‘My. It’s so difficult.’
‘That’s something Santiago can’t give you in his letters, still less if they’re censored.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Can I ask you a really indiscreet question?’
‘You can. But I might not answer.’
‘All right.’
‘What is it, then?’
‘Do you dream of other men?’
‘Do you mean erotic dreams?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sleeping, or daydreaming?’
‘Both.’
‘When I’m asleep, I don’t dream about any man.’
‘And when you’re awake?’
‘When I’m awake, I do daydream. You’re going to laugh. I dream of you.’
Don Rafael
(Benign and cruel madmen)
Santiago wrote, and he’s fine. I’ve learned to read between the lines – his lines – so I know he’s still in his right mind. That’s been my fear. Not that he’ll talk, or weaken. No. I think I know my son. My fear has been that he’ll slip from sanity to who knows what. The prison governor (I don’t know if it was the current one, or the one before him) once put it like this: ‘We didn’t dare finish them all off when we had the chance, and, at some point, we’ll have to set them free. We have to use the time we’ve got left to drive them all insane.’ At least he was frank about it, wasn’t he? Frank and deplorable. But something in that shameless remark hit home: it’s in them, those bloodhounds, there’s something crazy in them. They are the ones who are spending the time left going insane. But they’re not benign madmen; they’re twisted, grotesque. Madmen by vocation and free choice, which is the cruellest kind of madness. They were given scholarships to Fort Gulick and they graduated as madmen. Even though the prison governor said it more than five years ago, I still cling to the only words that offer any hope in his chilling summary: ‘We’ll have to set them free.’ So they ‘didn’t dare finish off’ Santiago when they ‘had the chance’. But will he be among those they set free before he is driven mad? I hope so. Santiago has managed to generate, or maybe to discover within himself, a strange vitality. His descent into hell has not burned him. Singed, perhaps. I think that in there, even more than clinging to hope, what’s important is to hang on to your sanity. And he is still sane. Touch wood. And, just in case, wood without legs: this olive-wood spoon, for example, which is, moreover, a gift from Lydia. Santiago is still sane because he has deliberately clung on to his sanity. And he is dosing his hatreds prudently and wisely: that’s all-important. Hatred only enlivens and stimulates you if you’re able to control it; if you can’t, it will destroy and unhinge you. I know it’s hard to keep your common sense about you when you’ve suffered relentless humiliation and silence, when you’ve been nauseated by death, unending terror and dread, on behalf of others: martyrdom on an instalment plan. After enduring all that, staying sane can be a kind of delirium. That’s the only way to explain such an obstinate commitment to mental balance. And sticking to your principles, of course. But there were people with many solid and proclaimed principles who still weakened and ended up feeling like shit. People I’m not judging: let that be clear to everyone and to myself, because nobody knows who they really are, how flammable or fire-resistant they are, until they’ve been through the fire. I’ll be frank: of course, principles are a fundamental part of it, but they’re only one part. The rest is self-respect, loyalty to others and above all a lot of pig-headedness, and also, it occurs to me now, a progressive demystifying of death. Because that’s the most powerful, piercing argument they wield: the genuine likelihood, the looming presence, of death – not just any death, one’s own death. And it’s only by taking death down a notch, deflating its legendary reputation, that man can win the struggle. He must convince himself that to die is not, after all, that terrible, provided he dies a good death, dies at peace with himself. And yet it also occurs to me (I who have never had to run that risk) that it can’t be easy, because in a situation like that you are agonizingly alone, not even accompanied by the grimy presence of the ceiling or walls, or the despicable faces of those who are destroying you. You are alone with the hood over your head, or rather, with the inside of a sack; alone with your pounding heart, your retching, your suffocation, your never-ending anguish. Obviously, once this is over, when it’s all done with and you become conscious of having survived it all, you must be left with a crumb of dignity, but also a permanent deposit of rancour. Which will never go away, even if the future brings you security, trust, love and a safe path forward. A deposit of rancour that can rot and spread and even contaminate that trust and love, that onward path, all of which could intertwine with more than one individual future. In other words, those ruthless jailers, those experts in cruelty, those loathsome cannibals, those hierophants of the Sacred Order of the Trap, are guilty not only in the present; their guilt will carry far into the future. Not only are they responsible for every single iniquity, or for the sum of those iniquities; they are responsible, also, for having undermined the time honoured foundations of a solid society. When they torture a person, kill him or not, they are also tormenting (even though they don’t lock them up, even if they just leave them defenceless and bewildered in their ravaged homes) that person’s wife, his parents, his children, damaging all of their relationships. When they crush a revolutionary (as in the case of Santiago) and force his family into exile, they tear time to shreds; distorting the history of that branch of the tree, that small clan. To regroup in exile is not, as is so often said, to wipe the slate clean, to start the count again from zero. You start from minus four, or minus twenty, or minus a hundred. The ruthless ones, the ones who really earned their stripes in militant cruelty, who started out as puritans and ended up utterly corrupt, have opened a long parenthesis in our society, a parenthesis that will surely be closed some day, although by then nobody will be able to pick up the thread of the original sentence. A new one will have to be woven, constructed with words that will no longer be the same (because beautiful words were among the properties of those whom they tortured, executed or added to the lists of the disappeared) in which subjects and prepositions and transitive verbs and direct objects will no longer be the same. The syntax will have changed in this society, born as it will be by Caesarean section. At its birth, it will seem weak, anaemic, hesitant, far too cautious, but over time it will come together, invent new rules and new exceptions, brand-new words will rise from the ashes of those prematurely burned, copulative conjunctions better able to act as bridges between those who stayed and those who left and will then return. But nothing will be able to stay as it was before 1973. For better or for worse; I’m not sure. And I’m even less sure that I’ll be able to grow accustomed (if I do return some day) to that transformed country, the one that’s even now being born in the backroom of the forbidden. Yes, it’s likely that my dis-exile will be as hard as exile. The new society will not be built by veterans like me, or even by mature youngsters like Rolando or Graciela. We’re survivors, of course, but we’re also battered and bruised. Them, and us. So will it be built by those who today are children, like my granddaughter? I don’t know, I really don’t know. Maybe the new celebrants, the future makers of that strange, suspended homeland will be those who are children today but who live, still, in the home country. Not the young boys and girls whose retinas absorb images of the snows of Oslo or sunsets over the Mediterranean or the pyramids of Teotihuacán or scooters on the Via Appia or the dark skies of the Swedish winter. Nor the young boys and girls who have memories of children begging in the Alameda, or the Latin Quarter drug addicts, or the consumer frenzy of Caracas or Tejero’s attempted coup in Madrid or the neo-Nazi disruptions of the German miracle. At most, they may be able to help, to communicate some of what they’ve learned, delve into what has been forgotten, try to adapt and work hard. But those who will forge the new, strange country of the foreseeable future, that homeland that is yet an enigma, will be today’s adolescents, those who we
re there, and who are there still, those who saw it as children, not amnesiacs, who saw so much of the bitter fighting and who, like other adolescents, those of ’69 and ’70, were riddled with bullets, declared to be enemies, who saw how their fathers, uncles and sometimes their mothers and even their grandparents were taken away, only to be seen again much, much later on, from behind bars, or from afar or, even, at close quarters, but kept remote by the impossible task of communicating, by emotional distance. And they saw people weeping, and themselves wept beside coffins they were forbidden to peer into, and witnessed the deafening silence on street corners that ensued, and the scissors that cut off their hair and their conversation, and yes, of course, took to rock music and jukeboxes and slot machines to forget the unforgettable. I’ve no idea how or when, but those kids of today will become the vanguard of a realistic uprising. What about us veterans? We the hearses, as the Spaniards say. Well, those of us who are still lucid by then, may we hearses still roll along, we’ll help them remember what they saw. And what they didn’t see.
Exiles
(Immobile solitude)
Journalist H., an expert in international affairs and correspondent for a Bulgarian newspaper in Montevideo, ended up in Sofia. After one of the Uruguayan regime’s many attacks, he had been forced to seek exile in Argentina, where he lived for seven months. But following the assassination of Zelmar Michelini and Gutiérrez Ruiz, Argentina also became uninhabitable for Uruguayan exiles. Under the protection of the United Nations, he left for Cuba and, from there, went on to Bulgaria.
He lived alone, far from his wife and children, but doubtless he made friends among the Bulgarians, a warm and welcoming people, fond of noble, sentimental drinking. He must also have enjoyed those incredible avenues lined with rose-filled flowerbeds that can be found all over that beautiful country, which is, of course, Dimitrov’s, but which also is that of my friend Vasil Popov, who more than ten years ago wrote a very tender story about two Tupamaros he once met in the lift of a Havana hotel.
Yes, he must surely have got used to yoghurt (from its home country), Orthodox priests and Turkish coffee, which I find undrinkable. But even so he must have doubtless felt the unpleasant humiliation of being utterly alone, looking at himself each day in the mirror with fresh astonishment and jaded resignation.
When in mid-1977 I arrived in Sofia to attend the Congress of Writers for Peace, H., ever the journalist, had made the news himself, just a few days earlier. As he did every evening, he had gone back to his apartment. He probably lay down, and nothing more was heard of him until a few days later, when his work colleagues, alarmed by his unexplained absence, went to knock on his door. Hearing no reply, they called the police to open it.
H. was in his bed, still alive, but in a coma. He had been left hemiplegic by some kind of cerebral collapse. He had been in this state for at least three days. Intensive care could do nothing for him.
Strictly speaking, he did not die of hemiplegia, but of solitude. The doctors said that, had he been found in time, he would probably have survived. By the time his friends found him, he had already lost consciousness – but it’s likely that for at least twenty-four hours he knew what was happening to him. It’s heart-rending, trying to grasp what his thoughts must have been as he lay there immobile. Out of respect, I won’t do so, even though perhaps I am particularly suited to the task.
A couple of years earlier, during my Buenos Aires exile, in my solitary apartment on Las Heras and Pueyrredón, I had undergone a very similar episode. For a whole day, an asthma attack left me semi-conscious. Apparently, several friends called me, but I was unaware of this, even though the phone was by my bed. They must have thought I wasn’t there. In those dark months of López Rega’sfn1 Argentina, when every day ten or twenty dead bodies appeared on rubbish tips, it was common for many of us, during especially worrying nights, to sleep at friends’ houses. I always had at least three of their keys on my keyring. In the evening, I vaguely recovered consciousness. I answered a call, just one, before blacking out again. That single act was enough to save me. H. didn’t even have that opportunity. Solitude had left him immobile.
The Other
(First choice and substitute)
Little Beatriz is lightning-quick. If only Santiago could see her: Rolando knows her absence must have been the toughest test for that famous swot. Years without Beatriz; who knows how many. It seems there’s some hope now, but what then? Obviously, Santiago will have other grounds for homesickness, Graciela being one of them, of course, but the hardest to accept must be Beatriz, because when he was rounded up he was just beginning to enjoy her. Not a lot, clearly, because those were dreadful years, but even so he found time to see her every two or three days. He’d bring her into the big bed and clown around with the kid, who ever since she was a little tadpole had been razor-sharp. Santiago was a devoted father, not like him, Rolando Asuero, habitué at first of brothels and then of motel rooms. It was really the politics that put a stop to his Latin American way of life: why, in the final days, even motel rooms were used for underground meetings. What a waste. He always felt a bit embarrassed not to even take off his jacket since he was obliged to respect the female comrade who would inevitably be there (tango habemus: ‘I’ve only myself to blame, what a fool’) in that classically celebratory ambience, although occasionally the context did win out over the text, but anyway it always seemed to him it was an abuse of authority by the irresponsible Responsible Ones, because in general the female comrades were gorgeous and you had to be really careful not to get aroused, you had to concentrate so hard on thinking of blocks of ice and snowy peaks that you’d end up forgetting the very message you had been given and were supposed to pass on.
A sharp one, little Beatriz. Today while they were both waiting for Graciela he had spent a good few minutes chatting with her. Rolando is enchanted by the way the kid talks about her mother, how she has got her worked out to a T, how she knows what’s non-negotiable and what her weak spots are. The curious thing is that she talks of all this without vanity or boasting, with an almost scientific rigour. A rigour that vanishes as soon as she starts talking about Santiago. She has made him into a god. Today she cross-examined Rolando, her Uncle Rolando (to her, all Graciela’s male friends are uncles; the female ones, aunts) asking him about ‘the Prison’, what the cells would be like, if it’s true Santiago can see the sky (he says he can, but she says perhaps that’s only so that Graciela and I don’t cry), and why exactly he was in jail if both Graciela and he, her Uncle Rolando, assured her he was such a good person and loved his country so much. At that point she had fallen silent, before asking, eyes half-shut, focusing on a concern that doubtless was not new: ‘Uncle, which is my country? I know yours is Uruguay, but what about me, I left there when I was tiny, so tell me truthfully, which is my country?’ And when she said ‘my’ she prodded herself in the chest with her forefinger, and he had been forced to clear his throat and even blow his nose to give himself time before he told her that there could be people, especially children, who had two countries, one the first choice and the other the substitute. But then the kid started insisting, So which one was her first choice?, and he said, Obviously, that’s Uruguay, then she jabbed her finger in the wound – So why then don’t I remember anything about my first-choice country, but on the other hand know lots about my substitute country? And thank heavens Graciela arrived at that moment and opened the door (they were waiting by the window, unable to get in) and went to wash her hands and run a comb through her hair, and told Beatriz to wash her hands too, and the kid: I already washed them at midday, so Graciela got mad and dragged her roughly to the washbasin, then came back in a state to where Rolando was sitting in the rocking-chair, staring at him as if it were only now that she had become aware of his presence and saying, Hello, in a weary, defenceless voice that bore only a distant resemblance to her normal one.
Intramural
(The seaside resort)
I don’t know why today I had su
ch vivid memories of the summers at Solís. The cabin there was lovely, so close to the beach. Sometimes when I lose my patience or grow angry, I think of the sand dunes and quieten down. In those short seasons of calm, which so closely resembled happiness, who could have imagined everything that was about to happen? I remember when we climbed the sierra, and when we met Sonia and Rubén, when we rented horses and you were firm in the saddle when it trotted, but despite all your commands and efforts the pony wouldn’t break into a gallop, which meant you ended up shattered. And yet I don’t just remember those bucolic seaside details; I also recall feeling a certain uneasiness that meant I couldn’t entirely enjoy those three weeks of frugal comfort. Do you remember what we talked about, so often, as evening drew in around the cabin and the hour of the angelus made us melancholy, gloomy, even? Yes, our comfort was terribly austere, our little getaway was extremely cheap and far from ostentatious, and yet we couldn’t help thinking of all those who had nothing, no work or bread or anywhere to live, still less a special hour given over to melancholy; their bitterness was full-time. And so we’d end up sitting in silence, with no obvious solutions to hand, feeling vaguely guilty. Of course, by the next morning when the fresh salty air and the first rays of the sun filled the cabin at dawn, nature’s encouragement chased away our dark thoughts and we’d feel replete and optimistic again. You’d spend your time collecting shells, while I went out on the bike, because even back then you maintained I had a certain tendency to a paunch, but as you can see, I don’t know how many years later, I don’t have one at all, though of course that’s due to a different remedy, one that is, perhaps, not exactly to be recommended. And the last few times, when our friends would drop by as well – there was something both good and bad about that, don’t you think? Of course, it was more entertaining, and made for rewarding (although occasionally over-long) discussions, which for me always had a clear purpose: they helped me discover within myself what I really thought about so many things. But that summer spent with the others was also bad, because it robbed us of our intimacy and reduced the chances for conversation between the two of us – to the hours in bed, where we generally employed other means of communication. And now the clan is scattered all over the world. Some are no longer with us. I think the women are in Europe. (Do you write to them?) I understand that one of the lads is where you are. Do you see him from time to time? Give him a hug from me. What’s he up to? Working? Studying? Is he still such a womanizer? I have fond memories of his tango expertise and his gifts as a peacemaker. I wonder what Solís is like these days? And does El Chajá still exist? It was great to have lunch in that log-walled dining-room, brimming as usual with English people, as amiable but distant as ever. Why did the English like that resort so much? Maybe for the same reasons we did: it was a place where (at least back then) you could still regain a sense of space; the beach could be seen as a beach, not one huge shopping mall, plus sand. The natural surroundings had survived, because the houses, even the decorously luxurious ones, weren’t blots on the landscape. It was so good to walk and walk for miles on the shore in the early morning, to feel those gentle little waves on your feet that made you want to go on living. I think we also liked it because in some way it symbolized Uruguay back then, a country of gentle little waves, not the sweeping storms that were to come. There were rocks at one end of the beach, but no crashing waves. You sat down and the water would simply rise in the gaps between the rocks, rushing through and cleansing the little channels, capsizing the crabs and muddling up the half-shells of mussels that would always collect in some corner or other along with the stones and pebbles. Sunset brought with it a different feeling, one that maybe generated less energy, less optimism, but offering instead a tranquillity that I have never felt since. The sun would go down behind the dunes at Jaureguiberry, and the rhythmic, lapping waves would mingle with the occasional lowing of cows that seemed to come from afar, and perhaps because of that sounded taciturn, doom-laden. Some days we caught that fleeting anxiety, but on others it added unexpectedly to how we’d savour the day, simply because we had no real excuse for feeling hypochondriac. Even if your green eyes grew moist and I felt a lump in my throat, we were always aware we had no real reasons to be sad, other than the inherited ones, the ones that come from the mere fact of living and dying. We would walk back slowly, arm in arm and in silence, and in the palm of my right hand I could feel the goose-bumps on the skin of your naked waist, probably because the evening breeze was starting to blow, and we needed to get back to the cabin to put on our pullovers and drink some grappa with lemon, and cook the steak with eggs and salad and kiss and nuzzle a bit, not too much, because the best would come later.