Happy Families_ Stories - Carlos Fuentes [68]
He remembered Roberto’s face when he betrayed his brother.
“It’s as clear as two and two make four.” Roberto dared to be ironic. “Don’t tell me, Father, that it never occurred to you the rebel might be hiding like a coward behind the skirts of his old lady here in Chilpancingo?” He laughed. “And you lost in the sierra, just think . . .”
“Why, Roberto?”
The ironic mask shattered. “Did you calculate, Father, the cost of having a brother who appears day after day in the papers as an insurgent fugitive? Have you thought of the very serious damage all of this does to my business? Do you believe that people, people, General, sir, the government, businessmen, gringo partners, all of them, do you believe they’ll have confidence in me with a guerrilla brother? For God’s sake, Papa, think about me, I’m twenty-eight years old, things haven’t gone well for me in business, give me a chance, plea—”
“Capturing him was only a question of time. You had no patience with me,” Marcelino Miles said, making a great effort to be conciliatory.
“Naaaaa,” his younger son mocked him openly. “Nonsense! You were acting like a fool, to put it kindly, you—”
The general stood, hit his son Roberto in the face with his whip, and headed for the prison.
“Let him go,” he told the captain of the guard. “Tell him that this time he should really disappear, because the second time will be the end.”
“But General, sir . . . If headquarters finds out, you’ll—”
Miles interrupted him brutally. “Who’s going to tell what happened?” he asked in a voice as hard as basalt.
“I don’t know . . .” stammered the captain. “The soldiers . . .”
“They’re loyal to me,” the brigadier general answered without any doubts. “None of them wanted to capture my son. You can testify to that.”
“Then, General, sir, your other son.” The captain’s firm tone returned. “The one who turned him in, the one—”
“Do you mean Judas, Captain?”
“Well, I—”
“My son Cain, Captain?”
“It’s your—”
“What do you think of the fugitive law, Captain?”
The captain swallowed hard. “Well, sometimes there’s nothing else—”
“And what do you think is worse, Captain, rebellion or betrayal? I repeat: Which one stains the honor of the military more? A rebel or an informer?”
“The honor of the army?”
“Or of the family, if you prefer.”
“There’s no question, General, sir.” Now Captain Alvarado blinked. “The traitor is despicable, the rebel is respectable.”
Nobody knows who shot Roberto Miles in the back as he was going into the hotel La Gloria in Chilpancingo. He fell dead on the street, surrounded by an equally instantaneous flow of thick blood that ran with sinister brilliance from the snow-white guayabera.
General Marcelino Miles communicated to headquarters that the rebel Andrés Miles had succeeded in escaping military detention.
“I know, Mr. Secretary, that this family drama is very painful. You must understand that it was very difficult for me to capture my own son after six weeks of combing the mountains looking for him. I couldn’t imagine that my other son, Roberto Miles, would put a pistol to the head of the upstanding Captain Alvarado and force him to allow his brother, Andrés, to escape.”
“And who killed Roberto, General?”
“Captain Alvarado himself, Mr. Secretary. A valiant soldier, I assure you. He wasn’t going to allow my son Roberto to stain the honor of an officer.”
“It’s murder.”
“That’s how Captain Alvarado understands it.”
“He thinks so? Or he knows so? He only thinks so?” the secretary of national defense said with controlled passion.
“General, Captain Alvarado has joined the rebels of the Vicente Guerrero Popular Army in the Sierra Madre del Sur.”
“Well, it’s better for him to join the guerrillas than the narcos.”
“That’s true, General. You see that four out of ten leave us to go with the narcos.”
“Well, you know your duty, General Miles. Continue looking for them,” said the secretary with a smile of long irony in which General Marcelino Miles could detect the announcement of a not very