Junot Díaz - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Well.

It was nothing but a simple encounter. The fight she had with La Inca upon her return was far more significant—La Inca waiting up for her with a belt in her hand—and when Beli stepped into the house, worn out from dancing, La Inca, lit by the kerosene lamp, lifted the belt in the air and Beli’s diamond eyes locked on to her. The primal scene between daughter and mother played out in every country of the world. Go ahead, Madre, Beli said, but La Inca could not do it, her strength leaving her. Hija, if you ever come home late again you’ll have to leave this house, and Beli saying, Don’t worry, I’ll be leaving soon enough. That night La Inca refused to get into bed with her, sleeping in her rocking chair, not speaking to her the next day either, going off to work by herself: her disappointment looming above her like a mushroom cloud. No question: it was her madre she should have been worried about, but for the rest of that week Beli found herself instead brooding on the stupidity of that gordo azaroso who (in her words) had ruined her whole night. Almost every day she found herself recounting the details of the confrontation to both the car dealer and Arquimedes, but with each telling she added further outrages which were not exactly true but seemed accurate in spirit. Un bruto, she called him. Un animal. How dare he try to touch me! As though he were someone, ese poco hombre, ese mamahuevo!

So he hit you? The car dealer was trying to pin her hand down to his leg but failing. Maybe that’s what I need to do.

And you’d get exactly what he got, she said.

Arquimedes, who had taken to standing in a closet while she visited him (just in case the secret police burst in), pronounced the Gangster a typical bourgeois type, his voice reaching her through all that fabric that the car dealer had bought her (and which Beli stored at his place). (Is this a mink fur? he asked her. Rabbit, she said morosely.)

I should have stabbed him, she said to Constantina.

Muchacha, I think he should have stabbed you .

What the hell do you mean?

I’m just saying, you talk about him a whole lot.

No , she said hotly. It’s not like that at all.

Then stop talking about him. Tina glanced down at a pretend watch. Five seconds. It must be a record.

She tried to keep him out of her mouth but it was hopeless. Her forearm ached at the oddest of moments and she could feel his hangdog eyes on her everywhere.

The next Friday was a big day at the restaurant; the local chapter of the Dominican Party was having an event and the staff busted their ass from early to late. Beli, who loved the bustle, showed some of her magis for hard work, and even José had to come out of the office to help cook. José awarded the head of the chapter with a bottle of what he claimed was ‘Chinese rum’ but which in fact was Johnnie Walker with the label scraped off. The higher echelons enjoyed their chow fun immensely but their campo underlings poked at the noodles miserably and asked over and over if there was any arroz con habichuelas, of which of course there was none. All in all the event was a success, you never would have guessed there was a dirty war going on, but when the last of the drunks was shuffled onto his feet and ushered into a cab, Beli, feeling not the least bit tired, asked Tina: Can we go back?

Where?

To El Hollywood.

But we have to change—

Don’t worry, I brought everything.

And before you know it she was standing over his table.

One of his dinner companions said: Hey, Dionisio, isn’t that the girl que te dío una pela last week? The bailer nodded glumly. His buddy looked her up and down. I hope for your sake she’s not back for a rematch. I don’t think you’ll survive.

What are you waiting for, the bailer asked. The bell?

Dance with me. Now it was her turn to grab him and drag him onto the pista.

He might have been a dense slab of tuxedo and thew, but he moved like an enchantment. You came looking for me, didn’t you?

Yes, she said, and only then did she know.

I’m glad you didn’t lie. I don’t like liars. He put his finger under her chin. What’s your name? She tore her head away. My name is Hypatia Belicia Cabral. No, he said with the gravity of an old-school pimp. Your name is Beautiful.

How much Beli knew about the Gangster we will never know. She claims that he only told her he was a businessman. Of course I believed him. How was I supposed to know different?

Well, he certainly was a businessman, but he was also a flunky for the Trujillato, and not a minor one. Don’t misunderstand: our boy wasn’t no ring wraith, but he wasn’t no orc either.

Due partially to Beli’s silence on the matter and other folks’ lingering unease when it comes to talking about the regime, info on the Gangster is fragmented; I’ll give you what I’ve managed to unearth and the rest will have to wait for the day the páginas en blanco finally speak.

The Gangster was born in Samaná at the dawn of the twenties, the fourth son of a milkman, a bawling, worm-infested brat no one thought would amount to na’, an opinion his parents endorsed by turning him out of the house when he was seven. But folks always underestimate what the promise of a lifetime of starvation, powerlessness, and humiliation can provoke in a young person’s character. By the time the Gangster was twelve this scrawny, unremarkable boy had shown a resourcefulness and fearlessness beyond his years. His claims that the Failed Cattle Thief had ‘inspired’ him brought him to the attention of the Secret Police, and before you could say SIM-salabim our boy was infiltrating unions and fingering sindicatos left and right. At age fourteen he killed his first ‘comunista,’ a favor for the appalling Felix Bernardino↓ and apparently the hit was so spectacular, so fucking chunky , that half the left in Baní immediately abandoned the DR for the relative safety of Nueva York. With the money he earned he bought himself a new suit and four pairs of shoes.

≡ Felix Wenceslao Bernardino, raised in La Romana, one of Trujillo’s most sinister agents, his Witchking of Angmar. Was consul in Cuba when the exiled Dominican labor organizer Mauricio Báez was mysteriously murdered on the streets of Havana. Felix was also rumored to have had a hand in the failed assassination of Dominican exile leader Angel Morales (the assassins burst in on his secretary shaving, mistook the lathered man for Morales, and shot him to pieces). In addition, Felix and his sister, Minerva Bernardino (first woman in the world to be an ambassador before the United Nations), were both in New York City when Jesús de Galíndez mysteriously disappeared on his way home at the Columbus Circle subway station. Talk about Have Gun, Will Travel . It was said the power of Trujillo never left him; the fucker died of old age in Santo Domingo, Trujillista to the end, drowning his Haitian workers instead of paying them.

From that point on, the sky was the limit for our young villain. Over the next decade he traveled back and forth to Cuba, dabbled in forgery, theft, extortion, and money laundering—all for the Everlasting Glory of the Trujillato. It was even rumored, never substantiated, that our Gangster was the hammer-man who slew Mauricio Baez in Havana in 1950. Who can know? It seems a possibility; by then he’d acquired deep contacts in the Havana underworld and clearly had no compunction about slaying motherfuckers. Hard evidence, though, is scarce. That he was a favorite of Johnny Abbes and of Porfirio Rubirosa there can be no denying. He had a special passport from the Palacio, and the rank of major in some branch of the Secret Police.

Skilled our Gangster became in many a perfidy, but where our man truly excelled, where he smashed records and grabbed gold, was in the flesh trade. Then, like now, Santo Domingo was to popóla what Switzerland was to chocolate. And there was something about the binding, selling, and degradation of women that brought out the best in the Gangster; he had an instinct for it, a talent—call him the Caracaracol of Culo. By the time he was twenty-two he was operating his own string of brothels in and around the capital, owned houses and cars in three countries. Never stinted the Jefe on anything, be it money, praise, or a prime cut of culo from Colombia, and so loyal was he to the regime that he once slew a man at a bar simply for pronouncing El Jefe’s mother’s name wrong. Now here’s a man, El Jefe was rumored to have said, who is capaz .