La Vida Doble (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

by Fontaine, Arturo

  TWENTY-ONE

  His death was his life’s work. That’s what being a hero is. The combination of doubt and the desire to believe was resolved in action. He told me, “It doesn’t hurt to not exist, only the bullets hurt.” He wasn’t a sensual man, Canelo, as I’ve said. He was tender in love, but not passionate. He preferred the idea of love to flesh-and-blood women. But he had loved a beautiful woman—tiposa, as a Cuban would say. This was in El Salvador. She was the daughter of the pharmacist in Laguna. One night he arrived at her house with its thick adobe walls, unannounced as always—a guerrilla never announces he’s coming—and when they didn’t open the door for him, he jumped over the wall into the yard: she was in the hammock with another man. The betrayal reached to his soul.

  We’re holed up in a safe house, it’s nighttime. We’ve eaten a plate of pasta with tomato sauce and, for dessert, canned peaches. We’re talking about what might happen to us. The atmosphere is tense. We’re speaking very seriously. Kid of the Day asks what a person can do when he’s afraid: “What do you do to overcome fear?” Canelo talks about a mission he carried out some time back: to set off a bomb in a bank. In a dull voice he says that, sadly, a boy died there, an eleven-year-old boy, and a nine-year-old girl was left mutilated. One of the bank’s windows exploded outward just at the moment the children were going by with their grandmother. The old lady was untouched. The boy’s name was José, he says, and the girl’s was Karina. It’s the thought of the mutilated girl that eats away at him most. There is silence. Pelao repeats a quotation from our violent Christ. The Spartan had reminded us of it when he gave us the mission that awaits us tomorrow: hold up a currency exchange. “This is going to be a long war, says Che. And, we repeat once again, a cruel war. Let no one fool himself . . . They are collateral damage, see? It’s unfortunate,” says Pelao Cuyano. “It can’t be avoided . . . For us—and it’s Lenin himself who says it—morality is subordinated to the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat. And that’s it.”

  Canelo, who has fallen very quiet, straightens up. “I think,” he goes on talking, paying no attention to Pelao, “about what that girl’s life must be like, Karina’s, without half of her left leg, and sometimes I see the boy José’s body torn to pieces. I feel guilty, and even so . . . and even so it’s necessary to act, it’s necessary to face the greatest risk out of love of justice,” he says. “It’s the only thing that can redeem my guilt for those innocent children: the danger of dying. We are not murderers. If I die tomorrow I’ll be the same as that boy José. If we aren’t capable of doing it, it means that God exists, brother. If we’re unable to make that sacrifice, it means that in order to be able to give your life for something, you have to believe in God. But we don’t believe in God, and we will give our lives for justice. We’ll prove that God is unnecessary. Once, I went to the Metropolitan Cemetery to see the boy José’s grave. There’s a little angel carved into his headstone. I promised myself that day that I would be capable of dying. For him, you know? And for that little girl, Karina . . .”

  He goes on saying something else, but I just look at his clear eyes, his hair that makes you want to caress it. Kid of the Day looks at him in surprise, “And the fear?”

  Canelo tells him: “You can’t think so much. If they get you, they get you. Coño, you just have to give them hell, that’s it.”

  And the next day, well, you know what happened the next day.

  For us, “History”—that word had a lot of weight back then—gave direction to our lives, and History was something like a long, collective pilgrimage for redemption, a long and torturous Purgatory that led to Paradise. Belonging to that brotherhood, I think now, gave shape and direction to my scattered life, it incorporated my life into a chorus of pilgrims, changing my whims and impulses and trivialities into destiny and salvation. The drop of my miniscule life was transfigured when it became part of a river. Ours was a Sacred History. The revolutionary—but who understands today what that was?—sacrificed happiness. His death justified him and opened the way to the New Society. That’s what it was to believe. The way Canelo did. That he knew how to die was proof of his conviction. He needed it. And it equated him, as he had promised himself beside the boy José’s grave, with his victims. I wish he could have lived to contemplate his death, like an artist does his masterpiece.

  TWENTY-TWO

  After exactly seventy days of freedom, a white Mazda pulled up next to me in the street, a block away from my mother’s house. I was coming back from teaching a French class. The door opened, an arm yanked me inside, the car took off, and the blindfold went over my eyes. I recognized Ronco’s shouts and I caught a glimpse of, yes, Rat’s matted red hair. He was looking at me with the same mocking smile. My mission of revenge crumbled. I obeyed like a worn-out ox. They put handcuffs on me. Now, don’t imagine these were two big, burly men. Quite the opposite—they were a couple of buffoons, the kind you don’t even see when you pass them on the street. Ronco, like Rat, was fairly short. He had a giant head, small, narrow eyes, big hands, and squat legs. When he smiled, which he only did halfway, as if hiding, a gold tooth peeked out on one side. But in that Mazda, as I said, my eyes were blindfolded. I felt an unbearable exhaustion. I hadn’t forgotten.

  We crossed a yard and I entered a space whose contours I couldn’t picture. It wasn’t Central. They pushed me forward. I took a few steps and fell and hit my head, and I kept on falling and banging my head with my hands trapped behind me. The fuckers didn’t warn me there were stairs. As I fell, the handcuffs bit into my wrists. Those scars stayed with me for weeks. Rat shouted at me. “Dirty whore!” A boot kept my nose pressed into a puddle on the floor. “Like a little bitch!” laughed Rat. “You’re a little fucking bitch, stinking whore!” A kick in my kidneys and the order to stand up.

  I went stumbling into a room that seemed dark and narrow and smelled of dampness. I was thrown onto a metal cot. My head hurt and I was dizzy. Nausea came and went. In spite of my confusion I understood very quickly that Gato wasn’t here, that I was truly a secret prisoner, that I’d been kidnapped and taken to an underground storage space who knows where, that here there was no structure or command or doctors or anything else, that my life was in Ronco’s hands, and he would do with me as he wished . . . My hopes were minimal then, the hopes of a dimwit, of a snail. I was consumed by the terror of dying. It’s the uncertainty that causes fear. That’s what they want: for everything to be unpredictable. It wasn’t just my own story that made me afraid; more than anything it was other women’s stories, the ones I’d heard or read about, the ones that poisoned my memory. I remembered we had been advised to defend ourselves, to kick, shout insults, scream . . .

  I took my clothes off in silent obedience and it was cold, the wet cold of a closed-off space. And no one knows you’re here, you catching on now, you little cocksucker? And I was a little bitch shivering from the cold and the fear. You stupid dyke, don’t fuck with us, and they tied me up and how much longer you goin’ to fuck with us, you dirty whore, and they tied me up and put the thick, stinking rag in my mouth again, and you get it now, motherfucker, you get what this is about, or are you a stupid little cocksucker? You want us to break your ass with the end of a broken bottle? And they shaved me and delved their fingers into me without desire, and on top of that the fleabag’s dry, and laughing with hard, mocking peals of laughter, she can’t be any good for a fuck, this skinny bitch is bland as hell, I couldn’t even get it up she’s fucking ruined and ugly the fucked-up bitch, and like someone examining a horse’s teeth to guess its age, what’d they do to your tits, dyke? More cackling. And wasn’t this the one they said was so hot, good for a fuck and all that, huh? It was a rough friction, harsh and painful, as if ripping something out of me, it was a suffocating appropriation to which I didn’t put up the least resistance. Afterward came a punch in the stomach with the butt of a pistol. There you go, little shit. At least you’ll like the air, you little bitch. I couldn’t breathe for a long time. The
rest was passing through a tunnel of quick, sharp, unbearable pains, a horrific and dark crossing.

  How the hell do they find animals like those? How do they round them up? The answer I’d give you today: it’s not that they go out looking for them. Once the space of delimited impunity is there—because there are limits, there is a system, it’s not just pure chaos—the monster we carry within us, the beast that grows fat on human flesh, is unleashed within the good father or the daughter of a good family. But for that to happen there has to be an order that you follow and that keeps you innocent. This, belonging to an institution carefully elaborated over time, the discipline, is what allows the transfer of blame to whoever is above you, your superior in the hierarchy. That’s what I think. Sometime later, Macha would tell me: It’s not the man who is evil; it’s what he does that turns him evil.

  My head falls and bounces against the metal bed frame. The bed acts like it doesn’t know you. As if your own guard dog is attacking you in your home. The torment makes your body into a foreign object, and at the same time, the one suffering is you—you, incapable of obeying your brain’s instructions. If you could at least control your mouth, if you could stop one jawbone from clattering against the other.

  Ronco shouts something about my daughter, “Ana,” he says. Now it’s an unmitigated pain. “Anita, that’s the kid’s name,” shouts Ronco. “I’m going to go grab her when she comes out of the French Alliance, in Calle Louis Pasteur. There, that’s the school your kid goes to, right?” I hear Ronco’s words in my memory, words he surely uttered on his way out. Gato tells me my first duty is to protect my daughter . . . When did Gato get here? I am devastated.

  “My daughter?” I ask, lifting my head with a wavering, little girl voice. And suddenly: “Nooo, pleeeease . . . noooo,” I plead, struggling, or I try to; I’m on the verge of fainting.

  Suddenly I lift my head up: How do they know about my daughter? Canelo would have thought about her. He would have fixed things to hide her for a while. I’m terrified: the Spartan was right. I should have sent her to Havana. I knew I had to. It was my duty. I put it off and put it off. . . I cry out in rage at myself. I see her coming out of school in all her innocence, playing around with her friends, never imagining that those men coming closer are going to kidnap her. No! How did they get to her? My alibi has fallen, I think. When that happens, it’s as if they’ve killed you. A combatant without an alibi isn’t worth anything. You are no longer the ghost you were, and now you’re consumed by a new fear.

  I give a start and I ask Gato to please, run after Ronco, order him to leave my daughter alone, Anita is only five years old . . .

  “All right,” he says. “I’ll go see if I can catch up with him,” he says. I hear him get up slowly and leave the room with heavy steps. The door shuts with a dry sound.

  Ronco’s cold laughter wakes me up. I must have been out for a second. They’re sitting down. “Gato stopped me. Let’s see what you have to say, you stupid dyke . . .” Rat frees my hands and feet. I hear him breathing. I ask for water and he says no, it’s not allowed. Holding on to him I manage to sit up on the frame. I sit there, naked.

  What’s happened is simple. They photographed me. When I was arrested the first time, they sat me in a chair, handcuffed, and they took my picture. I don’t remember it, but it happened. Later, they gave me the prisoner’s uniform. Investigative Police received that photo. Gray and methodical functionaries searched long and patiently—in those years the system wasn’t computerized—in the Cabinet of Identification’s registry until they found a photograph that looked like me, and with luck on their side, they came upon my real name and ID. And my alibi falls. I’m cooked: they find my parents, their addresses, where I work. In Central they quickly find out I have a daughter and that she goes to school at the French Alliance, located on Calle Louis Pasteur and, obviously, that the identity I had given them was false. I put all this together later, of course.

  You see, I was prepared for torture—or I thought I was, more like it—and my duty, I repeat, was to last five hours. After that I could talk and it didn’t matter anymore. My comrades would have vanished. Then one of two things would happen: they would release me or kill me. But now I was inside for the second time, my alibi had fallen, my cover had fallen. When that happens, I don’t know, it’s an awful feeling of helplessness, like nothing else. There’s no possible defense. Because then they have a way to blackmail me, starting with my daughter and moving on to my parents. And I don’t want them to bring Anita; I don’t want her to see me here naked among these clothed animals, naked among them, shaved for my torment. They have no right to make my daughter see me like this, no, they have no right to do that. But what is a right? In the meantime, they ask for names and more names, alibis, descriptions, houses, addresses . . . But in the end the questions all lead to Bone.

  Moments open only to the future or the past. In that state of anguish you can find no refuge within yourself or in anything you’ve been taught. Nothing makes sense. All that’s left are your cries half muffled by the gag. It gnaws at me like guilt, my daughter.

  Ronco stops. The miserable Gato then grows enormous before my blindfolded eyes. His voice calms me. His memory. I’ve already told you, I’ve never met anyone with such an ability to remember every detail of a story, to make someone tell it over and over until he found those raised bridges between two truths, the inconsistency, the lie that accuses and bites you. And as frightening as he is, it becomes more and more tempting to see him as one who is, deep down, good, or at least beautiful and cruel. It’s harder to accept that unlimited power could be in the hands of an abject being. The evil ones are his subordinates, like Ronco, not him. That assumption helps me resign myself. In the depths of that basement there is someone good, the invisible Gato on whom I depend, my deus absconditus. Hidden desires well up, I want to save him so that he can save me. The distressing thing is that he’s gone. Once again I’m at Ronco’s mercy.

  I surprise myself by searching for the fault in myself. He’s an implacable but fair god whose anger I myself must have unleashed. And so guilt sets in, and with it comes the will to sacrifice something as expiation. The attraction of collaborating with him will grow. It’s fear, of course, but fear transformed into remorse. The omnipotent father cannot be that evil, it must be possible to redeem my sin.

  When I heard, hours later, Gato’s feigned voice again, it was a relief, a happiness, a hope, and I gave myself over to him, sobbing and cursing what I had been. I was the guilty one now, putting my own daughter in danger. That’s what I shouted at him, out of control. And then I talked. I talked as if I were already one of them. The person I’d been was gone. She abandoned me the way someone I once loved and have stopped loving would leave. It was a change of skin, of language. And that is not innocent. One is never the same in another language. There had been pain, but it was before. Not anymore. My confession flowed out as a vomit of hate toward my brothers, toward myself, my previous self. Everything happened faster and at the same time much more slowly than what I’m telling you.

  Later, when they removed my blindfold and someone wearing a hood, I think it was Ronco, or maybe Rat, I don’t remember, I don’t really know, showed me the photo of my daughter, they finished breaking me. No one said anything. First it was the photo, and then a video, a couple of minutes of video shown on a small video camera that one of them plugged in and placed on the floor: her, Anita, coming out of school in her little blue skirt. She was talking to a friend and I heard her laugh. That was it. I need for her to go on laughing, I said to myself. And I surrendered. And I became one of them.

  TWENTY-THREE

  When I came out of there, shivering from cold and shivering from fear, and filthy, thirsty, fetid, and suffering, under the edge of my blindfold I could see where they’d held me: two red trucks, shiny and at the ready, waiting for the alarm. It was a fire station. Where was it? I never found out. At Central they took my clothes, which were disgusting, and they handed me
the grimy prison uniform.

  Tomasa squeezes me in a hug. “How can you possibly still be here?” I ask. She tells me that no, they had let her go, too, and then picked her up again. I lie down at one end of the cell’s cold cement floor. I wake up: the same cell, the same stinking clothes, the same sweaty grime on my skin, the same greasy hair. The same woman in jeans who brings us the same watery broth.

  Tomasa quietly hums “Te recuerdo Amanda” as she lays out the cards for solitaire. She tells me about an official in charge of the department of analysis. She thinks he’s attractive, different from the rest of them. “Flaco Artaza is a real intelligence agent,” she tells me. “Not like the others, who are just full-time gangsters.”

  Suddenly she tells me: “They’ve broken my spine and I need to be recognized as someone, at least as the whore with . . . It doesn’t matter who.”

  “You told me before,” I say. She doesn’t hear me, or she pretends not to hear . . .

  “As long as I have someone taking care of me,” she says. “Without a pimp you can’t even be a whore. If I could just find some way to get one of these thugs to soften, to warm up. I’d have to get something in return, of course. A hot shower and new underwear, maybe.” We’re back to the same thing.

  The noise of the lock turning startled me. I was sleeping. Several nights had passed, I don’t know how many, interrupted only by the arrival of the day’s glass of water and the watered-down broth. The same fat guardian in jeans brought me, in handcuffs and with the end of her baton sticking into my back, up to the second floor. “You’re going to see the famous Flaco,” she told me. Tomasa liked him, I think to myself. I had only seen him pass by once, from far away. He walked down the hallway with long strides, graceful and indifferent, with the elegance of authority.