The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [119]
At the drab, anonymous building, uniformed and plainclothes police armed with submachine guns, guarding the entrance behind barbed wire and sandbags, let him pass without searching him or demanding identification. Inside, César Báez, one of Colonel Abbes’s adjutants, was waiting for him. Husky, pockmarked, with curly red hair, he offered a sweating hand and led him along narrow corridors, where men with pistols in holsters hanging over their shoulders or dangling under their armpits were smoking, arguing, or laughing in smoke-filled cubicles that had bulletin boards covered with memos on the walls. It smelled of sweat, urine, and feet. A door opened. There was the head of the SIM. Cabral was surprised at the monastic spareness of the office, the walls bare of pictures or posters except for the one behind the colonel, which was a portrait in parade uniform—three-cornered feathered hat, his chest gleaming with medals—of the Benefactor. Abbes García, in civilian clothes, wore a short-sleeved summer shirt and had a cigarette dangling from his mouth. In his hand he held the red handkerchief that Cabral had seen so often.
“Good morning, Senator.” He extended a soft, almost feminine hand. “Have a seat. We have few amenities here, you must forgive us.”
“I’m grateful to you for seeing me, Colonel. You’re the first. No one, not the Chief or President Balaguer, not a single minister, has replied to my requests for an audience.”
The small, somewhat hunchbacked, potbellied figure nodded. Above the double chin, thin mouth, and flabby cheeks, Cabral could see the colonel’s deep-set, watery eyes darting like quicksilver. Could he be as cruel as they said?
“Nobody wants to risk contagion, Señor Cabral,” Johnny Abbes said coldly. It occurred to the senator that if snakes could talk, they would have that same, sibilant voice. “Falling into disgrace is an infectious disease. How can I help you?”
“Tell me what I’m accused of, Colonel.” He paused to take a breath and appear more composed. “My conscience is clear. Since the age of twenty I’ve devoted my life to Trujillo and to the country. There’s been some mistake, I swear it.”
The colonel silenced him with a movement of the soft hand holding the red handkerchief. He put out his cigarette in a brass ashtray:
“Don’t waste your time giving me explanations, Dr. Cabral. Politics is not my field, I’m concerned with security. If the Chief refuses to see you because he’s unhappy with you, write to him.”
“I already have, Colonel. I don’t even know if they’ve given him my letters. I took them to the Palace personally.”
Johnny Abbes’s bloated face distended slightly:
“Nobody would hold back a letter addressed to the Chief, Senator. He’s probably read them, and if you’ve been sincere, he’ll respond.” He paused, constantly watching him with his nervous eyes, and added, rather defiantly: “I see you’ve noticed the color of my handkerchief. Do you know the reason? It’s a Rosicrucian teaching. Red is a good color for me. You probably don’t believe in Rosicrucianism, you must think it’s primitive superstition.”
“I don’t know anything about the Rosicrucian religion, Colonel. I have no opinion in that regard.”
“Now I don’t have the time, but when I was a young man I read a lot about Rosicrucianism. I learned a number of things. How to read a person’s aura, for example. Right now yours is the aura of someone scared to death.”
“I am scared to death,” Cabral replied immediately. “For days your men have been following me constantly. Tell me, at least, if you’re going to arrest me.”
“That doesn’t depend on me,” said Johnny Abbes, casually, as if the matter were not