Mandragon Page 13

  Not what the audience had expected when they bought their tickets. So shaken by the second part of my prophecy they forgot it at once, wiped it from their minds, though later on, when an incident I’d predicted took place, some had flashes of déjà-vu. But the first part had come true even as power was using me to utter it: no way to sweep that under a mental rug. Those who’d been in the tent talked of nothing else, So inside an hour the new masters of Tinieblas learned that a circus trickster had recited all the details of their coup, plotted in total secrecy, while it was taking place and even before. Busy tightening their grip on the country or they’d have arrested me. Instead they gave Don Lorenzo until sunup to get his circus over the border. No killing in Tinieblas after all.

  Enraged, of course, and at me. Out, he figured, thirty or forty thousand. All my fault. As if I’d overthrown Alejo myself. It wasn’t my idea to make prophecies, I was only an instrument, and even without them he’d have made no money. Not that year. Not with martial law and a curfew in effect. But Don Lorenzo didn’t think like that. Couldn’t just accept adversity. Had to have someone to blame, and the someone had to be vulnerable to vengeance. So he blamed me. Let his resentment fester all the way to Chuchaganga and meanwhile ransacked his small but venomsteeped mind for the cruelest way to hurt me.

  And Mandragon? I lay twitching in Rebozo’s van like a galvanized corpse. Squeezed like a boardinghouse lime, exhausted, and scared to boot. In my prophetic trance I’d borne the pain of a whole country, years of tyranny and suffering and woe. And I was through with that, oh I was finished! I couldn’t take the trances any more. I’d have to ask Mohotty’s help.

  Never got the chance to. The profits Don Lorenzo had dreamed of weren’t coming, and he had losses to recoup, all he’d spent advertising the show in Tinieblas. We set up as soon as we arrived in Chuchaganga, opened as soon as we were set up. Less than twenty-four hours after my collapse I was made up and in costume. Weak as an old woman, jittery as a caged geek, but on the main-tent runway with Rebozo, waiting for our numbers to be called.

  Imelda was into her finale when Don Lorenzo, who’d withdrawn to the mouth of the runway, turned his back on the ring and walked over to us. Not a shadow of resentment or discontent. Top hat set jauntily, smooth face beaming pinkly, rich red silk cravat blossoming prosperously from his white waistcoat, tuxedo jacket sleek about his robust trunk. Strutted over with bouncy little steps, gleaming boots clicking the planks lightly, thighs of his beige jodhpurs swishing softly. Stopped before Rebozo and smiled.

  “Tonight you don’t go on.”

  Rebozo spread his arms, each with a duck in it, and shrugged his shoulders—his way of asking, Why not?

  Don Lorenzo’s smile spread and glowed, lighthouse beam of kindness above the rock-strewn coast of human life. Thinking, as he raised his small pink hands to caress the ducks’ heads, of how when I first came to the circus only Rebozo showed me kindness. Of how, when I was ill, Rebozo nursed me. Of how I’d come to come Rebozo. I didn’t know I loved Rebozo, but Don Lorenzo did. Recognized love when he saw it, just as he recognized talent and beauty, though there was no beauty, talent, or love in his own life.

  “Well, you see,” he said, hands caressing the ducks’ necks, eyes twinkling sweetly, “you’ve nothing to go on with.”

  Don Lorenzo’s carefully manicured stubby pink fingers closed about the ducks’ necks so quickly and tightly nary a quack escaped. Stepped back quickly, yanking the ducks from Rebozo’s arms. Smiled his benign smile, and then he twirled them, right-hand dock clockwise, left-band duck counterclockwise, like airplane propellers. Three quick twirls, more than enough, then held them out and dropped them on the planking. Two little lumps of feathers, without a particle of joy or music anymore.

  “You see? Nothing to go on with, so you don’t go on.”

  He swung the beam of his smile toward me and bathed me with it for a moment. Turned and went back to the mouth of the runway. Took his megaphone from a roustabout and strutted out into the ring.

  Don Lorenzo at center ring. Waves his top hat in air, raises his megaphone.

  “SEÑORAS Y SEÑORES, NIÑOS DE TODAS LAS EDADES! AHORA, PARA SU ADMIRACION Y DIVERSION, EL CIRCO UNIVERSAL AMICHEVOLE TIENE EL ORGULLO DE PRESENTAR …”

  The runway: Rebozo kneeling beside his ducks. Gathers them in his arms. Rocks back and forth, letting out low howls.

  Mandragon. Makes no move to comfort Rebozo. Stands perfectly erect and still, female-male features, male-female slight figure. Looks ringward. Eyes cake on a piercing glow, orange light flames about head and shoulders, Listens to Don Lorenzo’s echoing voice.

  “… DEL REMOTO TIBET, DONDE LOS SABIOS GUARDAN MISTERIOS OCULTOS, EL MAS ASOMBROSO Y PODEROSO DE TODOS LOS MAGOS; SEÑORAS Y SEÑORES, EL MAGO MANDRAGON!”

  Mandragon holds out a late paper fan and lifts it two inches.

  Don Lorenzo. Turns, smiling, toward the runway, waves his hat. His silk tie flies up out of his waistcoat and points straight up in air beside his right cheek. The tie draws taut, pulls upward, drags Don Lorenzo off the ground.

  “QUAAAAAA!”

  The tie hauls upward, slowly and steadily. Don Lorenzo drops his hat and megaphone, clutches the taut silk with plump pink hands, chins himself up to take his weight off his throat. Rises till his toes are twelve feet off the ground, staring about wildly, trying to scream for help but only quacking.

  Applause and laughter from the crowd, marvelous trick!

  But performers and roustabouts rush into the ring, gather beneath Don Lorenzo, gaping and shouting. The crowd grows still, then individual spectators start to scream in horror. Police break from their stations near the stands, run toward the ring.

  El Mago Mandragon steps from the runway. Wreathed in orange-red flame. Sweeps arms apart, and the police stop in their tracks, the roustabouts and performers draw aside.

  Mandragon enters the ring and stands beneath Don Lorenzo. Face raised, arms spread. Turns slowly, as though receiving applause, while Don Lorenzo pulls himself up, hand over hand, until his fingers clutch the tip of his necktie.

  “QUAAAAAAAAAAAACKI”

  Weary fingers slipping from the silk, smooth silk sliding through clutched fingers. Full weight against his throat, noosebite and horrorpain. Choke-anguish, Don Lorenzo starts to dance. Armflail, legthrash, shouldertwist. Face beet red, eyes bulging. Tongue poked from gaping fishmouth, jitterbug dance. Jerking and straining above Mandragon, who raises both hands, directing the crowd’s attention to the spectacle.

  Bulged eyes clouding over. Last convulsive flipflops. Stench of corruption as the waste of an excellent lunch empties into the seat of Don Lorenzo’s beige jodhpur trousers. Legs stop kicking. Arms droop limp. Body sways noosed in air, making slow quarter-turns.

  Mandragon reaches out with the paper fan and slashes the air. Don Lorenzo’s corpse blops heavily to the sawdust. Mandragon bows to it, then to the crowd. Flame fades, eyes lose their glow. Stands limply with head drooped as police and others rush ringward.

  20

  My last bow. Spectacular stunt, and I closed out my circus career. Early version, as it turns out, of my finale as prophet and savior.

  Variations on a theme, first hangman then victim. Repeating myself, as artists are condemned to. Even the greatest have only a few themes, but sad to know one’s done one’s best work early. Circus version much superior, my masterpiece in the form, and not because I was hangman. Simply more original, imaginative. Don Lorenzo got a marvelous noosing, mystical-magical, miraculous. Like of it never seen, before or since, whereas mine will be merely mechanical, cable and winch, but I’d best not dwell on it.

  I let the police lead me away. Utterly drained, empty, way I am now. Realized at last I was responsible for what the power in me did through me. Only an instrument, and yet responsible. Convenient that it happened in Costaguana. Can’t say how things would have gone had we been elsewhere, but sorcery’s a crime there, and they tried me. Guilty was what I was, and that’s how I pleaded.
Way out of it all, I thought, couldn’t take any more, wished it was over.

  Mandragon went to prison. Alejo went back into exile and married Angela. Dred Mandeville went gliding on through the deep-ocean gloom.

  And here in Tinieblas, what I’d prophesied came to pass.

  The majors were only trying to preserve their status when they overthrew Alejo and took power. Not much prestige to a commission in the Guardia, but the only way a fellow with nothing—no wealth no family, no education; no courage, no brains, no talent; no inclination to hard work—could live in comfort. Alejo meant to purge the Guardia. The majors purged him instead. But as soon as they had power, they began to enjoy it and decided to get as much as they could of it and keep it. Promoted themselves colonels and formed a junta. Suspended the constitution, dissolved the assembly, outlawed politics for everyone but themselves and their friends. Stole the state and called their theft a revolution.

  When the colonels had gathered up all the power in Tinieblas, they began trying to take it from one another. The junta came to resemble a basket of lobsters. Each colonel tried to climb on top of the rest. All were equally untalented, but one was more fearful and suspicious. This was Genghis Manduco. He became Crustacean in Chief. One by one he maneuvered his fellow thieves into exile. Then he promoted himself general and ruled arena,

  General Manduco raised the pay of the Guardia and recruited new guardias and promoted veterans and gave them all exciting modern weapons. He enlarged the coastal service and equipped it with rakishly proud cutters. He formed an air service and equipped it with helicopters and transports for dropping paratroopers. Then, when he was sure the troops loved him and could control any foolishness civilians might think up, he raised taxes.

  Under General Manduco the tax on alcoholic drinks was doubled, and the tax on cigarettes was tripled, and the tax on gasoline was doubled and redoubled, and every other tax was raised—income taxes, property taxes, amusement taxes; withholding taxes and licensing fees—and tariffs were jacked up and duties hiked, and all kinds of new imposts, tolls, and tithes were levied. The general made his brother Mangu minister of finance, and Mangu had a genius for imposing taxes. Taxes copied from other countries, and taxes resurrected from past eras, and taxes never dreamed up before. A sales tax, and all sorts of excise taxes, and a use tax, and a transactions tax, and a value-added tax, and a Ceylonese expenditure tax, and a Tsarist Russian soul tax for concerns and households with employees, and a medieval poll tax, and an Imperial Roman octroi tax on goods moved across provincial boundaries. A personal effects tax on clothing and furniture, with everyone’s home inventoried to collect it, and a surcharge eating tax on plates and silverware, and a surcharge sleeping-copulating tax—so much for beds, so much for hammocks, so much for straw mats—and a surcharge crapping tax on commodes and privies. Mangu declared air a state resource, and put a tax on breathing, and sent inspectors out to compute the volume of air consumed by each family and collect accordingly. Then he put a tax on mother’s milk and a tax on coffins, so that Tinieblans were taxed for being born and taxed for dying, as well as everything that went on in between. Mangu thought these taxes up and then imposed them. That was that. Anyone who objected was put on the first plane out if he was lucky, and in prison if he wasn’t, and those with no luck at all were put in the ground, or in the ocean, and objection ceased. Members of the government and the Guard were assessed no taxes and bought in special tax-free stores reserved for them, so they didn’t mind enforcing Mangu’s decrees, and since the exciting modern weapons—along with the cutters, transport planes, and helicopters, and a special helicopter for the general to zip him in comfort anywhere he pleased—came from gringo military aid, most of the new revenue from taxes was available to be stuffed in satchels and shipped out—to Panama, to Lebanon, to Switzerland—for deposit in numbered accounts.

  All dictators can be depended on to build roads and make trains run on time, but Tinieblas had no trains, so General Manduco concentrated on building roads. He made his brother Akbar minister of public works, and Akbar not only planned a huge program of road building but got a long-term, low-interest loan from the state bank, and went into the paving business, and built the roads himself. The general made his brother Kublai head of the state bank, and Kublai became famous for approving long-term, lowinterest loans. Some, the ones he approved for himself, had no term or interest at all, and with them he bought up land and businesses from Tinieblans who happened to be in exile or in prison, and from the heirs of those in the ocean or the ground. The general made his brother Xerxes head of the gaming commission, and Xerxes raised the price of lottery tickets but not the payoffs, and the difference was stuffed in satchels and shipped out. Xerxes established casinos all over the capital, and put slot-machine centers in the poorer neighborhoods, and in his spare time devised an infallible system for roulette, which he practiced nightly after closing time at one casino or another. He’d been a compulsive gambler all his life and had never had a winning year till his brother became dictator, but now he never lost, not on one spin of the wheel. In his new system he waited till a number played, and then he put his bet down. The general offered his brother Timur several important posts, but Timur was content with minor office. He became head of the courier service of the foreign ministry, and after that the diplomatic bag for the UN mission bulged with strange parcels, and people in New York spoke of the Tinieblan Connection, and Timur grew rich. The general had seventeen brothers and sisters, and all held office in his government, and all prospered.

  Still, there were certain discontents among the populace. Over things like the higher price of lottery tickets and brother Mangu’s crazy taxes. Over the way men in uniform had taken to insulting citizens and knocking them about. Even over the circumstance that no one had asked the Guardia and the Manduco family to run the country, much less loot it. News of these discontents reached the general and disturbed him. The people seemed lacking in moral fiber, in willingness to sacrifice. Disaffection toward the Guardia was treasonous. Resentment toward his family was worse.

  He thought of his elder brother Kublai. Went to the capital and got a job in Don Felix Grillo’s bank. Only a teller, though for shrewdness Kublai deserved to be the manager, and old Grillo was so jealous that a country boy could be so shrewd he pulled a surprise audit and fired Kublai, though his books were only a few thousand short. The same for all the others, jealousy and prejudice. He himself could have had a scholarship to study abroad, but his teachers were prejudiced against him. Sat him by himself during exams. Hovered over him like buzzards, so he got poor grades. Well, now he was dictator, and Kublai was head of the state bank, and the others had whatever posts they wanted. What was wrong with that? Why shouldn’t they run the country and be prosperous? Didn’t they deserve it after all that jealousy and prejudice?

  Nonetheless, the general decided to become popular, to divert the people’s discontents, and also to legitimize his rule. He declared the Tinieblan Revolution would go forward, and ordered elections for a constituent assembly.

  This was at a great rally, paid for by the general’s brother Sulimán, who was minister of health, with funds budgeted for buying medicines, Seven-story portrait of the general on the facade of the Hotel Excelsior, Huge reviewing stand set up before it in Bolívar Plaza, and the general stood there at salute. While elite units goose-stepped by in their camouflage jump suits. While the new helicopters clattered overhead. While schoolchildren sang a song called “Genghis Will Save Us” (composed, so the program said, by the general’s sister Lucrezia, who was minister of education, but actually ghosted by two Cubans in Miami). Then the general spoke. In a voice graveled by the whisky he’d drunk to calm his nerves and further distorted by the pressure against his throat of the bulletproof vest he was wearing, but boomed to thunder by loudspeakers and flung to every crevice of the land by TV and radio and cheered at every pause by the multitude. By peasants dragooned from their fields and trucked in to the capital. By state employees m
ustered in their offices and marched in lockstep to the plaza. By children assembled at the schools and issued bouquets. All carefully instructed to cheer at each pause, and the general declared the Revolution would go forward! No force on earth could stay the liberation of the Tinieblan people! They were equal to any sacrifice! Let the reactionaries beware!

  Let the imperialists beware! (The general waved his left hand toward the Reservation, where all the exciting weapons were unleaded, where the Guardia drew ammunition for them, where the helicopters were serviced and repaired. He lifted his eyes toward Dewey Hill, from whence came his military aid.) He, Genghis Manduco, would liberate Tinieblas from imperialism!

  (The general drank from his canteen, which was full of whisky.) If the imperialists resisted, he would crush them!

  (The general put his hand on his heart, to make sure his bulletproof vest was in place.) If need be, he would take the first bullet in his own breast!

  Let reactionaries and imperialists beware! The Tinieblan Revolution would go forward! And he, Genghis Manduco, would lead it, if the will of the people so ordained!

  The people spoke their will later that month. All citizens were compelled to vote. All candidates were selected by the general. The winners ratified the constitution he presented to them. They elected him president for life. They delegated all legislative authority to a committee picked by him. Then they adjourned. The will of the people was clear, and so the general led the Revolution forward.

  The general made his brother Caligula head of the legislative committee. It poured out a torrent of new codes. A rent code and a banking code and a labor code. An agricultural code, a commercial code, all sorts of codes. These took effect at once, though no one they concerned had been consulted. They were supposed to benefit the poor at the expense of the rich, and they hurt the rich very horribly, those who’d become prosperous before the Revolution. But the poor got no benefit. The codes were administered by the government, and the government was the general and his family and the high officers of the Guardia, and their only concern was filling the satchels.