The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Chapter 5 Summary

Poor Abelard 1944-1946

The Famous Doctor

• We're back in Yunior's voice now. Hello, old familiar narrator.
• This section tells the story of Beli's parents (Lola's grandparents), Abelard Luis Cabral and Socorro Cabral.
• Abelard is big-time surgeon in the DR.
• All super-rich and surgeonly, he has a sweet house (called Casa Hatüey), an apartment in Santiago, and stables with awe-inspiring horses. Plus, he employs five full-time servants.
• Brief footnote on the name of Abelard's house: Hatüey was a native islander who resisted the Spanish colonization of the DR. He was burned at the stake.
• Abelard also owns some supermarkets, a cement factory, and some farms. Not too shabby.
• On top of everything else that makes him awesome, Abelard is a smart dude. He reads Spanish, English, French, Latin, and Greek.
• He even hosts intellectual discussions in his parlor.
• "The Reign of Trujillo was not a great time to be a lover of Ideas, not the best time to be engaging in parlor debate" (2.5.1.7). Right you are, sir.
• Abelard is wise enough to keep contemporary politics out of his parlor debates, though. He never mentions Trujillo.
• He just keeps his head down. He doesn't say or do anything to get himself in trouble.
• For example, during Trujillo's Haitian genocide, Abelard patches up macheted Haitians like it's a normal day at the clinic. Which, it kind of was, when Trujillo was in power. That jerk.
• Okay. So now, Abelard runs into a situation.
• The Problem, Part I: Trujillo has a ridiculous appetite for young women. He seems to have slept with every girl on the island. Well, almost every girl.
• The Problem, Part II: Abelard's daughter, Jacquelyn, is grown up now and has "off-the-hook looks" (2.5.1.8).
• Conclusion: Trujillo will try to sleep with Jacquelyn if he ever sees her.
• Abelard tries to delay this inevitability by keeping Jacquelyn at home. He spreads a rumor that his wife has a nervous condition and that Jacquelyn has to stay home and take care of her.
• This is an enormous risk. Hiding your hot daughter from Trujillo amounts to treason.
• Jacquelyn is in danger, but she has no idea that she's in danger. Abelard's the only one who seems to realize that she's already in deep doodoo.
• Abelard talks to three different people about his dilemma: his wife Socorro, his mistress Lydia, and his neighbor Marcus.
• Socorro doesn't want to acknowledge the danger.
• Still, she dresses Jacquelyn in "the most suffocating of clothes" (2.5.1.14).
• Lydia says that Abelard should just send Jacquelyn to Cuba.
• Marcus is a little hesitant to talk about Trujillo at all. And his response is defeatist; he says, there's nothing you can do, buddy.
• Abelard successfully avoids Trujillo at official parties for a long time.
• But one night, Trujillo comes up to Abelard and asks if Abelard is still married.
• Yeah, Abelard says. Good, says Trujillo. I thought you might have turned gay. (Trujillo is, in addition to his numerous other wonderful qualities, quite homophobic.)
• Trujillo asks about Abelard's daughters. Well, Abelard says, I do have two daughters. But you'd only like them if you like women with mustaches.
• The dictator laughs.
• Abelard is pretty happy with himself. He protected Jacquelyn. For now, at least.

And So?

• Abelard waits for three months. He's sure the Trujillo regime is going to take him down.
• He waits for a nasty article in the newspaper about him or for a letter from Trujillo demanding a sit-down.
• Nothing comes.
• Abelard is falling to pieces. He loses weight; he's drinking too much; he screws up surgeries; he yells at his family; he doesn't feel like having sex with Lydia.
• He thinks: Maybe nothing will happen? Yeah, right.

Santo Domingo Confidential

• Living in Santo Domingo during the Trujillo era was like being in this one Twilight Zone episode, "It's a Good Life."
• In the episode, a kid with godlike powers rules over an isolated town named Peaksville.
• The people in Peaksville are really scared of the kid. They betray one another and say nice things about the kid even though the kid is a terrible person.
• You see where we're going with this: Trujillo rules the DR much like this kid rules Peaksville.
• He has total control over everything and everyone on the island. He can kill anyone; he can have sex with anyone; and he has a terrifyingly efficient secret police.
• Footnote: Trujillo also isolates the DR from world events much like the boy isolates Peaksville in the Twilight Zone episode. No one hears about anything outside the DR except through Trujillo, which is one of the cornerstones of maintaining a good ole fashioned dictatorship.
• Dominicans are sure that Trujillo has supernatural powers.
• (Our narrator constantly compares Trujillo to Sauron of The Lord of the Rings.)
• Plenty of folks resist Trujillo. Not openly, but they still resist.
• Oddly enough, Abelard isn't one of these folks. He wants to live out his life in peace. He doesn't want to ruffle Trujillo's feathers.
• Despite all this trying to live a quiet life, though, Abelard's luck runs out.

The Bad Thing

• It's 1945. This should be a good year for Abelard.
• In 1945, Abelard gets two articles published in journals and even gets some compliments from continental doctors.
• His stores and factory are doing well.
• His daughters, wife, and mistress are all happy and healthy.
• Then something shatters Abelard's happiness. He gets an invitation to a presidential party. The card specifically invites Abelard's daughter.
• Oh, dear. This means Trujillo wants to meet Jacquelyn. Which means he wants to have sex with Jacquelyn. Because that's what he does with all the young, pretty girls.
• Abelard is beside himself with fear and rage. He rants to Marcus and Lydia.
• Once again, Marcus says that there's nothing Abelard can do. (Was Abelard expecting him to say something different this time? Also, he's probably right. Trujillo's the baddest of the bad.) Lydia says that Abelard should have sent Jacquelyn to Cuba when he had the chance.
• Abelard starts spending a lot of time with Jacquelyn. He starts going to church and drinking three bottles of whiskey a day. We're not sure how he can possibly keep that up, but he does.
• Abelard tells his wife and daughter to get ready for the party.
• It's Jacquelyn's first party, and she wants to make a splash. She gets all done up. She looks fabulous, and Abelard can't take it. He tells Jacquelyn and his wife to stay home.
• Trujillo greets Abelard at the party and asks about his wife and daughter.
• Abelard simply says: "My apologies, Your Excellency. They could not attend" (2.5.4.28).
• Trujillo is not happy.
• Abelard is in T-R-O-U-B-L-E.

Chiste Apocalyptus [Apocalyptic Joke]

• Four weeks after the presidential party, the secret police arrest Abelard.
• What for? The court documents read: "Slander and gross calumny [saying terrible and untrue things about someone] against the Person of the President" (2.5.5.1).
• How did this go down? Let's backtrack, Shmoopsters.
• One afternoon, Abelard buys a bureau for his wife. He also wants to see Lydia.
• Some friends who are not really Abelard's friends say, Hey Abelard, why don't you have a few drinks with us?
• Abelard says, Why not?
• This is a bad decision. Trust us.
• Abelard gets really drunk with his so-called friends. When it's time to go, he asks them to help him move the bureau into the trunk of his car. Right now, the bureau is tied to the top of his car.
• These friends agree to help.
• Abelard makes this joke as he opens the trunk: "I hope there aren't any bodies in here" (2.5.5.3).
• You might need a little context for Abelard's joke. He drives a Packard sedan. It's the same type of car Trujillo's goons drove around during his early years or terrorizing the DR. Those Packards did have bodies in the trunk.
• Once the trunk is open, Abelard says: "Nope, no bodies here" (2.5.5.4).
• According to Abelard, that's the end of it. His so-called friends laughed and he drove off.
• The court records tell a different story.
• The court maintains that a hidden witness heard Abelard say, "Nope, no bodies here, Trujillo must have cleaned them out for me" (2.5.5.4).

In My Humble Opinion

• Our narrator says that the court record reads like "the most unlikey load of jiringonza [a nonsense language game] on this side of the Sierra Madre" (2.5.6.1).

The Fall

• Abelard spends the night with Lydia.
• Ten days ago, Lydia told Abelard that she thought she was pregnant.
• Eight days ago, Lydia told Abelard that it was a false alarm. They were both disheartened.
• But today, it's a good Saturday-night tryst with Lydia. Abelard is happy.
• Two weeks later, the U.S. bombs Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• Abelard's wife dreams that a faceless man (yep, he's back again) is standing over her husband's bed. Soon after, three Secret Police officers will arrive at Abelard's house. Time to play that scary music again, folks.

Abelard in Chains

• Abelard thinks the Secret Police are going to be cruel low-lifes, but they turn out to be polite.
• He's still scared, though.
• They take him to the Fortaleza San Luis. The guards there are not so polite. In fact, they're downright demonic.
• While Abelard is filling out forms, the guards beat him for complaining.
• Abelard cries, and they make fun of him.
• Then the guards throw him into a holding cell. They tell the other prisoners that Abelard is a gay communist. As you can imagine, this puts Abelard in solid with the other prisoners. They just love him after that.
• First, they take Abelard's clothes and force him to lie near the chamber pots.
• Then they take Abelard's food. He doesn't eat for three days.
• Some guards finally come to get Abelard. They're not there to help him out, though.
• The guards take him to another room and strap him to some sort of electrical device that they use torture him. Poor, poor Abelard.
• Eight days later, Socorro finally tracks Abelard down. The visiting room is disgusting and Abelard is a wreck: "Only been inside a week but already he looked frightful. His eyes were blackened; his hands and neck covered in bruises and his torn lip had swollen monstrously, was the color of the meat inside your eye" (2.5.8.9).
• We get (briefly) the story of Socorro's life.
• Socorro has had a tough go of it. Her mother was mute and her father was a drunk. Trauma every which way. Even after she married Abelard, she often dreamed the house was on fire.
• Back to the main story. Socorro puts her hand on Abelard's. He cries.
• Not long after the visit, Socorro realizes that she's pregnant.
• There's no telling whether this is a fukú or a zafa.
• And no one really knows if Abelard said that thing about the bodies in the trunk and Trujillo. The family is divided on it.
• One theory goes like this: Abelard didn't let Trujillo have his way with his daughter, so Trujillo threw Abelard in jail and put a fukú on his family.
• Footnote: the story of the girl who won't have sex with a powerful man is apparently a pretty common story in the DR. The O.G. DR story of this type is about a girl named Anacaona.
• She was the wife of one the five chiefs of the island and, by all accounts, a hot babe.
• Then the Spanish start killing the natives, and they end up killing Anacaona's husband.
• Anacaona tries to rally the people. But she can't stop the Spanish, so they capture her.
• Legend has it that on the night before her execution, the Spanish offered her a deal: marry a Spaniard, and we'll let you live.
• She turns them down. Courageous woman.
• Here's the other theory about Abelard and Trujillo. So this is unprovable, secret-history stuff.
• Anyway, some say Abelard wrote a book about Trujillo's supernatural powers.
• In it, Abelard collected all the stories the common people told about Trujillo's dark powers. He even argued that Trujillo might have come from another planet.
• Our narrator says that Oscar tried to find Abelard's book. Our narrator can't find it either.
• Apparently, Trujillo destroyed all copies of the book. Even further: Trujillo destroyed all of Abelard's books, both the ones he wrote and the ones he owned. Trujillo destroyed all his notes and letters, too. In fact, not a single scrap of paper with Abelard's handwriting on it survives.
• Our narrator reminds us that he doesn't have any solid evidence for this alternative theory.
• It makes you wonder, right? Why would all of Abelard's papers disappear?
• Maybe Abelard's book is right. Maybe Trujillo did have supernatural powers. Maybe he was actually… the Dark Lord.

The Sentence

• Abelard is convicted of his charges and sentenced to eighteen years in prison.
• The justice system during the Trujillo years is such a joke. The Palacio (Trujillo's center of operations) threatens Abelard's lawyer and his lawyer promptly drops Abelard's appeal.
• This is the beginning of a string of bad luck for the family.
• As our narrator points out, some people might call it luck. Others would call it fukú.

Fallout

• There are a few signs that the fukú has taken hold of the Cabrals.
• Some people say that the fukú caused the third Cabral kid, Beli, to be born black.
• (Remember that in the DR, especially under Trujillo, there's some serious discrimination against dark-skinned Dominicans and Haitians.)
• The real first sign of the fukú is when Socorro, probably grieving over her husband's prison term, gets hit by an ammunition truck.
• The fukú even gets Abelard's mistress Lydia.
• Abelard's number-one servant Esteban the Gallo is stabbed outside a cabaret. The police never find the attackers.
• Are you convinced that the fukú is in effect now? Not yet? Well, things get worse for the Cabrals, you see.
• The Cabral girls—Jacquelyn, Astrid, and Beli—have to find somewhere to live, all by themselves, since their mom is dead and their dad is in jail.
• Jacquelyn goes to live with her godparents.
• Even though the family has been through some rough stuff, Jacquelyn remains positive. Then they find her drowned in two feet of water. So much for optimism in this family.
• Astrid gets hit by a stray bullet while praying in a church in San Juan.
• Abelard, meanwhile, is sent to the truly horrific Nigüa prison. He serves fourteen years there.
• A footnote tells us all about this place; it sounds more like a death camp than a prison.
• They put Abelard through some terrible stuff there, ending with La Corona [The Crown].
• This is a torture tactic that involved tying a wet rope around Abelard's head and leaving him out in the sun. After a while, the rope dried and started to grip his skull.
• People say that Abelard died a couple days before Trujillo was assassinated.

The Third and Final Daughter

• So, what happens to the third daughter? What about our Beli?
• Beli is a dark-skinned, sickly child, so no one in the Cabral clan wants her.
• A dark-skinned woman Zoila (a neighbor?) feeds Beli. Zoila saves her life.
• Just when things seem to be settling down for her, though, some folks from Socorro's clan come and snatch her.
• These folks think that the Cabrals will send them some money.
• When no money comes their way, they sell Beli. She becomes a servant.
• The chapter ends with a footnote about another criada [servant] that our narrator knew.
• It sounds like criadas are uniformly abused. Poor Beli.

The Burning

• Enter La Inca.
• La Inca is Abelard's cousin and Beli's adopted mom. She hasn't been in the story since the Preface to Section II.
• La Inca's husband dies before all the terrible stuff goes down with Abelard's family.
• She doesn't help out immediately because she's "lost in the wilderness of her own grief" (2.5.12.2). You know the feeling: you're too deep in your own psychic stuff to think about anyone else. It happens.
• La Inca finally hears that Jacquelyn and Astrid have passed away. Now she decides to do something about the mess.
• La Inca hears about a little girl in Outer Azua (a really poor rural area in the DR). She hears that this girl's parents burned her with hot oil.
• Here's the story: so these people aren't Beli's real parents. They bought her. She's their servant.
• Beli tries to go to school, but her owners aren't having any of it. They want her to work.
• She skips out on work and attends class.
• As a result, Beli gets into a knock-down fight with her owners. The evil, evil man splashes hot oil on her back.
• The burns are unbelievably bad. They almost kill her.
• Rumor spreads. People say, Isn't this girl somehow related to La Inca?
• La Inca goes and gets the girl, who does turn out to be a Cabral.
• Beli's owners are suspicious. How can such a dark-skinned child be related to La Inca?
• La Inca doesn't give in. She takes Beli.
• Footnote: Suffice to say that Outer Azua sounds like a serious wasteland. Here's a brief quote: "A child [from Outer Azua] who hadn't escaped a close brush with Death was looked at askance" (2.5.12.6). Jeez.
• Beli ends up with La Inca in the town of Baní. She's safe. For now.

Forget-Me-Naut

• Beli never talks about her nine years in Outer Azua. Or the burning she suffered at the hands of her owners. Most of what we know about Beli's time there comes from La Inca.
• Beli told La Inca about Outer Azua on the day La Inca rescued her. But she never, ever talked about it again.
• Denial and amnesia [memory loss] are rampant in the DR. You could say that they are necessary to people's survival in the Trujillo era of the DR. Beli is no exception.

Sanctuary

• Finally, Beli finds peace at La Inca's.
• La Inca teaches her how to read and write, how to dress and eat.
• Beli does okay. She still curses. She's still aggressive. But she's learning.
• La Inca greases Beli's burned back each morning and evening. And the two talk about Beli's life before Outer Azua: Abelard and Socorro, Jacquelyn and Astrid.
• La Inca and Beli don't become best friends, but they get along.
• For the first time, Beli remembers her dreams. Most are bad.
• In one dream, the man throws hot oil on her. His face is blank. (Note: another faceless man.)
• In different dream, Beli wanders through an empty house hearing children's voices.
• Maybe those voices are coming from the shabby public school Beli attends.
• Later on, Beli transfers to the posh private school El Redentor.
• Then, we learn that an amazing thing happens at the public school.
• At the end of her first year, the teacher calls Beli to the board and asks Beli to fill in a date. She gets it right. Hot dog.