LOYALTY DAY MARKED the anniversary of Torrijos’s return to Panama in 1969 following a failed coup attempt. In fact, it was a tribute to Noriega more than Torrijos, since it was Tony who had thwarted the overthrow. He had arranged to smuggle Torrijos back into the country by a private plane, which landed in a jungle airstrip in Chiriquí that was lit by the headlights of jeeps and trucks. By this daring action, Tony had made himself the only man that Omar Torrijos really trusted.
Just like Moisés Giroldi.
That was the danger in letting people get too close, Tony thought as he finished tying his necktie and adjusting his ski-slope hat. He could not allow himself to make that mistake again. He was in a country now without maps, one in which his friends were more dangerous than his enemies.
The troops were awaiting his inspection in the courtyard. Tony stuck his pearl-handled pistol into his holster and took a final look in the mirror. He snapped off a salute to himself, then marched out to see his men.
There they were, a thousand men frozen at attention. It was like being in a museum by himself, walking among statues. He looked closely into their faces, but they did not blink or return his stare. They looked fixedly into space, frozen by duty and terror. Since the coup attempt, Tony had ordered the executions of more than seventy officers.
As closely as he looked, however, he could not see into their souls. He could not see if loyalty was really there.
He put a finger on the cheek of a handsome corporal. The man’s skin flinched.
“You need a shave, Corporal,” said Tony.
“Sir, yes, sir!”
Tony smiled. He might have some fun with this one. But some other time. He turned to the garrison commander, a small, wiry officer with a narrow face and a rodent’s mustache. “Colonel Macías, assemble the five ranking officers. We are going across the street to visit an old friend.”
FATHER JORGE WALKED in a daze through Chorrillo, led by forces he did not want to acknowledge but could no longer resist. How could he have been so naive?” He asked himself furiously. The more he considered his behavior in the last year, the more he concluded that he was a failure as a priest—a dangerous one at that. When Father Jorge was in this black mood, there was no end to his self-loathing. He placed himself in the witness seat and prosecuted his actions remorselessly. He had fooled himself into believing that he could help the people of Panama through political action, but so far the protests against Noriega had led only to repression, murder, and economic collapse. People were poorer and more desperate than ever before—thanks, in part, to Father Jorge! He had joined the movement and then betrayed it—completely! Naming every name! And yet in the morally reversed world he was living in, he had become a hero because of his “resistance”! He was far too great a coward to admit his betrayal. Even worse, he had fooled himself into believing that he understood God’s will. He had persuaded Giroldi that God would not demand violence. But what did he know of God’s intentions?
His despair filled him with defiance and a longing for annihilation. And every step took him closer to the object of his buried obsession. The landmarks that he passed—the Marlboro Man, the graffiti fence, the New and Slightly Used Tires store, were warning signs that he was drawing nearer to his own moral destruction. In his shame he could think only of the promise of consolation offered in the apartment of Gloria Sánchez.
Her face registered surprise and pleasure. “I’m just getting Renata fitted for her Communion dress,” she said as she invited the priest in. Renata was standing on a stool looking angelic as a Chinese seamstress hemmed her white organdy dress.
“Oh, Father, it’s you!” Renata said delightedly.
“Be still, child,” the seamstress fussed as she expertly looped the thread around the bottom of the dress.
In one corner of the room there was a small Christmas tree decorated with colorful paper cutouts and garlands of aluminum foil. An Advent calendar filled with candies hung on the wall, marking five days till the blessed event. The small room smelled of freshly made bread pudding. Father Jorge patted Renata on the head. She had a red Christmas bow in her hair, and she looked at him so adoringly that he felt deeply abashed. Strangely, everyone accepted his presence as being completely natural, as if this moment of heightened religious feeling had somehow summoned him up, rather than his own loneliness and sexual longing.
“Do you know your catechism, Renata?” he asked dutifully.
She laughed charmingly. “You know I do, Father.”
“It’s true, you are a clever young lady.”
She hugged him. How ironic that she called him “Father,” when he would never know the true meaning of that word! A wave of recognition washed over him, presenting him with a vision of himself surrounded by the sounds and smells of children—his children—and the comforts of physical love. Ordinary happiness could have been mine, he realized—not for the first time, but never so intensely as now. The Church often called itself a family, but it was really more like a multinational company, with colleagues and bosses rather than siblings and parents. The clergy were tied together not by blood and familial love but by an idea. All of a sudden he knew with absolute heartbreaking clarity the joy that would have been his if he had not made such a radical choice of profession. He wondered if he had ever really acknowledged, until now, the depth of his sacrifice. And for what? To serve a God he didn’t understand!
Within minutes, the Chinese seamstress had finished her task and taken the new dress away to be pressed. Gloria sent Renata to the convent school to help package groceries for the poor. Despite her protests that she wanted to stay, Renata skipped away singing a carol.
“Do you want some pudding, Father? It’s still hot.”
She came and sat beside him on the futon. One bite of the rum-soaked pudding and his eyes filled with tears.
Gloria took his hand. “If there’s something wrong, you can tell me.” Then she laughed and said, “I’ve never actually received a confession from a priest.”
Father Jorge smiled ruefully. “I’m afraid that I am not much of a priest.”
“You’ve been very good to us, Father.”
He looked at her and then looked away. “I wish, for once, that you wouldn’t call me ‘Father.’ ”
Gloria was silent, but she seemed to be reading his thoughts. He felt the uncertainty in her hand. Although he was ashamed, he was also desperate for her to simply understand. He wished that words did not have to be exchanged. His longing was so great and so unlimited that to explain it would be like trying to capture the air in buckets.
“I guess everybody has times they want to be someone else,” Gloria finally said. “It’s okay, but it is a little hard for me to think of you as an ordinary man.”
“Just because I’m a priest doesn’t mean I am not weak and filled with natural human desires. In fact, I am even weaker than other men, but until recently I have been able to hide this knowledge from myself. To be ordinary—this is what I want more than anything in the world! That would be a promotion from the life I now live. It is such a farce! People think of me as some kind of hero or a saint, but I’m a coward and the worst kind of sinner—the kind who does not even allow himself the pleasure of enjoying his sin.”
“But there’s nothing wrong with desire, Father.” Gloria stopped herself and said, “Jorge.” Then she giggled.
“Is my name so funny?”
“No, I’m a little nervous,” she admitted.
“Tell me something. What do you desire?”
“I want my children to be safe.”
“That’s not the same thing as desire,” said the priest. “God also wants this. When I talk about desire, I mean selfish things, things that you want for yourself that maybe are not right or not deserved.”
Gloria’s face emptied and she looked away. “I don’t have desires any longer, not the way I used to. Of course, I understand what men want of me, but I don’t have the same feelings for them. Physically, I mean. Sometimes I long for a man, but what I really want from him is that he talk to me, that he take me seriously as a person. This thought excites me more than sex. I know that I am not worthy of respect. Men will never want to just talk to me. Let’s be truthful, it is not what you came for.”
“I just want to be with you, an ordinary man with an ordinary woman.”
Gloria pushed a lock of hair away from the priest’s eyes and studied him for a moment, then she kissed him cautiously on the lips. “I don’t want you to break your vows,” she said before he could kiss her back. “It makes me feel like a criminal or something.”
“I broke my vows from the moment I started wanting you.”
“Well, there’s a difference between thinking and doing, I don’t care what the Church says.” She began unbuttoning her blouse. Father Jorge’s face felt as if it were on fire. He was filled with desire and confusion about her intentions. “You’re nice to me,” she was saying. “You were always nice, even from the beginning. I just want you to talk to me. It doesn’t matter what you say. Just don’t lie to me.”
When she opened her blouse, Father Jorge found himself staring at her brassiere. He put his index finger on the stiff white material and slowly traced the border along the soft brown skin of her breasts. Gloria watched him do this as if he were drawing a sketch in the sand. It was not as if it were her own body that was being touched. Physically she was somewhere else. He did not know how to reach her or if he should even try.
Nor did he know how to get past the brassiere. Certainly there was some simple and probably obvious means of removal, but it presented an inscrutable barrier to the priest.
“In the back,” Gloria said, leaning forward helpfully so that he could reach around her. He felt the clasp in the middle of her back. He pulled at it, but desire and guilt had made him fumbling and incompetent.
Gloria gently pushed him away and easily unfastened her bra.
The priest stifled a sob. It had been years since he had actually seen a woman’s breasts. Now that they were being offered to him, he felt awed, as if he were in the presence of something mysterious and holy. Was this blasphemy? he wondered. How could something so commonplace and profane as a prostitute’s body fill him with a sense of worship?
But these thoughts fluttered past and he lost himself again in sensation. The shape and feel and smell of her were dizzying. He was attached to her breast like a baby.
Gloria suddenly pushed him away. “You’re not keeping your end of the bargain,” she said. “You have to talk to me.”
“What do you want to hear?”
“Whatever is in your mind. You don’t have to worry, Father. Men tell me things—things they would never even say in confession. You won’t shock me.”
“I was thinking about my mother,” the priest said. “I don’t know why she came into my mind. She never wanted me to be a priest. She was not especially religious. I think she wanted grandchildren too much.”
“I approve of this mother,” Gloria said, smiling.
“I think she would have liked you, too,” Father Jorge said. “I was young when she died, but I remember that she judged people by her own standards. It didn’t matter to her who you were, but how you treated other people.”
“I think you have the same nature.”
The priest looked again at Gloria’s breast, cradled in his hand. “I keep wondering if my life has completely changed,” he said. “I’ve never felt what I’m feeling now, and I don’t know if I ever will again. There’s so much I don’t understand. I think I’m committing some terrible sin, but at the same time I feel like getting down on my knees and thanking God that I can be here with you.”
“I think I hear Renata coming,” Gloria said, as she quickly redressed. “Now you should eat your pudding, Father, and put these thoughts away. Renata loves you too much. You will have to be a priest again now.”
THE CURSE OF Panama, the criminal class,” Tony said as he led the small delegation across the street to La Modelo, where curious faces stared out at them from every barred window.
None of the officers said anything. Some of the faces in the windows belonged to the hundreds of men who had been their friends and colleagues only a few weeks before. Many others were buried in La Modelo.
The director of the prison hobbled forward to greet them, a large, crooked man named Pujols. “Welcome, General, we’ve made the preparations you’ve suggested,” he said. He led them through the courtyard to a wooden door that was reinforced with iron bands. “This is where we keep our special cases,” he explained.
“You once lived here yourself, didn’t you?” said Tony.
Pujols made an eerie noise that may have been a laugh, then he stuck an inhaler in his mouth and took a deep breath.
Inside the door a spiral staircase led down to a foul-smelling basement. The stairs were lit by bare yellow bulbs, which gave a sickening luminescence to the perspiring concrete walls. The sound of screaming became very clear.
“You hear that?” said Tony. “That’s the sound of the Traitor Bird.”
The officers looked at each other. Pujols tapped on the door of the room at the bottom of the stairs. A pudgy guard opened it and the officers followed Tony inside.
“Is he dead?” asked Tony.
At first, in the dim light, it was difficult to see the naked body lying motionless in the straw.
The guard kicked the body savagely in the kidneys. There was a small moan.
“Trust,” said Tony. “Who do you trust these days, you know what I mean?”
The officers nodded uncomprehendingly.
“I trust you, but I trusted him once, too.” Tony ground his boot into the prisoner’s crumpled hand. The finger bones cracked. But the man no longer registered pain. “My old friend. How are they treating you?” He turned to the others. “You all remember Major Giroldi?”
“Yes, sir!”
“That’s right. You all knew him, didn’t you? And what I know is that the major could never have done what he did without cooperation. Without his friends knowing. This being Loyalty Day, I’m going to offer you the opportunity to show some loyalty.”
The officers exchanged desperate and uncertain looks.
“Remember, trust!” said Tony. “It is the highest quality of friendship.”
Colonel Macías unholstered his pistol and waited for the others to do likewise. Then, at his nod, they each began firing. Giroldi’s body jumped at the first volley and then lay motionless.