The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [105]
It was during this time that Turk came to Father Fortín’s house, his large, heavy face transformed.
“What’s the matter, Salvador?”
“I’m going to kill Trujillo, Father. I want to know if I’ll go to hell.” He broke down. “It can’t go on. What they’re doing to the bishops, to the churches, that disgusting campaign on television, on the radio, in the papers. It has to stop, and the only way is to cut off the hydra’s head. Will I go to hell?”
Father Fortín calmed him down. He offered him coffee he had just prepared, he took him out for a long walk along the laurel-lined streets of Santiago. A week later he announced that the papal nuncio, Monsignor Lino Zanini, would grant him a private audience in Ciudad Trujillo. Turk felt intimidated when he presented himself at the nunciature’s elegant mansion on Avenida Máximo Gómez. From the very first moment, this prince of the Church put the timid giant, constrained by the shirt and tie he had worn for his audience with the Pope’s representative, at ease.
How elegant Monsignor Zanini was, how well-spoken! No doubt he was a real prince. Salvador had heard many stories about the nuncio, and liked him because they said Trujillo hated him. Was it true that Perón had left the country, after spending seven months here as an exile, when he learned of the arrival of His Holiness’s new nuncio? Everybody said he had hurried to the National Palace: “Be careful, Excellency. With the Church you can’t win. Remember what happened to me. It wasn’t the military that overthrew me, it was the priests. This nuncio the Vatican is sending you is like the one they sent me when my difficulties with the crows began. Watch out for him!” And the former Argentine dictator packed his bags and fled to Spain.
After that encounter, Turk was ready to believe anything good said about Monsignor Zanini. The nuncio led him to his office, offered him a cold drink, encouraged him to let out what he was carrying inside, with affable comments in a Spanish spoken with Italian music that had the effect of an angelic melody on Salvador. The nuncio heard him say that he could no longer endure what was happening, that the regime’s actions against the Church and its bishops were driving him mad. After a long pause, he grasped the nuncio’s ringed hand:
“I’m going to kill Trujillo, Monsignor. Will there be forgiveness for my soul?”
His voice broke. He sat, his eyes lowered, his breathing agitated. He felt Monsignor Zanini’s paternal hand on his back. When, at last, he raised his eyes, the nuncio was holding a book by St. Thomas Aquinas. His fresh face smiled at him with a roguish air. One of his fingers was pointing to a passage on the open page. Salvador leaned forward and read: “God looks with favor upon the physical elimination of the Beast if a people is freed thereby.”
He left the nunciature in a trance. He walked for a long time along Avenida George Washington, at the edge of the sea, feeling a tranquillity of spirit he had not known for years. He would kill the Beast, and God and His Church would forgive him; staining his hands with blood would wash away the blood the Beast was spilling in his homeland.
But would he come? He felt the awful tension that waiting had caused in his companions. Nobody opened his mouth, or even moved.