The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [217]
Smiling, wearing an expression of deep joy, as the photographers’ cameras flashed, Dr. Joaquín Balaguer walked toward them, arms opened wide.
24
“Manuel Alfonso came for me right on time,” says Urania, staring at nothing. “The cuckoo clock in the living room was sounding eight o’clock when he rang.” Her Aunt Adelina, her cousins Lucinda and Manolita, her niece Marianita, avoid one another’s eyes so as not to increase the tension; breathless and frightened, they look only at her. Samson is dozing, his curved beak buried in his green feathers.
“Papa hurried to his room, on the pretext of going to the bathroom,” Urania continues coldly, almost legalistically. “ ‘Bye-bye, sweetheart, have a good time.’ He didn’t have the courage to say goodbye while he was looking me in the eye.”
“You remember all those details?” Aunt Adelina moves her small, wrinkled fist, without energy or authority now.
“I forget a good number of things,” Urania replies briskly. “But I remember everything about that night. You’ll see.”
She remembers, for example, that Manuel Alfonso was dressed in sports clothes—sports clothes for a party given by the Generalissimo?—a blue shirt with an open collar, a light cream-colored jacket, loafers, and a silk scarf hiding his scar. In his peculiar voice he said that her pink organdy dress was beautiful, that her high-heeled shoes made her look older. He kissed her on the cheek: “Let’s hurry, it’s getting late, beautiful.” He opened the car door for her, had her go in first, sat down beside her, and the chauffeur in uniform and cap—she remembered his name: Luis Rodríguez—pulled away.
“Instead of going down Avenida George Washington, the car took an absurd route. It went up Independencia and drove across the old city, taking its time. Not true that it was getting late; it was still too early to go to San Cristóbal.”
Manolita extends her hands, leans her plump body forward.
“But if you thought it was strange, didn’t you say anything to Manuel Alfonso about it? Nothing at all?”
Not at first: nothing at all. It was very strange, of course, that they were driving through the old city, just as it was strange that Manuel Alfonso had dressed for the Generalissimo’s party as if he were going to the Hipódromo or the Country Club, but Urania didn’t ask the ambassador anything. Was she beginning to suspect that he and Agustín Cabral had told her a lie? She remained silent, half listening to the awful, ruined speech of Manuel Alfonso, who was telling her about parties long ago for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, in London, where he and Angelita Trujillo (“She was a young girl at the time, as beautiful as you are”) represented the Benefactor of the Nation. She was concentrating instead on the ancient houses that stood wide open, displaying their interiors, their families out on the streets—old men and women, young people, children, dogs, cats, even parrots and canaries—to enjoy the cool evening after the burning heat of the day, chatting from rockers, chairs, or stools, or sitting in the doorways or on the curbs of the high sidewalks, turning the old streets of the capital into an immense popular get-together, club, or festival, to which the groups of two or four domino players—always men, always mature—sitting around tables lit by candles or lanterns, remained totally indifferent. It was a show, like the scenes of small, cheerful grocery stores with counters and shelves of white-painted wood, overflowing with cans, bottles of Carta Dorada, Jacas, and Bermúdez cider, and brightly colored boxes, where people were always buying things; Urania