Sunk in that dark zone, the three analyzed the long hours of recorded testimony. They spent months navigating the weighty, burdened words of the man who tortured people. Each document was strung on a sticky thread that clung to their bodies, entangling them. Everything that this messenger from the far side of the mirror had brought over from the troubling place he inhabited seemed to be entirely true. The reporter, Parada, and Guerrero went about connecting the dots, recognizing beloved names on the list of the dead, linking the crimes described to other crimes, using the material to reconstruct scenes of detention, torture, execution, guessing at the identity of the agents behind each nickname, making the pieces fit, untangling a skein that even now is hard to follow.
Once the information had been checked, the reporter, along with Guerrero and Parada, decided that the interview would be offered to the Washington Post, in the United States, and later delivered in full to the Chilean courts. This had to wait until the man who tortured people had left the country and was safe, that was the agreement. Until then, his words transcribed from the dark zone would keep all of them—their team, the lawyer, the man who tortured people—dangling from a single thread.
We’ve been here for almost an hour and the presenter is beginning to draw things to a close. Family members, officials, and a few singers have all had their turn on stage. The inauguration ceremony is coming to an end, but an invitation is extended after the speeches and words of affection, the same invitation that is extended every March 29: the moment has come to light the candles. Now it’s clearer where to do it; instead of a long line of untidy little flames speckling the street with their melted wax, there will be an organized blaze around the memorial. Whether authorized or unauthorized, outside an apartment building or at the entrance to a small school, a small gathering or a huge group like this one: every March 29, this corner is the same again.
One day a priest turned up at the reporter’s office. I imagine him in a long cassock, sitting across the desk, speaking slowly, with the kind of fixed smile on his face often seen on men of the cloth. The priest said that he had come on behalf of the family of the man who tortured people. The priest said that the man’s family members knew he had talked to her, and that he hadn’t been home since. Given the circumstances, he was asking for a little compassion for the wife and children of the man who tortured people. Given the circumstances, our priest was requesting a clue to his whereabouts.
The reporter—I know this, I’m not imagining it—had no idea where the man who tortured people was. For her own safety, she knew nothing about anything that happened to him before he left the country. The meeting in the Plaza Santa Ana, the drive in the Renault van past the detention centers, his hiding place on church property, his attempts to acquire a passport, his southern route out of the country to Argentina, all of the scenes I’ve been trying to imagine: none of it was information to which the reporter had access.
She apologized to the priest and said she had no idea what he was asking about. She didn’t know any Andrés Antonio Valenzuela Morales, she said. So there was no way she could give any information about his whereabouts. The fake priest’s response was to pull a gun out from under his cassock: Listen, cunt. Tell us where he is or you’ll be sorry.
Everyone has gathered around the memorial. Stage, chairs, and microphones are left behind. We’ve fallen out of line as everyone tries to find a space to light a candle for each of the three honorees. A little flicker for Guerrero, another for Parada, and a final one for Nattino. Maldonado and I haven’t brought candles or lighters, but we watch it all and we’re part of the ritual, camouflaged among those who’ve come prepared. Across from us, a little girl asks her mother if this is a birthday party, if that’s why people are lighting candles. Her mother laughs and doesn’t answer, while Maldonado and I watch as more and more candles are added to the big cake.
It’s December 1984 and the reporter is meeting a trusted friend. He is traveling to the United States and she has asked him to carry a complicated document for her. For his own protection, she can’t tell him what it is, but someone will contact him to receive it once he reaches the United States. He has accepted the mission. Back then, this is what true friends did, so I imagine the reporter sewing up the lining of her friend’s coat, because that’s where she’s hidden the interview with the man who tortured people. The interview is to be delivered to the Washington Post, to be published at some future date.
Days or maybe hours later, I don’t know, the reporter’s friend gets on a plane. He settles into his seat, and after he fastens his seat belt he begins to feel a strange sensation against his back, around his kidneys. It’s a mild but rather irksome warmth, accompanied by his friend’s voice. Don’t take the papers out of your coat, he hears her saying in his head. Don’t read them, the less you know the better, for your sake and everyone else’s. And the plane takes off, leaving Chilean soil, and he again feels a pressing against his back. Now it’s an unsettling twitching inside his coat, which he hasn’t taken off and doesn’t plan to take off. It’s as if he’s transporting an animal, a living creature pacing back
