The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [88]
“A paraplegic?” Lucinda’s large eyes open wide.
“Seventy years old,” Urania says. “And very rich. He proposed marriage, that’s right. So I could keep him company and read to him, that’s all.”
“You were a fool, Urania.” Lucindita was scandalized. “You would have inherited a fortune, you’d be a millionaire.”
“You’re right, it would have been a terrific deal.”
“But you were young, idealistic, and you believed a girl should marry for love.” Her cousin makes her explanations easy. “As if any of that lasts. I missed a chance too, with a doctor who was rolling in money. He was crazy about me. But he was dark-skinned, they said his mother was Haitian. I’m not prejudiced, but suppose my child was a throwback and came out black as coal?”
She liked studying so much, she felt so happy at Harvard, that she planned to complete a Ph.D. and go into teaching. But she didn’t have the money. Her father was in an increasingly difficult situation, in her third year he cut off her already reduced monthly allowance, and she needed to get a degree and begin earning money as soon as she could to pay off her student loans and support herself. The prestige of Harvard Law School was immense; when she began to send out applications, she was called to a good number of interviews. She decided on the World Bank. She was sorry to leave; during her years in Cambridge, she acquired her “perverse hobby”: reading and collecting books on the Trujillo Era.
In the shabby living room there is another photograph of her graduation—a morning of brilliant sun that lit up the Yard, festive with canopies, elegant clothing, the many-colored mortarboards and robes of professors and graduates—identical to the one that Senator Cabral has in his bedroom. How did he get it? She certainly didn’t send it to him. Of course, Sister Mary. She’d sent this photograph to Santo Domingo Academy. For, until the nun’s death, Urania maintained a correspondence with her. That charitable soul must have kept Senator Cabral informed about Urania’s life. She remembers Sister Mary looking at the sea, leaning against the stone balustrade on the top floor of the academy building facing southeast—off-limits to students, it was where the nuns lived; at that distance, from the courtyard where the two German shepherds, Badulaque and Brutus, raced around the tennis courts, the volleyball courts, and the swimming pool, her lean silhouette seemed smaller.
It’s hot, and she drips perspiration. She has never felt anything like this volcanic heat even in steamy New York summers, which are offset by the chill of air conditioning. This was a different kind of heat: the heat of her childhood. And she had never heard that extravagant symphony of blowing horns, voices, music, barking, squealing brakes, which came in through the windows and obliged her and her cousin to raise their voices.
“Is it true that Johnny Abbes put Papa in prison when they killed Trujillo?”
“Didn’t he tell you about it?” her cousin asks in surprise.
“I was already in Michigan,” Urania reminds her.
Lucinda nods, with an apologetic half-smile.
“Of course he did. Those men went crazy. Ramfis, Radhamés, the Trujillistas. They began killing and locking up people left and right. Well, I really don’t remember much about it. I was a little girl and didn’t care anything about politics. Uncle Agustín had been distanced from Trujillo, and they must have thought he was involved in the plot. They held him in that awful prison, La Cuarenta, the one that Balaguer tore down, there’s a church there now. My mama went to talk to Balaguer, to plead with him. They kept him locked up for a few days until they proved he wasn’t part of the conspiracy. Later, the President gave him a miserable little job that seemed like a joke: as an official in the Civil Government of the Third District.”
“Did he say anything about how he was treated in La Cuarenta?”
Lucinda exhales smoke that hides