The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [189]
When he opened his eyes, he recognized his brother Guarionex lying beside him, his body naked and battered, covered with wounds and bruises. My God, they had left poor Guaro in a terrible state! The general’s eyes were open, looking at him in the dim light that a bulb in the hallway allowed to filter through the little barred window. Did he recognize him?
“I’m Turk, your brother, I’m Salvador,” he said, dragging himself over to him. “Can you hear me? Can you see me, Guaro?”
He spent an infinite time trying to communicate with his brother but did not succeed. Guaro was alive; he moved, moaned, opened and closed his eyes. At times he made bizarre remarks and gave orders to his subordinates: “Move that mule, Sergeant!” And they had kept the Plan secret from General Guarionex Estrella Sadhalá because they considered him too much of a Trujillista. What a surprise for poor Guaro: to be arrested, tortured, and interrogated because of something he knew nothing about. He tried to explain this to Ramfis and Johnny Abbes the next time he was taken to the torture chamber and seated on the Throne, and he repeated it and swore it over and over again, between fainting spells brought on by the electrical currents, and while they flogged him with those whips, the “bull’s balls,” that tore off pieces of skin. They did not seem interested in knowing the truth. He swore in God’s name that Guarionex, his other brothers, certainly not his father, none of them had been part of the conspiracy, and he shouted that what they had done to General Estrella Sadhalá was a monstrous injustice that they would have to answer for in the next life. They did not listen, they were more interested in torturing him than in interrogating him. Only after an interminable period of time—had hours, days, weeks passed since his capture?—did he realize that with a certain regularity they were giving him a bowl of soup with pieces of yuca, a slice of bread, and jugs of water into which the jailers spat as they passed them to him. By now nothing mattered. He could pray. He prayed in all his free and lucid moments, and sometimes even when he was asleep or unconscious. But not when they were torturing him. On the Throne, pain and fear paralyzed him. From time to time a SIM doctor would come to listen to his heart and give him an injection that revived him.
One day, or night, for in the jail it was impossible to know the time, they took him out of the cell, naked and handcuffed, made him climb the stairs, and pushed him into a small, sunlit room. The white light blinded him. At last he recognized the pale, elegant face of Ramfis Trujillo, and at his side, erect as always despite his years, his father, General Piro Estrella. When he recognized the old man, Salvador’s eyes filled with tears.
But instead of being moved at seeing the desolate creature his son had become, the general roared in indignation:
“I don’t know you! You’re not my son! Assassin! Traitor!” He gesticulated, choking with rage. “Don’t you know what I, you, all of us owe to Trujillo? He’s the man you murdered? Repent, you miserable wretch!”
He had to lean against a table because he began to reel. He lowered his eyes. Was the old man pretending? Was he hoping to win over Ramfis and then beg him to spare his life? Or was his father’s Trujillista fervor stronger than his feelings for his son? That doubt tore at him constantly, except during the torture sessions. These came every day, every two days, and now they were accompanied by long, maddening interrogations in which they repeated, a thousand and one times, the same questions,