I spent the rest of the morning making chicken with rice and a beet salad. Betito had gone to swim at the Club, and he returned a little before noon to accompany me to the Black Palace — that’s what we call police headquarters. They don’t let Betito come into the room where I meet with Pericles; he must remain in the waiting room. Those are the general’s orders: I am the only person authorized to see my husband and only for half an hour a day. Pericles was in a very good mood: I assumed he must have had some good news, but he didn’t say anything. I have been warned to never talk about politics during my visits, because the walls have ears.
Clemen, Mila, and my three grandchildren arrived punctually at one o’clock. The children are rambunctious and poorly behaved. Marianito is five years old, but he is already a little demon; the twins, Alfredito and Ilse, just turned three, and they seem headed in the same direction. Pericles quickly loses patience with them; he doesn’t like how destructive, willful, and ill-mannered they are. He says that Clemen and Mila do not make the best couple. “What else could come from a union between a frivolous man and a shifty woman?” he complained angrily once when the children got into his library and tore apart several books; I told him not to talk like that. This afternoon, they started running around the house asking for their grandpapa the moment they arrived. When he is calm, Marianito is a tender, sweet child, the spitting image of Clemen at that age.
After lunch, while Mila was out on the patio watching the children play with Néron, our old dog, I asked my son what would happen to his father if he were in prison during a coup d’état. Clemen said, without hesitating, that it would be for the best, that a coup was, in fact, the speediest means for Pericles to regain his freedom. Then I asked him what would happen to his grandfather, Colonel Aragón, who has always been so loyal to the general. He answered that this would depend on the position his grandfather takes during the coup. I don’t share Clemen’s confidence that the best way to secure Pericles’s release is a coup d’état. I’m fearful; I’d rather be with my husband if something like that happens. I don’t understand very much about politics, but my son is rather rash. And the general has been ruling this country with an iron fist for twelve years.
I went to the Club this afternoon. I learned that Betito had been drinking beer with some friends from school, secretly — he’s only fifteen years old. When I got home, I scolded him, I told him he should have more respect for me and not take advantage of his father’s absence to do foolish things, for Pericles is very strict and would punish him on the spot; years ago he had the same kinds of problems with Clemens.
After dinner, I spoke for a long time on the phone with Mama Licha. The poor thing suffers from arthritis, which makes it difficult for her to walk. She told me that every single day she asks my father-in-law when they will release Pericles, and every single time the Colonel answers her with an irritated harrumph. My mother-in-law adores my husband, her firstborn. She asked me how Patricia is, and she complained that neither Clemente nor Betito had come to visit her in the last two weeks. Cojutepeque is about twenty-five miles away; the colonel’s the governor there.
Later, my mother called to tell me they had just returned from the finca, where they had lunch with several couples, friends of theirs, including Mr. Malcom, the British commercial attaché, and his wife. I assume the men, as usual, spent their time in heated discussions about the war in Europe, then mocking the general and his wife; my father says the English simply can’t understand how that Nazi warlock has been able to hold onto power, nor why the Americans make no concerted effort to remove him. My mother asked if there was any news about Pericles.
Raúl and Rosita came by for a while this evening. We listened to the radio, drank hot chocolate, and ate delicious vanilla biscuits. Raúl has his clinic, but he also teaches at the university, where, according to him, the atmosphere is quite heated and new protests are being planned against the general. Both are very worried about Chente, their eldest son and a medical student, who seems to be involved in planning the protests and refuses to accompany them to the beach for the Easter holidays.
Monday, March 27
It’s strange how sometimes when I write in this diary I feel nostalgic for my adolescence. Then I remember I turned forty-three last October, I have three children and three grandchildren, and I started writing this diary as a substitute for my conversations with my husband. I needed this time alone, Pericles’s long absence, to get me to open this beautiful notebook and begin to let my fountain pen glide across its bone-colored pages. I bought it nine years ago in Brussels, when we’d already moved into the house on Boulevard du Régent; in the mornings, after Pericles had left for the embassy and Clemen and Pati for school, I would roam around the city for a few hours with Betito, who at five years old was too young to go to nursery school in a foreign language. I bought this notebook at a shop near Saint Catherine’s Square. I saw it in the window, I loved the design on its hard cover, and I immediately decided to buy it to write down my impressions as a stranger in that city, a fantasy I’d been harboring ever since we crossed the Atlantic by steamship. But I never wrote in it, not till now.
This morning, María Elena returned from her village later than usual; usually she’s here by eight, but today it was almost eleven before she arrived. She explained that Belka, her daughter, has a terrible flu, and they had to take her to the hospital early in the morning; Belka is six years old, spirited and charming, and lives with María Elena’s parents and siblings, and we only get to see her when we visit the finca; María Elena’s family has always worked for my family. I asked her to finish cooking the meatballs and rice that were already on the stove while I packed the rest of the food in the basket I take to Pericles every day: a thermos of coffee, hard-boiled eggs, milk, and sweet rolls for breakfast; and ham and cheese sandwiches for dinner. What matters most is that he not have to eat that filthy food they serve at the palace.
My husband was very upset today: he found out that the general didn’t have him arrested because of the article he wrote criticizing him for violating the Constitution so he could get re-elected president, but rather because somebody had told him that Pericles had agreed to join the group headed by Don Agustín Alfaro, the leader of the coffee growers and bankers who are now opposing the general, most of whom are Father’s friends. I told him that was nonsense, the general knows very well that none of them agree with Pericles’s ideas, which they consider communist. But gossip is gossip. And this wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened: a few years ago, when the War in the Pacific began, the general kept Pericles in jail for a week for no apparent reason, though subsequently we learned that someone had told him that my husband was spreading rumors about the general concocting a plan to re-supply Japanese submarines on Mizata Beach and another plan to land Japanese troops in California, and supposedly those stories had turned the government of the United States against “the man.” But these accusations against my husband are groundless, the whole world knows of the general’s sympathies for the Germans and the Japanese and of his plans to assist them.
When I returned home, I called my mother-in-law to tell her what Pericles had told me, hoping she would pass it on to the colonel, who has privileged access to the general. Mama Licha said she would do so without delay, she said it’s unheard of that her son should be kept in jail because of a silly piece of gossip, and it’s high time he be released. My father-in-law belongs to the military old guard, those who supported the general’s coup d’état twelve years ago and have remained loyal to him ever since; both my husband and my mother-in-law call him “colonel,” never his given name, even I stopped calling him Don Mariano, or Father, years ago, and now I also call him only colonel.