The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [152]
He staggered to the door and let it slam behind him when he left the house. From the sofa in the living room, where he still held the empty glass in his hand, Agustín Cabral heard the car pull away. He felt lassitude, an immeasurable lack of will. He would never have the strength to stand, climb the stairs, undress, go to the bathroom, brush his teeth, lie down, turn out the light.
“Are you trying to say that Manuel Alfonso proposed to your father that, that…?” Aunt Adelina cannot finish, she is choked by rage, she cannot find the words that will soften, make presentable, what she wants to say. In order to conclude somehow, she shakes her fist at the parrot Samson, who has not even opened his beak: “Be still, you miserable creature!”
“I’m not trying. I’m telling you what happened,” says Urania. “If you don’t want to hear it, I’ll stop talking and leave.”
Aunt Adelina opens her mouth but cannot say anything.
For the first time in his life, the senator did not go upstairs to bed. He fell asleep in the living room, in his clothes, a glass and an empty whiskey bottle at his feet. The sight of him the next morning, when Urania came down to eat breakfast and go to school, left her shaken. Her papa wasn’t a drunkard; on the contrary, he always criticized heavy drinking and dissipation. He had drunk too much because he was desperate, because he was hounded, pursued, investigated, dismissed, had his bank accounts frozen, for something he hadn’t done. She sobbed and embraced her papa, who was sprawled on the armchair in the living room. When he opened his eyes and saw her next to him, weeping, he kissed her over and over again: “Don’t cry, precious. We’ll get out of this, you’ll see, we won’t let them defeat us.” He stood up, straightened his clothes, sat with his daughter while she had breakfast. As he smoothed her hair and told her not to say anything about it at school, he looked at her in a strange way.
“He must have had doubts, gone back and forth,” Urania imagines. “Thought about exile. But he never could have gone into an embassy. Since the sanctions, there were no more Latin American legations. And the caliés made the rounds, watching the entrances to the ones that were left. He must have spent a horrible day, struggling with his scruples. That afternoon, when I came home from school, he had already made his decision.”
Aunt Adelina does not protest. She only looks at her from the depths of her deep-set eyes, reproach combined with horror and a disbelief that, despite all her efforts, is fading. Manolita twists and untwists a strand of hair. Lucinda and Marianita have turned into statues.
He had bathed, and was dressed with his usual propriety; there was no trace left of the bad night he had spent. But he hadn’t eaten a bite of food, and his doubts and bitterness were reflected in his deathly pallor, the circles under his eyes, the glint of fear in his gaze.
“Don’t you feel well, Papa? Why are you so pale?”
“We have to talk, Uranita. Come, let’s go up to your room. I don’t want the servants to hear us.”
“They’re going to arrest him,” the girl thought. “He’s going to tell me that I have to go live with Uncle Aníbal and Aunt Adelina.”
They entered the room, Urania dropped her books on her desk and sat on the edge of the bed (“A blue spread with Walt Disney characters”), and her father leaned against the window.
“You’re what I love most in the world.” He smiled at her. “The best thing I have. Since your mama died, you’re all I have left in this life. Do you know that, sweetheart?”
“Of course I do, Papa,” she replied. “What other terrible thing has happened? Are they going to arrest you?”
“No,