Tyrant Memory (5 page)

Before it got dark, Don Leo drove us to my house to pick up some
clothes so we could spend the night here, and to lock up all the doors and
windows, in case any robbers thought to take advantage of the chaos; I put my
diary and my rosary in my overnight bag; I left a note on the table in case
Betito or Pericles showed up. María Elena helped her Aunt Juani prepare dinner;
Juani has been working for Mother for twenty-five years, and the poor thing
suffers terribly from varicose veins. After dinner I spent some time in the
kitchen where the servants eat: María Elena was talking about how, when the coup
began, she was going for the third time to see the movie
Flor
Silvestre
, with Dolores del Río and Pedro Armendáriz, in which a poor young
peasant girl marries the son of a rich landowner, but now she’ll never be able
to see it again because the movie surely burned up in the Teatro Colón. It was
so touching to hear her. I returned to the living room; Mother suggested we pray
a rosary. But just then the phone rang: it was Clemen. I asked him if he was
alright, if he knew anything about his father; I told him about my futile
efforts to get to the Central Prison. He told me right now all efforts were
focused on the assault on the Black Palace, where the general has taken refuge,
first the beast must be finished off in his lair then there would be time to go
to the Central Prison; he said he was spending the night guarding the station,
and if he heard anything about his father he would call me immediately. I asked
him what was going on there. He told me not to worry, they would level the Black
Palace at the latest tomorrow, he said everything would have been easier if that
idiot Lieutenant Mancía had captured the general on the highway to the port,
which was the plan, but he had slipped out of their hands, in disguise and in a
private automobile, the sneaky devil. Clemen spoke excitedly, his voice hoarser
than usual; I assumed he’d been drinking whiskey and smoking for many hours. I
wanted to ask him about my father-in-law, but we got cut off.

After praying the rosary, well-nigh unable to give it my full
attention because of all the emotions churning inside me, I went to my bedroom.
Now that it is night, the planes have stopped dropping bombs, the heavy
artillery fire has also stopped, though from time to time and with certain
regularity, there are flurries. Dr. Romero, who has been proclaimed the civilian
leader of the coup, announced on the radio that the forces opposing the general
will cease their attacks during the night to avoid innocent casualties; he made
an appeal to the population to join the democratic movement; he confirmed that
General Marroquín and Colonel Tito Calvo are leading the military rebellion;
they are half brothers, and dislike my husband. Then the transmission ended.

I’m going to lie down for a while, just to rest, I’m so distressed I
don’t think I’ll be able to sleep; I want to believe everything will turn out
well, that the general will be defeated, and Pericles will be freed any moment,
but at the same time I fear the worst — I have terrible premonitions.

(Midnight)

Father arrived a little before ten. I had already fallen
asleep; the noise in the living room woke me up. He arrived with friends. Soon I
got out of bed and was listening to their reports about the latest events.
Father heard about the coup while he was still at the finca; he was taking a
siesta when Don Toño, the foreman, woke him up to tell him what he was hearing
on the radio. He went immediately to the coffee-processing plant and the other
warehouses to make sure everything was in order and to warn the security guards
to remain very vigilant, there has been a coup d’état, and criminal elements
would take advantage of the anarchy. Then he went to Santa Ana, to my sister
Cecilia’s house, where he met with his coffee-growing colleagues to find out who
was leading the movement and figure out how to lend them support; the local
military detachment has joined the uprising, according to Father. Then he
decided to return to San Salvador. Some of the men warned him it would be better
to remain where they were for the night, it was already getting dark and the
roads would be dangerous. But Father is stubborn, and once he makes a decision
nobody can get him to change his mind. He said he’d had no problems leaving
Santa Ana, but when he got to San Juan Opico he encountered the first
checkpoint, then another as they approached Santa Tecla, and lastly entering the
capital; at each checkpoint it took him a long time to convince the soldiers to
let him pass. It’s obvious Father had been aware of the possibility of a coup
but knew nothing about the details or the exact date; he’s vexed they didn’t
inform him. He was quite enthusiastic about Clemen’s participation in the
seizure of the radio station. “Finally, he’s decided to do something
worthwhile,” he said. Mother does not share his opinion, she thinks it imprudent
to expose oneself so openly; she said that if the coup fails, there will be
weeping and gnashing of teeth. Father asked me if Captain Ríos Aragón, who’d
been mentioned as the commander of the troops that had taken over Ilopango
Airport, is Jimmy, Clemen’s cousin; I said, yes, he is, he’s the eldest son of
Angelita, Pericles’s first cousin.

Juan White, Güicho Sol, and my Uncle Charlie were quite frantic,
pacing around the room, whiskey glasses always in hand, complaining about how
useless the military is, wondering how they could possibly have let the general
slip out of their hands, and the pilots were even worse, instead of bombing the
Black Palace, they dropped the bombs two blocks away, destroying the Teatro
Colón and all the shops in the vicinity. Mother piped up and asked if the Casino
had also been destroyed; they told her it hadn’t been; fortunately, it was
untouched. Güicho said it seems the leaders of the coup don’t really want to
carry out the assault but instead only scare the general, as if they could
possibly win like that, only the faint of heart would be foolish enough to
suspend the assault at night, when they should be delivering the coup de grâce
to the Black Palace and finishing that Nazi warlock off once and for all. Güicho
said he doesn’t trust General Marroquín, the commander of the First Infantry
Regiment, which is leading the charge on the palace. Then I thought about why
General Marroquín might have called Pericles on Friday night: why would he have
wanted to contact him when it’s common knowledge my husband is in jail? Father
wondered to what extent the American Embassy supports the coup. Güicho said he
had spent some time that afternoon with the ambassador, and there would be no
support or any statement of support until the outcome became known. Juan is
livid because he hoped the American troops would come to the support of the
rebels. After drinking another couple of shots of whiskey, Juan and Güicho left.
Only then did Father ask me if I had been able to speak to my father-in-law; I
told him I hadn’t, the telephone lines to Cojutepeque are out, but undoubtedly
the colonel is beside himself because of Clemen’s participation in the coup. I
expressed my anxiety about Pericles’s situation. He told me that we should
immediately mobilize all our contacts to get him released, taking advantage of
the opportunity, now that the general is under siege and on the verge of being
overthrown. But he couldn’t get in touch with either Chaquetilla Calderón or
Judge Molina, president of the Supreme Court, or Don Agustín Alfaro, the
director of the coffee-growers’ association, who they say is inside the garrison
of the First Regiment with the rebels. He told me he can’t understand why Clemen
hasn’t persuaded any officers to go with a contingent of troops to the Central
Prison to liberate his father and the rest of the political prisoners.

I’ve returned to my bedroom to rest for a while. Father is still out
in the living room with his friends, drinking whiskey by candlelight, discussing
the latest rumors, going over the names of the officers involved in the coup. I
keep thinking about how worried Pati must be, how she’ll hear about all this so
suddenly and not be able to get in touch with any of us; Betito is at the beach
with his friends, perhaps without the slightest idea what is going on. And I
think about Pericles, how uncertain things must be at the Central Prison, where,
after all, God has seen fit to keep him safe, because if he had been at the
Black Palace he would be at the mercy of the general’s fury. I will pray for
this Holy Monday to be a good day, when at long last the spell that warlock has
cast over our country and over all our lives will be broken.

Holy Monday, April 3

Today feels like the longest day of my life. I’m
amazed I still have the strength to sit here and write, to consign to paper some
of the events that are burning inside me as nothing ever has before. The coup
failed. My fears became reality: the general took control again, the rebel
officers surrendered, Clemen is in hiding, Pericles is still in prison in a very
precarious situation, isolated, without any possibility of receiving anything
from the outside world. I am home, unable to sleep, tormented by my fears;
Betito is sleeping at his friend Henry’s house. Fortunately, the
electricity and the telephone have been working normally since noon. Pati has
called twice, the poor thing is in so much anguish, she even offered to get on a
plane to come help me; I’m afraid all this stress will affect her pregnancy.
I’ve also spoken to my mother-in-law, who told me with great sadness that if
Clemen gets caught he is a dead man. Two plainclothes policemen have been
watching the house since dusk; María Elena saw them when she came back from
buying tortillas. In the streets, chaos and panic reign supreme.

Where, dear God, is my poor Clemen now? I have told myself not to
think about him, that I must take him out of my mind or the anxiety will destroy
me; I keep repeating to myself that there is nothing I can do for him, only God
and fate can save him now. The last time we spoke was at one in the afternoon; I
managed to get in touch with him at the radio station. He told me they had not
lost hope that the infantry and artillery regiments could launch a decisive
assault against the Black Palace, though he admitted that a defeatist attitude
was beginning to take hold, many with him there at the station had begun to talk
about the embassies where they would seek asylum if the coup failed. I asked him
what he would do if that happened. He told me he still didn’t know, he was
weighing his options, but I shouldn’t worry. He sounded exhausted, almost like a
zombie; I assumed he had barely slept and that the excitement and the alcohol
had taken their toll. By this time Father and his friends had already given the
coup up for lost, he said the rebel officers had been remarkably idiotic:
negotiating on the telephone with the Nazi warlock, trying to force him to
surrender, when precisely the opposite was really going on — the general was the
one tightening the screws on them. By then I had already found out that my
father-in-law had publicly announced his full and unconditional support for the
general and had angrily condemned Clemen’s actions.

So, the entire city is on tenterhooks, there’s no end to the rumors
and hearsay: Colonel Tito Calvo was driving a tank through the streets bragging
about how they were going to demolish police headquarters with cannon fire; the
pilots had dropped bombs on purpose on the block of the Casino and the Teatro
Colón because they didn’t really want to finish off the general, just give him a
scare; the ambush of the general failed because the general had infiltrated the
ranks of the rebel officers; many vagrants have been killed by gunfire in the
vicinity of Parque Libertad; the Nazi warlock has made a pact with the devil, he
conducted a black mass in the basement of the palace and will now execute all
those who plotted against him; troops from Cojutepeque and San Vicente are
marching to the capital from the east and have the support of the people along
the way, and they have already taken back the garrison at the Ilopango
Airport.

One horrible rumor is that the general lashed out yesterday against
poor Don Jorge. They say that once he felt safe in the palace, the first thing
he did was order Don Jorge to be tortured; he was then taken out of his cell and
executed in the street, where his body was left as a warning to the rebels. It
appears they shot Don Jorge and left him for dead, but he somehow managed to
survive. Horrific. I’ve called his house to talk to Teresita, his wife, but the
line is dead. I pray to God, please, make this be only a rumor.

I tried to get to the Central Prison early this morning, but the
same checkpoint that stopped me yesterday was there again today. This afternoon,
when it was already evident the rebels had lost, I attempted again, and finally
I managed to get through. But it did me no good. Soldiers were surrounding the
prison, still afraid of an assault by the rebel forces. I was carrying the
basket of food for Pericles; I approached the casemate to ask them to call
Sergeant Flores. In vain. Several groups of prisoners’ families were standing
around outside; the guards had told them that everything was fine inside the
prison, no visits were allowed until further notice, and they should leave, take
themselves out of harm’s way. I recognized the mother of Merlos, one of
Pericles’s cellmates; her eyes were red from crying, she was drying them with a
handkerchief. I feared the worst. I was alarmed and asked her what had happened.
She said she was afraid the general would now decide to execute the political
prisoners, take his anger out on them. It was the same fear eating away at my
insides. I told her what I tell myself: this cannot happen, her son and my
husband are innocent, they have been locked up, they have had nothing to do with
the plot, played no part in the coup, and had no responsibility for it. Then,
when I stopped talking, an image of Clemen struck me full force. She saw it in
my face, for she immediately said to me, “Let us pray to God that your son
escapes.” I was on the verge of collapsing, crying my heart out right there in
the middle of the street, in front of the guards who were watching us and the
rest of the families; I felt a huge lump in my throat and two tears fell out of
my eyes and down my cheeks. But I managed to control myself. I hastily said
goodbye to Doña Chayito, that’s Merlos’s mother’s name, turned around, and made
my way back home. After so many years with Pericles I have learned to hold back
my tears. But what I didn’t let out in the street, I did at home, in my bedroom
behind closed doors, until I felt that I didn’t have a single tear left inside
me and that my husband was watching me, frowning severely.