Dear Andrés,
We don’t know each other, and I hope my boldness in tracking down your address and taking the liberty to write won’t stop you from reading this letter. The reason I want to be in touch is that I have dreamed of writing a book about you. Why? Good question, and indeed I’ve wondered as much myself without finding a satisfactory answer. I can’t explain it exactly, because the source of my obsessions is never clear, and, over time, that’s what you’ve become for me: an obsession. Without realizing it, I’ve been following you since I was thirteen years old, when I saw you on that Cauce magazine cover. I didn’t understand everything that was happening around me when I was a girl—I still don’t—and I suppose that, in my attempt to understand back then, I was captivated by your words, by the possibility of using them to decipher the enigma. Later, for work, and because I was interested, I came to know your story in greater detail and I read everything about it that I could get my hands on, which still seems paltry and insufficient given the value of the information you provided. Now, writing to you, I’m trying again to clarify my motives so that I sound less vague, but the honest truth is that all I can come up with are more questions.
Why should I write about you? Why should I resurrect a story that began more than forty years ago? Why bring up curved knives, electric shock torture, and the rats again? Why bring up the disappearances? Why should I talk about a man who was part of it all and at some point decided he couldn’t be anymore? How do you decide when you’ve had enough? What kind of line do you cross? Is there such a line? Is the line the same for all of us? What would I have done if, like you, I had reported for military service at eighteen, and my superior had sent me to guard a group of political prisoners? Would I have done my job? Would I have run away? Would I have understood that this was the beginning of the end? What would my partner have done? What would my father have done? What would my son do in the same place? Does someone have to take that place? Whose images are these in my head? Whose screams? Did I read about them in the testimony you gave the reporter or did I hear them myself somewhere? Are they part of a scene from your life or mine? Is there some fine line that separates collective dreams? Is there a place where you and I both dream of a dark room full of rats? Do these images creep into your mind, too, and keep you awake? Will we ever escape this dream? Will we ever emerge and give the world the bad news about what we were capable of doing?
When I was a girl, I was told that if I misbehaved the man with the sack would come for me. All disobedient children disappeared into that wicked old man’s bottomless dark sack. But rather than frighten me, the story piqued my curiosity. I secretly wanted to meet the man, open his sack, climb into it, see the disappeared children, and get to the heart of the terrible mystery. I imagined it many times. I gave him a face, a suit, a pair of shoes. When I did, he became more disturbing, because normally the face I gave him belonged to someone I knew: my father, my uncle, the corner grocer, the mechanic next door, my science teacher. Any of them could be the old man with the sack. Even I could probably play the part, if I looked in the mirror and drew on a mustache.
Dear Andrés, I’m the woman who wants to look into the sack.
Dear Andrés, I’m the woman who’s ready to draw on a mustache to play you.
If you’ve read this far and my request doesn’t seem absurd or inappropriate, I’d be grateful if you’d write to me at this address. I eagerly await your response.
The alarm goes off at 6:30 every morning. What follows is a long chain of hurried, awkward acts, an attempt to start the day by shooing away sleep, to forge ahead while yawning and wanting to go back to bed. Drawers opening, cups filling with coffee and milk, taps turning. Showers, toothbrushes, deodorant, combs, toast, butter, the morning news, the announcer reporting the latest carjacking or the day’s gridlock. Heating lunch for my son, putting it in a thermos, making a snack for recess. And between each rushed activity, calls of hurry up, it’s late, let’s go. The cat meows, it wants food and water. The garbage truck goes by, taking away the trash we put out last night. The school bus stops in front and honks for my neighbors. The children come out yelling, their mother sees them off. The man with the dog goes by with his dog and waves as I’m opening the gate and my son’s father is starting the car, getting ready to leave. The young man who jogs is jogging. The woman with the cell phone is talking on her cell phone. Everything is just like yesterday or the day before yesterday or tomorrow, and in the spatiotemporal cycle that we move in daily, my
