The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [216]
The saddest day of his odyssey was also the happiest. On November 18, as the departure of Ramfis was being announced, it was reported on television that the six assassins of the Chief (four killers and two accomplices) had fled after murdering the three soldiers escorting them back to La Victoria prison following a reconstruction of the crime. Sitting in front of the television screen, he lost control and burst into tears. So, then, his friends—Turk, his dearest friend—had been killed, along with three poor guards who provided the alibi for the farce. Of course, the bodies would never be found. Señor Cavaglieri handed him a glass of cognac:
“Take heart, Señor Imbert. Just think, soon you’ll see your wife and daughter. This is coming to an end.”
A short while later, there was an announcement of the imminent departure of the Trujillo brothers and their families. This really was the end of his confinement. For the moment at least, he had survived the hunt in which, with the exception of Luis Amiama—he soon learned that he had spent six months hiding in a closet for many hours a day—practically all of the principal conspirators, along with hundreds of innocents, among them his brother Segundo, had been killed or tortured, or still languished in prison.
The day after the Trujillo brothers left the country, a political amnesty was declared. The jails began to open. Balaguer announced a commission to investigate what had happened to the “executioners of the tyrant.” From that day on, radio, television, and the newspapers stopped calling them assassins; executioners, their new designation, would soon become heroes, and not long after that, streets, squares, and avenues all over the country would begin to be renamed for them.
On the third day, very discreetly—the Cavaglieris would not even allow him to take the time to thank them for what they had done, and all they asked was that he not reveal their identity to anyone, so as not to compromise their diplomatic status—he left his confinement at dusk and appeared, alone, at his house. For a long time he, Guarina, and Leslie embraced, unable to speak. They examined one another and found that while Guarina and Leslie had lost weight, he had gained five kilos. He explained that in the house where he had been hiding—he could not tell them where—they ate a lot of spaghetti.
They could not speak for too long. The ruined house of the Imberts began to fill up with bouquets of flowers and relatives, friends, and strangers, who came to embrace him, congratulate him, and—sometimes, trembling with emotion, their eyes brimming with tears—to call him a hero and thank him for what he had done. Suddenly, a military man appeared among the visitors. He was an aide-de-camp to the President of the Republic. After the obligatory greetings, Major Teofronio Cáceda told him that he and Don Luis Amiama—who had also just emerged from his hiding place, incredibly enough, the house of the current Minister of Health—were invited to the National Palace at noon tomorrow to be received by the Head of State. And, with a complicitous little laugh, he informed him that Senator Henry Chirinos had just introduced in Congress (“Yes, sir, the same Trujillo Congress”) a law naming Antonio Imbert and Luis Amiama three-star generals in the Dominican Army for extraordinary services to the Nation.
The next morning, accompanied by Guarina and Leslie—the three of them in their best clothes, though Antonio’s were too tight—he kept his appointment at the Palace. A swarm of photographers greeted them,