The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [72]
He had founded enterprises and established businesses to create jobs and progress for the country and have the resources to give away presents left and right and keep the Dominicans happy.
And with his friends, collaborators, employees, hadn’t he been as magnificent as Petronius in Quo Vadis? He had showered them with money, giving generous gifts for birthdays, weddings, births, jobs well done, or simply to show that he knew how to reward loyalty. He had presented them with pesos, houses, land, stocks, he had made them partners in his farms and enterprises, he had created businesses for them so they could earn good money and not plunder the State.
He heard a discreet knock at the door. Sinforoso, with the suit and underwear. He handed them over with lowered eyes. He had been with him more than twenty years; he had been his orderly in the Army, and the Chief had promoted him to majordomo and taken him to the Palace. He feared nothing from Sinforoso. He was deaf, dumb, and blind regarding everything that had to do with Trujillo, and he had the sense to know that where certain intimate subjects were concerned, such as his involuntary urinations, the slightest betrayal would deprive him of all he had—a house, a little cattle farm, a car, a large family—and, perhaps, even his life. The suit and underwear, hidden in a bag, would not attract anyone’s attention, for the Benefactor was in the habit of changing clothes several times a day in his private office.
He dressed while Sinforoso—husky, his hair in a crew cut, impeccably groomed in his uniform of black trousers, white shirt, and white jacket with gold buttons—picked up the clothing scattered on the floor.
“What should I do with those two terrorist bishops, Sinforoso?” he asked as he was buttoning his trousers. “Expel them from the country? Send them to jail?”
“Kill them, Chief,” Sinforoso answered without hesitation. “Everybody hates them, and if you don’t do it, the people will. Nobody can forgive the Yankee and the Spaniard who came to this country to bite the hand that feeds them.”
The Generalissimo had stopped listening. He would have to reprimand Pupo Román. That morning, after receiving Johnny Abbes and the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and of the Interior, he had gone to San Isidro Air Base to meet with the heads of the Air Force. And he saw something that turned his stomach: right at the entrance, a few meters from the guard post, under the flag and seal of the Republic, a pipe was spewing out filthy black water that had formed a quagmire at the edge of the highway. He ordered the car to stop. He got out and walked to the spot. It was a pipe carrying thick, stinking sewage—he had to put his handkerchief over his nostrils—and, of course, it had attracted a swarm of flies and mosquitoes. The waste kept flowing, inundating the area, poisoning the air and soil of the leading Dominican garrison. He felt rage, burning lava flooding his body. He controlled his first impulse, to return to the base and curse the officers who were present and demand if this was the image they were trying to give to the Armed Forces: an institution overrun by stinking water and vermin. But he immediately decided that he had to take the warning to the head man. And make Pupo Román in person swallow a little of the liquid shit pouring out of that sewage pipe. He decided to call him right away. But when he got back to his office, he forgot to do it. Was his memory beginning to fail, just like his bladder? Damn. The two things that had responded best throughout his whole life were failing now that he was seventy.
When he was clean and dressed, he returned to his desk and picked up the telephone that communicated automatically with Armed Forces headquarters. It