Turn around. Go back the way you came. Go home. Get into bed and forget him. Let him go. He can manage without a translator. I say these mantras over and over to myself when I see him outside the door to the Office for Refugees and Stateless Persons. But I keep on going. I get closer to the tall building but I don’t stop. I don’t hurry but I’ve come inexorably closer. 1 put one foot behind the other. Why? Why are my legs working independently of my will?
Yesterday I got a call from the Office. They needed a certified translator to fill in. It was urgent, said the metallic voice on the other end of the line. One last interview with an asylum seeker who’s a bit of a problem, said my interlocutor, who was not anyone I knew. I thought, he’s filling in, too. He went on, It’s a colonel from the Theological Republic. But—He interrupted me, I read your file. “Refuses to do any simultaneous translation for military or government personnel from her country of origin.” There was a silence. It lasted a few seconds. The man went on, We’ll pay you extra, double the usual amount, if you agree. Another silence. He repeated, it’s urgent. Well? I should have said no. But then I should not have hesitated for a second. No. A firm, sharp no, without prevaricating. The word no longer belongs—or shouldn’t belong—to my vocabulary, even if Yes hasn’t quite triumphed altogether. The word no, flying the colors of captivity, has all the connotations of a prison ordeal. To be avoided. Or, to be used in homeopathic doses. According to my shrink. Consequently, the word yes should automatically become one of those hymns to the glory of life which I so sorely need. Another one of the same shrink’s ideas; it seemed so stupid at first. And yet the exercise has turned out to be good for me. If I stop saying no, I no longer feel like I’m being attacked. But in this particular case I should have said no. It was a slip of the tongue. I said yes. Without knowing how or why. An unthinkable verbal slip of the most disciplined muscle in my ravaged body. Ordinarily I count to ten before I open my mouth. A lesson I learned from my dear departed grandmother, and which I practiced assiduously in the Supreme Commander’s jails. A lesson for life, basically. And which yesterday morning I forgot. To my great astonishment. I still wonder if it was really me who uttered that distinct, curt and unhesitant yes. I heard it without recognizing my own voice. It was like some robot, programmed in advance. By whom? To what aim? No idea. And here we go again. Now I can feel my legs urging me on, drawing me toward that tall man who’s hopping up and down to keep warm. He’s the soldier I’m supposed to help. I’m sure of it. Without a doubt.
I’m a few feet away from him. He’s at least two heads taller than I am. I hurry my step. Go past him. I can hear him mutter a timid good morning. I nod my head, press my lips, and punch in the code to unlock the green button for the employee interphone. I ring the bell, again punch in the numbers and letters of my ID, the magic formula which gives me access to this sanctuary of hope, “to the possibility of being.” A free individual in a society governed by the rule of law. The doors creak. I enter the building and hurry to the elevator. Sixth floor, Room 2304. Here I am. The man in charge, the department head—among colleagues they call him the big boss—greets me. He is visibly surprised. He refrains from asking any questions. This is indeed the first time I’ve agreed to an interview with an official from my country of origin, a military man on top of it. I have a quarter of an hour before I will find myself in the presence of the man I saw outside the entrance. A brute. With a massive, imposing build. Having said that, if he had been a puny little one-eyed hunchback he still would have been a barbarian. Just like the other mercenaries from a regime that tortures, terrorizes, and oppresses my compatriots, holding them hostage in their own country. I have fifteen minutes to change my mind. Fifteen minutes, or nine hundred seconds. Which is plenty of time to get out of it. I can pretend I don’t feel well, come up with a pretext, some emergency, some sudden family matter . . . I can’t make up my mind. I’m trying to think. In vain. My thoughts drift, and come apart as soon as they occur to me. I’m passive. I stare at the screen on my laptop, and count the passing minutes. Suddenly it comes to me in a flash. Why should I run away? If anything, this is a bad day for the big man downstairs. The presence of the big boss is not a good sign. He is the last one who questions the asylum seekers before they close the case for good. In 99.99% of the cases the request is rejected. The thought is comforting. Enchanting. I’ll stay. I’ll do whatever it takes to eradicate the Colonel from the list of candidates for human dignity. You can count on my overzealousness, you son of a bitch.
The boss is speaking to me. Pardon? He says, Would you like to take a look at the questionnaires which I have . . . No. He is surprised. He knows me well enough to be astonished by such abrupt verbal velocity. There’s nothing impulsive about me. I don’t like negatives. I don’t seek out the word no and I have made this widely known. I’ve been working here for three years, and no one has ever heard me utter a categorical no. They call me Mrs. Maybe, Miss Why-Not, the we’ll-see girl . . . These nicknames for the interpreter with the Olympian calm suited me fine. I was proud of them. Until today. The arrival of the soldier, visibly, has changed things. The word no has invaded my repertory. The big boss asks me if everything is all right. I look at him, vacantly. He rephrases his question, he can’t help it, it goes with the job. As if I were one of those unfortunate fugitives who want to trick him so he has to trap them. Madame, is there a problem? I take a deep breath, and count to ten. I am thinking, Absolutely not. But I answer yes, unintentionally. Without batting an eyelash. This yes was not what I was thinking. This yes slipped out—the way the no did, earlier—and it frightens me. I hear it, once again, and don’t recognize my own voice. Like yesterday, when I agreed to come. I’m disconcerted. But my traitor of a voice—how phony can you get?—repeats the word yes, and follows with, I’m just a bit worried about my son. He’s sick. The boss didn’t even know I had a son. Nor did I, I feel like saying. And I feel like explaining what it’s like, to have a miscarriage in a prison cell. Prisoner 32, in solitary, Section 209 of Ravine Prison. But my voice fell silent. Fortunately. Silence at last, I think, how can you call a prison Ravine? You can never know what’s going on in the depths of the Theological Republic. You have to be locked up in there. Let the place penetrate you to the bone. But I digress. Ravine doesn’t mean a thing in my mother tongue. The cynicism of wordplay would surely enchant the jailers of the Theological Republic and the Supreme Commander. I’m sorry about your son, I hope it’s not too serious, says the boss, dubiously. I don’t answer. A self-imposed silence. A storm in my heart. Ravine! The Ravine prison, the programmed rapes. The uninterrupted beatings. Raining down from everywhere. Ravine and its incomparable torturers. Infanticides. The loss of my love child. It was surely for the best. In the order of things. The implacable logic of the footnotes of history. My own history. I probably wouldn’t have known how to love that child after Ravine. In the end I say, In fact, he’s my nephew. I love him like a son. My voice rescues me with this new lie. The big boss knows I don’t have any children, even if he doesn’t know that I cannot have any, anymore. I understand, he says, sympathetically. It’s time. Are you ready? Good. I’ll bring him in. Above all, don’t forget that the only purpose of the interview is to verify the Colonel’s prior declarations. To uncover any contradictory statements. I think, Count on me to nail that son of a whore. I nod my head.
What can he possibly know, that representative of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, about the contradictions in the twisted minds of the Inquisition? Without me—nothing.
The floor gives way beneath me. I stop on the threshold of the tiny room and gasp. My usual translator is not there. The lady professor of Asian languages from the University, the genteel pensioner, is not there. The little woman with her singsong, peaceable accent, her salt and pepper hair, her kindly smile. She is empathetic. She understands fugitives. Feels for them. Doesn’t judge them. All she does is translate their pain. I used to find her odd, even suspect. In her book, survivors are always vi
ctims. Without distinction, she explained one day, with the same kindly smile and tender gaze which I no longer found suspect. She thinks the way you do, my dear Vima. She thinks I’m a victim. She is a balm for my aching soul. The woman who is now sitting in her place—455—cannot, will not take me for a victim. I look at her and try not to falter. Not to keel over. Not to faint. It was 455 I just ran into outside the building. But I didn’t recognize her then. Which is not surprising. She was in disguise. Her hat pulled down over her eyebrows, a scarf over her mouth. Dark glasses. In a way she has always been in disguise. Who could fail to believe in the Almighty’s bad jokes now? You used to say, with a laugh, that God plays his best tricks without warning, to punish us. You who never believed in the God of other people any more than you believed in mine. Nowadays I believe in your God. It is your God, the god of numbers and probabilities, who is making fun of me. Yes, there is nothing surprising about the fact that I am now face to face with this woman. The woman sitting next to the official, strung as tight as a bow, is none other than 455. The legend of section 209 at Ravine. She is replacing my kind translator, the professor of Asian languages. Can you believe it? She was the pasionaria of Ravine, as wild about her husband as I am about you. The innocent woman. A martyr of the resistance who was never sanctified. She should have died. It is to you that she owes her life. Yes, she always wore a good disguise. For me, at any rate. Like all the female prisoners. Her face hidden beneath a hood or a burlap bag. But I also saw 455 without her hood, blindfolded, in the torture chamber. A human wreck, flat on her face after the beating. Her torturers were relentless. She seems to be in fine shape now. Sitting only a few feet away from me, motionless. I’m freezing, but my guts are on fire. A desire to throw up, my guts burning with acid. Do your god’s sarcastic remarks make any sense to you, dear Vima? You keep up with what goes on in the skies—can you figure out this message from the Creator? Whether it’s my Creator or yours?
Here in this room, Prisoner 455 from Ravine is no longer in disguise. I’m the one who is, with my face plain to see. I can overcome my confusion, elude my memories, defuse the shock. I step forward, confidently. I was properly raised. I know how to control myself. And I have one advantage over her. She doesn’t know me.
She is sitting to the right of the head interviewer. A little ways behind them. I am facing them. As usual. In the dock, in a way. The head man looks me up and down. The translator pays me no attention. Her eyelids are lowered, her sidelong gaze is aimed at my legs, or the floor. I can sense her hatred. The way my superior could smell the fear rising off of me.
The head man’s pale eyes drill into my pupils. He has placed his broad hands, as white as a corpse, flat on my file—a big binder with several cardboard volumes, the red ones on the top of the pile—and he says, you understand our language fairly well, but you don’t speak it. Isn’t that right? I don’t reply. I nod. He continues, We are going to begin, if you have no objection. Again I nod. We are going to go through your statements point by point. I hold his gaze. Is he capable of reading my thoughts? Do I have any choice, Mr. Fucking Stupid Human Rights? If only I could spit in his face. He smiles, and says, My colleague will motion to you with her hand when you have to stop. I stare at him. Without blinking. Something that makes people uneasy. I know from experience. He remains unruffled. Not the least bit impressed. I don’t like the looks of this guy. Maybe he’s new. In any case I’ve never seen him before. Maybe he’s a cop. Probably, surely. Yes, without a doubt. There’s nothing of the petty civil servant about him. Unthinkable. We live in a democracy, Colonel, and not a tyrannical regime, my lawyer would say. He can be incredibly extravagant, that gentleman lawyer of mine. I don’t know if he’s pretending or if he really believes the fairy tales he tells me. Someday I’ll tell him as much. For me it’s definite. That guy reeks of the fuzz. I have a nose for these things. Years of experience. The head man presses his point, indicates a pause is necessary so she’ll have time to translate my declarations as we go along.
I’m tense. My back is stiff. My neck is aching. Temples pounding. I’m sweating. A tension that reminds me of Ravine. And my worst memories. I feel trapped. Caught in a snare. The director is going to realize. I’m going to lose my grip and my job along with it. Why the devil did I agree to fill in on this assignment? Stop. Get on with it. Think. I’m garbling my words. Repeating them over and over. I hang on, ingurgitate, steep myself in words, syllable after syllable, until they become meaningless. I’m shooting up on onomatopoeic phrases, about to overdose. Have to go on. Have to hold up. Finish the job. Right to the end. Don’t look at him. Above all. Control your voice. Don’t betray yourself. The mental training of a former jailbird. It works every time. I feel calm again. I tell myself he doesn’t know we’re from the same wretched country. And he won’t suspect it if I avoid looking at him. People think I’m Mediterranean—Italian, Greek, Spanish. They often tell me that. And the accent from my native region, at the edge of the country, confuses my compatriots. They take me for a foreigner who has a marvelous mastery of their beloved language. I’ll stick it out. Whatever the cost. That son of a bitch won’t unnerve me. He might even contribute to my healing. If healing is not just an illusion. I have to put the past behind me. My shrink tells me as much, at length, at every session. No, he doesn’t say put it behind me but rather deal with it, confront it. Yes, he tells me I have to confront my past. Well there you are, dear shrink, my past is staring me in the face. Calmly. As if it were nothing at all. There it is, my past. I’m about to start chatting with one of those men who destroyed my life. One of those bastards who killed the child I was carrying. He’s there before me. We’ll see if I have the nerves to deal with my past. I’m listening, says the director.
He’s listening to me. The cop is listening to me. No doubt about it, he’s a specialized agent. I don’t take my eyes off him. The woman translates. Her eyes down. Maybe she can’t look people in the eye. She’ll be wearing the blindfold of the political prisoner for the rest of her life. It’s depressing. I feel defeated, exasperated. So it will never end. The past will adhere to me. I have no right to a future. This woman’s presence is the best proof of that. There’s no such thing as coincidence. It doesn’t exist. I ask the guy, Where should I begin? Tell me, rather, what you want to hear, that would be easier.
The Colonel is starting to get annoyed. Already with the first questions. His voice is trembling. He’s already told his story a hundred times. His work. The reasons for his escape. The itinerary of his escape. How he spent his time the week before his escape. His—The boss interrupts him. He says he may have already told them all that but he has to start over. From the beginning. He is there to verify the contents of his deposition. It’s procedure. He has to repeat one more time what he has already said a hundred times. He speaks calmly, slowly, distinctly. I translate.
I stare at the Colonel’s knees. They are quivering imperceptibly. The left knee is actually trembling. He grabs his knees with his scarlet hands, which are swollen at the joints. He has pudgy fingers. Gnarled knuckles. His broad hands with their cracked skin calm his knees. The trembling stops. His fingers relax. The Colonel crosses his legs and shoves his hands into his pockets. Please proceed, says the boss.
I went to the front at the age of seventeen. The war had just broken out. I was a volunteer like hundreds of other guys from our village. My brother was at the head of a regiment of the Army of the Lord. That was how we had to refer to the Theological Republic’s brand-new army. We were all proud to be soldiers for the Supreme Commander, the new leader. The country had just been attacked by our heathen neighbor. We were defending our fatherland and the new regime which the Lord had blessed. We believed in it. I fought like a dog. Like my brother, who was my model. Like my cousins and thousands of others, while the country burned. We had faith in our superiors in those days. The faith of dogs, who had volunteered for martyrdom—that was our only fuel. Cold, hunger, a lack of ammunition, of sleep, of human warmth:
nothing discouraged us. I picked up five medals for heroism, after one year of combat under conditions you simply cannot imagine. With a handful of other young guys, as crazy as I was, we liberated several villages the enemy had invaded. I was their leader. I was all of seventeen, commanding a regiment of rookie soldiers in rags. Scarecrows as stubborn as we were. Peasants, workers, farmers, all followed us, armed with hunting rifles or their bare hands. The dirty war went on for years. But in the end we got rid of the enemy. At the cost of huge sacrifices. While the rich kids in the capital were fleeing the country to avoid their military service, tramps like us were having their brains blown out. I would not disown those years of brotherly abnegation for anything on earth. Do you hear me? Not for anything on earth. Things went downhill after that. I have to agree. But I’ll say it again, because you like to hear me repeat my life story, I am proud of the years I spent fighting.
The Man Who Snapped His Fingers Page 2
