On the west patio, the Presidente-in-Exile prowls through the newspaper. The sun has just broken the ridge high above the villa. It is light and already warm. “Buen desayuno, patrón,” Cook murmurs as she places the tray before him. He rattles his paper. He does not speak to Cook, who came with the villa. She retreats, returns to the kitchen to prepare luncheon. Guests are expected today — that Italian, Bettinger, and some others from the bank. No breakfast for the mistress. A late sleeper, Dinorah has yet to see the sun rise in Paraguay.
The Presidente-in-Exile repasts. He snaps a page of El Diario. There’s been nothing about him lately, thank Christ. Since his arrival fourteen months ago, the Asunción dailies have cut him no slack. Every indiscretion is rooted out and blown out of proportion — shopping sprees, drunken romps, shoving matches with cops and maître d’s, public squabbles with Dinorah. The trivia of his life as a private citizen is made public, laid out to be probed and pawed at. They went through his garbage once, and the guards caught them red-handed, knocked them around a bit, and that was reported — brutal suppression of the press or some such bullshit. Last year the service main in the street burst, leaving him without water for days. He called Stroessner in a fury to complain, to simply get it taken care of. The papers reported that he called the president of Paraguay to fix his plumbing. They hate him here. They think him arrogant and crass. They think he “sullies the dignity of the Republic.” Sullies! That’s what the papers have said! And Stroessner is no fan, either; otherwise he wouldn’t let them write that shit. But Stroessner has extended his protection. And Stroessner has been well paid. But they do hate him here.
Well, fuck them. He hates them, too.
He works on his grapefruit, browses the paper. There is a full-page ad with the banner headline DO YOU RECOGNIZE THIS MAN? It offers a reward for information on the whereabouts of Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele. The Presidente-in-Exile snorts, flips the page. Sully my balls! Dignity of the Republic, my ass! Hideout for Nazis, haven for cocaine kings. There is an opinion piece by an undersecretary of the Ministry of the Interior railing against the feral dog population and concluding with an appreciation of the dictator Francia, who in 1840 ordered every dog in Paraguay killed. And there is an item buried in Business Briefs, a report on unanticipated delays with a hydroelectric project down on the Argentine border, involving work stoppages and a cement embargo. Bettinger’s little venture — some kind of deal with the unions that will work to his financial advantage. Leave it to Bettinger: The bitch is prone. The Presidente-in-Exile lets El Diario’s pages spill to the ground. He looks at his watch. He spoons the guts of his egg onto the cottage cheese, picks up the Ry-Krisp, and pushes it all into his mouth. He licks his fingers and wipes them with the napkin. He tosses back the orange juice and smacks his lips. “Ahhh!” He stands up, tucks the Times under his arm; it is air-expressed from São Paolo every morning and delivered to the villa from the airport by taxicab.
He strolls across the patio, then stops short. Something flits into the edge of his vision, and he turns. He spots it, hovering, then alighting upon the ground. He approaches. It is some kind of insect, a big one. Thin, translucent wings spanning half a foot shimmer and iridesce in morning light. Perpendicular to these, a thorax over seven inches long inscribes in the air a slender and delicate arc of the deepest red — the red of arterial blood, of crème de cassis and rubies and the juice of roasted meat. It is a helicopter damselfly, the rarest of the order Odonata in all the world, and far from its range in southwest Brazil. The Presidente-in-Exile would not know this. He bends down, eyes narrowed. “What the fuck,” he mutters, for he has never in his life seen anything like it. He peers intently, seemingly making a study of this rare and exquisite creature — a trembling scarlet wound against the gray slate tiles. He pivots his left foot and moves the thin leather sole of his bespoke shoe centimeters above it. He taps. There is a sound like a burst of static, and the insect is squashed like a bug. The Presidente-in-Exile proceeds across the patio, dragging his foot once to scrape off the gore. He cuts through the west garden, along a flagstone pathway that circles toward the front of the villa. Behind him, the discarded pages of his newspaper trip and tumble across the grounds in a zephyr that has come from nowhere on this still and windless day.
In the courtyard, Gallardo has moved the Mercedes out from under the tree. The Mercedes is an armored vehicle custom-equipped with hardened steel body panels, 1.5-inch-thick windows of polycarbonate ballistic glass, and Kevlar-lined gas tanks. Gallardo has just finished the washing, and the car glistens all dewy in the light. He is struggling with the water hose, trying to coil it without getting his dress shirt dirty. Ten yards away, outside the gate, on Avenida España, a red Datsun blocks the driveway to the villa. Three men loll on the car, smoking cigarettes. They call to Gallardo: “Maricón, chuparosa, marica chingada.” They blow him kisses. They tell him they have hoses for him to handle, if he wishes. These men are the Paraguayan bodyguards assigned by Stroessner to protect the Nation’s Esteemed Guest. Gallardo snaps his wrist, flicks his finger, fires his cigarette butt. It traces an arc through the bars of the gate and lands in a burst of embers on the chest of the biggest guard. Direct hit. Beautiful. The guard leaps off the Datsun, curses, rushes the gate. But what can he do? Gallardo smiles, turns around, and waggles his ass. The guard reaches down and grabs his crotch. A piercing high-pitched whistle disrupts their pas de deux. From the pathway into the gardens, the Presidente-in-Exile is waving his folded paper impatiently: Let’s go. The driver kicks the hose into the bushes, slips into his coat, gets in the Mercedes and starts it up. The bodyguards squeeze into the Datsun and back the car out of the way. The gates glide open. The Mercedes exits. The Datsun follows. The gates close. Overhead, security cameras mounted atop thirty-foot poles turn slowly, taking in the perimeter with a ho-hum weariness.
In the backseat, the Presidente-in-Exile excavates his ear canal with the locust-wood toothpick. Eyes closed, he grunts blissfully. Out his passenger window, a sun-strobed flip-book of Asunción — whitewashed brick walk-ups along tree-lined avenues, nannies pushing prams, chipa vendors pushing carts, barefoot women with towers of folded laundry on their heads, white-suited old men walking tiny old dogs, sanitation workers in yellow coveralls sweeping dirt into the gutters. And everywhere, the guano-crowned statuary of the Republic’s military heroes.
By the time they reach the Plaza of the Chaco War, the señor’s face is buried in the Times and Gallardo has shaken the bodyguards. He’s not supposed to do this. It pisses off the Minister of Security. But Gallardo gets bored, and it’s fun, although too easy now since Stroessner’s monkeys have been downgraded to that piece-of-shit Datsun. And besides, the señor doesn’t care. Gallardo negotiates the traffic circle — an apocalyptic teem of limos and buses and taxicabs, dray trucks and trailer rigs, and the intrepid horse-drawn wagon. On Avenida Mariscal López, he slows the Mercedes for the left onto Calle America, one of the intersections in the city with a traffic signal. The lights are his, and he would have made it but for a turquoise blue Chevy pickup that backs out of a driveway and lurches to a halt in the street. Gallardo hits the brakes. He sighs, gives his horn a toot. The truck that cuts him off is shotgunned with mud, a ferrous earth of unsettling redness. Gallardo remembers his first look at Paraguay, peering out the porthole of the Learjet that brought them here, the Gran Chaco below him, the high desert pan that makes up the western half of this country. Flat and featureless and still, it burned red under the sun. As far as the eye could see, an ocean of blood in its doldrums. It was another world. His world now, he thought.