Arturo Fontaine - La Vida Doble

He goes on chewing and chewing, concentrated. He examines the bit of sandwich he has left and he takes a giant bite right in the center.

“Macha lives with no yesterday or tomorrow. Those acts of blood and guts he’s so wrapped up in happen and they swallow him up. It’s like he dreamed them. He’s isolated in a present that’s separate, I’m telling you, from what happened before and what will happen after. Maybe he lives like he’s dead. He thinks: this has to be done; it has to be done, period. Tomorrow no one will understand us. He and I understand each other, you know? ‘Someone,’ he says to me, ‘gives the order: clean out the building’s plumbing, it’s stopped up. And someone else has to go and open it up and look at the plumbing, shine a light into the pipes and watch the shit go by in that thick and stinking water, someone has to stick the metallic tubes in there and unclog the pipe. And the hands that are feeding out the electric snake end up stinking like that sewage. Gato, we are nobody, and we always will be,’ he tells me.

“You know what he was telling me about the other day, last Thursday, I think it was? ‘The bad thing about these CZs, Gato, the down side is that they’re too fast. You shoot, and the bullets go through the man so fast he keeps on moving, right? It seems like he’s still alive, he won’t die, he goes on opening and closing his mouth, poor fucker, and so you go on shooting him. When the guy finally stops moving, you’ve already emptied a clip into him. . ’ As for me, Cubanita, you know I’ve never shot at anyone. God willing, I won’t. Macha suspects that someone higher up is protecting the terrorists, he thinks they don’t want to finish them off once and for all so we can maintain the threat, the justification, he tells me, he asks me. And he watches me. Like he’s trying to get in my head. That’s how it feels, I don’t know. . Did you know Macha has terrible aim? But he gets up close to the target, he holds the gun at eye height and shoots at the man between his belly button and his neck. He gets really close to him and that, of course, makes all the difference.”

The phone rang. Gato repeated the order I had received. Silence. “I wanted to be sure the operation was authorized,” he said.

“Understood,” he answered, submissive. “It’s just that with Macha Carrasco, you never know. . Right away,” he adds, resigned. “Right away!”

He hangs up, chastened, and he squats down to take my purse out of the drawer.

“Go on. They’re waiting for you.” And when he handed it to me: “Of course, he would do it now. I forgot: they’re doing evaluations this month. That Flaco doesn’t miss a trick!” he exclaimed.

He licked the mayonnaise off his lips, though a smear remained on his chin; he smiled at me, sphinxlike, and waved his thin little fingers in the air.

They intercepted him at eight in the morning coming out of a house that was being watched. He walked calmly, an ordinary man. He didn’t worry about checking for a tail. Once again, no attempt at checking his surroundings. Nothing. I watched what happened second by second through my binoculars from a fake taxi parked a block and a half away. As soon as I recognized him walking toward me, I gave the signal. Macha got out of another car parked closer, got right on top of him, and aimed at his forehead. No more than four yards between them. I would have liked to see that exchange of power in their eyes. The Spartan tried to take his gun out. But Great Dane came out of nowhere, leaped into the air, and planted a foot in his face. The Spartan fell but he got up, blood streaming down his face, and ran toward a pickup truck, ignoring Macha’s bullets as they whistled past. As I told you, they wanted him alive. He put the key in the lock. Macha shot holes in the tires and the Spartan’s truck started to lean to the side. He managed to get the door open. When he saw he was lost, he put the barrel of his SIG-Sauer in his mouth and fired.

I liked it. The guy had balls. The Spartan didn’t want to surrender: “Talking isn’t the sin, the sin is letting yourself be taken alive.” That thick paste, mixed with viscous liquids — it was hard to believe that repugnant pulp was all that was left of the head that used to lean over a chessboard and could divine moves none of the rest of us could see. And if he was only that, then so was my daughter, so was I, so was anyone. He was left shamelessly exposed, turned inside out like an animal destroyed. And I remembered the Fonseca no. 1 wrapped in rice paper that he’d given me at the restaurant in the Central Market. And I remembered the girl who was waiting for him in Quivicán, rolling tobacco leaves.

That same night, three leaders of Red Ax fell, including “Viollier.” They made me identify him after he was already dead: it was Max, no doubt about it. He was almost intact. It happened at the corner of Argomedo and Raulí. He was on his way in to the “meet.” He didn’t obey the order to stop, they said. Lies. They shot him point-blank. He never even fired. It wasn’t like with Rafa or the Spartan. They didn’t even try to take him alive. Macha crossed in front of him, aiming at him and cutting off his escape. Iris, from the sidewalk across the street, hit him with a single 9mm bullet in his temple. An old woman who’d just arrived heard the bullets and started walking down Raulí; they let her escape and put a tail on her.

“Let’s go to Wild Cat,” he says, “Come on.” And in the Volvo he gives me a bottle of Christian Dior perfume — a small bottle so I can carry it in my purse — and then he hands me a line on his gold credit card. Flaco is attractive, but you know, the fire of the beginning has cooled over time. But not if we go to the den in Malloco. There, my whole body starts to vibrate again. Sometimes, I go with Flaco to the private room with Louis XV chairs and the faded black velvet sofa. And after a little of the white powder, I start to smolder again, burning up my desperation, my resentment, my twisted sadness. Then, to receive Jerónimo and Rabbit under Flaco’s gaze is to kill them and resuscitate myself. And Flaco loves me then with a renewed passion.

So we went, and I lost him soon after we got there. I went to the bar and drank two pisco and Cokes. I looked for him until I got tired of looking for him. I danced with a big, slightly pudgy guy who squeezed me and whom I didn’t like. He gave me a black mask, soft and flexible. “It’s Italian,” he told me. He gave me a couple of lines. A boy with a shaved head embraced us, a friend of his, and we danced like that, the three of us. Then the two of them were kissing. I went back to the bar and I was drinking another piscola when Flaco appeared; he was laughing with a younger guy, dark, not very tall, thin, with dark glasses. There was a lot of complicity in the laughter of those two. We went into the room with imitation Louis XV chairs, and Flaco took out his little mirror. The other guy followed the rhythm of the music, and he inhaled and looked at me seriously and went on dancing.

“You’ve got white on the nose of your mask,” laughed Flaco. He knew what he wanted from me. The other guy came closer. Flaco told me yes, yes, with his somber voice that conquered me. The other man laughed. I had already given myself over.

Then I recognized him, suddenly and without a doubt. I recognized his smell. He was wearing a T-shirt again, sleeveless this time, and his arms were more muscular than I remembered. He looked at me in the darkness, but he didn’t remember me. My heart jumped when I felt my captor’s arm around me, and Flaco’s clinging gaze. Now it was me who was nervous. I whispered into his ear. “I remember you,” I told him. “I saw you once and you were wearing a green shirt.” He didn’t answer. I don’t think he heard me. He was licking my nipples and he caressed them tenderly and in the darkness he gaped at them and then went back to biting them gently. He was concentrated there. His body was hairless. I like hairless men. Rodrigo was hairless. The Greeks didn’t sculpt men’s hair, except for where it should be: on their heads and down below. Their shapes emphasize a smooth and continuous surface. Hair interrupts the beauty of the muscles. At that moment, I was enjoying his chest, too, I liked that it was bare now and free of hair that would impede my tongue.