Mapuche (35 page)

Before the Human Rights Commission visited, they had walled off the stair leading to the jail cells: the naked, wet bodies lying on iron plates, the rapes, the electricity—the emissaries of the international community saw none of that. The soccer World Cup could take place. They left again with their attaché cases full of recommendations, leaving us alone, at their mercy. And everything began all over again. The prohibitions—talking, seeing, sitting down—the odor of hoods drenched in the blood of former detainees who had bitten their tongues while they were being tortured, my cries when I was taken to the workroom for the tenth time, the
picana
that empties your intestines, the torturers' jokes, the unquenchable thirst, the beating of your heart that drums in your temples, a hundred and thirty, a hundred and forty, a hundred and fifty, still more blows, the nakedness, the isolation, the loss of bearings, the smell of shit become almost familiar, the fear, still more blows that I didn't see coming from behind my hood, the insults, the threats, and the despair when I thought about you. The terrible thoughts. Where were you, little sister? I heard the cries of the new arrivals who were being tortured, the television cartoons and comedies the guards turned on in the break room to drown out the screams, trembling at the idea that it was you who were being torn apart on the tables. They questioned me about Papa, asked me where he was—in France—what he was doing there—writing poems—kept telling me that I was lying, that I was the son of a Red, that they were there to clean up the mess, and I was already part of it. Papa hadn't said anything to me about communists, Montoneros, or terrorists who had taken refuge abroad. The answers I didn't have threw them into mad, or simulated, rages. The crying fits, supplications, their stubbornness, insanity loomed everywhere. Time was erased, a life in pencil. I was afraid I'd become like those zombies, the people who had never been political activists and who were not prepared to die for a cause that they were not fighting for, people incapable of getting back on their feet and who lost their minds, who played the slave thinking the torturers would spare them or collaborated so that it would all finally end.

Die or go mad.

Die or go mad.

Die or go mad.

The elastic of the hood pressed on my skull, was slowly cutting it in half, a shooting, unbearable pain; tears flowed by themselves all night, or during the daytime, I no longer knew, time had dissolved, hanged itself, a dead life—madness that soon no longer looms but creeps closer, lies in wait, watching for the slightest weakness, to carry me off like a sheep in its claws. Through the walls I felt the presence of other detainees dispossessed, as I had been, of their names and their rights, reduced to simple matriculation numbers that could be tormented at will, the abstract universe of questions in which submission meant survival, the disgusting stew they served us, the night terrors when we were awakened on a whim so that we could be beaten, riding crops, clubs, whips, karate holds, water-boarding, hung by the feet with a cloth over the head and lowered into a bathtub full of icy water: the shock, the asphyxiation, the pain of water in the lungs, a death by suffocation. Doctors were assigned to bring the drowned person back to life, so it could begin all over again, once, ten times, repeated deaths, and then the attack dogs trained to kill that were let loose on the poor devils who had nothing left but their bones, my neighbors whom I saw when they took us out of the cells for collective beatings, burning us with cigarettes, boiling water, red-hot pokers, cut, gashed, slashed us, skinned us alive, the new arrivals who were given a choice between electroshock torture and gang rape, sadistic, systematic vexations, sitting on the floor without being permitted to lean against the wall of the cell, from six in the morning to eight in the evening, fourteen hours to stay in that position, those who fell were beaten, those who turned their heads were beaten, those who talked were beaten, and then the detainees who were forced to fight each other without taking off their hoods, the worker, number 412, who had been literally forgotten in his cell, the victim of some administrative problem, and who died of thirst and exhaustion, the sophisticated humiliations, still more blows, gratuitous, the same routine that was inflicted to punish us for being born, for having long hair, for wearing glasses, for going out to nightclubs. Where were you? In time, I succeeded in communicating with the people in the neighboring cells, whispering a few words when we were jostled together or when one of them brought our meager ration. Of you, no trace. I sometimes heard children's screams from the upper floor, but they didn't last. I still didn't know that they were being given to sterile couples close to the military. Twelve years old, little sister: you were too big to be given to just anyone. And then one evening, while I was picking up my bowl of “tumba” I heard a comrade's voice whispering to me: “Your father's here.”

My heart started beating so hard that I almost dropped my food bowl: had Papa let himself be captured in order to find us, his kidnapped children? What madness!

The World Cup was in full swing, the pressure put on us by the guards had let up a little, or rather it had shifted to the Argentine team. July 17, 1978, the day I turned fifteen. A new detainee was handing the soup in through the hole in the door, closely supervised by El Turco, the jailer. I was about to go for the bits of meat that were floating on the surface when I saw the little aluminum ball mixed with the sticky mess. I licked it off in my mouth before carefully unfolding it: it was a piece of aluminum foil off a package of cigarettes and contained, on its opposite side, a treasure. A poem, little sister, scribbled in tiny letters, on the inside of the foil.

 

Don't be afraid

Of buried giants

It's the lightning that's decapitated

To warm matter

Look,

The stars' skin is soft

The plains are naked of it

Walk little man,

Walk:

The same hand caresses and kills

The memory of the knife . . .

 

Only the two of us remain

In the lion's den,

There I see the ruins

Of cathedrals

Luminous signals,

It's the lighting following us,

Look,

The war is over

The forest has gone silent

Go, little man,

Go

The same hand caresses and kills

The memory of the knife!

 

A poem by Papa, for my birthday. My fifteenth birthday. The last poem by Daniel Calderón. I couldn't
destroy it, little sister, that poem was my life. I read it dozens and dozens of times that evening, with a sick joy, and I learned it by heart, then I rolled it up in a ball and hid it in a crack in the wall of the cell. Invisible. The torturers had stolen our freedom, our integrity, but not our love. A week later, in the middle of the night, the guards carried out a meticulous inspection of the cells, throwing the prisoners out in the corridor. It was there, between two salvos of blows, that I saw Papa's bearded face. He had been tortured, but I knew he had held up. We said nothing to each other, he had just given me a calming sign (he must have known that I was in the neighboring cell) when a hand grabbed me by the hair.

“What's this?”

They had just discovered the little paper hidden in the wall: my treasure.

Daniel Calderón, number 563, was not afraid of dying: he knew why he was there. Not only did he refuse to talk, but by writing a poem he had broken the rules. He was defying authority, seriously. In addition to the usual treatment, beatings and the
picana
, they decided to starve him.

The torturers were not all sadists or confirmed rapists; many were just ordinary brutes who had been given free rein; El Turco would be their puppet
.
Days went by, then more days. Weakened, “the Poet,” as they called him sarcastically, could not hold out much longer. I had known that obsessive hunger in the lion's cage where they had kept me lying down for days. The hardest part was mealtime, when the clicking of the spoons ate away at your stomach and made tears come to your eyes. El Turco and the others made it worse, taunting them through the hole in the door, laughing, moronic and having eaten their fill. Finally the great day came, the one that the whole country was waiting for: June 25, 1978. The guards, the interrogating officers, everyone was talking only about the upcoming match: Menotti's team was going to win that damned final. We heard them braying in the break room, where they had put the television set. Whether it was the end of the forced diet or an offering to the gods of football, that night a bowl of “tumba” was given the Poet. The guards shouted: one goal each at the end of regulation time, Argentina and Holland would play overtime. Taking advantage of the pause, El Turco and his gang broke into Papa's cell: they saw the empty bowl, licked clean, and began to laugh like hyenas. I heard their comments in the corridor, but I didn't understand what made them so mocking.

The television was howling when an enormous clamor greeted the third Argentine goal. The guards were exultant, bellowing with a taurine joy: “Argentina! Argentina!” The roar of victory rose up from the avenue. The River Plata stadium where the final was being played was quite close to the ESMA: the guards in the room with the television set were shouting too loudly to hear it, but the muffled noise that came from the neighboring cell, a compact noise, I was able to clearly identify: it was Papa's head banging against the intervening wall.

The man was fracturing his skull and moaning like a puppy. It was him, little sister.

El Turco and the others came to see me shortly afterward. They had waited until the Poet had finished his revolting stew to show him what they were hiding behind their backs, and what they now exhibited before my livid face: your head, little sister. Your child's head that they brandished like a trophy. The ogres had left your hazel eyes open: the momentary stupefaction that had gone through your mind at the instant they decapitated you could still be read in them.

Die or go mad: Daniel Calderón had chosen to die. Anyway, his head was no longer banging against the wall of my cell. The Poet had died of indigestion with the world, and you in the form of boiled meat that El Turco and the others had made him swallow, mixed with the “tumba.”

No, men's cruelty has no limits.

They released me two days later, amid the national happiness, so that I would tell your story. But I won't say anything, little sister, ever. Never to anyone but you. My little poppy.

 

*

 

Jana closed the notebook, her eyes staring, chewing her little clots of hatred. No, men's cruelty had no limits.

The stars were tumbling down over the glowing rock, but she could no longer distinguish the colors, the birds soaring off the snowy peaks, the tints of the desert at sunset. She no longer saw anything but that poor girl and her fifteen-year-old brother in the putrid jails of the ESMA, all that love decapitated, which made her weep cold tears. Pale, she closed the accursed notebook where his nightmares lived. Die or go mad! Rubén had survived. Alone.

A blue-gray wave was watering down the sky when the Mapuche raised her head. Rubén was just then walking back to their improvised camp, a few stunted branches in his hands. Jana swallowed the rage that was breaking her heart and stood up as he approached.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked him.

Rubén's face was pale under the moon. He threw his measly branches on the stones.

“No.”

“I did,” she said.

Jana took off the tight-fitting tank top, let it drop to the ground, and turned to face him. Her scrawny breasts poked out, two little monsters in the starlight. Rubén felt no pity on looking at the Indian's amputated body: her unhappy beauty dazzled him.

Jana took him in her arms first, pressed her chest against him and kissed him. She wasn't afraid of the
winka
who had tried to destroy them. The Mapuches had resisted the Incas, the conquistadors, Argentine army regulars, the
estancieros
and the Indian hunters paid by the number of cut-off ears, the carabineros, the political and financial elites that had bled the country dry: she was a descendant of survivors. Their feet danced a moment on the sand, Jana kissed him, kissed him again.

“Come,” she said, detaching herself, “come . . . ”

Their clothes disappeared, thrown away, their modesty, the past, the future, whether they would live together or not, the eternal solitude and the words that were never said: they made love, trembling, standing up, holding each other with their eyes as if they might lose each other, entwined so tight it hurt in order to ward off the death that was gripping them, and came together, like demons.

Elsa Calderón was one of the hundred and seventy-two children murdered during the Process.
Having no news of her family, Elena had joined the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo two months before the famous World Cup. Through her knowledge of the enemy, Elena Calderón had quickly become one of the main intellectual leaders of the Association for the Defense of Human Rights. They were the ones who were the military's primary targets. A first roundup had taken place after Astiz's infiltration; he had passed himself off as the brother of a
desaparecido
when twelve persons were kidnapped on coming out of the church of Santa Cruz, among them the first president of the association and two French nuns. End of 1977. To incriminate the Montoneros, the junta had had a false document published, a rather crude photomontage that was disseminated around the world, but the ruse hadn't worked. Voices were raised. The international community got involved. The emotion elicited by the disappearance of the first Mothers threatened to spoil the soccer triumph, so it was decided to use a more subtle method to do away with these madwomen who dared to defy the government. Since their threats had had no effect, the oppressors had thought up an attack by several gangs that would hit them hard, especially Elena Calderón.