The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [32]
“Coffee, Excellency?”
Johnny Abbes was in uniform. Though he made an effort to wear it with the correctness Trujillo demanded, he could not do more than his flaccid, misshapen physique allowed. Fairly short, with a protruding belly that complemented his dewlaps, and a prominent chin divided by a deep cleft. His cheeks were flabby too. Only his cruel, shifting eyes revealed the intelligence behind the physical calamity. He was thirty-five or thirty-six years old but looked like an old man. He hadn’t gone to West Point or to any military academy; he wouldn’t have been admitted, for he lacked a soldier’s physique and a military vocation. He was what Gittleman, the Benefactor’s instructor when he was a Marine, would have called “a toad in body and soul”: no muscles, too much fat, and an excessive fondness for intrigue. Trujillo made him a colonel overnight when, in one of those inspirations that marked his political career, he decided to name him head of the SIM to replace Razor. Why did he do it? Not because Abbes was cruel but because he was cold: the iciest individual Trujillo had ever known in this country of hot bodies and souls. Was it a fortunate decision? Recently the colonel had made errors. The failed attempt on the life of President Betancourt was not the only one; he had also been wrong about the supposed uprising against Fidel Castro by Commanders Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo and William Morgan, which had turned out to be a trick by the Beard to draw Cuban exiles to the island and capture them. The Benefactor was thoughtful as he turned the pages of the report and sipped his coffee.
“You insist on pulling Bishop Reilly out of Santo Domingo Academy,” he murmured. “Sit down, have some coffee.”
“If you’ll permit me, Excellency?”
The colonel’s melodious voice dated from his youth, when he had been a radio announcer commenting on baseball, basketball, and horse races. From that period, he had kept only his fondness for esoteric reading—he admitted he was a Rosicrucian—the handkerchiefs he dyed red because, he said, it was a lucky color for an Aries, and his ability to see each person’s aura (all of it bullshit that made the Generalissimo laugh). He settled himself in front of the Chief’s desk, holding a cup of coffee in his hand. It was still dark outside, and the office was half in shadow, barely lit by a small lamp that enclosed Trujillo’s hands in a golden circle.
“That abscess must be lanced, Excellency. Our biggest problem isn’t Kennedy, he’s too busy with the failure of his Cuban invasion. It’s the Church. If we don’t put an end to the fifth columnists here, we’ll have problems. Reilly serves the purposes of those who demand an invasion. Every day they make him more important, while they pressure the White House to send in the Marines to help the poor, persecuted bishop. Don’t forget, Kennedy’s a Catholic.”
“We’re all Catholics,” Trujillo said with a sigh. And demolished the colonel’s argument: “That’s a reason not to touch him. It would give the gringos the excuse they’re looking for.”
Though there were times when the colonel’s frankness displeased Trujillo, he tolerated it. The head of the SIM had orders to speak to him with absolute sincerity even when it might offend his ears. Razor didn’t dare use that prerogative in the way Johnny Abbes did.
“I don’t think we can go back to our old relationship with the Church, that thirty-year idyll is over,” Abbes said slowly, his eyes like quicksilver in their sockets, as if searching the area for ambushes. “They declared war on us on January 24, 1960, with their Bishops’ Pastoral Letter, and their goal is to destroy the