Vengeance(94)

One day, quite spontaneously, Alejandro said, “I think Manuel is very sad.”

Sorrow was always a danger, and the General thought again of firing the old man. “Perhaps he would be happier in another job.”

“I hope he never leaves us,” his son said quickly. Oh, the boy was careless like that, just like his mother. The innocent are careless, the General thought, trusting. He felt a moment of fear — and then of anger. His son would have to learn caution. It would serve him right if he fired Manuel, but, weakened by his love for the boy, the General said, “I would be very sad if I lost you. The death of his son is why Manuel is sad.”

“I think that is true. He can never forget what happened,” said Alejandro, but his face told the General nothing.

“The child was ill, wasn’t he? There was no one to blame.”

“I don’t know,” said Alejandro. “Mother —” He started to speak, then stopped. The General looked at him sharply.

“Mother didn’t die of illness.”

“Evil men murdered your mother,” the General said. “She was too trusting. She went out in the car when I had warned her —” He broke off, moved in spite of himself. Though there had been threats, she had never understood the hatred against him. Of necessity, he had kept her innocent of his life, and that innocence had killed her. To prevent Alejandro from meeting the same fate, the General had fled to the north, even though his prime impulse had been to seek revenge.

“A lot of people were killed at home,” observed Alejandro.

Well, what had the General expected? There were stories in the Yankee papers, perhaps even in Alejandro’s school lessons, for the General suspected that even St. Ignatius, chosen for its tradition and rigidity, was infected with new and liberal ideas. “Most of them deserved to die,” he said. “The men who murdered your mother — death would have been too good for them.”

“They got away, didn’t they?”

“Things fell apart. We had many enemies. It was me they wanted to kill, because I defended our country.”

He spoke passionately, and as if to console him — for the boy had a tender heart — Alejandro said, “I know. I know you were a great man at home. When I am older, I will study your career. You will be in history books.”

The General was pleased; then it struck him that this was a strange phrase for a boy to use, even a bookish boy. He remembered again that Manuel had told the boy that his father had been a great man at home and that one day Alejandro would understand the sort of man he was. Not if I can help it, thought the General.

Still, he did nothing about the old man’s residence in the garden, which bloomed ever more luxuriantly. I am getting old, thought the General, I am succumbing to nostalgia. He sat out on his terrace smoking and listening to the night sounds and imagining himself back in the capital. Or, and these were moments he both loved and feared, he sat in the darkness with only the torches lit and envisioned the highlands with the moon rising over the jungle trees of Santa Lucia de Piedras, and he saw himself turning toward the interrogation rooms. He’d always liked to work at night. Certain things do not belong with daylight.

Possibly, neither did Manuel. The General avoided the garden during the heat of the day, and even at night, when, courting a confrontation, he walked around the vegetable patch and passed the shed, the old man remained as invisible as if he were a figment of the General’s imagination — or of Alejandro’s.

But the latter idea was disturbing, for why should Alejandro have any knowledge of the villages of the hinterlands, villages he had never seen? Why should he imagine an old man who offered him the promise of seeing the General as he was? No, this was a warning, and the General had just resolved to fire Manuel and make the shed uninhabitable when Alejandro raced inside, crying that his friend had taken ill, that he must have a doctor.

“He is probably just drunk,” said the General, and saw the shock in his son’s eyes. Then there was nothing for it but to go down to the garden and see for himself.

Alejandro ran ahead, his anxiety for Manuel all too apparent. Perhaps the gardener really was sick; perhaps he could be sent to the hospital, or even home. The General gave a tight smile at that and entered the shed. The afternoon light came in over the potting bench, stacked with clean terra-cotta pots and shining trowels and containers of soil, sand, and peat moss.

The old man, very thin, very gray, was lying on a small cot in the shadows. The General saw at once that this was serious. “Get out of here,” he told Alejandro. “It may be contagious.” Then he took out his cell phone and dialed for an ambulance. “We will get you a doctor,” he told the old man in Spanish.