We had to get back before it got dark, and since we didn’t have much time, we got straight to the point.
“Why don’t you just ask Manuel what you want to know, gringuita?” the priest suggested, between sips of tea.
“I have asked, Father, but he brushes me off.”
“Then you have to respect his silence, child.”
“Forgive me, Father, but I haven’t come here to bother you simply out of curiosity. Manuel’s soul is sick, and I want to help him.”
“And what might you know about soul sickness, gringuita?” he asked me, smiling sarcastically.
“Quite a bit, actually, because I arrived in Chiloé with a sick soul, and Manuel took me in and has helped me to get better. I have to return the favor, don’t you think?”
The priest talked to us about the military coup, the implacable repression that followed, and his work at the Vicarage of Solidarity, which didn’t last long, because he was arrested too.
“I was luckier than others, gringuita, because the cardinal rescued me in person in less than two days, but he couldn’t keep them from banishing me.”
“What happened to people who were detained?”
“It depends. You might fall into the hands of the political police, the DINA or the CNI, the carabineros or the security services of one of the branches of the armed forces. Manuel was first taken to the National Stadium and then to the Villa Grimaldi.”
“Why does Manuel refuse to talk about it?”
“It’s possible he doesn’t remember, gringuita. Sometimes the mind blocks out traumas that are too serious as a defense against dementia or depression. Here, I’ll give you an example of something I saw at the Vicarage of Solidarity. In 1974 I had to interview a man just after they’d released him from a concentration camp, and he was physically and morally destroyed. I recorded the conversation, as we always did. We managed to get him out of the country, and I didn’t see him again for a long time. Fifteen years later I went to Brussels and I looked him up, because I knew he was living in that city, and I wanted to interview him for an essay I was writing for the Jesuit magazine Message. He didn’t remember me, but he agreed to talk to me. The second recording didn’t resemble the first in any way.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The man remembered that he’d been arrested, but nothing else. The places, dates, and other details had been erased from his mind.”
“I guess you made him listen to the first recording.”
“No, that would have been cruel. In the first recording he told me about the torture and sexual brutality he’d been subjected to. The man had forgotten in order to go on living with integrity. Maybe Manuel has done the same.”
“If he has forgotten, then what Manuel has repressed surfaces in his nightmares,” interrupted Liliana Treviño, who was listening to us very closely.
“I need to discover what happened to him, Father. Please help me,” I begged the priest.
“You’ll have to go to Santiago, gringuita, and look in the most forgotten corners. I can put you in contact with people who will help you—”
“I’ll go as soon as I can. Thank you so much.”
“Call me whenever you want to, child. Now I have my own cell phone, but none of that electronic mail. I haven’t managed to unravel the mysteries of a computer. I’ve fallen very behind in communications.”
“You’re in communication with heaven, Father. You don’t need a computer,” Liliana Treviño said.
“Even in heaven they’ve got Facebook these days, my child!”
Since Daniel left, my impatience has been growing and growing. Almost three interminable months have gone by, and I’m worried. My grandparents never spent time apart due to the possibility that they wouldn’t be able to find each other again. I’m afraid that’s what’s happening to Daniel and me. I’m starting to forget his smell, the feel of his hands, the sound of his voice, his weight on top of me, and I’m assaulted by obvious doubts. Does he love me? Is he thinking of coming back? Or was our encounter just a fling for a peripatetic backpacker? Doubts and more doubts. He writes to me, which should reassure me, as Manuel reasons when I drive him up the wall, but he doesn’t write enough, and his messages are too temperate; not everybody knows how to communicate in writing as well as I do, if I do say so myself, and he doesn’t say anything about coming back to Chile. That’s a bad sign.
I wish I had someone to confide in, a friend, someone my own age to pour my heart out to. Blanca gets bored with my litanies of amorous frustrations, and I don’t dare bug Manuel too much; his headaches are getting more frequent and intense. They hit him all of a sudden, and there’s nothing any painkillers, cold compresses, or homeopathy can do to alleviate them. For a while he tried to ignore them, but at Blanca’s and my insistence he phoned his neurologist, and soon he has to go to the capital to have that damn bubble examined. He doesn’t suspect that I’m planning to go with him, thanks to the generosity of the marvelous Millalobo, who offered to pay my way and gave me a little bit more for pocket money. I can use those days in Santiago to finish putting the pieces of the puzzle of Manuel’s past into place. I need to fill in the gaps in the facts I’ve found in books and on the Internet. The information is freely available, but it’s like peeling an onion, layer after thin and transparent layer, without ever getting to the heart of the matter. I’ve found out about accusations of torture and murders, which were extensively documented, but I need to get up close to the places where they happened if I’m going to try to understand Manuel. I hope the contacts Father Lyon gave me will be useful.
It’s difficult to talk to Manuel and other people about this. Chileans are prudent, fearful of offending or giving a straight opinion. Their language is a dance of euphemisms; the habit of caution is deeply rooted, and there is a lot of resentment under the surface that nobody wants to air out. It’s as if there was a sort of collective shame, for some because they suffered and for others because they benefited, for some because they left, for others because they stayed, for some because they lost their relatives, for others because they turned a blind eye. Why does my Nini never talk about any of this? She raised me in Spanish, even though I answered in English. She used to take me to La Peña, a Chilean joint, in Berkeley, where Latin Americans congregated to listen to music and to see plays or films, and she made me memorize Pablo Neruda’s poems, which I barely understood. I knew Chile through her before ever setting foot here. She told me about steep snow-capped mountains, dormant volcanoes that sometimes wake up with an apocalyptic shudder, the long Pacific coast with its choppy waves and foamy collar, the desert in the north, dry like the moon, which very occasionally flowers into a Monet painting, the cold forests, clear lakes, bountiful rivers, and blue glaciers. My grandma talked about Chile with the voice of a woman in love, but she never said a word about the people or the history, as if it were a virgin, uninhabited territory, born yesterday of a telluric sigh, immutable, frozen in time and space. When she got together with other Chileans, her tongue quickened and her accent changed, and I couldn’t follow the thread of the conversation. Immigrants live with their eyes on the distant country they’ve left, but my Nini never made any effort to visit Chile. She has a brother in Germany with whom she rarely communicates; her parents have died, and the myth of the tribal family doesn’t apply in her case. “I don’t have anyone left there. Why would I go?” she used to say. I’ll have to wait to ask her face-to-face what happened to her first husband and why she went to Canada.
Spring
September, October, November
And a Dramatic December
The island is cheerful and lively because the parents have arrived to celebrate the Fiestas Patrias, the Chilean equivalent of the Fourth of July, and the beginning of spring; the winter rain, which seemed poetic to me at first, became unbearable after a while. And it will be my birthday on the twenty-fifth—I’m a Libra—I’ll be twenty years old, and my adolescence will be over with once and for all. Juesú
, what a relief! Normally on the weekends some young people come to see their families, but in September they start arriving en masse, the boats full every day. They bring gifts for their children, who in many cases they haven’t seen for months, and money for the grandparents to spend on clothes, things for the house, new roofs to replace those damaged by the winter storms. Among the visitors was Lucía Corrales, Juanito’s mother, a kind, nice-looking woman, far too young to have an eleven-year-old son. She told us that Azucena got a cleaning job at a guesthouse in Quellón, and that she doesn’t want to go back to school or come back to our island, so she won’t have to face people’s malicious comments. “Often in rape cases, the victim gets the blame,” Blanca told me, corroborating what I’d heard at the Tavern of the Dead.
Juanito is shy and wary around his mother, whom he only knows through photographs. She left him in the arms of Eduvigis when he was two or three months old and wouldn’t come back to the island while Carmelo Corrales was alive, although she did phone him often, and she’s always supported him financially. The kid’s talked to me about her a lot, with a mixture of pride, because she sends him good gifts, and anger that she left him with his grandparents. He introduced her to me with his cheeks aflame and his eyes glued to the floor: “This is Lucía, my grandma’s daughter,” he said. Then I told him that my mother left me when I was a baby, and my grandparents raised me too, but I was very lucky—my childhood was a happy one and I wouldn’t trade it for any other. He looked up at me for a long time with his big dark eyes, and then I remembered the belt marks he had on his legs a few months ago, when Carmelo Corrales could still catch him. I hugged him sadly; I can’t protect him against that. He’ll carry those scars for the rest of his life.
September is Chile’s month. Flags wave all the way up and down the country, and even in the most remote places they erect ramadas, four wooden posts and a roof of eucalyptus branches, where everybody gathers to drink and shake their bones to American rhythms and cueca, the national dance, which looks like an imitation of the courting ritual of roosters and hens. We made ramadas here too, and there were empanadas to your heart’s content and rivers of wine, beer, and chichi. The men ended up snoring spread-eagled on the ground, and at dusk the carabineros and the women threw them into the greengrocer’s cart and dropped them off at their houses. No drunk gets arrested on September 18 or 19, unless he pulls out a knife.
On Ñancupel’s television I saw the military parades in Santiago, where President Michelle Bachelet reviewed the troops amid cheering crowds, who venerate her like a mother; no other Chilean president has been so beloved. Four years ago, before the elections, nobody thought she’d win, because it was assumed that Chileans would not vote for a woman, let alone a socialist, agnostic single mother, but she won the presidency as well as everyone’s respect, or the respect of Moors and Christians, as Manuel puts it, although I’ve never seen any Moors in Chiloé.
We’ve had some warm days with blue skies, as winter has retreated at the onslaught of patriotic euphoria. Now that spring is arriving, a few sea lions have been seen in the waters around the cave. I think they’ll soon settle back where they were before and I’ll be able to rekindle my friendship with La Pincoya, if she still remembers me. I walk up the hill toward the cave almost every day, because I usually find my Popo up there. The best proof of his presence is that Fahkeen starts to get nervous and sometimes runs away with his tail between his legs. It’s just a vague silhouette, the delicious smell of his English tobacco in the air, or the feeling that he’s embracing me. Then I close my eyes and give in to the warmth and security of that broad chest, that big round belly, and those strong arms. One time I asked him where he was when I needed him most last year, and I didn’t have to wait for his reply, because deep down I already knew: he was always with me. While alcohol and drugs dominated my existence, no one could reach me, I was an oyster in its shell, but when I was at my lowest ebb, my grandfather picked me up in his arms. He never lost sight of me, and when my life was in danger, when I was doped up on tainted heroin on the floor of a public washroom, he saved me. Now, without all the noise in my head, I sense him always near. Given the choice between the fleeting pleasure of a drink or the memorable pleasure of a walk on the hill with my grandpa, I prefer the latter hands down. My Popo has finally found his star. This remote island, invisible in the world’s conflagration, green, evergreen, is his lost planet; instead of looking so hard in the sky for it, he could have just looked south.
People have taken off their sweaters and gone out to catch some sun, but I’m still wearing my putrid-green hat—we lost the school championship soccer match. My unfortunate and downcast Caleuches have taken full responsibility for my shaved head. The game was played in Castro in front of half the population of our island, who went along to root for the Caleuches, including Doña Lucinda, whom we transported in Manuel’s boat, tied into a chair and wrapped in shawls. Don Lionel Schnake, ruddier and louder than ever, supported our team with discordant shouts. We were about to win—a tie would have been enough—when fate played a dirty trick on us at the last moment; with only thirty seconds left in the game, they scored. Pedro Pelanchugay headed the ball away, amid the deafening cheers of our supporters and the enemies’ hisses, but the blow left him a bit stunned, and before he could recover, a little squirt came up and poked the ball into the back of the net with the tip of his toe. Everyone was so astonished that we were all paralyzed for a long second before the explosion of warlike screams and beer cans and pop bottles started flying through the air. Don Lionel and I were on the verge of suffering simultaneous heart attacks.
That afternoon I turned up at his house to pay my debt. “Don’t even think of it, gringuita! That bet was just a joke,” the Millalobo assured me gallantly, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned in Ñancupel’s tavern, it’s that bets are sacred. I went to a humble barbershop, one of those staffed by its owner, with a tricolored striped tube outside the door and a single ancient and majestic chair, where I sat with a bit of regret; Daniel Goodrich wasn’t going to like this at all. The barber very professionally shaved off all my hair and polished my head with a strip of chamois leather. My ears look enormous, like the handles of an Etruscan jug, and I have colorful stains on my scalp, like a map of Africa, from the cheap dyes I used in the past, according to the barber. He recommended rubbing it with lemon juice and bleach. The hat is necessary, because the stains look contagious.
Don Lionel feels guilty and doesn’t know how to make it up to me, but there’s nothing to forgive: a bet’s a bet. He asked Blanca to buy me some cute hats, because I look like a lesbian in chemotherapy, as he actually said, but the Chilote hat suits my personality better. In this country, hair is the symbol of femininity and beauty; young women wear their hair long and care for it like a treasure. What can I say about the exclamations of sympathy in the ruca, when I showed up there as bald as an alien among those gorgeous golden women with their abundant Pre-Raphaelite manes?
Manuel packed a bag with a few items of clothing and his manuscript, which he’s planning to discuss with his editor, and called me to the living room to give me some instructions before going to Santiago. I came out with my backpack and my ticket in hand and announced that he’d be enjoying my company, compliments of Don Lionel Schnake. “Who’s going to stay with the animals?” he asked weakly. I explained that Juanito Corrales was going to take Fahkeen to his house and would come over once a day to feed the cats. It was all arranged. I didn’t tell him anything about the sealed letter from the extraordinary Millalobo that I had to discreetly hand to the neurologist, who turned out to be related to the Schnakes, as he was married to one of Blanca’s cousins. The network of relationships in this country is like my Popo’s dazzling spiderweb of galaxies. Manuel couldn’t get anywhere by arguing and finally resigned himself to taking me. We went to Puerto Montt, where we caught a flight to Santiago. The trip that had taken me twelve hours by bus on my way to Chiloé took an hour by plane.
“W
hat’s the matter, Manuel?” I asked when we were about to land in Santiago.
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean, nothing? You haven’t spoken to me since we left home. Are you feeling okay?”
“Yes.”
“So you’re mad.”
“Your decision to come with me without consulting me is very invasive.”
“Look, I didn’t consult you because you would have said no. It’s better to ask for pardon than for permission. Forgive me?”
That shut him up, and soon he was in a better mood. We went to a little hotel downtown—separate rooms because he doesn’t want to sleep with me, even though he knows how hard it is for me to fall asleep on my own—and then he invited me to go for pizza and to the cinema to see Avatar, which hadn’t yet reached our island and I was dying to see. Manuel, of course, would rather see a depressing movie about a postapocalyptic world, covered in ash and populated with roaming bands of cannibals, but we flipped a coin, which landed face up so I won, as usual. It’s an infallible trick: heads I win, tails you lose. We ate popcorn, pizza, and ice cream, a feast for me, who’s been eating fresh, nutritious food for months and missing a bit of cholesterol.