“He’s brave, that lieutenant, determined, without him I wouldn’t have been able to get through the blockade. I got out of the canoe in Candelaria and walked for two hours toward Cojutepeque; he kept going all the way to the other side of the lake, where he has a friend, near San Miguel Tepezontes.”
“I hope he made it.,” Clemen says and gets up again, bent over, his neck pressing against the perpendicular ceiling. “And I hope that goddamn priest gets here, my bladder’s about to explode.”
“That ‘goddamn priest’ is the person who’s saving our necks. Maybe you could learn to show a little more respect.”
“Don’t start giving me one of your sermons,” Clemen says, pressing his hand against his genitals. “I’ve known Father Dionisio for as long as I can remember.”
Jimmy has lain back down on his mat; he takes the folded shirt out from under his head and puts it over his face, covering his eyes.
“What I don’t understand is what the hell you, a cavalry captain, were doing at Ilopango Airbase, instead of leading your troops against the barracks where your general was taking cover. That’s why things turned out the way they did, everything was badly organized, you people did everything ass backwards.”
Jimmy doesn’t move.
“Be thankful I’m exhausted,” Jimmy mumbles. “If not I’d smack you for being such an ass. The air force doesn’t have its own troops, and we went to protect the airbase, it’s as simple as that.”
Clemen has sat down, his knees bent; his legs are moving around restlessly.
“Maybe there’s a can somewhere I can piss in,” he says, looking around.
“What a pig. You’ll stink the place up. Don’t you realize there’s no circulation in here.”
“This is no joke. I can’t hold it any longer,” Clemen says as he crawls over to the corner where the junk is.
“Keep your voice down, they’re going to hear us,” Jimmy urges.
Clemen rummages anxiously around through the broken furniture, the rusty pieces of iron, the moldy clothes.
“Don’t make so much noise.”
“Fuck you, stop giving me orders. All you military bastards know how to do is give orders.”
“Stop making so much noise, you dimwit. You’re putting us in danger,” Jimmy insists, still lying down, not moving, his folded shirt covering his eyes.
“Look what I found!” Clemen exclaims with excitement, lifting up an empty paint can.
“What is it?” Jimmy asks without budging.
“A can I can piss in.,” Clemen says as he returns to his mat.
“That’s disgusting, you’re not going to. ”
Suddenly, a pile of junk falls to the ground with a loud crash.
Jimmy jumps up; his head hits the ceiling.
“Moron!” he spits out between clenched teeth, furious, and starts to come at him threateningly.
“It was an accident.,” Clemen says apologetically with a whine, lifting his hands to protect himself.
At that very instant, in the midst of that tense silence, they very clearly hear someone’s footsteps running from the back of the house.
“We’ve been discovered,” Jimmy mumbles, still furious, sitting down on his mat. “Let’s see how you explain your stupidity to the priest.”
Clemen brings his fists to his temples and rubs them, pressing hard, his face twisted in pain and his eyes closed, as if his head were about to explode.
“I don’t even have to pee anymore,” he says as he pushes the can away and lies down on the mat.
“What are we going to do?” Jimmy wonders out loud, now looking worried.
“What?”
“What if the girl got frightened and has decided to go out and tell someone?”
“I don’t think they’d go out without the priest’s permission.”
“I’m not so sure. They might even think it’s the Devil,” says Jimmy as he puts on his white undershirt.
“You think?”
“Put yourself in their place: a whole ton of weird noises coming from the roof over the prayer room, over the altar.”
Jimmy buttons up his olive-green shirt and starts to put on his boots.
“You’re right,” Clemen says, smiling, now confident again. “They must be scared shitless. But what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to go down and tell them we’re doing some work for the priest, repairs, and that they shouldn’t be afraid.”
“What if there’s someone with them who’s not to be trusted?”
Jimmy stops to think for a few seconds. Then he takes his watch out of his pocket.
“It’s five to six,” he says.
“If you want, let’s both go down, then I can take a leak. But Father Dionisio means what he says, and he made it very clear I wasn’t to go down until he got back.”
“He told me the same thing,” Jimmy says, indecisively.
“We don’t want him to get angry and throw us out.”
“I don’t think he ever would.”
“Because you don’t know him. Let’s wait five more minutes, and if he doesn’t come, we’ll go down.”
Jimmy lies down so he can press his ear against the crack in the wooden floor.
“We’ll wait,” he says, “but if I hear one of the girls about to leave, I’m going to go down and stop her.”
He moves over to the loose floorboard that covers the entrance to the loft.
“Let’s keep quiet, then,” says Clemen in a circumspect tone of voice.
“That’s what I say: keep your mouth shut.”
The light abruptly turns gray, as if the setting sun had been obscured by a cloud or some foliage; a flock of parrots make a racket as they fly over the house.
“Soon we won’t be able to see anything,” Clemen says.
Jimmy reaches for the edges of the board he’ll have to lift in an emergency; he turns and gives Clemen a scornful look, but Clemen doesn’t notice.
“We were left in the dark like this at the radio station,” Clemen continues, “from one minute to the next they cut our electricity and, that was that, the party was over. ”
“Shh.,” Jimmy demands silence.
“I don’t see how they could have forgotten to send troops to take over and defend the power station.”
Jimmy looks at him in disbelief, then anger.
“You participated in planning the coup,” Clemen continues. “There wasn’t anybody with enough sense to think of taking over and defending the power station?”
“Are you going to shut up once and for all?” Jimmy mutters.
“Don’t worry, if the girls haven’t gone out yet they’re not going to, the priest forbids them from going out without permission. They’ll wait and tell him about the noise.”
Clemen sits down and grabs his genitals again.
“That was a major fuckup, but it wasn’t ours, it was yours, the civilians,” Jimmy says. “None of you thought you’d need electricity to keep the station running. ”
“I can’t hold it anymore,” says Clemen, reaching for the empty can. “I’m going to take a leak.”
“You’re a pig.”
“I don’t have time for niceties.”
On his knees and with his back to Jimmy, Clemen has unzipped his pants and is peeing into the can; as the stream starts to flow, he lets out two short farts.
“Sorry.,” he says, looking relieved.
Jimmy shakes his head back and forth in disbelief. Then he puckers up his face in a look of disgust and covers his nose with his palm.
They hear distinctly the front door opening.
Jimmy grabs the edges of the board, ready to lift it; Clemen hurries to pull his pants up.
“I’m here, girls, and so is Doña Chon!” Father Dionisio exclaims in his hoarse voice and his Castilian accent. “Come get the tamales!”
They hear the flip-flops slapping against the floor, a greeting, the priest giving his blessing to Doña Chon, and the door closing.