The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [18]
It was his first clash with a reality that, despite his twenty-nine years, splendid grades, magnificent record as a cadet and an officer, he had known nothing about. (“Like most Dominicans,” he thought.) The reply to his request was delayed. He was told that the corps of adjutants had passed it along to the SIM, so that they could investigate the person in question. In a week or ten days he would have his approval. But the reply did not come in ten, or fifteen, or twenty days. On the twenty-first day the Chief summoned him to his office. It was the only time he had exchanged words with the Benefactor even though he had been close to him so often at public functions, the first time this man whom he saw every day at Radhamés Manor had directed his gaze at him.
From the time he was a child Lieutenant García Guerrero had heard, from his family—especially his grandfather, General Hermó-genes García—at school, and later as a cadet and an officer, about Trujillo’s gaze. A gaze that no one could endure without lowering his own eyes, intimidated and annihilated by the force radiating from those piercing eyes that seemed to read one’s most secret thoughts and most hidden desires and appetites, and made people feel naked. Amadito laughed at the stories. The Chief might be a great statesman whose vision, will, and capacity for work had made the Dominican Republic a great country. But he wasn’t God. His gaze could only be the gaze of a mortal man.
It was enough for him to walk into the office, click his heels, and announce himself in the most martial voice his throat could produce—“Second Lieutenant García Guerrero, at your service, Excellency!”—to feel electrified. “Come in,” said the sharp voice of the man who sat at the other end of the room behind a desk covered in red leather, writing and not looking up. The young man took a few steps and stood at attention, not moving a muscle or thinking, looking at the meticulously groomed gray hair and impeccable attire—blue jacket and vest, white shirt with immaculate collar and starched cuffs, silvery tie secured with a pearl—and at his hands, one resting on a sheet of paper that the other covered with rapid strokes of blue ink. On his left hand he saw the ring with the precious iridescent stone, which, according to the superstitious, was an amulet given to him when he was a young man, a member of the Constabulary Guard pursuing the “bandits” who rebelled against the United States’ military occupation, by a Haitian wizard who assured him that as long as he kept it on he would be invulnerable to enemies.
“A good service record, Lieutenant,” he heard him say.
“Thank you very much, Excellency.”
The silver-colored head moved and those large staring eyes, without brightness and without humor, met his. “I’ve never been afraid in my life,” the boy later confessed to Salvador. “Until that gaze fell on me, Turk. It’s true. As if he were digging up my conscience.” There was a long silence while those eyes examined his uniform, his belt, his buttons, his tie, his visored hat. Amadito began to perspire. He knew that the slightest carelessness in dress provoked such disgust in the Chief that he could erupt into violent recriminations.
“A service record this good cannot be stained by marriage to the sister of a Communist. In my government, friends and enemies don’t mix.”
He spoke quietly, not releasing him from his penetrating gaze. Amadito thought that at any moment the thin, high-pitched voice would crack.
“Luisa Gil’s brother is one of the June 14 subversives. Did you know that?”
“No, Excellency.”
“Now you know.” He cleared his throat and added, without changing his tone: