Nicaraguan Gringa. John Keith

repulsion at its drabness, nor anxiety in anticipation of what might happen, just impatience. She didn’t like sitting and waiting for the Chief Minister to see her and thought of leaving. The minutes seemed even longer because they were empty, because she was empty, ready to give up and give in. At least her wait didn’t stretch into hours. Within a half an hour a secretary called her into the office of Aldolfo Castillo López.

      There were few signs of privilege and power in Castillo’s office—an old battered metal desk, three wooden armchairs and four straight chairs and one comfortable padded swivel chair for the minister, not even a carpet on the floor nor curtains over the windows. At the side of the room a table was piled high with maps and blueprints. On the minister’s desk were stacks of papers and a stapler. A very large, exquisite pre-Columbian jade carving served as a paperweight on top of a high pile of rumpled pages. It was insecurely balanced and could have fallen off and broken, even though it was probably worth hundreds of dollars.

      “Buenos días (Good morning), Señorita Rutledge Lloyd. Please have a seat.” Castillo López shook Sarah’s hand and stared at her. His hands were cold against her palm as she thought the metal of the pistol on his hip would feel if she were to touch it. Her heart also felt cold inside her chest.

      “Gracias (Thank you).” Sarah sat in one of the straight wooden chairs without an armrest.

      “What do you want me to do for you?”

      “I want to get a final decision about the disposition of my property.”

      “Do you plan to stay in Nicaragua permanently and live on the finca (farm), or do you intend to sell it and leave the country?”

      Weariness overcame Sarah. She could no longer pretend and deceive Castillo, perhaps because she could no longer pretend and deceive herself with tentative possibilities and illusions of happy resolutions. She had already collapsed and given up within herself, and there seemed no reason to maintain any outward resistance to the government’s program of confiscating foreigners’ property, no matter how much they might protest.

      “When I came back to Nicaragua, I did not think I would stay permanently. After the revolution and the death of my father it has been difficult to operate the finca and the factory; but since I have been back, almost three months now, I have found it hard to think of leaving for good, forever. This is my home. I am a citizen of the United States, but I have always thought of Nicaragua as my real home. Quinta Louisa has been the home of my family for almost a century. I have not been able to decide whether to sell it and give it up or to stay. Right now I think I will leave, but I just do not know.”

      Against her will Sarah was forced to dab away tears from her cheeks. Castillo’s face softened, almost as if it might show a human expression. She thought that telling the truth moved him more than her tears. His lancing stare had penetrated to the center of her ambivalent sentiments.

      “If it is difficult for you to decide, you can imagine that it is also difficult, much more difficult, for the government to decide what is right in these matters. In times of great change not all matters are easily adjudicated fairly and justly.”

      “What do you think my chances are for keeping Quinta Louisa at this point?”

      “I cannot speculate. It will be decided on the basis of what this ministry and other officials think your true rights are. Some people want to curry the good favor of the United States government and make that a part of the issue. I do not personally think the issues of property settlement should be influenced by the international climate. I believe each case should be decided on its own merits.”

      “Even if I decide to leave Nicaragua, surely I have the right to receive something in compensation for Quinta Louisa.”

      The cold mask returned to Castillo’s face, and he made no reply. Sarah understood that rights and values were defined differently in the two worlds in which they lived, one socialist and the other capitalist.

      Tyranny and Colonialism: 1964–72

      Who Belongs Here?

      Sarah was nine and a half years old, almost nine and three quarters, as she calculated her age for anyone with the patience to listen to her, when she ran down the hall of Quinta Louisa on the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6, wearing the homemade crown with two quetzal plumes attached to its sides. It was constructed from cutout cardboard and gilded with gold paint whose long drips had dried into permanent globs under the feathers, and Sarah believed it endowed her with magical powers.

      “Have much care, Sarita,” Don Martín called from the patio door. “Have much care not to break the feathers.”

      “I am going to wear the crown to the . . . party at the church . . . for the three kings.” Sarah couldn’t remember how to say Epiphany in Spanish, even though it was almost the same as in English, Epifanía.”

      “You may not take the crown away from the forests. The quetzal belongs in the forests.”

      Sarah knew that she would lose the battle if she appealed to her mother and father to overrule Don Martín. Even if he hadn’t seen her, permission to wear the quetzal crown to the church would have been a long shot at best.

      “Then you must tell me the story again.”

      “You know the words exactly. It is not necessary for me to repeat them.”

      “I want to hear you say them.”

      “Well, come outside to the patio.”

      “No. You come in here.”

      Martín laid his machete on the edge of the stone patio and sat down beside it and waited. Sarah carefully took off the crown and placed it on the table behind the English Sheridan sofa that had been shipped from England by her great-grandmother—she knew that Don Martín wouldn’t allow her to wear it outside—then opened the screened door. Sarah had grown almost as tall as Don Martín, but his body and arms and legs were strong and firm under his ginger colored skin. His face was smooth and round, but in the sandals he’d made with leather thongs and soled with treads from old automobile tires his feet were scarred from cuts and bruises.

      As he told her the story for the hundredth time, Don Martín’s black eyes twinkled and rolled like a little boy relating a secret.

      “Long ages ago when the world was young, before Jesus was born of the blessed Virgin, there was a handsome prince in our land. His skin was golden, and his hair and eyes were as black as the night but glistened with light like the stars and the moon. He loved the forests, the animals and the flowers and the butterflies, but he especially loved the birds. He found the feathers from the tail of the great blue and green quetzal on the forest floor, and his sisters wove them into beautiful robes for him. Then the quetzal had no red breast.” Don Martín paused. It had been a long, wearying day. “He began to trap the quetzals . . .”

      “No, no, Don Martín. Tell about the little boys. You’re leaving that part of it out.”

      “¡Como no! (As you say!) Those were evil days when men killed each other in war. Their priests came and told them that the king must choose a child, a male child, a beloved son, the most beautiful boy of the tribe and kill him. Every year a little boy had to be killed, so that the warriors would have success in war. The prince did not have to worry about the evil priests or about war while he was young. He played in the forest with his friends, the animals and the birds. He gathered flowers, and he brought the beautiful feathers of the birds and butterflies that had died and put them with his flowers in the temple. The priests laughed at the feathers and flowers and dead butterflies that he stuck in cracks of the temple walls, but he was the prince and just a little boy, and they didn’t scold him. No one ever scolded him, and he grew up thinking that he could do whatever he wanted to do, because he was the prince. He became spoiled and vain, but his heart was good, deep inside. He did no work and walked around in his robe of gleaming green feathers like a proud bird.”

      “Would they have killed me if I had lived back then, so they would win the war?”

      “Of