My son is fourteen. A little while ago he started taking the bus on his own. It’s an ordinary thing now, but I don’t like him to travel at night or to unfamiliar places. He’s respectful of my fears: he’s careful and calls and lets me know where he is, and he hasn’t rebelled yet against my controlling ways. Boris Flores was three years older than my son and he crossed the city by bus, probably at night, hurting and broken after a month of being locked up. I can’t imagine what his mother felt when she saw the men come for him. I can’t even approach what went through her mind when she had to watch him being beaten and taken away. I don’t know how she was able to bear that entire month with no news, searching for him and imagining him. I don’t know how she must have reacted when she heard that he was back, when she saw him walk through the door and she was able to hug that seventeen-year-old body, battered by electric shocks and torture.
When young Boris arrived he was surprised to see his brother Lincoyán back home. In turn, Lincoyán was surprised to see Boris back home. And the two of them together in their turn were surprised when their brother Carol didn’t return.
The man who tortured people says he kept guarding the prisoners. He learned to take them to their torture sessions. He learned to bring them back. He learned to keep watch so that they didn’t talk among themselves; he learned to make them eat and prevent them from sitting down, if that was what was required. He learned well, and after a while, he was selected to be part of the reaction groups, as they were called. He was taken on operations, directing traffic while the others seized and arrested people.
At the same time, in the basement setting of the War Academy, I imagine Carol Flores still locked up in room number two. From within the confines of those four walls, he imagined his brothers at his mother’s house, the place where they had been arrested and where they were surely now wondering what had become of him. An extra bowl of soup was served and grew cold daily on the Floreses’ table. A seat was left empty for him every lunchtime, every dinnertime.
The man who tortured people says that one day he didn’t see Carol Flores in room number two. He hadn’t been taken to the interrogation room and he wasn’t in the bathroom or anywhere else. The prisoners had gradually been leaving the lower levels of the AGA for other detention centers, so the man who tortured people guessed that Carol Flores had also been relocated.
Young Boris smiled happily when his brother Carol showed up at home. In turn, so did Lincoyán. And in their turn, so did their brother Fabio and their parents and Carol’s wife and even his newborn son when they saw Carol back at home.
That day Carol Flores sat down at the table to eat his bowl of soup but he did not smile. He ate slowly as everyone watched. He lifted his spoon to his mouth robotically. Young Boris had a question for him, and Lincoyán shushed him. Young Boris had another question, and then his brother Fabio shushed him. Young Boris kept asking, and then his parents and his sister-in-law shushed him. And thus the third of the Flores brothers said absolutely nothing during dinner. He didn’t talk about his three months in detention, he didn’t talk about what had happened to him there, or how or why he’d been let go. He said hardly a thing when he saw his son for the first time. For a moment, the Floreses wondered whether this man sitting at the table with them was the same person who’d been taken away three months ago.
Carol Flores didn’t look for work. He stayed home, smoking, sitting in an armchair, probably watching television. His wife cared for their newborn son, and watched this strange man who’d been returned to her. She remembered the other man, the one she had married, a restless young man full of energy, a man who had taken part in land grabs, a man who had enthusiastically joined militant factions in the party and at work. An extroverted, loving man, so very different from this silent man in the armchair.
After yet another day of television, cigarettes, and diapers, Carol’s wife looked out the window and saw an alarming sight. In the street, standing by a car, was one of the men who had been there when the Floreses were arrested. Carol’s wife screamed, terrified. She feared the worst. That they would take Carol again, that they would beat him to death. That they would take her, that she would be beaten to death. That her son would be left alone crying in an empty house. But no such thing happened. When he heard her scream, Carol came to the window and in a voice she had never heard before, he said: It’s okay, it’s just El Pelao Lito. Carol Flores went out to meet the man who was waiting for him. From then on, the man became his shadow.
A little while ago I saw a documentary by the French filmmaker Chris Marker. It describes an episode during World War II that I had never heard of: the mass suicides in Okinawa. In 1945, the Allies invaded the island, which was of strategic importance in bringing about the final surrender of Japan. I don’t know all the details of the battle, but what moved me most and what I’d like to tell is the testimony of one old man, a survivor who described his experiences to the camera.
Shigeaki Kinjo
