The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa
He raised the glass without whiskey to his lips and put an ice cube in his mouth. He remained silent for a long time, sucking, abstracted, exhausted by his soliloquy. Cabral observed him, saying nothing, caressing his glass full of whiskey.
“We’ve finished the bottle and I don’t have another one,” he apologized. “Take mine, I can’t drink any more.”
Nodding, the ambassador held out an empty glass and Senator Cabral poured in the contents of his.
“I’m moved by what you say, Manuel,” he murmured. “But I’m not surprised. What you feel for him, that admiration and gratitude, is what I’ve always felt for the Chief. That’s why I find this situation so painful.”
The ambassador put his hand on his shoulder.
“It’ll work out, Egghead. I’ll talk to him. I know how to say things to him. I’ll explain it to him. I won’t say it’s my idea, but yours. An initiative from Agustín Cabral. An absolutely loyal man, even in disgrace, even in humiliation. You know the Chief. He likes gestures. He may have a few years on him, a few problems with his health. But he’s never refused the challenges of love. Don’t worry. You’ll recover your position, those who turned their backs on you will soon be lining up at your door. Now, I have to go. Thanks for the whiskey. In my house they don’t let me have a drop of alcohol. How good it’s been to feel that burning, bitter little tickle in my poor throat. Goodbye, Egghead. You can stop agonizing over this. Leave everything to me. Just prepare Uranita. Without going into details. It isn’t necessary. The Chief will take care of that. You can’t imagine the delicacy, the tenderness, the human touch he uses in cases like this. He’ll make her happy, and he’ll reward her, her future will be assured. He’s always done that. Especially with a creature as sweet and beautiful as she is.”
He staggered to the door and let it slam behind him when he left the house. From the sofa in the living room, where he still held the empty glass in his hand, Agustín Cabral heard the car pull away. He felt lassitude, an immeasurable lack of will. He would never have the strength to stand, climb the stairs, undress, go to the bathroom, brush his teeth, lie down, turn out the light.
“Are you trying to say that Manuel Alfonso proposed to your father that, that…?” Aunt Adelina cannot finish, she is choked by rage, she cannot find the words that will soften, make presentable, what she wants to say. In order to conclude somehow, she shakes her fist at the parrot Samson, who has not even opened his beak: “Be still, you miserable creature!”
“I’m not trying. I’m telling you what happened,” says Urania. “If you don’t want to hear it, I’ll stop talking and leave.”
Aunt Adelina opens her mouth but cannot say anything.
For the first time in his life, the senator did not go upstairs to bed. He fell asleep in the living room, in his clothes, a glass and an empty whiskey bottle at his feet. The sight of him the next morning, when Urania came down to eat breakfast and go to school, left her shaken. Her papa wasn’t a drunkard; on the contrary, he always criticized heavy drinking and dissipation. He had drunk too much because he was desperate, because he was hounded, pursued, investigated, dismissed, had his bank accounts frozen, for something he hadn’t done. She sobbed and embraced her papa, who was sprawled on the armchair in the living room. When he opened his eyes and saw her next to him, weeping, he kissed her over and over again: “Don’t cry, precious. We’ll get out of this, you’ll see, we won’t let them defeat us.” He stood up, straightened his clothes, sat with his daughter while she had breakfast. As he smoothed her hair and told her not to say anything about it at school, he looked at her in a strange way.
“He must have had doubts, gone back and forth,” Urania imagines. “Thought about exile. But he never could have gone into an embassy. Since the sanctions, there were no more Latin American legations. And the caliés made the rounds, watching the entrances to the ones that were left. He must have spent a horrible day, struggling with his scruples. That afternoon, when I came home from school, he had already made his decision.”
Aunt Adelina does not protest. She only looks at her from the depths of her deep-set eyes, reproach combined with horror and a disbelief that, despite all her efforts, is fading. Manolita twists and untwists a strand of hair. Lucinda and Marianita have turned into statues.
He had bathed, and was dressed with his usual propriety; there was no trace left of the bad night he had spent. But he hadn’t eaten a bite of food, and his doubts and bitterness were reflected in his deathly pallor, the circles under his eyes, the glint of fear in his gaze.
“Don’t you feel well, Papa? Why are you so pale?”
“We have to talk, Uranita. Come, let’s go up to your room. I don’t want the servants to hear us.”
“They’re going to arrest him,” the girl thought. “He’s going to tell me that I have to go live with Uncle Aníbal and Aunt Adelina.”
They entered the room, Urania dropped her books on her desk and sat on the edge of the bed (“A blue spread with Walt Disney characters”), and her father leaned against the window.
“You’re what I love most in the world.” He smiled at her. “The best thing I have. Since your mama died, you’re all I have left in this life. Do you know that, sweetheart?”
“Of course I do, Papa,” she replied. “What other terrible thing has happened? Are they going to arrest you?”
“No, no,” and he shook his head. “In fact, there’s a chance everything will be all right.”
He stopped, incapable of continuing. His lips and hands were trembling. She looked at him in surprise. But then this was a great piece of news. A chance the radio and newspapers would stop attacking him? That he’d be President of the Senate again? If that was true, why do you look like that, Papa, so discouraged and sad?
“Because I’m being asked to make a sacrifice, my dear,” he murmured. “I want you to know something. I would never do anything, anything, you must understand, really understand, that wasn’t for your own good. Swear to me you’ll never forget what I’m saying.”
Uranita begins to feel irritated. What was he talking about? Why didn’t he come out and tell her what it was?
“Sure, Papa,” she says finally, with a weary gesture. “But what’s happened, why are you being so roundabout?”
Her father sat beside her on the bed, took her by the shoulders, pulled her to him, kissed her hair.
“There’s a party and the Generalissimo has invited you.” He kept his lips tight against the girl’s forehead. “In the house he has in San Cristóbal, on the Fundación Ranch.”
Urania slips out of his arms.
“A party? And Trujillo is inviting us? But, Papa, that means everything’s all right again. Doesn’t it?”
Senator Cabral shrugged.
“I don’t know, Uranita. The Chief is unpredictable. His intentions aren’t always easy to guess. He hasn’t invited both of us. Only you.”
“Me?”
“Manuel Alfonso will take you there. And he’ll bring you home. I don’t know why he’s inviting you and not me. Certainly, it’s a first gesture, a way of letting me know that everything’s not lost. At least, that’s what Manuel assumes.”
“How bad he must have felt,” says Urania, seeing that Aunt Adelina, with lowered head, no longer reproaches her with eyes from which all certainty has been erased. “He talked in circles, he contradicted himself. He was terrified I wouldn’t believe his lies.”
“Manuel Alfonso could have deceived him too…,” Aunt Adelina begins but can’t continue. She makes a contrite gesture, apologizing with her hands and head.
“If you don’t want to go, you won’t go, Uranita.” Agustín Cabral rubs his hands, as if, on that hot afternoon that is turning into night, he felt cold. “I’ll call Manuel Alfonso right now and tell him you’re not well, and give your regrets to the Chief. You’re under no obligation, dear girl.”
She doesn’t know how to respond. Why did she have to make a decision like that?
“I don’t know,
His Adam’s apple moves up and down in Senator Cabral’s slender throat. His eyes avoid Urania’s.
“If he’s invited you, there’ll be other girls there too,” he stammers. “It must be that he no longer considers you a little girl, but a young lady.”
“But he doesn’t even know me, he’s only seen me at a distance, in crowds of people. How can he remember me, Papa?”
“Somebody must have told him about you, Uranita,” her father says evasively. “I repeat, you’re under no obligation. If you like, I’ll call Manuel Alfonso and tell him you’re sick.”
“Well, I don’t know, Papa. If you want me to, I’ll go, and if not, I won’t. What I want is to help you. Won’t he be angry if I say no?”
“Didn’t you understand anything?” Manolita dares to ask her.
Not a thing, Urania. You were still a girl, when being a girl meant being totally innocent about certain things that had to do with desire, instincts, power, and the infinite excesses and bestialities that a combination of those things could mean in a country shaped by Trujillo. She was a bright girl, and everything seemed very hasty, of course. Who ever heard of an invitation made on the day of the party, not giving the guest any time to get ready? But she was a normal, healthy girl—the last day you would be, Urania—and very inquisitive, and suddenly a party in San Cristóbal, on the Generalissimo’s famous ranch, where the horses and cows that won all the prizes were raised, couldn’t help but excite her, fill her with curiosity as she thought of what she would tell her friends at Santo Domingo, how jealous she would make those classmates who had made her suffer so much in recent days, telling her the awful things that were said about Senator Agustín Cabral in the newspapers and on the radio. Why would she have misgivings about something her father approved? Instead, she felt hopeful that, as the senator said, the invitation might be the first sign of making amends, a gesture to let her father know that his calvary had ended.
She suspected nothing. Like the budding young lady she was, she worried about the most trivial things. What would she wear, Papa? Which shoes? Too bad it was so late, they could have called the hairdresser who did her hair and made her up last month, when she was a lady-in-waiting to the Queen of Santo Domingo. It was her only concern from the moment when, to avoid offending the Chief, she and her father decided she would go to the party. Don Manuel Alfonso would come for her at eight. She didn’t have time to do homework.
“How late did you tell Señor Alfonso I could stay?”
“Well, until people begin to leave,” says Senator Cabral, squeezing his hands. “If you want to leave earlier, because you feel tired or whatever, you just tell him and Manuel Alfonso will bring you right home.”
17
When Dr. Vélez Santana and Bienvenido García, General Juan Tomás Díaz’s son-in-law, drove Pedro Livio Cedeño to the International Clinic, the inseparable trio—Amadito, Antonio Imbert, and Turk Estrella Sadhalá—reached a decision: it made no sense to go on waiting there until General Díaz, Luis Amiama, and Antonio de la Maza found General José René Román. What they should do is find a doctor to treat their wounds, then change their soiled clothes and look for a place to hide until things were settled. Was there a trustworthy doctor they could go to at this hour? It was close to midnight.
“My cousin Manuel,” said Imbert. “Manuel Durán Barreras. He lives nearby and his office is next to his house. He can be trusted.”
Tony’s expression was somber, which surprised Amadito. When Salvador was driving them to Dr. Durán Barreras’s house—the city was quiet and the streets were empty of traffic, the news hadn’t broken yet—he asked:
“Why the long face?”
“This is all fucked up,” Imbert replied quietly.
Turk and the lieutenant looked at him.
“Do you think it’s normal for Pupo Román not to show up?” he added between clenched teeth. “There are only two explanations. Either they found him out and arrested him or he got scared. In either case, we’re fucked.”
“But we killed Trujillo, Tony!” Amadito tried to cheer him up. “Nobody’s going to bring him back to life.”
“Don’t think I’m sorry about that,” said Imbert. “The truth is, I never had much faith in the coup, the civilian-military junta, all those dreams of Antonio de la Maza. I always saw us as being on a suicide mission.”
“You should have said so earlier, brother,” Amadito joked. “I would have written my will.”
Turk dropped them off at Dr. Durán Barreras’s place and went to his own house; since the caliés would soon find his abandoned car on the highway, he wanted to alert his wife and children and get some clothes and money. Dr. Durán Barreras was in bed. He came out in a robe, yawning. His jaw dropped when Imbert explained why they were covered with mud and blood, and what they wanted from him. For long seconds he looked at them, astounded, his large bony face, with its full beard, contorted in bewilderment. Amadito could see the doctor’s Adam’s apple moving up and down. From time to time he rubbed his eyes as if he were seeing ghosts. At last he reacted:
“The first thing is to treat you. Let’s go to my office.”
Amadito was the most seriously hurt. A bullet had hit his ankle; you could see the entrance and exit wounds, and splinters of bone protruding from them. His foot and part of his ankle were deformed by swelling.
“I don’t know how you can stand with that shattered ankle,” the doctor remarked as he disinfected the wound.
“I didn’t realize until now that it hurt,” replied the lieutenant.
In the euphoria of what had happened, he had hardly paid attention to his foot. But now, the pain was there, along with a fiery tingling that went up to his knee. The doctor bandaged the wound, gave him an injection, and handed him a vial of pills to take every four hours.
“Do you have somewhere to go?” Imbert asked while he was being treated.
Amadito thought immediately of his Aunt Meca. She was one of his eleven great-aunts, the one who had pampered him most since he had been a little boy. The old woman lived alone, in a wooden house filled with flowerpots, on Avenida San Martín, not far from Independencia Park.
“The first place they’ll look for us will be with our relatives,” Tony warned. “A close friend would be better.”
“All my friends are in the military, brother. Staunch Trujillistas.”
He could not understand why Imbert looked so worried and pessimistic. Pupo Román would show up and they would put the Plan in effect, he was sure about that. And anyway, with the death of Trujillo, the regime would collapse like a house of cards.
“I think I can help you, son,” Dr. Durán Barreras intervened. “The mechanic who fixes my station wagon has a little farm he wants to rent. Near the Ozama extension. Shall I talk to him?”
He did, and it turned out to be surprisingly easy. The mechanic was named Antonio (Toño) Sánchez, and in spite of the hour he came to the house as soon as the doctor called. They told him the truth. “Damn, tonight I’ll get drunk!” he exclaimed. It was an honor to let them have his place. The lieutenant would be safe, there were no close neighbors. He would take him in his jeep and make sure he had food.
“How can I ever repay you, Doc?” Amadito asked Durán Barreras.
“By taking care of yourself, son,” and the doctor shook his hand, looking at him with compassion. “I wouldn’t want to be in your skin if they catch you.”
“That won’t happen, Doc.”
He had used up his ammunition, but Imbert had a good supply and gave him a handful of bullets. The lieutenant loaded his .45 and made his farewells by stating:
“Now I feel safer.”
“See you soon, Amadito.” Tony embraced him. “Your friendship is one of the good things that’s happened to me.”
When they left for the Ozama
“They know the Goat is dead,” said Amadito. “I wish I could have seen their faces when they found out they had lost their Chief.”
“Nobody’s going to believe it until they see and smell the body,” the mechanic remarked. “Shit, this’ll be a different country without Trujillo!”
The farm was a crude building in the middle of ten hectares of uncultivated land. The house was practically unfurnished: a cot with a mattress, a few broken chairs, and a demijohn of distilled water. “Tomorrow I’ll bring you something to eat,” Toño Sánchez promised. “Don’t worry. Nobody will come here.”
The house had no electricity. Amadito took off his shoes and lay down, fully dressed, on the cot. The sound of Toño Sánchez’s jeep grew fainter until it disappeared. He was tired, and his heel and ankle hurt, but he felt a great serenity. With Trujillo dead, a great burden had been lifted from him. The guilt that had been gnawing at his soul ever since he was forced to kill that poor man—Luisa Gil’s brother, my God!—would start to fade away now, he was sure. He would become the person he used to be, a man who could look in the mirror and not feel disgust with the face he saw reflected there. Ah, shit, if he could finish off Abbes García and Colonel Roberto Figueroa Carrión too, nothing else would matter. He would die in peace. He curled up, changed position several times, trying to get comfortable, but couldn’t fall asleep. He heard noises in the dark, scurrying sounds. At dawn the excitement and pain eased, and he managed to sleep a few hours. He woke with a start. He’d had a nightmare but couldn’t remember his dream.