La Vida Doble (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

by Fontaine, Arturo

  A door slams.

  Then the calm voice became nervous and told me that Ronco, and that’s how I found out they called him “Ronco,” was crazy, capable of anything, you know; that Ronco was one to watch out for, see? He was out of control; I had to be responsible; I was going to regret this later; that all this effort and suffering, see, was for nothing, nothing.

  They make me sit down again. The same woman helps me. Then Gato, in his calm falsetto voice, asks me why in our newsletters there is never a photo of Bone and there are so many photos, but all almost the same one, of Commander Joel. Gato doesn’t insult me. It’s a question I wasn’t expecting. I don’t know how to answer. “Didn’t Canelo ever tell you what commander Joel Ulloa looked like? And you want us to think you’re not lying to us. And he never described Bone to you? Why don’t you just talk, already?” he insists in his soft little voice. “Why not? What difference does it make? We’re all in this together, don’t you think?”

  I let out a “No!” I say: “It’s not true! Your side doesn’t have ideals. We’re fighting for a world . . . a new world. Your side is only fighting so that we don’t win.” Silence. That silence frightens me. From a distance, as if I were hearing it from underwater, it seems like a door opens. I’m sitting, naked, on a hard chair. I must have been some three steps away from the bed frame. He repeats:

  “Did Canelo ever meet Commander Joel?”

  “I don’t know. I assume so.”

  It was the pure and simple truth.

  “But you didn’t?”

  “No.”

  It was hard for him to believe. I was tricking him, he told me. “How do you keep the allure, the unity, of a movement that never meets with its highest leaders? The members of a cell are contacted by the head of the group, and sometimes, they only meet to go over a mission and, later, during the operation itself. OK. We know that. But the leaders of the movement, how can they lead if no one or almost no one ever sees them or meets them in person? You could all be a shadow movement that Central agents invented . . .” He laughs.

  FOUR

  A crash in my ears. I’m stunned. No. Two simultaneous, awful blows have fallen, one on each ear. I take a step. My eardrums are buzzing terribly and I lose my balance. I’m blind and deaf. The room comes unmoored and spins away from me. I can’t find the chair. Something . . . something sudden and horrible.

  I’m terrified. Why did I stand up? Someone came up behind me and I didn’t hear it. I’m confused. I’m going to fall down. I feel nauseated. If I could only sit down. Where? I’m lost. No. Now I start to retch. I’m no good to them anymore. They must be looking at my exposed flesh, dirty, foul smelling, doomed. Why is that woman trying to put clothes on me? These men have seen my breasts that I used to find pleasing and that some men, like Rodrigo, found marvelous, and my deep belly button, and my long legs with their soft skin that I used to care for with lotion, and my behind, my good-looking ass that was still high and firm. But now I don’t feel like covering myself with anything. Because I’m nothing else besides my body, and they have subdued my body and turned it against me. By dressing me, they only humiliate me again, because they’ve had me naked.

  I think while they put shoes on me. I think, hooded, trying to think. Or maybe I don’t think. But I believe I’m thinking about something or feeling something. That’s why I tell myself: I’m still alive. Surely I think: What’s going to happen now? They’re taking me out of here. There is an abrupt change in the temperature. It’s cold. Are we outside? My legs won’t respond. They pick me up. They carry me.

  I don’t hear the sound of cars. It must be the middle of the night. I hear a turn signal. I think it comes from the front of the car. They’ve thrown me into the back of a van. I don’t hold out any hope. That is to say, I do. A change. That’s something in itself. I am terribly thirsty. I should count so I can figure out where they take me. That’s what we’ve been taught to do. One, two, three . . . twenty-four, twenty-five . . . At some point I get distracted and lose count. I think I got to seventy-eight. I think. It’s useless at this point. It’s all useless. I am terribly thirsty. We’re going up and the car barely slows down at what, I assume, must be corners. Silence. We stop. A red light, I say to myself. The handcuffs bother me. I try to rub my head against something so the blindfold will loosen, but it doesn’t work. Suddenly, a dry bump and we’re on a dirt road. We go up a steep incline. The van stops, but no one gets out. Now we’re moving more slowly; the road is full of holes and the van jounces like a cocktail shaker. The nausea comes back. We’ve arrived, it seems. I hear voices outside. The van is stopped with the motor still running. They keep talking. I should be afraid. I’m very thirsty. Are they debating? Impossible. This was decided before they took me out. What can they be discussing? What they should do with my body? But that must also be decided beforehand.

  My heart jumps when they open the back doors. “Come on,” they say. “Come on now . . .” I know that this unfamiliar and vulgar voice is the voice of death. It’s a relief. It’s over. They pull me out because, though I try, I can’t move. They pick me up themselves, they support me almost lifting me, and they carry me again. People die, that’s all, they kill each other, so what. That’s how it’s always been, and that’s how it will always be. Violence is the midwife of history . . . And what will happen to Anita? I tell myself: I should beg for mercy. But I’m speechless. The horror. The call of death embracing me. I want its peace. One of them, panting, smells of onions.

  “OK, hold on to this.” A trunk, a tree trunk. I think of the Cross, of the wood of the Cross. I’m a Christ, I say to myself. Did I think it then, or later? I’m stepping on a root. I hear them talking. “You wanna say something? ’Cause this is as far as you get, bitch. Get it? We’re gonna shoot you. So: this is as far as you get. You know, you brought this on yourself. Or no?” I hear a shouted order, then: “For the last time, you got something to say?”

  My tongue is responding now and I say: “Yes.”

  I smell the stink of onion very close: “Go on . . .”

  I say: “I want, please, a glass of water.”

  The guy bursts out laughing. “She wants a glass of water, the princess.”

  I sense him moving away. I hear the murmur of the others. I don’t think about death. I think: Did they go to get me some water? They must have some water in a canteen around here, warm water that tastes like metal, but water nonetheless. “Here,” he tells me: “Take a drink, shit.” As if by reflex I move my hands and the cuffs squeeze them painfully. He puts the bottle in my mouth and I smell the pisco. No.

  “I don’t want pisco,” I protest. “I want water.” He tells me:

  “You’re fucked, ’cause there’s no water here; there’s just this leftover pisco. And if you don’t drink it, bitch, I’ll drink it myself. So hurry up.” He carefully pulls back my head and puts the bottle between my lips. A sip that burns, another. I close my mouth. I feel the pisco sliding into the cracks in my lips. I’m thirstier. “A little more?” And he brings the bottle close again. I drink. I drink even though I don’t like it. But I drink enthusiastically. “OK! Enough. You’re not gonna drink it all, bitch . . .”

  He moves away, taking the bottle with him. I hear his steps crushing dry leaves. I’m thirsty, I think. The pisco made me thirstier. I hear another shouted order. The squad, I think, that is my firing squad, the one that’s fallen to me. How many people? Two, three? A pause. My heart is beating and I hear it beat. Its last spasms. We’re in the foothills, it seems. All is calm. The silence of night in the countryside. The stars must be out. I’d like them to lift my blindfold just so I could see the stars one last time. I think of Canelo, who knew how to confront death. I think: I should shout Long live commander Jo . . . I shout and now, yes, the gunfire rips the mountain peace to shreds. A burst of gunfire is so violent, so long and noisy, I think. It doesn’t hurt yet, I manage to think.

  I came back to myself and I was still alive. It was terrible. I was stretched out on the
ground and one hip was hurting. I’m badly wounded, I thought. They’re going to finish me off. This tree root is bothering my hip. I think: Why are they taking so long? My head is spinning and the nausea returns. What is this? I hear laughter coming closer. Now they’ll finish me. Why are they laughing, the fuckers? I feel the cold of a gun barrel on my temple. Why are they still laughing?

  FIVE

  A faint light above, through the barred window. I came to and I was in the same narrow, damp cell with unpainted concrete walls. I wasn’t wearing a blindfold. My wrists hurt. But I could move them; my hands were free. I looked at myself, touched my body as best I could. My hip hurt, the skin of my back was stinging. They didn’t kill me, I thought. Nostalgia for death. Something was left unfinished. And suddenly I felt happy, inexplicably, absolutely happy. I was terribly thirsty, but I had survived. Fuck, I thought. Nothing has ended, then. And Anita? A shiver raced like a cat down my back. And last night dying felt like a relief, but now I’m happy to be alive. Thirst. And I did it. I held out, shit. To be without the blindfold, to see that beam of light on the wall, to move my hands on my bruised wrists, to feel them free: that is happiness. My cell is frozen by now. They’re fucked. I fucked them over. And why didn’t my captors kill me if they knew I was no good to them now? They didn’t break me, the fuckers. If they would only give me a glass of water . . . I’m shivering.

  “Tomasa,” she tells me she’s called. Tomasa embraces me, and I still don’t quite know who she is, and she kisses me and hugs me and lends me her blanket. She repeats in my ear: “I’m Tomasa, I’m with Red Ax.”

  And like a dark and fast-moving cloud crossing overhead, the memory of the tiled room, the cold water, the insanity that blots out the world . . . I’m trembling. I’m thirsty, I’m thirsty. I imagine the transparency of water in a glass. I see the water streaming out in the bathroom. I see the ocean at El Quisco, its blue, its infinite pound of waves. I see my golden skin in the full-length mirror in my father’s room. I’m in my bikini and I look fantastic. I swallow saliva and my throat scrapes. I curl up on the filthy mattress and I cover myself with my blanket and the one Tomasa lent me. The dark cloud of the metal bed frame, the cold sensation of the tiles, the Pentothal injection, Ronco’s hoarse order. I think about that place. It’s as if it were a hole, and the floor was tilting and all the things in the world were sliding toward it like a pile of worn-out furniture, like a wave of wind full of wreckage to be swallowed up by the magnet of a gigantic toilet. Only Ronco and Gato were left, talking in that empty basement that looked like a bathroom but wasn’t one, but would become one again in a split second if some diligent judge dared come to inspect it. In that place Gato’s word creates all, including the detritus that is me. What will become of my body, naked, shaved, and torn asunder for them? His word is a mirror I cannot see.

  Someone picked me up and left me thrown down on that cold cell’s rough cement floor. I curl up, pressed close to Tomasa: now I’m happy. If they gave me a glass of water I would be completely happy. I think about Anita and my heart gives a jump. Is she getting up now to go to school? The table with its flowered tablecloth, the mug of Milo with milk, the smell of the bread my mother just toasted, orange marmalade, a clear pitcher full of water. My mother, I think. If it weren’t for her, what would become of Anita? I smell the Christmas bread my mother makes. But we’re not close to Christmas. I can’t describe that smell of Christmas bread, but I can smell it. After all, my mother is my mother, I think to myself.

  The sound of a key and I am trembling. A fat woman, in jeans and a belt with holster and baton, orders me to get up. She’s short and smells of old sweat. She cuffs my hands in front of me and blindfolds my eyes. She takes me by the cuffs, and I walk behind her, blind and awkward. Behind me, a guard’s footsteps. The smell of an infirmary. They sit me down like when I first got here, at the edge of a cot. Someone, a man with fat fingers, takes my pulse and my blood pressure. They weigh me. They take my temperature. The coolness of the thermometer in my armpit is pleasant. I think of my father taking me by the hand, sitting on the edge of my bed when I was a child and had typhus and a high fever. He still lived in the house then. My mother, when I got sick, would put on her serious face—her medical technician face—take my temperature, prescribe lemonade, and wait for “new symptoms.” Examination with the stethoscope, ear exam, throat, they turn my eyelids inside out. “Say: AAAHHH . . .” It hurts: the little hammer on my knees, reflexes. They palpate my joints. All this calms me, makes me feel taken care of. I move my arms, my legs, my ankles. They palpate my breasts, my stomach, ribs, and spine. The sound of rubber, a glove, I relax, internal examination. I’m happy. After this they’ll let me go. I ask for a glass of water.

  The doctor doesn’t answer me. “You’re in good condition,” he says to me. “A piece of advice: if you don’t want them to damage you, give them everything straight away. Believe me, anything else is pointless, it’s self-destructive. It’s up to you whether you make it out of here or not.”

  My spirits fall. He is, obviously, one of them.

  Back in the cell, the same guard brings me a green plastic glass. The water fills it halfway. Tomasa advises me to only drink a sip so it will last. Some hours later the fat woman brings me a full glass. I sleep. I wake up. They bring us a tray with a watery, lukewarm chicken broth, the kind that comes in a Maggi bouillon cube. I didn’t know I was so hungry. The thirst hid my hunger. I fall asleep. I wake up and pace until I can’t pace anymore, and then I doze and I sleep, perhaps, and I pace. I’m thirsty. I’m hungry. I’m cold. Tomasa wraps me up, she tells me to try to walk. I look for the light of the barred window. When I hear the key, my heart jumps: now they’ll let me go. No. It’s only a glass of water. We’re hungry. Then, I sleep.

  Until it happens. They blindfold my eyes, handcuff me, they take me along the hallway, they make me go down some stairs, and—godddamn it!—I’m in a room with a tiled floor that I recognize. They ask me the same things and I repeat the same answers. Pure fear. I don’t want them to punish me for having lied, for not having told them more before. A moment later I’m splayed out on top of the bed frame, tied up, moaning, with a rag in my mouth, subjected to the same technology of pain. At times I hear Ronco’s shout, but it’s a shout that seems far away from me, and then it gets closer and moves away again.

  And Gato’s faked voice returns. No one will ever know what happened here, he tells me; none of it matters, he tells me. I let him talk. I hear him from so far away, from my crumbling self. He asks me what I think I will do. I tell him I am too exhausted to think.

  SIX

  C’est tout, that’s all. I’m telling you all of this because you’re going to write a novel, not an interview, right? How did you find out about me? Oh, you told me already, I remember now. Rumors, of course, those crumbs that feed the hunger of the curious. Why would a writer like you be interested in my wretched story? Anyway, you got lucky. If you had come to see me a while back I would have answered you the same way I did all the others: Not one word about that. End of story.

  Call me Lorena. Not Irene. I want to be Lorena to you. You’ll never know my real name. I live here in Stockholm under an assumed name with false papers. I have cancer; I am, as they say, “at death’s door.”

  To die is to be gradually overcome by minutiae, indignities, trifles. Death is not of God. My illness sped up my aging. Now the filth is out in the open, the physical fatigue, my obscenely organic nature, and the fragilities of my infancy are sprouting up again. It’s the second childhood, pure oblivion. Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. I can’t dress myself: I need someone to help me put on my bra, to help me put on my stockings. It takes time; you have no idea how much. I can’t go to the bathroom by myself, I can’t walk by myself. This, and nothing else, is what it means to die. It hurts here, on my back; my skin is peeling off after so much time in bed. From the position I’m in. They put lotion on me. New pains crop up—stupid, unexpected pains. Sometimes I spend hou
rs with this tube in a vein in my wrist so they can infuse me with chemotherapy or whatever else they feel like. I live vulnerable and propped up by those inoculations. The oxygen dries my throat. The cylinder is always next to my bed, and there are days when my lungs depend on it the same way I do the wheelchair or the nurse’s arm when she helps me to the bathroom. Modesty dies along with a person. The dead are shameless. Sometimes the nurse punishes me with a twisted hatred. I ring the bell and she doesn’t come, or she leaves the wheelchair out of reach. I call her too often, she says. It’s possible. It’s very pedestrian, this business of dying. And it is slow, it takes an eternity. She pressures me, negotiates her moments of independence. It’s a dull, cruel fight, this final battle. If my friend Agda were alive, she would come and see me, she would take care of me. That thought comforts me.

  As my illness progresses, the nurse both serves me more and enslaves me more. I am gradually immobilized. If you only knew how long it takes me to put on my shoes, even with my keeper’s help. But she doesn’t bend down, she doesn’t put them on with her hands. She pushes the shoes to me with her feet, she kicks them, and if they make it on, fine; if not, another shot. She hates trimming my stubborn toenails that now grow curved and yellow. My keeper puts that job off longer and longer. When she finally does it, she’s careless, and it’s not unusual for her to accidentally catch my skin in the clippers.