The She-Devil in the Mirror by Horacio Castellanos Moya Page B

entire world. It’s all a plot. They say it’s his
political enemies. The press has turned against him, too. Luckily they haven’t
mentioned anything about Olga María. I told you they were going to use the Olga
María thing to try to finish Yuca off, and that’s exactly what’s happened, even
if they don’t say so publicly, they’ve started accusing him of other things.
They already made him resign from the leadership of the party. Terrible. The man
who is far and away the best leader, and the most charismatic—everybody was
supporting him. They’ve done him in—just because of that stolen car they say he
bought. A Mercedes Benz this damned priest sold him and now says he doesn’t know
anything about. No, my dear, I haven’t been able to talk to Yuca. He’s been too
busy: he’s at the very center of a political storm—fending off the low blows,
defending his reputation. What worries me is that he’ll get hooked on coke
again, he’ll sink back into a cycle of depression and turn to drugs. They
haven’t stopped attacking him—just look at the media. How possible is it: a
high-ranking leader of the governing party buying a stolen car!? What idiots!
But the way they say it, it makes people think he’s somehow involved in the
stolen car racket, as if Yuca needed to be, like he isn’t rich enough already.
They set a trap for him, and that no-good priest helped lure him into it. I’m
sure of it! Yes, my dear, I’ll lower my voice, it’s just that I get so furious
when I realize what they’re doing to that man. They’ve ruined his political
career, and now they want to sink him completely. It’s not fair. But that’s not
the worst of it; the worst is what people are saying in private, what people
everywhere are mumbling about under their breath. Horrible: people you thought
were Yuca’s friends are now out to slander him, they’re saying awful things,
like he ordered Olga María’s murder because she was threatening to expose him as
a drug trafficker. Can you imagine? It makes me furious. It’s one thing that the
man’s an addict and another that he’s involved in drug trafficking. People say
such vile things. Even to me, and they know I’m his friend, you wouldn’t believe
the atrocious things they insinuate; that happened a few days ago—at the club no
less. According to this person, the gringos discovered Yuca’s connection with
the drug traffickers, and they decided to take him out of the running,
politically speaking, but since they couldn’t expose him without spreading the
shit all over other high-ranking government officials, they decided to invent
this whole farce about the stolen car. Nobody in his right mind can actually
believe something like that. Others are saying that Yuca, in a fit of
cocaine-induced madness, hired a hitman to kill Olga María, and the authorities
found out, and when he refused to resign, they invented this scandal about the
stolen car. What a mess. All fantasies. Yuca never would have had Olga María
killed. I’m not denying that he gets crazy sometimes, but it would never have
occurred to him to hurt that woman. All I know for sure is that Yuca insists he
bought that Mercedes from this priest. So it must be true. But now the priest is
playing the fool and says he knows nothing about the car. Just look at him, that
hypocrite up there saying Mass, as if nothing were wrong. Poor Olga María, if
she knew that despicable priest, who is part of a plot to destroy Yuca, is the
one saying her Requiem Mass, she’d die of outrage—I’m sure of it. It would make
her furious. I had no idea he’d be the priest. If I’d known, I’d have warned
Doña Olga. I just realized it, just now when I walked into the church—that’s why
I stayed here in the back row, as a form of protest. That’s what I explained