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

It’s his name, he hears it clearly a second time. This isn’t a nightmarish fantasy, or an arbitrary invention of mine to make the scene more suspenseful. It’s the honest truth. For some reason the policeman is calling just him. Him alone, no other passenger.

The man who tortured people and the lawyer look at each other.

Both turn pale when they hear the call.

No longer nonchalant or feigning indifference, the man who tortured people puts out his cigarette and approaches the officer. The vision of a gravestone with his name on it appears to him as he pulls his fake ID from his jacket pocket again. Andrés Antonio Valenzuela Morales, chiseled on a bleak and lonely gravestone that he can see clearly in some cemetery of the future. Or maybe it isn’t a gravestone and it’s just his naked, bullet-riddled corpse borne along by the river’s current.

Not nonchalant in the slightest, and utterly unable to feign indifference, the lawyer watches the man who tortured people and the officer. The two of them exchange words he can’t hear. He senses the moment has come to step in. He feels an urge to vomit; maybe his vision clouds. He doesn’t see a gravestone or his bullet-riddled body. The future is simply blank. In the grip of this emptiness, he walks toward the man who tortured people, who is still talking to the officer. The rapid beat of his heart governs his steps, his breathing, his thoughts. I’m a lawyer of the Vicariate, he’ll say. I won’t let anything happen to Agent Valenzuela. But he has yet to speak when the man who tortured people pockets his ID and gestures decisively for him to retreat.

The lawyer changes direction. He doesn’t slacken his pace or momentum, he just turns, as if he intended to head somewhere else. Meanwhile, the man who tortured people is saying goodbye to the agent, who goes back into his office.

Two cigarettes lit urgently at the same time.

One raised to the lips of the man who tortured people, the other to the lawyer’s lips.

Tension begins to release its grip on their muscles as they inhale and exhale tobacco smoke. The man who tortured people has no way of explaining what happened, but from a distance he tries to transmit signs of reassurance. His ticket was booked twice, so his fake name was on the customs officers’ list twice. A small misunderstanding they wanted to clear up, that’s all.

The driver announces that they can get back on the bus. The suitcases are already loaded on top and all the passengers begin to climb aboard. The man who tortured people and the lawyer get in separately, avoiding making eye contact with each other, making no signs that might be detected. When everyone is in their seats, the bus pulls away and sets off on its route, this time through Argentine territory. Chile is left behind. An unsettling sense of freedom begins to rise through every pore of his skin, but he won’t give himself permission to feel it. He knows there’s still a long way to go. Hours of travel by bus and then by plane. Years of life. He’d rather distract himself by looking out the window. The landscape unfurls before them, even more luminous. Light bounces off the snow and everything goes white like in those absurd movies where people go to heaven when they die, with hopes of a new life.

Will there be a new life for him?

Will he be able to change the shadows of things to come?

He wants to believe he will, that he has the right to a change of skin. But as he’s thinking, he looks out the window and sees that same old raven again, flying over the bus and shrieking louder than ever. Nevermore, he hears from his seat. Nevermore.

I’m living a new life.

Hiding from the world in my very own rat trap.

I don’t use email, I don’t give out my address,

no one knows how to find me.

How you were able to write me, I don’t know.

How you were able to get a letter to me, I don’t know.

Why do you want to write a book about me?

I’ve answered so many questions in the past.

Will I have to keep answering questions in the future?

I don’t have much time.

I know sooner or later they’ll come.

No matter where I hide.

No matter how long it’s been.

It’ll be quick, maybe even before I know it.

They’ll have the red eyes of a devil dreaming.

They’ll find me here or wherever I am,

and one of them will be willing

to stain their pants with my blood.

Maybe it’ll be you.

Maybe you’ve done it already, there in the future.

Nothing is real enough for a ghost.

What else can I tell you?

I gather mushrooms in the woods, I read in the evenings.

And at night I dream of rats.

ESCAPE ZONE

I remember her at the back of the classroom, sitting at one of those wooden desks in the last row. The science teacher is taking attendance, ready to tell us about Major Yuri Gagarin. Or maybe it isn’t him, maybe it’s the Spanish teacher, who has us reading Charles Dickens. Or the math teacher, or the art teacher, or any of the other teachers, reading our last names from the class roster as we listen and call out in reply. Elgueta, here. Fernández, here. And she always comes after me on the list. González, here. Her roster number was fifteen and her full name could be read embroidered in red thread on the bib of her checkered smock: Estrella González Jepsen.

Those were days of numbers and last names. That’s essentially what we were, a last name and a number on a long list of children. That long list was added to another long list, which in turn was added to yet another long list, and all those lists together were the classes that lined