The Twilight Zone

by Nona Fernández

  She apologized to the priest and said she had no idea what he was asking about. She didn’t know any Andrés Antonio Valenzuela Morales, she said. So there was no way she could give any information about his whereabouts. The fake priest’s response was to pull a gun out from under his cassock: Listen, cunt. Tell us where he is or you’ll be sorry.

  Everyone has gathered around the memorial. Stage, chairs, and microphones are left behind. We’ve fallen out of line as everyone tries to find a space to light a candle for each of the three honorees. A little flicker for Guerrero, another for Parada, and a final one for Nattino. Maldonado and I haven’t brought candles or lighters, but we watch it all and we’re part of the ritual, camouflaged among those who’ve come prepared. Across from us, a little girl asks her mother if this is a birthday party, if that’s why people are lighting candles. Her mother laughs and doesn’t answer, while Maldonado and I watch as more and more candles are added to the big cake.

  It’s December 1984 and the reporter is meeting a trusted friend. He is traveling to the United States and she has asked him to carry a complicated document for her. For his own protection, she can’t tell him what it is, but someone will contact him to receive it once he reaches the United States. He has accepted the mission. Back then, this is what true friends did, so I imagine the reporter sewing up the lining of her friend’s coat, because that’s where she’s hidden the interview with the man who tortured people. The interview is to be delivered to the Washington Post, to be published at some future date.

  Days or maybe hours later, I don’t know, the reporter’s friend gets on a plane. He settles into his seat, and after he fastens his seat belt he begins to feel a strange sensation against his back, around his kidneys. It’s a mild but rather irksome warmth, accompanied by his friend’s voice. Don’t take the papers out of your coat, he hears her saying in his head. Don’t read them, the less you know the better, for your sake and everyone else’s. And the plane takes off, leaving Chilean soil, and he again feels a pressing against his back. Now it’s an unsettling twitching inside his coat, which he hasn’t taken off and doesn’t plan to take off. It’s as if he’s transporting an animal, a living creature pacing back and forth inside its cage. After a while, the stewardess brings him something to eat. He uncovers the meal on the tray, helping himself with his metal utensils to rice, salad, noodles, meat, or whatever he’s been served, feeling the disturbing presence and thinking again that he mustn’t take the document out of the lining of his coat, mustn’t read it. And he eats. And he drinks wine from his glass. And then it’s time for coffee and the stewardess takes the tray, but he decides to keep the little metal knife. Before anyone notices, he tucks it into the same coat that he knows he shouldn’t unstitch. Don’t remove the papers from the lining, that’s what he was told. Don’t read them. And feeling that stifling warmth against his back, he drinks his coffee and thinks about the creature he’s harboring. It’s a dangerous beast, no doubt, something like a rat or a raven, he feels it there against his kidneys, and now it’s between his shoulder blades. And then he orders a whiskey. And another and another. Or maybe he doesn’t order anything. Maybe alcohol is no distraction and all at once he rebels. He simply can’t stand the presence of whatever it is against his back anymore and he stops listening to the annoying little voice telling him what he can and can’t do. Like in a children’s story, the protagonist is tempted to disobey his mother’s orders, or his father’s, or his older brother’s, whoever has forbidden him to do something, and with the little metal knife from his meal he unstitches the coat’s lining and removes the document, just as he’s been told not to do, and rats and ravens are coming out of the papers, and he’s horrified and afraid and he doesn’t want the ink of this cursed text to taint him, but it’s too late now, now he’s stained, now he can’t help it and he reads, just as he was told not to do, and as he does, the words of the man who tortured people come sticky and dense out of Pandora’s box, all the threads tangled up with Parada, Guerrero, and Nattino’s names.

  The reporter’s friend can’t believe what he’s reading.

  The reporter’s friend weeps silently, steadily, there in the airplane seat.

  So many familiar names, so many deaths, such horror.

  The reporter’s friend clings to the seat belt, because he knows that once he’s done reading he’ll tumble into space and never be the same again.

  I remember another episode of The Twilight Zone. In it, a lonely man of few means finds a book with an inscription forbidding anyone to read it on fear of death. Of course the man is tempted to open it and read what’s inside, but first he wants to test whether the warning is true. The man wordlessly passes the book to an old acquaintance, and right away the man starts to read it. What he finds there is riveting, and he reads and reads for hours until at last he falls down dead with a big smile on his face.

  The man who found the book is shaken. Not satisfied by what he’s seen, he tempts fate again and gives the book to another acquaintance. The very same thing happens again. The second acquaintance can’t stop reading and he reads and reads in delight until he falls dead with the same smile on his face as the first reader.

  The man who found the cursed book begins to use it as a weapon against his enemies. If anyone tries to collect money from him, if anyone opposes his ideas, the book comes to the rescue. Everyone reads and falls down dead, and his life is gradually transformed and ruled by this seductive, deadly book.

  The man who found the cursed book becomes a millionaire, owner of a chain of stores and a palatial house where he lives with his four children and his platinum blond wife. One day, always careful and paranoid about where the book is hidden, he decides to take it out of its safe and bury it in a secret spot in his big yard. What the man fails to predict is that one of his four children is watching from the bedroom window.

  One day the man comes home and no one is there to greet him. The children don’t come running with hugs and kisses, and his platinum blond wife is nowhere to be seen. The servants take his coat and hat. When he goes up to his room he finds his whole family lying on the big bed. His wife has the book open in her hands and the children, gathered around her, seem to be listening intently to a long story. But no one is listening anymore. No one is reading. The man’s family are resting in peace, with smiles on their faces. Whatever they’ve read has transported them once and for all to the dark realms of the twilight zone.

  The reporter’s friend disembarks for a layover in Caracas, Venezuela, with the document hidden in the lining of his coat. He walks out of the airport and there he is welcomed by a group of friends who realize at once that something is wrong. The reporter’s friend can’t keep the document secret, and he talks. And out of his mouth come the heavy words of the man who tortured people. And out of his mouth come rats and ravens. And the tale captivates and consumes all who hear it. A Chilean reporter who is part of the group decides to publish the interview in Caracas. No permission is requested, no notice given; the testimony is simply published immediately in a Venezuelan newspaper.

  What comes next is like that episode from The Twilight Zone.

  Words written in dangerous ink turn against their owner.

  Words written in poisonous ink turn against whoever reads them.

  When word of its publication gets out, the group of the man who tortured people tires of searching for him and decides to destroy everything. They wipe out the publishing arm of AGECH, the Chilean Teachers’ Union, because they’re sure that the originals of the published testimony must be there. The press is registered in the name of a graphic designer named Santiago Nattino. That same day he is kidnapped and taken to La Firma. They handcuff him to a metal bed frame, where the interrogations and torture begin. The next day, March 29, 1985, a day like today, they follow another strand of the investigation. Another detainee, in the middle of another torture session, in another clandestine headquarters, has declared he knew that his party comrades José Manuel Parada and Manuel Gu
errero were working to analyze the testimony of a security agent. Following that thread, the group of the man who tortured people makes its way to this corner, this very spot, and early in the morning, with all the children in their classrooms, with Guerrero and Parada’s own children beginning the school day, the two men are abducted from an entrance that no longer exists, and they’re taken to La Firma to be tortured day and night.

  They must have been asked about the man who tortured people.

  They must have been ordered to reveal his whereabouts.

  On March 30, 1985, as everyone is looking for them, as the press is talking about the kidnapping, in a caravan headed by the old red Chevy that I once rode in with Maldonado, a commando unit takes the three detainees down the airport road. The comrades of the man who tortured people are there. González, the officer with the wooden hand who was my classmate’s father, is there. The cars stop and the comrades of the man who tortured people make the three detainees get out. With a knife they cut their throats and leave them to bleed to death. The country wakes up to this “gruesome discovery,” that’s how I heard the news on my mother’s car radio on the way to school. That’s what I remember the voice of the announcer saying, the same person who is the presenter at today’s ceremony, which will never end.

  There was a video of the Billy Joel song. In it, Joel is drumming on the kitchen table when suddenly a couple comes in. It’s a bride and groom straight out of the 1950s, who are about to begin their life together. They don’t see Joel. He’s like a ghost from the future watching them unseen, witness to everything that happens in the kitchen. Soon a child appears, the couple’s son. And then the boy grows up, becomes an adolescent and then a young man as styles change, the kitchen appliances grow more modern, and the parents’ clothing evolves. A whole life unfolds in that kitchen. Birthdays, graduations, parties, lunches, Christmases, funerals. Sometimes we see newspaper headlines. Sometimes Life magazine is read. Elvis appears in a photograph. Calendar pages fly off, one month after another, and clocks spin madly. And sometimes the family is a different family. Because families are all alike and each era leaves its mark on families and kitchens, whether they know it or not. And sometimes, in the chorus, Joel keeps drumming on the table, but behind him the kitchen is gone, and instead there’s a kind of window though which we see images from his times, from the world in which he was fated to grow up. A man hanging from chains in a tree, which makes me think of Korea. An Asian man shooting another man, which makes me think of Vietnam. Arrests, policemen, soldiers, bodies from some war. And then flames start to come in through the window to the place where Joel is. Flames that burn everything up, because there has never been a kitchen anywhere in the world that is safe from the blaze of history.

  Coup in Chile.

  President Allende dies at La Moneda.

  Mass arrests,

  secret executions,

  war tribunals.

  The Caravan of Death travels south and north.

  Víctor Jara is tortured

  and killed at the National Stadium.

  The man who tortured people starts at AGA.

  Our neighbors, the Quevedos,

  hide flyers at our house.

  My grandmother, alarmed, makes a fuss.

  Creation of DINA, the National Intelligence Directorate.

  Creation of SIFA, the Air Force Intelligence Service.

  Selective detentions, abductions,

  people disappeared.

  The man who tortured people

  joins an antisubversive group.

  I start school, wearing a uniform for the first time

  and carrying a metal lunch box.

  Assassination of General Carlos Prats,

  ex-minister of the interior under Salvador Allende.

  His car explodes in Buenos Aires.

  On Calle Santa Fe, MIR leader Miguel Enríquez is killed.

  Pinochet flies to Franco’s funeral.

  The Vicariate of Solidarity is created.

  Bodies in the Cajón del Maipo, fingers missing the first joints,

  no fingerprints.

  Assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington.

  Ceremony on Cerro Chacarillas,

  seventy-six young men climbing the hill with torches,

  receiving medals from Pinochet.

  The man who tortured people

  becomes a guard at clandestine detention centers.

  El Chapulín Colorado

  makes an appearance at the National Stadium,

  I go to see him, bringing my plastic squeaky hammer, the chipote chillón.

  Contreras Maluje is kidnapped blocks from my house,

  My mother watches it happen and then

  tells us the story at lunchtime.

  El Quila Leo is assassinated.

  The man who tortured people

  cries secretly in his barracks.

  DINA is dissolved and CNI, the National Information Center, is created.

  The first bodies of the disappeared

  are discovered in the Lonquén mines.

  Don Francisco hosts the first Telethon,

  I have a sleepover with a group of friends

  and we stay up all night to watch it.

  Family members of the disappeared chain themselves

  to the gates of the National Congress.

  Six-year-old Rodrigo Anfruns is kidnapped,

  and we’re all afraid of being kidnapped

  whether we’re blond like Rodrigo or not.

  A national plebiscite is held.

  The new constitution is approved,

  the one that governs us to this day.

  Pinochet moves to La Moneda.

  Fire at the Torre Santa María.

  The Apumanque mall opens.

  Ex-president Eduardo Frei is assassinated

  at the Clínica Santa María.

  Union leader Tucapel Jiménez is assassinated.

  Opposition magazines begin to circulate

  among my classmates.

  I read the special issue on torture and dream about rats.

  Economic crisis in Chile.

  My Uncle R and Aunt M leave for Miami, fleeing their debts.

  The Parque Arauco mall opens.

  Family members of the disappeared

  Light candles in front of the cathedral,

  I see the little flames go out

  in jets from the water cannons.

  First national protest.

  Santiago governor Carol Urzúa dies

  in an ambush.

  Five MIR members gunned down in retaliation

  on Calle Janequeo and Calle Fuenteovejuna.

  My mother-in-law locks the door

  when she hears the shots.

  M hears it all from the thirteenth floor.

  The man who tortured people

  comes home with bloodstained pants.

  His wife notices.

  The Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front

  commences its activities

  with a first general blackout,

  my grandmother buys candles by the dozen.

  New national protest.

  Stones thrown at Pinochet in Punta Arenas.

  Family members of the disappeared

  light candles in front of the cathedral,

  I see the little flames go out

  in another jet from the water cannons.

  The man who tortured people

  arrives at the Cauce magazine offices.

  I want to talk, he says.

  Priest André Jarlan is killed

  in the settlement of La Victoria.

  The man who tortured people

  takes refuge on Catholic Church property.

  His superiors search for him.

  State of siege declared,

  opposition press banned.

  The man who tortured people leaves Chile.

  The man who tortured people seeks asylum in France.

  Los Prisioneros launch La voz de
los ochenta.

  New earthquake in the Zona Central.

  Brothers Rafael and Eduardo Vergara Toledo

  are killed by a national police patrol.

  On the road to Pudahuel Airport,

  Santiago Nattino, Manuel Guerrero, and José Manuel Parada

  are found with their throats slit.

  We go to their wake, we go to their burial.

  New national protest.

  We scatter flyers in the center of Santiago.

  We see a headline on the cover of Cauce magazine

  that reads I TORTURED PEOPLE,

  we decide that the torturer

  looks like our science teacher.

  Back to the Future is released.

  Marty McFly breaks the barriers of time

  and space and travels to the past.

  Halley’s Comet passes.

  A psychic claims to speak

  to the Virgin in Peñablanca.

  In France, the man who tortured people keeps speaking out

  from his hiding place.

  New national protest,

  we scatter more leaflets in the center of Santiago.

  The young photographer Rodrigo Rojas de Negri

  is burned to death by an army patrol.

  Vigils, days of reflection, marches.

  Sábado gigante debuts in the U.S.

  Attempted assassination of Pinochet

  by the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front,

  Pinochet escapes and claims to have seen the Virgin.

  The reporter Pepe Carrasco is assassinated.

  In France, the man who tortured people keeps speaking out

  from his hiding place.

  The pope visits Chile.

  We go to the National Stadium to see him,

  we go to Parque O’Higgins to see him.

  Stones are thrown at us and we’re drenched in water and tear gas.

  Cecilia Bolocco is crowned Miss Universe.

  Twelve members of the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front

  die in Operation Albania.