The Dissertation, page 32
part #2 of Tinieblas Series
The large holders, who had lobbied ceaselessly to water the bill down, were furious. The peasants listened sullenly to León’s explanation of his veto, which he made over and again by radio and on a painful swing through the interior, and then found it simpler to believe certain agitators, who charged that León was duping them, that he was in cahoots with the landlords, that he would never permit any land reform. There followed a wave of crop burnings on the cane plantations of La Merced, which León was obliged to put down firmly. Aware that the immediate application of overwhelming force is less cruel and costly than half-hearted measures, he declared martial law in La Merced, named Major Dorindo Azote Military Governor of the province, and gave him three companies of guardias to reinforce the regular garrisons. The disturbances were quashed in short order without loss of life, and when courts-martial gave the ringleaders long terms in the penal colony on Fangosa Island, León first arranged for them to remain in local jails and then, at Christmas, commuted their sentences. The events turned the peasants strongly against him, however, and since the Chamber chose to dawdle futilely with land reform for the remainder of the session, he never won them back—or rather not until he’d gained an honest martyrdom with his body meatballed across Via Venezuela.
Meanwhile, the landowners found a more craven outlet for their spite: inspired by two gentlemen whom this history will not dignify by naming and who discovered a forgotten clause in the Club Mercantil charter denying membership to men of illegitimate birth, they called for León’s expulsion in a series of private letters to the club president. He, though properly apologetic, felt compelled to bring the matter to León’s attention. My father resigned at once, saying that he was glad to be a naturally born and not a self-made bastard, but the incident rankled him cruelly, having pierced the tenderest zone of his character, his urge for respectability.
“I’m surprised a thing like this can hurt,” he told Soledad, “considering all I’ve been through in my life and all the ways I’ve found to stuff my ego. But I dreamed Clarita might be club Carnival Queen someday.”
“She doesn’t mind.”
“I know. She’s not as childish as I am. The worst part is I have to hold it in. It’s been suggested—as if I hadn’t thought of it myself—that I make the thing political and win some favor with the lower classes. Half this country was born out of wedlock. But I can’t do it. I can’t even knock anyone’s teeth out till my term is up. People would think I’ve declared a revolution.”
León’s political opponents, whom his great popularity had cowed to an unnatural and agonizing silence, took heart from these events and filled the press and every public forum with their yelpings. At the same time, a number of his followers deserted him. During the troubles in La Merced the Chamber had overwhelmingly endorsed León’s vigorous action. Once order was restored, in the very instant of the danger’s passing a motion of censure was introduced, charging that President Fuertes and his government had overreacted. A number of Progressive Party Deputies—though not enough to make up a majority—supported it, invariably asking time to explain their votes and then driveling out grave empty phrases about the painfulness of the decision and the telling weight of moral imperatives over personal friendship and party royalty.
“It’s part cowardice and part ambition,” Rosendo Salmón told León. A Tinieblista member from Salinas, he had nonetheless voted against censure. “But the main thing is they’ve never forgiven you for helping them get where they are. I don’t owe you anything, and besides, every once in a while I give myself the luxury of voting like a man.”
Student protest continued. Canino’s faction won control of the Students’ Syndicate, and scarcely a week passed without a campus demonstration or a rally in Plaza Cervantes. Canino dealt entirely in abusive falsehood but was inventive at it and had the peasant troubles to embroider on as well as Day-Cornudo. His rantings drew large audiences from the lower-class barrios, and by fall the atmosphere of the capital was nearly as polluted with resentment and frustration as in the last days of 1951. Now, however, the target of invective was not a class but an individual: “Superbicho, the campesino killer”; “Meestair Forts, the first gringo President of Tinieblas.” The scenario that León had outlined during his first campaign was developing as he foresaw: Without any encouragement from him, the country had installed him as its hero. Tinieblas nonetheless remained Tinieblas; no magical transformation had ensued. León must now be punished for failing to incarnate the fantasies he had tried consistently to dispel.
The woes of León, politician, were aggravated by the rebellion of the other Leóns. They had ceded portions of their time and energy to León, politician, so that he might, acting as their agent, maintain a favorable environment for their stimulations and fulfillments. Upon becoming President, however, and with the growing instability of the Tinieblan system during the summer and fall of 1963, León, politician, absorbed an ever-increasing share of the common patrimony, so that the other Leóns, finding themselves ever less free to act, judged him a tyrant and declared their independence.
After suffering himself to be denied for several weeks following my father’s resignation from the Club Mercantil, León, athlete, picked the day after a blustery speech by the Commander of the American Legion in the Reservation—“We’ve got the right to stay here nine hundred thirty-four more years, and we’ll stay another thousand after that if we feel like it!”—to seize command of the communal body and sneak to the tennis courts at Fort Shafter. There he remained for seven hours, enjoying himself hugely and fraternizing in the greatest good humor with the gringos whom he found there and with the many others who, as news of his presence spread, came to look on. Inevitably, word of his whereabouts reached the news desks of the Tinieblan papers, and by midafternoon four carloads of journalists had arrived to witness him partner the commandant’s daughter (a properly photogenic blonde of twenty-two) at mixed doubles and, by way of keying up her game, drench her with gallantries in fluent English. The motion to censure was at that time being debated in the Chamber, and the headlines, pictures, leaders, editorials, and feature stories that began appearing the next morning and that continued till the last dram of scandal was wrung from the incident “disclosure” that León was divorcing Soledad to marry Miss O’Moore—contributed materially to the closeness of the vote. And as if this were not sufficient proof of his existence and autonomy, León, athlete, continued to play tennis at Fort Shafter now and then—to the great aid and comfort of Manfredo Canino and associated fanatics—and to make León, politician’s life otherwise more difficult by flitting over to the grass court behind the British Embassy Residence whenever he took the notion, even if there was a crisis on or a cabinet meeting scheduled.
León, lecher, whom interest of state and the all-seeing eye of the news media had denied his normal complement of romps, took to leaping palace maids and secretaries at the most inappropriate times and places. Important visitors huffed in anterooms while the presidential office served as a humpodrome, and the discretion of presidential aides was sorely strained by glimpses of El Jefe tearing one off in the pantry or on the service stairs. Beyond asserting his independence, León, lecher, seemed bent on destroying León, politician, altogether. The Tinieblan Constitution stipulates that the President of the Republic may not leave national territory without the formal consent of the Chamber of Deputies, and yet only the last-minute intervention of Carlos Gavilán (who used his authority as Minister of Justice to order all flights leaving Monteseguro Airport temporarily grounded) prevented León, lecher, wearing a false beard and bearing an even falser passport in the name of Panurgo Burlando, from decamping to New Orleans in the company of an atypically well-nourished and perfectly adorable young gringa fashion model who had been appearing in an international display of couture sportive at the Hotel Excelsior. Like all the members of my father’s repertory company of personalities, León, lecher, passed these months in a wild drive for primacy—no, for exclusivity. He resented all bounds, even his own commitment to careless futtering, and on top of his pitiless assaults on targets of opportunity persuaded Loli Gavilán not to return to her studies in Lausanne when summer ended, so that he might continue unimpeded a liaison that engaged his heart as fully as his gonads.
Nor were León, scholar, and León, husband, any less rebellious. The former, who was the meekest of all my father’s figures, recalled the long hours he had spent poring over English grammars, decided he had been vilely manipulated for the purposes of polities, and reacted with amazing boldness. Previously content with an abbreviated and nocturnal existence’ he now appeared during the day and seized control of my father’s mind and body at his pleasure. Ministers and other conferees grew accustomed to seeing León’s face go blank even as they posed him important questions, to hearing him mutter phrases of no currency at all in the argument at hand, to witnessing him snatch up a pencil and fill his notepad with the incomprehensible hieroglyphics of topology or physics. He was wont, during cabinet meetings, to pull from his jacket pocket a folio anthology of the poems of Blake and engross himself therein, sometimes quoting from it in the original, sometimes translating passages whose opacity to the men of affairs present was in no way pierced by being put in Spanish, and invariably remarking, slapping the book on the glossed table before tucking it away, that Blake was the only justification for his having learned English, one verse of his being worth fifty interviews with Kennedy. Don Felix Grillo del Campo gave the most acute appreciation of the problem. Invited along with other leaders of the banking community to inform the President on certain economic questions and then treated to a performance by León, scholar, Grillo went from the meeting to the private apartments of the Palace and urged Soledad Fuertes to make her husband take a rest.
“I don’t want to alarm you, Sóle, and I have the greatest confidence in León, but just now I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming of my crazy uncle Escolástico.”
My mother was not alarmed by Grillo’s comment for the simple reason that she had been alarmed before he made it. But overwork did not seem to be the problem. Soledad could not recall a period when my father had been more willing to give time to his family. He would loll in bed of mornings chatting playfully, would drop in on her at odd times in the day, would neglect his work to linger in her company in a, manner altogether unprecedented in their sixteen years of wedlock. More, on the impulse of the moment he would whisk her arid the children to the beach, scoffing alike at their school obligations and his official duties. In short, León, husband, too was asserting himself freely.
Yet however much Soledad enjoyed my father’s company and appreciated spontaneous attentions, León, husband’s behavior was too uneven not to be disturbing, His goings were as unpredictable as his comings. He was liable now to disappear during a family dinner, to give way to León, scholar, for example, in the midst of a conversation—though neither Soledad nor the children understood the process whereby Papá’s gaze would glide off into nowhere and his penless hand start scribbling on the tablecloth. Or he might suddenly be replaced by León, lecher—who, heretofore, had always kept his distance whenever Soledad was anywhere around—as when, during a poolside party at the home of Aquilino Piojo, my father (with the unconcern of a cocktail tippler dipping in the peanut dish) slipped his fingers and at least half his palm under the dorsal fold of Pastora Avispa’s bikini bottom. Soledad’s world was love, and love and jealousy are mutually exclusive,98 but she had to be alarmed at this: her husband was acting weirdly, and she bad no notion why.
Had Soledad understood León and possessed a rudimentary grasp of cybernetics, she would have realized (1) that the complex open system known as León Fuertes achieved stability (homeostasis) by means of a built-in, selfcorrective feedback mechanism which regulated the flow of energy to several component systems (León, husband—León, scholar; etc.); (2) that the stability of the overall system depended on continual small alterations in the allotments to components; (3) that while the introduction (in response to external pressure) of a new component (León, politician) had been accomplished without excessive disturbance to the system’s balance, the application of new external pressures, beginning in June, 1962, and intensifying during summer and fall, 1963, resulted in a massive increase in the energy allotment to this particular component (4) that the system’s self-corrective feedback mechanism responded to this change in one variable by effecting similarly dramatic changes in the other variables, so that the normal pattern of continual small changes in the flow of energy to the component systems was warped into a blunder of abrupt, wild fluctuations, ragged zigzags, zingy swings; and therefore (5) that under external pressure the system’s internal stabilizing mechanism had pushed the system into instability. In other, more familiar words, my father’s psychical ecology was gravely out of whack.
That fall, as the interior festered in resentment and the capital suppurated radical dissent, León Fuertes appeared to withdraw from events, so that many Tinieblans felt he’d lost his nerve. It was, rather, that the other Leóns restricted León, politician’s freedom of action and attention. Not that they found much profit in it: they restricted each other’s freedom also. None could thrive unless all did. And as if that were not enough, León’s ancestors combined against him—or rather took action far more noxious than intrigue or attack. Concerned for his welfare and with the best intentions, they began hustling him in very wrong directions.
It is something the custom of my country for important men to repair in times of crisis to the Palace, there to give counsel to the President of the Republic and to themselves reaffirmation of their own importance. All through the latter half of 1963, President León Fuertes received visitations, both in dreams and during waking moments, from Generals Isidro Bodega, Feliciano Luna, and Epifanio Mojón. They all had done the state some service. They all possessed executive experience. They all could cite not only patriotism but ties of blood in motive for their urge to counsel the incumbent. And so, in the Tinieblan fashion, they went to León Fuertes uninvited and served him generous slices of their minds.
When León told Soledad it had been suggested that he milk political advantage from his bastardy, he did not tell her the suggestor was his grandfather General Feliciano Luna, who had cantered into León’s dreams on a black mare the very night León resigned from the Club Mercantil and who, rising in his stirrups and brandishing his Martini-Henry rifle, had volleyed blasphemies against solemnized procreation that shook the sky above him. Nothing could come of it, he bellowed, but “fags and cowards and thinshanked whining girls with cunts as dry as chalk! There’s never been a man with balls born yet, or a good hot-bottomed woman either, who wasn’t got by simple honest fucking, with the priests and magistrates left out of it! That’s how I made my children, fifty sons and Christ knows how many daughters! You just be proud you were made the same way!”
General Luna went on to advise León to get all the “bastards, drab-dropped foundlings, and other sons of whores” on his side and wipe out the Club Mercantil and all its members. These were, after all, the descendants of the very men who had connived with Monseñor Jesús Llorente and the gringos to have General Luna hanged. This was perfectly in line with the program General Luna had been proposing and continued to propose in León’s dreams and in what León thought hallucinations. Revolution and guerrilla war were, General Luna argued, the best policy for León and Tinieblas, and he went into considerable detail on how vulnerable the Reservation was to surprise attack, on how León might, in a lightning blow, rub out the entire garrison, or at least a large portion of it, along with oodles of civilians, and, more important, seize all the arms and ammunition he would need. As for U.S. retaliation, León should take his people down to Selva Trópica and let the gringos come looking for him in the jungle.
“They won’t enjoy it much, you can believe me. Your trouble is that when you hear the word ‘war’ you think of armies squaring off in open battle. Guerrilla war is different, boy, and a lot more fun besides. You can hold out for decades, doing as you please. They’ll never land a solid punch on you, and between you and the jungle they’ll lose thousands and get sick of the whole business.”
“But what of the people?” León would ask. “Our towns would all be occupied by foreign troops. You’ve seen how soldiers act when they occupy a country during war.”
“To shit with the people! The ones who want to fight will be with you in the jungle, killing their enemies like free men. The ones who don’t want to fight deserve what happens to them!”
León had no argument for this. He simply had to steel himself against his grandfather’s seductive simplifications, to bear General Luna’s harangues and sneers in silence, to remember the gentle people in Tinieblas—there were many of them, after all—and cling to his own values.
General Bodega’s advice was the opposite of General Luna’s, no less seductive, but in the end no more acceptable. Bodega had a way of flitting in (light as a butterfly despite his ample paunch) through the window of the presidential office while León was at paper work or in conference with one or two close aides, of taking a position of repose in midair near the bronze bust of him that filled a niche above the sofa, of waiting placidly till León could attend him. He counseled peace, above all peace with the gringos.
