“So many intelligent reports for us to read! They know every-thing, they’re ‘political analysts’ and they write about power. Makes sense, since they’re smart and they’ve studied everything at the best universities in Europe and the United States. Sure, they understand everything, except for one thing: the power of fear. The intellectuals don’t know a thing about that. And we do. I’m plenty professional, you know me. The thing that traps a man who is naked, tied up, and blindfolded isn’t what will happen to his body. Although he imagines it, or believes he imagines it, he still has no idea what it means to have a jolt of electricity turn his body into tongues of fire. But with the tough ones, the well-trained ones, that only softens them, it only softens them up.”
A shiver runs down my spine. I can’t get air, I’m starting to gasp. He asks what’s wrong with me. “Nothing,” I say. He goes on:
“Interrogation is an art. I know how to bring anyone, anyone at all, to a place of desperation. There, he gives up, surrenders. Am I offending you?”
He goes quiet. My anxiety recedes. He takes a sandwich from the drawer, calmly unwraps the paper, peers at it, and sinks his teeth into it deliberately. A dribble of mayonnaise slides out of the corner of his mouth. He chews energetically, concentrated. He softens his tone:
“And no one escapes. No one. It’s a fact. It’s normal, human. That’s why they shouldn’t feel guilty.”
“I have to go, they must be looking for me,” I say.
“I have to protect you. It’s my duty.”
“Gato: I know this operation is authorized. Not only that: the order comes from above.”
“That’s the story Macha gave you, right?”
“I heard the conversation on the phone.”
He furrowed his brow.
“What’s that?”
“While I was waiting, I could hear the conversation.”
“Macha does shout on the phone. I’ll give you that.”
“Yes. I heard it loud and clear.”
He calls again on the internal phone. I hear the secretary’s voice on the other end. It’s taking a while, she asks him to be patient, C3.1 is on the phone with someone else and he’ll call back in a minute. He looks at me, lowers his eyes to the sandwich, and plants another precise and determined bite.
“No one escapes, or as Ronco would say, ‘ain’t no one.’ It’s a fact, a fact.” And he goes on as if we had all the time in the world. “I had one, maybe two, who didn’t. I remember a doctor from the FPMR. We’d just gotten started on him when he had an epileptic fit. Two of our doctors checked him and rechecked him. There was nothing wrong with him. A hysterical reaction, they said. Nothing we could do. That one didn’t talk at all. Exception that proves the rule. Every person has his weak point. It’s just a matter of finding it. Macha, for example, has Cristóbal. He lives for that kid. Since he split up with his wife, he’s had women but never a woman, you get me? Cristóbal is his unconditional. That kid Cristóbal’s best friend is his father. Sometimes he brings him here and takes him shooting at the firing range. Real bullets, you can hear them. He loves that damned kid a lot. He takes him out on his Harley, on long trips, you know; he takes him camping, or fishing down south, at Yelcho. Fly fishing. Macha really likes that. He loves to fish, Macha does.”
He delves into his left ear with his pinky finger and then observes the extracted wax with great attention. He goes on chewing zealously.
“What do you have to say? I feel like our adversaries are respectable. That’s what I think, and I’ve seen them at their worst, human garbage, the mother giving up her son or the son giving up his mother, all dignity lost. But even so, I consider them respectable. But the feeling is not reciprocated, you know? That hurts. I don’t like to walk around this neighborhood. I come here by bus every day. I don’t have a car. If there’s an emergency they send someone to pick me up. But normally, I come in and leave through these filthy streets that are a boiling cauldron of foul-smelling cars all squeezing in together and thousands of pedestrians who look like beggars. What my mother would say if she saw me go by on my way home from work! This godforsaken lot, the pigeon shit on the ground and on the bodywork of the cars, fucking up the paint on the undercover cars and taxis they use when they follow people. .” The mayonnaise slides down his chin. “And outside, in the honking horns and squealing breaks,” he goes on. “The litter, the leftover food in wet and stinking cardboard containers, the scraps of fruits and vegetables that fall from crates and rot in the streets, the vulgarity, you know? The crushed beer cans that no one picks up, the oil spots on the pavement with its tar patches, the walls with curse words scrawled on them and shredded posters stuck on top of other shredded posters, the kiosk where they sell cigarettes, peanuts, sweets, and chocolates in the middle of the machine racket, the evil whine of the pigeons and the piss left by skinny, sleepy cats, those skin-and-bone cats that are always stretching, and the dirty roofs, the black smoke from the bus engines, their breaks that screech and squeal and hurt your ears, the same tired little shop on the corner, with its television always on full volume, where they sell mote con huesillo and where for safety reasons I never set foot, though that’s where these sandwiches and my Pepsi come from, the worn-out noise of the old trucks, the air heavy and stinging from the nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide and the ozone and the cancerous soot from the diesel engines. .”
“Gato! I have to go. They’re waiting for me. It’s urgent. .”
He falls silent. He takes another bite of the sandwich. I can’t avoid seeing in his open mouth the results of his back molars’ indefatigable chewing. As for him, he seems to be squinting at something far away.
“What would my mother say if she saw me in the middle of the muck of this neighborhood!” And he looks at the ceiling. He wants me to feel sorry for him. At the same time, he’s being sincere. “She, who was such a lady; she made such delicate embroideries that my aunts, who were both older than her, were jealous, and they competed with her but were never able to match the lace on her immaculate tablecloths. If she were alive, could I stand this job? What could I tell her? Listen, Central owes so much to me. I wasn’t here before, you know that, I’ve already told you that; I wasn’t here when the worst things, the most gruesome, were happening, the things that were so horrible that lots of people can’t even believe they happened. And that’s what they expected back then, that no one or almost no one would believe the victims. And the ones closest to them, the ones who actually would believe, well, even better, because they were exactly the ones who had to be taught a lesson. That was before they created Central. I started this shitty job here. And they owe me a lot, hear? Even though I just follow orders same as everyone else on the chain of command, same as Flaco Artaza, who gives orders to me and to Macha, who started working here after I did. He hasn’t been in this for very long, when it comes down to it. And here, no one answers to himself. If they did it would be pure chaos, we’d all be fucked, tearing at each other’s throats. Get it? Chain of command. Sure. The Chain of Command gives us orders that we’d rather not get, right? I wasn’t made for this. I mean: I am not what I do. Because, what the fuck, these are our fellow countrymen, it’s really hard, see?” He drags his little voice, inviting my commiseration; he thinks it’s possible, he wants to be thought of as a victim. “But,” he says with a dignified gesture, “I’ve done my duty, I’ve obeyed. That’s my honor. I’m right where they’ve ordered me to be, down here in this sewer, no judgment. Responsibility lies with the ones who give us orders. I just have to carry them out. Verticality of command. Compartmenting. As it should be. As I was taught. Though of course, I still manage to find out what goes on around here. But I haven’t invented anything new, no new techniques or procedures. It’s not like I enjoy what I do, and I go around thinking up new shit, you get me? You’ve seen it. You have to hold back the nausea sometimes. . But this is what I have to do, and if it wasn’t me it would be someone else. The order is there, it has to be carried out. Even so, when it comes to me, no one wants to see me. No one here inside, I mean.