Despite her silence, Anna had not forgotten. Each night, as soon as Eliza walked in, she put aside her own books and notes and demanded that Eliza tell her about her lessons and classes. Saying that since she intended to be a teacher anyway and might as well practice now, she then coached her through the intricacies of mathematics and history, sociology and literature, philosophy and physics. It had not fooled Eliza, who sought to repay her by studying indefatigably and never again getting into trouble. They remained together through the four years of their college education, moving from one dorm to another, until the very last semester when Eliza had bloomed into an authentic beauty and was corps sponsor, lantern parade queen, sorority head, and betrothed to a handsome nineteen-year-old heir of a wealthy clan. She and Anna had relaxed then, for she could coast along on the accumulated knowledge of the previous years and the ties between them loosened a little. Anna herself was “seeing,” as it was said, a young man by the name of Manolo Montreal while Eliza spent one evening after another partying, dizzied by the sudden respect and adulation that came her way. She had felt then that she could afford to forget a dying old woman in the South of France. She would never be afraid again, she had told Anna on graduation night, when she had staggered home still in her fiancé’s gifts of chiffon and diamonds. Anna had pursed her lips and had lain washcloths soaked in vinegar on Eliza’s forehead. After a while, she had bent over Eliza, brushed away stray locks from her face, and, sitting on the bed’s edge, shushed her, saying, “Eliza, my friend, my only friend, do not tempt fate by saying never. Never again this, never again that—for you can never be sure of never and that’s the only thing you can be sure of. Better not to call attention to yourself, better to live like the trees, better to be merely there like the plants, with no desire except to eat, sleep, and work, have a few thoughts, a few moments of happiness, not joy but happiness, better to exist without destiny, only to exist. This is what I learned from all the books and all the lectures—the virtue of mere existence.”
Eliza had burped wine fumes and laughed, teasing Anna on her dismal view of what the future held. Did she not have, had she not ever had, any wish at all, any desire? At which Anna had looked even more serious than before. “Desires do not have to be magnificent or large scale,” she had said. Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “I did make one vow—a self-aware one, on which I staked all my joys. While I was tossing handfuls of my father’s ashes among the roses, I wished for, I vowed that henceforth I would have—not extravagant but decent at least—funerals for my dead.” At which, folding her hands on her lap, Anna had done a remarkable thing, sobering Eliza almost instantly. She had smiled.
“Really?” The transvestite asked. But he had stopped dancing and his incredulous eyes were fixed on something behind her. Turning, Eliza found a soldier in camouflage uniform, his M-16 slung over one shoulder. He grinned and pointed at the transvestite and, without waiting for Eliza’s reply, stepped forward and seized the man in the pink gown about the waist. The onlookers shifted but the soldier froze them with a look. The singing began again—reluctantly, with foreboding. Eliza pushed against the spectators until the bodies gave way and she escaped.
Back in the street, she danced arm-in-arm with a Caucasian wearing a plastic phallus over his nose, keeping time with the drums that went one-two, one-two, one-two-three. The man offered to teach her how to square dance and soon they had a dozen couples walking, hopping back and forth, bowing to one another, linking arms and shouting hey! She and the Caucasian drained his hip flask of scotch and threatened to brain a television crew which had trained their cameras on them. One of the dancers collapsed abruptly, scattering the square dance. She seemed to be no more than a girl and two men picked her up by the arms and legs and carried her off, nodding and laughing at the bawdy suggestions of the crowd. Eliza felt the sun leaning too heavily on her head. She walked away, thinking of Anna, of how she had been lost for six years—or maybe, it was Eliza who had been lost. For some reason, the ground beneath her heaved and she was forced to concentrate on her feet, bumping into men and women who shoved her away gently. Then a hand gripped her upper arm and steadied her. It was Adrian, drenched with sweat, his T-shirt now tied by its sleeves about his waist.
“That wasn’t nice of you,” he said, “not nice at all.”
She focused her eyes on his face.
“What?” And burst out laughing.
“You abandoned us.”
She pushed his face away. “I was bored. I am bored.” Her heart contracted suddenly. “Why did we come here? What are we doing here?” she whimpered.
He shrugged. “To laugh.”
“At what?”
His eyes avoided hers. “I thought Anna would like it. She had never been to a fiesta.”
“But where is she?”
He shook his head. “I had to join my father and the governor in the library. When I came out, she was gone.”
“I left her in your care.”
“No one can take care of her.” He felt in his pocket, drew out a whistle, and slipped it over her head. “Here. Whistle for her. Or for a breeze. This god-awful heat.”
“Our wanton is smarting!” She placed the whistle between her lips and blew. A shrill note pierced the air. She laughed. “Don’t worry. If worse comes to worst, I’ll kill for her.”
He was shocked. “Kill me? What ever for?”
“Go away!” she screamed in anger. “Find yourself a nice girl. You’re too young. Too young. Twenty-three years old. Holy cow! I’m twenty-seven and so’s Anna but we’re three hundred years older than you!” She made an obscene gesture, hooked the arm of a passing stranger, and laughed. “Let’s go, love,” she said to the man, “find us a man to kill. Can’t kill boys. Christ!”
The man grinned and pulled her into a tangle of bodies. See, he said, there are little eddies here, tiny whorls, festivals within the Festival. As they danced, making a chaos of a warrior formation, they passed groups of men and women engrossed in their own celebrations. What are we celebrating, Eliza asked the man. Life, he screamed and pranced. Death, he said, bending and arching back. He hopped to the beat of the drums, one-two-one-two-three. He rushed at her and threw his arms about her body and squeezed her. He kissed the laughter in her throat. How right, how proper, she thought, to celebrate death.
She had known at once, the morning she met Colonel Urbano Amor that she would have to kill the man. Punch him full of holes from his armpit to his groin; slide a razor across his throat; erase his face with her fingernails. She shivered with the thought as he had talked. His voice was carefully modulated. Twilight, he had said, was never allowed in his buildings; a decree protected his domain from that nemesis.
He had offered her a tour of the compound, gallantly, showing her the light meters, the automatic switches, the computers, the electricians on patrol, the soldiers at attention even as he had pointed out the network of bulbs and lamps embedded in the walls and ceilings which provided a subtle but nevertheless pitilessly clear illumination. The whole system required vigilance and dedication, a discipline no less tenacious than that of the Albigensian fanatics exiled seventeen years in the desert, undulating their torsos in perpetual prayer.
“Do you like the explanation,” he had asked, interrupting himself, his voice changing. “I had it worked out by a university professor. As his penance.”
She had nodded. He was pleased.
“I don’t keep prisoners,” he had gone on. “Except for my staff, everyone here is—just passing through. Back to freedom or the detention centers proper. Of course, they can always be recalled.”
She had cleared her throat. “No one ends up in the morgue or cemetery?”
He had made a sad face. “Always regrettable when it happens. The dead don’t cower. Don’t talk. Don’t twitch in pain. Ah, yes; here’s something interesting. .” He had stopped before a glass window; it looked into a room filled with file cabinets. A half-dozen men were within, reading, shuffling through what
seemed like documents.
“Traitors.” He answered her silent question. “Oh, I shouldn’t call them that. Patriots. Maybe. But the truth is a man who betrays is simply a traitor. Period. One can’t have too much respect for him. Despite his help.”
“No women?”
“Women, like children, can be absolute in their loyalties. Very rare indeed.”
“You don’t free them?”
“I could, I suppose. But after they’ve talked, even the world outside becomes a prison. Extremely dangerous. This is the only safe place for them. We let them stay, out of charity. We give them jobs—as consultants. We let them go over the files and write endless memos and analyses. It’s all useless, of course. The files contain mostly their own confessions.”
Through the glass, Eliza had studied the curiously ordinary faces. Touching the glass with his forefinger, the colonel had explained it was a one-way mirror.
“So,” Eliza had said finally, “there are organisms that feed on their own waste.”
“Oh, don’t be contemptuous. It’s charity. The data are obsolete; the men’s knowledge is obsolete. If there’s anything at all I’ve learned in my years as—well, as an expert on conspiracies—it is the living nature of resistance. It exists in a constant flux, changing, breeding, metastasizing. All information about its internal processes is rendered obsolete by revelation.” He had smiled. “How do you like that explanation? It came from the same professor.”
“It’s really good.”
“Thank you. The glass is to make sure these men do not harm the files. We have traitors’ confessions in there twenty, thirty years old— and if we could find others older, we would be ecstatic. Ecstatic, I tell you.”
“But why? You said the data are old and useless.”
“From time to time, in the complexity of its growth, the resistance evolves into a structure similar to predecessors we have in the files. Then, it’s easier to piece together its modus operandi. Not exactly the same but close enough. Of course, the traitors don’t do that. We do that. For some reason, they can’t seem to go beyond their experience—like they're caught in a time warp.”
“You’re saying it’s not easy to deal with the resistance?”
“Oh, God, no. Rather, thank God, no. Otherwise, I would be bored to death and ask for a transfer.”
Christ, Eliza had said to herself, an aberrant intellectual. She had smiled at him, masking her thoughts, and he had smiled back, a gold tooth glinting in the left side of his mouth. He had taken her elbow and guided her away from the window.
“There are other places here. Isolation units. The box, we call those. The interrogation room. We call that the romance room. And the sleeping cells, some of which are occupied. But you did not come for these. You want to talk about your friend. Let us go to my office.”
She had let him take her to a corner room, toward the back of the building. As soon as he opened the door, a familiar scent had reached her. Brut men’s cologne, she had told herself, smirking. Oh, she knew him well enough, immediately and thoroughly. Imported cologne. A frailty of those enamored with power and yet not quite so powerful. A glass-topped black desk occupied the lower end of the room.
There were three folders and a vase with a single spray of purple Vanda orchids on it. Quite in character, she had thought.
She had taken the seat in front of the desk and waited for him to arrange himself in his own chair.
“As you have undoubtedly noted, I had her files brought here as soon as you mentioned you were Colonel Alejandro Batoyan’s—ah, friend. The colonel is my esteemed colleague and worthy of his uniform. He holds a most sensitive position, of course, being aide-de-camp to our commander-in-chief, as well as his personal bodyguard. I envy you your—ah, friendship.” He had picked up the topmost folder but let it rest, unopened, in his hand.
She had vowed that for his “ahs” she would kill him slowly. “Did the professor also—ah, devise your way of conversation?” She could not help mocking him.
His eyebrows had risen. “How sharp you are! As a matter of fact, he did. He assured me it would be most impressive. An edge of threat to a most civilized tone. He trained me himself. You are clever. Do you approve?”
She had snorted. “He must have overdosed on World War II films.”
He had laughed—a truly frightening sound, midway between a squeal and a giggle. Then, his other hand had made a gesture of dismissal. “Forget the professor. He’s dead, anyway.” He had flicked open the folder, glanced at the contents quickly as though refreshing his memory. “You’re Colonel Batoyan’s friend but it doesn’t say here that you are Villaverde’s associate.”
“We were in school together. I’d lost track of her.”
“Hmm.” His face had said memories had no value. “How did you find out she had been here?”
“A phone call. I assumed it had been from one of her friends. I checked and discovered it was true. Since I owed her some favors, I could not ignore the information.”
“True. Otherwise, where would civilization be? Villaverde, Anna. Never used her husband’s name. Twenty-five years old when . . . What’s the matter?”
“She is married?”
“Was. Widowed now. Degree in history; high school teacher. Arrested on suspicion of having committed or being about to commit subversion. Stayed here one month. Turned over to detention camp. Investigation pending. Possibly implicated—oh, dear!”
“Problem?” She had leaned forward.
“An escape. Three men, two women. Manner unknown. Interesting. She befriended a man in the camp. Fellow by the name of Guevarra. I remember him. Thin, dark; black hair, black eyes. Bullet wound in the thigh, calluses on hands and feet. A field man.”
“A what?”
“A warrior. Takes to the field and shoots. Not like your friend and others who hang around the city and shoot their mouths off. She was returned here for a week after the escape—but nothing.” He had raised his eyes to her face. “We may come to an arrangement, I think. Since she has been processed twice, I don’t think anything more could be gotten out of her.”
“You trust your methods that much?” She had been unable to resist showing her disdain.
He had bristled. “Miss Hansen, you live in a world of wealth and order. We maintain that world, understand. Our ways may not be known to you but believe me, they are both scientific and necessary. You may find them strange but I can assure you, they are based on a precise knowledge of the human capacity for pain and—oh, drat! I’m speaking like the professor again.”
She had to laugh.
“You have a lovely laugh,” he had said. “Very classy. I wish I could have that much class. But I will stop whining. I will show you what I can’t explain—at least not in my own words. That stupid professor drilled me too well. Oh, I’m happy he’s dead.”
His hand had groped under the desk. A few seconds later, a soldier entered and saluted.
“Take someone to the romance room,” the colonel had said. “Five minutes.”
“Yes, sir.” The soldier had saluted again, pivoted, and left the room.
The colonel had glanced at his wristwatch. Eliza had waited in silence, wondering what charade she would witness next. Just when she was making up her mind to rise and walk away, the colonel groped under the desk again. The curtains near the door rustled, slid apart on noiseless pulleys. A glass sheet was embedded in the wall, allowing a view of the next room. Sterile tiles, metal instruments on the shelves, black boxes, wires, and a metal bed on wheels. An emergency room, she had thought.
Four men walked in. Three were bare-chested; the fourth was naked. As Eliza realized what she was about to see, the colonel left his seat behind the desk and moved to the sofa. By shifting his eyes, he could watch both the other room and her face.
“But he is so young,” she had blurted out, peering at the fourth man’s face as the others began their work. “He is only a child.” By then, she had known enough to know that that was the onl
y protest she could make.
“As I told you, children can be dangerous.”
Fifteen minutes later, when the first spatter of blood and urine stained the room’s tiles, Eliza had looked at the colonel.
“Enough,” she had said. “Stop it now, please.” She had found the strength to say it gently, seeing Anna in that room. She had wondered then whether Anna had felt that same terrible nausea and anger during the abortion.
Colonel Amor had inclined his head in agreement. He walked to the desk and, a few seconds later, the curtains were drawing close. She had had no way of knowing whether the session in the romance room had gone on.
“To resist such methods . . .” The colonel had sighed.“I am therefore inclined to believe in your friend’s—innocence? No, ignorance. We will reach an agreement.”
Despite that, it had taken three more months before the colonel called. He said Anna could be fetched from the detention center now, this minute. She had jumped into her Mercedes-Benz, not even combing her hair, and had heel-and-toed on accelerator and brakes through the traffic, all the way across the city to the suburbs. She had congratulated herself for having taken all the necessary precautions to ease her friend back to normal life: a furnished apartment, cheap enough so Anna could pay for it; a job in one of Adrian’s minor corporations.
The reception area, a gray cage stuck close to the barbed-wire fence, was manned by a lieutenant convulsed with irony. Well, well, well, he had said, here we are, Miss Hansen; here is Anna Villaverde, safe and sound and ready to go home.
And there she was, indeed—standing in a corner of that unspeakably pitiful room, her three paper bags of clothes gathered about her feet, a wire hanger or two sticking out of one bag and snagging the hem of her skirt while she turned wary eyes at Eliza, wary in a face so blank that Eliza’s heart contracted.
State of War Page 5