Guillermo Rosales - Leapfrog and Other Stories

“Enter, Cornelio Rojas!”

Whitey came in dressed in a uniform very similar to the one Cornelio Rojas always wore. All of them started to applaud and to yell “Cornelio, Cornelio, we love Cornelio!”

Whitey moved forward with very short steps and paraded in front of Coro, waving and smiling. Then he passed in front of Cossack and the Madame, who threw kisses at him with the tips of their fingers. He passed in front of Manzano the poet, before Melanio, before Nefertiti, but when he passed before Danilo, the latter took the pistol from his hip and planted himself in front of Whitey with a face full of hate.

He was supposed to imitate the shots with his mouth, but Danilo’s rage was such and he was playing the role with so much passion, that he pulled the pistol’s trigger and the bullet wounded Whitey in the foot.

“Fool! Fool!” Coro howled when he heard the shot. “You shot for real. You wounded Whitey. And what’s worse, the noise could have been heard by anyone. You, Cossack, go to the window and see if there are any busybodies milling about. You, Madame, tend to Whitey’s wound however you can. And you, Castellanos, give me that pistol. I’ll give it back to you a few minutes before we go to action. You’re a fool.”

Cossack went out to the street and came back with disturbing news. There was a patrol car on the corner, and the police kept looking at the house.

“Fine,” Coro said, bitterly. “They’ve discovered us. It’s this bunker’s last hour. We made an oath one day and will see it through now. We’ll die before we become Cornelio Rojas’s prisoners.”

Then, Coro took a bottle of white pills out of the drawer and started handing them out one by one to the bunkers members.

“Cyanide,” Coro said when he gave Danilo his pill. “Don’t swallow it. Don’t chew it. Just let it dissolve in your mouth. In five seconds we will all die.”

Danilo took the pill with an air of seriousness, and accepted that there was no possible alternative. Through his mistake, the assassination would not be carried out. That was what bothered him so intensely. Much more than dying of poison.

Coro took his pill with two fingers and gave the last order of his life,

“Ready? Set? Go!”

And they all put the pills in their mouths and waited, livid and silent, for death’s arrival. Ten, fifteen, thirty seconds passed, until Coro let out another one of his terrible guffaws and exclaimed, “Gentlemen, what a bunker I have here! What loyalty to your principles! What courage under fire! Don’t worry, comrades, it was just aspirin. But keep in mind that someday if the police dare to enter this room, they will only find the corpses of nine courageous people.”

Cossack dispelled any remaining tension when she went back out to the street and returned with the news that the patrol car had left.

“God is with us,” Coro said. “You, Madame, put on some music. You, Nefertiti, dance for everyone. May these last hours be filled with enjoyment and happiness. Rum! Bring the rum!”

Again, it was Cossack who left the room and came back dragging a box of liquor.

“Hand it out, hand it out,” Coro said. “Let everyone drink, let everyone laugh, let everyone fornicate.”

An hour later, Coro’s room looked like a Roman hall in the time of Caligula. Salsa music was playing, the people were emptying bottles in three swigs and opening more. Manzano the poet was rolling around in the corner with Cossack. The Madame was riding Coro’s flanks completely naked. Melanio Webster, Whitey, and Danilo watched Nefertiti’s striptease in fascination, as she moved her hips with more panache than the fabulous Tongolele. Thus, dancing, the adolescent girl went over to Danilo and started to remove his shirt.

“Macho, macho man. Do you swear that tomorrow you will kill that infamous Cornelio Rojas?”

“The die is cast.” Danilo responded with conviction.

“Then take me, my King. Make me remember you forever.”

They both fell down on a bed of old newspapers and Danilo, his penis hard as an elephant hunter’s sword, broke Nefertiti’s resistant membrane with one resolute push and merged with her in a bloody, but delicious, embrace, that reached an other-worldly delirium as the girl contorted her hips on the floor like a lusty salamander.

Thus they spent the last night, until six in the morning when Coro woke them all up with the national anthem blasting on the radio, and the exciting news that there were only five hours left for the country’s history to take a 180 degree turn.

“Danilo, macho man, do you still have your courage?”

“Give me the pistol,” Danilo answered firmly.

Coro gave him the weapon and Danilo felt it once more at his hip, again transmitting a pleasant sensation of power. He studied the chamber and counted nine bullets. If just one of them entered Cornelio’s head, that would be enough. And if Qaddafi misbehaved, another bullet would be for him.

The Madame turned up the volume on the battery-operated radio and the announcer’s voice came on again, informing them that there were more than a million people lined up along the streets through which the convoy would pass.

“Grab your flag and your poster and show up at this act of international solidarity. Let’s show the world that our revolution is invincible and that our people march with conviction alongside our Maximum Leader.”

“They must’ve left the capital building already,” Coro reasoned. “Traveling fifteen miles an hour, it’s possible they’ll pass by the fatal corner at noon. What time is it?”

“Nine,” the Madame said.

“Well,” Coro summarized. “We’ll leave here at eleven. You, Danilo, the most macho of all machos, do you have a final wish?”

“Yes. I want to bathe, put on clean clothes, and, if possible, shave and put on a lot of cologne.”

“Madame,” Coro said. “Make sure you give him a good bath. Look in the closet for some clean shirts and look for a bottle of Brut cologne among my belongings.”

The Madame took Danilo by the arm and led him gently to one of the bathrooms, the cleanest one, since the others were clogged and the toilets overflowed with filth.

“You manly man,” the Madame said once they were both in the bathroom. “What an honor to bathe you, you who will make me free in two hours. Can I kiss your wee-wee?”

“Do it,” Danilo said. He was terse, had a vague look on his face and the nervous tic in his eyes had come back along with the ulcer pain.

“I’m going to die, dammit,” Danilo whispered.

“You will never die completely,” the Madame said as she began to soap him up with a sponge.

“Ferryman, ferryman. all of it is the fault of that damned ferryman.”

“Has your resolve weakened again? Are you feeling afraid again?”

“No,” Danilo said. And he repeated, firmly, “The die is cast.”

Once he was dry, dressed and perfumed, he took the beautiful pistol in his hands and thought about the most unfortunate events of his life. He couldn’t find one day of happiness among his memories. Cornelio Rojas had robbed him of thirty years of freedom. Thirty years in which he had imposed the law of his balls on the people and had crushed all rebellion.

No, Danilo wasn’t feeling cowardly. Rather, he was impatient to have the tyrant before him to empty the contents of the pistol into his head.

“You look so handsome!” the Madame said when she saw him dressed up and coiffed. “You look worthy of a photo.”

“I don’t want any photos. What I want is for all of this to happen quickly, and that my death be immediate. But only after seeing him fall over with a bullet in his head.”

“That’s how real men talk,” the Madame said. “Come on, let’s go back to Coro’s room.”