I find it difficult to picture this unusual, provincial young woman in the feverish atmosphere of the early days of the holy revolution. The Commander had infused people’s spirits with a mystico-political passion. The diktats of the new father of the nation were a great success. The war against the external enemy justified the internal repression. Protesters were brought to heel or eliminated. True citizens were those who were behind the Commander. It was impossible to escape from him. To ignore him. Vima was an exception. “She was special,” said the Colonel. She wasn’t interested in politics. Even less so in the war. Bombing. Hardship. Revolutionary violence. Everything that made up the everyday life of other people. It was as if nothing really affected her. Didn’t she live in the same country? When he asked her this, she invariably replied, What good does it do to keep talking about misfortune? And besides, the moment you looked above you there was no more misfortune. Another place—the sky, its vastness, its fabulous mysteries—had taken over her life. She was enchanted. The stars were closer to her than human beings were. She had been living among the stars since childhood. They conspired with her, and she wanted to unveil their secrets. The brilliant proof of the way life was perpetually evolving. Food for thought for an entire lifetime. How could she fail to escape from all the rest? To remove herself from anything superfluous, thanks to mathematical abstraction and its relative truths? The soldier was flabbergasted. Again and again I listen to the passages where he speaks for her. And eventually above the Colonel’s monotonous voice I hear Vima. I can feel her presence.
Who are you, Vima? A dreamer? I don’t think so. Or at least not in the commonly accepted meaning of the word. You have your head in the stars but your feet are on the ground. You know what you want. You are demanding. And you get what you want. Everything began with the promises of a shared desire. You made them unequivocally clear. Your suitor was handsome, you fancied him, and you told him so. There is nothing more thrilling, for a man who is hopelessly in love. But even then your mind was ahead of your feelings. The ultimate condition for marriage was for love be kept under control. Which the young man found deeply disturbing. Even today these recollections confuse your husband’s grieving memory. The Colonel falters when the time comes to speak of the most extravagant clause in your marriage contract. He says, “When Vima . . .” And stops. Starts again: “I don’t remember when Vima . . .” Coughs. Goes on in a changed voice: “Vima told me, literally: You must know that I don’t want any children until I’ve finished my studies.” You were only fifteen years old. How could a young girl, as he put it, possibly see so far ahead? You might say it was your stars. You had an acute awareness of distances measured in light-years. It reduced your suitor to silence. The Colonel admits as much, without shame. “I said nothing for a moment. But I agreed. Of course I did. I thought, foolishly, that the baccalaureate would be enough for her, the end to studies for a married woman . . .”
The young volunteer, with his war medals, promoted Captain, married Vima in secret, a little over a year after they first met. His family had nothing more to say in the matter, and they would never know the terms of the marriage contract which Vima had required, in due form. She obtained her baccalaureate in science, with a citation for excellence, and without affiliation to any school, thanks to the intervention of her military husband. Because there could be no mixing of the sexes, women were barred from the scientific departments at provincial universities, so she took the degree course in mathematics and physics under the supervision of former university professors who had been forced to retire. She also learned English, in the utmost secrecy. The provincial rulers frowned on those who spoke the language of the devil. Vima would rather converse with educated demons from the West than with local primates, she said. She was preparing for the future. Thinking about her higher education. She would obtain her Ph.D. abroad, or else by correspondence. She drew up a list of the best science universities in the West. With the utmost discretion. She gradually unveiled her plans. “Everything in its own time,” says the Colonel, without elaborating. The fact remains that she spoke English fluently by the time her husband, steadily rising in the ranks, was transferred to the capital. Six months later, one of the private universities opened a science department reserved for women. Vima obtained her Bachelor’s degree in less than a year. And embarked on a Master’s in physics.
Only once did the Colonel allow himself to wax lyrical. No doubt he was hoping to communicate to me, and I quote, “my dazzling Vima’s capacity for wonder, which I found truly enchanting!” He was sober once again when speaking of the end of the war. A futile, treacherous, lethal war, which left one million dead, including dozens of his friends. He was twenty-seven years old. She was twenty-three. They still had no children. Since he was keeping his promise. As the pill was not allowed, when she was ovulating he did not touch her. For fear he would not be able to control himself. He knew she would have an abortion, if ever . . . She had told him as much, without the slightest remorse. He kept his chin up, even when it meant putting up with his family’s insults. They said he was impotent. That she was barren. The young career officer’s sorrows and fears occasionally color his story. He was frightened. For both of them. Above all for her. People didn’t like his Vima. They said wicked things about her. Those who were close to him—by blood, in spirit—denigrated her. And felt sorry for him. The captain was well thought of in the Army and by the Commander, but he had a weak spot, and that would be his perdition, said his loyal followers, his only confidants and companions at the front. They owed him their lives. So he owed them his attention. They could see that Vima was his weakness. The Colonel’s Achilles’ heel was his wife. An Achilles’ heel who had not given him a child. A woman who hung around universities for no good reason was bound to be sick. She was suspected of every flaw. Those who were real men hated his wife and treated him with scorn. His superior officers told him, Soft guy, soft husband; soft husband, cheating wife. And all this without anyone even knowing that she didn’t pray. That she didn’t believe in all their hogwash. They would both be good for the gallows if anyone overheard the way she spoke about the Commander. Vima was beautiful. And on top of that she knew it. She was a flirt, and did not respect the modest dress code. No one ever saw her wearing the dark uniform that covered respectable women from head to foot. Officials’ wives singled her out for criticism. It was pointless to warn her of her dangerous behavior, pointless to ask her to make an effort: Vima the rebel just dug her heels in. She would listen to no one except her own conscience. That was the situation. Their nights of love effaced everything, dissolved fear and doubt. He could forget about his family, his superiors, the Commander, all the rules in force, the laws of the theological Republic. Summer was a good time for them to prolong their escapades and sleepless nights. The young soldier had certain privileges, including that of camping wherever he wanted whenever he wanted. The desert was their favorite place. All alone on earth, in the middle of nowhere, they were free to explore their romance in an otherworldly absence of constraint. It was there, with all the stars within reach, that Vima was happiest. It was there that she subjugated him beyond his senses. Her intelligence, her knowledge, her insatiable curiosity humbled him. She transformed him, from mere flesh into spirit. At this point the Colonel’s voice trembles. He so loved the constellations, the way Vima described them to him. Did he know, she asked, that the Milky Way, the expanding galaxy, contained hundreds of billions of stars? That its diameter was in the region of a hundred thousand light years? The young officer’s Eve stood naked before him, unique on earth, pointing to the canopy of heaven and shouting at the top of her lungs, This is what I worship. My God is nothing but concentrated intelligence, a supermassive black hole. The cosmos or the complexity of order born from chaos. Which surpasses us, but which is not inaccessible. Not at all. The paths to my God are not impenetrable. Science is his only Law. How do you expect me to pray to a God who is ignorant, vindictive, jealous, spiteful, bad tempered, ugly,
and as stupid as they come, forged in the image of those who claim to represent him? The representatives of my God are the likes of Galileo, Omar Khayyám, Einstein. Do you understand?
The birth of their daughter—whom she called Urania, to her mother-in-law’s great displeasure—came at the end of Vima’s first academic cycle. She had obtained her Master’s in applied physics. Her husband and her family all thought that now at last she would begin to focus on her home and her child. While expecting the second one. Since the husband was not impotent. Any more than she was barren. The first duty of a wife was to provide her husband with an heir. A daughter didn’t count. The leaders did not take the sacred duties of a mother lightly. Were they not a woman’s purpose in life? That was what the Commander said, again and again, whenever the issue of a man’s other half came up. Later, much later, Vima might eventually teach at the female university. “And do you know what?” adds the Colonel with a laugh. Which goes on for a moment. Filling the room and making me laugh in turn. “Vima,” he says in a joyful voice, “found an accomplice who surpassed herself. My old sister. A war widow. Who had no children.” After the birth Vima stayed in bed. And entrusted the baby to her sister-in-law, who was crazy about the little girl. Naturally the old woman had every good reason to defend the young mother’s cause. The child would lack for nothing. Vima could continue her studies. She submitted her application to study for a doctorate by correspondence to one of the best universities in Europe. She was immediately accepted. Thanks to her husband, she also obtained the right to use the Army’s observatory, with the powerful telescopes she needed for her research. It was at this time that her high-ranking officer husband’s problems began; he had just been promoted Colonel. Now to me he says, “I’m not going to bore you by repeating what is contained in my file. You know all, or almost all, the ins and outs of my career. You translated my deposition. Except that I didn’t say anything about the tension in my family due to my work. Vima wanted me to resign. She was putting pressure on me. When did they start, the lies that turned me into the traitor she eventually unmasked? Was it that winter when I swore I would resign? Or in spring when I showed her my real fake letter of resignation? Or more precisely, was it the day when, proud as a peacock, I led her triumphantly into my magnificent businessman’s office? There I was, the Commander’s Army Intelligence liaison officer, in the pay of the Residence! Our son had just been born. Vima was busy with her research for her doctoral dissertation. I was living on standby. Between heaven and hell. Acutely aware of the usurper in me who sooner or later would be banished from Eden to Gehenna for good. Without passing through purgatory. I don’t know, without betraying myself, how to explain the deeper reasons for my behavior. Panic, cowardice, the lure of personal gain, or quite simply indifference? When you are not personally affected by barbarity, it becomes so banal as to anesthetize you. This is a terrible thing to acknowledge. But it is what I experienced. The system was total, absolute, unfailing. Otherwise, armed with the innocence of distance, I would never have been able to watch those filmed sessions of the torture inflicted on political prisoners. The CD of bait 455 ‘to be examined’—that is the term used by the authorities, to be exact—was not the first of its kind. As you can imagine.”
There is a slight hissing and crackling for a few seconds, then the Colonel goes on to relate the events of the night when bait 455 suddenly came into his life. He says, “For a person like me who believes in signs, Number 455’s first name was a sign. The detonator of an imminent downfall.” He spares no details. He lists all the errors he committed. Number one: he took the CD home. Number two: he watched it on his personal laptop, which he left out in plain sight on the table in the living room. Number three: he didn’t switch the computer off. Number four: he didn’t put the CD away. “You’d have to be stupid,” he admits, “not to realize that these mistakes were made deliberately. Subconsciously, but a long time in advance.” He wanted, he says, to put an end to all the lying. And to all the internalized violence, gnawing away at him from within. He then describes in detail the night Vima accused him. How his spouse rescued him from drowning, at the last minute, then sent him away from the house. And he adds this detail: “Vima, too, was going to move away. She didn’t want to live in that house anymore, the house that had belonged to the ruined doctor. She said the villa was ruined, the way the country was, and to live together with the usurpers was to approve of them. We had to leave everything behind . . . First me, then her.” His voice cracks, trembles. The Colonel admits that Vima did not save me out of love. My death would have been too easy, and still equally pointless. I had to undo the harm. I had to save you. Now I learn, from the lips of the man who, with a snap of his fingers, removed me from the clutches of the criminals in maximum security Section 209, every step of how I escaped. He refers to his atonement in a strange way. He says, “It was astonishing, how she recovered, that human wreck I entrusted to the doctors at the military hospital.” The human wreck was me. He says this, not the least bit embarrassed, in a neutral tone of voice. As if it were about some third person. A stranger to me. He says, “After only one week in intensive care, Number 455 looked human again. I gazed at her as she slept. She was peaceful. Incredibly relaxed. And beautiful. With a childlike beauty. So fragile, the freshness of youth regained. Nothing obtuse about her face, with its regular features and delicate lines. Nothing in her physiognomy—that of the good little girl—to suggest such an obstinate nature. Her will had been tempered by steel.” I find it difficult to withhold my tears when he describes his conversations with my mother. He says, “The old lady’s voice petrified me. Her grief was unbearable. It was intolerable, the hope she placed in me. She called me her savior. The murderer had been sanctified. According to the old lady, I was proof of God’s existence. The God her daughter did not believe in would save her, thanks to one of his angels: me.”
I listen as the Colonel recounts my mother’s confidences about my father’s death. And I hear myself screaming, Nooooo, in my cell, under my burlap bag, I hear them saying Your old man has kicked the bucket. Because of you, filthy whore. You and your bastard husband. This Nooooo pounds in my head while the Colonel’s voice, not without emotion, describes my mother’s sorrow. She said to him, My husband adored Vima. After she disappeared he went around all the prisons, the hospitals, the morgues. Hundreds of times. Months of useless searching. One fine day some strangers called us on the telephone to tell us that our daughter was imprisoned in the maximum security section, in solitary confinement, without visiting rights. My husband’s heart gave way. He collapsed. We had difficulty removing the receiver from his hand. The Colonel clears his throat. He says, “Vima’s mother thinks that her husband’s soul is finally at rest, thanks to me. The day before their escape, which came about through my good offices, she said to me, as a sort of goodbye, Until my dying day I will pray for you, for your happiness . . . My happiness! Tell your mother, if ever you decide to tell her about our meeting, that she was the one who gave me my last glimmers of happiness. Thank her for me.” The Colonel doesn’t say anything about his own escape, which has been recorded in his deposition at the Office. Not a word about his parting with his family. No emotional outpourings. Nothing about how torn he must have been. Or about the vertigo of exile. His hopes betrayed. He must have thought, 455 knows all this by heart.
“Don’t try to reach me,” he insists at the end of the tape. “I’ll get in touch with you.” His last words follow, unsteadily. He says, “In keeping with the wishes of the love of my life, my soul has been restored to me, thanks to her namesake. Vima, a blessed name which I venerate, for everything in it that is now holy.” He also says, “455, I am not asking you for forgiveness. You must not give it to me. Under any pretext. I want my wife to forgive me. But not you. In that way both of you will render justice. And in this way, other reluctant murderers will be unmasked.” I don’t follow his logic or what he hopes to gain. But to hear him call me 455 makes me tremble. The boundary betwee
n the two Vimas is perfectly clear.
It is late at night. I’m exhausted. But I listen to the Colonel, over and over, ad nauseam. And one question is preying on my mind. Did Del ever love me the way this man loves his Vima?
The Man Who Snapped His Fingers Page 9
