The General's Orphans

The private plane carrying the dictator flew over the capital for the last time as he fled to the Dominican Republic, the only country that offered him refuge. From his mansion, retired captain Bartolomeo Amuay, a right-winger disappointed in the fallen leader for his weakness and cowardice, fired his small mother-of-pearl revolver in the direction of the aircraft, the only one flying over the country's airspace at that time.

"Traitor, son of a bitch!", he shouted, without letting the trigger rest.

His wife, Malena Echeverría, a flirtatious and severe septuagenarian, smoked expressionlessly from the balcony. She followed the flashing lights of the plane, absorbed, imagining the general: looking out the window, with his uniform dishevelled, cursing the socialists; while his wife, with whom she shared coffee and gossip countless times in the presidential palace, contemplated the lights of the city in silence, regretting nothing.

“Go into the house,” Malena suggested to her husband. "From today on we are traitors to the country".

"Let the damn communists come looking for me!" the captain shouted, raising the empty revolver.

Malena then asked the employees to padlock the doors and release the dogs in the entrance garden. Little by little, the night abandoned the fear of the uprising, giving way to the scandalous joy that regained freedom brings. The neighbours opened their balconies and waved flags that had been kept hidden for years in the dark corners of their closets. The first cars, sounding their horns, passed in front of the house at full speed. There was a mix of screams, laughter, and crying: "The pig fell!" Those who still had fireworks after Christmas and New Year's, coloured the sky with gunpowder northern lights.

The telephone in Captain Amuay's house, after having rung tirelessly during the early hours of the night, now remained silent, as if his world had gone to sleep. Malena then tore the telephone cable from the wall and ordered all the lights to be turned off. She and the captain barricaded themselves in their second-floor room overlooking the entrance gate. The dogs hid under the car in the parking lot, terrified by the fireworks. Protected by the shadows of the dark kitchen, the employees opened a bottle from the captain's bar and toasted the end of the dictatorship, hugging each other without fear.

The celebrations continued until dawn. The army and the political parties joined the citizens in the streets and the radio stations repeated the national anthem over and over again, interspersed with the rebels' message for the country. Malena spent the night awake. She chose her favourite cocktail dress, touched up her makeup, put on her heels, and put her hair in a high bun and litres of hairspray. He prepared the uniform for the captain, with the more than twenty medals won through flattery and barracks collusion. They went down to the first floor, where they found the employees collapsed in the lobby, reeking of whiskey and unable to hide their smiles of libertarian dreams. They continued to the kitchen, where, after more than forty years of being served, Malena prepared coffee for her husband. They sat at the little table bathed in the dawn light, like a newly married couple in their first home: alone, quiet, reading each other's minds, holding each other's hands delicately. She then perceived the film of atrocities committed passing through the captain's restless eyes.

“Calm down, Barto,” said Malena, with absolute calm, self-possessed. "If this country has something, it is a short memory".

The squeal of tires and soldiers' boots preceded the creak of the gate after a tank knocked it down after a single impact. The explosions of the battering ram against the double wooden door woke up the startled employees. Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Captain Amuay adjusted his bowler hat and let the small mother-of-pearl revolver rest on the table, while his wife took the last sips of her coffee.