by Matias Travieso-Diaz
Freedom is when one hears the bell at seven o’clock in the morning and knows it is the milkman and not the Gestapo.
– Georges Bidault
The caterpillar does all the work but the butterfly gets all the publicity.
– George Carlin
The sudden banging on the front door startled Ricardo, who was not expecting visitors that early in the morning. His first instinct was to flee, but there was no back door through which he could escape, and his two-room apartment had nowhere to hide. He approached the door and asked: “Who is it?”
“It’s the Posse! Open up!”
Ricardo opened the door and was shoved aside as four armed men wearing brown military fatigues entered and encircled him. “Are you Ricardo Trovador?” asked their leader. “Yes, I am. But…” started Ricardo.
“Mr. Trovador, you are under arrest. You have ten minutes to get dressed and contact any friends or relatives.”
Ricardo knew better than arguing with the Posse. He changed into a casual outfit, picked up his wallet and keys, and called Edgar, his publisher. There was no answer, since it was outside business hours. “Gar, this is Rich. I’m being arrested by the Posse. I don’t know where I’m being taken, but please follow up and get the lawyers involved. I’ll call again later, if I can. Thanks.”
“Where are you taking me?” he asked his captors.
“We are going to the Bureau’s headquarters. They’ll decide where to put you.”
“What am I charged with?”
“You are a writer, no?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Maybe it’s something you wrote. Get going!” Without more, the agents frog-marched Ricardo out of his apartment and into a waiting van.
***
At the Bureau, they put Ricardo in a holding cell and forgot about him, for he was left alone for several hours. Finally, he was led to an interview room and sat across the table from a dour pair of interrogators, male and female. She asked all the questions, in a tone dripping with sarcasm: “Mr. Trovador, you earn a living as a fiction writer, don’t you?”
Ricardo replied: “For the most part, I write children’s books and short stories. I guess all of those can be described as fiction.”
“And, in fact, you are the author of a best-selling children novel, ‘The Very Sleepy Caterpillar,’ is that right?”
“Yes, it has sold well.”
“Do you always write alone?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you sometimes write in collaboration with others?”
“I have written some stories jointly with some friends, if that’s what you mean.”
“Do you know a man by the name of Hossein Kashfi?”
“Huss? Yes, we are friends from college.”
“Has Mr. Kashfi been your collaborator in some of your fiction?”
“Yes, we jointly wrote a couple of short stories.”
“Are you aware that Mr. Kashfi has engaged in activities in support of enemies of our country?”
Ricardo replied carefully: “I was not aware of that. I try to focus on my work, so I don’t know what others do.”
“In a search we conducted of Mr. Kashfi’s home, we discovered many emails and pieces of correspondence between the two of you. You talk to each other about many subjects, sports, movies, popular music, current affairs. Do you ever discuss politics?”
“We often talk about the state of things in his country of origin. I commiserate with him.”
“How about affairs in this country? Do you find yourselves criticizing our Leader?”
“I maintain a distance between myself and politics and do not talk about the government with others.”
“Well, Mr. Trovador, let this be as a warning. This country has been very generous with you, first in letting you come to our shores and become a citizen, and now allowing you to live off the land by publishing your trivial fiction. Your citizenship can be revoked if there is evidence of disloyalty. You can be imprisoned or deported to your place of birth or elsewhere, so be warned: we are watching you!”
***
Back in his apartment, Ricardo plunged into a whirlpool of conflicting emotions. He was concerned about the safety of his friend Huss, who despite being born in this country could be arrested and face deportation to some foreign backwater. He also had qualms about his own freedom, safety, and means of livelihood. Could the powers that now ruled exert such a dominion over his life? Could he live and continue to create his art under a totalitarian regime?
He was loath to go abroad, although that seemed like the most viable alternative. From abroad he could go on writing and perhaps influence the future by alerting this country’s citizens of the threats the regime posed for everyone. But that perhaps would be a cowardly escape. What if all disaffected members of the population were to vote with their feet? Wouldn’t that ensure that the tyrant had the ability to remain in power in perpetuity?
On the other hand, what obligation did he have to his fellow citizens? They said it could not happen here. Like the people of the city of Hadleyburg, everyone went about congratulating each other for the incorruptible nature of our government. They said we had strong institutions, an educated population that could smell a tyrant a mile away, a perfect balance of power among the three branches of government that prevented abuses and corrected mistakes.
This country’s people proved gullible, uneducated, prejudiced, and lacking in civic awareness. It did not take a cataclysm for its citizens to turn the keys of government to a cadre of self-seeking ruffians. There had been no crushing military defeat, no plague, no historic depression, nothing that would have caused a rending of the national soul. Yet millions bought at face value the empty promises of a demagogue who had nothing to recommend himself. How could they have been so foolish?
But there was no point in further finger-pointing. He was afraid, but had a duty to himself and to future generations to act to the full extent within his powers to help bring the nightmare to an end. He would turn his pen into a weapon, and take it from there.
He sat at his laptop and started typing a new story: “The Angry Caterpillar – A Modern Fable.” He described an environment in which peaceful caterpillars are preyed upon by ferocious birds, wasps and flies, rats, toads, even other disloyal caterpillars who turn on their own; faced with these relentless attacks, the hero of the story and his friends grow stinging hairs and spines that irritate predators, develop camouflage techniques to mimic leaves or twigs, and take shelter in thick, dense groups of plants that provide more natural hiding spots. The story ends with a simple moral: “If you are under attack, you must resist by all available means. Even if you are unable to strike back, you should make it harder for your enemies to have their way. At the end, you may be rewarded by turning into a beautiful butterfly.”
Ricardo’s new story was a best seller, both at home and abroad. He did not get to bask in the glory of his success, however: there was another Posse intrusion into his apartment and he was carted away, never to be seen again. But his story served to encourage a multitude of human caterpillars whose resistance brought about the end of the tyranny and ushered a new era of freedom, as he would have wanted.
© Matias Travieso-Diaz
Born in Cuba, Matias Travieso-Diaz migrated to the United States as a young man. He became an engineer and lawyer and practiced for nearly fifty years. After retirement, he took up creative writing. Over two hundred and forty of his short stories have been published or accepted for publication in anthologies, magazines, blogs, audio books, and podcasts. One of his four novels, an autobiography entitled “Cuban Transplant,” and four anthologies of his stories have also been published. His most recent novel, “The Last War of Independence” has just been completed.
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