I returned from the front as an officer, ahead of my time because of my exemplary conduct during the holy defense decreed by the Commander, and I was taken on in an elite corps of the territorial Army. I rose rapidly through the ranks. I was good with weapons, and specialized in engines of war and the latest technology. During a competition I was noticed. It was fairly sophisticated equipment, I’ll warrant you that. I obtained the first prize and, the following year, a prize for excellence. Since you want me to repeat it to you, I will confirm that I can dismantle all sorts of automatic weapons with my eyes closed, as well as all any number of robots and control and espionage gadgets. Two months after the second competition, I was hired as a trainer for section K in the Army, a sort of holy of holies directly connected not to the staff but to the Residence of the Supreme Commander, head of the armed forces. When was that? You know very well, it’s written in black and white in the files piled up there in front of you. In the year 2000. Who was I training? As you already know, it’s in the signed deposition, and I’ve already told you a hundred times. Officers from our regiments and foreign volunteers. From fraternal countries. What’s that? Yes, they were volunteers, destined for outside operations. I beg your pardon? How do you want me to refer to them? I’m trying to be precise. That’s all your colleagues ever say. Be precise. Back there, these candidates were destined for martyrdom, they were our brothers in arms, valiant combatants in the service of God. They came from neighboring countries but also from Africa. There were a few Westerners, too. Quite a few, actually. The leaders pampered these neophyte apprentices. We were told they were going to help their countries cast off the yoke of heresy and decadence. Having said that, if you prefer I can use your regulation terminology—they were terrorists, jihadists, converted crusaders or . . . Shall I go on? Can we talk about something else? My promotions! The first one was in the winter of 2003, when the Supreme Commander made a surprise visit to our base. He noticed me and hired me on the spot. I was transferred to one of the top secret services in the Army. Top-level Security. In other words, the Gordian Knot of Intelligence, under the control of the Supreme Commander, the most powerful, most feared person in the country. Since 2005, thirty thousand people, directly in the service of the Commander’s Residence, have been governing every authority in the country and the eighty million souls under its rule. Yes, my life was turned upside down that day. I thought the day was blessed. In fact it was the most accursed day of my life. To be in the service of the Supreme Commander means completely putting your past behind you. Your identity. Your feelings. Your beliefs. To be in the service of the Supreme Commander you have to accept graciously that your duties are the only rights you can claim as your own. The first duty, a sacred one, is absolute obedience to the absolute Master. The relation of cause and effect is clearly established from day one. Those who work at the Residence go behind the mirror the moment they cross the threshold into that nest of vipers. Any individual incorporated into the Commander’s inner circle is no longer his own person. We were subjected to the regime of the Three Fs+S. S for self-sacrifice when the commander required it, and the three Fs were, in order of importance, absolute faith, absolute fidelity, and absolute falsification. Faith and fidelity toward the Circle and those who were close to the Commander. Falsification where everyone else was concerned, the outsiders. Everyone else we were supposed to control, beyond the walls of our forbidden city. I would learn to lead a secret life in the bosom of my own family. What would you call this? Schizophrenia? Multiple personality disorder?
For a fraction of a second I can see Yuri in the place of the guy giving me the third degree. I’m thinking, Filthy cop, but I say I don’t really understand these scholarly words. I add that I went along with it all the best I could. My life was unfolding in a closed circuit. I would change my identity the way I changed my shirt. As far as my family was concerned, I was a businessman. It was the explanation for my sudden fortune, it justified the extravagant salary deposited every month into the account of the director—who happened to be me—of a front that belonged to the Circle. I moved into a magnificent house, with garden, swimming pool, and all the trimmings. I lived like a prince. But in a permanent state of anxiety. The Residence was worse than the Army. Any discussion outside the order of the day was off-topic. Questions were forbidden, dangerous. We all tried to outdo each other when it came to showing our loyalty to the Commander. It was a contest in obsequiousness. We reveled in our degradation. But I didn’t want to get my hands dirty . . . I beg your pardon? You want me to repeat that? I told you I didn’t want to get my hands dirty. That’s right, sir. You want me to explain? And yet it’s simple, I never killed anyone. Never, do you hear me? Except as a soldier in the field of battle. You’re at liberty not to believe me. What did you say? I was training others to kill? Not at all, sir. I was training people how to use combat materiel and cutting-edge technology. Those were my fields of expertise. You want me to remind you whom I was training? You want to know whether the volunteers from other countries were potential suicide bombers? The kind who blow themselves up on buses and subways and kill innocent people? Could be. To be exact, I would even say definitely! Are you satisfied? But it wasn’t my remit to keep up with what those guys got up to once their training was over. No, that wasn’t my problem. It was their problem and that of their hierarchical superiors in the operational sector. It wasn’t my signature authorizing their missions. What? What do you mean afterwards? What was my remit? You have it in the miles of paperwork there before your eyes. Twice I was put in charge of the so-called sensitive personnel. In other words: I trained the personal guards for the Supreme Commander’s inner circle. Then I joined the exclusive committee of the Commander’s personal representatives. In charge of security in penal institutions. It was my job to renovate and oversee the technological installations. As the Commander’s representative I automatically became the coordinator between Military Security and Intelligence. In fact, the Commander wanted to clean up both of those mammoth administrations before absorbing them into the top-level sector at the Residence. My role would be to oversee the drastic purges within these organisms. This decision was a consequence of the growing number of spectacular escapes by political prisoners who were considered a risk to the system. There was a scandal when a former highly placed official, now disgraced, escaped from Ravine. In broad daylight. It triggered a crisis among the country’s leaders. Because an escape necessarily implies complicity among the personnel. At the top of the ladder, it goes without saying. In other words, those who have the right keys. The prisons of the Theological Republic, reputed to be the best-protected places on earth, had become regular sieves. My job consisted in beefing up the security of the installations. Padlocking the bastions of power. Making them impregnable, the way they’d been in the past. The way they should be. The technical aspect was child’s play. Unmasking the traitors, the scum who were responsible, that was another story. I could turn a blind eye to the trafficking, which the guards organized, of drugs, medications, books, or pencils, why not. But to allow the escape of traitors or political prisoners who were viewed as terrorists—never again.
My brain is overheating. I translate the Colonel’s words with sickly slowness. My tongue is furred, my mouth is dry. I had him repeat the last sentences, wondering how I myself got out of there. Who helped me escape from Ravine, since no one paid for my escape? No one had the means to pay for my freedom. Who had the right key to let me run away? How did they get it? To whom do I owe my life? Who is the man my mother qualified as providential? Where is he today? Questions I had pushed aside, had tried to forget. In order to have a life again. And now they are pouring down on me, assailing me. Oppressing me. I should never have agreed to take this assignment. I’m not going to manage. It fills me with fear. The fear of losing my job. The Colonel repeats, It requires astuteness to unmask the high-ranking officials involved.
Astuteness, or even genius. Prisoners and jailers, from the guard to the warden b
y way of the judges and lawyers in the pay of the powerful, I had my eyes on all of them. Advanced technology is infallible, and in my domain I’m unbeatable. I assured the Commander that very soon everything would be back to normal.
I set up what was needed, where it was needed, to spy on prisoners, jailers, wardens, judges, and court-appointed lawyers. I wove my web. A network of opaque waves, which made them—individually and all together—audible and visible at all times. No one could escape my vigilance. Every one of them, from the greatest to the most insignificant, was under surveillance. Day and night. At work. At home with their families. At home in their beds. Whether they were sleeping or fucking. Visiting family or friends. When they were traveling. By car. By train. By plane. On camelback. Wherever they were, they were under my control. After a few months had gone by, over one thousand seven hundred people had fallen into my net. Guards, wardens, judges, torturers . . . From north to south, from all over the country, by way of the capital, the arrests were multiplying in number.
That was my last position. I had decided it would be the last. Even though the job allowed me to travel. As a businessman, I went around the world. Russia, Japan, Korea, China . . . Beautiful countries. Unforgettable scenery. Fascinating discoveries. I was amazed by the incredible variety of cutting-edge items. The latest in espionage equipment. Miniature devices . . . What did you say? I don’t understand. What do you mean by instruments of a particular kind? The ones used for brutal interrogations? Do you mean instruments of torture? I swear, you are obsessed! I already answered this question. In the first place, it wasn’t my sector. In the second place, we didn’t need to go abroad to get devices like that. Our correspondents delivered them to us. Russians, Chinese, Koreans . . . Consultants who were officially appointed by their respective governments. There were also the unofficial consultants. Arms dealers are increasingly trading in interrogation technology software. Something of a cynical pun, I agree. But significant. And I’m not the one who invented the term. I am only using it in an attempt to be precise. Software means maximum efficiency without any drawbacks. No collateral damage. Not a trace on the body.
I’m suffocating. I don’t feel well. I can’t breathe. I am dying to grab him by the throat. The bastard, the way he articulates the words sophisticated software, so self-assured . . . I see myself back in solitary. My mouth forced wide open, in a jaw-crushing grip. My mouth is a toilet bowl. For the requirements of the penis pissing between my teeth . . . I don’t need software to slaughter you without leaving a trace, you monster. I stop the screams coming from deep inside, filling my lungs to bursting. I clear my throat, to rid it of the aftertaste of this traceless torture. All I do is translate. Tell us about these foreign consultants, asks the boss, calmly.
Consultants? Oh yes, the Russians. A whole load of Russian officers. They gave classes and trained the local interrogators. Or the torturers, if you prefer the exact terminology. It’s the truth. They were torturers. Obviously, I had to know about it. But no more than that. I didn’t have anything to do with the dirty work. No, I wasn’t present at the interrogations. I did, however, occasionally see video recordings of some of them. The brutal ones, as you call them. There had to be verification, in the event there was cause to suspect any complicity between prisoners and authorities. When my subordinates couldn’t cope, I would intervene. It was up to me, in the end, to decide one way or the other. Why did I run away? But how many times do I have to tell you? I didn’t want to become the Supreme Commander’s plaything. He wanted me for a guard dog. I would have to be at the Residence. Live there three hundred and sixty-five days a year. And if I refused, I was a dead man. That makes sense, doesn’t it?
Why did he refuse? Was he suddenly feeling remorse? I translate the boss’s questions, articulating each word to modulate my voice, to keep it calm and neutral. The Colonel doesn’t reply. He’s unnerved. I can tell from the way his knees are trembling, more than ever. He stands up. All of a sudden. He needs to go to the toilet. He has to take some medication. He has a stomach ulcer, and heart palpitations. An irregular heartbeat, he says. His staccato voice slips, falters when he says irregular heartbeat. Is he hoping to make us feel sorry for him? Well I won’t. Let the bastard die. I won’t lift a little finger. If I could look at him. Flood him with my hatred. Bury him alive. I keep my eyes down. Obstinately. My gaze slides from his knees to his feet. A giant’s feet, in military boots. Eloquent feet. They step forward and head toward the way out. I stifle the cry in my throat with a cough. The Colonel isn’t wearing military boots, he’s wearing sneakers. I immediately understand why I was mistaken. It’s his walk that led me astray, blurring my vision. A walk like a lame duck, with his right foot turned inwards. It blurred not my vision but my perception. I saw a memory, or thought I did. It’s always like that, when buried images take the place of reality. I’m frozen stiff. All of a sudden. The snapshots from Ravine prison stored on the hard drive in my brain are emerging, out of order, in slow motion. Have I recognized the Colonel’s feet? Those big feet, with their awkward movement, remind me of the feet of the man who burst into the interrogation room. I was close to death. They told me my end was approaching. My imminent execution. They were going to send me to the gallows . . . I have to get a grip on myself. I must be hallucinating. Haunted by the memory of a twisted walk. Of a pair of giant’s feet. Feet, and the way they walk, flimsy clues political prisoners steal behind their torturers’ backs, while those same torturers destroy their lives, incognito.
In jail, the cleverest inmates—and I was one of them—quickly learn how to loosen the blindfold in order to see what their prison hell is made of. Only during interrogations. The rest of the time, we were stuck with the regulation hood over our heads, or the burlap bag stinking of piss, the uniform of the ones who were kept in solitary. Interrogation meant torture. Moral of the story: in Ravine, all the female inmates knew that the blindfold, which meant no hood or burlap bag, was synonymous with rape. As sordid a relation of cause and effect as they come: the inmate, if she was as agile as she was bold, could make the most of the unique view onto the world the blindfold offered her if she loosened it just a few millimeters. During the eighteen months of my imprisonment I was forced to undergo long sessions of brutal interrogation. My view of the world amounted to a few centimeters of space above the ground, and a few pairs of feet, sometimes with shoes, sometimes without. You have to have survived a place like Ravine to understand how and why a world reduced to an insignificant patch of floor can suddenly become so vital. You have to have a real hunger for life, in spite of Ravine, to be able to capture that random shot of a pair of feet that spend more time kicking you than walking by. The net of your blurred gaze beneath the blindfold is the only thing connecting you to the world, and most of the time it is reduced to a pair of boots, shoes, or worn-out old slippers splattered with blood, snot or puke. To survive in Ravine you learn to read the infinitesimal, in spite of yourself. A few foot movements which you then classify according to walk. Even if it’s only a few steps forward or back. Traces on the ground . . . Insignificant clues to start with but which over time turn out to be far more eloquent than you would have thought. Rhetoric that is inconceivable outside of isolation. Because freedom doesn’t necessarily make you observant. Any more than confinement will ineluctably turn you into a moron. In the deafening world of a prison, where human beings with the power of speech no longer speak, but vociferate, bellow, and scream—some from pain, others to inflict terror and pain—any intelligible element becomes a tool for survival. In Ravine, deciphering the cement floor is the most tenacious road to escape. Thinking allows you to resist, to contain your fear. And on rare occasions to force it over to the other side. So, the codebreakers of the interrogation room floor—and I was one of them—had a head start on the others. If you could read the ground, you could be informed. It was a tiny wedge against absolute isolation. You quickly learned that a floor splattered with blood or smeared with shit, urine, or cum was just a
s eloquent as one wiped with bleach. You could go on to decipher the veiled messages these traces left behind. A pool of blood or urine, drops of blood or cum, a streak of blood or vomit spoke volumes about the torturers’ mood, as well as the ordeal your comrades had been through. After the rapes they would mop the floor with the bleach of ritual ablution, and haloes of white foam remained, furrows of macabre still lifes, signs the inmate was scared shitless. Scared shitless before torture, and after. Clues that, like news flashes, regularly punctuated the cadence of the rape and sexual torture, the beatings, the miscarriages. A persistence that narrated the agenda of the days to come. In Ravine, the ground—pure or impure—was a silent screen where a new type of reality show played to an absent audience. The floor in Ravine, or the dazibao of psychedelic drawings. No comment. The floor in Ravine needed no words, but it twisted the soul. In Ravine, a man’s walk was the ID card of a coward. It was up to the most observant prisoners to identify the jailers and their rank among the despicable. An exploit only the bravest undertook, and which they paid dearly. We were playing with fire, to be sure, but it was worth it. Even with our shackles, we were better armed against the enemy we had tracked down. Even if he was invisible, and armed with every right including that of beating a prisoner to death, he became vulnerable the moment we could see through to the slightest weakness. There were voices, too, and we could try to make out who they belonged to, these louts who held our lives in their hands. But voices were unreliable. Even the keenest sense of hearing could not unravel the sophisticated effects of the microphones used in Ravine. The only thing I could rely on were the motions that went into a person’s walk. Tell me how you walk and I will tell you who you are. I was good, very good at the game. The best. If there was a competition for identifying walks, I would win it every time.
The Man Who Snapped His Fingers Page 3
