The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [20]
Amadito thanked her. Turk turned off the overhead light. The shade on the bedside lamp had a design that the light of the bulb turned red. Clouds? Animals? The lieutenant thought that if a fire broke out, he wouldn’t move.
“Go to sleep, Amadito. Things will seem less tragic in the light of day.”
“It won’t make any difference, Turk. Day or night I’ll still make myself sick. It’ll be worse when I sober up.”
It began that afternoon, in the headquarters of the military adjutants, next to Radhamés Manor. He had just returned from Boca Chica, where Major Roberto Figueroa Carrión, liaison between the Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Generalissimo Trujillo, had sent him to deliver a sealed envelope to General Ramfis Trujillo at die Dominican Air Force Base. The lieutenant entered the major’s office to report on his mission, and Figueroa Carrión received him with a mischievous expression. He showed him the red file folder on his desk.
“Can you guess what I have here?”
“A week’s leave for me at the beach, Major, sir?”
“Your promotion to first lieutenant, boy!” His superior happily handed him the folder.
“I stood there with my mouth open, because it wasn’t my turn.” Salvador didn’t move. “I still have eight months before I can apply for a promotion. I thought it was a consolation prize because I was denied permission to get married.”
Salvador, at the foot of the bed, was ill at ease and made a face.
“Didn’t you know, Amadito? Your friends, your superiors, didn’t they tell you about the test of loyalty?”
“I thought they were just stories,” Amadito said with conviction, with fury. “I swear. People don’t bring that up, they don’t brag about that. I didn’t know. It took me by surprise.”
Was that true, Amadito? One more lie, one more pious lie in the string of lies that had been his life since he enrolled at the Military Academy. Since his birth, for he had been born almost at the same time as the Era. Of course you had to know, had to suspect; of course, in the Fortress at San Pedro de Macorís, and then, among the military adjutants, you had heard, intuited, discovered, in the jokes and boasts, in the excited moments, the bravado, that the privileged, the elect, the officers entrusted with positions of greatest responsibility were subjected to a test of loyalty to Trujillo before they were promoted. You knew very well it existed. But now Second Lieutenant García Guerrero also knew that he never had wanted to know in detail what the test involved. Major Figueroa Carrión shook his hand and repeated something he had heard so often he had begun to believe it:
“You’ll have a great career, boy.”
He ordered him to pick him up at his house at eight that night: they would go for a drink to celebrate his promotion, and take care of a little business.
“Bring the jeep.” The major dismissed him.
At eight o’clock, Amadito was at his superior’s house. The major did not invite him in. He must have been watching at the window, because before Amadito could get out of the jeep, he appeared at the door. He jumped into the jeep, and without responding to the lieutenant’s salute, he ordered, in a falsely casual voice:
“To La Cuarenta, Amadito.”
“To the prison, Major, sir?”
“Yes, to La Cuarenta,” the lieutenant repeated. “You know who was waiting for us there, Turk.”
“Johnny Abbes,” murmured Salvador.
“Colonel Abbes García,” Amadito corrected him with quiet irony. “The head of the SIM, yes.”
“Are you sure you want to tell me this, Amadito?” The young man felt Salvador’s hand on his knee. “Won’t you hate me afterward because you know that I know too?”
Amadito knew him by sight. He had seen him slipping like a shadow along the corridors of the National Palace, getting out of his black bulletproof Cadillac or climbing into it in the gardens of Radhamés Manor, entering or leaving the Chief’s office, something that Johnny Abbes and probably nobody else in the entire country could do—appear at any hour of the day or night at the National Palace or the private residence of the Benefactor