Human Solutions

by Avi Silberstein

  I explained about the Colony. “The way I see it,” I said, “this cult is like a concentration camp. You’ve been there—how am I going to get the boy out?”

  Tibor thought about it. “There was a man who was at the camp with me—the only man to get out while I was there. He was on grave-digging duty with me. A group of twenty of us, and two guards. One of the guards took a woman from our group and dragged her into the forest. As soon as they were out of sight, the man who was digging next to me picked up his shovel and threw it at the remaining guard. It knocked the gun out of his hands and hit him in the chest. The man ran over and picked up the shovel. He killed the guard with a blow to the head and put on his uniform. Then he walked out of the camp.”

  It was afternoon rush hour, and the streets were filling up with bustling pedestrians and gridlocked cars. I looked at my watch.

  “You have to walk out of there,” Tibor said. “You’re not going to get in by force, and you’re not going to get out by force. You walk in, you walk out.”

  SIXTEEN

  I brought a pot of soup and a loaf of bread over to Elena’s. She looked like she hadn’t eaten or slept.

  “I dreamt about Claudio last night,” she said.

  I didn’t want to hear about any dreams.

  “Come here,” I said. Elena put her head down onto the table. The tablecloth was a mess of soup stains and bread crumbs. I went over to stand behind her, putting my hands on her shoulders.

  “Listen,” I said. “We’re going to get Claudio out of there. We just need to do it right, because there’s only one chance. If we drive up there tomorrow and beg and plead and threaten the guards, they’ll just turn us away and put Claudio under heavier security. If we call the police, they won’t do a thing, because General Pinochet and Uncle Peter have some sort of thing going on. We need to be careful and precise—”

  “And quick,” Elena interrupted, jerking her head up. She started to cry. I couldn’t bear the sight of it.

  “To have him taken away from me like this,” she said. I handed her a cloth napkin that was resting on the table. She blew her nose noisily.

  I thought of the people I had lost—the woman I had married, my father, my mother.

  “He would never hurt a fly,” Elena said.

  That was the problem with letting someone like Elena into my life. They buoy me, and, when they leave, I sink.

  “He was such a good boy—slept through the night since the day he was born, ate anything I put in front of him.”

  She began crying again, this time more uncontrollably. She was in despair. I put my hands on her shoulders and squeezed gently. “Look at me,” I said, my voice calm and encouraging. “There, that’s it. I want you to let me help you more.”

  She couldn’t seem to catch her breath. “Breathe with me,” I said, putting my face close to hers. “Just like that.”

  I went to get her a glass of water. “Did you eat enough?”

  She nodded.

  “Can I draw you a bath? She nodded again. I was halfway to the washroom when she said something.

  “What’s that?” I said, coming back into the room.

  “Make it hot,” she said.

  I read the paper while she lay listlessly in the tub. I helped her out, dried her off, and put her in bed.

  “Will you stay?” she said.

  I took off my pants and shirt and got in. She reached over and turned off the bedside lamp. I turned on my side to face her.

  “No, on your back,” she said.

  I obliged, and she put her head on my shoulder and curled up against me.

  “I need you,” she said.

  I needed her, too.

  “You’ll bring me my son back?” she whispered.

  I felt weightless, like I was floating in the sea.

  “I will,” I said. But she was already asleep by then.

  SEVENTEEN

  “Coffee?” said my secretary, popping her head in. I shook my head without looking at her.

  “Please,” Julio said.

  “As well,” Rodolfo said.

  We sat there for a moment. “How’s she doing?” Julio said.

  “About as well as anyone could.”

  My secretary came back with the coffee. We were silent as she poured and hurried out.

  “I came back last night from investigating the Colony,” Rodolfo said, stirring sugar into his coffee. “There’s no way to break in. They’ve got a three-meter fence around the perimeter—barbed wire and guards with rifles. Patrolled day and night.”

  Julio raised his eyebrows. “We can’t take this one, Javier,” he said firmly.

  I shook my head. “I promised her I would get her son back.”

  “You heard what Rodolfo said—there’s no way to break in.”

  “I’m not breaking in,” I said. “I went to speak to Tibor. Here’s what he told me: ‘You walk in, you walk out.’ ”

  Nobody said anything. My phone rang, but I didn’t pick it up.

  “I’m walking in,” I said. The phone kept ringing. “You can help me if you want—but I’m going in regardless.”

  Julio drummed his fingers on the table. “You’re risking your life for what—some woman you just met?”

  I nodded.

  “Fine,” Rodolfo said, finally, shaking his head.

  “We’ll have to be very careful,” Julio said slowly. “We want you to come out of this alive.”

  “You walk in there,” Rodolfo said, “and then what?”

  “Is there anything in here …?” I patted Julio’s notes.

  Julio took off his glasses and began cleaning them. “You might be tempted to avoid Uncle Peter,” he said, in his professorial tone. “He’s a cruel and abusive man—but you’ve got to get as close to him as possible. Give him admiration and flattery, but not too much. That’s the way these leaders are—the Hitlers, the Stalins, the Maos, the Pinochets. They attract gushing admirers, and you’ve got to be something other than that. Give him some admiration, sure, but also some honesty, and, whatever you do, don’t act afraid. Find Claudio, find someone you can trust, and cozy up to Uncle Peter.”

  Julio stopped in mid-gesture. He dropped his hand and shook his head. “But it’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.”

  “How much do you know about Claudio?” Rodolfo said.

  I called Elena and put her on speakerphone.

  “We need your help,” I said. “I’m going in there, and I need to know everything about Claudio. What he looks like, what he likes to do, how he should be approached.”

  “He’s a happy boy—he’s confident and has a big smile. He plays the clarinet,” Elena said. “In one of his earlier letters, he said that he plays in the orchestra there.”

  I wrote this down.

  “He likes playing almost any sport, but especially soccer.”

  Julio cleared his throat. “Elena, this is Julio—Javier is going to need to convince Claudio that you sent him. Is there something he can say—something only you would know?”

  Elena thought about this for a minute. “You just tell him that Papo needs someone to cover his ears.”

  “Pardon?”

  “His Papo—that’s what he calls his teddy bear that he’s had since he was born. When he was little, he used to cover Papo’s ears whenever there was a scary bit in his bedtime story.”

  Elena sounded like she was very close to crying. I had more questions for her, but now was not the right time. There was much to prepare

  “The day after tomorrow,” I said, after hanging up the phone, “I need someone to drop me off at the Colony.”

  “I can do it,” Rodolfo said.

  “So help me God, if anything happens to you,” Julio said.

  EIGHTEEN

  Rodolfo picked me up at noon on Saturday. I had been up all night.

  We went by Julio’s house and honked the horn. He hurried out—his wife poked her head out the window and waved at us. It took forever to get out of Santiago. Ther
e was not much traffic, but we sat for long seconds at stoplights. Soldiers stood attentively at street corners, clinging to their guns. This was General Pinochet’s own Manipulation—keep us all afraid, remind us constantly that we are being watched and monitored.

  “It’s not too late to turn back,” Julio said.

  I opened the window and let the wind pull noisily into the car.

  Julio stretched his hand across to the seat and rested it on my shoulder. I didn’t move out from under it.

  As we moved further from the city centre, high-rises became suburban houses and then battered apartment buildings, subsidized housing, and, finally, cardboard slums. Soon the clutter of five million people vanished and was replaced by long expanses of fields and mountains. Trellised grapevines butted up against the highway, and I leaned back and tried to relax.

  “How are you feeling?” Julio asked. None of us had spoken in a while, and his voice scraped.

  “I’m not,” I said.

  “Once you get in there,” Rodolfo said, “you need to become a detective. Stay sharp and alert. Eyes open, ears open—be gathering information every minute of every hour. Follow your instincts, and stay calm.”

  Rodolfo steered his station wagon off the highway. He turned onto a dirt road. Colonia Alemana, a brightly coloured sign read. There were freshly plowed fields left and right. Rodolfo pulled the vehicle over to the side of the road.

  “It’s just up there,” he said. “Better if they don’t see the car.”

  I nodded, and we all climbed out of the car. I picked up my small suitcase and looked at Julio and Rodolfo.

  “If this doesn’t work …,” I said.

  I couldn’t continue. Julio stepped over to where I was standing and gave me a hug. I had not been hugged by another man since my dad had passed away. “I’ll see you soon, okay?” he said.

  Rodolfo pulled me into his arms. His beard sifted through my shirt and scratched my shoulder. “I swear to God” he said, “if you don’t make it back, I’m going to sleep with your sister.”

  We agreed that they would drive to this very location every Sunday at noon and stay there until two. I thumped the hood of the car and started walking down the road.

  “Javier,” Julio called out.

  I turned around.

  “Don’t forget,” he said. “You walk in, you walk out.”

  The Colony was not very far—ten minutes at the most. I came to a tall cement wall that was heavily crowned with barbed wire. I heard someone yell, and a guard appeared from a small booth and slowly walked over to me.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “At long last,” I said, looking up at the sky. “I have come home.”

  I was taken to a small room and told to sit and wait. The walls were crowded with bucolic scenes from the Colony—children splashing in a lake, a group of men erecting a barn, three flour-dusted women kneading dough—and many of a man who was presumably Uncle Peter. He wore sunglasses in all but one of the pictures. In that one picture, he was giving the camera his profile, staring off into the distance.

  My stomach sat as heavily as a cannonball—the last time I had been this nervous was in elementary school. I was in third grade and a finalist in the annual speech contest. I ate nothing for breakfast that morning and sat on the stage in my school uniform (grey pants, light-blue shirt, navy vest, loosened tie) while the first- and second-grade contestants went up to the podium. When it was my turn, I climbed down from the chair and made my way over to the microphone. I squinted into the bright lights until I found my father. He was smiling and pointing at his cheeks, urging me to smile. “If you act like you’re relaxed,” he had said that morning, “then you’ll be relaxed.” I slumped my shoulders and forced a grin. I evacuated any trace of anxiety from my body language, just like my father had shown me. Then I began speaking.

  There was a flurry of conversation from outside, and I returned to my chair. A group of people entered the room. Two guards led the way, taking positions on either side of the door. They were followed by three men, who all stood before me. One of them, the oldest, leaned on a thick cane.

  “Tell us your name, boy,” he said. I had not been called “boy” in two decades.

  “My name is Javier,” I said. I stood up to shake their hands and introduce myself—immediately, one of the guards took a step forward and readjusted the grip on his rif le.

  “Relax,” the old man said to me. “What brings you here, Javier?”

  “I’ve been unhappy with life for as long as I can remember,” I said. “I live in the capital, where you can’t throw a stone without hitting a sinner. When I heard about Colonia Alemana, I knew that I had finally found my way home.”

  One of the men blew his nose loudly into a handkerchief. I looked at him.

  “Hay fever,” he said.

  “Everyone here has to work,” said the old man. “Some of us are carpenters, some of us are cooks, some of us are teachers. What do you bring to the Colony?”

  “Ah,” I said, pretending to have to think about it. “Well, I did run an acting school for many years—I could teach people how to act. Children, perhaps? We could put on plays every now and then.”

  The old man creased his brow. He cleared his throat. “I think a theatrical performance would not be a terrible idea,” he said. “We will have to ask Uncle Peter, of course.”

  They stepped back and conferred with each other in whispers.

  “You will join us for supper,” said the old man. “And then you will meet Uncle Peter. He will decide whether you will be accepted into the Colony”

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” I said, bowing my head. “You are saving my life.”

  “I hope you are well and certain of your decision to join the Colony,” Hay Fever said. “Because once you’ve walked in these gates, there’s no walking out. The guards are only to let people out in extreme circumstances—a fire, etc.”

  “There’s no need to go anywhere,” the old man said. He gestured all around us. “Everything you could ever need is right here.”

  The men walked out, and I was left alone with the two guards.

  “Supper is in fifteen minutes,” said one of them. “In the dining hall. Don’t be late.”

  They hoisted their rifles and walked out of the room.

  “Wait,” I called after them. “Where’s the dining hall?”

  One of them turned and spat on the ground. “You can’t miss it—just follow anyone.”

  I was left alone in the room again. First place—I had beaten the fifth-grader, the fourth-grader, and the first- and second- and third-graders.

  NINETEEN

  I walked down the wide, unpaved road that cut through the center of the Colony. Men and women emerged from brick apartment buildings that appeared to be segregated by gender. They were dressed the way I imagined German peasants might traditionally dress: the men in thick pants and suspenders over white shirts, the women in modest dresses and headscarves.

  The colonists wore docile expressions for the most part, and they did not speak to each other much. The men and women were of varying ages, but there was not a child in sight.

  The dining hall was a large wooden building, church-like in appearance. I followed the colonists into the room and into a lineup that ended at a long table where food was doled out. It was not so different from what I had experienced as a schoolboy.

  There was a large blackboard at the front of the room, and, as the colonists streamed in, some of them went up to the blackboard and wrote down a name. After a few minutes of waiting in line, I looked up to see a commotion at the door. All of the children had arrived. They marched in, hushed and admonished by their supervising adults, and hurried over to the food line.

  I got to the front of the line and craned my neck to see what I would be eating. “What is this?” I asked the man who was standing in front of me. He pretended not to hear me. I turned to speak to whoever was behind me but was interrupted by the sound of micr
ophone feedback.

  A man stood at the blackboard. He was tall and wiry, with thinning gray hair. He wore oversized aviator sunglasses and an impeccable white suit—which made him stand out in contrast to the uniformly old-fashioned clothes worn by the Colonists. It was unmistakably Uncle Peter.

  “We have many names today,” he said calmly into the microphone.

  The colonists nodded obediently. They looked at him with what I took to be a combination of fear and worship.

  “Starting at the top,” Uncle Peter said. “We have Alejandra Goethe.”

  A woman stood up, blushing fiercely, and bowed her head.

  “Yes, Uncle Peter,” she said.

  “Your name is on the sinner’s list,” Uncle Peter said. “Why don’t you tell us why it’s there?”

  Alejandra looked around at the women sitting near her. They averted their eyes and concentrated on eating. “I don’t know, Uncle Peter.”

  “NONSENSE!” Uncle Peter yelled. There was feedback again, and I winced. “Someone put your name on the list, and I demand to know why!”

  Alejandra’s hands shook as she pulled at the sleeves of her dress. “I tempted a man,” she whispered.

  The clatter of cutlery abruptly died down, and the colonists leaned forward.

  “That’s better,” Uncle Peter said, calm again. “How did you tempt him?”

  “I untied my hair just as he was walking by,” Alejandra said, so quietly that everyone in the room seemed to hold their breath. “And pushed my breasts up against my shirt.”

  Uncle Peter commanded her to sit down. He railed against temptation for a few minutes. Then he ran out of steam and proceeded to the next name on the list. He worked his way through the long list of names, urging men and women of all ages to confess to lying, tempting, misbehaving, and many other variations of sinning, some of which I had never heard of but seemed to be accepted by everyone. I was less shocked by Uncle Peter’s denouncements than by the betrayal and suspicion that he had produced in the colonists. I found myself becoming anxious and uneasy, and was reminded of General Pinochet’s similar strategy—asking Chileans to turn in their friends and neighbors, even their family members, if they exhibited what he called unpatriotic tendencies.