Human Solutions

by Avi Silberstein

  “The video was horrible,” he continued, “but the nuns put their heads down and prayed for him to let them be.”

  The other chickens all began to take dust baths, too.

  “Then Uncle Peter burned their house down,” Ernesto said. “And that was the end of that.”

  I glanced at the church. “Does Uncle Peter use the church for anything these days?”

  “Depends on who you ask.”

  Neither of us said anything for a while. It was mid-morning, and we were standing on the edge of an expansive field. There was a fenced-off area to one side, where a handful of pigs burrowed into the mud. Beside the pigs was a series of beds—some planted, some fallow—and beyond that was the river.

  “What were you doing last night?” Ernesto said. We started walking again—back to the library. Faster, this time. “The lights in my room were flickering on and off—the way they do every so often.”

  I didn’t say anything. Ernesto didn’t seem to be expecting an answer.

  THIRTY-SIX

  The next three days went by in a blur. My brain seemed to shut itself off in the evenings—recording torture testimonies at the church—and, the rest of the time, it was running at a very low level. I spent most of my time in the Library Staff Only room. I wasn’t sleeping much at night, and the little sleep I did get was restless and nightmarish. I dreamt of young men trapped in a burning house and nuns being sent into electroshock convulsions. I was grinding my teeth constantly, and my gut was a knot that I struggled unsuccessfully to loosen in the washroom.

  The truth was that Uncle Peter frightened me. He was cruel and unpredictable, and seemed to genuinely enjoy inflicting harm on others.

  In order to manipulate someone, I would tap away at their protective shell until it cracked open. There were weaker spots that I worked away at—sometimes a vulnerability, sometimes a particular moral grounding—but, in the end, there was always some bit of humanity at the core for me to work with. Uncle Peter was uncrackable. He was inhumane and amoral—and there was also the threat of what would happen if I got caught. There would be no expulsion from the Colony. I would be tortured, surely, and then killed.

  I tried to work on the escape, but all I saw were images of Claudio being taken into Uncle Peter’s bedroom; of electrodes being adhered to my bare skin; of Elena’s face as she realized that I had shown up alone, without her son. I tried to remember why I was doing this, and all I could come up with was my happiness being manipulated at the Santiago International Airport.

  I needed Julio and Rodolfo here with me—their calm, their analytical minds, their investigative abilities. Without help, I knew I wouldn’t be able to carry out this Manipulation.

  On the fourth day, I was late for breakfast. I didn’t sleep in—I just didn’t care anymore. Anita was nowhere to be found, so I began helping a colonist core and slice apples. He was a young man, and he was working away at the apples slowly and meticulously.

  “If you wouldn’t mind,” he said, after a few minutes, “we are to be slicing them far thinner than that. Paper thin, just so you can see some light shining through.”

  I stopped in mid-slice and turned my head to glare at him. “Listen up,” I said through gritted teeth, “I am sick and tired of people telling me what to do—I will slice these goddamn apples however thick I want to— got it?”

  My voice had gotten louder and louder, and, by the end, everyone else in the kitchen was staring at me silently.

  “What are you looking at?” I called out. “Get back to work!”

  I felt someone take ahold of my arm. It was Anita. “I need your help,” she said.

  I was shaking.

  “Would you wash the dining-hall tables?” Anita asked.

  I nodded and went to find a bucket and rags. The slippery feel of the warm, bleachy water, the circular motions—neither did much to calm me down. The sun rose over the Cordillera, and it glared off the tables. Anita came into the dining hall and pulled a rag out from where it was tucked into her apron. She swished it around in the bucket of water and gently twisted it. We washed adjacent tables, and then she turned to me.

  “You doing okay?” she said.

  “Fantastic,” I said.

  Anita dropped her rag into the bucket and walked over. She opened her arms and pulled me into a hug. Her body was a nest of pillows that I let myself fall into. I cried like I hadn’t since I was a child—long, heaving sobs that seemed to pull at every corner of my body. Anita rubbed my back and didn’t say a word.

  “You’re not having an easy time here,” she said, finally.

  “I’m not,” I said, my eyes shut tightly. I was finished—I no longer had to put on a face, to part my hair on the other side, to look for subtle changes in body language.

  “You’re better than him,” Anita said.

  I shook my head. He was better—he had outcompeted me. His Manipulations were far superior, and he didn’t have a shred of humanity for me to work with.

  “You’re not alone here,” Anita said.

  She was right, of course. I thought of Ernesto and Claudio. Of Julio and Rodolfo, who were not here but who had given me tools to work with. Of Elena. I lifted my head up from Anita’s shoulder—I felt buoyed.

  “Go on, now,” she said, shooing me away with her rag. I had not hugged my own mother since I was a young boy—she had died giving birth to my sister María Paz.

  We wiped down tables side by side for a few minutes, neither of us saying anything.

  “How did you end up here?” I asked. I wasn’t trying to gain anything by asking her this—I was genuinely interested.

  Anita held up a finger and then walked over to the window and peeked out. “I lived in the town just outside here. There used to be an order of nuns on this property—my job was to come over every day and make lunch for them. When the order dissolved and the nuns left, I decided I would open a restaurant. Nothing fancy, just a little place. It had been my dream since I was a little girl. I had hardly begun planning when a group of men with guns came to my house one night and marched me over to the Colony. I remember the feeling when I was walking through that gate—that feeling of not knowing if I would ever come back out. The men took me to a room, where I met Uncle Peter for the first time. I had heard much about him but had never seen him. He told me that he had acquired the land that the nuns lived in and, therefore, had acquired my services as well. I tried to tell him that I had plans to start my own restaurant, but he said that this would be my own restaurant. And since everyone who worked at the Colony needed to live there, the men would go to my house and bring a few bags of things. I begged him to let me go back to town, but he wouldn’t budge.”

  I tried to process the story Anita had just told me. “Why?” I said.

  “The nuns,” Anita said. “I knew too much about what had happened with the nuns, and Uncle Peter didn’t want anyone to find out.”

  Before I could ask about the nuns, a man rushed into the dining room to let us know that there was smoke coming from the oven. Anita left, and I hurriedly finished wiping down the tables.

  While breakfast was being served, Uncle Peter announced that he would be leaving on a trip for a couple of days. I was relieved—there hadn’t been a play rehearsal in a while, and I had begun to worry about Claudio. Uncle Peter seemed excited with his own announcement—I was afraid that he would be returning with a new cohort of political prisoners. I asked Uncle Peter if I might make an announcement. I went up to the microphone and tried to muster up the energy to promise an exciting play rehearsal that very night.

  “Tonight, we’ll be figuring out who will play which role,” I said—which seemed like a good way to get a good turnout.

  When I left the kitchen that day, I was in higher spirits than I had been in in days. There was work to be done at the library—Ernesto was trying to figure out what to do about some mouse droppings that he had found, and there was a group of boys arriving any minute for a story time.

  “No
chicken walk today,” Ernesto said.

  “You need some help?”

  “I need a cat,” he said. “A library cat to keep the mice away.”

  I went outside to greet the chickens and to get out of the library. The sun was tucked behind a cloud, but it was warm out. A few minutes passed, and I heard Ernesto call out my name. I hurried back inside.

  “We have a situation,” he said, pulling me into the children’s section.

  There were a group of boys sitting on the ground—one of them was sitting all by himself, an ocean of pillows and carpet separating him from the others. He was folded up into a tiny package, his head in his arms, his shoulders heaving.

  “I had just started telling the kids a story,” Ernesto whispered, “but then they all started yelling and moved away from that one boy, who won’t stop crying. I think he peed his pants.”

  I looked around the room.

  “Their supervisor just left them here and took off,” Ernesto said.

  I went over to the boy and squatted down next to him.

  “Want to see some chickens?” I said.

  He shook his head.

  “There are some chickens out back—we can go pet them and look for eggs.”

  He seemed to be considering it. Ernesto relaunched his story—I gently pulled the boy by his arms until he was standing and then led him out into the garden. We went into the chicken coop and sat down on a grassy patch. I gave him a handful of grain and showed him how to lay his hand flat on the ground so that the chickens would peck at it.

  “It’s not fair,” he said quietly. “That one’s not letting the others get any.”

  He was right—I picked up the hen that was at the very top of the pecking order and held her in my lap. The other chickens gratefully pecked at the food. We talked about the chickens, and I told him that I was new to the Colony, having just arrived from Santiago. His name was Pedro—like Claudio, he lived in Santiago and was a student in the Intensive Boarding School program. Things had been fun at first, and the other boys were nice. There was a lot of playing soccer, which he loved, and the food was better than anything his father cooked. Then he had been made Sprinter, and that had been okay, too. Running from one end of the Colony to the other was fun, and he got to deliver important messages from Uncle Peter to the Colonists.

  “But last night,” Pedro said, “a guard came during my prayer time and took me to Uncle Peter’s room. Uncle Peter gave me something to drink—it tasted terrible—and then I was dizzy, and he said that, when you’re dizzy, you should have a bath. …”

  Pedro began to cry. I felt like I might be sick. I dug my fingernails into the dirt until it was painful and put my arm around his shoulders. He flinched—of course, the last thing he needed was to have another grown man touching him. I had no idea whatsoever how to comfort a boy in a situation like this—saying “it’s okay” would be dishonest; saying “don’t cry” would be ridiculous. If there was ever a reason to cry, this was it.

  “Now it hurts me,” Pedro said, sniffling, “down there.”

  I heard a noise and looked up at the library. Ernesto was standing there.

  “I’m going to get you some pants,” I said to Pedro.

  I told Ernesto about the situation while we rummaged through the lost-and-found. He told me that one of the nurses at the clinic was known to be particularly sympathetic towards these kinds of things. I found a pair of pants and took them out to Pedro.

  “Put these on,” I said, turning my back to give him some semblance of privacy. I told him we were going to go see a nurse who would help him out. We walked to the clinic at a quick clip. Fortunately, we avoided running into any of his friends or any guards. I found the office of the sympathetic nurse and knocked on the door. A young woman opened the door—she took one look at Pedro’s tear-streaked face and gave me a heartbroken look.

  “He’s a Sprinter,” I whispered to the nurse. She gestured with a wave that no more explanation was needed. I said goodbye to Pedro and let myself out of the clinic. The lunch bell rang, and I let myself be carried towards the dining hall in a wave of colonists.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  I had just started eating when the speakers buzzed on and Uncle Peter’s voice boomed across the dining hall.

  “My dear colonists,” he said. “I am a happy man today. I am proud, too—proud to announce that, in just a few short days, we will be bestowing three new boys with the honor of becoming Sprinters!”

  The colonists clapped.

  “And who are these lucky boys?” Uncle Peter was pacing rapidly, his gestures brimming with excitement. “Alejandro Gonzalez!” he called out, pointing at a boy sitting not far from me. “Lalo Mittenberg!”

  The colonists turned to look at another young boy.

  “And, last, but not least, one of our newest boys, Claudio Soto!”

  I followed Uncle Peter’s gaze until I found Claudio. His ears were red, and he was looking down at his plate with fierce concentration.

  “On Sunday evening, after dinner,” said Uncle Peter, “these boys will receive their new titles and begin serving as Sprinters immediately thereafter.”

  That night, once the dining-hall tables had been shoved to one side of the room, we had our second official rehearsal. The children were in high spirits, and I led them through a series of acting exercises. I asked someone to help me gather some chairs, and, after a pointed stare, Claudio raised his hand. When we were far enough away from the group, I asked how he was doing.

  “When can I go home?” he said, his voice hardly more than a whisper. His face was pale, and his eyes narrow and darting.

  “Very soon,” I said. I couldn’t risk giving him any actual details. “You’ll have to be ready to leave with just a moment’s notice.”

  He nodded his head. “But on Sunday, he said today at lunch—I don’t want to be a Sprinter!” His voice was getting louder, and I looked around at the rest of the children.

  “I know,” I whispered, squatting down next to him. “But we need to pick the right time. I have a plan. I’m going to need your help on the day of the escape.”

  Claudio looked at me, wide-eyed and serious. “I can help—I can do anything I need to do. What do I need to do?”

  “It’s very simple,” I said. “You’re going to need to act.”

  We returned to the dining hall and set the chairs down off to the side. I gathered everyone around me and began assigning roles.

  “In Act One, you’re Uncle Peter,” I said. “You three are farmers; you’re a sheep; you two are a horse …”

  By the time I was done, everyone had several roles—most of the children had six or seven. We worked through the play in rough motions—they did not have scripts, so I just ran them through the general movements and stage entrances and exits. Then I waved the children in until they formed a tight semi-circle.

  “Listen carefully,” I said. “This play is going to be the most exciting thing to ever happen at the Colony—but only if we are able to keep everything about it a secret. Don’t tell anyone anything about it, or it’ll spoil the surprise.”

  The children nodded their heads (they were mirroring my own nodding head). A chain of yawns swept through them, and I herded them out the door.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  I awoke the next morning feeling restless. I hurried into my regular clothes—pants, suspenders, white shirt—and made my way down to the river. I listened sharply for birds, but there was only silence.

  I tromped through the tall grasses of the riverbank, and water began seeping through the seams of my shoes. The sun was just coming up, and, as it filtered through the water, I could see the ghostly outlines of fish. I knew nothing whatsoever about fish, but I knew then with complete certainty that, when this whole thing was over, I would be one of those men who wakes up while it’s dark out and goes fishing in the early hours. I had known things with this level of certainty before—that I would be a father by the time I was thirty; that I would walk across the
mountains, from Chile to Argentina—things that had never worked out. But, somehow, this time, it felt different.

  I wandered around for a few moments, hoping to catch a glance of a deer or other woodland creature. I was anxious to be warmed by full sunlight—rather than the canopy-filtered one—and it was probably time for me to report to the kitchen. The walk back went by quicker than I would have liked.

  I spent the next hour or so hard at work—scrubbing, peeling, chopping—and went out to serve the oatmeal when the breakfast bell rang. When we had all finished eating our breakfasts, I made my way over to the library. Ernesto was doing some library-related task that I did not bother asking him to explain.

  “Chicken time?” I said.

  We set out with our worm-sticks and our eagerly trailing poultry.

  “I want to go visit Angela today,” Ernesto said.

  I stopped walking. “Keep walking,” he said.

  We walked past the fields and towards a small hill. We wound our way down a row of headstones, and then Ernesto stopped in front of one. There were two adjacent plots. One of them had Angela’s name on it and the years of her birth and death. And below it, the phrase “Our ship …”

  “What does that mean, ‘our ship’?”

  “That one’s for me,” Ernesto said, ignoring my question, as he pointed at the space next to Angela’s grave. He dangled his worm stick over it, and the chickens began scratching at the plot. We were quiet for several minutes. Ernesto brushed some dirt off Angela’s headstone.

  “I was married when I was still in high school,” I said. “It was our graduation day, and, instead of going to the ceremony, we went to City Hall and got married. We were eighteen years old, and we’d been in love since we were fourteen. We moved in together, into her parents’ house—they had a large basement—and I was as happy as could be. Then, one weekend she went with her parents to the beach. I couldn’t get the time off work, so I didn’t go.”

  I could feel Ernesto tense up.

  “They were hit by a truck on their way home,” I said quickly. “She wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.”