The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [117]
“We’ve been something more than friends. We’ve been together, behind the Chief, in every decision that transformed this country. We’re living history. We set traps for each other, gave each other low blows, played dirty tricks to gain an advantage. But total annihilation seemed out of the question. This is different. I can end up ruined, discredited, in prison. Without knowing why! If you’ve cooked this up, congratulations. It’s a masterpiece, Henry!”
He had risen to his feet. He spoke calmly, impersonally, almost didactically. Chirinos stood up too, leaning on one of the arms of the chair to hoist his weight. They were very close, almost touching. Cabral saw a quotation from Tagore in a small, square frame on the wall, between the shelves of books: An open book is a mind that speaks; closed, a friend who waits; forgotten, a soul that forgives; destroyed, a heart that weeps. “He’s pretentious in everything he does, touches, says, and feels,” he thought.
“Frankness deserves frankness in return.” Chirinos brought his face close to Agustín Cabral, who was dazed by the stink that accompanied his words. “Ten years ago, five years ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated to concoct anything that got you out of the way, Agustín. And you would have done the same to me. Including annihilation. But now? To what end? Do we have some account left to settle? No. We’re no longer in competition, Egghead, you know that as well as I do. How much oxygen is left to a dying cause? For the last time: I have nothing to do with what’s happening to you. My hope, my wish, is that you resolve it. Difficult days are coming, and it’s to the regime’s advantage if you’re there to help withstand the onslaught.”
Senator Cabral nodded. Chirinos patted his shoulder.
“If I go down to the caliés who are waiting for me and tell them what you’ve said, that the regime is suffocating, that it’s a dying cause, you’ll be keeping me company,” he murmured, instead of saying goodbye.
“You won’t do that.” The great dark mouth of his host laughed. “You’re not like me. You’re a true gentleman.”
“What happened to him?” Urania asks. “Is he still alive?”
Aunt Adelina laughs, and the parrot Samson, who seemed to be asleep, reacts with another series of shrieks. When he stops, Urania can hear the rhythmic creak of the rocking chair where Manolita is sitting.
“Weeds don’t die,” her aunt explains. “He’s still in his lair in the colonial city, at the corner of Salomé Ureña and Duarte. Lucindita saw him a little while ago, walking with a cane in Independencia Park, in his house slippers.”
“Some kids were running after him and shouting: ‘The bogeyman, the bogeyman!’” Lucinda laughs. “He’s uglier and more repulsive than ever. He must be over ninety, right?”
Have they had enough after-dinner conversation so that she can leave? Urania hasn’t felt comfortable all night. She’s been tense, waiting for the attack. This is the only family she has left and she feels more distant from them than from the stars. And she’s beginning to be irritated by Marianita’s large eyes constantly staring at her.
“Those were terrible days for the family.” Aunt Adelina keeps harping on the same subject.
“I remember my papa and Uncle Agustín whispering together in this living room,” says Lucindita. “And your papa was saying: ‘But my God, what could I have done to the Chief to make him treat me this way?’”
She is silenced by a dog barking wildly near the house; two more, five more, respond. Through a small skylight in the ceiling, Urania can see the moon: round, yellow, splendid. There were no moons like that in New York.
“What upset him most was your future if something happened to him.” Aunt Adelina’s look is heavy with reproach. “When they took over his bank accounts, he knew it was hopeless.”
“His bank accounts!” Urania nods. “That was the first time my papa talked to me about it.”
She was already in bed and her father came in without knocking. He sat at the foot of her bed.