It was already too late to see the ferryman. So he would wait until morning, taking refuge in some dark place where the police wouldn’t find him. He walked. He walked like a madman through the elegant neighborhood of Los Molinos, looking for the right place to spend the night. The noise of a police siren made him enter the doorway of a large, seemingly uninhabited colonial house. Then it started to rain. A cold, abundant rain, that made him back up against the wall of the house and lean against a slimy door where, inexplicably, there were no Cornelio Rojas posters. Since he was still getting wet, he got closer to the door and noticed that it opened slowly. The siren of another patrol car made him open the door wider and enter on the tips of his toes into a large, high-ceilinged house where in years past some bourgeois family, one of the hundreds who had left the country after Cornelio’s arrival, had lived. He lit a match. The house smelled like dried shit, but in the middle of the living room was a velvet sofa that, although moth-eaten, was still a good place to rest. He laid down on it. He was so tired that he immediately fell asleep. He dreamt about the ferryman. He dreamt that he was at last escaping the country and sailing through a calm sea to an island of peaceful black people. He didn’t know how long he was there, sleeping. But when he woke up, the sun was already coming through the window and a disheveled woman was standing in front of him, watching him with curiosity.
“Forgive my trespassing,” Danilo said. “I didn’t know there was anyone in this house. I’ll leave.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” the woman said. “You have to go up to the second floor to see Mr. Coro.”
“Is that an order?”
“Absolutely,” the woman said, brandishing an old, rusty machete. “It’s easy to come in here, but leaving is a big problem. Come with me.”
Danilo rubbed his eyes with his fists and stood up, smoothing out his shirt.
“I’ll say again that I’m sorry. I didn’t know that this house. ”
“This house has an owner,” the disheveled woman said. “Follow me so you can meet him.”
Danilo followed the woman up a spiral staircase covered in dust and rat droppings, and both stopped before a gray door. The disheveled woman gave three light taps, and from inside the room, came an energetic voice that said, “Come in, Cossack.”
Danilo and the woman went in. It was also a bare room,
except in the middle was an ordinary desk behind which sat a puny man, wearing suspenders despite being shirtless, and looking aimlessly at the new arrivals from behind round, black glasses.
“Is this our new guest?” The little man asked the disheveled woman.
“It is.”
“You slept for twelve hours, my friend. I’ve been waiting for you since six in the morning. I’m Mr. Coro, and I’m blind because a bandit took out my eyes. But I prefer to tell that story another time.”
Coro turned his head toward the disheveled woman and
ordered, “You can leave, Cossack, leave me alone with this gentleman. ”
“Danilo Castellanos, at your service. I’d like to take this occasion to ask your forgiveness for having dared enter your house. I was truly exhausted.”
“Besides, the police are looking for you,” Coro said.
“That’s not true,” Danilo denied. “I’ve never had problems with the police.”
“Do you believe in chiromancy, Mr. Castellanos?”
“I’ve never thought about it.”
“Let’s see, come closer, give me your hands. Through your hands, I will know everything you were, are, and will be.”
Danilo Castellanos gave his hands over to the little man, and he felt him begin to study them with his fingers.
“An intellectual,” Coro started to say. “You have no children, no wife, no house. And I maintain that you are being pursued by the police. Now I’d like to know: for political reasons?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Danilo was obstinate. “I’ve never had any problems with the law.”
It was then that the little man’s squalid hands grabbed his wrists and began to squeeze with such pressure that Danilo fell to the ground whimpering like a child.
“Who are you, brute?” Cora said with a suddenly sinister voice.
“I am Danilo Castellanos, history teacher at Simón Bolivar high school, I am running from the police because I fear I killed my aunt.”
“A vulgar criminal!” Coro exclaimed, releasing him at once, his face full of contempt. “That’s not what I need in my bunker. I want political men. Do you understand? Principled people who are always ready to give their lives for their homeland. But you are a vulgar old-lady murderer.”
“It’s not like that,” Danilo clarified. “I didn’t kill her with my hands. I accidentally pushed her and she hit her head against the bathtub. In reality, I’m a thief.”
“Thieves won’t overthrow Cornelio Rojas. You’re not useful to me, either.”
“In all truth, I’ve never stolen. I only did so to get three thousand pesos and to hire a boat to leave the country. That’s a political act.”
“Leave the country? That’s something rats do. This is a crucial time when you, more than ever, must stay in the country and fight the dictatorship. Everyone wants to leave the country! No one is capable of mustering up the courage to blow the tyrant’s brains out like Brutus and Zeno of Elea did in their time. Those were men. Real men. Would you fire against Cornelio Rojas if you had him in front of you?”
Danilo hesitated before responding.
“I’ve never killed anyone. But the tyrant, I think I would.”
“You’ll have time enough to prove it,” Coro said with a prophetic air. And then he called, “Madame!”
A very beautiful woman, dressed in a see-through negligee, appeared from behind a closet door.
“What do you think of this, Madame?” Coro inquired.
The Madame studied Danilo’s appearance for a while. Then she asked, “Is your penis short or long?”
Flushed, Danilo responded, “Average. I’m an average guy.”
“We don’t admit anyone here who has less than seven inches.”
“That’s what I have.”
“Do you have money?”
“No.”
“You’re lying.”
Then the woman called out, “Whitey!” And through a side door, came an ugly, heavyset man with a garrote in his hands.
“Check him, Whitey.”
It was like being on a butcher counter. The big man took Danilo as if he were a ragdoll, and turned him over, felt him all over, took off his clothes, and proceeded to examine them with extreme meticulousness. In the back pocket of his pants, he found the roll of bills, a gold locket, a pocket watch, also gold, and some diamond earrings. He put everything in front of Coro and, after bowing, took his spot in a corner of the room.
“Was there money, Madame?” Coro asked.
“A fortune!” The woman exclaimed, feeling the booty with lecherous hands. “More than nine thousand pesos in bills and about five thousand in jewels.”
“A gift from God,” Coro opined. “That means our bunker will be able to survive for many more months. Regarding Mr. Danilo, let him stay. He doesn’t have the nerve of an assassin, but perhaps he’ll be infected by the spirit of combat that exists in this house. Let the others come!”
The Madame left the room and quickly returned with a small troop of two men and two women. There was the elusive Melanio Webster, whom Coro introduced as the future minister of propaganda after the fall of Cornelio Rojas. At Coro’s insistence, that unimportant-looking little man demonstrated what he did daily in dark movie theaters, public bathrooms, deserted alleyways, and vacant plazas where there was no one watching. His art consisted of wetting a rubber stamp in a small pillow soaked in red ink, and sticking it on any surface until the slogan “Death to Cornelio Rojas” was left imprinted. He had never been caught, but if that should ever happen, he had a cyanide pill as a precautionary measure in his pocket to avoid humiliating blows and brutal interrogations. Then Coro introduced Manzano the poet, a black man dressed in an old frock coat, which despite its being ripped and wrinkled he wore with great dignity. He would become head of the country’s union of writers and artists, after the fall of Cornelio Rojas. According to Coro, that black man was as good as Rilke and had written more than two hundred battle hymns, cursing Cornelio Rojas and extolling Coro. He also made us a succinct demonstration of his virtues, singing admirably in a tenor’s voice: