The sun shines radiantly through the amber holder. Within its rich glow I can see the scarlet macaw and the hawk-headed caique and the Patagonian conure as they tumble to the jungle floor, feathers flying, while the helicopters bank left and right, raking the trees with their fire.
General Gomez shakes his head despairingly. “The rebels cannot be considered real men, Don Pedro. They live and fight like animals.”
It is a curious etiquette that the General employs. In the Camp I once saw a man shot because he had been caught gnawing on the fingers of a dead body that lay beside him in the bunk, a bestiality the Special Section, in its purity, would not permit.
“When you live like a beast, you must be treated like a beast,” General Gomez concludes.
“Certainly,” I tell him. “But do you think the rebels actually intend to attack El Caliz?”
“Attack?” the General says loudly. His eyes narrow. “These rebels do not know the meaning of the word attack. They are not warriors.”
One cannot speak to General Gomez without first understanding the categories that define his intellect and the language that conveys them. I rephrase the question. “Do you think the rebels intend to sneak into El Caliz and carry out some sort of vicious assault?”
“Possibly,” the General replies. He lights his cigarette. “With those animals, anything is possible.” He watches me closely. “Tell me, Don Pedro, have you seen any suspicious activity around the compound of late?”
“Suspicious activity?”
“Movements? Strangers? Anything like that?”
“No.”
General Gomez allows his eyes to drift out over the verandah. “From this height,” he says, “you can see a great deal, can you not?”
“A great deal, yes.”
The General snaps his eyes back toward me. “I am told you spend much time on the verandah.”
“I am too old to move about the compound, General.”
“And yet you have seen nothing, Don Pedro?” the General asks doubtfully.
“I have noticed that from time to time the monkeys are disturbed,” I tell him.
General Gomez slaps his knee delightedly. “You see, that’s what I mean,” he says excitedly. “Something is disturbing them, yes?”
“No doubt.” Soon, perhaps, the helicopters will dive from the upper air and devastate the monkeys.
“Rebels skulking beneath the trees, I think,” the General says. “They disturb the monkeys.” He glances back toward the river. “I knew it. I told El Presidente that the rebels might try to take advantage of his visit here.”
“But he will be well protected, will he not, General Gomez?” I ask.
The General turns his eyes to me. “Of course, Don Pedro.”
“Then we have nothing to fear.”
General Gomez returns his gaze to the jungle depths. “We need more powerful defoliants,” he says quietly, almost to himself. He turns back to me and smiles. “In certain areas of the northern provinces, we have entirely denuded the earth,” he says boastfully. “Even the scorpions cannot find shade.”
I have seen photographs of his enterprise. They portray vast stretches of barren ground, the scorched trees rising from the cracked and gutted earth like twisted wire.
General Gomez leans across the table toward me, the cigarette holder embedded in his smile. “Tell me, Don Pedro, do you retire early to your bed?”
“No.”
“You sit out on the verandah until late in the night, then?”
“Yes.”
General Gomez nods. “Very good. And do you ever see fires across the river? Campfires, I mean?”
I shake my head. “I’m afraid not, General.”
General Gomez leans back in his seat as if to seek a better vantage point for staring into my mind. “You’re quite sure of this?”
“Quite sure.”
The General pulls the cigarette from his lips and looks admiringly at the amber holder. “A gift from El Presidente,” he tells me.
“Most elegant, General.”
General Gomez moves his fingers up and down the holder, caressing it lovingly. “Imported. From Paris.”
“I should have known. It is very European in its delicacy.”
General Gomez extracts the cigarette butt from the holder and drops it over the railing of the verandah. It appears to fall in slow motion through the waxy heat.
“I think El Presidente will be safe here,” I say.
The General turns his eyes toward me. They look like two small gun barrels trained on my face. “Why is that, Don Pedro?”
“We are very far from the northern provinces,” I explain.
General Gomez pulls a crimson silk handkerchief from his uniform pocket and wipes the sweat from his brow. “Never underestimate a serpent, Don Pedro,” he warns.
I nod. “Are there any special precautions we should take for El Presidente’s safety?”
General Gomez smiles at me indulgently. “Don’t trouble yourself, Don Pedro. El Presidente’s safety is in my hands.”
“Very good, then, General.”
The General peers into my office, scanning the shelves of books. “You are a reader, I see.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me, do you receive the newspaper that the army publishes, Don Pedro?”
“I’m afraid not.”
The General looks disappointed. “It’s quite a fine paper,” he says. He pauses. “Are you by an chance a reader of poetry?”
“No.”
The General’s face seems to tighten. “Really? I had thought you might be, Don Pedro. A man of learning, I am told. Don Camillo has been much impressed by your intelligence.”
I smile. “Perhaps my tastes are not as catholic as they should be, General.”
General Gomez glances wearily at his hands. “Perhaps someday I will retire. My first love is literature.”
“A worthy vocation,” I tell him.
The General frowns. “The Republic has no poets of any note whatsoever. It is most unfortunate.”
“Here in the Republic we are much oppressed,” I tell him.
The General’s eyes snap to attention. He looks at me suspiciously. “Oppressed?”
“By labor,” I add quickly.
The General nods slowly. “Ah, yes, quite true. I am often very tired.” He rises slowly and thrusts out his hand. “Thank you for your help, Don Pedro.”
I take his hand in mine. “I am always your obedient servant, General Gomez.”
The General turns and moves down the stairs to his jeep. His high black boots thud heavily against the clay. He pulls himself in beside the driver and looks back up toward the verandah. “Vaya con Dios, Don Pedro,” he calls.
IN THE RUMBLE of the General’s jeep as it pulls away, I can detect the crumbling foundation of the Republic. Built with the shoddy, decrepit timbers of El Presidente’s greed, it is a structure destined for collapse. The Camp, too, was destined for collapse, but the steady rumbling that rolled over it — echoing through the stinking barracks and settling into the contorted bodies that lay randomly in the mud or hung stiffly from the sagging wire — came from the air, as the bombers made their way toward the Leader’s tottering capital.
In medicine, there is a time of life known as the agonal period. It is the agony suffered by a creature that still lives but is irrevocably dying. In the jungle, the great birds convulse in a final fluttering of wings. On the river bank, the silver fish heave and shudder, their mouths twisted, gulping, their broken fins jerking sprays of mud into the indifferent air. The agonal period of the Camp was long and tedious, and Langhof watched it with a kind of aloof amusement. His compatriots gathered on the steps of the medical compound and trembled as the planes passed overhead. But Langhof did not tremble; he rejoiced. Once, slouching against one of the barracks with Ginzburg at his side, he watched a little knot of Special Section officers who crouched and whispered below the chimney of the now defunct crematorium.