The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [126]
“There’s something inhuman in you,” he said, as if the object of his remarks were not present. “You don’t have a man’s natural appetites. As far as I know, you don’t like women and you don’t like boys. Your life is more chaste than the nuncio’s, your neighbor on Avenida Máximo Gómez. Abbes García couldn’t find any mistress or girlfriend, and no whores either. Which means that sex doesn’t interest you. Or money. You hardly have any savings; except for the house where you live, you don’t own property, or stocks, and you have no investments, at least not here. You haven’t been involved in the intrigues, the deadly wars that bleed my collaborators dry, though they all plot against you. I had to force ministries and embassies on you, the Vice Presidency, even the Presidency. If I removed you now and sent you off to some damn little post in Montecristi or Azua, you’d go and be just as content. You don’t drink, you don’t smoke, you don’t eat, you don’t chase women, money, or power. Is that the way you really are? Or is it a strategy with a hidden agenda?”
Dr. Balaguer’s clean-shaven face flushed again. His soft voice did not falter when he declared:
“Ever since I first met Your Excellency, on that April morning in 1930, my only vice has been serving you. That was when I learned that by serving Trujillo I was serving my country. This has enriched my life more than a woman, or money, or power could have done. I will never find the words to thank Your Excellency for allowing me to work at your side.”
Bah, the usual flattery, the kind any Trujillista who was less well-read might have said. For a moment, he had imagined that the diminutive, inoffensive man would open his heart, as in the confessional, and reveal his sins and fears, his animosities and dreams. He probably didn’t have a secret life, or any existence other than the one everybody could see: he was a functionary, frugal, hardworking, tenacious, and unimaginative, who gave shape, in beautiful orations, proclamations, letters, agreements, speeches, and diplomatic negotiations, to the ideas of the Generalissimo; a poet who produced acrostics and odes to the beauty of Dominican women and the Dominican landscape that embellished poetic festivals, special anniversaries, Miss Dominican Republic pageants, and patriotic celebrations. A little man without his own light, like the moon, who was illuminated by Trujillo, the sun.
“I know you have been a good colleague,” the Benefactor declared. “Yes, ever since that morning in 1930. I sent for you at the suggestion of Bienvenida, my wife at the time. A relative of yours, wasn’t she?”
“My cousin, Excellency. That lunch decided my life. You invited me to accompany you on your election campaign. You did me the honor of asking me to introduce you at meetings in San Pedro de Macorís, the capital, and La Romana. It was my debut as a political speaker. At that moment, my destiny took another direction. My vocation had been literature, the classroom, the lecture hall. Thanks to you, politics came to the forefront.”
A secretary knocked at the door, asking permission to enter. Balaguer consulted the Generalissimo with a glance, and gave his authorization. The secretary—well-cut suit, small mustache, hair smoothed with brillantine—brought in a memorandum signed by five hundred seventy-six prominent residents of San Juan de la Maguana, requesting “that the return to this prelature of Monsignor Reilly, the felonious bishop, be prevented.” A commission led by the mayor and the local head of the Dominican Party wanted to deliver it personally to the President. Would he receive them? Again he consulted the Benefactor, who nodded.
“Ask them to be good enough to wait,” Balaguer said. “I shall receive those gentlemen as soon as I finish my meeting with His Excellency.”
Could Balaguer be as devout a Catholic as people said? Countless jokes circulated about his bachelorhood and the pious, intense manner he adopted at Masses, Te Deums, and processions; he had seen him come up to take communion with his hands together and his eyes lowered.