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

to me without mentioning her name. I expect I’ll be ushered into some office or waiting room, but no. Suddenly I’m in the middle of a meeting, the main subject of which is the arrival of gypsies in the neighborhood. The comrade is very upset because she was fined by an inspector of the district of La Cisterna for an addition that she’s building on her house, which is nearby, in the same development. But no one has said anything to her neighbor, one of the gypsies who’ve moved into the neighborhood, about the construction of a bay window overlooking her yard, which according to her is completely unauthorized and illegal. The comrade is sure the municipal inspectors have been bought off by the gypsies. That’s the only way she can understand why they’re never fined or made to pay taxes. The director of the center accepts her complaint and tells the neighbor he’ll bring it to the comrade councilwoman and the comrade mayor himself. The director of the center has his own complaint to file because people have been throwing dead rats onto the grounds of the Former Nido 20 Memorial and they’ve put glue in the front lock, which is why it’s broken and they have to secure the gate with a chain, so he’ll attach the comrade’s complaint to his personal complaint. Surely the comrade councilwoman and the comrade mayor will attend to their requests. After a cordial farewell, the comrade exits the memorial with the director, and I’m left alone in this house that was once a detention and torture center, with the photograph of Comrade Yuri staring at me from the mantelpiece.

The place is messy. Dust, lots of chairs scattered around the empty space, a sideboard full of old magazines, and a screen covered in colored paper. Displayed on it are photocopies of the faces of other prisoners with their names and nicknames written in black felt-tip marker. El Quila Leo, Comrade Díaz, Comrade Diego. All the sheets are stuck to the display with tape and risk coming unstuck. El Quila Leo looks at me a bit crookedly, listing to the right, about to fall to the floor. Everything is very precarious, handmade, like some kind of school report. Next to the painting of Comrade Yuri is one of Allende, another of Neruda, and finally one of General Bachelet, the president’s father, after whom the memorial is named.

The comrade director comes back in and explains that as a human rights organization they offer services to the community. They act as a nexus between local residents and the mayor, and they also host biomagnetism sessions in the back room, offered by a therapist comrade for a modest fee. Right now the comrade is treating a Peruvian woman who has stomach cancer, he says. The comrade director tells me he’s a taxi driver, which is why his taxi is parked in the house’s front entrance. By night he drives the taxi and by day he runs the memorial. It isn’t easy. There’s no funding, and the Communist comrades aren’t happy that he’s in charge. All the prisoners who came through Nido 20 were Communists, so the party can’t understand why a socialist comrade like him is the director of the memorial. It strikes them as inappropriate. They don’t like him parking his taxi here, either. After apologizing for the mess, the comrade director offers to show me the house.

The man who tortured people says that Don Alonso Gahona, Comrade Yuri, spent long sessions in the room where I am now. It was the designated location for torture. A small space, once a laundry room. The floor is red tiles with white grout, like the ones in my kitchen. There’s a window that faces the street, directly across from another window in the house across the street. Taped to the walls are a couple of posters with drawings of different forms of torture. They’re illustrations by the comrades who survived this room. On one I read sub-marino. Next to the handwritten word I see the drawing of a naked man with his head in a bucket of water or maybe urine. Two men are holding him down. From the drawing I understand that the intent was to cause the detainee to come close to drowning. On the poster next to it I read piscina con hielo. Here the drawing shows another man, naked and bound, in a tub full of ice. In the drawing, there are random letters around the man’s body. They don’t mean anything, they’re just there as a kind of sign, a secret code that I don’t understand and the comrade director can’t explain. On the floor of the room is a little metal bed frame that might be a child’s. The comrade director explains that in fact it is a child’s cot. It was the only thing they could get to represent the frame that the torturers used for strapping down their prisoners and administering electric shocks.

The man who tortured people says this is what they did to Comrade Yuri. They strapped him to the parrilla, as they called those metal frames, and they beat him and shocked him. The man who tortured people says that after a long session they hung him in the shower of the bathroom that the comrade director is showing me now. It’s a small bathroom, barely big enough for the two of us, tiled in blue and green with a quite tasteful sink and mirror, that’s what I think when I walk in. Once upon a time somebody must have chosen them with care. Once upon a time somebody must have considered how nice they would look in their house’s bathroom. Once upon a time somebody bought them and installed them and used them. Someone washed their hands in this sink. Someone brushed their hair and put on makeup in front of this mirror. And yet, the whole sixties-ish ensemble that goes so well with the tiles