Sometimes I see the old man, Arnstein, in my mind. He is slumped over a desk filled with papers and photographs, one of the crime’s relentless scholars.
“Many years have passed,” Don Camillo continues, “but never believe that you are forgotten.”
Against the far wall in Arnstein’s office, the files bulge, open-mouthed, screaming.
“They are still looking for you, Doctor,” Don Camillo goes on tediously, “be assured of that.”
I can see Arnstein’s files in my mind. They stand ghostly and alone — gray, silent cabinets filled with thousands of tattered papers. Somewhere among the thumbed, soiled pages, my name is underlined in red.
“There is no need to threaten me, Don Camillo.”
“A little party of commandos,” Don Camillo continues, “coming over the ridge there. What chance would you have against them? None. None whatever, let me assure you. They would come, and you would end up in a glass booth like the others.”
“How would such a circumstance serve El Presidente, Don Camillo?” I ask.
Don Camillo shakes his head. “It wouldn’t,” he says. “Not yet.” He leans back, watching me, imagining that I squirm under his gaze. His is the foolishness that conceives terror as the absolute solution. For him, the world is made secure by fear. If dread were a woman, he would take it to his bed for buggering.
“How could my leaving the Republic ever serve El Presidente’s purposes?” I ask.
“Oh, it probably couldn’t, Don Pedro,” Don Camillo admits. “But this business in the northern provinces, it’s very expensive. The treasury has been diminished. It is in need of resupply. It might be profitable for you to show your concern.”
“How might I show it?”
Don Camillo smiles. “You are very direct.”
“I have learned to be.”
“Yes. Good. Well, to your question. These diamonds you have in your possession.”
“What about them?”
“Forgive me for saying so, but you’ve been doling them out rather stingily over the years, Don Pedro.”
“El Presidente thinks me ungrateful?”
Don Camillo laughs. “No, no. Not at all. But you see, these rebels — the ones in the northern provinces — suppressing them is very expensive. My point is that perhaps you might be persuaded to give a little more than usual when El Presidente comes for his visit.”
“Then I will.”
Don Camillo looks surprised by my quick agreement. It is one of the self-justifications of the greedy to think everyone as greedy as themselves.
“You intend to make a special offering, then?” Don Camillo asks.
“Yes.”
Don Camillo’s eyes narrow. “How much?”
“Enough to make El Presidente happy.”
Don Camillo looks at me pointedly. “El Presidente is very sad, Don Pedro.”
“I will make him joyous.”
Don Camillo slaps his hands together loudly and a flock of parrots spray noisily into the air over the river. “Excellent!” Don Camillo cries. “Excellent! I knew I could depend upon you, Don Pedro.”
“You can tell El Presidente that I intend to make his visit here a very happy one.”
“I’m sure you do,” Don Camillo says. “He always looks forward to seeing you, Don Pedro. He considers you to be one of the first citizens of the Republic.”
“I will reaffirm my loyalty to him. You may be assured of that.”
“He never doubted it, of course,” Don Camillo says. He smiles broadly, then glances at his watch. “I must go, I’m afraid.”
“So soon?”
“I’m afraid so, Don Pedro,” Don Camillo replies. He grips the arms of the chair, grunts, and rises with difficulty from the seat. He is weighed down by the burdens of state and imported cream cheese. On his feet now, he extends his hand toward me. “So good to have seen you again, Don Pedro,” he says.
“And you, Don Camillo.”
“And Dr. Ludtz, how is he?”
“He is ill. A fever.”
Don Camillo crinkles his brow, imitating concern. “Sorry to hear it. I hope he’ll be better when El Presidente visits. I would not want him to miss such an occasion.”
“Nor would I.”
Don Camillo turns slowly and moves toward the stairs. I follow behind him until one of his guards steps between us and presses his palm against my chest. “No,” he says. His face is smooth and brown, his eyes very dark, like his hair. He has the look of a matinee idol, clean and piercing. But the nature of his function contradicts the beauty of his person, transforming his lovely, graceful body into a rattling machine.
Don Camillo eases himself around. “¿Qué pasa?” he asks the guard. Then he notices the hand pressed against my chest. He laughs and sweeps the hand away. “El doctor es un amigo mio,” he says. He winks at me. “Well trained, don’t you think?”
“Yes.”
Don Camillo turns again and proceeds down the stairs. “Adiós, Don Pedro.”
“Adiós.”
The guard continues to eye me carefully for a moment, then turns and follows Don Camillo down the stairs, quickly unsnapping the guardstrap of his holster. His is the thoughtful precision of the devoted servant.
At the limousine Don Camillo turns back toward me and waves his hand. In his grotesque rotundity, Don Camillo is that perfect metaphor of bloat about which exiled poets write when they turn their eyes homeward to the Republic. Casamira in New York and Sanchez in Leningrad, these two forlorn poets, separated by oceans real and ideological, and yet who both seized on the obesity of Don Camillo as the apt image for a famished land, rendered him immortal in their songs. In their twisted verse they map the sagging glut of underdevelopment and feed the minds of the northern provinces with visions of release.
A short distance from Don Camillo’s limousine I see Dr. Ludtz stagger out onto his porch, his fevered bulk supported by two canes. He lifts his hand in greeting to Don Camillo, but the grinning minister does not see him and completes the task of maneuvering himself into the back seat of the car.
As Don Camillo pulls away, a sudden cool breeze sweeps down from the mountains, splitting the heat like a sword through gossamer. Here in the Republic, we are accustomed to inversions: to the chill within the swelter, the knife beneath the velvet, the sea snake twisting in the cool, blue wave.
BELOW THE VERANDAH, the workmen are beginning to prepare the tent. They work under a sun that turns the river to a flowing amber. They erect the corner posts carefully, as they have been instructed. The poles must stand absolutely straight. Nothing is allowed to lean here in the Republic. And when the posts have been set deep in the ground, they raise the tent, a brilliant panoply of red and orange stripes. Underneath the tent, they set the table that I will prepare for El Presidente. He will bring his officers with him, for it is his habit to surround himself with the weak, the stupid, and the worshipful, all those too cowardly, incompetent, or avaricious to call his person into question.
Here, underneath the tent, the El Presidente of Casamira’s satirical invention will engorge himself with meat and fruit. He will stuff the dripping flanks of pigs into his mouth, follow that with fistfuls of brandied dates, and wash it all down with papaya juice mixed with beer. For a few hours, this compound upriver from the village of El Caliz will become the mead hall of the Republic, a place of noise and brawling, of lewd jokes and lurid tales. The people of the village will observe it all, standing barefoot behind a velvet cordon defended by well-heeled soldiers. As El Presidente feasts upon the meat and sweets, they will feast on him while their stomachs rumble under frayed rope belts. It is part of the nature of adoration to find immunity from the contradictions of reality.
The key to sudden transformation, that is what El Presidente offers. In the great sports arena where the Leader spoke, they came by the benighted millions in search of that one blinding instant that would lift them effortlessly to another life. Observe the little bald-headed burgher failing in business, despised by his wife, dismissed by his children; a man without credential, place, or influence; a man whose mind is held captive by every illusion that ensures mediocrity; a religious man to whom the Church in her grandeur gives no more than a passing nod; a business man whose connection to the engines of finance does not extend beyond a dwindling bank account; a family man whose children pay greater heed to movie stars and black musicians; a community man whose duties and responsibilities reach no further than his obligation to sweep the sidewalk once a week; a political man whom the state regards as nothing more than an annual source of petty revenue. To such a one, the Leader’s voice was clarion, concentrating all his fear and rage into one shrill cry of indignation. Through all the history of crime there runs one immemorial complaint: Save me! Save me! For I cannot save myself!