Laura Restrepo - Hot Sur

Interview with Ian Rose

Not far from the prominent, white, well-lit sign that announced “MANNINPOX STATE PRISON,” Ian Rose saw another more modest sign that said in Spanish, in faded letters, “Mis Errores Café-Bar.” Cleve and his dogs had ended up right in front of the café frequented by Cleve. Shit, Rose thought, it’s as if everything is predetermined. He walked toward the entrance and went in like a detective walking into the scene of a crime, as if he were afraid to disturb any fingerprints that his son might have left floating there. The place was deserted and desolate, and did not reveal much. On top of the Formica table hung semicircles of plastic red lamps befouled with flies, and the blue oilcloth covering on the benches was coming apart at the seams, exposing the foam rubber guts. Rose asked for a Diet Coke at the bar and water for his dogs, and felt the urge to order an espresso for Cleve. That’s what his son always ordered, an espresso, to which he added a pinch of sugar.

“Look at them,” the bartender said, signaling with his chin to the women in the beauty parlor across the street from Mis Errores. “You see them. They don’t only do your hair, brother; they give you a cut too. Take a look at the tall one. Before she worked there, she did time at Manninpox. And she’s not the only one, you know. There have been several of them who didn’t know where to go once they were granted their freedom, or why to go; they didn’t have a job or a home, or family that loved them, or dogs that barked for them. So they stayed around here, right where they were released, getting together to share a room with a monthly rate at the Best Value Inn, and if they’re not too worn down, they latch onto The Goddess to work as manicurists or masseuses. And I don’t have to explain the kind of massages they offer, you know what I’m talking about?”

“I really couldn’t care less,” Rose said, fixing his eyes on his glass and swirling it to make the ice click, to signal that he had no interest in chatting.

“Do you want to see the prison?” The guy did not drop the subject. “You can’t see it from the road, but you can see it from the roof here. It’s quite a sight, I assure you.”

Rose told him he wasn’t interested, but the bartender persisted, trying make Rose feel at ease by telling him it wouldn’t cost anything, that he used to charge, when he had the binoculars for clients to use, but not anymore.

“I used to charge the tourists,” the guy kept saying, although Rose avoided eye contact. “Many people drive up here just to see the prison, and I’m not just talking about the family members of the prisoners. I’m talking about normal people, tourists who feel cheated when they realize that Manninpox is hidden behind all those trees. Installing the binoculars on the roof was my friend Roco’s idea, a great idea, I tell you, and we made some extra money from it. We charged one buck for three minutes of viewing. I’m the owner of the bar, the very person you see here, so I supervised everything and bartended while Roco took care of the fees and timing the customers with the binoculars. This new feature put my place on the map, it filled up, and people bought more drinks and food. A great show. And if you were lucky, you could even see the prisoners when they took them out to the bus to go to court. The human side, you see. They were led out single file, each one of them cuffed at the wrists, ankles, and waist as well as chained to each other. Quite the scene, I tell you, not even Houdini could have escaped such a thing. They could barely walk, looked like ducks advancing with little hops. They call it a fish line, and from the roof you could see everything as if from a box seat. Not anymore, that’s when we had the binoculars. I remember one prisoner in particular, a young woman, very good-looking, who cried and whose nose ran and she tried to wipe it with a hankie she had in her hand, but of course, she couldn’t because of the chain. I swear, I’d have released her if I could, at least to let her blow her nose. The binoculars were German, very good ones, I had bought them secondhand, but they were in perfect shape and came with a pigskin leather case and everything. But the authorities forced us to stop, threatening to arrest me if I kept peeping at what was happening in the prison, and they fucked the business. But if you want to go up on the roof, go right ahead. You can see the building with the naked eye. You lose the human angle but can appreciate the architecture. Manninpox was built between 1842 and 1847 under the guidance of Edward Branly, a genius of his time; you won’t see anything compared to what this man could dream up, at least not on this side of the Atlantic.”

“In the end, I relented and I went up,” Rose tells me. “Maybe because I needed to do it, although I’d have never admitted that. I had to see all that with my son’s eyes. I wasn’t being morbid; I can assure you of that. I imagine the tourists wasted a dollar for three minutes of voyeurism. But that wasn’t why I did it. I went up to see the place that had captured the attention and stirred the passion of my son in the months before his death. That’s why I went up, because that place spoke to me of Cleve, and on top of that, the girl María Paz was still locked up there, and I had been trying to figure out her story, thinking over what I’d read in the manuscript and asking myself questions about its author.”

When Rose went up to the roof of Mis Errores to look, he had to admit that the owner had been right. The thing wasn’t just a gray uniform block; it was an architectural spectacle in the middle of the woods, in the shape of a European castle of an indeterminate style, somewhere between the medieval and Renaissance periods. Before his eyes there appeared an ostentatious stone castle with massive walls, round arched doorways, narrow windows with iron bars crowned with spear tips, shuttered balconies, a chapel, and a dry moat all around. He wanted to compare it to something that would be familiar to him, and he found that the structure was sort of an American replica of the fortress of Pinerolo, where they had locked up the luckless Man in the Iron Mask, or a New World version of the Tower of London. The whole thing, created with a morbid attention to detail, looked something like a Disney World of horror. Rose thought that the only thing missing was a chorus line, with the prisoners kicking up their legs in unison, like the Radio City Rockettes, but wearing black-and-white striped miniskirts. To finish the sick, hyperrealistic scenario, the only thing missing was a tour of the torture chamber, or a light and sound show from the public gallows for a fascinated crowd. The whole thing could have been a new kind of wax museum, one in which they’d charge twenty-five dollars for admission for adults, fifteen for children, and free for seniors over seventy and kids under four. “Come see a cavernous prison from the Middle Ages, a one-of-a-kind experience. Don’t miss it!” With the added attraction that it would not be inhabited by wax figures but by flesh-and-blood prisoners. As seen from the outside, Manninpox prison was an ersatz, a trompe l’oeil, conceived and built to attract attention, to cause an impression, and finally to entertain.

Rose didn’t know how to explain the raison d’être of that amazing display of judicial power and coercive force, that manifestation of the greatness of authority, judges, district attorneys, wardens, guards, honest neighbors, and other good citizens before the alleged insignificance and baseness of the prisoners. The American state had spent a fortune building that monster to make an impression and teach a lesson. But to whom? Hard to say, if you took into account that the portentous structure wasn’t visible to anyone unless you went up on the roof of Mis Errores, certainly not to the prisoners themselves, for whom the punishment was meant, because once inside they could not see the exterior. They’d see it perhaps once, briefly, on the day they were brought in, and with any luck a second time, on the day they were released, when Manninpox would appear in the rearview mirror of the bus that would take them away from there.