The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [118]
“This business is going very badly, darling. You have to be prepared for anything. So far, I’ve kept the gravity of the situation from you. But, today, well, you must have heard something at school.”
The girl nodded solemnly. She wasn’t worried; her confidence in him was limitless. How could anything bad happen to a man who was so important?
“Yes, Papa, there were letters against you in ‘The Public Forum,’ accusing you of crimes. Nobody will believe it, it’s so silly. Everybody knows you’re incapable of doing bad things.”
Her father embraced her, through the quilt.
It was more serious than slanders in the newspaper. They had removed him from the Presidency of the Senate. A congressional committee was looking into mismanagement and misuse of public funds during his tenure as minister. For days the Beetles of the SIM had been following him; there was one outside the front door right now, with three caliés inside. This past week he had received notifications of expulsion from the Trujillonian Institute, the Country Club, the Dominican Party, and this afternoon, when he went to withdraw money from the bank, the final blow. The manager, his friend Josefo Heredia, informed him that his two accounts had been frozen for the duration of the congressional investigation.
“Anything can happen, Uranita. They can confiscate this house, throw us out on the street. Even into prison. I don’t mean to frighten you. Maybe nothing will happen. But you ought to be prepared. And be brave.”
She listened to him, stunned; not because of what he was saying but because of the weakness of his voice, the hopelessness of his expression, the fear in his eyes.
“I’ll pray to the Virgin,” she said. “Our Lady of Altagracia will help us. Why don’t you talk to the Chief? He’s always liked you. He’ll give an order, and everything will be settled.”
“I’ve requested an audience and he won’t even respond, Uranita. I go to the National Palace and the secretaries and aides barely greet me. And President Balaguer doesn’t want to see me, and neither does the Minister of the Interior; that’s right, Paíno Pichardo. I’m the living dead, my dear. Maybe you’re right, maybe the only thing we can do is trust in the Virgin.”
His voice broke. But when the girl sat up to embrace him, he regained his composure. He smiled at her:
“You had to know about this, Uranita. If anything happens to me, go to your aunt and uncle. Aníbal and Adelina will take care of you. It may be a test. Sometimes the Chief does things like this, to test his collaborators.”
“Accusing a man like him of mismanagement,” Aunt Adelina says with a sigh. “Except for that little house on Gazcue, he never had anything. No estates, no companies, no investments. Except for his savings, the twenty-five thousand dollars he doled out to you while you were studying up there. The most honorable politician and the best father in the world, Uranita. And, if you’ll permit some interference in your private life from this doddering old aunt, you didn’t act properly with him. I know you support him and pay for the nurse. But do you know how much you made him suffer when you wouldn’t answer a single letter or come to the phone when he called? Aníbal and I often saw him crying over you, right here in this house. Now, after so much time has gone by, Urania, can I ask why?”
Urania reflects, enduring the censorious look of the old woman bent like a hook in her chair.
“Because he wasn’t as good a father as you think, Aunt Adelina,” she says at last.
Senator Cabral had the taxi drop him at the International Clinic, four blocks from the Intelligence Service, which was also located on Avenida México. When he was about to give the address to the driver, he felt a strange rush of shame and embarrassment, and instead of telling him to go to the SIM, he mentioned the clinic. He walked the four blocks slowly; the domains of Johnny Abbes were probably the only important places in the regime he had never visited, until now. The