The Twilight Zone by Nona Fernández (inspirational books .txt) 📗

with him to talk. He didn’t want anyone to overhear them. Then, for the first time, Carol told his father what had happened to him when he was detained. He talked to him about the lower levels at AGA, the interrogations, the torture sessions, young Boris’s screams, his brother Lincoyán’s screams. He told him about the final pact that he had decided to sign with his enemies. He would collaborate with them if they let his brothers go, releasing them from any possibility of detention. And that was what happened. The Floreses were freed from danger in exchange for Carol’s soul. Carol was convinced that this was an act of salvation.

Did young Boris know this? Did Lincoyán? Did Fabio?

For the first time in a long time, Carol’s father recognized the son he once had. In those despairing eyes he recognized his son’s gaze. In those sad words he recognized his son’s voice. Everything that had remained hidden in the man returned from detention now surfaced. At last Carol was back, but only to say a final goodbye and be replaced, once and for all, by the fearsome Juanca.

The photograph that the man who tortured people is looking at is from that exact time, I imagine. Carol’s son is a few months old and he’s in his father’s arms, wearing those little white shoes. Carol is part Carol and part El Juanca in this shot. His smile is strange, uncomfortable, remote. The man who tortured people knows that expression. He recognizes it, because it’s tattooed on his own face.

Remember who I am, he hears from the photograph.

Remember where I was, remember what they did to me.

Carol Flores, or El Juanca, sometimes went to El Pelao Lito’s house for lunch. The two of them sat in armchairs, staring into space, as the children played over their outstretched legs. They ate bean stew, they smoked, they watched television, and they went out again on some covert operation. Each time they returned they seemed thinner, more tired, more broken down, more taciturn, more silent. This happened over and over again until one day they didn’t come back.

Young Boris never saw his brother Carol again. Neither did Lincoyán. Neither did Fabio, or their parents, or his wife, or the children. The Floreses left an empty chair at lunch and dinner. The soup grew cold once and for all.

The man who tortured people never saw Carol Flores or El Juanca again either.

The man who tortured people says that one night he and his fellow agents were brought in for a special operation. They were driven to a detention center, where his superiors were waiting for them in the midst of a cocktail party. There was pisco and pills and everybody drank and ate. When the drinks were finished they called in the “package”—that was the word they used, he said. The package was El Pelao Lito, handcuffed and blindfolded. He made a mistake, they were told, he was a traitor, you don’t play around with information, whose side was he on. The man who tortured people says he didn’t know what was happening, but he gathered that El Pelao Lito had done something bad, had betrayed the group by revealing some secret. That was why they forced him kicking and screaming into the trunk of a car and took him to the Cajón del Maipo. There, in the middle of the mountain night, they let him out and they shot him, just as he had done to so many of his own targets. Just as had been done to José Weibel, to Carlos Contreras Maluje. The man who tortured people says that he had to bind El Pelao Lito’s hands and feet and throw him into the river. The man who tortured people says that he was scared. For a moment it crossed his mind that the same thing could befall him some day. El Pelao Lito was his comrade, he was twenty-five years old. The man who tortured people had never imagined having to witness the death of one of his own at the hands of their group. He had never imagined what a fine line it was that separated his comrades from his enemies.

The man who tortured people says that a little while later he learned that Carol Flores, or El Juanca, had suffered the same fate. His body turned up in the river riddled with seventeen bullet holes, his fingers severed at the first joint, his spinal column snapped, and his genitals exploded.

The Floreses saw the photograph of the body many years after the man who tortured people gave his testimony. In the photograph, the Floreses recognized a son, a brother, a husband. It was him. Carol, not Juanca. He was missing his teeth, his forehead was beaten out of shape, but it was the Carol Flores they had always loved and looked for. Not the enemy, not the informant.

I remember another episode from The Twilight Zone. In it a man could choose a new face whenever he needed to. He was the so-called man of a thousand faces. He kept all of the faces inside, and depending on the context, he used whichever best fit the circumstances. If he had been on Okinawa he would have been a peaceful, happy neighbor until the war and then a savage murderer of his own family. If he had been in Chile in the seventies he would have been a happy municipal employee of La Cisterna or a young peasant from Papudo who dreamed of being a policeman or a sailor, and then a savage agent, willing to torture or turn in his loved ones.

How many faces can a human being contain?

What about young Boris? How many did he contain?

What about his brother Lincoyán?

What about the lawyer listening to the man who tortured people?

What about the man himself? What about me?

We crossed a bridge and the car turned left.

We drove