The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [58]
“He understands,” she thinks, falling silent. His father’s gaze is fixed on her; at the back of his eyes there is a mute entreaty: be quiet, stop opening wounds, digging up memories. She doesn’t have the slightest intention of complying. Isn’t that why you’ve come to this country when you swore you’d never return?
“Yes, Papa, that must be why I’ve come,” she says so quietly her voice is barely audible. “To give you a bad time. Though with the stroke, you took your precautions. You tore unpleasant things out of your memory. And my, our, unpleasantness, did you erase that too? I didn’t. Not for a day. Not a single day in thirty-five years, Papa. I never forgot and I never forgave you. That’s why when you called me at Siena Heights or at Harvard, I would hear your voice and hang up and not let you finish. “Uranita, is that you…?” Click. “Uranita, listen to me…” Click. That’s why I never answered any of your letters. Did you write a hundred? Two hundred? I tore them all up or burned them. Pretty hypocritical, those little notes of yours. You always talked in circles, in allusions, in case other eyes saw them, in case other people learned the story. Do you know why I could never forgive you? Because you were never really sorry. After so many years of serving the Chief, you had lost your scruples, your sensitivity, the slightest hint of rectitude. Just like your colleagues. Just like the whole country, perhaps. Was that a requirement for staying in power and not dying of disgust? To become heartless, a monster like your Chief. To be unfeeling and self-satisfied, like the handsome Ramfis after raping Rosalía and leaving her to bleed in the doorway of Marión Hospital.”
The Perdomo girl did not return to school, of course, but her delicate Virgin Mary face continued to inhabit the classrooms, halls, and courtyards of Santo Domingo Academy, the rumors, whispers, fantasies that her misfortune provoked lasted for weeks, months, even though the sisters had forbidden them to mention the name of Rosalía Perdomo. But in the homes of Dominican society, even in the most Trujillista families, her name was mentioned over and over again, an ominous premonition, a terrible warning, above all in houses with girls and young ladies of marriageable age, and the story inflamed the fear that the handsome Ramfis (who was, moreover, married to a divorced woman, Octavia—Tantana—Ricart!) would suddenly discover the little girl, the big girl, and have a party with her, one of those parties that the spoiled heir had regularly with whatever girl he wanted, because who was going to challenge the Chief’s oldest son and his circle of favorites?
“It was because of Rosalía Perdomo that your Chief sent Ramfis to the military academy in the United States, wasn’t it, Papa?”
To the Fort Leavenworth Military Academy in Kansas City, in 1958. To get him away from Ciudad Trujillo for a couple of years, because, they said, the story of Rosalía Perdomo had irritated even His Excellency. Not for moral reasons but for practical ones. This idiotic boy, instead of becoming knowledgeable about affairs and preparing himself as the Chief’s firstborn, devoted his life to dissipation, to polo, to getting drunk with an entourage of bums and parasites and doing clever things like raping the daughter of one of the families most loyal to Trujillo and causing her to hemorrhage. A spoiled, pampered boy. Send him to the Fort Leavenworth Military Academy in Kansas City!
Hysterical laughter overcomes Urania, and the invalid, disconcerted by this sudden outburst, shrinks as if wanting to disappear inside himself. Urania laughs so hard her eyes fill with tears. She wipes them away with her handkerchief.
“The cure was worse than the disease. Instead of a punishment, the handsome Ramfis’s little trip to Fort Leavenworth turned out to be a reward.
“It must have been funny, wasn’t it, Papa? This little Dominican officer comes for an elite course of study in a select class of American officers and shows up with the rank of lieutenant general, dozens