The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [131]
He paused briefly, and in the same cordial tone of voice he would have used in after-dinner conversation, laid out an argument that the Generalissimo had often heard Agustín Cabral make. In order to rebuild bridges to the hierarchy, the Vatican, and the priests—the immense majority of whom still supported the regime out of fear of atheistic Communism—it was indispensable that this daily campaign of accusations and diatribes end, or at least become more moderate, for it allowed their enemies to portray the regime as anti-Catholic. Dr. Balaguer, with his unfailing courtesy, showed the Generalissimo a protest from the U.S. State Department concerning the persecution of the sisters at Santo Domingo Academy. The President had replied by explaining that the police guard was there to protect the nuns against hostile acts. But, in fact, it really was harassment. For example, every night Colonel Abbes García’s men played popular Trujillista merengues over loudspeakers directed at the school, depriving the sisters of sleep. They had done the same thing earlier, at the residence of Monsignor Reilly in San Juan de la Maguana, and were still doing it in La Vega, to Monsignor Panal. A reconciliation with the Church was still possible. But this campaign was moving the crisis toward a complete rupture.
“Talk to the Rosicrucian and convince him,” Trujillo said with a shrug. “He’s the priest-hater; he’s sure it’s too late to placate the Church and that the priests want to see me exiled, arrested, or dead.”
“I assure you that is not the case, Excellency.”
The Benefactor paid no attention to him. He said nothing as he scrutinized the puppet president with penetrating eyes that disconcerted and frightened. The little lawyer normally resisted the visual inquisition longer than others, but now, after a few minutes of being stripped bare by an audacious gaze, he began to betray some discomfort: his eyes opened and closed unceasingly behind his thick spectacles.
“Do you believe in God?” Trujillo asked with a certain uneasiness: he bored into him with his cold eyes, demanding a frank answer. “In a life after death? In heaven for the good people and hell for the bad? Do you believe in that?”
It seemed to him that the diminutive figure of Joaquín Balaguer grew even smaller, crushed by his questions. And that behind him, his own photograph—in formal dress and wearing a feathered tricorn, the presidential sash crossing his chest next to the decoration he prized most, the great Spanish cross of Carlos III—grew to gigantic size inside its gold frame. The puppet president’s tiny hands caressed one another, as he said, like a person confessing a secret:
“At times I doubt, Excellency. But years ago I reached this conclusion: there is no alternative. It is necessary to believe. It is not possible to be an atheist. Not in a world like ours. Not if one has a vocation for public service and engages in politics.”
“You have the reputation of being very overly pious,” Trujillo insisted, moving in his chair. “I’ve even heard that you never married, and don’t have a girlfriend, and don’t drink, and don’t do business, because you made secret vows. That you’re a lay priest.”
The bantam executive shook his head: none of that was true. He had not made and never would make any vow; unlike some of his classmates at the Normal School, who tormented themselves wondering if they had been chosen by God to serve Him as shepherds of the Catholic flock, he always knew that his vocation was not the priesthood but intellectual labor and political action. Religion gave him spiritual order, an ethical system with which to confront life. At times he doubted transcendence, he doubted God, but never the irreplaceable function of Catholicism as an instrument for the social restraint of the human animal’s irrational passions and appetites. And, in the Dominican Republic, as a constituent force for nationhood, equal to the Spanish language. Without the Catholic faith, the country would fall into chaos and