The Spartan lived there as a lodger. The problem was that there were other lodgers, two students, and, of course, the widow who owned the house and who knew nothing about the clandestine activities of the “Prince of Wales.” That’s all they had managed to find out. We had to avoid innocent deaths, and we had to take him alive.
He came serenely around the corner. He was three blocks away from us and he was coming closer, wearing the same blue jacket, common and worn, as he had in the restaurant at the market. I recognized him right away: his physical solidity, the poise of a man who walks with confidence through the world. “That’s him!” I exclaimed. I passed the binoculars to Macha and he sat watching the Spartan as he walked closer to us. Then he gave them to Iris, and she watched him for a while, too. The Spartan stopped in the doorway of the house, inapprehensive, and took a key from his pants pocket; he looked mechanically to the right and left, and went in. He did not act like the professional I expected. He didn’t check his surroundings the way he should have. He did not attentively note the presence of the old Ford truck and the Toyota parked behind it. That carelessness kept him from sensing the threat.
Then we got out of the Toyota, walked to an alley and climbed up onto a roof that didn’t have a steep incline. The terrain had been studied. Iris and I went up. Macha helped us, but he stayed below. We crawled, Iris ahead of me, until we were on the house next to the Spartan’s. I don’t know how no one woke up. The zinc roof made noise. From our position we could see the yard, lit up by two street-lights, and a wing of the L-shaped house. We saw a light on at the back. Iris was very attentive. “The bathroom,” she told me in a tiny voice I could barely hear. “The pension’s shared bathroom,” she said.
Do you want another glass of raspberry juice? It’s good, go on, have another one. Now, as I tell you this, one thing stands out to me: the Spartan had to share a bathroom. And what did I feel at the moment? Nothing. Except I was nervous, except I was shaking. That light went out and another one came on next door. “The bedroom,” Iris told me. The second light went out. Iris looked at her watch. We waited for a long minute to go by. Iris stood up without making a sound and flashed a small flashlight to signal. She looked at her watch. And the wait continued. “Now, thirty minutes,” she whispered to me. “Until he’s asleep.” We couldn’t talk or move. In situations like that my back starts to itch, a leg will go to sleep, I yawn or start sneezing. All of that happened to me on that damned roof. Not to Iris, of course, who chastised me with the disdain in her oily eyes.
Suddenly, she checked the time, stretched out her neck, and slowly stood up, flexible and silent as a panther, until she was crouched behind the cornice. I imitated her. From her new position, she drew her CZ and removed the safety. At that same instant, a footstep scraped the sidewalk. After another silence, a slight metallic groan sounded. Iris didn’t take her eyes from the room with the light turned out. You couldn’t see anything. The house was silent. But any experienced ear could clearly hear the sound of a lock pick searching for the combination. Until the lock gave way and the door opened. Light, very soft steps barely sounded on the wooden floor. A single, small circle of intense light flickered, advancing through the interior of the house. It was getting closer to the room where the light had been extinguished minutes earlier. Iris stretched out her neck and took her weapon in both hands, her nose sniffing at the night, her eyes scrutinizing the movements of that solitary beam of light.
A thud, a kick to the door suddenly broke the calm of the night. Then we heard a revolver fire, a window was smashed to smithereens, shouts; the circle of light turned, searching, and there was another shot. There was a tense pause during which I heard only my heart reverberating in its cage. And then, machine-gun fire from an AKM.
“They fucked us!” Iris shouted without looking at me.
Another burst of fire.
THIRTY-NINE
Iris raised her arms unhurriedly, aiming her gun with both hands, and waited. I saw a shadow run through the yard toward the back. It knelt down and covered the others who were following, shooting. Then it was relieved by another shadow and it took off running. They weren’t just students, those two students. They knew how to fight. Iris calmly took aim. There, with her sharp face, she looked like a fox. I think I’ve told you she was an expert shot. The best of the team. When it reached the wall, one of the shadows seemed to take a wrong step, stopped short, faltering close to a streetlight, and slammed onto the pavement: Iris. I wanted to imitate her.
Just as we’d been taught, I didn’t put my sights on the precise spot of the other figure, but rather a little ahead; I fired, but my shadow kept running. I had missed. In the middle of the noise and confusion I recognized the Spartan from his way of moving. He had already climbed the wall and he was getting away over the roof of the house behind. It was him. I didn’t feel any guilt, none, not even when I pointed him out to Iris. My heart was pounding as I imagined what would happen next. The other shadow let itself fall, sliding down over the zinc roofing. And the Spartan kept going; unstable, taking hesitant steps, he kept moving over the treacherous roofs. I wanted to see how they got him alive. I laughed, a peal of uncontrollable laughter I couldn’t suppress. Then he disappeared, followed by a burst of gunfire. We slid down from the roof and took off running. A red Datsun passed us at full speed toward Avenida Dublé Almeyda. “I’m sure he stole that Datsun,” Iris told me. The Spartan had broken through the cordon.
Macha was waiting for us in the Toyota with its motor running. He was dirty, his hair was disheveled, and he had a cut on his forehead. The traffic on Dublé Almeyda, though scarce at that hour, protected the Spartan. He was alone. We chased him southward down Vespucio. As he drove, blood dripped down from Macha’s eyebrow and into his eye. Iris tied a handkerchief around his head. The cars we passed seemed to be standing still. That’s how fast we were going. The Spartan seemed to be about to turn east, but then he broke fast to the west, tires squealing, and took off down Avenida Grecia. We couldn’t shoot at him because of the other cars. We couldn’t. I would have liked to get him with my still-virgin CZ. My heart was in my throat. I was someone else; I was unhinged, blinded. Before we reached Vicuña Mackenna, the Spartan threw a hand grenade out the window, and it exploded just a few yards from our Toyota. The splinters smashed our windshield. At the corner, he turned left, tires screeching, across four lanes of cars going in the opposite direction on Grecia, and he headed south on Vicuña Mackenna. He left a swarm of horns, brakes, and tangled cars behind him. Smoke and the smell of burnt rubber.
We lost him, and that’s where he made a mistake: he should have turned onto a different street. For some reason he kept going full speed down Vicuña Mackenna. As soon as we managed to get free of the tangle of cars, Macha floored the accelerator of that beefed-up 4×4 with its big pistons and augmented carburetor, and soon we saw the tail of the Datsun again. We were gaining ground. Iris drew her gun, looking for the right angle with half her body out the window. We got close to the Datsun, and on his second try, Macha managed to bump it close to the rear wheel. It was a technique they’d taught us at the training camp in La Rinconada, though I never thought it would be useful in action. But it worked.
The Datsun went up onto the sidewalk, sped a few yards farther, barely missing a tree, scraped loudly against a wall, veering side to side. Just then we heard a peremptory voice on the car’s radio that startled me: “You are under orders from your superiors to stop the Toyota immediately and cease the chase. Do you copy? You are under orders from your superiors . . .” it repeated. The Spartan’s Datsun made it back onto the street and lost us, fleeing southward.
A silver Volvo pulled up in front of us. Macha got out and went over to it, his black leather jacket half open. Iris turned off the motor. Macha slammed the Volvo’s windshield with the butt of his CZ. The door opened very slowly and a slender, distinguished, serene form appeared—Flaco. I had recognized his voice, of course. Macha tucked his gun behind him, under his belt. We coul
d hear his dark voice as he looked up at Flaco: “We’ve got some fucking scared shitless, fat-ass generals around here. And you, Flaco, you’re one of them now? Are you listening to me?” Flaco was looking over Macha’s head with a vague, indefinite expression and a cold, steady smile that I didn’t recognize. But his gestures had the same calm as always as he began explaining something to Macha.
“I’m telling you . . .” Iris was saying to me. “Let’s see, how many times has this happened to us? Macha always does this shit. He goes off on his own, and then they de-authorize him from above. Why did we go in with so few people? . . .”
Then the figure of Gato came into my mind, downcast, his hands in his coat pockets, dragging his feet while we waited for the heavy door to open.
FORTY
The Volvo left and the operation was considered terminated. Macha took out the first aid kit, cut a piece of gauze with his Swiss army knife, opened the bottle of peroxide, and, looking at himself in the Toyota’s mirror, cleaned his wound. It was a superficial cut, but there were little shards of glass in it. Iris helped him get them out with the tweezers on the same pocketknife. One splinter had gone in sideways and when it was forced out, it tore the flesh with its irregular rhombus shape. Iris, who was shining a flashlight on it, had trouble getting it out. Macha put a few drops of iodine on it, applied a bandage, straightened his clothes, combed his hair, and happily invited us for beers at a nearby dive that he knew would be open at that hour. It was on the same avenue to the south, near stop number 20 at Calle Santa Amalia, he told us, right across from a phone booth. He would have to go back to Central later on to file a report on what had happened. Then, Lisandro Pérez Olmedo would have to appear, like so many times before, in the appropriate police station, number 18, and make the required declaration: “In circumstances that the individual XX, identity number such-and-such, ignoring the order to freeze, fled through the back yard shooting an AKM, it was necessary to neutralize him, for which I used my service weapon . . .” He started to laugh.
Lisandro Pérez Olmedo still had time for a beer. He didn’t seem worried about the declaration he would later stamp with his signature and that would then be archived in the case files in the Tenth Third Criminal Court of Santiago. Iris offered to go herself, since any ballistic study would show that the shot came from the roof and not the ground. Lisandro Pérez Olmedo rejected the argument with another laugh. “Who says I didn’t go up on the roof? You, off to bed after this,” he told her. “That’s an order,” he told her.
We were drinking a few beers, as I said, in a diner on Calle Santa Amalia. Through the window I could see a forsaken phone booth next to a broken streetlight that offered no light. When Iris asked him: why the order from above, and what had happened with Flaco? Macha made a disdainful gesture, wrinkling his brow, and took a long swallow of beer. “They’re going to put a citation on your service record,” Iris told him. “It’s really bad for your career.” Macha twisted his mouth in the same disdainful scowl. A drop of beer shone in his black moustache. The first round of beers was gone in no time, and I was in the middle of my second when Iris stood up to go to the bathroom. I got up to let her pass. In that exact second I recognized the Spartan. He was approaching the phone booth, his hair disheveled and his jacket dirty. Coincidences happen. Not always, of course, but sometimes, and they are decisive.
Could I keep quiet? My heart was in my throat. I realized that no one was paying any particular attention to me. Why did I do what I did? Squeezing my glass hard with both hands and looking at the table with its flowered plastic tablecloth, I said it in a voice that I remember as sounding terrified. “There’s the ‘Prince of Wales,”’ I said. “There, in the phone booth.” I expected Macha to go running out with guns blazing, but he didn’t. He didn’t bat an eye. We went right on drinking beer as if nothing was happening, until Iris came back. Then he handed her the keys to the Toyota and gave her the order to follow the Spartan.
“Don’t use the radio,” he told her. “Got it? Do not use Central’s radio. Call me from a public phone when you can. I’ll send you another car for support.” As soon as the Spartan hung up, she went out to follow him. Macha and I calmly finished our beers.
Only then did I dare to ask him if he had really thought he’d be able to take down the “Prince of Wales” alone at the pension and bring him out in cuffs. He nodded.
“But he wasn’t sleeping. He wasn’t even in bed,” Macha said. And looking at a distant, indefinite point: “The man was dressed, pacing in the dark with his gun in his hand. The others were dressed too, in their rooms, each one with his AKM at the ready. Strange, right?”
The tail stayed on him day and night for more than two months. They put him “to bed” at night and “woke him” in the morning. They used three cars and nine agents in rotation. He never left their sight. This allowed them to sketch a complete web of contacts. They followed a person who once, at a “meet,” arrived last and placed himself in the most protected spot, revealing his superiority to the “Prince of Wales”; he went into an apartment on Calle Viollier. In the photo of “Viollier” I recognized Max: his small eyes, his dark, wiry hair. Twice, the “Prince of Wales” lost them, both times in the Vega market on the way to a “meet.” He got away from them among so many people and fruit and vegetable stands. But they found him again in the same market. It was a tail Macha organized behind Flaco Artaza’s back.
FORTY-ONE
In the meantime, Clementina had a book published that compiled her reviews and catalog copy. She was invited to Paris to give a series of lectures. I thought of Giuseppe. I bought him a gift—a book of photographs of Patagonia—and I wrote him a card. Clementina happily agreed to deliver it. When I went to say good-bye to her, I brought the gift in my bag. At the last minute I thought better of it, and I didn’t want to give it to her. I chickened out. Clementina’s lectures were a roaring success. One publisher was interested in putting out a book of her articles. When she got back, we got together with three other girlfriends to celebrate and talk about her trip, her triumph. I felt uncomfortable having lunch with them. I was used to pretending, but that day, as I raised my glass with them, it was difficult, it hurt, I felt sorry for myself. I was sad when I left them.
That night—another of the many nights in Malloco when I lost sight of Flaco—I felt sad again, and I found myself dancing, pretty drunk, with two women I’d never seen and who I thought were pretty. My “mixed race,” you know—my “hybridity,” as Clementina would say—was born of the original sin of violence. And they moved gracefully, and we laughed together and embraced and I think we kissed a little. My memory is cloudy. Then we went up to a private room—the novelty of the house—and laughing and touching each other tenderly, we fell onto a waterbed. “I’m Josefina,” one told me; “I’m Josefa,” the other said. “I’m María José,” I said. We were all lying.
One of us closed the door, and we floated there in the sweetness and the thickness, and in the darkness we were touching each other the way you palpate a chirimoya or a pear to see if it’s ripe. Our movements were slow and persistent; we were enveloped in a net of tenderness and silence. A high-heeled shoe or a stocking that had captivated me while we were dancing now became a barrier, a wall to climb over. Each bit of bared skin was a discovery, as if that profile, those breasts, that waist were the silent starting point of a piece of music being played for the first time. It was the hour of my beauty, my very own, and I was proud of having taken it for myself.
It’s easy to kiss a woman; the hand can imagine with such ease a shoulder or a thigh that turns into her shoulder or thigh, and the hand protects it, as if the permanence of her skin depended on my hands moving over it, as if, without the soft and insistent touch of another’s skin, she would wither and fall to pieces. And it was as if the constant caress of those hands were reconstituting an invisible shell, an egg that incubated a metamorphosing body. We felt each other, letting ourselves go without hurry, purpose, or fear. The next moment t
rembled like the flame of a candle in darkness, and all was anticipation and surprise.
At some point I cried and Josefina cradled me and Josefa licked my tears, and I cried some more and the three of us cried in each other’s arms, each one hiding in the other. And later we started laughing and nothing existed apart from the three of us laughing, intertwined on that waterbed. Until the kisses returned, and a slow loving. Then I focused on Josefina and Josefa’s eyes, their serene and emptied gaze.
A person is not a “lesbian” or “fag” or “sadist” or “straight” or “masochist” or “loyal” or “deceitful” or “hero” or “villain.” We must break through language in order to touch life. A person simply does certain things. We never step into the same river twice. There, in that house of Dionysian lights and shadows, I encountered phalluses that were big and long, others that were narrow and short, and straight ones and curved ones—the thousand and one shapes those little devils can possibly take. That man, Phoebus’s, was pointed. I remember another one with a fold covering it, so thick and noticeable. Every phallus is different, you know, and it has a personality of its own, expressive and individual like the nose on a face.
Energized by amphetamines or seeing, thanks to the amyl, the violent power of the light and the palpitations of my heart beating full speed, I could endure all, embrace all, accept all, desire all, and the skin of my soul, of the omnivorous beast that we usually suppress, was captivated and threw itself headlong into the frenzy. It was the night of the great “Yes.” Nothing is true, everything is permitted. Because we are disguised barbarians; that’s what we are. Why do I say “barbarians”? The Scythians, says Herodotus (wasn’t it Herodotus?), shared their women and fornicated in public like animals. That’s why they were barbaric. Let me correct myself, then: we are carnivorous animals, badly disguised and without innocence. That’s what we lost with Paradise: animal innocence. We looked at ourselves naked and shame was born. Hell is a mirror that we can’t look away from.
La Vida Doble (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) Page 20