No one will go with you, of course. Nothing you’ve done before will be worth anything to you. And from now on there’s no purpose, no task, not even the smallest one stays with you. For this voyage you won’t bring a suitcase. I can feel my fear. To see death a step away, waiting for you like an abyss just a yard and a half away, and to be the one who’s going to fall — it’s atrocious, I tell you, just horrifying. I didn’t want to die when Canelo fell in combat. Now either, you know; I don’t want to die now, either. Even though when I was healthy, I did. And they’re taking my life from me one bite at a time.
Do not go gentle into that good night. / Old age should burn and rave at close of day; / rage, rage against the dying of the light. Dylan Thomas. What do you know, I still have some memory left.
That’s why you’ve come all the way to Ersta, Stockholm, to listen to me. I’m not kidding myself. You’ve come before it’s too late. . You’re a crow with an ear for a beak. No one can understand this story. And no one would want to. It’s useless. Only the edifying fable with its moral will remain, only the husk of the facts, the pornography of horror. We know that. But what gave it meaning, what made it human — that dies with us. I don’t know how you’ll use what I tell you, though I’m curious. I don’t know if it will help you at all. I don’t think a novel should repeat reality. Perhaps you should just imagine me on your own. You want me to talk to you about fingerprints, lock picks, chases, car bombs, manhunts, shootouts, and torture. But in the end what you’re looking for is a moral adventure tale. That’s what will get you a publisher. People love a story that confirms their prejudices. To recognize what they’ve already seen on TV: that’s what they like. The truth is too disturbing, thorny, too contradictory and horrible. Truth is immoral. It shouldn’t be printed. You won’t write what I tell you. You’re not going to like what you hear at all. I can read it in your eyes. Hypocrite lecteur, mon semblable, mon frère: Hypocritical reader, my double, my brother!
Ha, ha! Why am I laughing? You were saying you wanted my version. Don’t ask me to give you yours, then. You have to listen to my story. That’s why you came to Ersta. No one made you come here. You know what? I can smell your contempt, your virtuous-souled contempt.
Remember, when Dante reaches the bottom of Hell he finds the Devil crying. But he’s still the Devil, and he doesn’t repent. If he did, he would be in Purgatory, and he would have hope. The Devil doesn’t repent and yet he cries, he cries hopelessly. There’s something undignified about repentance and the desire for forgiveness, something Christianoid that bothers me. The Devil, even in defeat, stays faithful to himself and to his own contradiction. He punishes those he inspired and who have followed in his footsteps, he punishes them day and night, as he himself is punished. He is the supreme traitor.
SEVEN
Hate is human. There is nothing I don’t hate. Tomasa hates only the other side. Not our brothers, not the ones who placed the bomb and blew up the bridge, not the ones she hid and who later fled, she tells me, leaving her at the mercy of these rabid dogs. I don’t know what cell she’s in. We try to maintain our compartmentalization. But I do know that they’ve brought her face to face with Chico Escobar and with Vladimir Briceño. There must be microphones in here, because she whispers it in my ear. “They want to know about the cash,” she says.
I passed Briceño in the hallway. I’m sure they did that intentionally. His nose was broken, his shirt soaked in blood. We did as we’d been taught: we looked at each other like strangers. It isn’t easy. How do two strangers look at each other in a place like that? Your surprise can betray you — the unexpected pleasure of recognizing a friend, though he’s in the same situation as you — and so can an overly studied indifference. . They’re very alert to any signs.
“If they would just let me work,” Tomasa says to me. “If they would just let me use my body for something. If only I could be a whore, I could do something and I’d at least be that, a whore. I want to prostitute myself,” she says. You won’t be able to understand that feeling. Even I can’t understand it now, but I did back then. Who could I have been in those days?
If only they would let me shower. That’s all I ask. As the days pass you can’t imagine how important that becomes to me. I can’t stand my own smell. Let me change these stinking clothes. Who knows how many people used them before me. They keep us in this basement in these gray, foul-smelling sweat suits and underneath them, nothing. I just want to wear underpants; I want to put on a bra, that’s what I want. Clothes never used to interest me. But now. . If they would only let me go out in the yard for a little while to feel the warmth of the sun on my face.
They’ve said to Tomasa: “Show us your tits, fucking cunt!” And she has lifted her shirt and done as they said. “Your nipples are really long,” they told her. “Your nipples are skinny and ugly,” they told her. And that time they didn’t rape her. Me, I have pretty nipples. Tomasa screamed and they made me listen. She started to screech the moment they tied her up. I try to get used to it. It’s impossible. She shouts like a wild boar. According to her, it protected her; according to her, it satisfied them and they weren’t as hard on her. I’ve told her how I feel about underwear, what I would give for a Triumph bra. She doesn’t care at all about that. As long as they don’t rape her again, she doesn’t care about anything. I want a bra. I feel so skinny. . Who could buy me a bra? It doesn’t matter if they have sex with you, Tomasa tells me, what matters is that they don’t damage your insides. Gato rewards Rat or Ronco, she tells me, he gives them the go-ahead when he feels like it. Tomasa lent me a little mirror the other day. Somehow she gets her hands on those kinds of things. I saw the circles under my eyes, my sunken face, my elongated ears poking out from my greasy hair. My ears never used to stick out like that. But they do now. My breasts are smaller and more flaccid. Or am I imagining that? Surely that’s why I don’t interest them; they don’t even want me to show them. I can feel their nondesire. I’ve heard that some women are forced to dance and they end up naked as showgirls, dancing and crying, naked as effigies of showgirls. In spite of everything, Tomasa and I laugh. I don’t remember about what. But there are things we whisper about that make us burst out laughing.
I concentrate on trying to figure out what time it is, on following the sun between the bars of our cell’s little window and measuring the shadows on the damp walls. The task keeps me busy. Tomasa got her hands on a deck of cards. That keeps us busy. She knows some tricks that amaze me. Tomasa tells me she imagines things, tells herself stories, dreams that she’s free, that she’s at her mother and father’s house, that she’s at a barbecue with high school girlfriends, that she’s climbed up to place a charge on a high-voltage tower, or the column of a bridge; she dreams she’s shooting at the enemy. That’s how she kills time. I try to do the same, I try to imagine I’m crawling along on knees and elbows, soaked to the skin, in the Nahuelbuta mountain range, or with my heavy pack over my shoulder hiding out in the mountains and covering my tracks, or conducting a Vietnamese maneuver, or stashing an FAL rifle — one of those that donkey-kicks your shoulder when you fire — well-oiled and loaded in a hidden compartment under the floor of a house, or I imagine myself excavating a dugout to sleep in under the snow. I never manage to hold these images in my mind. And then, when they take Tomasa for another interrogation, her outbursts are truly frightening. She’s already told them everything, surely. Why do they keep working on her? And I have to listen to it. And when my turn comes, they repeat their instructions: Raise your hand if you want to talk.