Horacio Castellanos Moya - Tyrant Memory

Write no more poems, you say? You are mad, I suspect

as if such a thing were nothing to request.

I can never please you, try as I will.

As if you’d asked death to no longer kill.

As if you’d wished the babe in my womb

to remain forever as if in a tomb.

My verse is the offspring of a homicidal pain.

It’s a beautiful poem, though of course I prefer the ones Pericles has written for me. A little while ago, surrounded by the silence of this somber night, I reread them and felt so wistful. The ones he wrote when he was courting me bring back so many memories, but I am more moved by those he wrote during the first year of our marriage. There are many of them, I’ve realized, now that I have gone over each one, written with green ink on marble-colored sheets folded carefully and duly sealed. It’s so vivid to me, how each time he gave me one he would repeat that it was a gift for me alone, nobody else should read it, and they should never be published, each poem is something exclusive, personal, between him and me. This idea is so deeply ingrained in me, I would not even dare to transcribe one into this diary; it would be a betrayal of him.

I spent all afternoon and part of the night with Mother. We joined the Holy Burial procession for a spell, then returned home. The Club, the Casino, and the Círculo Militar remain closed by order of the general; neither parties nor family gatherings are allowed without prior authorization; a bit more and they’ll forbid the processions. The secret police have been given carte blanche; they are everywhere, listening, spying, even at today’s procession, where they were easily recognizable and it was all people could do not to jeer at them, they were so indiscreet; the ones keeping watch on the house are still there, prowling around. “The man” must be very frightened; we are more so.

María Elena came to tell me that this has been the saddest Good Friday of her life; I feel the same way. She went to the procession as well, with her cousin Ana, who has to sleep alone at Clemen’s house every night, with the doors locked, trembling with fear, terrified that the police will burst in and rape her. Poor dear. I told María Elena to suggest that she come sleep with her here, but she says that Mila won’t allow the house to be left alone. And I don’t have the strength to take the chance of my daughter-in-law being rude to me.

Holy Saturday, April 8

I had a terrible shock this afternoon before leaving for the procession of the Virgin: the colonel showed up at the house without warning. My father-in-law comes to San Salvador under only extraordinary circumstances usually related to his work; at seventy years old, he says traveling aggravates him, puts his nerves on edge. He came to attend a meeting of regional leaders called by the general. He was here for about fifteen minutes, sitting in Pericles’s rocking chair on the porch facing the patio. I was on my guard, watchful, knowing the colonel doesn’t pay courtesy visits; he came solely for the purpose of telling me something. He accepted the glass of tamarind juice I offered him; Nerón came to lie down at his feet. He asked after Pericles; I told him that he is well, that tomorrow I will be able to see him again. He bewailed Clemen’s “stupidity,” that’s what he called it, and said I should pray to God they don’t capture my son; I told him we should all pray for that. He said he would like to be able to do that, but God no longer listens to his prayers. Nerón got up and went out to the patio, suddenly, as if he smelled danger in the air. Then, with no further ado, he came right out with it: the war council will meet, and Clemen will most likely be sentenced to death. I felt as if I had been stabbed in the chest; I was in shock. Then I reacted: I told him my son is a civilian, and war councils are for trying military officers. Not if the charge is treason, he muttered, clearing his throat. I told him what I had heard about the offers of amnesty, the guarantees of mercy. “You, more than anybody, Haydée, know how the general reacts in these situations,” he said categorically. Then I remembered the final days of January 1932, when Pericles would return exhausted from the Presidential Palace, very late at night, and recount his conversations with “the man” regarding the fates of Martí and the other leaders of the communist revolt who would soon be executed. “It’s them or us,” I murmured, my voice shaking, because those were the words the general had used when Pericles asked him if he was going to reconsider the sentence. My father-in-law took a sip of his tamarind drink. I asked him, horrified, if he would participate in the council, if that’s why he had come to the city. He told me he wouldn’t, it wasn’t his duty for he did not belong to that particular organizational structure of the army, nor did the general need to have him undergo a loyalty test of that kind. I asked him if he could do anything to prevent that sentence; he barely even bothered to shake his head. He stood up with some difficulty and said he had to go. As we walked through the living room, I asked him when the council was going to convene; he said he did not know exactly, but soon, very soon, once the holy days were over. I watched him walk to his car, he looked older, with the stiffness of somebody long accustomed to hiding his sorrow. I managed to reach the sofa, where I collapsed, I was a wreck, the tears welling up, forming a lump in my throat. María Elena came to comfort me, she must have guessed what I had just heard.

Father returned to the city late in the afternoon: he said a group of soldiers had come to the finca on Wednesday looking for Clemen; they interrogated the workers, entered the manor house, searched the entire property, then spent the night in a nearby hamlet, where María Elena’s family lives; the next morning they came back and scoured the entire property with a fine-tooth comb, asking about caves or possible hideouts. They found nothing, but they threatened the peons. Father told me that several acquaintances who participated in the coup have crossed the border into Guatemala, also some of his fellow coffee growers are on the lam, afraid of the Nazi warlock’s rage. I asked him if Clemen has managed to cross the border; he said we would have heard if he had. That’s when I told him about the colonel’s visit and what he told me. He left the house immediately to go see his friends, to tell them of the tribulations that await us.

At the procession I spent some time talking to Angelita, Jimmy’s mother. She was with Linda and Silvia, her two daughters, both of whom married quite well and are staying with her during this difficult period; she was widowed ten years ago when Dr. Ríos died, and her other son, Salvador, is a seminary student in Rome. I didn’t want to bring up the war council, as it serves no purpose other than to make someone else worried about what is inevitable anyway. But she already knew. For a short stretch we carried a heavy statue of the Virgin, and we said several rosaries during the procession so that our sons would avoid capture. Angelita harbors the hope that the American military will defend Jimmy if he falls into the general’s hands: Jimmy did a course at the Infantry and Cavalry School in Kansas, then he was stationed for another semester at a base in Laredo; the poor boy returned to El Salvador to rejoin the army only nine months ago. I expressed my doubts about the Americans sticking their necks out for an individual. But Angelita whispered in my ear that she is certain that if Jimmy got involved in the coup, it was with the approval of the American military, she knows for a fact that her son met frequently with Mr. Massey, the embassy’s military attaché, with whom he enjoys a close friendship. That’s when I noticed a spy circling around closer and closer, not taking his eyes off us; I warned Angelita. We resumed our prayers.