The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [50]
“I know you think I had Octavio killed and that his suicide was a farce set up by the Intelligence Service. I had you come to tell you personally that you’re wrong. Octavio was a man of the regime. He was always a loyal Trujillista. I’ve just appointed a commission, under the leadership of the Attorney General of the Republic, Francisco Elpidio Beras. With broad powers to question everyone, military and civilian. If the story of his suicide is a lie, the guilty parties will pay.”
He spoke without animosity and without inflection, looking into Antonio’s eyes in the direct, peremptory manner with which he always spoke to subordinates, both friends and enemies. Antonio remained motionless, more determined than ever to attack the hypocrite and wring his neck without giving him time to call for help. As if to make the job easier for him, Trujillo stood and walked toward him with slow, solemn steps. His black shoes shone even brighter than the waxed wood in his office.
“I also authorized the FBI to come here and investigate the death of this Murphy,” he added in the same sharp tone. “It’s a violation of our sovereignty, of course. Would the gringos allow our police to go and investigate the murder of a Dominican in New York, or Washington, or Miami? Let them come. Let the world know we have nothing to hide.”
He was a meter away. Antonio could not endure Trujillo’s unmoving gaze, and he blinked incessantly.
“My hand does not tremble when I have to kill,” he added, after a pause. “Governing sometimes demands that you become stained with blood. I’ve often had to do that for this country. But I am a man of honor. I do justice to those who are loyal, I don’t have them killed. Octavio was loyal, a man of the regime, a proven Trujillista. That’s why I took a risk and kept him out of prison when he went too far in London and killed Luis Bernardino. Octavio’s death will be investigated. You and your family can participate in the commission’s deliberations.”
He turned and, in the same unhurried way, went back to his desk. Why didn’t he attack when he had him so close? He was still asking himself the question four and a half years later. Not because he believed a word of what he was saying. That was part of the melodrama that Trujillo was so fond of and that the dictatorship superimposed on its crimes, like a sarcastic supplement to the tragic deeds it was built on. Why, then? It wasn’t fear of dying, because fear of dying was never one of the many defects he acknowledged in himself. Since the time he was an insurgent and fought the dictator with a small band of Horacistas, he had risked his life many times. It was something more subtle and indefinable than fear: it was the paralysis, the numbing of determination, reason, and free will, which this man, groomed and adorned to the point of absurdity, with his thin high-pitched voice and hypnotist’s eyes, imposed on Dominicans, poor or rich, educated or ignorant, friends or enemies, and it was what held Antonio there, mute, passive, listening to those lies, the lone observer of the hoax, incapable of acting on his desire to attack him and put an end to the witches’ Sabbath that the history of the country had become.
“Furthermore, as proof that the regime considers the De la Mazas a loyal family, this morning you have been granted the concession for highway construction between Santiago and Puerto Plata.”
He paused again, wet his lips with the tip of his tongue, and concluded with a phrase that also said the interview had ended:
“In this way you’ll be able to help Octavio’s widow. Poor Altagracia must be having a difficult time. Give her my best, and your parents too.”
Antonio left the National Palace more stupefied than if he had been drinking all night. Had that been him? Had he heard with his own ears what that son of a bitch said? Had he accepted explanations