Arturo Fontaine - La Vida Doble

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.