The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [82]
“Not them either,” he thought. The rich too, if they wanted to go on being rich, had to ally themselves with the Chief, sell him part of their businesses or buy part of his, and contribute in this way to his greatness and power. With half-closed eyes, lulled by the gentle sound of the sea, he thought of what a perverse system Trujillo created, one in which all Dominicans sooner or later took part as accomplices, a system which only exiles (not always) and the dead could escape. In this country, in one way or another, everyone had been, was, or would be part of the regime. “The worst thing that can happen to a Dominican is to be intelligent or competent,” he had once heard Agustín Cabral say (“A very intelligent and competent Dominican,” he told himself) and the words had been etched in his mind: “Because sooner or later Trujillo will call upon him to serve the regime, or his person, and when he calls, one is not permitted to say no.” He was proof of this truth. It never occurred to him to put up the slightest resistance to his appointments. As Estrella Sadhalá always said, the Goat had taken from people the sacred attribute given to them by God: their free will.
In contrast to Turk, religion had never occupied a central place in the life of Antonio Imbert. He was Catholic in the Dominican way, he had gone through all the religious ceremonies that marked people’s lives—baptism, confirmation, first communion, Catholic school, marriage in the Church—and he undoubtedly would be buried with the sermon and blessing of a priest. But he had never been a particularly conscientious believer, never been concerned with the implications of his faith in everyday life, never bothered to verify if his behavior complied with the commandments, as Salvador did in a way that he found debilitating.
But what he said about free will affected him. Perhaps this was why he decided that Trujillo had to die. So that he and other Dominicans could recover their ability to at least accept or reject the work they did to earn a living. Tony did not know what that was like. Perhaps as a child he knew, but he had forgotten. It must be nice. Your cup of coffee or glass of rum must taste better, the smoke of your cigar, a swim in the ocean on a hot day, the movie you see on Saturday, the merengue on the radio, everything must leave a more pleasurable sensation in your body and spirit when you had what Trujillo had taken away from Dominicans thirty-one years ago: free will.
10
At the sound of the bell, Urania and her father become rigid, looking at each other as if caught in some mischief. Voices on the ground floor and an exclamation of surprise. Hurried steps coming up the stairs. The door opens almost at the same time that they hear an impatient knock, and a bewildered face peers in; Urania immediately recognizes her cousin Lucinda.
“Urania? Urania?” Her large protruding eyes examine her from top to bottom, from bottom to top, then she opens her arms and walks toward her as if to verify whether or not she is a hallucination.
“It’s me, Lucindita.” Urania embraces the younger daughter of her Aunt Adelina, the cousin who is her own age, her classmate at school.
“Uranita! I can’t believe it! You’re here? Let me take a look at you! What’s going on? Why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t you come to the house? Have you forgotten how much we love you? Don’t you remember your Aunt Adelina, and Manolita? And me, you ungrateful thing?”
She is so surprised, so full of questions, so curious—“My God, girl, how could you spend thirty-five years—thirty-five, right?—without coming home and seeing your family? Oh, Uranita! You must have so much to tell us!”—that she doesn’t give her time to answer her questions. That’s one way she hasn’t changed much. Even as a little girl she chattered like a parrot, Lucindita the enthusiastic one, the inventive and playful one. The cousin she always liked best. Urania remembers her in her dress uniform,