Juan White, Güicho Sol, and my Uncle Charlie were quite frantic, pacing around the room, whiskey glasses always in hand, complaining about how useless the military is, wondering how they could possibly have let the general slip out of their hands, and the pilots were even worse, instead of bombing the Black Palace, they dropped the bombs two blocks away, destroying the Teatro Colón and all the shops in the vicinity. Mother piped up and asked if the Casino had also been destroyed; they told her it hadn’t been; fortunately, it was untouched. Güicho said it seems the leaders of the coup don’t really want to carry out the assault but instead only scare the general, as if they could possibly win like that, only the faint of heart would be foolish enough to suspend the assault at night, when they should be delivering the coup de grâce to the Black Palace and finishing that Nazi warlock off once and for all. Güicho said he doesn’t trust General Marroquín, the commander of the First Infantry Regiment, which is leading the charge on the palace. Then I thought about why General Marroquín might have called Pericles on Friday night: why would he have wanted to contact him when it’s common knowledge my husband is in jail? Father wondered to what extent the American Embassy supports the coup. Güicho said he had spent some time that afternoon with the ambassador, and there would be no support or any statement of support until the outcome became known. Juan is livid because he hoped the American troops would come to the support of the rebels. After drinking another couple of shots of whiskey, Juan and Güicho left. Only then did Father ask me if I had been able to speak to my father-in-law; I told him I hadn’t, the telephone lines to Cojutepeque are out, but undoubtedly the colonel is beside himself because of Clemen’s participation in the coup. I expressed my anxiety about Pericles’s situation. He told me that we should immediately mobilize all our contacts to get him released, taking advantage of the opportunity, now that the general is under siege and on the verge of being overthrown. But he couldn’t get in touch with either Chaquetilla Calderón or Judge Molina, president of the Supreme Court, or Don Agustín Alfaro, the director of the coffee-growers’ association, who they say is inside the garrison of the First Regiment with the rebels. He told me he can’t understand why Clemen hasn’t persuaded any officers to go with a contingent of troops to the Central Prison to liberate his father and the rest of the political prisoners.
I’ve returned to my bedroom to rest for a while. Father is still out in the living room with his friends, drinking whiskey by candlelight, discussing the latest rumors, going over the names of the officers involved in the coup. I keep thinking about how worried Pati must be, how she’ll hear about all this so suddenly and not be able to get in touch with any of us; Betito is at the beach with his friends, perhaps without the slightest idea what is going on. And I think about Pericles, how uncertain things must be at the Central Prison, where, after all, God has seen fit to keep him safe, because if he had been at the Black Palace he would be at the mercy of the general’s fury. I will pray for this Holy Monday to be a good day, when at long last the spell that warlock has cast over our country and over all our lives will be broken.
Holy Monday, April 3
Today feels like the longest day of my life. I’m amazed I still have the strength to sit here and write, to consign to paper some of the events that are burning inside me as nothing ever has before. The coup failed. My fears became reality: the general took control again, the rebel officers surrendered, Clemen is in hiding, Pericles is still in prison in a very precarious situation, isolated, without any possibility of receiving anything from the outside world. I am home, unable to sleep, tormented by my fears; Betito is sleeping at his friend Henry’s house. Fortunately, the electricity and the telephone have been working normally since noon. Pati has called twice, the poor thing is in so much anguish, she even offered to get on a plane to come help me; I’m afraid all this stress will affect her pregnancy. I’ve also spoken to my mother-in-law, who told me with great sadness that if Clemen gets caught he is a dead man. Two plainclothes policemen have been watching the house since dusk; María Elena saw them when she came back from buying tortillas. In the streets, chaos and panic reign supreme.
Where, dear God, is my poor Clemen now? I have told myself not to think about him, that I must take him out of my mind or the anxiety will destroy me; I keep repeating to myself that there is nothing I can do for him, only God and fate can save him now. The last time we spoke was at one in the afternoon; I managed to get in touch with him at the radio station. He told me they had not lost hope that the infantry and artillery regiments could launch a decisive assault against the Black Palace, though he admitted that a defeatist attitude was beginning to take hold, many with him there at the station had begun to talk about the embassies where they would seek asylum if the coup failed. I asked him what he would do if that happened. He told me he still didn’t know, he was weighing his options, but I shouldn’t worry. He sounded exhausted, almost like a zombie; I assumed he had barely slept and that the excitement and the alcohol had taken their toll. By this time Father and his friends had already given the coup up for lost, he said the rebel officers had been remarkably idiotic: negotiating on the telephone with the Nazi warlock, trying to force him to surrender, when precisely the opposite was really going on — the general was the one tightening the screws on them. By then I had already found out that my father-in-law had publicly announced his full and unconditional support for the general and had angrily condemned Clemen’s actions.
So, the entire city is on tenterhooks, there’s no end to the rumors and hearsay: Colonel Tito Calvo was driving a tank through the streets bragging about how they were going to demolish police headquarters with cannon fire; the pilots had dropped bombs on purpose on the block of the Casino and the Teatro Colón because they didn’t really want to finish off the general, just give him a scare; the ambush of the general failed because the general had infiltrated the ranks of the rebel officers; many vagrants have been killed by gunfire in the vicinity of Parque Libertad; the Nazi warlock has made a pact with the devil, he conducted a black mass in the basement of the palace and will now execute all those who plotted against him; troops from Cojutepeque and San Vicente are marching to the capital from the east and have the support of the people along the way, and they have already taken back the garrison at the Ilopango Airport.
One horrible rumor is that the general lashed out yesterday against poor Don Jorge. They say that once he felt safe in the palace, the first thing he did was order Don Jorge to be tortured; he was then taken out of his cell and executed in the street, where his body was left as a warning to the rebels. It appears they shot Don Jorge and left him for dead, but he somehow managed to survive. Horrific. I’ve called his house to talk to Teresita, his wife, but the line is dead. I pray to God, please, make this be only a rumor.
I tried to get to the Central Prison early this morning, but the same checkpoint that stopped me yesterday was there again today. This afternoon, when it was already evident the rebels had lost, I attempted again, and finally I managed to get through. But it did me no good. Soldiers were surrounding the prison, still afraid of an assault by the rebel forces. I was carrying the basket of food for Pericles; I approached the casemate to ask them to call Sergeant Flores. In vain. Several groups of prisoners’ families were standing around outside; the guards had told them that everything was fine inside the prison, no visits were allowed until further notice, and they should leave, take themselves out of harm’s way. I recognized the mother of Merlos, one of Pericles’s cellmates; her eyes were red from crying, she was drying them with a handkerchief. I feared the worst. I was alarmed and asked her what had happened. She said she was afraid the general would now decide to execute the political prisoners, take his anger out on them. It was the same fear eating away at my insides. I told her what I tell myself: this cannot happen, her son and my husband are innocent, they have been locked up, they have had nothing to do with the plot, played no part in the coup, and had no responsibility for it. Then, when I stopped talking, an image of Clemen struck me full force. She saw it in my face, for she immediately said to me, “Let us pray to God that your son escapes.” I was on the verge of collapsing, crying my heart out right there in the middle of the street, in front of the guards who were watching us and the rest of the families; I felt a huge lump in my throat and two tears fell out of my eyes and down my cheeks. But I managed to control myself. I hastily said goodbye to Doña Chayito, that’s Merlos’s mother’s name, turned around, and made my way back home. After so many years with Pericles I have learned to hold back my tears. But what I didn’t let out in the street, I did at home, in my bedroom behind closed doors, until I felt that I didn’t have a single tear left inside me and that my husband was watching me, frowning severely.