Eva Luna (21 page)

“I don't know anything. Wait till the
patrón
returns,” was the only answer I could think to give.

At noon I carried a bowl of soup to Zulema and tried to spoon it into her mouth, but I kept seeing shadows, and my hands trembled so that the liquid spilled onto the floor. Suddenly she began to rock back and forth with her eyes closed, mourning, first a moaning monotone and then a sharp and uninterrupted
ayayay
like the wail of a siren.

“Be quiet! Kamal will not be back. If you can't live without him, get up and go look for him. There's nothing else you can do. Do you hear me,
señora?
” I shook her, frightened at the magnitude of that suffering.

But Zulema did not respond; her Spanish was forgotten, and no one would ever hear her speak a word in that language again. Then I put her to bed, and lay down beside her, listening to her sighs until we both fell into an exhausted sleep. That was where Riad Halabí found us when he returned in the middle of the night. His truck was loaded with new merchandise, and he had not forgotten gifts for his family: a topaz ring for his wife, an organdy dress for me, and two shirts for his cousin.

“What's going on here?” he asked, amazed at the wind of tragedy that swept his house.

“K-Kamal's gone,” I stammered.

“What do you mean, gone? Gone where?”

“I don't know.”

“But he is my guest—he can't leave like this, without telling me, without saying goodbye.”

“Zulema isn't well.”

“I think you're even sicker, child. You have a high fever.”

In the days that followed, I sweated out my terror; my fever went away, and I regained my appetite. In contrast, it was evident that Zulema was not suffering from a passing illness. She was stricken with lovesickness, and everyone realized it except her husband, who did not want to see it and refused to connect Kamal's absence with his wife's despair. He did not ask what had happened, because he guessed the answer, and had he been certain of the truth, he would have had to take revenge. He was too softhearted to slice off his unfaithful wife's breasts or to hunt down his cousin, cut off his genitals, and stuff them in his mouth, in keeping with the traditions of his ancestors.

Zulema continued silent and sullen, weeping at times, with no trace of interest in food, the radio, or her husband's gifts. She began to lose weight, and at the end of three weeks' time her skin had turned a light sepia, like a photograph from another century. She reacted only when Riad Halabí attempted to caress her; then she crossed her arms tightly, hunched her shoulders, and glared at him with implacable hatred. For a while my classes with the schoolteacher Inés and my work in the store were interrupted, and the weekly visits to the mobile movie theater were not resumed, because now I could not leave my
patrona
's side. I spent all day and a large part of the night caring for her. Riad Halabí hired two girls to do the cleaning and help in The Pearl of the Orient. The only good thing about that period was that he began to pay attention to me as he had before Kamal had come: he
asked me to read aloud to him or to tell him tales of my own invention; he invited me to play dominoes and again let me win. In spite of the oppressive atmosphere in the house, we found reasons to laugh.

Several months went by without noticeable improvement in Zulema's health. The inhabitants of Agua Santa and neighboring towns came to inquire about her, each bringing a different remedy: some sprigs of rue for a healing tea; a syrup to cure trauma; vitamins in pill form; chicken broth. They did not do it out of consideration for that haughty and friendless foreigner, but from affection for the Turk. What she needed, they said, was to see an expert healer, and one day they brought a Goajira woman of few words, who smoked tobacco leaves, blew the smoke on the patient, and concluded that she had no illness known to science, only a prolonged attack of love sadness.

“She misses her family, poor woman,” her husband explained, and dismissed the Indian woman before she went further and divined his shame.

We had no news of Kamal. Riad Halabí never again mentioned his name, wounded by the ingratitude with which Kamal had repaid his hospitality.

SEVEN

R
olf Carlé began working with
señor
Aravena the same month the Russians launched a space capsule containing a dog.

Rolf's Uncle Rupert was infuriated when he heard the news: “That's the Soviets for you, they don't even respect animals!”

“What's all the fuss, husband? She was only a mutt, not even pedigreed,” Aunt Burgel replied without looking up from the pastry she was rolling out.

That unfortunate comment unleashed one of the worst fights the couple ever had. They spent all of Friday shouting at each other and hurling insults stored up during thirty years of married life. Among many other deplorable remarks, Rupert heard his wife confess for the first time that she had always detested the dogs; she was sick of raising and selling them, and she prayed every single one of the damned German shepherds would get distemper and die and get the hell out of her life. In turn, Burgel learned that her husband knew of an infidelity she had committed in her youth, but had not mentioned so they could live in peace. They said unthinkable things, and both ended in a state of collapse. When Rolf arrived Saturday at La Colonia, he found all the doors closed, and thought the family was down with the Asian flu that was taking its toll that season. Burgel was prostrate, lying on the bed with sweet-basil compresses on her forehead, and Rupert,
purple with rage, had locked himself in the carpentry shop with his bitches and fourteen whelps, and was methodically destroying all the cuckoo clocks he had built for the tourist trade. The cousins' eyes were swollen from crying. The girls had married their candlemakers, adding the delicious aroma of beeswax to their natural bouquet of cinnamon, clove, vanilla, and lemon. They lived on the street where they had lived as children, dividing the day between their own housekeeping and helping their parents with the hotel, chickens, and dogs. No one reacted to Rolf Carlé's excitement over his new movie camera or, as they usually did, begged to hear detailed accounts of his activities and the political unrest at the university. The argument had so radically disturbed the spirit of that tranquil home that for once he could not even pinch and nuzzle his cousins: they went around with long faces and failed to show any enthusiasm whatever for airing the eiderdowns in the unoccupied rooms. Sunday night Rolf returned to the capital, inflamed but celibate, wearing last week's dirty clothes, without the usual biscuits and sausages his aunt always packed in his suitcase, but with the uncomfortable sensation that a Muscovite bitch was more important in his family's eyes than he was. Monday morning he met
señor
Aravena for breakfast in a corner coffee shop near the newspaper office.

“Forget the damned dog and your aunt and uncle's tiff,” his mentor said, attacking the toothsome dishes that helped him begin a new day. “Something important's in the air.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There's going to be a popular election in a couple of months. It's all cut and dried, the General intends to govern another five years.”

“That's not news.”

“But this time he's going to get his ass reamed, Rolf.”

Just as predicted, a referendum was held shortly before Christmas, spearheaded by a publicity campaign that swamped the nation in noise, posters, military parades, and dedications of patriotic monuments. Rolf Carlé decided to do his work carefully and, within limits, with a degree of humility, beginning at the beginning and the bottom. Well in advance of the event, he began to gauge the situation, making the rounds of campaign offices and talking with officers of the armed forces, with workers and students. On election day, the streets were filled with the Army and the
guardia
, but very few citizens were seen at the polls; it looked like a country Sunday. It was announced that the General had won a crushing majority of eighty percent of the registered voters. The fraud was so brazen that instead of giving the desired effect it made the General look ridiculous. In the several weeks Carlé had spent snooping around, he had gathered a lot of useful information, which he delivered to Aravena with the brashness of a novice, hazarding in passing complex analyses of the political situation. Aravena listened with a sardonic air.

“It isn't that complicated, Rolf. The simple truth is, as long as the General was feared and hated, he had a firm grip on the reins of government, but as soon as he became an object of scorn, his power began to slip through his fingers. He'll be out of office before a month passes.”

All the years of tyranny had not abolished opposition to the dictatorship: a few unions still operated in the shadows; political parties, although they were illegal, had survived; and students never let a day go by without showing their discontent. Aravena contended that the masses had never determined the country's course, but only a handful of bold
and powerful men. The fall of the dictatorship, he believed, would come through a consensus of the élite, and the people, accustomed to a system of political bosses, would follow wherever they were led. He considered the role of the Catholic Church to be fundamental, because even though no one respected the Ten Commandments, and men bragged of being atheists as another expression of machismo, the Church continued to exercise enormous power.

“You should talk with the priests,” Aravena suggested.

“I already have. There is one group inciting the workers and middle class; according to them, the Bishops are going to accuse the government of corruption and repressive measures. When my Aunt Burgel went to confession after the argument with her husband, the priest reached under his cassock and passed her a handful of pamphlets to distribute in La Colonia.”

“What else have you heard?”

“That the opposition parties have signed a pact—they've finally banded together.”

“Then this is the moment to drive the wedge into the armed forces—divide them and stir up a revolt. The time is ripe, I can smell it,” said Aravena, lighting one of his strong Havanas.

From that day forward, Rolf Carlé was not content simply to register events; he used his contacts to advance the cause of the rebellion and at the same time to measure the moral strength of the opposition, which was spreading discontent among the soldiers. Students occupied schools and colleges, seized hostages, took over a radio station, and urged the people to come out into the streets. The Army was called out with specific orders to leave a harvest of corpses, but within a few days discontent had spread among many
officers and contradictory orders were being issued to the troops. The winds of conspiracy had begun to blow among them, too. The Man of the Gardenia reacted by flooding his cellars with new prisoners, whom he dealt with personally without disturbing a hair on his Beau Brummel head; but his brutality failed to slow the erosion of power. The country became ungovernable. Everywhere people were talking openly, liberated finally from the fear that had sealed their lips for so many years. Women smuggled weapons beneath their skirts; schoolboys slipped out at night to paint slogans on walls; and Rolf found himself one morning on the way to the university, carrying a load of dynamite sticks for a beautiful girl. He had fallen for her at first sight, but it was a passion that was never to be: she took the bag without so much as a thank-you, hurried away with the explosives over her shoulder, and he never heard from her again. A general strike was called: stores and schools closed; doctors refused to treat patients; priests bolted the church doors; the dead were left unburied. The streets were empty, and at night no one turned on a light; it was as if civilization had suddenly come to an end. Everyone was holding his breath, waiting, waiting.

The Man of the Gardenia left in his private plane to live in luxury in Europe, where he is today, very old but elegant still, writing his memoirs to set the record straight. The same day, the Minister of the bishop's plush chair escaped, carrying with him a large quantity of gold. They were not alone. Within a few hours, many whose consciences were less than clear fled by air, land, and sea. The strike did not last three days, however. Four captains reached an agreement with the political parties of the opposition; they enlisted their junior officers, and soon other regiments joined in, drawn to the conspiracy. The government fell, and the General, his coffers
overflowing, fled with his family and his closest collaborators in a military airplane put at his disposal by the Embassy of the United States. A throng of men, women, and children covered with the dust of victory rushed into the dictator's mansion and, while a black man played jazz on a white grand piano adjoining the terrace, they jumped into the swimming pool, turning the water to a human soup. The barracks of the Security Force was attacked. Guards defended it with machine-gun fire, but the mob broke down the doors and stormed the building, killing everyone in their path. The torturers were nowhere to be found; they must have hidden months before to avoid being lynched. The shops and homes of foreigners accused of having grown rich through the General's immigration policy were sacked. Liquor-store windows were shattered and bottles flowed into the street, passed from mouth to mouth to celebrate the end of the dictatorship.

Rolf Carlé did not go to bed for three days, filming events in the midst of frenzied mobs, automobile horns, street dances, and widespread drunkenness. He worked as if in a dream, with so little thought of himself that he forgot fear; he was the only person who dared carry his camera into the Security Force building to record firsthand the piles of dead and wounded, the dismembered agents, the prisoners set free from the infamous cellars of the Man of the Gardenia. He was also at the General's mansion to film the mobs destroying furnishings, slitting paintings, and dragging the First Lady's chinchilla coats and beaded ball gowns into the streets, and he was also present at the Palace when the new Junta composed of rebel officers and prominent citizens was formed. Aravena congratulated him for his work and gave him one last push by praising him at the television station,
where his daring reporting made him the most celebrated figure on the news broadcasts.

All the political parties joined in a conclave to outline the basis of an agreement; experience had taught them that if they cannibalized each other the only ones to benefit would again be the military. Exiled leaders tarried a few days before returning to establish themselves and begin to untangle the skein of power. In the interim, the economic right and the oligarchy, who had joined the rebellion at the very last moment, quickly moved in on the Palace and in a few hours had taken over the vital posts, apportioning them so astutely among themselves that when the new President took office, he realized that the only way he could govern was through compromise with them.

Those were confused days, but finally the dust settled, the noise diminished, and the first day of democracy dawned.

*  *  *

In many places people did not learn of the overthrow of the dictatorship because, among other things, they had not known that the General was in power all those years. They lived on the periphery of current events. All ages of history co-exist in this immoderate geography. While in the capital entrepreneurs conduct business affairs by telephone with associates in other cities on the globe, there are regions in the Andes where standards of human behavior are those introduced five centuries earlier by the Spanish conquistadors, and in some jungle villages men roam naked through the jungle, like their ancestors in the Stone Age. It was a decade that had witnessed great upheavals and marvelous discoveries, but for many it was no different from previous times. People are generous and forgive easily; there is no death penalty in
the nation, or life imprisonment, so that those who benefited from tyranny—collaborators, informers, secret agents of the Security Force—were soon forgotten.

The details of the news did not reach Agua Santa, so I did not learn what had happened until many years later when, out of curiosity, I was scanning the newspapers of the period. On that fateful day a fiesta was in progress, organized by Riad Halabí to raise funds to repair the school. It began early in the day with the blessing by the priest, who originally had been opposed to such festivities on the grounds they served as an excuse for betting, drinking, and knife fights, but who had taken a broader view when the school had been damaged in a recent storm. After the blessing came the election of the Queen, who was crowned by the mayor with a diadem of flowers and imitation pearls fashioned by the schoolteacher Inés; then later in the afternoon came the cockfights. Visitors came from nearby towns, and when someone with a portable radio interrupted, shouting that the General had fled and mobs were breaking into the prisons and butchering secret agents, people yelled at him to shut up, he was upsetting the gamecocks. The only person to give up his place was the chief of police, who left reluctantly to go to his office to communicate with his superiors in the capital and receive instructions. He returned a couple of hours later, saying that the whole damn thing was a tempest in a teapot; the government had fallen, but nothing had changed. So start up the music and dancing, and give me another beer, let's drink to democracy. At midnight Riad Halabí counted the money, handed it over to the schoolteacher Inés, and returned home, tired but happy, pleased that his project had not been in vain and a roof on the schoolhouse was assured.

“The dictatorship has collapsed,” I said the minute he
came in. I had spent the day looking after Zulema, who was suffering one of her crises, and I was waiting up for him in the kitchen.

“I know, child.”

“That's what they said on the radio. What does it mean?”

“Nothing that involves us. It happened a long way from here.”

Two years passed and democratic power was consolidated. With time only the taxi-drivers' union and a few military men felt any nostalgia for the dictatorship. Oil continued to flow with undiminished abundance from the depths of the earth, and no one was overly concerned about investing the profits, because at heart they believed the bonanza would last forever. At the universities, the same students who had risked their lives to topple the General felt betrayed by the new government, and accused the President of bowing to the interests of the United States. The triumph of the Cuban Revolution had sparked a fire storm of hopes across the continent. There men were changing the order of life, and their noble words were borne on the breeze. There was Che, born with a star on his forehead and prepared to fight in any remote area of America. Young men let their beards grow and memorized concepts of Karl Marx and phrases of Fidel Castro. If the conditions for revolution are not ripe, the true revolutionary must create them, is written in indelible letters on the walls of the university. Some, convinced that the people would never obtain power without violence, decided the moment had come to take up arms. That was the beginning of the guerrilla movement.