The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [218]
“As soon as we were on the highway, perhaps when the car was passing by the place where they killed Trujillo two weeks later, Manuel Alfonso began…” A sound of disgust interrupts Urania’s story.
“What do you mean?” asks Lucindita after a silence. “Began to what?”
“To prepare me.” Urania’s voice is firm again. “To soften me up, frighten me, charm me. Like the brides of Moloch, pampered and dressed up like princesses before they were thrown in the fire, into the mouth of the monster.”
“So you’ve never met Trujillo, you’ve never talked to him,” Manuel Alfonso exclaims with delight. “It will be the experience of a lifetime, my girl!”
Yes, it would. The car moved toward San Cristóbal under a star-filled sky, surrounded by coconut palms and silver palms, along the shores of the Caribbean Sea crashing noisily against the reefs.
“But what did he say to you?” urges Manolita, because Urania has stopped speaking.
He described what a perfect gentleman the Generalissimo was in his treatment of ladies. He, who was so severe in military and governmental matters, had made the old proverb his philosophy: “With a woman, use a rose petal.” That’s how he always treated beautiful girls.
“How lucky you are, dear girl.” He was trying to infect her with his enthusiasm, an emotional excitement that distorted his speech even further. “To have Trujillo invite you personally to his Mahogany House. What a privilege! You can count on your fingers the girls who have deserved something like this. I’m telling you, girl, believe me.”
And then Urania asked him the first and last question of the night:
“Who else has been invited to this party?” She looks at her Aunt Adelina, at Lucindita and Manolita: “Just to see what he would say. By now I knew we weren’t going to any party.”
The self-assured male figure turned toward her, and Urania could see the gleam in the ambassador’s eyes.
“No one else. It’s a party for you. Just for you! Can you imagine? Do you realize what it means? Didn’t I tell you it was something unique? Trujillo is giving you a party. That’s like winning the lottery, Uranita.”
“And you? What about you?” her niece Marianita exclaims in her barely audible voice. “What were you thinking, Aunt Urania?”
“I was thinking about the chauffeur, about Luis Rodríguez. Just about him.”
How embarrassed you were for that chauffeur in his cap, a witness to the ambassador’s hypocritical talk. He had turned on the car radio, and two popular Italian songs—“Volare” and “Ciao, Ciao, Bambina”—were playing, but she was sure he didn’t miss a word of the ploys Manuel Alfonso was using to cajole her into feeling happy and fortunate. A party that Trujillo was giving just for her!
“Did you think about your papa?” Manolita blurts out. “Did you think my Uncle Agustín had, that he…?”
She stops, not knowing how to finish. Aunt Adelina’s eyes reproach her. The old woman’s face has collapsed, and her expression reveals profound despair.
“Manuel Alfonso was the one who thought about Papa,” says Urania. “Was I a good daughter? Did I want to help Senator Agustín Cabral?”
He did it with the subtlety acquired in his years as a diplomat responsible for difficult missions. And wasn’t this an extraordinary opportunity for Urania to help his friend Egghead climb out of the trap set for him by perpetually envious men? The Generalissimo might be hard and implacable when it came to the country’s interests. But at heart he was a romantic; with a charming girl his hardness melted like an ice cube in the sun. If she, being the intelligent girl she was, wanted the Generalissimo to extend a hand to Agustín, to return his position, his prestige, his power, his posts, she could achieve