The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [94]
“Not to mention robberies and attacks on property,” insisted young Agustín Cabral. “Gangs of criminals cross the Masacre River as if there were no customs, checkpoints, or patrols. The border is like a sieve. The gangs demolish villages and farms like swarms of locusts. Then they drive the livestock back into Haiti, along with everything they can find to eat, wear, or adorn themselves with. That region is no longer ours, Excellency. We have lost our language there, our religion, our race. It now forms part of Haitian barbarism.”
Dorothy Gittleman barely spoke Spanish and must have been bored with this conversation regarding something that occurred twenty-four years earlier, but she nodded very seriously from time to time, looking at the Generalissimo and her husband as if following every syllable of what they were saying. She had been seated between the puppet president, Joaquín Balaguer, and the Minister of the Armed Forces, General José René (Pupo) Román. She was a small, fragile, upright old woman rejuvenated by the pink tones of her summer dress. During the ceremony, when the Generalissimo had said that the Dominican people would not forget the solidarity displayed by the Gittlemans during this difficult time, when so many governments were stabbing them in the back, she too had shed a few tears.
“I knew what was going on,” Trujillo declared. “But I wanted proof, so there would be no doubts. I didn’t make a decision even after I received an on-site report from the Constitutional Sot and Egghead. I decided to go there myself. I traveled the length of the border on horseback, accompanied by volunteers from the University Guard. I saw it with my own eyes: they had invaded us again, just as they had in 1822. Peacefully, this time. Could I allow the Haitians to remain in my country for another twenty-two years?”
“No patriot would have allowed it,” exclaimed Senator Henry Chirinos, raising his glass. “Least of all Generalissimo Trujillo. A toast to His Excellency!”
Trujillo continued as if he hadn’t heard:
“Could I allow what happened during those twenty-two years of occupation to happen again, allow blacks to murder, rape, and cut the throats of Dominicans, even in churches?”
Seeing the failure of his toast, the Constitutional Sot wheezed, drank some wine, and began to listen again.
“During the entire trip along the border with the University Guard, the cream of our youth, I examined the past,” the Generalissimo continued, with increasing emphasis. “I recalled the slaughter in the church at Moca. The burning of Santiago. The march to Haiti by Dessalines and Cristóbal, with nine hundred prominent men from Moca who died along the way or were given as slaves to the Haitian military.”
“More than two weeks since we presented our report and the Chief hasn’t done a thing.” Young Deputy Chirinos was agitated. “Is he going to make a decision, Egghead?”
They had both accompanied Trujillo on his trip along the border, with the hundred volunteers from the University Guard, and they had just reached the city of Dajabón, breathing more heavily than their horses. The two of them, despite their youth, would have preferred to rest their saddle-weary bones, but His Excellency was holding a reception for Dajabón society and they would never offend him. There they were, suffocating with the heat in their stiff-collared shirts and tunics, in the decorated town hall, where Trujillo, as fresh as if he had not been riding since dawn, and wearing an impeccable blue-and-gray uniform studded with medals and gold braid, moved among the various groups with a glass of Carlos I in his right hand, accepting their tributes. Then he caught sight of a young officer in dust-covered boots who burst into the flag-draped room.
“You showed up at that gala reception, sweating and in your field uniform.” The Benefactor abruptly turned his gaze toward the Minister