Come on, Papudo, he says, let’s go for a swim.
The man who tortured people doesn’t know what to do.
The man who tortured people is wearing his uniform, he can’t go swimming in his clothes.
The man who tortured people remembers his wife, with whom he hardly speaks; his children, with whom he no longer plays; his parents, whom he no longer sees; and he feels an uncontrollable urge to plunge into the sea. He doesn’t know where he is, he can’t say what beach this is, but none of that matters, and he takes off his jacket with the pair of metal eagles, then his shirt, his tie, his pants. His uniform is trodden into the sand. It looks like the sloughed-off skin of a snake, the vestige of a body that’s of no use to him anymore.
We’re at your beach, Papudo, he hears a shout from somewhere.
Look around and see the color of the sand, Papudo, hear the cry of the seagulls, the sound of the waves.
Suddenly everything is familiar.
At last he’s part of that ancient collective celebration that he could only watch from a distance before. The man who tortured people runs naked, feels the heat of the sun on his face, feels the cool air strike his body. His toes sink into the warm black sand of the beach where he was born, and in the distance he thinks he hears one of his children laughing, playing ball. The man who tortured people reaches the edge of the sea and then he sees him. It’s Quila Leo, dear Quila Leo, ducking under and splashing naked in the waves.
We’re on your beach, Papudo, he says again. Your beach. Do you recognize it now?
Without a second thought, the man who tortured people dives into the sea, immersed at last in the waters of that lost planet, its only traces the tokens scattered over the table in the parish hall.
From there I hear him shouting to me.
Remember who I am, he says.
Remember where I was, remember what they did to me.
GHOST ZONE
I imagine him hiding on the floor of a van. I don’t know what he’s wearing. I don’t know whether he’s clean-shaven, either. It may be that he’s gotten rid of that dark bushy mustache, or on the other hand, he’s kept it and he has a heavy beard, too, to throw off anyone who might recognize him. Months have gone by since he gave his testimony to the reporter and the lawyer. Since then he has waited in utter seclusion until conditions were right for him to be escorted from the country. He knows that his superiors are looking for him. He knows that if he is found, he’s a dead man. That’s why he’s being taken in secret to complete some paperwork that will make it possible for him to leave. He’s hidden on the floor of a delivery van from Manantial Books, a familiar store.
There he is, under piles of packages. Schoolbooks, notebooks, boxes of pencils and erasers shifting with each turn of the wheel. He feels the weight of the bundles on his back and legs. He can hardly see out from under all the packages. From the street comes the clamor of the city. He hears car engines, horns, the radio announcer’s voice. His hands are sweating. His scalp, too. The trip has taken longer than he calculated. But all at once he feels the van’s motor slowing, the turn signal ticking, the clutch shifting, and all of this tells him that they’re parking in front of a church. Specifically, Our Lady of Los Ángeles on Avenida El Golf, in the upper reaches of the city.
We’ll wait here, he hears the lawyer say from the front of the van.
He doesn’t answer, acquiescing in silence. He knows what this means, they discussed it in advance. Any moment now a car will pull up and an official will step out to take his fingerprints for his new identity. In a few days he’ll be in possession of the passport that will enable him to travel south and cross the mountains into Argentina. Then he’ll fly to France, where help is waiting to get him started in his new life. But it is not yet time for that. Now he simply has to keep calm and wait for the official. Everything will happen in the van. From inside the church, sympathetic eyes are watching, ready to assist. In case they’re discovered, in a true emergency, the Spanish embassy a few blocks away is ready to offer them asylum. If they aren’t seized on the street and they’re able to reach the embassy, they’ll be driven to the airport in a diplomatic car and put on a flight to Madrid. No suitcases, no goodbyes, no plan, no passport. But nobody wants a real emergency. They’ve taken every precaution and neither the air force nor the security services should know they’re here now.
I imagine the lawyer turning on the radio as they wait. From the speakers comes a song from back then, December 1984. I try to remember what was on the radio in those days and the first thing that comes to mind is the song from the Ghostbusters sound track. For some reason, that’s the background music I imagine for this scene. If there’s something strange / in your neighborhood / who you gonna call? Ghostbusters! goes the chorus, over and over. And on screen I remember a young Bill Murray with a couple
