Arturo Fontaine - La Vida Doble

Voices. I peeked over the banister of the second-floor hallway. They were inside the house. Iris stayed in the room with the old woman. Downstairs in the living room was a man in a wheelchair. A gentleman with disheveled white hair and a distinguished nose who was wearing pajamas. His hands were cuffed behind him. In front of him, Macha, his CZ drawn and his head full of dirt and half white from fallen plaster, asking where was Commander Joel, was he in Chile or not, show him a current photograph. . Macha wasn’t shouting. The other man was shaking his head no.

In a piece of the gold-framed mirror that was inexplicably still hanging on the wall I could see, as if it were an insect squashed on the windshield of a car, what was left of one of the pit bulls. And I saw a piece of human head next to the leg of the sofa I had hidden behind. There was no blood in its hair. The rest was a vomit of body. Suddenly I understood that that poor white-haired gentleman handcuffed and in a wheelchair was Bone. None other. But was it really him? His pajama shirt was unbuttoned and open, and I could see the tangle of white hair on his chest. His stomach was swelling up. A dark pool was accumulating and spreading out under the wheel-chair.

“You’re going to die,” Macha was telling him. “You’re bleeding out. You’re a doctor, so you know.” He brought his hand to his waist, above his hip. “I can still take you to the hospital. Talk. Who is Commander Joel? Who? Who gives you your orders? Who do you give them to?”

“Let’s go, Macha,” said Great Dane, rushing over to push the wheelchair. “This is over.”

His blond hair was turning red in the back from blood. He must have gotten cut on his head, I guess. As it flowed out it stained the back of his dusty jean jacket.

“Let’s get him out of here now. They could come back for him. Let’s not waste time!”

Macha didn’t let go of the chair. The man went on shaking his head no.

“Macha!” A spot of dirt or a bruise, I wasn’t sure which, prolonged Macha’s eye downward over his cheek. “We have to stop this cock-sucker’s bleeding and turn him over to Gato! He’ll give up everything then. His belly is swelling up from the blood, man. Let’s go!”

The sound of a siren coming closer knifed through the night. It must have been less than a couple blocks away. I looked around. The others had come downstairs. All except Iris, who was guarding the gagged and bound mother. I heard the punch. Bone’s face lurched. A thread of blood ran down from his nose to his lips. His head lolled backward, but he straightened it again. The man passed his tongue over his lips. He was pallid. He was in bad shape.

“Feeling pretty thirsty, huh?” Macha said to him, changing his tone. “That’s because you’re losing blood, man. Nothing matters now. Talk, and we’ll save you. Does Commander Joel exist? He doesn’t exist, fuck, he died in ’73, drowned in the Pillanleufú River, and you lied and said he survived. . Answer me, shit! Or you’d rather we bring you in to Central? We’ll save your life. It was all theater, all a big set-up of yours, wasn’t it? A cripple like you could never be the leader, isn’t that right? And so. . Tell me! Or they’ll take care of you in Analysis and you’ll end up singing just like they all do. You want that humiliation? You’ll give us every last fucker left in the organization. You think we’ll let you die here? No way. We’re not that stupid. . You’re fucked. We got you alive. Talk. Better to do it here. In there, you know how it is. .”

“You got me alive and I’m dying, fuck. .” Bone said. “But I got a bullet in you, Macha. You’re bleeding, too, you son of a bitch.”

“OK. Let’s get him out of here, Macha,” Great Dane repeated. “This guy’s gonna go before we hand him over to Gato, he’s bleeding like a motherfucker.”

Macha let go of the chair handle and he looked at his hand with its bloody Rolex. He lowered it to his side and then looked at it again. We heard the insistent siren of the ambulance. It was parked right there, apparently. Outside, voices.

“See? You’re wounded, Macha. But it’s not a serious wound, I’m afraid. I feel sorry for you, man. Nothing will be left of your brave deeds. They’ll all be erased. You’ll end up alone and you’ll die alone. Your own bosses will toss you out on your ass. The moment will come when they’ll wipe their asses with you, man, they’ll pin everything on you for being a damn foolish asshole, you’ll be up to your ears in shit for the rest of your life! That moment will come.” The bag of his stomach continued to swell. “You’ll understand then that you spent your life in the service of a cause that wasn’t worth it and that didn’t need you. It’ll be the last mission they give you: act as the toilet where your big bosses can dump their shit and piss and stay clean themselves. Cristóbal, your son, will find out some day what you are. He’ll distance himself from you. He’ll go through life branded by the shame of being your son. .”

Another blow convulsed his head. He shook it and put out his tongue to lick the blood from his lips.

“There are things, Macha, that you’ll never be able to understand: defeats that are worth more. . Sacrifice is, sometimes, more human and more beautiful than triumph.”

I was sure: it was him. I recognized his voice. It was the voice of Commander Iñaqui, who had talked to us about the color red: krasnyi. Everything changed for me in that instant. It was his suggestive voice, intimate and serene. It was his voice that brought me back, the way an aroma can do after years have passed, to my place in that community of dreamers who sang along to a couple of guitars next to a bonfire in the Nahuelbuta Mountains. It seemed as if I could hear the crackling of that red fire: krasnyi.

He wanted to add something else, but a vomit of black blood stopped him. His belly was still swelling up like a pregnant woman’s.

“Macha!” shouted Great Dane, beside himself. .

“MIR, the Front, they all have real leaders,” Macha was saying to him, calm now and ignoring the shout. “But in Red Ax the leader didn’t exist, right, Bone? Commander Joel was you. Right?”

“You win, Macha Carrasco, but without honor. A man like you. .,” he spit a little more blood. And, facing him: “Take your victory, you fucking murderer, take it back to your putrid den. The glory stays here, with us.”

Macha stood there looking at him, unmoved.

“Pretty words, Bone, but. . only words.”

Reflections of the ambulance siren colored the old living room with red beams. Macha gave a signal and Indio Galdámez came up behind him. I saw the medical technicians coming over with a cot and saline bags. They didn’t have much time. I saw Great Dane’s enormous, denim-sheathed back, dirty and bloodied, covering Macha. Suddenly, Bone’s balding head bounced forward violently, emptied over the wall like a smashed cup. I moved away immediately from the railing, hiding my weapon. Although I managed to catch sight of the suctioning black of Macha’s eyes. It seemed like he would swallow my eyes up.

“Who fired?” shouted Indio Galdámez. “Who was it?” And the rage suffocated his curses.

I escaped through the hole of the broken skylight, and after clambering and slipping over the roofs, I managed to climb down to Calle Maturana. I arrived before dawn at the house of the Swedish cultural attaché, the one who used to invite Clementina and me for lunch. Hours later, in the consul’s car, we went into the Swedish embassy. Anita was with me, wearing her school uniform.

And I see myself now in the plane telling her about Sweden, land of the Vikings in search of amber, the “tears of sea-birds,” I tell her. I told her it was the only precious stone of organic matter, and it came from the fossilized resin of ancient conifers that existed forty million years ago, and had gone extinct over ten million years ago, when the ocean rose and swallowed those forests up. “There are insects from that time, ones that are extinct now,” I tell her, “that were preserved in a piece of amber. They’re still there.”