La Vida Doble (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

by Fontaine, Arturo

  Nothing I think gets me out of here. This stubbornness is a form of subsistence, a way of continuing to be me thanks to the guilt that is my past, the only bit of it that’s still alive. That day, all my hopes were emptied out and turned into regrets.

  And the burn never stops stinging. Could things have happened some other way? Was it mere chance? But isn’t chance just the name we give to the reason we do not know? Were there, then, objective reasons? Then I return to how the events took place; I return, then, to the pain that exists within a time that expands and defers, that doesn’t pass and won’t allow me to forget for one minute the density of its presence. Pain is jealous like no other.

  Once it has stopped, it’s hard to understand what happened. It’s a vertigo you cannot re-create. There is an impassable abyss between who you are under that pain and who you are one second later. There is no bridge between the two points. You ask why they are doing this to you. Images go by, they turn on and off, and you try to put them in order: my fingertips covered in layers of hardened glue, my awareness of Canelo behind me, the woman with glasses and the black Bic pen who passes me the receipt through the teller window—she is “fixed,” we’d been informed, she will collaborate—the sketch I drew spread out on the dining room table in the safe house—it’s the night before, we’re going over the plan in detail—my drawing of the bars that protect the safes, the lying silence that follows Canelo’s shouted order, the sound of the dial on the door of the Bash safe, the used bills encircled with elastic, my spacious black leather purse open, the sound of the purse’s clasp closing. All of this is clear and makes sense. You knew it would be like this.

  This is a fight for information. You are in a process of truth production, your body will be the living truth. And so they ask you for “the meet,” where was “the meet,” fucking cunt, tell us and we’ll leave you alone, shit. Half a minute later they come back and the information you gave them was worthless. All is once again incomprehensible. And the spasms start up again, your body leaps, it lashes out uncontrollably, you are an insane doll hurting itself. It’s an unbearable explosion that comes from within and that your own organism retains, convulsing, a crash of opposing waves in which your body is no longer yours, it escapes from you, breaks away, and nonetheless you go on suffering with endless ferocity. You want to give it up, your body, to let it go and keep your soul. Because it’s your soul that can’t take any more pain and terror and wants to flee. It can’t, of course. Like feeling the rhythm of music without a body. I try to travel back through my memories. It’s what we’ve been taught to do. But I can’t think about anything now, and I moan, I shout for them to stop, but the gag swallows my shouts and I hear a groan rising from my guts. The impotent writhing hammers your impotence into your brain. Its counterpart: the power of that treacherous voice that gives and takes away this pain that is splintering you. For this to stop, you have to raise a finger. If you do, it’s to confess, to denounce. The word you deny them is the only thing left of you. If it doesn’t come, they punish you. The pain moves. Your own pain drives you mad, dislocates you. My pain is my pain. No one else can get inside it.

  THREE

  All this is what I say now. At the time . . . That experience of mine, only mine in that here and now, was everything, and it erased everything. No one else existed. That was the idea, as I see it. Only me, tied up and splayed out and shaking; me, invaded and run through by that evil flow that shot into me and dispersed. Just me and them, the ones who have the power to put a stop to all this. The pain ceases and yet—how can I explain—what has just happened goes on terrifying you. That’s what fucks you. We’re in another pause. When? It could start up again, right now. These memories are all confused for me. I’m putting this material of vague, nightmarish horror in order for your benefit, and for mine. I’ve spent years and years with all of this pent up and eating away at me from inside. I didn’t want to talk about this. I didn’t want the obscenity of these detailed descriptions that only dilute it all. I didn’t want it. But I’m the one who does what I don’t want to do. That’s who I am.

  Since I was a little girl, I’ve been that way. Obedient and scrupulous. Ever since the convent school where I lived in reverential terror of the nuns, whose authority I blindly obeyed; ever since, later on, my mother made me shave and wax my body; ever since I yanked out the first hair that sprouted from my nipple—so Rodrigo wouldn’t see it—because yes, sometimes I get long hairs growing from my nipples; men think it doesn’t happen to women, but it does to me. And it’s those same nipples that two little pinchers are now biting into, two little metal clamps tormenting me. I’m not at all sure about the things I seem sure about. In that place, time stretches out like gum and loses its shape. You float, trapped in confused scenes made of spongelike material. I string together shadowy blotches; that’s what I do when I tell you all this. I know I should construct a metaphor. A metaphor of the absurd, for example. But as you know, in the absurd no one is guilty. Here, yes.

  The sound of water from a hose. An old voice tells you, as if talking to a baby: Get up, child. Let me get some water on you. An old woman who does the cleaning here. I hear the footsteps of her rubber boots. The smell reaches me, and it’s a smell that is terrifyingly mine. I obey, ashamed, and I stand up as best I can and I show myself. It’s offensive, I know. And? The stream of cold water. Now I remember that when they made me get undressed and they tied me to the metal bed frame, a woman shaved me. I am a baby, then. I’m tired. The shame leaves me. My body belongs to them and I let it go. Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to thy word. My flesh suffocates my conscience. But my freedom to refuse survives. They want to take possession of that when they go to work on my body. Let the fuckers throw water on me, then. Let them take their time. I have to endure five hours. They take it all calmly, though they are diligent as well. They know they are racing the clock. If I give them the “alternative meet” in time, they can catch the rest of my cell. If I don’t, the others will vanish and the trail will go cold.

  It hits, and the shock is even stronger. The first moment is always the worst. You flail out, and it’s as if your arms, legs, and head were going to be severed from you. You feel that they are taking you apart; they’re going to tear you to pieces. The unbearable pain and trepidation. The straps hold you down; otherwise you would go flying through the air. The pressure of opposing forces crushes you. I am a body that escapes from its body, a being that dislocates from its being. It’s an impossible escape. It’s suffocating. It’s desperate. I lift a trembling finger. I can’t take any more. I have to give them something.

  “The meet,” I say. “I’m going to give you the meet. We . . . we . . . agreed . . .” I’m panting and my tongue is awkward and swollen. “We agreeeed . . . to mee . . . meeeet in Caaaa . . . in Caa . . . fé Haití, the one on Caaaaaalle Ahuuu . . . mada.”

  Silence. It’s the lie that Canelo, ever prepared, had made up for me. Canelo protected me. I’m overcome by a terrible sorrow for him, for myself. As I think of him my resolve hardens; I want to be faithful to him, like a widow who wants or needs to be faithful and is resolved to stay true unto death. Why didn’t I ask him more about the war in the desert of Ogaden? He didn’t like to talk about that. Once, he told me about how that arid African soil trembled under the Soviet T-55 caterpillar tanks as they advanced toward the enemy. And another time he told me about that night, the night of the decisive attack, just before his column set off on the secret march to place themselves behind enemy lines, when General Ochoa came in person to rally them. He remembered almost nothing of what the mulatto had said to them, except: “If anyone falls prisoner, die in silence. Real men don’t talk.” That, Canelo remembered. And also: “The truth was invented not to be told.”

  I ask for a little water. “No,” the chief interrogator, or the one I assume is the chief, tells me calmly in his whistling voice. And the word “no” immediately does what it says. That soft voice of authority is expressed in
my behavior. I want to endure. I think of our songs by the fire in the mountains, I think of those long nights of conversation while we waited for a mission in some safe house. I can’t betray the loyalty that ties me to my brothers, I can’t endanger them, I have to be the one to interrupt the chain of denunciations before one link hooks into another and that one into another and on and on. Not because of what they would say about me. It’s my reputation with myself that matters. I feel united with my brothers, we have a common dream, and I feel that I won’t be me if I abandon it. Something like that—though not that, because there’s no time for words in my head—is what sustains me.

  “What else?” he asks me. I say: “There’s a maaaa . . . man, we would find a . . . a . . . a man in a graaaay suit there, they said, drinking coffee and reading a n . . . newspaaaaper . . . Laaas . . . Laas . . . Últiiimaas Noooo . . . Nooooti . . .” The guy with the hoarse voice shouts at me. I don’t understand and I keep quiet.

  “They’re asking what newspaper it is,” the other one breaks in. My mouth fills with foam.

  “I aaaalready told you: Laaas Úuultimas Noooticias.” They shout something, I don’t know what. Someone left the room and closed the door.

  “And what was your second meet, the ‘recovery meet’?” I answer quickly, encouraged by my own lie:

  “Caaanelo had to giiiiiive me thaaat.”

  A tremendous blow resounds on the metal table. “Good for nothing! Don’t feed us garbage, bitch. You know you gotta give us information we can validate. Got it?” It’s the one with the low, booming voice. “Give us something that’s true. And don’t waste any more time, you cocksucking whore. Don’t think you’re gonna be some kinda hero, that kind of shit don’t get you anywhere here. Ain’t no one stands up under this shit. Ain’t no one. Sing, if you don’t want us to fuck you up, you cocksucking bitch.”

  “I aaaan . . . swered your queh . . . your question, sir.” I couldn’t do anything but stand by my lie. And he, insidiously:

  “You did? You answered my question?” And to the other man: “Go on, then! Let her have it!” And to me: “Let’s see if you understand my questions now, you shitty whore.” I beg them not to. I plead, I ask for mercy, I cry. The humiliation of that, of not being able to control myself. I let out a wail as they stuff the rag back into my mouth.

  Enough, isn’t it? Let’s leave it at that. I don’t want to go on. It’s too much. I don’t like your curious eyes, I don’t like the corners of your mouth; there’s something obscene about them. I feel like I humiliate myself, I get myself dirty as I tell you this. And it’s pointless. You don’t understand anything. You could never understand. The words grope me. They are foreign like the hands that grope me and tie me up. You can’t get at what I lived through by talking, you understand? It’s better not to try to imagine what can’t be imagined. Because you can only act by means of that body that they’ve usurped. You can’t act, then. There are only blocked possibilities. Your body connected to the enemy’s brain to turn it against you. The skin of your back pricks and burns from so much contact with the springs of that horrible bed frame. And the machine becomes violent, and you twist and contort splayed out on that nauseating frame.

  They stop: “You gonna talk now, you fucking bitch?” I don’t react; I want to say something but I am half dazed. “You want her? Go ahead, stick your sausage in her ass.”

  “You crazy? This whore is so ugly I wouldn’t fuck her even if she was sucking me, not even if she begged me on her knees, the bitch.” The touching, their fingers, their mocking, their boorish language—listen to the ridiculous word I use, “boorish”—I don’t know why it humiliates me so much. I already told you that. The degradation of a simple insult, a taunt.

  “You’re not convinced? All right then. You asked for it, whore. Quit your whining! . . .” In one jolt I am yanked out of my being. The vibration hammers into me and radiates through every fiber of my being. My musculature has come undone in a frantic dance that disarticulates my bones. I cry out. What I hear is someone else’s voice. It’s just like in my nightmares: my voice won’t come. I’m losing my senses and the mortification does not let up. It penetrates into every molecule of my body. If this lasts any longer I could go insane. I am afraid of that. I am about to cross the threshold. I shout, I keep shouting and contorting inside a funnel of horror. I can scarcely make out the murmur of that high voice. “Stop. She’s had it . . .” I’m exhausted. They tell me to sit down. I try and I lose my balance. A woman helps me. It must be the same old woman who shaved and washed me. She sits me down in a chair. My entire body is shuddering. I ask for water and the hoarse voice says no.

  More questions. Where was the “upper meet”? Have I reached the moment of truth? How much time has passed? Fewer than five hours, surely. I take a long time in speaking. My numbed, awkward tongue. My shoulders hurt, my hips, knees, wrists, ankles. I try to calm down. The “upper meet,” they ask me. I am terrified. That last time was even worse. It seems it can always get worse. It was the water, I think. The water made it hurt more. I know what I should do: give them something so they leave me alone. “The meet . . . ,” I say shivering and unable to stop, “. . . the meet was in the meeeeetro staaaation Los Héroes, on the platform of the traaaain going weeeeest. That’s where Canelo would be waaaaaiting for me.” Another blow to the table.

  “And who gave the order to Canelo?” The question means I’m still in danger. I’m strangled by thoughts of the terror that was and is to come, of his freedom to do what he wishes with my body. If only I could shut off my imagination, lock it away. I explain, stuttering, I explain in disjointed syllables and broken words that I dooooo . . . don’t know, that I had no reeeeeason to knoooow.

  The door opens and closes. It opens again and the shout startles me. The man with the hoarse voice tells me they have located two waitresses from Café Haití who were there this morning. Both of them confirmed, he shouts at me—and his voice breaks in rage—both girls confirmed that not at the time we were leaving the currency exchange with the money nor afterward was there a man in a gray suit reading Las Últimas Noticias and drinking coffee. “You lied, you stupid cunt.” The voice lowers, the chords worn out. “What’re you thinking? Who do you think you are? You disrespected us, you know? That hurts my feelings. And when my feelings are hurt I get angry and I start to feel like melting you into the metal of that frame you’re on. Some fucking nerve, know what I mean? We’re intelligence agents, we’re professionals, you know? Or who d’you think you’re dealing with, down here? You, you think that just because you got good tits we ain’t caught on that you’ve been trained to handle this shit? Huh? Sure, she plays possum, the bitch. You really think we’d let you pull one over on us like that? You held up a currency exchange, you stole thirty thousand dollars, four million Chilean pesos on top of that, and there were armed men with you. What is that, cunt? A little game? Stick her, go ahead, we gotta stick her! Now you’re fucked!”

  A pause. Movement. The smell of alcohol, a pressure in my right arm, an elastic band, the prick of the needle, the pain of thick liquid going in. I know what it is, what it must be, what they taught us it would be: Pentothal. I let myself go. A calm comes over me. I feel dizzy, I’m going away, maybe I’m dying, and that’s for the best.

  The shouts wake me up, the questions, blows from a rubber hose on my thighs, on my arms, my stomach; more shouting. “Go on, Rat, turn it up, shit! This fucking cocksucker still hasn’t understood anything . . .” His booming voice moves into me and fills me up as if I were an empty balloon. He doesn’t have a face or body, only that booming voice that’s connected to the instruments connected to my body in pain. The next charge hits hard. I am a sack that takes on shape according to his orders. I am a glove that fits his hand, mere femininity waiting for the structuring vector, the solid rod. The metal springs that wound my raw back, the gag that steals my animal cries, my piglike squeals—because that’s what they’ve turned me into, a sow that squeals with her snout muzzled as the
y set about killing her. The jolt makes me howl again behind the rag and my body thrashes; then it is onslaught, shit, convulsions.

  I enter into a petrified state, far removed from myself. I see myself as a child at the seaside in El Quisco, I smell the salt on the breeze, I see the reflections of light on the water as it washes over the sand, I hear the soft whisper of the foam near my feet . . . All this happens fast, very fast, and it’s as if it is hanging outside me. As if parts of me were breaking off, parts of my memory, and the person I had been could now observe me from outside. Because I’m going, that’s what I tell myself; this is dying, I tell myself, and I wander unstuck from my body, and it’s a relief to die . . . A bucket of freezing water wakes me, frightened, and I’m back in my body. They won’t let me die.

  The other one is talking, the serene one, the one with the falsetto voice. It pacifies me. I wonder if the “truth serum” has softened me or given me some kind of brain damage. My heart is pounding. It’s hard to breathe. That scares me. He wants to know if I know Bone. I tell him no. I’m exhausted and it feels better to tell the truth. My thirst is desperate. He asks me if Canelo knew Bone. I tell him I’m not sure, that I think maybe he did, but he never talked to me about him. The other one, the one with the hoarse voice, starts to laugh. “Fuck this whore. I’m bored, Gato.” And that’s how I found out they called him Gato. “The contact above is Canelo, dead; the contact below, a man reading Las Últimas Noticias in the Café Haití who was never even at the fucking Café Haití. This one’s trained, man, can’t you tell? She’s a trained terrorist . . . She’s carrying a Beretta when we pick her up, after a robbery and shootout where three men died, she’s got thirty thousand stolen dollars on her, but no, she doesn’t know anything . . . This fucking bitch is squeezing our balls, man. And it’s fine if she wants to touch them, but I don’t want the bitch counting up the wrinkles . . .” Laughter, several masculine laughs. I want to placate them and I think: How? And him: “I’m bored. She’s all yours, Gato. You know where I’ll be. Bye.”