The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [70]
For the third time the senator became agitated, as if his seat had turned into a bucking horse.
“Very little, Chief. Well, relatively speaking, I mean.”
“How much?” Trujillo insisted, affectionately. “And where?”
“About four hundred thousand dollars,” he admitted rapidly, lowering his voice. “In two separate accounts. In Panama. Opened before the sanctions, of course.”
“That’s peanuts,” Trujillo admonished him. “With the posts you’ve held, you should have been able to save more.”
“I’m not a saver, Chief. Besides, you know I never cared about money. I’ve always had all I needed to live.”
“To drink, you mean.”
“To dress well, to eat well, to drink well, and to buy the books I want,” the senator agreed, looking at the ceiling and the crystal lamp in the office. “Thank God, with you I’ve always had interesting work to do. Should I repatriate that money? I’ll do it today if you tell me to.”
“Leave it where it is. If I need a hand when I’m in exile, you can help me out.”
He laughed, in good humor. But as he laughed he suddenly recalled the scared little girl at Mahogany House, a compromising, accusatory witness who ruined his mood. It would have been better to shoot her, hand her over to the guards, let them raffle her off, or share her. The memory of that stupid little face watching him suffer reached all the way into his soul.
“Who’s taken the most precautions?” he asked, hiding his distress. “Who has the most money overseas? Paíno Pichardo? Alvarez Pina? Egghead Cabral? Modesto Díaz? Balaguer? Who’s accumulated the most? Because none of you believed me when I said the only way I’d leave here was in a coffin.”
“I don’t know, Chief. But if you’ll permit me, I doubt that any of them has much money outside the country. For a very simple reason. Nobody ever thought the regime could end, that we’d find ourselves obliged to leave. Who would ever think that one day the earth could stop moving around the sun?”
“You would,” Trujillo replied sarcastically. “That’s why you took your miserable pesos to Panama, figuring I wouldn’t last forever, that one of the conspiracies might succeed. You’ve given yourself away, asshole.”
“I’ll repatriate my savings this afternoon,” Chirinos protested, gesticulating. “I’ll show you the deposit slips from the Central Bank. Those savings have been in Panama a long time. My diplomatic missions allowed me to put something away. For cash outlays on the trips I make in your service, Chief. I’ve never padded the expenses the position required.”
“You’re scared, you think what happened to Egghead might happen to you.” Trujillo was still smiling. “It’s a joke. I’ve forgotten the secret you told me. Come on, tell me some gossip before you go. Bedroom gossip, not politics.”
The Walking Turd smiled with relief. But as soon as he began telling him that the talk of Ciudad Trujillo right now was the beating the German consul gave his wife because he thought she was cheating on him, the Benefactor became distracted. How much money had his closest collaborators taken out of the country? If the Constitutional Sot had done it, they all had. Was it only four hundred thousand he had tucked away? It had to be more. All of them, in the darkest corner of their souls, had lived in fear that the regime would collapse. Bah, they were trash. Loyalty was not a Dominican virtue. He knew that. For thirty years they had worshiped him, applauded him, deified him, but the first time the wind changed, they would reach for their daggers.
“Who invented the slogan of the Dominican Party, using the initials of my name?” he asked unexpectedly. “Rectitude, Liberty, True Work, Morality. Was it you or Egghead?”
“Yours truly, Chief,” Senator Chirinos exclaimed proudly. “On the tenth anniversary. It caught on, and twenty years later it’s on all the streets and squares in the country. And in the overwhelming majority of the homes.”
“It ought to be in the minds