1 Then John had a friend: or he had Victor Caceres.
1.1 They used to play poker. Neither man drank, John Moffat was relieved to meet another teetotaler. There was something in Victor’s rabid spiel –
“I am a sadist, but this is a good thing in me.” “I am a great saint in my childhood.”
“I am the only real man in this army, but I am a coward.”
– that leavened John’s anomie.
1.2 Victor was anti-American, anti-left, just plain contrary.
1.3 The Indians were racially underdeveloped. The ladinos of his own class were Indians in suits. Guatemalan women were whores without exception.
1.4 “But I am a patriot of this disgusting country.”
2 Over cards, Victor peppered John with tales of massacre and torture: the women with their breasts sheared off; the children mutilated; all the men shot in front of their wives. Though some horror stories were the doing of Victor’s “friends,” and some disturbingly like the accounts of an eyewitness, Caceres would study John accusingly, wronged.
“Who began this shit?” he would ritually demand.
John would chirp to order: “The CIA.”
And both men laughed, cheered by the frivolous sound of the catechism.
3 Once and only once, he met Caceres drunk. John was walking down the street, he heard a man screaming at him. Next thing he knew, it’s Victor spitting in his face. Shouting: America was shitting on his country, on the Madonna, John was a man of shit. Caceres pulled a gun, and had to be restrained by embarrassed friends.
3.1 The next day he sent John an expensive watch and a note of apology.
3.2 John thought that was real style.