Tyrant Memory (13 page)

“Hoot’s gotten away,” the dark-skinned guard exclaims in alarm.

“I have to go, Father,” Eulalio says, getting up.

“Come back afterward, son, so we can finish . . . ,” Jimmy tells
him.

“Where are you going?”

“Usulután, but first we’re stopping off at La Carrera Hacienda . .
.”

“I’ll be back if I have time,” he says, his helmet already on, as he
grabs the rifle Clemen holds out to him.

Jimmy takes a medal with a picture of the Virgin out of the pocket
of his cassock; he holds it out to Eulalio and says:

“Pray to the Virgin, she will guide you . . .”

“Thank you, Father,” he says and rushes out after his partner, down
the corridor.

Clemen remains standing until he makes sure the soldiers have left;
then he comes and sits down in his seat.

“What did that jerk want?” he asks anxiously.

“The secrecy of confession is sacred, Brother,” Jimmy
says.

“Don’t fuck with me. Tell me,” he insists, raising his voice, “I was
shitting myself out there . . .”

Jimmy energetically motions to him to keep his voice down; Clemen
turns to look at the door of the compartment: nobody’s there.

“To confess,” Jimmy says. “But he didn’t have the courage . . . or
the time.”

“I can’t believe it,” Clemen says.

“Soldiers also confess.”

“It’s not that.”

“So, what is it?”

“Forget it. How much longer?”

The train has descended into the valley. The engine whistles, then
takes off full steam ahead.

Jimmy takes out his pocket watch.

“We’ll reach San Marcos Lempa in about half an hour,” he says. “It’s
another half hour from there to the hacienda.”

The warm wind of the valley swirls through the compartment.

3

“Very impressive!” Mono Harris exclaims with admiration.
“I actually didn’t recognize you.”

They are in a large luxuriously furnished living room, sitting in
armchairs around a table where there’s a bottle of whiskey, a pitcher of water,
and an ice bucket; through a large picture window can be seen other buildings —
sheds, processing plants, sleeping quarters — and a parking lot, and cotton
fields that stretch to the horizon. This is the manor house of the hacienda.

“Well-planned, wouldn’t you say?” Clemen brags, gulping down the
whiskey left in his glass.

“Very well-planned,” says Mono Harris. “Nobody would have recognized
you.”

“Ah . . . this tastes so good,” Clemen says, licking his lips, and
lunging at the table to pour himself more.

“Where were you all this time?” Mono Harris asks, still in
astonishment. He has pale skin, graying sideburns, a bulbous nose, and green
eyes; he’s wearing blue mechanic’s overalls.

“Near Cojutepeque,” Clemen says, “locked up in an attic.”

“I can’t believe it!”

“Yup,” Clemen exclaims, settling back comfortably in his big chair,
his glass on his lap. “Six days stuck there.”

“Why didn’t you come sooner?”

A tractor rumbles into the parking lot.

“It was better to wait till Holy Week was over,” Jimmy explains, “so
it would seem more natural that we were traveling. And we were hoping to get
false papers, but there was no way . . .”

“Anyway, we had to give this one a tonsure and train him to become a
priest,” Clemen explains mockingly. “What’s fucked up is that he can’t stop
playing the part, and he keeps saying Mass . . .”

“I’m a much better actor than you are, you can’t deny it. . . ,”
says Jimmy, rubbing his upper lip where he used to have a mustache.

“You’re excellent,” Mono Harris interjects. “Until you told me who
you were, I didn’t recognize you.”

“Whereas this one, the man himself,” Jimmy says, gesturing with his
thumb at Clemen, “the only thing he could do to make himself look like a
sacristan was to act like a mongoloid, which is a cinch for him . . .”

Mono Harris chuckles.

“Eat shit . . . ,” Clemen says, without losing his sense of
humor.

“Tell him about the drunk . . . ,” Jimmy says, laughing.

“This asshole came looking for a fight, and I punched him in the gut
. . . Scared the shit out of him because he thought he was dealing with some
dumb sacristan. So don’t go on about how you’re a better actor than me.”

“You don’t even come up to here on me, look,” Jimmy says and makes a
cutting movement with his hand at the level of his knees. Then he turns to Mono
Harris and says boastfully, “One of the soldiers on the train wanted to confess
to me.”

“You’re kidding! That’s incredible! . . . A toast!”

They toast and drink.

“What did he confess?”

“Nothing, in the end he held back, but here at the station he
very politely helped me off the train,” Jimmy says, smiling.

“I don’t believe it !” Mono Harris exclaims.

“Yup,” Clemen interjects. “‘Thank you so much for everything, Father
. . . ,’” he adds, imitating the chubby soldier, and letting out a laugh.

“The soldiers knew you were coming here?” Mono Harris asks, suddenly
wary.

“Yeah, it was unavoidable,” Jimmy says. “But there’s no problem;
they didn’t suspect us at all. And the idea is to get out immediately, as soon
as we finish our drinks, if that’s possible.”

“Which pilot is on duty?” Clemen asks.

“Pepe Dárdano will be here in a few hours . . .”

“Perfect!” Clemen exclaims.

“I’m going to take off this cassock, I’m boiling hot,” Jimmy
says.

“Wait a minute, you plan to leave here by plane?” Mono Harris
asks.

They both nod.

The expression on Mono Harris’s face has changed.

“Where to?” he asks, frowning.

“The American military base in Punta Cosigüina, in the gulf,” Jimmy
answers.

There’s an awkward silence. Mono Harris empties his glass.

“There’s no problem,” Jimmy explains. “The general doesn’t have any
planes. The pilots flew all of them into exile; my troops covered the last
takeoff. So nobody can follow us . . . And the officers at the American base are
my friends, and they’ll be waiting for us.”

“The problem isn’t the arrival,” Mono Harris mutters, “it’s the
departure.”

“Why?” Jimmy asks.

“There’s a National Guard post here at the hacienda, and everybody
who flies out has to report to them, with their IDs. That’s the order.”

Clemen and Jimmy look at each other, taken aback.

“It can’t be . . . ,” Clemen stammers, his mouth suddenly
parched.

The three sit in silence.

“There’s got to be another way,” Jimmy mumbles.

Mono Harris leans over the table to pour himself another glass of
whiskey; he looks increasingly concerned.

“Anyway,” he says, “no pilot is going to want to take you. Whoever
does it won’t be able to come back. If he’s caught, he’s a dead man.”

“I’ll talk to Pepe and convince him!” Clemen shouts excitedly, as if
he’d suddenly found the solution.

Mono Harris turns to look at him, now very serious, and sits up in
his chair.

“I think,” he says, and takes a sip of whiskey before continuing,
“the most prudent thing would be for nobody to know you’ve come here. Things are
very ugly.”

“We found out about the executions on the train,” Jimmy says.

“They say the warlock is going to continue the executions, and you
two are on the list of those sentenced to death.”

Clemen, pale, swallows hard; he drinks down the rest of his second
whiskey.

“That’s why it would be best for us to leave right away,” Jimmy
says. “Colonel Stuart is stationed at the base in Cosigüina; he was one of my
instructors in Fort Riley. He knew about the coup, he gave us his support, and
he told me that if I needed to retreat, I should go there.”

The atmosphere has turned leaden.

“I told you: there’s no way you can leave here by air.”

“There’s no other runway nearby?” Jimmy insists.

Mono Harris looks out the picture window: workers are loading bales
of cotton onto a truck. He rubs his face with his hands, as if he had just woken
up.

“The problem isn’t the runway,” he says. “If we make that flight, we
risk the pilot, the airplane, we get the whole hacienda in trouble, and the ones
who have to pick up the pieces are us, the owners, Juan and I, and we’ve already
got enough problems with the warlock. He’s got us in his sights. It’s only
because we are American citizens that he hasn’t fucked with us.”

“So?” Clemen asks, in anguish, squirming in his chair.

“So, we have to find another way out of this,” Mono Harris says,
pensively. “I’m not going to throw you to the lions . . . Let me make a phone
call.”

He stand up, shakes his head, and walks over to the telephone, on a
table in the back of the room.

“Don’t mention our names, the lines are being tapped,” Jimmy
warns.

“Of course not . . . Don’t worry.”

Clemen has poured himself another glass of whiskey and is
compulsively taking little sips.

“You’re going to get drunk . . . ,” Jimmy scolds him.

“Don’t fuck with me, you shit head, I don’t care if you are a
bishop. What are we going to do now?”

At that moment Mono Harris says hello to Don Mincho on the phone,
tells him in English that there are some cattle buyers who are very interested
in seeing the herd on the island, says he trusts them completely and that they
are interested in staying at the house for a few days, is that possible?

Jimmy and Clemen turn to look, their eyes narrowing.

“Perfect,” Mono Harris exclaims before hanging up.

He returns to the table; he empties his glass.

“What happened?” Jimmy asks, rubbing his hands together.

“Drink up and let’s go.”

“Where?” Clemen asks nervously.

“You, Jimmy, put on your cassock,” Mono Harris says, without paying
any attention to Clemen’s question; he’s moving quickly, nervously. “You have to
leave here exactly as you came: a priest and a sacristan.”

“I don’t understand,” Jimmy says. “What’s your plan?”

“I’m going to take you to Mincho’s island before those soldiers get
back here looking for you. You’ll stay there a few days while we figure out a
way to get you out of the country.”

“Can we take the whiskey?” Clemen asks, picking up the half-full
bottle.

Mono Harris agrees with a nod.

Clemen puts the bottle in this knapsack.

“I’m going to pack you some clothes in another knapsack,” Mono
Harris says, and he quickly disappears down the hallway leading to the bedrooms
in the rear.

“What do you think?” Clemen asks.

Jimmy has put his cassock back on.

“If we can’t leave by air, we’ll have to find a way by land or by
sea,” he says as he walks over to the window; at the back of the parking lot he
sees a soldier standing in the shade of an almond tree, talking to the tractor
driver.

Mono Harris returns with a knapsack.

“Leave that bottle,” he tells Clemen. “I put a full one here in the
knapsack.”

“We can take both . . .”

“No, you’d leave me with nothing. And I’m not going to town before
tomorrow.”

Clemen takes out the bottle and places it on the table.

“If the soldiers come here asking for you, I’m going to have to say
something,” Mono Harris says. “Did you tell them why you were coming here?”

“No,” Jimmy answers. “But if they’d asked me, I was planning
to tell them I was sent here to check out the possibility of building a
chapel.”

“Perfect,” Mono Harris says as he approaches the hat rack.

“I’m Father Justo and the mongoloid is called Don Tino,” Jimmy says,
pointing at Clemen.

Mono Harris takes a gun out of the cupboard and slips it under his
belt.

“You got another one for me?” Jimmy asks.

Mono Harris points to the knapsack.

“We’ll drive to the bay and from there we’ll take the boat to the
island,” he says, as he walks to the door and takes some keys out of his pocket.
“Along the way you’ll get rid of that cassock and turn into cattle buyers.”

They emerge into the boiling breath of the afternoon.

Haydée’s Diary

Tuesday, April 11

This morning in the cemetery they executed a young man
named Víctor Manuel Marín. I didn’t know him, nor had I ever heard his name.
They say he was one of the organizers of the coup, his brother is Lieutenant
Alfonso Marín, one of the officers of the Second Artillery Regiment who held out
against the counter-coup until the very end. Doña Chayito and Doña Julita, the
mothers of Merlos and Cabezas, paid me a visit today; they brought me some
delicious guava candy. Doña Chayito told me she knows the Marín family because
Víctor Manuel worked at the Tax Collector’s Office, where her husband was the
head accountant; she said the young man’s parents are devastated, especially
because they discovered that he had been brutally tortured; they pulled out his
nails, his teeth, and one eye, and they broke his arms and legs and had to prop
him up on sawhorses so he could face the firing squad. According to Doña
Chayito, Father León Montoya, who gave him extreme unction and visited his
parents this morning to console them, confirmed that he suffered as much as
Jesus on the cross. I shudder to think of it.

Doña Chayito also told me they have met with the mothers of other
political prisoners, including those sentenced to death, and they came to invite
me to join them at one of their next meetings. But we couldn’t continue the
conversation because Raúl and Rosita, my neighbors, dropped by. It turns out
Raúl is a professor in the same department where Doña Chayito’s son, Paquito
Merlos, as they call him, is studying, and he is two years ahead of Chente. As
Pericles always says, the world is as small as a handkerchief. As she was
leaving, Doña Chayito told me she’d call me tomorrow to see if I would like to
join them.

Wednesday April 12

I have just discovered the worst of all infamies: Colonel
Castillo, whom Mila is involved with and to whom she speaks so disparagingly of
Clemen, was the special military prosecutor at the war council. Since yesterday
I’ve been devoured by curiosity, and I didn’t stop till I revealed the
treachery. The first thing I did this morning was ask María Elena to wheedle the
colonel’s full name out of her cousin Ana; she remembered that when Mila is
drunk she calls him Aníbal. The rest was easy, as I remembered having read in
the official government newspaper that someone named Colonel Castillo had taken
part in the trial. My insides are twisted in knots. I was so enraged I couldn’t
control myself: I tried to call her at home and at her parents; it was fortunate
I didn’t find her because I would have flown off the handle. Then I went to
Mother to tell her what was happening; she was aghast. She asked me if I was
absolutely certain; I told her it was highly unlikely for there to be two
colonels by the name of Aníbal Castillo. She told me we should keep it to
ourselves for now, we had to think very carefully about how we were going to
handle the situation; she told me she would tell Father tonight, after they were
already in bed, to avoid an intemperate reaction. When I told Carmela, she said
perhaps the best thing that could come from such a bad situation would be for
that woman to leave Clemen’s life for good, no matter how unforgiveable the
treachery. But what about my grandchildren? No matter how hard I try, I have not
been able to stop thinking about them: at moments I feel I’m spewing venom. I
keep reminding myself that there is justice and that that Harpy’s time will
come; then I feel remorse for harboring so much hatred. María Elena made me a
mug of lime blossom tea.

I have been making every possible effort to get them to let me
visit Pericles, but all to no avail. It seems “the man” trusts no one and is
finding conspiracies hatching even under his own desk. Not a single bureaucrat,
moreover, wants to stick his neck out; they are all terrified of coming under
suspicion. Father tried to speak to that Chaquetilla Calderón fellow, but his
efforts yielded no results. My mother-in-law says I must be patient, for now,
Pericles is safe at the Central Prison. This afternoon, I happened to run into
Dr. Ávila, the minister of foreign affairs, in front of the Polyclinic: he was
there to visit his mother, who recently suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, and I
was there to visit Don Jorge. He looked haggard, seemed evasive, as if he were
ashamed, and his tie was crooked. I mentioned my troubles and asked him to
please intercede on my behalf so I could visit my husband; he begged me to
understand that for the time being nothing could be done. Fortunately Don Jorge
is beginning to react positively to the treatments and now has a better chance
of pulling through.

Betito has returned from Santa Ana. High school and university
classes don’t resume till next Monday, by edict of the government, for fear of
student protests, which anyway seem poised to erupt the moment they open the
university, according to Chente, Raúl and Rosita’s son, who came by this
afternoon to talk to Betito and tell him about the protests being planned; he
says students continue to organize despite the curfew and martial law, and those
at the medical school, supporters of Dr. Romero, are the most active. Chente is
a short young man, very serious and diligent, and he’s full of curiosity;
sometimes he comes to talk to Pericles. When we moved into this house, the poor
thing fell in love with Pati, but she’s two years older and was already engaged
to Mauricio. I suspect Betito is more deeply involved than I had thought. He
asked me if I have any idea where Clemen might be hiding; I told him I neither
know nor want to know, the fewer people who know the safer his brother is. “If I
were Clemen, I’d already be in Guatemala,” he said proudly, then mentioned that
he knows secret ways to cross the border in the area around Güija Lake, near his
friend Henry’s estate. He told me his cousins in Santa Ana were excited about
the coup, many people there think we need to make another big push to finally
get rid of the Nazi warlock, that for the next coup the Americans will come and
drag him out by his hair. I perceived in his words the enthusiasm of
adolescence. I have pleaded with him to act with prudence.

Doña Chayito called tonight to tell me that tomorrow she is hosting
a wedding shower for Leonor, Doña Julita’s daughter, and that I am cordially
invited, at three in the afternoon, but since it was organized at the last
minute due to recent tragic events, I mustn’t worry about bringing a gift, and
she gave me her address in the San Jacinto district, near the market. I was
quite surprised, at first I didn’t understand, because I had not thought about
them all day, but I was then quite impressed by her audacity. I told her I would
definitely attend and would bring a delicious chocolate cake.

I have never taken part in politics on my own initiative but
have always gone along with Pericles, supported his decisions, trusting fully
that he knew what he was doing and why he was doing it, always certain that my
duty was to remain by his side. So it was when he decided to become the
general’s private secretary after the coup d’état that brought him to power, or,
two years later, when he accepted the embassy posting in Brussels, or when he
decided to break with the government and return home, or when we had to go into
exile in Mexico. I will attend the meeting at Doña Chayito’s place in the same
spirit; as soon as I am able to speak with Pericles, I will tell him all about
it and follow his dictates. I admire women like Mariíta Loucel, who fight in the
front lines for their political ideals, but she is French and had a different
education. My place is by my husband’s side.

Thursday, April 13

I asked Don Leo to take me to Doña Chayito’s house and pick me
up an hour and a half later; first we stopped at the Bonets’ patisserie to buy
the chocolate cake. Today has been stifling hot. I wondered what I should wear;
I didn’t want to call attention to myself. Fortunately, my life with Pericles
has taught me how to adapt to different social milieus. As we drove up the hill
toward the San Jacinto church, I had a strange sensation, a kind of
dissociation, as if it wasn’t really me who was in that car. I arrived ten
minutes late because I stayed chatting with Montse Bonet at the patisserie. Doña
Chayito welcomed me with deference, even a bit of relief, or so it seemed to me,
as if she had begun to wonder if I was really going to come. I apologized for my
lateness and handed her the cake; she led me to an interior patio where Doña
Julita, her daughter Leonor, and two other ladies she introduced me to were
sitting around a table full of coffee and pastries. They were Doña Consuelo, the
wife of Dr. Colindres, and a young and beautiful, though beleaguered, young
woman dressed in strict mourning, named Mercedes, the wife of Captain Carlos
Gavidia. It was cooler on the patio, thanks to the shade of two trees, a leafy
mango and an avocado. I noticed a couple of gifts on the table; for a moment I
wondered if this really was a wedding shower and if the political part hadn’t
been simply the fruit of my fertile imagination. But soon Doña Chayito explained
that Dr. Colindres was arrested after the coup because he belonged to Acción
Democrática, the party led by Dr. Romero, and although at first he was held at
the Black Palace, it is now believed he has been moved to the Central Prison;
she then told me that Captain Gavidia was arrested a few days ago as he was
attempting to cross the border into Honduras, near Chalatenango; Merceditas
doesn’t know for certain where her husband is being held, though she believes he
is still in the basement of the palace; and the captain’s younger brother,
Lieutenant Antonio Gavidia, was executed by firing squad on Monday at the
cemetery. I crossed myself, greatly dismayed, and gave my condolences to
Merceditas, who immediately began to cry, quietly, with so much sorrow I felt my
heart breaking. A third brother, Pepe, a civilian, was arrested by the police
the very night the coup failed, she muttered, and they’ve heard nothing about
him, either. Doña Chayito poured me a cup of coffee, and as I cut the cake, I
told them about Pericles and Clemen; I had the impression this was not the first
time the four of them had met. Then a servant came to say that someone was at
the front door, someone she didn’t know. We all grew quiet and turned to look at
Doña Chayito, who immediately stood up and went to the front door. I was
nervous; my companions seemed even more so. All we could hear was a melodic
bolero playing on the radio in the living room. I asked Leonor if she was really
engaged and about to be married; she said she wasn’t, but if the police arrived
or someone asked why we were meeting, she would say that she was engaged to
Paquito Merlos, Doña Chayito’s son. Our hostess returned looking rather worried:
she said it was a man claiming to be a soap salesman, and he was quite insistent
that she let him in to show her his wares, but he looked to her like a police
informer. I was quite surprised by Doña Chayito’s sangfroid. She went to the
living room to turn up the volume on the radio. She then explained that the
purpose of the meeting was to organize a committee of mothers and wives of
political prisoners in order to pressure for the immediate release of our family
members and prevent those found guilty of having participated in the coup from
being executed. Doña Chayito is a very outspoken woman: she said several mothers
and wives had met previously, but now we must put more effort into organizing
ourselves; she indicated that Doña Consuelo will be in charge of maintaining
contact with Acción Democrática and certain professional organizations,
Merceditas with the families of the officers who have been sentenced to death,
and Doña Julita and she with the university students and the employee unions;
she asked me if I would agree to pursue contacts with the diplomatic corps. I
told her I would gladly try. Doña Chayito then asserted that we must get to work
drafting a communiqué demanding a general amnesty as well as the immediate
release of all political prisoners. She went into the house to bring paper and a
pencil. Doña Consuelo didn’t stop eating the chocolate cake and praising the
Bonets’ patisserie; Doña Julita sat very quietly, somewhat absentminded, as she
always is when I see her, as if she were Doña Chayito’s shadow, though I did
manage to exchange a few words with her, during which I found out her husband is
an engineer and works in the Ministry of Public Works, her son is also studying
engineering, and the Cabezas and Merlos families are neighbors. Doña Chayito
began drafting the communiqué on a piece of graph paper in a notebook; she had
in hand a manifesto the university students had written, demanding the release
of their fellow students and the end of the general’s dictatorship, and she
copied it almost entirely, then added a paragraph asking for amnesty for those
who’d received death sentences and wrote at the bottom the name of the Committee
of the Families of Political Prisoners. She asked us if we agreed, we all said
yes, except Doña Consuelo, who warned that the slogan “Long live the families of
political prisoners!” imitating the university students, seemed inappropriate,
and might make us sound like communists. Doña Chayito crossed out that sentence
and said she would type up several copies, tomorrow morning she would send each
one of us a copy, and we should make more copies to distribute to the sectors we
were individually responsible for. Everyone agreed it was vitally important for
me to get it to the American Embassy as quickly as possible. We drank tamarind
juice, finished eating the pastries, and finalized the details; I learned that
Doña Chayito and Doña Consuelo are both teachers at the Central Girls School.
Doña Julita mentioned that she’d heard a rumor that they are going to allow
visits to the Central Prison on Saturday. I didn’t feel the time flying by.
Again someone was at the door: we were all frightened, but it was Don Leo coming
to pick me up. I asked if anybody wanted a lift home; Merceditas, the poor
thing, who had been rather withdrawn during the whole meeting, said she would be
grateful. Before we said goodbye, Doña Chayito insisted on giving us bags of
avocados, she said that tree produced fruit all year round.