“Seeing that the arrival of this Napoleon coincided with the legend, the miners smiled in relief. Everything was happening as in a marvelous dream. The Indian suggested we open a few bottles to make a toast in honor of us, the Holy Family. We drank a glass of wine. Then the workers hugged us with great emotion and accompanied us to the main door. When they began to open it, I felt my legs weaken. I lost strength and had to ask Seraphim to carry Almo. I felt unbearable shame. I had never been a coward and didn’t understand why now, when I needed the most courage so I could be an example, I was feeling dizzy. I took the arm Rosauro offered me and mumbled to him: ‘Friend, for what you venerate most, keep me from falling. I don’t want the comrades to realize my weakness and to think I’m having doubts. I, more than anyone else, have faith in the power of my son.’
“‘Don’t worry, Teresa,’ he whispered into my ear. ‘I’ll accompany you, holding you up until the spell passes. Be brave.’
“And, giving the strikers an explanation I didn’t hear because I was holding back my vomit, he walked out onto the street with us. We were four human beings against an army armed to the teeth. Under my sweating feet, the ground moved like the deck of a ship on the high seas. My dry tongue had turned into a piece of wood. Seraphim held up the child and spread his legs to show his two sexes. I took a deep breath and concentrated my will, trying not to faint. Almo smiled. I waited for him to shine like a sun so the colonel would fall as if struck by lightning. Suddenly Rosauro took me by the back of my neck and brutally forced me to run toward the soldiers. I was so weak I couldn’t resist. When the soldiers, smiling, opened a path for us, Silva Bernard howled: ‘Open fire, God damn it!’ And a cannon shell blew my lover and my son to pieces. It had to be a nightmare. The Indian was laughing. There on the street, the flesh of my two beloved beings was falling in shreds like a slow rain.
“The machine guns began to bark. The soldiers tossed hand grenades and tear gas. They put on masks. They fixed bayonets. The cannon thundered again. The school door became a sun of splinters. I forgot my name, forgot where I was. An overpowering need to sleep made my eyelids swell. I knew my heart was tearing apart, but I felt that pain as if it were distant, above; my body transformed into the surface of a black well where my awareness was submerged. Soldiers and sailors dashed into the school. Everything became mixed up. Shouts of rage and agony. Packs of dogs coming to lick up the blood. Men, women, and children shot to pieces on the upper terraces. Miners running through the street with their guts in their hands. Brutish soldiers finishing off the wounded with knives. Masked men in gray dragging corpses by the hair. I begin to faint.
“The Indian carries me like a package, enters the administration building, goes upstairs to an office, locks the door, throws me onto an armchair, lifts my skirts, tears my panties off, mauls my breasts, and possesses me three times in a row. I vomit in his face. He laughs and drags me by the foot to the bathroom. He takes off his clothes, finishes undressing me, turns on the shower, and under the cold water rapes me again. Whistling a popular song, ‘We Who Love Each Other So,’ he brings me back to the armchair.
“I fall into a deep sleep. When Rosauro wakes me up, it’s already nightfall. I barely recognize him. He’s no longer an Indian or one-eyed, his skin is much lighter, his hair is short, he’s wearing a suit of English cut, a striped shirt, and a green tie with a clip in the form of the Chilean seal. Seeing my surprise, he whirls like a fashion model, guffaws aggressively, takes me by the waist, and forces me to look out the window. While the soldiers, with innocent faces, pile corpses onto garbage trucks, he, standing behind me, sexually assaults me like a wild animal.
“Hatred mixes with suffering, but pleasure, a pleasure only located in my sex, increases, and I can do nothing to stop it. It is like a soft crab that grows in my guts, stretching its sickening legs out further and further. My body betrays me. I explode, want to die, punish myself. I try to jump out the window. He punches my breasts and tosses me, splayed out, onto the armchair. He penetrates me again and, with no modesty whatsoever, roars and drools until he ejaculates.
“I scream, insulting him. Then he ties my feet together and puts handcuffs on my wrists. He pulls over a chair, sits opposite me, and lights a cigarette: ‘You won’t get anywhere screaming, Teresa. No one will come. I suppose they expect me to kill you. There’s still room in the last garbage truck. You must be wanting to die as well. But I’m going to disillusion you. I’ve decided to keep you for a while. The moment I saw you breastfeeding the baby in that miserable scene, I decided to get control over you. A Russian like you, with huge tits, a big ass, and skin whiter than your own milk — that’s not something you find every day in this country.
“‘I requested you as a prize if I carried out my task. The government has wanted to cut off that damned Recabarren for a long time. With his poisonous newspapers, taking advantage of the eternal discontent of the poor slobs, he was churning up political agitation that was very dangerous for the mining companies. Even though it would have been easy, it wasn’t convenient to assassinate him. Transformed into a martyr, he would end up unifying the workers around his myth. Better to defame him. The secret police sent me disguised as an Indian so I could catch him in something bad. I followed him for months, shadowed his every footstep, but it was useless. The bastard is straighter than my dick. He even looks like a saint. He doesn’t smoke and doesn’t drink, so he won’t assist bourgeois business. If you offer him cocaine, he rejects it in a rage. He’s faithful to his girlfriend and has no children we would have liked to lead into degradation. He never goes to parties and only likes to read. This shitty traitor is an enlightened nut. I was about to throw in the towel when I saw you clean your kid’s ass. At first his double sex disgusted me. Then I was happy, because a genial plan came to me, a plan that would win me a promotion, money, vacation, and your ass. I made up a legend in the asshole style of the Mapuche Indians, and you and your husband, like all parents who just drool over their kids, swallowed the hook.
“‘I sent you to Iquique for four months to have time to spread the story among the superstitious miners and convince them, showing them the photo of the monster, that he was God incarnate. I communicated with my chiefs, we coordinated the action with the mine administrator, the city, and the army, and the plan was set. We managed to eliminate all the strike leaders. The dragon lost its two thousand heads. The mass of workers, who only think about fornicating and getting drunk, will be happy with a pay increase of a few pesos. Recabarren will need many years to recruit new disciples. And what you thought was cowardice was the effect of a sleeping drug I put in your wine during the last toast. I’m talking to you, but I don’t want you to answer. What you think or feel doesn’t matter a bit to me. So I can make good use of your body, I want you to keep your mouth shut. And if you do say something, I’ll knock your teeth down your throat. We’re going to spend two months by the sea, far away from the world, in a chalet they’ve lent me, located between Iquique and Tocopilla. I’m going to have you at least six times a day. When I get tired of you, I’ll sell you so you can work as a whore in Peru or Argentina. If you do everything I want, you can grow old in those slimy bars, but if you make trouble, I’ll blow your brains out.’
“I gave in. Something in my brain had broken. I stopped thinking or having emotions. I assumed the role of his faithful bitch — to the point that when my executioner went to buy provisions, leaving me locked up, I whined by the door until he came back. I had to follow him wherever he went. When he cleaned his pistol, I stretched out at his feet, naked, waiting to be raped. I actually licked his boots clean and smiled when he peed on my face.