Guillermo Rosales - Leapfrog and Other Stories

“Besides, the police are looking for you,” Coro said.

“That’s not true,” Danilo denied. “I’ve never had problems with the police.”

“Do you believe in chiromancy, Mr. Castellanos?”

“I’ve never thought about it.”

“Let’s see, come closer, give me your hands. Through your hands, I will know everything you were, are, and will be.”

Danilo Castellanos gave his hands over to the little man, and he felt him begin to study them with his fingers.

“An intellectual,” Coro started to say. “You have no children, no wife, no house. And I maintain that you are being pursued by the police. Now I’d like to know: for political reasons?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Danilo was obstinate. “I’ve never had any problems with the law.”

It was then that the little man’s squalid hands grabbed his wrists and began to squeeze with such pressure that Danilo fell to the ground whimpering like a child.

“Who are you, brute?” Cora said with a suddenly sinister voice.

“I am Danilo Castellanos, history teacher at Simón Bolivar high school, I am running from the police because I fear I killed my aunt.”

“A vulgar criminal!” Coro exclaimed, releasing him at once, his face full of contempt. “That’s not what I need in my bunker. I want political men. Do you understand? Principled people who are always ready to give their lives for their homeland. But you are a vulgar old-lady murderer.”

“It’s not like that,” Danilo clarified. “I didn’t kill her with my hands. I accidentally pushed her and she hit her head against the bathtub. In reality, I’m a thief.”

“Thieves won’t overthrow Cornelio Rojas. You’re not useful to me, either.”

“In all truth, I’ve never stolen. I only did so to get three thousand pesos and to hire a boat to leave the country. That’s a political act.”

“Leave the country? That’s something rats do. This is a crucial time when you, more than ever, must stay in the country and fight the dictatorship. Everyone wants to leave the country! No one is capable of mustering up the courage to blow the tyrant’s brains out like Brutus and Zeno of Elea did in their time. Those were men. Real men. Would you fire against Cornelio Rojas if you had him in front of you?”

Danilo hesitated before responding.

“I’ve never killed anyone. But the tyrant, I think I would.”

“You’ll have time enough to prove it,” Coro said with a prophetic air. And then he called, “Madame!”

A very beautiful woman, dressed in a see-through negligee, appeared from behind a closet door.

“What do you think of this, Madame?” Coro inquired.

The Madame studied Danilo’s appearance for a while. Then she asked, “Is your penis short or long?”

Flushed, Danilo responded, “Average. I’m an average guy.”

“We don’t admit anyone here who has less than seven inches.”

“That’s what I have.”

“Do you have money?”

“No.”

“You’re lying.”

Then the woman called out, “Whitey!” And through a side door, came an ugly, heavyset man with a garrote in his hands.

“Check him, Whitey.”

It was like being on a butcher counter. The big man took Danilo as if he were a ragdoll, and turned him over, felt him all over, took off his clothes, and proceeded to examine them with extreme meticulousness. In the back pocket of his pants, he found the roll of bills, a gold locket, a pocket watch, also gold, and some diamond earrings. He put everything in front of Coro and, after bowing, took his spot in a corner of the room.

“Was there money, Madame?” Coro asked.

“A fortune!” The woman exclaimed, feeling the booty with lecherous hands. “More than nine thousand pesos in bills and about five thousand in jewels.”

“A gift from God,” Coro opined. “That means our bunker will be able to survive for many more months. Regarding Mr. Danilo, let him stay. He doesn’t have the nerve of an assassin, but perhaps he’ll be infected by the spirit of combat that exists in this house. Let the others come!”

The Madame left the room and quickly returned with a small troop of two men and two women. There was the elusive Melanio Webster, whom Coro introduced as the future minister of propaganda after the fall of Cornelio Rojas. At Coro’s insistence, that unimportant-looking little man demonstrated what he did daily in dark movie theaters, public bathrooms, deserted alleyways, and vacant plazas where there was no one watching. His art consisted of wetting a rubber stamp in a small pillow soaked in red ink, and sticking it on any surface until the slogan “Death to Cornelio Rojas” was left imprinted. He had never been caught, but if that should ever happen, he had a cyanide pill as a precautionary measure in his pocket to avoid humiliating blows and brutal interrogations. Then Coro introduced Manzano the poet, a black man dressed in an old frock coat, which despite its being ripped and wrinkled he wore with great dignity. He would become head of the country’s union of writers and artists, after the fall of Cornelio Rojas. According to Coro, that black man was as good as Rilke and had written more than two hundred battle hymns, cursing Cornelio Rojas and extolling Coro. He also made us a succinct demonstration of his virtues, singing admirably in a tenor’s voice:

“Through lands of gold, I’ve walked without sorrow

and everywhere I found people that be

in their entirety, completely free,

paying homage to Hermenegildo Coro.”

The third person Coro introduced was Nefertiti, a teenager with a sensual face, dressed in a shiny cloak that covered her from the neck to her feet. She was an exotic dancer in the capital’s clandestine bars and was famous for moving her hips and gyrating her body with more dexterity than Josephine Baker. Many men had offered her their fortunes to spend a night with her, but that young girl rejected money — for handing herself over, her only condition was that the man must have the courage to join the conspiracy to kill Cornelio Rojas. As soon as they heard that, the most braggadocio of men would quickly distance themselves from her and would never proposition her again. She was, therefore, a virgin. Although when it came to masculine genitals, she had been an expert with her mouth since the age of eleven. She also gave a brief demonstration of her art, removing her cloak slowly and dancing a few steps completely nude before Danilo’s bulging eyes.

“That’s enough!” Coro grumbled from his desk, bitter because his blindness prevented him from seeing the magnificent show.

“Get dressed and go to the foyer to await orders.”

Nefertiti put on her cloak quickly and left the room, but not before going over to Coro and giving his thigh an electrifying caress.

“My big, big boy,” she said in his ear. “Your every word is sacred to me.”

And she left. Coro remained in his chair, his shoulders slumped, looking toward the ceiling with an expression of intense sadness.

“Cossack.,” he then said: “Go see what Cornelio Rojas is doing right now.”

The disheveled woman took a compact from between her breasts, and opened it with the utmost care. Then, she took out a cotton ball that she wet with saliva, and rubbed it three times over the oval-shaped mirror. After a few seconds of complete concentration, the woman informed him:

“Now, I see Cornelio Rojas on a luxurious yacht, surrounded by young, semi-clad women, who are fighting among themselves to put lotion on his thighs and shoulders and to comb his beard.”

“The vile man!” Coro said, in a rage. “That yacht should’ve been mine. Those women belong to me. He stole everything from me! This revolution was mine, mine. Do you understand, Mr. Danilo Castellanos? I was the strongman who was going to come to power thirty-two years ago. Cornelio Rojas was no more than a lady-in-waiting to whom I transmitted my wisdom and political projects from a little plaza set beside the University’s law school. Back then, I wasn’t blind. It was enough for me to stare firmly at men for them to obey me without hesitation. I already had a clandestine army of fifty young men willing to die for me. I had already developed the plan to attack the presidential palace and execute President Estrada. The date for the action had been set. And one day, Mr. Castellanos, when I was alone in that same little plaza, pondering the final touches of our attack, a masked son of a bitch — surely Cornelio Rojas himself — came out from behind some trees and, with two fingers as hard as nails, took my eyes out in one blow. I was left blind. Do you understand, Castellanos? Blind!” As he said this, Coro removed his dark glasses and showed Danilo his horrible, empty sockets that still oozed blood.