2007 - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (25 page)

It was widely believed that at anyone time between forty-two and eighty-seven percent of the Dominican population was on the Secret Police’s payroll. Your own fucking neighbors could acabar con you just because you had something they coveted or because you cut in front of them at the colmado. Mad folks went out in that manner, betrayed by those they considered their panas, by members of their own families, by slips of the tongue. One day you were a law-abiding citizen, cracking nuts on your galería, the next day you were in the Cuarenta, getting
your
nuts cracked. Shit was so tight that many people actually believed that Trujillo had supernatural powers! It was whispered that he did not sleep, did not sweat, that he could see, smell, feel events hundreds of miles away, that he was protected by the most evil fukú on the Island. (You wonder why two generations later our parents are still so damn secretive, why you’ll find out your brother ain’t your brother only by accident.)

But let’s not go completely overboard: Trujillo was certainly formidable, and the regime was like a Caribbean Mordor in many ways, but there were plenty of people who despised El Jefe, who communicated in less-than-veiled ways their contempt, who
resisted
. But Abelard was simply not one of them. Homeboy wasn’t like his Mexican colleagues who were always keeping up with what was happening elsewhere in the world, who believed that change was possible. He didn’t dream of revolution, didn’t care that Trotsky had lived and died not ten blocks from his student pension in Coyoacán; wanted only to tend his wealthy, ailing patients and afterward return to his study without worrying about being shot in the head or thrown to the sharks. Every now and then one of his acquaintances — usually Marcus — would describe for him the latest Trujillo Atrocity: an affluent clan stripped of its properties and sent into exile, an entire family fed piece by piece to the sharks because a son had dared compare Trujillo to Adolf Hitler before a terrified audience of his peers, a suspicious assassination in Bonao of a well-known unionist. Abelard listened to these horrors tensely, and then after an awkward silence would change the subject. He simply didn’t wish to dwell on the fates of Unfortunate People, on the goings-on in Peaksville. He didn’t want those stories in his house. The way Abelard saw it — his Trujillo philosophy, if you will — he only had to keep his head down, his mouth shut, his pockets open, his daughters hidden for another decade or two. By then, he prophesied, Trujillo would be dead and the Dominican Republic would be a true democracy.

Abelard, it turned out, needed help in the prophecy department. Santo Domingo never became a democracy. He didn’t have no couple of decades, either. His luck ran out earlier than anyone expected.

Nineteen forty-five should have been a capital year for Abelard and Family. Two of Abelard’s articles were published to minor acclaim, one in the prestigious — and the second in a small journal out of Caracas, and he received complimentary responses from a couple of Continental doctors, very flattering indeed. Business in the supermercados couldn’t have been better; the Island was still flush from the war boom and his managers couldn’t keep anything on the shelves. The fincas were producing and reaping profits; the worldwide collapse of agricultural prices was still years off Abelard had a full load of clients, performed a number of tricky surgeries with impeccable skill; his daughters were prospering (Jacquelyn had been accepted at a prestigious boarding school in Le Havre, to begin the following year — her chance to escape); his wife and mistress were pouring on the adoration; even the servants seemed content (not that he ever really spoke to them). All in all, the good doctor should have been immensely satisfied with himself. Should have ended each day with his feet up, un cigarro in the comer of his mouth, and a broad grin creasing his ursine features.

It was — dare we say it? — a
good
life.

Except it wasn’t.

In February there was another Presidential Event (for Independence Day!) and this time the invitation was explicit. For Dr. Abelard Luis Cabral
and
wife
and
daughter Jacquelyn. The daughter Jacquelyn part had been underlined by the party’s host. Not once, not twice, but three times. Abelard nearly fainted when he saw the damn thing. Slumped back at his desk, his heart pushing up against his esophagus. Stared at the vellum square for almost a whole hour before folding it and placing it inside his shirt pocket. The next morning he visited the host, one of his neighbors. The man was out in his corral, staring balefully as some of his servants were trying to get one of his stallions to stud. When he saw Abelard his face darkened. What the hell do you want from me? The order came straight from the Palacio. When Abelard walked back to his car he tried not to show that he was shaking.

Once again he consulted with Marcus and Lydia. (He said nothing of the invitation to his wife, not wanting to panic her, and by extension his daughter. Not wanting even to say the words in his own house.)

Where the last time he’d been somewhat rational, this go-around he was fuera de serie, raved like a madman. Waxed indignant to Marcus for nearly an hour about the injustice, about the hopelessness of it all (an amazing amount of circumlocution because he never once directly named who it was he was complaining about). Alternated between impotent rage and pathetic self-pity. In the end his friend had to cover the good doctor’s mouth to get a word in edgewise, but Abelard kept talking. It’s madness! Sheer madness! I’m the father of my household! I’m the one who says what goes!

What can you do? Marcus said with no little fatalism. Trujillo’s the president and you’re just a doctor. If he wants your daughter at the party you can do nothing but obey.

But this isn’t human! When has this country ever been human, Abelard? You’re the historian. You of all people should know that.

Lydia was even less compassionate. She read the invite and swore a coño under her breath and then she turned on him. I warned you, Abelard. Didn’t I tell you to send your daughter abroad while you had the chance? She could have been with my family in Cuba, safe and sound, but now you’re jodido. Now He has his Eye on you.

I know, I know, Lydia, but what should I
do?
Jesú Cristo, Abelard, she said tremulously. What options are there. This is Trujillo you’re talking about.

Back home the portrait of Trujillo, which every good citizen had hanging in his house, beamed down on him with insipid, viperous benevolence.

Maybe if the doctor had immediately grabbed his daughters and his wife and smuggled them all aboard a boat in Puerto Plata, or if he’d stolen with them across the border into Haiti, they might have had a chance. The Plátano Curtain was strong but it wasn’t that strong. But alas, instead of making his move Abelard fretted and temporized and despaired. He couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, paced the halls of their house all night long and all the weight he regained these last months he immediately lost. (If you think about it, maybe he should have heeded his daughter’s philosophy:
Tarde venientibus ossa
.) Every chance he got he spent with his daughters. Jackie, who was her parents’ Golden Child, who already had memorized all the streets in the French Quarter and who that year alone had been the object of not four, not five, but twelve marriage proposals. All communicated to Abelard and his wife, of course. Jackie knowing nothing about it. But still. And Astrid, ten years old, who took more after their father in looks and nature; plainer, the jokester, the believer, who played the meanest piano in all of the Cibao and who was her big sister’s ally in all things. The sisters wondered about their father’s sudden attentiveness: Are you on vacation, Papi? He shook his head sadly. No, I just like spending time with you is all.

What’s the matter with you? his wife demanded, but he refused to speak to her. Let me be, mujer. Things got so bad with him that he even went to church, a first for Abelard (which might have been a really bad idea since everybody knew the Church at that time was in Trujillo’s pocket). He attended confession almost every day and talked to the priest but he got nothing out of it except to pray and to hope and to light some fucking stupid candles. He was going through three bottles of whiskey a day.

His friends in Mexico would have grabbed their rifles and taken to the interior (at least that’s what he thought they would have done) but he was his father’s son in more ways than he cared to admit. His father, an educated man who had resisted sending his son to Mexico but who had always played ball with Trujillo. When in 1937 the army had started murdering all the Haitians, his father had allowed them to use his horses, and when he didn’t get any of them back he didn’t say nothing to Trujillo. Just chalked it up as the cost of doing business. Abelard kept drinking and kept fretting, stopped seeing Lydia, isolated himself in his study, and eventually convinced himself that nothing would happen. It was only a test. Told his wife and daughter to prepare for the party. Didn’t mention it was a Trujillo party. Made it seem like nothing was amiss. Hated himself to his core for his mendacity, but what else could he have done?

Tarde venientibus ossa
.

It probably would have gone off without a hitch too, but Jackie was so excited. Since it was her first big party, who’s surprised that it became something of an event for her? She went shopping for a dress with her mother, got her hair done at the salon, bought new shoes, and was even given a pair of pearl earrings by another of her female relatives. Socorro helped her daughter with every aspect of the preparation, no suspicions, but about a week before the party she started having these terrible dreams. She was in her old town, where she’d grown up before her aunt adopted her and put her in nursing school, before she discovered she had the gift of Healing. Staring down that dusty frangipani-lined road that everybody said led to the capital, and in the heat-rippled distance she could see a man approaching, a distant figure who struck in her such dread that she woke up screaming. Abelard leaping out of bed in panic, the girls crying out in their rooms. Had that dream almost every damn night that final week, a countdown clock.

On T-minus-two Lydia urged Abelard to leave with her on a steamer bound for Cuba. She knew the captain, he would hide them, swore it could be done. We’ll get your daughters afterward, I promise you.

I can’t do that, he said miserably. I can’t leave my family. She returned to combing her hair. They said not another word.

On the afternoon of the party, as Abelard was dolefully tending to the car, he caught sight of his daughter, in her dress, standing in the sala, hunched over another one of her French books, looking absolutely divine, absolutely young, and right then he had one of those epiphanies us lit majors are always forced to talk about. It didn’t come in a burst of light or a new color or a sensation in his heart. He just knew. Knew he just couldn’t do it. Told his wife to forget about it. Said same to daughter. Ignored their horrified protestations. Jumped in the car, picked up Marcus, and headed to the party.

What about Jacquelyn? Marcus asked.

She’s not coming.

Marcus shook his head. Said nothing else.

At the reception line Trujillo again paused before Abelard. Sniffed the air like a cat. And your wife and daughter?

Abelard trembling but holding it together somehow. Already sensing how everything was going to change. My apologies, Your Excellency. They could not attend.

His porcine eyes narrowed. So I see, he said coldly, and then dismissed Abelard with a flick of his wrist. Not even Marcus would look at him.

Not four weeks after the party, Dr. Abelard Luis Cabral was arrested by the Secret Police. The charge? ‘Slander and gross calumny against the Person of the President’.

If the stories are to be believed, it all had to do with a joke.

One afternoon, so the story goes, shortly after the fateful party, Abelard, who we had better reveal was a short, bearded, heavyset man with surprising physical strength and curious, closeset eyes, drove into Santiago in his old Packard to buy a bureau for his wife (and of course to see his mistress). He was still a mess, and those who saw him that day recall his disheveled appearance. His distraction. The bureau was successfully acquired and lashed haphazardly to the roof of the automobile, but before he could shoot over to Lydia’s crib Abelard was buttonholed by some ‘buddies’ on the street and invited for a few drinks at Club Santiago. Who knows why he went? Maybe to try to keep up appearances, or because every invitation felt like a life-or-death affair. That night at Club Santiago he tried to shake off his sense of imminent doom by talking vigorously about history, medicine, Aristophanes, by getting very very drunk, and when the night wound down he asked the ‘boys’ for assistance in relocating the bureau to the trunk of his Packard. He did not trust the valets, he explained, for they had stupid hands. The muchachos good-naturedly agreed. But while Abelard was fumbling with the keys to open the trunk he stated loudly, I hope there aren’t any bodies in here. That he made the foregoing remark is not debated. Abelard conceded as much in his ‘confession’. This trunk-joke in itself caused discomfort among the ‘boys,’ who were all too aware of the shadow that the Packard automobile casts on Dominican history: It was the car in which Trujillo had, in his early years, terrorized his first two elections away from the pueblo. During the Hurricane of 1931 the Jefe’s henchmen often drove their Packards to the bonfires where the volunteers were burning the dead, and out of their trunks they would pull out ‘victims of the hurricane’. All of whom looked strangely dry and were often clutching opposition party materials. The wind, the henchmen would joke, drove a bullet straight through the head of this one. Har-har!

What followed is still, to this day, hotly disputed. There are those who swear on their mothers that when Abelard finally opened the trunk he poked his head inside and said, Nope, no bodies here. This is what Abelard himself claimed to have said. A poor joke, certainly, but not ‘slander’ or ‘gross calumny’. In Abelard’s version of the events, his friends laughed, the bureau was secured, and off he drove to his Santiago apartment, where Lydia was waiting for him (forty-two and still lovely and still worried shitless about his daughter). The court officers and their hidden ‘witnesses,’ however, argued that something quite different happened, that when Dr. Abelard Luis Cabral opened the trunk of the Packard, he said, Nope, no bodies here,
Trujillo must have cleaned them out for me
.