The Coup

By Peter Schoenau

The day began with a hazy morning. He had been able to see the ocean most days from his room on the twelfth floor, a view restricted by the uneven, jagged line of rooftops. This morning he peered in vain beyond the sea of houses. He could only make out a grey band that marked the horizon.

His right arm was badly swollen. Each movement of the fingers on his right hand was intensely painful. The rectally administered antibiotics which he took morning and night had not halted the blood poisoning. His mind felt strangely muddled, and he tried but failed to put his thoughts in order. Every time he tried, he returned right away to the beginning of whatever thought he had held, and it was impossible to think something through to its conclusion. Somewhere in between the line disconnected. Eventually he gave up, and stared out of the window without a thought.

The apartment on Malecón was in a dilapidated building behind a crumbing neo-classical facade, its pastel blue paint blotchy where the stucco crumbled. The bare spots were taking over.

The apartment consisted of a bedroom, living room, bath and kitchen. Two miniature pictures looked out from the sideboard in his bedroom. They depicted two of his ancestors—Pedro Bandejas, the pirate, and Camilo Bandejas, his great-grandfather who had fought on the side of the Mambists during the war for independence.

He had rented the apartment fully furnished and paid the rent three months in advance in US dollars, at the insistence of the landlord, a small, unsavory bureaucrat who managed the buildings for the Interior Ministry. There was no written rental agreement. The only exchange between them was money and the keys.

All the same, he knew the landlord would make inquiries regarding the tenant. During the investigation, the long arm of the Interior Ministry would discover that his Peruvian passport was false. But who was to say what the landlord would do about it? He wasn't planning to stay at the apartment more than two weeks. No stranger to the long administrative process at the Ministry, he felt relatively certain the risk was minimal at this time.

He had awakened on his first morning at the apartment covered in sweat, feeling leaden. He stared at the floor where a fly circled in its death throes. Reluctantly and with great effort, he rose and went to the window and pulled the curtain in one swift move.

Thick grey clouds covered the horizon, merging with the ocean so that no clear line separated the sea from the sky.

A battered old Fiat 600 took him to Plaza José Miguel Cérrez. The stink of urine lingered between the statues, and the ground and walls were covered in graffiti. He looked for a sign. When they had parted, Federico and he arranged that whoever was first to return would leave a sign of life hidden somewhere between the declarations of love and the wise-cracks painted on the walls.

He had found the message next to large letters declaring, True love needs no pay, it is free. "Every Friday night at 10."

The square in front of the cathedral was lit by two spotlights. Deserted, it looked remarkably like an empty stage. A few guests lingered at the tables in the palm court of the patio. From the piano metallic evergreens tinkled into the night. Two skinny tabby cats snoozed beneath an empty table, periodically opening their eyes and peering in the direction of the only occupied table.

A bored waiter sat in a corner waiting for the last guests to leave. The bird inside the cage above the chilled wine case had tucked its head under its wing. The lone waiter looked relieved when one of the last remaining patrons asked for the check in an authoritative voice. Life pulsed through the white and black clad figure. Several minutes later, the sounds of laughter and chair legs scraping the floor confirmed that the guests were leaving. When the last of the crew left the stage, the lamps that had lit the palm court went out and the two skinny cats departed, disappointed. Perhaps the kitchen had left them scraps. Maybe they'd get lucky.

He stood in the shade of Palacio del Segundo Cabo before he crossed Calle Mercaderes to Plaza de Armas. Before entering the restaurant La Mina, he surreptitiously eyed the few guests on the patio and surmised they were ordinary tourists, as ordinary as he was hoping to appear. He took a seat at a table for two by the wall and caught the last of the current fashion show at La Mina. Four models pranced around, two women and two men passing in alternating sequence. Light-footed and twirling, they skipped by, their dark skin contrasting with the white linen dresses and suits they paraded. The men looked arrogantly past him while the women smiled at the parrot screeching in delight from the cage above his head.

He knew why the men didn't smile. In their centuries-old code a smile could evoke doubt as to their masculinity and provoke the ugly epithet Maricón among the patrons.

Federico was late.

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