The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [190]
One day—what day could it be?—they put in his cell Fifí Pastoriza, Huáscar Tejeda, Modesto Díaz, Pedro Livio Cedeño, and Tunti Cáceres, Antonio de la Maza’s young nephew, who, in the original Plan, was going to drive the car that Antonio Imbert eventually drove. They were naked and handcuffed, like him. They had been in El Nueve the whole time, in other cells, and received the same treatment of electric shocks, whippings, burnings, and needles in the ears and under the nails. And they had been subjected to endless interrogations.
From them he learned that Imbert and Luis Amiama had disappeared, and that in his desperation to find them, Ramfis was now offering half a million pesos to anyone facilitating their capture. From them he also learned that Antonio de la Maza, General Juan Tomás Díaz, and Amadito had died fighting. He had been kept in isolation, but they had been able to talk with their jailers and learn what was happening on the outside. Huáscar Tejeda had heard from one of his torturers, with whom he had become friendly, about the conversation between Ramfis Trujillo and Antonio de la Maza’s father. The son of the Generalissimo came to inform Don Vicente de la Maza, in prison, that his son had died. The old caudillo of Moca asked, without a tremor in his voice: “Did he die fighting?” Ramfis nodded. Don Vicente de la Maza crossed himself: “Thank you, Lord!”
It did him good to see that Pedro Livio Cedeño had recovered from his wounds. Nigger felt absolutely no rancor toward Turk for shooting him in the confusion of that night. “What I can’t forgive any of you for is not killing me,” he joked. “What did you save my life for? For this? Assholes!” The resentment all of them felt toward Pupo Román was very deep, but nobody was happy when Modesto Díaz said that from his cell on a higher floor, he had seen Pupo naked, handcuffed, his eyelids sewn shut, being dragged by four bailiffs to the torture chamber. Modesto Díaz was not even the shadow of the elegant, intelligent politician he had been all his life; he had lost many kilos, had wounds over his entire body, and wore an expression of infinite despair. “That’s what I must look like,” thought Salvador. He had not looked in a mirror since his arrest.
He often asked his interrogators to allow him a confessor. At last, the jailer who brought their meals asked who wanted a priest. They all raised their hands. He had them put on trousers and brought them up the steep staircase to the room where Turk had been insulted by his father. To see the sun and feel its warm touch on his skin renewed his spirit. Even more so when he confessed and took communion, something he thought he would never do again. When the military chaplain, Father Rodríguez Canela, asked them to join him in a prayer in memory of Trujillo, only Salvador kneeled down and prayed with him. His companions, disconcerted, remained standing.
From Father Rodríguez Canela he learned the date: August 30, 1961. Only three months had gone by! To him it seemed as if this nightmare had lasted for centuries. Depressed, debilitated, demoralized, they spoke little among themselves, and conversations always revolved around what they had