Arturo Fontaine - La Vida Doble

A couple days later I went back alone to Plaza Manuel Rodríguez. It was cold and the night was very dark. I took a couple of turns around the adjacent streets to be sure that there were no suspicious people or vehicles. My steps echoed on the pavement. I started at the sound of my own footsteps. Just as Rafa had, I arrived on Grajales and stopped on the southwest corner of the plaza, next to the palm tree; I made sure the place was empty and then I set off down the gravel path toward the bench under the bluish cedar tree. I could smell the dampness of the grass. The sound of leaves in a thicket startled me, and I stood there paralyzed. I touched my gun. A pigeon darted out and flew away. Once I was under the roof of the enormous cedar, I sat down on the bench just as I had seen Rafa do. I looked at the dark sky, across which even darker clouds were gliding. The plaza was intimate, secret. I reached my hand down until I touched the leg of the bench, and I made sure to affix the paper firmly with the gum.

He called me right on time at my student’s house, interrupting my class as I’d wanted. I arranged to meet him without giving any explanations. My tone, firm and decisive, was enough. Address, day, time. Nothing else. I don’t know why I was so sure he would listen to me, in spite of the irregular way I went about it. The “meet point,” the shadowy Plaza Concha y Toro in the old part of downtown Santiago, had escape routes on three narrow streets: Erasmo de Escala, Maturana, and Concha y Toro. That, I thought, would give him confidence. At one thirty on the dot I heard his footsteps on the cobblestones, breaking the silence of the night. And then he was there. He’d entered from the south on Concha y Toro. His way of walking was the same as always: hesitant and slightly tilted backward. His open parka couldn’t hide his belly. His right hand in his pocket made me think he had a small weapon. He was suspicious.

He made no sign when he saw me. Close to the fountain, as soon as he could check the little street that ends at Maturana, he stopped. Rafa looked and listened carefully. I didn’t move. I watched his legs. I didn’t dare look at his face. Then he rounded the fountain and came closer to me with short, measured steps. When he was very close I reached out my arms to hug him, but he didn’t take his right hand from his pocket. I kissed a cold cheek. Right then, I wavered. I was afraid to do it. I felt a wrenching in my guts. Could I still save him? Yes, I thought, it’s still possible. And in that fleeting moment I wanted to, I swear I wanted to. “They’re following me,” I told him anxiously.

He looked at me with an attentive, cold intensity. I was desperate, I withdrew into myself. “Inform the Spartan that they’re following me,” I told him, dazed. “He won’t answer my messages. I need help.” He looked at me, disconcerted and annoyed. “I’m sorry,” I told him. “I didn’t know who else to turn to.”

“Why don’t you get in touch with your contact?” he reproached me. “Why don’t you follow procedure?”

Something, a flash, passed over his tense eyes. I wavered then, just barely, but I wavered. I couldn’t stand the situation one second more. I still wanted to save him, still. . I looked over his shoulder. “They’re coming!” I told him. “Run, run!” And without waiting for his reaction I took off running desperately toward Maturana. He ran northward to Erasmo de Escala.

I swear, of all that I did, that was the worst.

I fell to the ground. I was running, I heard footsteps and gunfire, a Browning, I thought, and I fell, and then I heard more gunfire. Rafa? Then I heard the first CZ. Now there was machine-gun fire. The narrow streets made the noise echo. I didn’t feel any pain, but when I brought my hand to my calf I felt something warm. I brought my fingers to my mouth: blood. Shouts, but far off. Now there was Macha’s grave voice. He was telling me no, don’t move. The light from a flashlight, a penknife or pocket knife, something cutting my pant leg. “It’s not serious,” Macha was saying to me. “It’s not serious. This will hurt a little.” He lifted me in his arms and carried me as he walked. Pancha supported my leg, which was starting to hurt. Macha laid me in the back seat of a car. He took off his belt and made a tourniquet that almost strangled my leg. “Let’s go,” he said to Pancha. “Let’s go.”

I wanted to know if Rafa had shot me. But no, it hadn’t been him, Pancha explained to me as I was rolled on a cot through the hallways of the Military Hospital. “He had someone with him,” she told me. “Rafa ran toward Erasmo de Escala, with his bodyguard following. He was the one who shot you. When he got to the plaza, he shot toward Erasmo de Escala to cover Rafa’s retreat, but he saw you running to his left, toward Maturana, and he fired. I’m sure he wanted to protect you from me, because he must have seen me next to the car, waiting for you on Calle Maturana. He was aiming at me or at Macha, and he hit you. That’s what I think.”

“And what happened to him, Pancha? What happened to him?” She tightens her mouth.

“He was eliminated.”

I ask: “And what did he look like?”

She tells me: “There wasn’t much left of his face. Macha and I emptied our cartridges. He was, how to put it, all over the paving stones. He was a big guy, I can tell you that. I noticed a piece of skull that was left and his hair was really blond. He was wearing cowboy boots. Great Dane took those off him. He wanted to save them from the blood, he said, and he kept them. He said they’d fit him well.”

As if in a bad dream, I saw then what was left of the Gringo, who had wanted to save me, I saw him emptied out over the cobblestones. All that had lain behind his eyes, all that was inside him, I saw spread out now over the ground. I felt nauseous, and I vomited in the cot.

When I woke up from the anesthesia, they’d removed the bullet and given me stitches. That was it. I would have a small scar. And, of course, the indelible and burning memory of Rafa next to the fountain, looking at me with those eyes that were suddenly suspicious. He had managed to make it almost to the corner of Erasmo Escala, I found out later. There, after the curve, Mono Lepe and Iris blocked his path. They aimed their guns at him and ordered him to stop. He fired and missed. Great Dane appeared behind him and with one kick to his head knocked him down and overpowered him. Three seconds later he was in cuffs. They lifted him up and brought him struggling to the van.

They made me interrogate Rafa. My Cuban voice. And he, Rafa, with his eyes blindfolded. . Don’t ask me for details.

We don’t know what we want to talk about when we want to talk about this. I still rebel. I know it’s a rebellion that’s doomed from the start, just like the Devil’s. And nonetheless I rebel. I’m an apostate. They broke my being and I apostatized. But I can’t change or erase my past; I can hate it. The past is what I am, though I cannot live it. It hurts. You see, I’m crying now. I don’t want to trivialize what happened to me. But you, you’ve convinced me to talk. What for? Now I think the sadistic part of you has been unleashed. I didn’t want to talk. You are morbid, you’re sick. That’s why you’re interested in me. Admit it! You convinced me, little by little. But I was right: I’m sinking, alone, down into the same pit as before.

Laughing, he repeated: “My Malinche, thanks to you the empire will fall, my Malinche.” And he laughed, smelling of garlic. Gato never made any advances toward me, but he created an atmosphere of intimacy between us. And I listened to him, bound up in my impossibilities with my insides contorting. And he talked to me in his viscous, sticky voice.