The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [142]
The face of the head of the SIM bent over him. He could feel his breath, heavy with tobacco. His eyes were dark, with yellow flecks. He wished he had the strength to bite those flaccid cheeks. Spit on them, at least.
“He was wrong, he’s only wounded,” said Abbes García. “Which Imbert?”
“Antonio Imbert,” he explained, gnawed by anxiety. “Does that mean he lied to me? Shit, oh shit!”
He could hear footsteps, a movement of bodies, those present crowding around his bed. The smoke blurred their faces. He felt asphyxiated, as if they were stamping on his chest.
“Antonio Imbert and who else?” Colonel Abbes García said in his ear. His skin crawled when he thought that this time he’d put the cigarette out in his eye and blind him. “Is Imbert in charge? Did he organize this?”
“No, no leaders,” he stammered, fearful he wouldn’t have the strength to finish the sentence. “If there were, it would be Antonio.”
“Antonio who?”
“Antonio de la Maza,” he explained. “If there were, it would be him, sure. But there aren’t any leaders.”
There was another long silence. Had they given him sodium pentothal, is that why he was talking so much? But pentothal made you sleepy and he was wide awake, overexcited, eager to tell, to pull out the secrets chewing at him inside. He’d go on answering whatever they asked, damn it. There were murmurs, footsteps on the tiles. Were they leaving? A door opening, closing.
“Where are Imbert and Antonio de la Maza?” The head of the SIM exhaled a mouthful of smoke and it seemed to Pedro Livio that it went into his throat and nose and down to his guts.
“Looking for Pupo, where the hell else would they be?” Would he have the energy to finish the sentence? The astonishment of Abbes García, General Félix Hermida, and Colonel Figueroa Carrión was so great that he made a superhuman effort to explain what they didn’t understand: “If he doesn’t see the Goat’s body, he won’t lift a finger.”
They had opened their eyes wide and were scrutinizing him with suspicion and dread.
“Pupo Román?” Abbes García had certainly lost his confidence now.
“General Román Fernández?” Figueroa Carrión repeated.
“The head of the Armed Forces?” an agitated General Félix Hermida asked in a shrill voice.
Pedro Livio was not surprised when the hand came down again and put out the lit cigarette in his mouth. An acrid taste of tobacco and ash on his tongue. He did not have the strength to spit out that stinking, burning piece of trash scraping against his gums and palate.
“He’s fainted, Colonel,” he heard Dr. Damirón Ricart murmur. “If we don’t operate, he’ll die.”
“The one who’s going to die is you if you don’t revive him,” replied Abbes García with muted rage. “Give him a transfusion, whatever, but wake him up. This man has to talk. Revive him or I’ll fill you with all the lead in this revolver.”
If they were talking like that, he wasn’t dead. Had they found Pupo Román? Shown him the body? If the revolution had started, Abbes García, Félix Hermida, and Figueroa Carrión wouldn’t be standing around his bed. They’d be arrested or dead, like Trujillo’s brothers and nephews. He tried in vain to ask them to explain why they weren’t arrested or dead. His stomach didn’t hurt; his eyelids and mouth felt on fire because of the cigarette burns. They gave him an injection, they made him inhale from a piece of cotton that smelled of menthol, like Salems. He discovered a bottle filled with serum next to his bed. He could hear them and they thought he couldn’t.
“Can it be true?” Figueroa Carrión seemed more terrified than surprised. “The Armed Forces Minister involved in this? It’s impossible, Johnny.”
“Surprising, absurd, inexplicable,” Abbes García corrected him. “Not impossible.”
“But why, what for?” General Félix Hermida’s voice rose. “What can he hope to gain? He owes everything he is to the Chief, everything he has. This asshole is just throwing out names to confuse us.”
Pedro Livio twisted around, trying to sit up so they would know he wasn’t groggy or dead, and that he had told the truth.
“You can’t