I make air quotation marks with my fingers. I wasn’t lying, not in the slightest; at that moment it was what I felt, what welled up in me; it was the truth.
“Everything — understand me, anything — the most horrible things, chopping off their legs and arms with an ax — it’s all justified.”
And I really felt that to be true, as well.
“As long as it’s effective,” he tells me in a cold, firm voice. “Our hate, sister Irene, is also subordinated to our collective goal. Everything we do or don’t do is justified by the cause. Otherwise, it’s better not to fight. To resign ourselves to peace and endless negotiation. Which means tolerating the world’s abuse and injustice. It means having endless patience and getting used to misery and the disgrace of inequality. It would mean adapting, reconciling ourselves to evil. No! We are at war, but it’s not a conventional one. Any armed mission of ours is always a message. The formal retaining walls of the ‘democratic bourgeois’ have given way and class domination is exposed for what it is. The seed is germinating underground. The hour of the great vengeance is approaching. We’re going to win, sister Irene,” he says with a trace of softness, and immediately he hardens his brow. “And if we can’t win we have no right to live.”
He fell silent, sunk into his thoughts. That’s how the Spartan was. He’d turn somber all of a sudden. He lived completely absorbed, I think now, in his task of revenge. He was disdainful of politicians because they all made concessions, because they were all dirty. He, on the other hand, was going against the current, and he knew himself to be tough and alone and superior.
“Why were they waiting for us at the currency exchange? What went wrong?”
“One must lose, sister, if one wants to someday win. This episode has been investigated. Your version of events will be requested and then you will be given a report.”
I looked at him, but he was stirring sugar into his coffee.
“You know the procedure,” he concluded after a long pause. “You’ll have to write a report about what happened. It will be processed and then you will be called in to clear up any questions. Remember this number.” And he made me repeat it three times from memory. “Call from a public phone, of course, on Tuesday at 12:10. Understood?”
“Understood.”
“Sister Irene ends here, right? As you know, you’ll be disconnected for a while. That means: no stipend. What do you plan to do?”
“Whatever you, my brothers and sisters, assign me to do. I’m at your disposal.”
“I’m asking what you would like to do, compañera.”
“I want revenge, a just revenge. That’s what I want. I want a dangerous mission. This time I won’t fail. I want to show what I’m capable of. I ask you, brother, for that chance. It’s a formal request.”
“I’ll deliver this request at the appropriate time. The question was, what do you plan to do now?” he said, relaxing his tone.
“Go back to teaching French, I guess.”
“And not leave Chile? You’ll stay here and go on giving private French lessons?”
He looked at me approvingly.
“Teruca, as you know, sent her son, Francisco, out of Chile. He’s in a children’s home in Havana. There’s a group of kids, the children of militants, living together there. As you know, it’s an indispensable security measure. To avoid blackmail and to protect the children. You already said no once. You wanted to keep your daughter here, you said she was safe in your mother’s house. We respect your decision, sister, though we don’t agree with it. It’s a very serious matter. Serious for you, as the responsible mother that you are, and serious for all your brothers. The time has come for you to send your daughter to that home on the island. Don’t you think?” I lowered my eyes. “It’s a tremendous sacrifice, I know. But it’s necessary. Your safety is at risk, your daughter’s safety, all of ours.”
I nodded my assent. He took my chin in his hand and met my eyes.
“Everything for the cause, Irene. Everything.”
I nodded again.
The Spartan, when we separated, gave me a Lonsdale Fonseca no. 1 that came wrapped in fine, transparent rice paper. That night, I went out alone in my mother’s yard, and I contemplated its wrapper, as the Spartan called it, like someone staring at the skin of the person they love; I lit it from below, turning it around, slowly, as he had taught me, and I smoked it unhurriedly. Then I went barefoot into Ana’s room. She was asleep. She slept with such trust. The air passed through her half-open lips so serenely. She looked so beautiful to me. With one finger I traced her profile. “Everything for the cause, Irene. Everything.” I didn’t shed a tear.
1. Faction of the Socialist Party of Chile.
THIRTEEN
Some days later I went to a “meet” on Calle Placer. Evening was falling and the storekeepers were starting to close up shop. I spent a few minutes looking at tennis shoes outside the Danny and Robert shoe stores, until I saw the sign of recognition, heard the question we had prearranged, and I got into a Fiat with a couple in the front seat. He was muscular and very dark. The woman, a redhead, was driving. They asked me to lie down on the floor. I figure it was on Gran Avenida, around stop number 9, more or less, that we turned west, turned around, and crossed Gran Avenida again, heading eastward. After a couple of turns to disorient me, we stopped at a house that must have been on Calle Curinanca, or around there, maybe actually on Olavarrieta, which is what I thought then. The bell sounded twice in short bursts, and four big boxer dogs came out, plus a small mutt, black with a curved tail, which seemed to be the fiercest. The door was opened by a scrawny, jumpy, big-nosed kid they greeted with the name “Piscola Face.” He calmed his dogs with a whistle and let us in. After walking a stretch along some paving stones in disrepair, we went into a garage next to an old, two-story mansion. It was a large space, cold, with unpainted brick walls and high ceilings, closed off at one end with chicken wire that had ivy growing on it. There was a carpenter’s bench with tools, cans of paint on the floor, boxes, bottles of gas, paraffin drums. We were lit by a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. We sat down in mismatched chairs. On the cement floor, old oil spots.
They listened to my story in silence and then began to ask about details. They weren’t too interested in why I had crawled under the truck but rather in what I knew about Tomasa, about Chico Escobar and Vladimir Briceño, about their functions. They also wanted to find out exactly what the brothers who made the plan had told us about the woman with glasses and the Bic pen, the one who’d put the money in my purse. I told them. Just that she was fixed, that she would cooperate. Nothing more. They asked me to describe her.
Half an hour later Puma came into the garage, and just behind him was Rafa. My eyes filled with tears when I saw him and I ran to hug him. He seemed distant. So, the next day I went to his mother’s house on Calle Los Gladiolos and left a message with her: “I want to see you. It’s been too long.” My mother’s phone number was below in invisible ink. He never called.
They accepted my version with a certain reticence, I think, but they didn’t accuse me of anything. I was left in peace and disconnected. I hoped to be reincorporated after a few days. Above all, I needed a new identity. I requested one. I needed it for security reasons, I said. And I waited.