We stopped after about seven kilometers,
approximately forty meters from the cliff.
It was cold.
I guess there was a moon because everything was clear.
They got El Pelao out of the trunk and took him to a rock
about ten meters away.
How do you want to die? they asked.
With no handcuffs and no blindfold, he said.
They ordered me to remove them.
I crept toward him.
I was a wreck. I could hardly look at him.
It’s windy, Papudo, he said, it’s a cold night.
And I couldn’t answer him, the words wouldn’t come out.
I was scared. Everybody but me was an officer.
I thought they were going to throw me down there with El Pelao.
I took off his handcuffs.
And they sent me for rope and wire.
I was in the car getting them when I heard the burst of gunfire.
It was cold.
I guess there was a moon because everything was clear.
When I got back, El Fifo Palma was finishing him off.
I didn’t see anyone else shoot.
They ordered me to bind El Pelao’s hands and feet.
They ordered me to tie stones to him.
They ordered me to push him off the cliff.
I remembered the last time we had lunch together.
It hadn’t been so long ago.
We’d talked about soccer.
We’d told jokes.
Because of all the bushes
I had to hang over the edge myself.
Someone gripped my hand.
And I dangled there as I pushed El Pelao over.
I thought they would let me go too.
But no. He fell alone.
I guess there was a moon
because I saw him clearly down there in the river.
I can’t get it out of my mind.
When we got back we drank a whole bottle of pisco.
On April 12, 1961, Major Yuri Gagarin became the first astronaut to travel to outer space. For one hundred and eight minutes he orbited Earth in his ship, the Vostok 1, and from up above he was able to take the measure of our planet with his own eyes. He saw that it was blue, round, and beautiful. That’s what he said in his transmission to mission control: Earth is beautiful. My science teacher, the one with the big mustache I mentioned before, once got very excited telling us about the Soviet space program and Gagarin’s amazing feat. I can’t remember whether it was part of something we were studying or whether he just felt like telling us the story, but his enthusiasm was contagious and that’s probably why I remember the class when he drew Vostok 1 for us on the blackboard, which stood in for outer space. He didn’t tell us about the little dog Laika, or about Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in orbit, or about Neil Armstrong and his walk on the moon. My teacher talked only about Major Gagarin, as if his flight twenty years before had been the most important one, the definitive one.
After that class I realized a few things. One interesting discovery was that there were a number of Yuris floating around my neighborhood and my life. I knew it was a Soviet name, but I didn’t know why it was popular in Chile. I had never met a Nikolai or an Anton or a Pavlov or a Sergei. In fact, I had never met anyone with a Soviet name, because at that time anything Soviet was definitely not popular. But I had met several Yuris.
Our mustached teacher told us how Major Gagarin became a star the moment he returned from his voyage. The government of the Soviet Union trotted him around the world as an ambassador, a public relations phenomenon. No one could be indifferent to the smile of the man who had seen what no one else had ever seen. So Major Gagarin was replicated all over the world. In Egypt, Cuba, Mexico, Chile, everybody wanted to be a little bit like him, and as an homage they called their children Yuri, a name that honored not only the cosmos but also a nation heralding itself as a present-day and future utopia. Yuri Pérez, Yuri Contreras, Yuri Soto, Yuri Bahamondes, Yuri Riquelme, Yuri Gahona. An army of South American cosmonauts were born in Chile as a tribute to Major Gagarin and his trip, the idea that Earth was blue and beautiful, and the conviction that in outer space no voice of a god could be heard.
I imagine Don Alonso Gahona Chávez, employee of the district of La Cisterna, looking into the face of his newborn son and speaking the name with which he’ll be baptized. I imagine him years later, on a soccer field, playing ball with his son and shouting that same name when his son scores a goal. I imagine him sitting at a chessboard, trying to teach his son the game’s basic moves. Pawns advance one space at a time, rooks in a straight line, and bishops on the diagonal. The queen attacks—and, most importantly, protects the king. I imagine him out for a walk in the country one night, looking up at the stars, and telling his son enthusiastically, as my teacher once told me, about the great feat of the man who saw the world from up above for the first time, long ago in 1961. About the voyage of that mythic cosmonaut, from whom, I venture to imagine, Don Alonso’s young son inherited his name: Yuri Gahona.
I imagine that on September 8, 1975, when little Yuri was just seven years old, he began to set up the chessboard as he waited for his father to get home from work. I imagine him taking one of the white bishops and pretending the piece is a rocket ship. Little Major Gagarin, or Yuri Gahona, imagines that he’s inside that bishop, flying over the chessboard, across each black and white square. From inside he gazes at the rest of the pieces down below as he carefully steers his plastic ship. Little Major Gagarin, or Yuri Gahona, imagines rising above the dining room table, above the stained rug; he
