I have been moving heaven and earth to find out if Pericles is still at the Central Prison. I managed to speak on the phone with Colonel Palma, the director: he assured me my husband was there, and perfectly fine, but that visiting privileges have been suspended until further notice, he said I must understand that these are extraordinary times. It’s odd, but instead of arrogance, which is what I expected, I had the impression that Palma was frightened. I mentioned this to Mingo, who dropped by the house for a cup of coffee after lunch. He explained that there is much unease, fear, and mistrust among the officers in the army for, as it turns out, more of them than anyone could imagine were aware of or involved in the coup. As if this were not enough, Mingo told me, everybody also knows full well that Ambassador Thurston turned Tito Calvo over to the general after receiving a promise of clemency, that many of the officers who took part had recently returned from special courses in the United States, like Jimmy, and it would be not be surprising if the majority of the top brass saw these executions as the desperate thrashings of a drowning man, assuming the Americans have already turned their back on him completely. That’s what I like sometimes about talking to Mingo, it’s as if Pericles himself were explaining to me what was going on.
Mingo also told me that among those executed was one Lieutenant Mancía, a commander of the detachment that was supposed to ambush the general on his way back from the beach, and apparently the general owed his life to him because Mancía let him get to the Black Palace, thanks to Father Mario’s efforts. Poor lieutenant! The general doesn’t forgive the least hint of betrayal nor does he like to owe anything to a subordinate, that’s what Pericles has always said. That came up this afternoon while Carmela and Chelón and I were eating cemita cakes and drinking coffee on the porch facing the garden and discussing the events of the morning; the sun was starting to go down, the heat was letting up a bit, and we were making fun of Nerón snoring. Chelón brought up the time the general invited him to the Presidential Palace, around 1936, a few weeks after he executed Lieutenant Baños, which upset us all so much at the time because the poor young man had done nothing but mouth off in a drunken outburst, yet the general had wanted to establish a precedent of zero tolerance for criticism from within the ranks of the army. “He likes to speak about the beyond, the invisible world, but he has a very strange relationship to death, he denies it has any meaning, and he has made a hodgepodge, to suit his needs, of many Eastern doctrines, especially those dealing with reincarnation, that’s why he says it is worse to kill an ant than a man because the man will reincarnate and the ant will not,” Chelón said. Then he added: “He was cajoling me, asking me about the heavenly bodies, about the development of the chakras, about traveling through time to remember previous incarnations, for he’d heard that I was knowledgeable about these things; but I was cautious, I pretended to be a curious neophyte, I didn’t want him to take an aversion to me if he discovered that I knew more about some subjects then he did. In any case, he didn’t like me and never invited me again.” “Fortunately,” Carmela said. Then I recalled, without mentioning a word of it to my friends, what Pericles told me the morning of the first of February, 1932, as he was about to get into bed after being up all night: at dawn, when he arrived at the Presidential Palace from the cemetery to give his eyewitness account that Martí and the other communist leaders had been executed, he found “the man” in his office, his eyes red and moist, as if he were suffering a bad conscience, trying to expiate his guilt for his crime, aware that he had stepped over a line and that there was no going back. Those tearful eyes, that expression of weakness in the face of the first executions of his political career, is a secret Pericles has always kept, one he told only me in the privacy of our bedroom. I now wonder if that silence might be what’s kept him alive.
Fugitives (II)
1
“I almost fell and broke my ass!” Clemen exclaims, still trying to catch his breath after their mad dash and collapsing into the seat next to Jimmy in the first row of a half-empty train car, behind all the other passengers.
“Brother, shame on you for speaking that way!” Jimmy admonishes him, then looks at him disapprovingly. He is sitting next to the window. “What is the matter with you?”
Clemen turns and look around, afraid somebody may have heard.
“Forgive me, Father. I repent . . . ,” he says, still panting, but with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes after verifying that no other passenger could possibly have heard him over the loud clattering of the train. “I meant to say I almost fell on the stairs . . .”
“Your appearance is reprehensible, Brother,” Jimmy says, as he checks to make sure his own cassock has not come unbuttoned.
They ran onto the train just as it was pulling out of the station to avoid the National Guard and prevent anybody from recognizing them at the ticket window.
“What do you expect?” Clemen grumbles, whispering in Jimmy’s ear. “After almost a week shut up in that attic, be grateful we didn’t get cramps.” Then he suggests: “We should look for a compartment.”
They are sitting and facing the direction the train is moving. Jimmy again looks at the other passengers scattered around the car, then at the mountains through the window, and says:
“We’ll wait for the conductor, he’ll find us one.”
Clemen is wearing gray trousers and a white shirt; he’s carrying a backpack. Jimmy is draped in a black cassock; a large crucifix is hanging around his neck and he has a Bible in his hands.
“Good morning, Father,” says a woman entering the car holding a little girl by the hand; she immediately crosses herself.
“Good morning, daughter.”
Clemen adopts a docile expression and smiles like an idiot. Jimmy looks at him and whispers in his ear:
“You don’t have to make yourself look like a mongoloid. Not all sacristans are mongoloids.”
“Let me play my part the way I think I should,” Clemen responds, irritated, into Jimmy’s ear. “I’ve got more experience in these things than you.”
“Sure doesn’t seem like it . . .”
Clemen takes advantage of Jimmy looking out the window to poke the crown of his head with his middle finger, right in the middle of his new tonsure.
Jimmy is about to react angrily, but at that very moment several passengers enter the car and greet him with reverence.
“Good day, my children,” Jimmy responds, blessing them with the sign of the cross. “May God be with you.”
Clemen turns to them with his foolish grin.
“What an imbecile you are,” Jimmy says angrily in his ear. “How dare you do something like that? If someone had seen you, we’d be in serious trouble.”
“Nobody saw me,” Clemen whispers.
“I can’t believe it. You don’t take anything seriously. You’re playing games with our lives.”
“The tonsure suits you,” Clemen says, teasingly. “Nobody would recognize you.”
Jimmy passes his hand over it, then solemnly declares, “Father Dionisio knows what he’s doing.”
“Maybe he was a barber before he became a priest . . .”
“He made you look like an orphan in the poorhouse,” Jimmy mutters between clenched teeth without turning around to look at him, and without losing the severe expression on his face. “You look better now than you did before . . .”
Clemen passes both his hands over his shaved head.
The train car has filled up; the engine whistles furiously.
“Move over to this seat,” Jimmy orders him under his breath. “It’s better if we sit facing each other.
“I don’t like facing backwards, I get sick,” Clemen answers. “I’m just fine here.”
“Brother, I am ordering you to change your seat,” Jimmy says sternly.
A young, good-looking woman is standing next to them; she has put down the two suitcases she was carrying. The train sways; she grabs onto a handle, about to lose her balance. Clemen jumps up to help her.
>
“Good morning, Father. May I sit here?”
Clemen quickly moves the suitcases onto the seat facing Jimmy and gestures for her to sit in the one next to it.
“You are very kind, thank you,” she says.
Her skin is light, as are her eyes, she is slender, and she is wearing a cream-colored close-fitting dress, her hair pulled back with a red scarf.
Clemen looks at her, surprised and eager, then immediately gives her his foolish smile. She smiles at him as she sits down — a gorgeous smile: full fleshy lips and perfect teeth.
Jimmy looks at her for a second out of the corner of his eye; he remains in a state of deep concentration, as if he were praying, his Bible on his lap and held firmly in both hands.
“Did you just get on?” Clemen asks with feigned sheepishness.
“No,” she answers. “I boarded in San Salvador, but I changed cars because there are a lot of children in the other one, and one was vomiting, the poor dear . . . , “ she explains, making a face of disgust. “Forgive me for mentioning it, Father,” she adds, turning to look at Jimmy.
He barely glances up at her with his placid gaze, then subtly nods in her direction, as if granting her forgiveness.
Clemen is making an even more idiotic face, but he is so enchanted he doesn’t take his eyes off her.
“Are you quite alright, Brother?” Jimmy asks, turning to look at Clemen with a stern expression; he then turns to the woman. “He gets a bit dizzy. He’s not used to traveling by train.”
“I’m fine, Father,” Clemen says and flashes his idiot smile. Then he asks her, “How far are you going?”
“I’m getting off soon, in San Vicente. And you two?”
“Usulután . . .”
Clemen has placed his knapsack on the ground between his legs; he bends over to open it and rummage around inside, as if he were looking for something; he takes the opportunity to sneak a peek at her knees.
“I went to spend the Holy Week with my aunt and uncle, but everything was so nerve-racking because of the coup . . . ,” she complains.
“Were you in any danger, my daughter?” Jimmy asks.
“It was horrible, Father. My uncle’s house is in the El Calvario district, near the Second Infantry Regiment. I thought we were all going to die with all the shooting . . . ,” she says with a groan as she crosses herself.
“Calm yourself, my child, let us thank the Lord that it is all over now . . .”
Clemen is still bent over, rummaging around in his knapsack, furtively glancing at the woman’s knees. Jimmy turns to him and asks sternly:
“Have you lost something, Brother?”
“An orange, Father.”
“Perhaps you left it at the church.”
“I was sure I brought it with me,” he says, sitting up.
“I have an orange,” she says, opening her handbag.
“No, please, my child,” Jimmy stops her. “It won’t be good for him to eat on the train; it will upset his stomach.”
Clemen glares at him, then quickly resumes his meek expression.
The conductor appears next to him with his blue uniform, his cap, and his thin, well-groomed moustache.
“Good morning, Father,” he says, greeting him with a little bow.
The woman takes her ticket out of her bag and hands it to him; the conductor punches it and returns it with a smile that wants to be polite but oozes lust.
“We’ll pay you now for ours,” Jimmy tells him. “We got to the station too late to buy them there. We were accompanying some of our congregants and almost missed our train. I hope that’s not a problem.”
“Not at all, Father. Where are you going?”
“We boarded at San Rafael Cedros, and we’re getting off at Usulután.”
Clemen takes some banknotes out of his trouser pocket and hands them to the conductor, the idiotic smile still on his face.
“Do you think you could possibly arrange a compartment for us . . . ?” Jimmy asks solicitously.
The conductor looks at the woman.
“For the sacristan and myself,” Jimmy explains. “This has been a quite exhausting Holy Week, and I would prefer the faithful not to see me nodding off . . .”
“There are none available at the moment, Father. I’ll see if I can get you one in San Vicente.”
He hands the tickets and the change to Clemen.
“The Lord would be most grateful, my son.”
The conductor starts to walk away, giving the woman one last look before he leaves.
“Are you from San Vicente?” Clemen asks the woman.
“Yes,” she answers. “I was born there and still live there.”
“A lovely town,” Clemen says, obsequiously.
“Thank you.”
“Do you live with your parents?”
“Yes.”
“Do you work?”
“I’m a primary school teacher, I teach in the afternoons.”
Jimmy, irritated, clears his throat; he has closed his eyes, as if trying to concentrate on his prayers.
“How interesting,” Clemen exclaims. “You must love children . . .”
“Very much,” she says, smiling.
“What’s your name?”
“Ana María,” she answers. “Ana María Fuentes. And you?”
“Tino, they call me Tino,” Clemen answers, flashing a full smile. “How lucky for you that you’ll soon be at your destination. Your boyfriend will probably be there waiting for you, won’t he?”
Her face turns bright red.
“Brother, you know very well the Lord does not approve of gossip,” Jimmy warns him in a strict voice, looking at Clemen out of the corner of his eye. “Please restrain yourself. Focus on your prayers.”
She lowers her eyes, ashamed. She opens her bag, takes out a newspaper, unfolds in, and begins to read, holding it up between her and the two men.
Jimmy and Clemen’s jaws drop, they are in shock, their eyes glued to the front page: REBELS EXECUTED, the headline reads in huge bold letters. They swallow hard and exchange looks, their faces as white as sheets.
“How terrible,” she says. “Those poor men . . .”
Jimmy clears his throat, feigning ignorance, as if he hadn’t read anything.
Clemen’s idiotic expression has twisted into one of fear; now he looks like a total moron, or madman.
“Who did they execute?” he mutters, his mouth parched, trying to muster his courage.
“The leaders of the coup,” she says, lowering the paper.
She’s about to hand it to Clemen, but first she turns to Jimmy and asks him shyly, “Would you like to read it, Father?”
“Let’s see, my child. Let’s see what was going on while we were celebrating Easter Sunday.”
“No, Father,” she corrects him. “The executions occurred this morning. The newspaper had just arrived hot off the press when I was about to board the train.”
Jimmy reads carefully, trying to control any hint of eagerness; Clemen anxiously tries to read over his shoulder.
“Mr. Tino, that is quite rude,” Jimmy scolds him, folding up the paper and returning it to the woman. “It’s not polite to read over another person’s shoulder.”
Clemen practically grabs the newspaper out of her hands.
“Can I see?” he says.
Jimmy shoots him a disapproving glare, then turns to her with a gesture of resignation.
“They never really learn . . .”
Clemen, pale and shaking, has glued his eyes on the list of the condemned; Jimmy turns to look out the window and pretends to be nodding off.
The car is swaying, but Clemen seems too much in shock to be aware of anything.
“I would be happy to leave you the newspaper, Mr. Tino, but my parents will want to read the news,” she says, in a quiet voice so as not to disturb Jimmy.
“They-shot-ten-of-them . . .” Clemen says, enunciating each word carefully, as if he could barely read.
“Brother
! Put that down, it will only upset you!” Jimmy orders him categorically. “Take your Bible out of your knapsack and practice calming yourself . . .”
But Clemen continues in a stupefied state and begins to mumble the names of those who were executed.
“Ge-ner-al-Al-fon-so-Ma-rro-quín, Colo-nel-Ti-to-To-más-Cal-vo, Ma-jor-Fau-sti-no-So-sa . . .”
Jimmy is about to grab the newspaper out of his hand, but he catches himself; the woman has lowered her eyes, clearly embarrassed by the situation.
“Let us pray for the souls of those poor sinners,” Jimmy says, now fully composed; he joins his hands at his chest, then takes his rosary out of the pocket of his cassock and, with the Bible on his lap, he intones, “Domini homini, domini nostro. For the word of our Lord is our guide and our salvation . . .”
“Amen,” says the woman contritely.
Clemen turns to look at Jimmy, as if he didn’t understand, then quickly shakes his head and repeats, “Amen.”
He hands her the newspaper, opens his knapsack, and takes out a Bible.
“Our Father who art in Heaven . . .” Jimmy begins.
“ . . . hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven . . . ,” the woman and Clemen repeat in unison.
At that very moment, a pair of National Guard soldiers enter the car; they stop next to them to get their balance, and watch the scene with surprise. They greet them with a reverential nod of the head, careful not to interrupt their prayers. They are wearing boots with gaiters, green uniforms, helmets, and are both carrying rifles.
“ . . . and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil . . .”
The soldiers walk over to the passengers in the next row and ask to see their documents.
“Hail Mary, full of grace . . . ,” Jimmy continues in deep concentration after shooting a scathing glance at the soldiers.
The passengers in that row, obviously frightened, have quickly pulled out their documents; the soldiers have a list they check the names against. Clemen, extremely pale and still with the idiotic expression on his face, doesn’t lift his eyes from his Bible.
Tyrant Memory Page 10
