The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [33]
Colonel Abbes had two plans. One, to use the paleros—thugs armed with clubs and knives led by Balá, an ex-convict in his service—as a shield while the caliés rioted, pretending to be recalcitrant groups that had broken away from large protest demonstrations against the terrorist bishops in La Vega and at Santo Domingo Academy, and killed the prelates before the police could rescue them. This formula was risky; it might provoke an invasion. The advantage was that the death of the two bishops would paralyze the rest of the clergy for a long time to come. In the other plan, the police rescued Panal and Reilly before they could be lynched by a mob, and the government deported them to Spain and the United States, arguing that this was the only way to guarantee their safety. Congress would pass a law establishing that all priests who exercised their ministry in the country had to be Dominicans by birth. Foreigners or naturalized citizens would be returned to their own countries. In this way—the colonel consulted a notebook—the Catholic clergy would be reduced by a third. The minority of native-born priests would be manageable.
He stopped speaking when the Benefactor, whose head had been lowered, looked up.
“That’s what Fidel Castro did in Cuba.”
Johnny Abbes nodded:
“There the Church started out with protests too, and ended up conspiring to prepare the way for the Yankees. Castro threw out the foreign priests and took drastic measures against the ones who were left. What happened to him? Nothing.”
“So far” the Benefactor corrected him. “Kennedy will send the Marines to Cuba any day now. And this time it won’t be the kind of mess they made last month at the Bay of Pigs.”
“In that case, the Beard will the fighting,” Johnny Abbes agreed. “And it isn’t impossible that the Marines will land here. And you’ve decided that we’ll the fighting too.”
Trujillo gave a mocking little laugh. If they had to die fighting the Marines, how many Dominicans would sacrifice themselves with him? The soldiers would, no doubt about that. They proved it during the invasion sent by Fidel on June 14, 1959. They fought well, they wiped out the invaders in just a few days, in the mountains of Costanza, on the beaches of Maimón and Estero Hondo. But the Marines…
“I won’t have many with me, I’m afraid. The rats running away will raise a dust storm. But you won’t have a choice, you’ll have to the with me. Wherever you go you’ll face jail, or assassination by the enemies you have all over the world.”
“I’ve made them defending the regime, Excellency.”
“Of all the men around me, the only one who couldn’t betray me, even if he wanted to, is you,” an amused Trujillo insisted. “I’m the only person you can get close to, the only one who doesn’t hate you or dream about killing you. We’re married till death do us part.”
He laughed again, in a good humor, examining the colonel the way an entomologist examines an insect difficult to classify. They said a lot of things about Abbes, especially about his cruelty. It was an advantage for somebody in his position. They said, for example, that his father, an American of German descent, found little Johnny, still in short pants, sticking pins into the eyes of chicks in the henhouse. That as a young man he sold medical students cadavers he had robbed from graves in Independencia Cemetery. That though he was married to Lupita, a hideous Mexican, hard as nails, who carried a pistol in her handbag, he was a faggot. Even that he had gone to bed with Kid Trujillo, the Generalissimo’s half brother.
“You’ve heard what they say about you,” he said, looking him in the eye and laughing. “Some of it must be true. Did you like poking out chickens’ eyes when you were a kid? Did you rob the graves at Independencia Cemetery and sell the corpses?”
The colonel barely smiled.