The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [40]
“If I’m killed, it will be by someone very close, a traitor in the family, so to speak,” he said, as if talking about someone else. “For you, it would be a great misfortune.”
“And for the country, Excellency.”
“That’s why I’m still in the saddle,” Trujillo agreed. “Otherwise I would have retired, as I was advised to do by my Yankee friends who were sent down here by President Eisenhower: William Pawley, General Clark, Senator Smathers. ‘Go down in history as a magnanimous statesman who turned the helm over to younger men.’ That’s what Roosevelt’s friend Smathers told me. It was a message from the White House. That’s why they came. To ask me to leave and to offer me asylum in the United States. ‘Your patrimony will be safe there.’ Those assholes confuse me with Batista, with Rojas Pinilla and Pérez Jiménez. They’ll only get me out when I’m dead.”
The Benefactor became distracted again, thinking about Guadalupe, Lupe to her friends, the fat, mannish Mexican Johnny Abbes married during that mysterious, adventurous period of his life in Mexico when he was sending detailed reports to Razor on the activities of the Dominican exiles, and at the same time frequenting revolutionary circles, like the one made up of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and the July 26 Cubans, who were preparing the expedition of the Granma, and people like Vicente Lombardo Toledano, closely connected to the Mexican government, who had been his protector. The Generalissimo had never had time to question him calmly about that period in his life, when the colonel discovered his vocation and talent for espionage and clandestine operations. A juicy life, no doubt about it, full of anecdotes. Why had he ever married that awful woman?
“There’s something I always forget to ask you,” he said with the vulgarity he used when speaking to his collaborators. “How did you ever marry such an ugly woman?”
He did not detect the slightest sign of surprise on Abbes García’s face.
“It wasn’t for love, Excellency.”
“I always knew that,” said the Benefactor, smiling. “She isn’t rich, so you didn’t do it for money.”
“It was gratitude. Lupe saved my life once. She’s killed for me. When she was Lombardo Toledano’s secretary and I had just come to Mexico. Thanks to Vicente I began to understand politics. Much of what I’ve done wouldn’t have been possible without Lupe, Excellency. She doesn’t know the meaning of fear. And until now her instincts have never failed.”
“I know she’s tough, and knows how to fight, and carries a pistol and goes to whorehouses like a man,” said the Generalissimo, in excellent humor. “I’ve even heard that Puchita Brazobán saves girls for her. But what intrigues me is that you’ve been able to make babies with that freak.”
“I try to be a good husband, Excellency.”
The Benefactor began to laugh, the sonorous laughter of other days.
“You can be amusing when you want to be,” he congratulated him. “So you took her out of gratitude. And you can get it up whenever you want to.”
“In a manner of speaking, Excellency. The truth is, I don’t love Lupe and she doesn’t love me. At least not in the way people understand love. We’re united by something stronger. Dangers shared shoulder to shoulder, staring death in the face. And lots of blood, on both of us.”
The Benefactor nodded. He understood what he meant. He would have liked to have a wife like that hag, damn it. He wouldn’t have felt so alone when he had to make certain decisions. It was true, there were no ties like blood. That must be why he felt so tied to this country of ingrates, cowards, and traitors. Because in order to pull it out of backwardness, chaos, ignorance, and barbarism, he had often been stained with blood. Would these assholes thank him for it in the future?
Again he felt demoralized and crushed. Pretending to check his watch, he glanced out of the corner of his eye at his trousers. No stain at all on the crotch or on his fly. Knowing that did not raise his spirits. Again the memory of the girl at Mahogany House crossed