Much later, he felt he had the strength to sit up. The shadow had yielded not an inch. He groped about him in the darkness. Nothing. He moved his legs until he sensed they were without support.
His feet sought a footing. When he felt some contact, he sat for a moment on something he imagined to be a bed. He resolved to stand up.
His feet were not really a base of support. They were two stone wheels. He felt the floor moving under him, he was falling. He reached out with heavy arms and, still on his feet, but stumbling, fell against a flat surface. He tried to pull himself erect, clawing at that smooth space, and then growled with strange jubilation. The enormous head of mute cotton that had become Felix Maldonado was pressing against a cold, smooth surface, was returning to him a proof of life, moistness, a breath.
His extended arms girded the contours of the object that was holding him upright and breathing with him, upon him, at the same time he breathed. He feared it was something alive, another being embracing him, holding on to him to keep from falling down dead.
Suddenly the lights went on, and Felix saw the reflection of a mummy swathed in bandages, with no apertures but the holes for eyes, nose, and mouth.
14
NOW he was awakened by the clearly defined chink of glass against metal, familiar, unmistakable sounds, liquid being poured from a bottle, a spoon stirring the contents of a glass, rubber-soled shoes, tiny catlike footsteps squeaking on a composition floor.
Then he felt a painful jab on the inside of his forearm, and heard a woman’s voice: “Hold still. Please don’t move. Don’t move your arm. You must have your intravenous solution. You haven’t eaten in forty-eight hours.”
He moved the other arm, and touched his body. A sheet covered him from the stomach down, a shortsleeved gown above. He touched his head and realized it was still wrapped in bandages.
“I asked you to be still. I can’t find the vein. Since you can’t make a fist, it’s really hard.”
Felix Maldonado inhaled deeply, but identified only the aseptic and neutral scent of alcohol-soaked cotton and a lingering scent of chloroform that seemed to cling to the ceiling like a recalcitrant early-morning mist.
Then he smelled the odor of clove.
Desperately, Felix rolled his eyes in their irritated sockets. There was no one in his field of vision.
“Leave us alone, Lichita,” said Simon Ayub.
“His condition isn’t good at all. Don’t let him move his arm.”
“We’ll worry about him. He’s the one who doesn’t know how to take care of himself.” Felix heard a hollow, cutting laugh that was interrupted abruptly, severed like a thread. Felix moved his bandaged head, and through the tunnels of his vision saw the Director General sitting before him.
“Well, please be careful,” said the woman’s voice.
Felix tried to place that voice; he’d heard it somewhere, but the effort exhausted him. It wasn’t important. He supposed the woman was the nurse who’d been attending him during the forty-eight hours she’d alluded to earlier.
It didn’t matter, especially in view of the fact that he knew perfectly well who was in the room: Simon Ayub, outside his range of vision but, by the aroma of clove, certainly present, and the Director General, an unlikely presence in the echoing chamber of this sickroom, a hospital maybe. Tinted lenses could not contend with the glare from white-enameled walls assaulting the eyes of his superior, forcing him once and again to remove the pince-nez between thumb and index finger of his left hand to rub the dry eyes deprived of their protective penumbra.
“Lower the blinds, Ayub,” said the Director General, “and draw the curtains.”
Felix heard the corresponding movements. The Director General replaced the violet-colored glasses on the bridge of his nose and looked inquisitively at Felix. “For the moment, you cannot speak,” he said, when Ayub had darkened the room. “It’s better so. That will prevent you from asking unnecessary questions. I recall your disagreeable buffoonery when you came to my office. You thought you were the cock of the walk. Perhaps now you will listen to reason. I repeat that what we are doing is for your own good.”
Felix attempted to speak, but the sound emerged as a death rattle. Intimidated, he accepted his passive role. Simon Ayub laughed discreetly. Out of the corner of his eye, Felix thought he could see the Director seize Simon Ayub by the necktie. As he tugged him toward him like a marionette, Felix could clearly see the small Lebanese, his mouth grotesquely agape, brought to his knees before his chief.
“Don’t mock our friend,” said the Director General in a serene tone inconsistent with the violence of his action. “He’s been of service to us, and we’re going to prove to him how fond we are of him.”
He released Ayub and again stared intently at Felix. “Yes, you’ve been of service to us, but not in the discreet manner we would have desired. Do you object to my smoking?”
The Director General extracted an English cork-tipped cigarette from an engraved silver case.
“The day you came to my office, I asked to borrow your name. Merely borrow your name. But you felt obliged to intervene personally in a matter that did not concern you. You did only minor harm, and that can be corrected. That’s why you’re here, to correct the harm. Everything was planned, mmh? so that only your name would be guilty. You should have understood what was happening and accepted the arrangement we were offering you. That would have avoided any complications. I told you that in my office. I don’t like annoying details, prolonged negotiations; in sum, red tape. So. I’m going to tell you exactly what happened, n’est-ce pas? No more, no less. The facts. If you attempt to secure more information, you must assume the responsibility, and the risk. I warn you once again, mmh? You are not guilty of anything. But your name is.”
“You’re the guilty one,” Simon Ayub interjected angrily. “You should have prevented him from ever showing up at the ceremony at the Palace.”
“Ah, but the Licenciado, at heart, is overly sentimental.” The Director General smiled. “I agreed with Rossetti that the inevitable contretemps with Bernstein at Rossetti’s house would be sufficient to convince our friend to absent himself, n’est-ce pas? out of decency or pride or simple temper, from the ceremony honoring the professor. But no, by heaven! His gratitude and warm memories as one of Bernstein’s former students prevailed, instead.”
“You’re out of your head!” Ayub laughed. “He went out of pure vanity. He wanted to shake hands with the President.”
“Doubtless,” continued the Director General, overlooking the impertinence, “at this instant our friend is asking himself whether in fact the highest official in our nation recognized him and offered him his hand, n’est-ce pas?”
“What he must be asking is why you always call him ‘our friend’ instead of addressing him by name.” Ayub was being sarcastic.
The Director General exhaled a mouthful of smoke into Felix’s face. It drifted in through the holes in the bandages, and Felix coughed painfully.
“Don’t treat him so rough,” said Ayub in a tone of mock seriousness, smothering his laughter. “Remember what the nurse told us? His condition isn’t good at all.”
“Well, my friend,” the Director General continued. “There wasn’t time. The President never reached you. How shall I explain it? There was an accident. An instant before he reached you, there was a shot. The President’s security agents shielded him with their bodies, forcing him to his knees. A sight never witnessed before that moment, if you’ll allow me to express my amazement, mmh? In the confusion that followed, all eyes were on the President, who rose with dignity, brushing aside his zealous bodyguards, and murmured some obligatory phrase, I die for Mexico, or, They can kill me but they can’t kill the fatherland, something of the sort, n’est-ce pas? I imagine every chief of state has some bon mot prepared for the fatal moment.”