Horacio Castellanos Moya - Tyrant Memory

I’ve returned to my bedroom to rest for a while. Father is still out in the living room with his friends, drinking whiskey by candlelight, discussing the latest rumors, going over the names of the officers involved in the coup. I keep thinking about how worried Pati must be, how she’ll hear about all this so suddenly and not be able to get in touch with any of us; Betito is at the beach with his friends, perhaps without the slightest idea what is going on. And I think about Pericles, how uncertain things must be at the Central Prison, where, after all, God has seen fit to keep him safe, because if he had been at the Black Palace he would be at the mercy of the general’s fury. I will pray for this Holy Monday to be a good day, when at long last the spell that warlock has cast over our country and over all our lives will be broken.

Holy Monday, April 3

Today feels like the longest day of my life. I’m amazed I still have the strength to sit here and write, to consign to paper some of the events that are burning inside me as nothing ever has before. The coup failed. My fears became reality: the general took control again, the rebel officers surrendered, Clemen is in hiding, Pericles is still in prison in a very precarious situation, isolated, without any possibility of receiving anything from the outside world. I am home, unable to sleep, tormented by my fears; Betito is sleeping at his friend Henry’s house. Fortunately, the electricity and the telephone have been working normally since noon. Pati has called twice, the poor thing is in so much anguish, she even offered to get on a plane to come help me; I’m afraid all this stress will affect her pregnancy. I’ve also spoken to my mother-in-law, who told me with great sadness that if Clemen gets caught he is a dead man. Two plainclothes policemen have been watching the house since dusk; María Elena saw them when she came back from buying tortillas. In the streets, chaos and panic reign supreme.

Where, dear God, is my poor Clemen now? I have told myself not to think about him, that I must take him out of my mind or the anxiety will destroy me; I keep repeating to myself that there is nothing I can do for him, only God and fate can save him now. The last time we spoke was at one in the afternoon; I managed to get in touch with him at the radio station. He told me they had not lost hope that the infantry and artillery regiments could launch a decisive assault against the Black Palace, though he admitted that a defeatist attitude was beginning to take hold, many with him there at the station had begun to talk about the embassies where they would seek asylum if the coup failed. I asked him what he would do if that happened. He told me he still didn’t know, he was weighing his options, but I shouldn’t worry. He sounded exhausted, almost like a zombie; I assumed he had barely slept and that the excitement and the alcohol had taken their toll. By this time Father and his friends had already given the coup up for lost, he said the rebel officers had been remarkably idiotic: negotiating on the telephone with the Nazi warlock, trying to force him to surrender, when precisely the opposite was really going on — the general was the one tightening the screws on them. By then I had already found out that my father-in-law had publicly announced his full and unconditional support for the general and had angrily condemned Clemen’s actions.

So, the entire city is on tenterhooks, there’s no end to the rumors and hearsay: Colonel Tito Calvo was driving a tank through the streets bragging about how they were going to demolish police headquarters with cannon fire; the pilots had dropped bombs on purpose on the block of the Casino and the Teatro Colón because they didn’t really want to finish off the general, just give him a scare; the ambush of the general failed because the general had infiltrated the ranks of the rebel officers; many vagrants have been killed by gunfire in the vicinity of Parque Libertad; the Nazi warlock has made a pact with the devil, he conducted a black mass in the basement of the palace and will now execute all those who plotted against him; troops from Cojutepeque and San Vicente are marching to the capital from the east and have the support of the people along the way, and they have already taken back the garrison at the Ilopango Airport.

One horrible rumor is that the general lashed out yesterday against poor Don Jorge. They say that once he felt safe in the palace, the first thing he did was order Don Jorge to be tortured; he was then taken out of his cell and executed in the street, where his body was left as a warning to the rebels. It appears they shot Don Jorge and left him for dead, but he somehow managed to survive. Horrific. I’ve called his house to talk to Teresita, his wife, but the line is dead. I pray to God, please, make this be only a rumor.

I tried to get to the Central Prison early this morning, but the same checkpoint that stopped me yesterday was there again today. This afternoon, when it was already evident the rebels had lost, I attempted again, and finally I managed to get through. But it did me no good. Soldiers were surrounding the prison, still afraid of an assault by the rebel forces. I was carrying the basket of food for Pericles; I approached the casemate to ask them to call Sergeant Flores. In vain. Several groups of prisoners’ families were standing around outside; the guards had told them that everything was fine inside the prison, no visits were allowed until further notice, and they should leave, take themselves out of harm’s way. I recognized the mother of Merlos, one of Pericles’s cellmates; her eyes were red from crying, she was drying them with a handkerchief. I feared the worst. I was alarmed and asked her what had happened. She said she was afraid the general would now decide to execute the political prisoners, take his anger out on them. It was the same fear eating away at my insides. I told her what I tell myself: this cannot happen, her son and my husband are innocent, they have been locked up, they have had nothing to do with the plot, played no part in the coup, and had no responsibility for it. Then, when I stopped talking, an image of Clemen struck me full force. She saw it in my face, for she immediately said to me, “Let us pray to God that your son escapes.” I was on the verge of collapsing, crying my heart out right there in the middle of the street, in front of the guards who were watching us and the rest of the families; I felt a huge lump in my throat and two tears fell out of my eyes and down my cheeks. But I managed to control myself. I hastily said goodbye to Doña Chayito, that’s Merlos’s mother’s name, turned around, and made my way back home. After so many years with Pericles I have learned to hold back my tears. But what I didn’t let out in the street, I did at home, in my bedroom behind closed doors, until I felt that I didn’t have a single tear left inside me and that my husband was watching me, frowning severely.

A few minutes after three this afternoon, Father called the house to tell me the rebels had just surrendered. “That warlock broke the backs of those spineless sissies,” he said bitterly; he told me a white flag was flying over the barracks of the First Infantry Regiment. “The elation lasted less than twenty-four hours,” he said. I didn’t know where he was calling from, but I could hear his friends shouting in the background, they were surely drinking and bewailing the turn of events. He told me we now had to find a hiding place for Clemen, help him escape. He asked me if I had spoken to him in the last few hours. I recounted to him the conversation we’d had at one in the afternoon. Then he suggested that Betito stay with them, Mother was hoping he’d spend the night there, the worst thing would be if the warlock’s henchmen decided to take it out on him that his brother had participated in the coup; I told him Betito is at his friend Henry’s house, and he will stay there where he is safe. Father insisted I remain at home, in case Clemen called again. It wasn’t Clemen who called, though, but rather his wife, Mila; it was the third and last time I spoke to her today; she was completely out of her wits, ranting on and on, a whole litany of complaints, insulting Clemen for his total lack of responsibility. She said that neither she nor the children should have to pay the price for that exhibitionist getting mixed up in such stupidity just to impress his secretary at the station, whom she said is his lover. I “turned off the lights,” as Pericles calls it, when one’s mind simply departs from where it doesn’t want to be and doesn’t hear what it doesn’t want to hear, until I heard Mila say that if the general condemns my son to death, he deserves it. “You are talking nonsense, Milita, and you are going to regret it,” I said, and immediately asked her if she had spoken to Clemen in the last few hours. She answered that that “you-know-what” hadn’t called since noon, but that she had taken that opportunity to rub his face in how stupid she thinks he is, just look at what he’s done, even getting his own grandfather, Colonel Aragón, in trouble; she said she told him she’s going to ask for a divorce once everything settles down. I didn’t say a word: it never rains but it pours.