Horacio Castellanos Moya - Tyrant Memory

“The problem isn’t the arrival,” Mono Harris mutters, “it’s the departure.”

“Why?” Jimmy asks.

“There’s a National Guard post here at the hacienda, and everybody who flies out has to report to them, with their IDs. That’s the order.”

Clemen and Jimmy look at each other, taken aback.

“It can’t be.,” Clemen stammers, his mouth suddenly parched.

The three sit in silence.

“There’s got to be another way,” Jimmy mumbles.

Mono Harris leans over the table to pour himself another glass of whiskey; he looks increasingly concerned.

“Anyway,” he says, “no pilot is going to want to take you. Whoever does it won’t be able to come back. If he’s caught, he’s a dead man.”

“I’ll talk to Pepe and convince him!” Clemen shouts excitedly, as if he’d suddenly found the solution.

Mono Harris turns to look at him, now very serious, and sits up in his chair.

“I think,” he says, and takes a sip of whiskey before continuing, “the most prudent thing would be for nobody to know you’ve come here. Things are very ugly.”

“We found out about the executions on the train,” Jimmy says.

“They say the warlock is going to continue the executions, and you two are on the list of those sentenced to death.”

Clemen, pale, swallows hard; he drinks down the rest of his second whiskey.

“That’s why it would be best for us to leave right away,” Jimmy says. “Colonel Stuart is stationed at the base in Cosigüina; he was one of my instructors in Fort Riley. He knew about the coup, he gave us his support, and he told me that if I needed to retreat, I should go there.”

The atmosphere has turned leaden.

“I told you: there’s no way you can leave here by air.”

“There’s no other runway nearby?” Jimmy insists.

Mono Harris looks out the picture window: workers are loading bales of cotton onto a truck. He rubs his face with his hands, as if he had just woken up.

“The problem isn’t the runway,” he says. “If we make that flight, we risk the pilot, the airplane, we get the whole hacienda in trouble, and the ones who have to pick up the pieces are us, the owners, Juan and I, and we’ve already got enough problems with the warlock. He’s got us in his sights. It’s only because we are American citizens that he hasn’t fucked with us.”

“So?” Clemen asks, in anguish, squirming in his chair.

“So, we have to find another way out of this,” Mono Harris says, pensively. “I’m not going to throw you to the lions. Let me make a phone call.”

He stand up, shakes his head, and walks over to the telephone, on a table in the back of the room.

“Don’t mention our names, the lines are being tapped,” Jimmy warns.

“Of course not. Don’t worry.”

Clemen has poured himself another glass of whiskey and is compulsively taking little sips.

“You’re going to get drunk.,” Jimmy scolds him.

“Don’t fuck with me, you shit head, I don’t care if you are a bishop. What are we going to do now?”

At that moment Mono Harris says hello to Don Mincho on the phone, tells him in English that there are some cattle buyers who are very interested in seeing the herd on the island, says he trusts them completely and that they are interested in staying at the house for a few days, is that possible?

Jimmy and Clemen turn to look, their eyes narrowing.

“Perfect,” Mono Harris exclaims before hanging up.

He returns to the table; he empties his glass.

“What happened?” Jimmy asks, rubbing his hands together.

“Drink up and let’s go.”

“Where?” Clemen asks nervously.

“You, Jimmy, put on your cassock,” Mono Harris says, without paying any attention to Clemen’s question; he’s moving quickly, nervously. “You have to leave here exactly as you came: a priest and a sacristan.”

“I don’t understand,” Jimmy says. “What’s your plan?”

“I’m going to take you to Mincho’s island before those soldiers get back here looking for you. You’ll stay there a few days while we figure out a way to get you out of the country.”

“Can we take the whiskey?” Clemen asks, picking up the half-full bottle.

Mono Harris agrees with a nod.

Clemen puts the bottle in this knapsack.

“I’m going to pack you some clothes in another knapsack,” Mono Harris says, and he quickly disappears down the hallway leading to the bedrooms in the rear.

“What do you think?” Clemen asks.

Jimmy has put his cassock back on.

“If we can’t leave by air, we’ll have to find a way by land or by sea,” he says as he walks over to the window; at the back of the parking lot he sees a soldier standing in the shade of an almond tree, talking to the tractor driver.

Mono Harris returns with a knapsack.

“Leave that bottle,” he tells Clemen. “I put a full one here in the knapsack.”

“We can take both. ”

“No, you’d leave me with nothing. And I’m not going to town before tomorrow.”

Clemen takes out the bottle and places it on the table.

“If the soldiers come here asking for you, I’m going to have to say something,” Mono Harris says. “Did you tell them why you were coming here?”

“No,” Jimmy answers. “But if they’d asked me, I was planning to tell them I was sent here to check out the possibility of building a chapel.”

“Perfect,” Mono Harris says as he approaches the hat rack.

“I’m Father Justo and the mongoloid is called Don Tino,” Jimmy says, pointing at Clemen.

Mono Harris takes a gun out of the cupboard and slips it under his belt.

“You got another one for me?” Jimmy asks.

Mono Harris points to the knapsack.

“We’ll drive to the bay and from there we’ll take the boat to the island,” he says, as he walks to the door and takes some keys out of his pocket. “Along the way you’ll get rid of that cassock and turn into cattle buyers.”

They emerge into the boiling breath of the afternoon.

Tuesday, April 11

This morning in the cemetery they executed a young man named Víctor Manuel Marín. I didn’t know him, nor had I ever heard his name. They say he was one of the organizers of the coup, his brother is Lieutenant Alfonso Marín, one of the officers of the Second Artillery Regiment who held out against the counter-coup until the very end. Doña Chayito and Doña Julita, the mothers of Merlos and Cabezas, paid me a visit today; they brought me some delicious guava candy. Doña Chayito told me she knows the Marín family because Víctor Manuel worked at the Tax Collector’s Office, where her husband was the head accountant; she said the young man’s parents are devastated, especially because they discovered that he had been brutally tortured; they pulled out his nails, his teeth, and one eye, and they broke his arms and legs and had to prop him up on sawhorses so he could face the firing squad. According to Doña Chayito, Father León Montoya, who gave him extreme unction and visited his parents this morning to console them, confirmed that he suffered as much as Jesus on the cross. I shudder to think of it.

Doña Chayito also told me they have met with the mothers of other political prisoners, including those sentenced to death, and they came to invite me to join them at one of their next meetings. But we couldn’t continue the conversation because Raúl and Rosita, my neighbors, dropped by. It turns out Raúl is a professor in the same department where Doña Chayito’s son, Paquito Merlos, as they call him, is studying, and he is two years ahead of Chente. As Pericles always says, the world is as small as a handkerchief. As she was leaving, Doña Chayito told me she’d call me tomorrow to see if I would like to join them.