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

M remembers this news story well. He was a boy, twelve years old, and he lived very close to Calle Fuenteovejuna, where one of the MIR safe houses was located. M says that it was early, around 8:00 p.m., when explosions were heard in the neighborhood. Truth be told, in those days explosions were not infrequent. His mother’s policy was to lock the apartment door whenever there was a blackout or a helicopter flew overhead or the sound of an explosion was heard, whether near or far from the building where they lived. So the door to M’s apartment was swiftly locked, as an airtight security measure, and they carried on with the evening routine. Setting the table, serving dinner, laying out clothes and school things for the next day.

M says that he expected to hear something about it on the news, but as far as he remembers, there was nothing. Later that night, a news flash interrupted the scheduled programming. This must have been when he saw the same news segment we watched in the special. A reporter states that at 1330 Calle Fuenteovejuna in the district of Las Condes, three radicals, two men and a woman, were killed after a dramatic confrontation ending in a big blaze. When the radicals realized they were trapped by the police, they decided to burn all the compromising documents they kept at the safe house, starting a fire that had yet to be extinguished at the time of reporting.

M must have seen that house when he was a boy riding around the neighborhood on his skateboard. A single-story white brick house with a small front yard and a barred gate. But he never noticed it. His eyes saw it but his brain didn’t process the information. It wasn’t until that night, sitting in front of his eighties television set, that he followed instructions and concentrated on the house, on it alone, and on what the reporter’s voice was saying, like everybody else watching the news.

Lying in bed, we watched the news report just as the whole country must have watched it in 1983. We observed the flurry of activity outside the house in flames. The reporter says that the radicals were intercepted by national police agents at a roadblock a few blocks from the house. The reporter says that when they were surprised they drew their guns and fled into hiding, shooting as they went. The reporter says that from inside the house, the radicals shot to kill, initiating a dramatic gun battle that fortunately hadn’t injured a single man in uniform. The reporter is flanked by flares as he talks, his voice scrambled by the sound of radio transmitters, the voices of firemen, other reporters, police officers and agents walking past.

I sat up in bed, moving closer to the screen to get a better look. Everything was faded and gray, like my memories of that time. I scrutinized every inch of the picture, aware that I shouldn’t overlook any corner of it, any bit of scenery. I examined every face passing before me, following each with obsessive interest, intent as a spy, because in the middle of all that activity, camouflaged in the shadows and smoke, perhaps caught for a second by the camera or hidden in the wings, I knew he was there. The man who tortured people.

Let’s open that door again. Behind it we’ll find another dimension. A world forever hidden by the old trick that makes us look the other way. A vast, dark territory that seems distant but is as close as the reflection we see each day in the mirror. You’re crossing to the other side of the glass, is what the intense narrator of my favorite series would have said. You’re entering the twilight zone.

The man who tortured people says that on September 7, 1983, they were summoned to a major operation. Around 8:00 p.m., he and a group of sixty agents arrived at the parking lot of a supermarket. As the Santiaguinos of the upper city did their shopping and loaded their cars with groceries, the sixty agents awaited instructions. The man who tortured people says that a CNI jeep drove up, mounted with a .30-caliber machine gun. A reineta, he calls it. A national police officer explained that the night’s objective was three radicals at a safe house on Calle Fuenteovejuna. Their names were Sergio Peña, Lucía Vergara, and Arturo Villavela, also known as El Coño Aguilar, a key figure in the MIR organization. Those responsible for the death of General Carol Urzúa had already been arrested, but this action was deliberately aimed at eliminating the leadership of the movement and sending a clear message about who was in charge. The man who tortured people says that the national police officer made it clear that he didn’t want a single bastard to come out of that house alive. That’s what he said: no bastard is coming out of that house alive, I want everybody dead. Those were his instructions. The man who tortured people says the sixty agents left the supermarket and moved on to Calle Fuenteovejuna.

This is where M enters the story. Surely the sixty agents drove past M’s building in their trucks. Surely, as my mother-in-law was making dinner up on the thirteenth floor, the sixty agents were positioning themselves a few meters from the white brick house at 1330, so close to M’s building. There they set up the .30-caliber machine gun capable of firing a thousand rounds per minute and they evacuated the neighboring houses, staging the scene for the execution. Surely, as M was setting the table and laying out the forks and spoons, the sixty agents were listening over the radio for the official to give the order to start shooting.

Maybe: what were Sergio Peña, Lucía Vergara, and Arturo Villavela doing inside?

Maybe they were making dinner too. Maybe Sergio was setting the table.