he told them to himself.
He could tell us apart by the sound of our footsteps.
When we walked by, he called us by name
and he was always right.
He had his head on straight, much straighter than mine.
One night they called me.
They told me to put pikes, shovels, a few machine guns
and several liters of gasoline in a truck.
Then they gave us a list of detainees.
We had to bind and blindfold them.
One of them was El Quila.
He had been with us for more than four months.
They’re going to let you go,
I lied as I covered his eyes with a blindfold.
Yes, he said. I’ll be going free, but I’m not going home.
Before I tied him up he shook my hand
and held it for a moment.
I gave him a cigarette and he thanked me for it.
I started to cry as I was tying him up.
I cried silently, trying not to let him see,
but both of us knew what was going to happen.
El Quila went with the other detainees in the truck.
I kept his ID card.
Also his driver’s license,
his watch, his wallet.
I had to make everything disappear.
I burned them and buried them, same as they did to him.
One day, a little while ago, I was with another agent in a car.
Someone had gotten run over.
The body was crushed
under the wheels of a bus.
The other agent drove past very slowly, and I realized that he liked looking.
I couldn’t look. I turned away.
I’m used to dead bodies.
I’ve seen lots of them by now,
but even so I couldn’t look.
We were eating sandwiches.
The other agent kept eating. He finished his entire sandwich.
We had been innocent conscripts. Dumb. Naive.
Now we were able to eat sandwiches while gawking at a dead body.
I thought about El Quila.
I thought about how much I cried when they killed him.
I imagined him there, out in the open, before he was riddled with bullets.
We’re in Peldehue, he must have guessed from under the blindfold.
I cried slowly, secretly, so that no one would notice.
Some time later I felt grief, a knot in my throat.
Some time later I was able to control my tears.
Some time later I stopped crying.
Whether I wanted to or not, I had gotten used to it.
In the end I felt nothing.
I had become someone else.
Someone who gets up and goes to bed with the smell of death.
I don’t want my children to know what I was, he says. I’m going back to my job and I’ll pay the price for what I’ve done.
I don’t care whether they kill me.
For three days the lawyer has been taking his testimony in the parish hall. I imagine that both men are weary and overwhelmed by all the probing.
I’m only doing this so there are no more deaths, says the lawyer. You’re helping us with the truth, but not in exchange for your life. We won’t do anything with your testimony until we get you to a safe place.
I imagine that a long time goes by.
I imagine that silence and cigarette smoke fill the room.
I imagine that they sip coffee. That some nun silently comes and goes.
I imagine that for a moment, maybe only a second, the man who tortured people sees himself inserted into one of those photographs still watching him from the table.
Remember who I am, they keep saying.
Remember where I was, remember what was done to me.
Where they killed me, where they buried me.
It’s a vast chorus. Smiling faces, bright eyes, all posing for the camera while on an outing or at some gathering or party, alongside family members, children, brothers or sisters, friends, in the happy past that everyone was once a part of. A distant and now nonexistent place, from which this man looking at the photographs was barred. He imagines himself as just another face among these lost people. He sees himself with his own children, his wife, maybe his parents, whom he hasn’t visited for a while. He pretends they’re on a beach in Papudo, sunning themselves and eating hard-boiled eggs, relaxing after a pickup soccer game and a nice dip in the sea, feet covered in black sand. They seem happy living a life that was never theirs. A life that he was never able to live because unwittingly he entered the dark parallel dimension where any photograph like this is part of an ancient reality or simply nonexistent.
You’re right, he says. I won’t go back to my job. I’m going to desert, with you as witness.
I imagine that the man who tortured people then reaches into his pocket. From an old wallet he removes his armed forces card, Andrés Antonio Valenzuela Morales, Soldier First Class, ID #39432 of La Ligua. In the center is a photograph numbered 66650, which I’m not imagining, which I have here in front of me, on a photocopied sheet that the lawyer himself gave me years later when we talked about this moment. In the photograph, the man who tortured people is posing for the camera in his uniform. His hair is neatly combed and he’s clean-shaven, no mustache. Eyes wide. Three deep furrows in his brow, too deep for someone his age. On the lapel of his impeccable military uniform are two air force eagle pins.
The lawyer takes the card.
In the parish hall, the desertion is registered.
The face of the man who tortured people lies on the table, exposed, looking up from his ID card. There he is just as he imagined himself, among the other faces. The faces of Contreras Maluje, Don Alonso Gahona, El Quila Leo. They and all the others in the surrounding photographs grow restless when they sense his presence. They seem puzzled. They glance at the man who tortured people, eye him curiously, try to creep into his photograph to get a better look at him. In the left-hand corner, I imagine José Weibel taking off his thick glasses and rubbing his eyes,
