asked him if
Clemen has managed to cross the border; he said we would have heard if he had.
That’s when I told him about the colonel’s visit and what he told me. He left
the house immediately to go see his friends, to tell them of the tribulations
that await us.

At the procession I spent some time talking to Angelita, Jimmy’s
mother. She was with Linda and Silvia, her two daughters, both of whom married
quite well and are staying with her during this difficult period; she was
widowed ten years ago when Dr. Ríos died, and her other son, Salvador, is a
seminary student in Rome. I didn’t want to bring up the war council, as it
serves no purpose other than to make someone else worried about what is
inevitable anyway. But she already knew. For a short stretch we carried a heavy
statue of the Virgin, and we said several rosaries during the procession so that
our sons would avoid capture. Angelita harbors the hope that the American
military will defend Jimmy if he falls into the general’s hands: Jimmy did a
course at the Infantry and Cavalry School in Kansas, then he was stationed for
another semester at a base in Laredo; the poor boy returned to El Salvador to
rejoin the army only nine months ago. I expressed my doubts about the Americans
sticking their necks out for an individual. But Angelita whispered in my ear
that she is certain that if Jimmy got involved in the coup, it was with the
approval of the American military, she knows for a fact that her son met
frequently with Mr. Massey, the embassy’s military attaché, with whom he enjoys
a close friendship. That’s when I noticed a spy circling around closer and
closer, not taking his eyes off us; I warned Angelita. We resumed our
prayers.

Betito will spend the weekend with my sister’s family at their house
on Lake Coatepeque. I must think carefully about what to say to Pati tomorrow,
as I don’t wish to make her more alarmed than she already is; I hope that after
my visit with Pericles my spirits will improve, my mind will clear up. Because
today I will go to bed as a lost soul, desolate, with a black cloud hovering
over my home, my loved ones.

(9:30 p.m.)

Father came over a while ago, unexpectedly, to tell me the
incredible news about Clemen’s escape. He says that Monday afternoon, after my
son left the station, he took refuge at the home of Mr. Gardiner, the American
vice-consul. He managed to sneak in through the service door, thanks to his
acquaintance with the servant and his friendship with the vice-consul’s wife; my
son’s radio drama is very popular, his charm wins people over, though Father
said, who knows what Clemen has going with that servant girl. Mr. Gardiner was
at a meeting at the embassy and wasn’t aware of Clemen’s presence in the house
until he returned that night. He then warned him that he could not offer him
political asylum, but at that point he could not very well throw him out on the
street, either, where the general’s police would have immediately arrested him.
Clemen spent the night at their house. On Tuesday morning, wearing one of Mrs.
Gardiner’s wigs and dressed as a housemaid, they took him in a diplomatic car to
another hideout. That’s all I know; Father didn’t want to tell me how he found
this out, and he warned me not to utter a word of it to anybody, not even to Mr.
and Mrs. Gardiner.

Easter Sunday, April 9

It’s eleven at night. Many of us are awake, our
hearts in our mouths. The war council was convened tonight, between eight and
nine o’clock, in the Black Palace. The general has not respected the holy day;
his apostasy is great, and greater still will be his thirst for revenge. It was
meant to be held in the greatest of secrecy, but word spread like wildfire.
Everybody knows everything in this city. They say that Tonito Rodríguez and
Memito Trigueros are acting as defense attorneys; General Luis Andréu is
presiding. The whole city is petrified, sunk in a deathly silence. The ten
o’clock curfew and martial law are still in effect. My parents wanted me to stay
with them, but I preferred to stay at home. I have said several Rosaries with
María Elena. There’s nothing more I can do. And answer the telephone, for we,
the families of the accused, can at least offer each other comfort.