And then Luisa got up. I had never seen her before, had not even noticed her sitting at the table with the beautiful girl who drew all eyes even when she wasn’t dancing. Luisa was a plain girl, neither fat nor thin but with a stout body, long hair, and large, masculine hands. She was shorter than the beautiful girl, she stood awkwardly to the side, and then started dancing herself. A flicker of awareness appeared in the beautiful girl’s eyes as Luisa began to move, and she began to exaggerate her movements. Once more, she ran her hands down from her breasts to her stomach, but this time her hands went lower and lower. I felt a spasm of anger watching her, different from the normal anger a man feels at the beauty of a woman he does not own. Luisa shifted jerkily from side to side, half singing the lyrics, her eyes shifting from the spectacle of her beautiful friend to the boys at her table, none of whom looked at her for even a second. I could see Luisa’s eyes, searching, seeking to make contact, to be seen. The song ended, and the beautiful girl collapsed, laughing, into her chair, while Luisa remained standing, waiting for the next song, which turned out to be a slow song, a song you need a partner to dance to, and then she sat down as well.
It was her defeat that gave me confidence. I imagined, perhaps, that she would be grateful when I walked up to her and told her, “I noticed you dancing, and you were very beautiful,” but she stared at me, stone-faced, and said, “I know who you are.” Then she returned to her friends.
Later that same night, when she had drunk more and so had I, I met her and told her that I did not think of myself as a paraco, but as an administrator of local government. A bridge from the people to the power that ruled them—Jefferson. She looked very afraid of me then, and asked me what I wanted of her, and I told her I wanted to see her here more, and she asked me if she had any choice, and I told her she didn’t. Her face went flat. It was no longer a face but an object, a mask. I knew I had made a mistake and I said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what I want to say. Of course you have a choice. But it would hurt me. It would make me very sad not to see you again.” The mask shifted, animated back into a face capable of compassion, and she nodded, but after that day she never drank there again.
• • •
The next time I saw Luisa, I was with Jefferson. He took me with him to Rioclaro. The little town, it seemed, had become disloyal.
“I blame the mayor,” he said.
The mayor, a man named Victor Sánchez, wanted his town to be left alone. Left alone by the guerrilla, left alone by the army, and left alone by us. A place of peace. Jefferson was going to make it clear that was impossible. I was there as the carrot to Jefferson’s stick.
“You will offer him money for the town,” Jefferson told me. “I will say nothing. He will know I’m offering him death. The trick is to make him think he’s taking the money because he cares about his people, and not because he’s scared. If he thinks he’s doing it out of fear, he’ll feel like a coward, and he’ll hate us. So there must be a way for him to be the hero, and then he will come to love and defend us, because loving and defending us will be the same as loving and defending himself. So I want you to talk a lot. I want you to be excited about what you can do for his town. The only reason he’ll let us in the door will be because he knows if he shuts us out, we’ll kill him. Your job is to make him forget he’s a coward.”
When we entered the town it was hot, and I had dark stains on my uniform under my arms and in the center of my belly where the sweat had soaked all the way through. The town was pretty, with clean, well-kept houses and balconies full of flowers. I thought we’d head to the mayor’s office but instead we went to a bar. Jefferson posted his men at the corners of the street and then invited me to sit down with him.
“We’re going to visit Sánchez at his home, not at his office,” Jefferson said. I understood very well why that would be more frightening.
As we sat and sipped cold beer, I looked out at Jefferson’s paracos, posted on the corners, and it astonished me to realize that I was somehow important enough to sit in the shade and drink beer while they sweated.
Jefferson was thinking the same. “You’re smart,” he told me, “and trustworthy. Usually, the smart ones are not trustworthy. Only the really, really smart ones are smart and trustworthy. They understand obedience.”
“Yes,” I said, obediently agreeing with him that I was smart, and trustworthy, and that I understood obedience. Two men passed by and Jefferson smiled and waved to them. They scurried away.
Jefferson settled into himself, his face like an outcropping of rock. I didn’t know whether I should say anything, so I remained silent. We stayed like that, not talking, ordering new beers as soon as we finished the old ones. The fear we’d provoked in the town, just by being there, began to infect me. Then he broke the silence.
“In ancient times, all wars were holy wars,” he said.
I nodded. And he spoke of the book of Joshua, which tells of how the Jews killed for God. How they killed from the rivers to the seas, and from the plains to the seas. They killed to the salt sea,
