The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [156]
He spent the hours of the new day peering out the windows, watching for the jeep. There was nothing to eat in the house, but he wasn’t hungry. His occasional drinks of distilled water seemed to fill his stomach. But he was tormented by solitude, boredom, lack of news. If there were only a radio at least! He resisted the temptation to go out and walk to some inhabited place and find a newspaper. Control your impatience, boy, Toño Sánchez would come soon.
He didn’t come until the third day. He appeared at noon on June 2, the day that Amadito, faint with hunger and desperate for news, turned thirty-two. Toño was no longer the easygoing, effusive, self-confident man who had brought him here. He was pale, devoured by anxiety, unshaven, and stammering. He handed him a thermos of hot coffee and some sausage and cheese sandwiches, which Amadito wolfed down as he heard the bad news. His picture was in all the papers and was shown frequently on television, along with those of General Juan Tomás Díaz, Antonio de la Maza, Estrella Sadhalá, Fifí Pastoriza, Pedro Livio Cedeño, Antonio Imbert, Huáscar Tejeda, and Luis Amiama. Pedro Livio Cedeño had been taken prisoner, and he had given them up. They were offering huge amounts of pesos to anyone with information about them. There was a fierce persecution of everyone suspected of being anti-Trujillista. Dr. Durán Barreras had been arrested the night before; Toño thought that if he was tortured, he’d betray them all in the end. It was extremely dangerous for Amadito to stay here.
“I wouldn’t stay even if it was safe, Toño,” the lieutenant said. “I’d rather be killed than have to spend another three days alone like this.”
“Where will you go?”
He thought of his cousin Máximo Mieses, who had a place along the Duarte highway. But Toño discouraged him: the highways were full of patrols and they were searching every vehicle. He’d never get to his cousin’s farm without being recognized.
“You have no idea what’s going on.” Toño Sánchez was in a rage. “Hundreds of people have been arrested. They’ve gone crazy, looking for all of you.”
“They can go to hell,” said Amadito. “Let them kill me. The Goat’s gone and they can’t bring him back. Don’t worry, brother. You’ve done a lot for me. Can you get me to the highway? I’ll go back to the capital on foot.”
“I’m scared, but not so scared that I’d leave you out in the cold, I’m not that much of a bastard,” said Toño, who had calmed down. He patted him on the shoulder. “Let’s go, I’ll take you. If they catch us, you put a gun to my head, okay?”
He settled Amadito in the back of the jeep, under a piece of canvas, on top of which he placed some coils of rope and gasoline cans that slammed against the hunched-over lieutenant. The position gave him cramps and made the pain in his foot worse; every pothole in the road battered his shoulders, back, and head. But he never let go of his .45; he held it in his right hand, with the safety off. Whatever happened, they wouldn’t take him alive. He wasn’t afraid. In fact, he didn’t have much hope of getting out of this. But it didn’t matter. He hadn’t felt this kind of serenity since that disastrous night with Johnny Abbes.
“We’re coming up on the Radhamés Bridge,” he heard a terrified Toño Sánchez say. “Don’t move, don’t make a sound, there’s a patrol.”
The jeep stopped. He heard voices, footsteps, and after a pause, friendly exclamations: “Hey, it’s you, Toñito.” “What’s up, compadre?” They authorized him to continue without searching the car. They must have been in the middle of the bridge when he heard Toño Sánchez again:
“The captain was my friend Skinny Rasputín. Shit, what a piece of luck! My balls are still up around my ears, Amadito. Where should I drop you?”
“On Avenida San Martín.”
A short while later, the jeep braked to a stop.
“I don’t see caliés anywhere, now’s a good time,” Toño said. “God be with you, boy.”
The lieutenant lifted off the canvas and the cans and jumped to the sidewalk. A few cars were passing, but he saw no