Laura Restrepo - Hot Sur

“When did that happen? The guy’s face ripped off?”

“A few days before the death of my son.”

Soon, the hulking mass of Manninpox appeared on the horizon, a place as undesirable as any, the nightmare of its good neighbors, the dark cloud of sunny days, a stain in the amazing scenery. Rose, who up to that point had not yet decided whether he would go in, realized that there would be no escaping it. If there were any answers to his questions about Cleve’s death, they were locked in that place. Pro Bono, who was a regular there and knew the procedures, got him a badge as a legal professional, his assistant, but told him he would not lie to Mandra X. He would let her know he was the father of Cleve Rose. This was not going to be a regular visit.

Mandra X enjoyed certain privileges. She could receive visitors during the week, including members of the press, in private and without the presence of guards, according to provisions made by the state assembly for prisoners with recognized leadership records on human rights issues. They were put in Conference Hall, a room with absurdly tall ceilings and five metallic tables with four chairs each, placed far enough from each other so that conversations would not be overheard. They were the only ones there, and Rose thought that there could not be a more desolate place. To ease his anxiety, he tried to figure out in what direction his house would be. But there were no windows in the room, making it impossible for him to orient himself. They must have been underground. At least Rose had the sense that they had been descending as they traversed an access ramp. He shivered and regretted having left his coat in the car. So he lifted the collar of his jacket and buttoned it up. It felt strange to feel a breeze in the air, which somehow snuck into that sealed place, making the solitude in there even more unbearable. The drafts made it in but not daylight, not a single ray of sunlight. The place was lit by fluorescent tubes on the ceiling, which emitted a grainy light that broke up the space into a million vibrating points. Rose tried to make out any human sound, a cough, steps, some sign of life in the distance, but heard nothing. On the other hand, he heard bells trilling like the voice of God and metallic noises that reached his ears from various angles repeatedly, dry, deafening noises of gates slamming shut — or was that just the echo of older noises? Good God, he thought, and stuck his frozen hands in his pockets to warm them up.

“I don’t know what got into me in that place,” Rose tells me. “Maybe claustrophobia. I felt my chest tightening. A horrible pain, and on my left side, so I thought it could be my heart. I just wanted to get out of there. Like I said, it was a huge room, but I felt as if all that empty and cold space was closing in on me. No one came; no one opened the door, no one. We remained there alone, under lock and key for what seemed like an eternity, although in truth it must have been no more than fifteen or twenty minutes. I felt they had forgotten about us. Till finally Mandra X appeared with a guard on each side, although there was no physical contact.”

From what he had been told, Rose expected Mandra X to come in breathing fire and smashing things, an enraged bull trotting into the arena. But there was none of that. Mandra X walked in as patiently, coldly, and majestically as an ice queen, balancing her muscular bulk, scoping out the place, her mouth pursed and her arms bent slightly and separated from her body. Although Pro Bono had advised him to be cool and not stare with his mouth agape as people often did, Rose could not help but keep his eyes on her from the moment she walked in. She was a totemic figure, a being above the confines of nature, or below them. Hard to tell if she was goddess or demon, man or woman, a temple devoid of statues or a statue with no temple. That’s what she had been able to turn into after so many years of being locked up in a cell, with no other option but to metamorphose, cutting and painting and perforating herself with metal spikes and needles, becoming a contemporary version of Saint Liduvina. She had transformed herself in all the physical means possible. Tattoos covered every inch of her skin, not leaving a single spot blank, as if some child armed with a blue crayon had gone to war on her. Her elongated earlobes seemed detached from her head. The lack of eyelashes and eyebrows gave her an otherworldly appearance. Her hair was buzzed short and lined with razor cuts, so that her head seemed like a miniature ancient geoglyph. On top of this, her nose and upper lip were pierced and her tongue bifurcated, and her neck and arms adorned with scars. That’s just what you could see, what her uniform wasn’t concealing. Rose didn’t even want to imagine, but he couldn’t help remembering that according to María Paz, Mandra X had her nipples injected with ink and added a crown of rays around each, two dark suns in the middle of her chest. And the smell that came off her… Not exactly smelling like a saint, Rose thought, more so like homeless folk who pass by you pushing their clanging carts. She carried her theatrical bearing well, like a Delphic Sibyl, but a savage one, not lovely or green-eyed like Michelangelo portrays her in the Sistine Chapel, but a snake-like Sibyl, grotesque and somehow sublime as well, as the Sibyls must truly have been.

“Suffice it to say that she has had tattooed the phrase ‘I have a dream,’” Rose tells me. “Believe it or not. There in those dungeons lives a creature who dares to dream. To be truthful, I don’t know. It was creepy. In the outside world, people wear shirts that say, ‘Single and at your service,’ ‘I love NYC,’ ‘Fuck y’all,’ and ‘Ban nuclear now.’ But that monster tattooed ‘I have a dream’ across her forehead. It was no wonder Pro Bono had said that Manninpox seemed to exist simply to hold her in, Mandra X, the minotaur in that labyrinth of stone. And she wasn’t by herself. She came with another inmate of the same size, or maybe even bigger. But I swear I didn’t even notice. My eyes were glued to that… species of bull inked in blue. I didn’t even notice the other one until they were right beside us. In silence.

“Pro Bono had neglected to tell me that Mandra X does not talk directly to anyone from outside, only through an intermediary. Perhaps not to incriminate herself, I never knew the exact reason. I was never able to hear her speak but for a single phrase. At times, she would whisper something in the ear of the other inmate, who was the one who spoke with us. Afterward, Pro Bono told me the other inmate was known as Dummy. Maybe because that’s her role, she’s like a ventriloquist’s dummy. But out of Mandra X’s mouth, not a word. Not one. The minotaur was content just to look at us.

“She didn’t join us at the table, but sat a few feet away from it. And she looked at us. To start off, Dummy asked about me. ‘Can we trust this guy?’ Do you know what Pro Bono told them? He said he didn’t know me that well. Unbelievable, but that’s exactly what he said. There you have it, my new BFF, betraying in me in the company of this monster without a moment’s thought to the consequences. ‘If you like, I can go,’ I said absurdly, as if I could just walk out that huge, solid-steel door, and I started to get up, but then Pro Bono explained that I was Cleve Rose’s father, and with a whisper from Mandra X, Dummy gestured for me to sit.”

Rose imagined it had been some kind of test: Mandra X wanted to take a fresh look at him and he had to accept that. It was impossible not to anyway. It was clear that she was the alpha among the four of them, the dominant macho who said when and how and for how long things would transpire. Dummy began to talk about María Paz right away. About how when the other inmates first saw her, the first thing they said was, “That one ain’t gonna make it.” Two kinds of people ended up in Manninpox. The first group consisted of those who take responsibility for their actions, and they admit that they committed a crime and it has proven costly, and they throw it right back in your face: “I did it, so what? — and I’m paying for it now, and when I finish paying I’m outta here and you’ll never see my ass again.” The other type says, “I did nothing, this is an injustice and the fuckers who did it are going to pay.” This latter group remained active and alive out of pure indignation and the need for vengeance. But Dummy explained that María Paz belonged to a third category, those who condemned themselves, who did no wrong but still felt guilty. She was fucked before she could defend herself because she killed the defense attorney within her, a horrible handicap.