Arturo Fontaine - La Vida Doble

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?

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.