Arturo Fontaine - La Vida Doble

Did you find the bathroom? See? You can’t miss it. . and your notebook is still there, see?

And Anita? She’s good, she has a boyfriend, a Danish guy she met in Chile when she was backpacking in Torres del Paine. For a while they lived in San Francisco, and then they went to Santiago. He works at Santander Bank and she works at EuroAmerica Insurance. . They seem happy. They work a lot, too much if you ask me. To Anita it’s only natural that I’m dying; I’m old, and old people die. But it’s me who is dying, fucking shit. That’s what changes everything for me. To me, my death is not natural.

And now you’ve come all the way from Chile to open and shut me, right, mon chéri? A crab has taken over my stomach. It’s growing like a fetus. Now nothing works right in my organism. I’ll give birth to my own death. I was never a crier. Since I was a little girl I hated that old idea that “real men don’t cry,” which means: women do. Well, not me. But I do now. The memories return: Anita has come back from Chile and my hand caresses the closed door of her room while she sleeps. Did I tell you how after the equinox Roberto and I would start going to the ocean? We’d lay back naked on those rocks that had been polished to perfection by primeval ice and that hold the warmth of the sun. We jumped into the water, and no one existed besides us.

The Baltic sunsets through my window are very long, very gradual. As if the light wanted to hold on just a little longer. For some time now, my eyes will tear up on occasion, and a single tear falls. I brush it away so it doesn’t run down my face. I take the little polished silver mirror that my grandmother left me out of my purse and I use a tissue to dry my face. I put on a little eye shadow, go over my eyelashes with mascara. I look out at the Baltic, some ship is coming in or going out, and that’s it. It’s just a moment. I wouldn’t want the other women in the home to notice. Though I’ll tell you, I’ve see a lot of them quietly crying, who knows why.

What? Yes; I laugh with the nurses, I talk with these shriveled-up old ladies, I do a few little translation jobs they still give me, and I talk on the phone with my daughter, so far away. I think about her a lot. I imagine what she’s doing: for example, at this hour she must be having breakfast, her muesli with cold milk and honey. . Or has she changed what she has for breakfast? You know, it never occurred to me to ask her. She is always the one to call me, from Santiago. She prefers it that way. Sometimes I think about Roberto and I want to call him on the phone. The other day, I did. A machine answered. I hung up. Talking to you, I don’t know, I feel like I might call again. I’m sure he would want to see me. . I wonder if we’ll have snow this year before Christmas. The snow brings light.

And? Have I earned my money yet? I’ll tell you a secret: With what you’re giving me for my story today, I’ll have thirty thousand dollars. An inheritance for Anita. Not a bad amount, don’t you think? Well, it’s no great thing, but for me. . She’ll appreciate that I’ve saved money so I can leave it to her. So here I am, telling you my damned story. Sometimes, like I’ve said, a stranger is the best confidant. But it’s better if you don’t write it. Change it, make up something else, find a metaphor. No one will understand. Not here and not back in Chile, either. Not even my daughter, if she ever found out. She knows very little about all this. I never wanted to tell her the story the way it really happened. Too crude for her. I thought: I don’t want to make her suffer. Also: Someday she should know the truth, I’m her mother. Someday. That moment never came. Not until now.

You know? My voice caught there for a second, you noticed, right? It was laughter, it welled up inside me and stopped, it wouldn’t come out. What blocked it? What would that aborted peal of laughter have been like? Happy people do not speak for me. I speak with the mouth of sacred hate. For me, only someone pursued like a shadow by shame and resentment can speak. Although neither death nor oblivion will be able to erase the fact that I lived and this was my insignificant and shitty life. No one lived it for me. No one will. I’m unrepeatable. I existed. You only live once. And in your own way. Forever. I never became the combatant I promised myself I would be. “Everything for the cause, Irene, everything.” I wasn’t capable of living up to that credo. You know that by now. I tried and I couldn’t. And then I did what I did to my brothers and sisters. But I was the one, I alone though no one knows it, who kept them from putting Bone into Gato’s hands. I knew what that was. And I saved my daughter from his jaws. I was forced to choose: combatant or mother. I feel as if only now, finally, am I ready to start living. I was what I was in the only chance I got to be alive. It’s taken me an entire life to learn how to live. Maybe.

You’re leaving with your notebook nice and full. . For my quotations? Ha, ha! My being is a pit filled only with quotations. . Ha ha! What I’m telling you, I repeat, is no good to you. For your novel, I mean. Forget this Lorena. A good novel leaves the door half-open for hope. Not me. You know who the woman talking to you is? I’m a question for you. I’m your Lorena, nothing more.

What time is it? Good grief! The five hours we agreed on are long over. Give me my money and get out of here. Better count it, hadn’t we? Only hundred-dollar bills, right? OK. . They’re about to bring me my merienda; that’s what the Spanish priest calls my dinner: They’re bringing your merienda, child. That’s three thousand. . My nose is itching. I don’t know why I have that itch now on my nose, so I wrinkle it like that, see? And then I scratch it and it’s gone. OK. It’s all there. Yes, here, leave it here below, please. Thanks.

As for you, go back to Santiago and do what you will with those notes you’ve been taking. But don’t even think of coming near me again, is that clear? I don’t want your condescension, not yours or anyone else’s. I won’t answer your calls. I don’t want to see you ever again. I won’t even read what you write, if you end up writing anything. That’s how I want it. Leave me alone. Go on, get out of here. Now you know: Truth is impossible, the truth was invented not to be told.

Look, see how there’s light even now over the Baltic?

Although the people and events in this novel are fictional, the author used actual events and true stories as a point of departure. In addition to interviews with various protagonists and witnesses from the period, he made use of the following documentary bibliography: Eduardo Anguita and Martín Caparrós, La voluntad (Buenos Aires: Norma, 1998); Luz Arce, El infierno (Santiago: Planeta, 1993; translated into English by Stacy Alba Skar as The Inferno: A Story of Terror and Survival in Chile [Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004]); Miguel Bonasso, Roberto Bardini, and Laura Restrepo, Operación príncipe (Mexico City: Planeta, 1988); Carmen Castillo, Un día de octubre en Santiago, trans. Felipe Sarabia (Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 1982; original title: Un Jour d’octobre à Santiago [Paris: Éditions Stock, 1980]); La Flaca Alejandra (documentary film, 1993) and Calle Santa Fe (documentary film, 2007); Ascanio Cavallo, Manuel Salazar, and Óscar Sepúlveda, La historia oculta del régimen militar (Santiago: Editorial Sudamericana, 1998); Comité Memoria Neltume, Guerrilla en Neltume (Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 2003); Daniel de Santis, A vencer o morir (Buenos Aires: Editorial Nuestra América, 2004); Régis Debray, Alabados sean nuestros señores (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1999; original title: Loués soient nos seigneurs [Paris: Gallimard, 1996]); John Dinges, Operación Condor (Santiago: Ediciones B, 2004; original title: The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terror to Three Continents [New York: New Press, 2004]); Diamela Eltit, “Perder el sentido,” La Época (Santiago), July 30, 1995; Eltit, “Vivir ¿dónde?” Revista de Crítica Cultural (Santiago) 11 (1995); and Eltit, “Cuerpos nómadas,” Debate Feminista (Mexico City) 14 (1996), all essays reproduced in Emergencias (Santiago: Planeta/Ariel, 2000); Nancy Guzmán, Romo (Santiago: Planeta, 2000); Max Marambio, Las armas de ayer (Santiago: La Tercera Debate, 2007); Marcia Alejandra Merino, Mi verdad (Santiago: A.T.G. S.A., 1993); Pedro Naranjo, Mauricio Ahumada, Mario Garcés, and Julio Pinto, Miguel Enríquez y el proyecto revolucionario en Chile: Discursos y documentos del Movimiento de izquierda revolucionaria, MIR (Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 2004); Ricardo Palma Salamanca, El gran rescate (Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 1997), and Una larga cola de acero (Historia del FPMR, 1984–1988) (Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 2001); Cristóbal Peña, Los fusileros (Santiago: Debate, 2007); Roberto Perdía, La otra historia: Testimonio de un jefe Montonero (Buenos Aires: Editorial Grupo Ágora, 1997); Cristián Pérez, “Salvador Allende, apuntes sobre su dispositivo de seguridad: El Grupo de Amigos Personales (GAP),” Estudios Públicos (Santiago) 79 (2000); “El Ejército del Che y los chilenos que continuaron su lucha,” Estudio Públicos (Santiago) 89 (2003); “Historia del MIR: Si quieren Guerra, Guerra tendrán. .,” Estudios Públicos (Santiago) 91 (2003); Patricio Rivas, Chile, un largo septiembre (Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 2007); Ricardo Uceda, Muerte en el Pentagonito (Lima: Planeta, 2004); Hernán Valdés, Tejas verdes (Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 1996); Hernán Vidal, Chile: Poética de la tortura política (Santiago: Mosquito Editores, 2000), and Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez (Santiago: Mosquito Editores, 1995); and Patricio Verdugo and Carmen Hertz, Operación Siglo XX (Santiago: Las Ediciones del Ornitorrinco, 1990).