The Twilight Zone

by Nona Fernández

  The passersby, the people on the street, my mother, the bus driver, everyone inhabiting the surface world of everyday life, were brief witnesses to the crack through which the twilight zone appeared. The man who tortured people said that when he got to the location in question, a crowd had already gathered and it wasn’t easy to remove Contreras Maluje, who was shouting, and who, despite being seriously injured, was big and fought hard. Contreras Maluje was then taken back to headquarters on Calle Dieciocho where he was locked up, accused of being a liar, and beaten all day. The man who tortured people said that Contreras Maluje was taken that night to Melipilla, where he was shot and buried in a ditch.

  My mother knew none of this when she told us what she’d seen that morning, a few hours before. It took me years to connect her story to the one I read in the testimony of the man who tortured people. While we were having lunch that day, eating the casserole or stew my grandmother had made, Carlos Contreras Maluje was probably getting beaten in a cell on Calle Dieciocho, a few blocks from my old house. While we were helping ourselves to gelatin and drowning it in condensed milk, a dessert we loved, Carlos Contreras Maluje was probably sending telepathic messages to his family and friends, asking someone to come and rescue him from the small, lonely planet where he had landed. That place where he was stranded, afraid and in pain, with no ship to take him back to his home above the Maluje Pharmacy in Concepción.

  Hello? Ground Control? Is anybody out there? Can anybody hear me?

  Desperate cries, calls for help that no one could answer. While my mother was drinking lemon verbena tea and while I listened to the end of the story of her disturbing experience, Carlos Contreras Maluje was probably bleeding on the floor of his cell, besieged by gremlins, in a time frozen by the deadly stopwatch marking the bounds of the twilight zone. A reality so different, according to the old voice-over, you can only unlock it with the key of the imagination.

  I click and search for Andrés Valenzuela Morales’s name.

  I know I won’t find it. This is the Absence and Memory Zone, not the Torturers Who Turn Over a New Leaf Zone, not the Deserters Zone, not the Feelings of Remorse Zone, not the Motherfucking Traitors Zone. The man I’m imagining hasn’t died, and he isn’t catalogued as a victim. A black hole swallowed him up just like everybody else, and if I want to find him, it can only be here, in front of this screen like something in a control tower, a radio whose signal reaches that eerie planet. The only zone that has no place in this museum.

  Dear Andrés, Control Tower here. Are you there? Can you hear me?

  Dear Andrés Antonio Valenzuela Morales, Soldier First Class, ID #39432 of La Ligua, Control Tower speaking. Are you there? Can you hear me?

  I want to believe it’s possible, that my voice can reach that place. That from some still-functioning speaker in your wrecked and broken spaceship you can hear me and maybe even be cheered by my words. I want to believe that your microphone short-circuited and that’s why I can’t hear what you have to say to me. I want to believe that each time I ask whether you can hear me, you answer yes, that although history and memory have abandoned you in that nebulous place, you’re still alive, still standing, still waiting for someone to come and rescue you.

  I believe that evil is directly proportional to idiocy. I believe that the territory you roamed in anguish before you disappeared is ruled by idiots. It isn’t true that criminals are masterminds. It takes a vast amount of stupidity to assemble the parts of such grotesque, absurd, and cruel machinery. Pure brutality disguised as a master plan. Small people, with small minds, who don’t understand the abyss of the other. They lack the language or tools for it. Empathy and compassion require a clear mind. Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, changing your skin, adopting a new face: these are all acts of genuine intelligence.

  Dear Andrés, I think you were ultimately an intelligent man.

  Each time you vomited after watching an execution. Each time you shut yourself in the bathroom after a torture session. Each time you snuck someone a cigarette or saved an apple from your lunch for a prisoner. Each time you passed on a message to someone’s family. Each time you cried. Each time you wanted to speak up but couldn’t. Each time you spoke up. Each time you repeated your testimony to reporters, lawyers, judges. Each time you hid. Each time you fled out of fear of being found. Each and every time, each and every day, you used and use your lucid intelligence against the stupidity of where you landed.

  You imagined being someone else. You chose to be someone else. You chose.

  Being stupid is a personal choice and you don’t have to wear a uniform to employ that evil talent. If only you knew, dear Andrés, the number of good guys these days who aren’t good and never were, though they have yet to be memorialized in a museum; the number of heroes who aren’t heroes and never were. I wonder how we’ll tell ourselves the story of our times. Who we’ll leave out of the Nice Zones in the story. Who we’ll entrust with control and curatorship.

  Colonel Cook, space traveler, shipwrecked on that mysterious planet, receives a final radio message from home. In it, his superiors inform him that they can’t come to rescue him because a great war has broken out. Good guys and bad guys blowing each other to bits. Everything he knew as his world is beginning to disappear. Any real memory of the past will be preserved solely in Colonel Cook’s mind. From now on it will be his mission to record and bear witness to a past that no longer exists. Stranded in captivity on a small planet in outer space—or the twilight zone, as it seems to Colonel Cook—he sends messages into the void about a world that has disappeared.

  El Negro was there, El Yoyopulos, El Pelao Lito, El Chirola.

  I was the only one from Papudo, which is how I got my name.

  And it stuck. Papudo.

  I don’t know whether I liked being called that or not.

  It wasn’t the kind of thing I asked myself back then.

  I was a kid, I had just enlisted, I never complained.

  Nobody calls me that anymore.

  Chile isn’t so clear in my mind now, I’m forgetting it. But not Papudo.

  Sometimes it all comes back to me. Not the person I was, but the place.

  The sea. The smell of the beach and the black sand sticking to my toes.

  And the taste of clams.

  CONTACT ZONE

  Once again I imagine him walking down a city street. He’s a tall man, thin, black hair, that bushy mustache. He’s wearing the same clothes he had on in the photograph in Cauce magazine, I think: a checkered shirt and a denim jacket. This time I don’t imagine him smoking. He has his hands in his pockets, maybe because of the cold this August afternoon in 1984. He’s already seen the reporter. He’s just left her office and now he has a new objective. With him is another man who seems to be leading the way. They’re heading toward a plaza. Specifically, the Plaza Santa Ana, between Calle Catedral and Calle San Martín. People are everywhere. Passersby on their way from one place to another, like them. I imagine him scanning each face, staring anxiously and trying to guess which among them is his next contact. That man who seems to be waiting for a bus, or that man reading the newspaper on a bench, that man talking on the phone in a booth, that man eating sopaipillas with hot sauce at the stand in the middle of the plaza. Or someone else, could be anyone.

  His companion stops at the corner. In a low voice, he tells the man who tortured people to keep walking, that in a few feet, at a certain spot in the plaza, someone will be waiting for him. I imagine the man follows instructions. I imagine from the distance he spies a discreet signal from his new contact. A dark man with short hair and a mustache, watching him from behind a pair of sunglasses. He looks like a detective, though he isn’t. I imagine the man who tortured people walks casually toward him, rousing no suspicions. Once they meet, the contact turns and gestures for the man to follow him to a car, with no word of greeting or any exchange at all. It’s a Renault van, parked with a driver inside. I imagine they walk toward it calmly and get in as anyone migh
t, as if they’ve known each other forever, as if they’re trained in the act of simulation. I imagine once they’re inside their eyes meet for the first time, in recognition.

  I’m a lawyer at the Vicariate. I know who you are and I know what you told them at the magazine, says the new contact. Or that’s what I imagine he says, as the man who tortured people listens, surrendering himself to the situation. And I know our time is short, so let’s head straight to the places you mentioned in your testimony.

  I imagine the man doesn’t question this. I imagine he nods. Because this is precisely what he’s chosen to do: talk, show, testify. To the reporter. To this lawyer; to whoever wants to listen while there’s still time. And yet the question comes out of his mouth, a tiny act of rebellion. Or maybe exhaustion. Sheer exhaustion.

  Now?

  Now, says the lawyer as the driver starts the van.

  A little while ago, the documentary I worked on about the Vicariate of Solidarity was released. I was traveling abroad, so I wasn’t there for the premiere. I was sorry not to get to meet the characters who had for some time occupied my computer screen and taken over my very life. By the end, their faces and voices had become more than familiar to me. I’d spent hours listening to them and trying to find the key to their stories. I would have recognized them on the street if I saw them, whereas they had no idea who I was or how many hours I’d spent spying on them.

  Now that I’m back I’ll see the film in the theater. I’ve watched the final cut, but I want the experience of seeing it on the big screen, in Dolby Surround Sound, sitting in a comfortable seat and maybe eating a bag of popcorn—why not? I invite my mother to join me for a noon screening. It’s the only showing she can make, so I pick her up and we walk into the Hoyts La Reina Cinema like any other pair of moviegoers, hiding our secret connection to the film we’ll be seeing.

  A motley lineup is playing. Avengers 2: Age of Ultron fills almost all the theaters in assorted versions and at assorted times: 2-D dubbed versions, 2-D subtitled versions, 3-D dubbed versions, 3-D original-language versions, 4-DX dubbed and subtitled versions, and so on, to satisfy each and every special desire to see this band of superheroes. In the movie, supervillain Ultron, assisted by an army of ultrabad guys, tries to destroy humanity. He’s challenged by the Avengers, who do their best to save the world. Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, Black Widow, Thor, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, and other Marvel notables I can’t recall are the heroes. One character’s super speed is complemented by another’s super vision, or super strength, or super intelligence, or super humor, or super sex appeal. They work together, they’re good-looking, they’re fun, they’re smart, and though it isn’t easy, they do save the planet. I saw the movie with my son a few weeks ago at a screening jam-packed with shrieking kids and teenagers accompanied by adults like me happy to tag along and watch Robert Downey Jr. or Mark Ruffalo fighting for justice. It’s always exciting to see attractive people fighting for justice.

  Other titles on the marquee are The Seventh Dwarf, Fast and Furious, Mall Cop, Cinderella, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Cobbler. Nearly squeezed off the edge of the electronic display of current attractions, we manage to find the documentary’s paltry three daily showings. We pay for our tickets, buy a couple of cortados, and go into the theater to see the 1:00 p.m. show, while the rest of the world is eating or making lunch.

  An army of red seats constitutes the lonely, unsettling landscape inside the theater. A distinct smell suffuses the space, of Forest Pine or some other air freshener. Left behind are the bright lobby posters, ads for ice cream, deals on drinks and popcorn, video games, pizza menus, ATMs, sound tracks of trailers for coming attractions. As if we were crossing over to the dark side of the moon, the smallest theater in the multiplex awaits us, completely empty and utterly silent. Our steps slow to the pace of a different time inside. It’s a dense, plodding time, far from the rain of stimuli that we’ve just weathered on the other side of the door. We advance through the gloom, looking for seats. The screen is still dark, so all we hear are our voices trying not to disturb the hush. We settle down in the middle of the theater and wait for the show to start with the strange feeling that we’re being watched. Probably by the operator in the projection room. Or maybe by someone on the other side of that enormous blank screen.

  I remember a certain episode of The Twilight Zone. In it an older actress retreats alone to the living room of her mansion to watch, over and over, the movies she acted in when she was younger. She is trying desperately to stop time, and nothing and no one can pry her from her seclusion as she drinks whiskey and watches her own past projected on the screen in the darkness. Outside is the effervescent city of Los Angeles, her old friends, her assistant, her loyal agent trying to find her new job prospects. Scene of a woman watching a screen. Leading lady from long ago, bright star of a vanished constellation, left behind as the earth turns and time passes, intones the announcer as the episode begins. Barbara Jean Trenton, her world a room where dreams are spun of celluloid, struck down by the years and left lying on the sad street, grasping for the license number of fugitive fame.

  More than the announcer’s intense introduction to the story, it’s the memory of Barbara drinking whiskey as she sits before the continuous projection of her past that creeps into my mind in the middle of this empty place. Except for my mother next to me in this theater that is at once tiny and vast, I’m as alone as Barbara. And like her I’m here to watch yet again the same old images that have hounded me for years.

  After a few previews the documentary begins. The clatter of a typewriter comes over the theater’s speakers. A giant blank sheet of paper appears onscreen and keys type the title of the movie across it. Next comes the bombing of La Moneda yet again, the military proclamations yet again, the National Stadium and the detainees yet again.

  Unlike Barbara Jean Trenton, I’m not the protagonist of what I see. I wasn’t there, I have no dialogue or part in the plot. The scenes projected in this theater aren’t mine, but they’ve always been close, at my heels. Maybe that’s why I think of them as part of my story. I was born with them planted inside me, images in a family album that I didn’t choose or arrange. What little I remember from that time are these scenes. In the rapid succession of events that I inhabit, in the whirlwind of images that I consume and discard daily, they stand untouched by time and forgetting. As if governed by a different gravitational force, they neither float away nor spin off into space at random. They’re always there, unshakeable. They come back to me or I come back to them, in a dense, circular time, the kind I’m breathing in this empty theater.

  I’ve spent much of my life scrutinizing these images. I’ve followed their scent, tracked them, collected them. I’ve inquired about them, requested explanations. I’ve peered into their corners, their darkest crannies. I’ve blown them up and sorted them, trying to find a place and a meaning for them. I’ve turned them into quotes, proverbs, maxims, jokes. I’ve written books about them, articles, plays, TV scripts, documentaries, and even soap operas. I’ve seen them projected on countless screens, printed in books, newspapers, magazines. I’ve researched them to the point of boredom, imagining or even inventing what I can’t understand. I’ve photocopied them, stolen them, consumed them, displayed and overdisplayed them, exploiting them in every possible way. I’ve ransacked every page of the album they inhabit, searching for clues that might help me decipher their message. Because I’m sure they, like a black box, hold a message.

  In the documentary, one of the subjects talks about the discovery of a mass grave in 1978. A peasant came to the offices of the Vicariate to deliver a valuable piece of information. In an abandoned limestone mine near Santiago, in the district of Isla de Maipo, he said that he had seen a group of hidden bodies. Immediately a commission of lawyers, priests, and reporters set out discreetly to verify the man’s claims. When they arrived they made their way into the dark vault of the mine, lighting their way with a torch. As they were combing through
the rubble, a human rib cage fell on one of them, confirming the information they had been given. Then they looked up and discovered that the chimneys of the kilns were sealed with bars and wire mesh, concealing a jumble of bones, clothing, lime, and cement. There were fifteen bodies hidden in the mine.

  It wasn’t easy to find out whose bodies they were. After a long investigation, with the help of expert reports and information accumulated in the Vicariate’s archives, it was possible to determine that the exhumed bodies matched a group of people who had been arrested in October 1973. After years spent looking for living loved ones, horrified family members identified the unearthed bodies, putting an end to any hopes of reunion. All the stories they had made up in the face of absence and emptiness began to fall apart, fantasies in which the disappeared parents, siblings, or children were on a desert island, safe, hidden somewhere in the world waiting for the right moment to send word or return. This discovery was the first evidence that prisoners who had yet to appear had likely been killed. From that point on, families and professionals focused their efforts on searching for the bodies.

  My mother listens, weeping steadily beside me.

  It’s only been a few months since she emerged from a depression that hit her pretty hard. After her mother’s death and her own retirement, she moved slowly but surely into a period of great anxiety. Everything around her changed completely. As if stepping into the lobby of this movie theater, she suddenly found herself confronted by a range of possibilities she had never dealt with before: 2-D dubbed versions, 2-D subtitled versions, 3-D dubbed versions, 3-D original-language versions, 4-DX dubbed and subtitled versions. So many new titles, so many movies, and there she was standing at the ticket booth, vulnerable to the whirlwind of stimuli. Who she was and how she had gotten to this point hardly mattered. The logic of cause and effect had broken down. The previous chapter was closed and everything that constituted her past was obsolete in the sea of perspectives opening before her. Then, without a prior plan to guide her choices, without the kind of solid script that takes years to write, with no gravitational force to make sense of her options, my mother, light and fragile, shot out into space. She was lost the way memories are lost. And there she drifted tethered by a flimsy cord, as we tried to toss her a cable to earth to restore her weight and gravity. My mother checked into that unnerving territory where 80 percent of my fellow citizens live. A brisk, upsetting place, ruled by psychiatrists, antidepressants, anti-anxiety drugs, and sleeping pills.