The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [169]
They were standing in the living room of General Juan Tomás Díaz’s house. Chana, his young wife, served them glasses of lemonade with ice.
“We have to hide until we know what’s going on with Pupo,” said General Juan Tomás Díaz.
Antonio de la Maza, who had not spoken yet, felt a wave of anger coursing through his body.
“Hide?” he exclaimed in a rage. “Cowards hide. Let’s finish the job, Juan Tomás. Put on your general’s uniform, give us some uniforms, and we’ll go to the Palace. And that’s where we’ll call for a popular uprising.”
“You want the four of us to take the Palace?” Luis Amiama tried to reason with him. “Have you gone crazy, Antonio?”
“Nobody’s there now, just the guards,” he insisted. “We have to force the hand of the Trujillistas before they can react. We’ll call on the people, we can use the Palace connection to every radio station in the country. We’ll tell them to take to the streets. In the end, the Army will support us.”
The skeptical expressions of Juan Tomás, Amiama, and Modesto Díaz made him even angrier. They were soon joined by Salvador Estrella Sadhalá, who had just left Antonio Imbert and Amadito at the doctor’s office, and Dr. Vélez Santana, who had taken Pedro Livio Cedeño to the International Clinic. They were devastated by the disappearance of Pupo Román. They agreed that Antonio’s idea of infiltrating the National Palace disguised as officers was futile and rash, an act of suicide. And all of them energetically opposed Antonio’s new proposal: to take the body of Trujillo to Independencia Park and hang it from the parapet so that residents of the capital could see how he had died. Rejection by his friends provoked one of those fits of uncontrolled rage De la Maza had recently been subject to. Cowards! Traitors! They weren’t equal to what they had done, ridding the Nation of the Beast! When he saw Chana Díaz come into the living room, her eyes terrified by the shouting, he realized he had gone too far. He muttered apologies to his friends and fell silent. But he felt waves of nausea inside.
“We’re all upset, Antonio,” said Luis Amiama, patting him on the shoulder. “The important thing now is to find a safe place. Until Pupo shows up. And we see how the people react when they find out Trujillo is dead.”
An ashen Antonio de la Maza nodded. Yes, after all, Amiama, who had worked so hard to bring the military and highly placed officials in the regime into the conspiracy, perhaps he was right.
Luis Amiama and Modesto Díaz decided to go their separate ways; they thought they had a better chance of avoiding detection if each was on his own. Antonio persuaded Juan Tomás and Turk Sadhalá that they should stay together. They went through possibilities—relatives, friends—and discarded them; the police would search all those houses. Vélez Santana was the one who came up with an acceptable name:
“Robert Reid Cabral. He’s a friend of mine. Totally apolitical, all he cares about is medicine. He won’t refuse.”
He drove them in his car. General Díaz and Turk didn’t know Robert personally, but Antonio de la Maza was a friend of his older brother, Donald Reid Cabral, who was working in Washington and New York in support of the conspiracy. The young doctor was dumbfounded at being awakened close to midnight. He knew nothing about the plot; he wasn’t even aware that his brother Donald was collaborating with the Americans. But as soon as he regained his color and his power of speech, he hurried them into his small, Moorish-style, two-story house, which was so narrow it looked like something out of a fairy tale. He was a clean-shaven boy with kindhearted eyes who made a superhuman effort to hide his consternation. He introduced them to his wife, Ligia, who was several months pregnant. She accepted the invasion by strangers good-naturedly, without much apprehension. She showed them her two-year-old son, who slept in a corner of the dining room.
The young couple led the conspirators to a narrow little room on the top floor that was used