Maya's Notebook: A Novel (21 page)

Yesterday Manuel found me absorbed in front of his computer reading about the Caravan of Death, an army unit that in October 1973, a month after the military coup, traveled all over Chile from north to south murdering political prisoners. The group was under the command of someone called Arellano Stark, a general who chose prisoners at random, had them summarily shot, and then blew their bodies up with dynamite, an efficient method of imposing terror on the civilian population and on indecisive soldiers. Manuel never talks about that era, but seeing my interest, he lent me a book about that sinister caravan, written a few years ago by Patricia Verdugo, a brave journalist who in
vestigated those events. “I don’t know if you’ll understand it, Maya. You’re so young and from so far away,” he said. “Don’t underestimate me,
compañero
,” I answered. He was startled, because nobody uses that term these days, which was in vogue when Allende was president and then banned by the dictatorship. I found that out from a Web site.

Thirty-six years have gone by since the military coup, and for the last twenty this country has had democratic governments, but there are still scars and, in some cases, open wounds. People don’t talk about the dictatorship much. Those who suffered it try to forget it, and for young people it’s ancient history, but I can find as much information as I want. There are lots of Web pages and books, articles, documentaries, and photographs, which I’ve seen in the Castro bookstore, where Manuel buys his books. That period is studied in universities and has been analyzed from the most varied angles, but in society it’s bad taste to talk about it. Chileans are still divided. The father of Michelle Bachelet, the current president, an air force brigadier, died at the hands of his own comrades-in-arms because he didn’t want to join the uprising. Then she and her mother were arrested, tortured, and sent into exile, but she never talks about that either. According to Blanca Schnake, that piece of Chilean history is mud at the bottom of a lake, and it mustn’t be stirred up or it’ll cloud the water.

The only person I can talk to about this is Liliana Treviño, the nurse, who wants to help me investigate. She offered to accompany me to visit Father Luciano Lyon, who has written essays and articles on the dictatorship’s repression. Our plan is to go and see him without Manuel, so
we’ll be able to talk openly.

Silence. This Guaitecas cypress house
has the longest silences. It’s taken me four months to adapt to Manuel’s introverted personality. My presence must be a nuisance to this solitary man, especially in a house without doors, where privacy depends on good manners. He’s nice to me in his own way: on the one hand he ignores me or answers in monosyllables, and on the other he hangs my towels by the stove to warm up when he thinks I’m going to have a shower, brings me my glass of hot milk in bed, takes care of me. The other day he lost his temper for the first time since I met him, because I went out with two fishermen to set their nets, and we got caught by some bad weather, rain and a choppy sea, and got back really late, soaked to the skin. Manuel was waiting for us on the wharf with Fahkeen and one of the carabineros, Laurencio Cárcamo, who had already been in radio contact with the Isla Grande to request they send out a navy ship to look for us. “What am I going to tell your grandma if you drown?” Manuel shouted furiously at me, as soon as I stepped on dry land. “Calm down, man. I can take care of myself,” I told him. “Of course, that’s why you’re here!’ Cause you take such good care of yourself!”

Laurencio Cárcamo was kind enough to drive us home. In the jeep, I took Manuel’s hand and explained that we’d gone out after checking that the weather forecast was good and with the permission of the captain of the port; no one
was expecting that sudden storm. In a matter of minutes, the sky and the sea both turned brownish gray and we had to pull in the nets. We were lost for a couple of hours, because it got dark and we lost our bearings. There was no cell phone signal, so I couldn’t let him know; it was just an inconvenience, we weren’t in danger, the boat was well made and the fishermen know these waters. Manuel didn’t deign to answer or look at me, but he didn’t pull his hand away either.

Eduvigis had made us salmon with baked potatoes, a blessing for me, as I was very hungry, and in the shared routine of sitting down together at the table, his bad mood evaporated. After eating we settled down on the worn-out sofa, him to read and me to write in my journal, with our big mugs of sweet and creamy coffee with condensed milk. Rain, wind, the tree branches scratching on the windowpane, wood burning in the stove, purring cats, that’s my music now. The house closed up, embracing us together with the animals.

It was the early hours
of the morning by the time I returned with Brandon Leeman from my first excursion around the casinos of the Strip. I was collapsing from exhaustion, but before going to bed I had to pose in front of a camera; they needed a photo to get my new identity started. Leeman had guessed that I wasn’t actually called Sarah Laredo, but my real name didn’t matter to him. Finally I was able to go to my room, where I lay down on the bed without sheets, with
my clothes and shoes on, disgusted by the mattress, which I imagined had been used by people with less than stringent standards of hygiene. I didn’t wake up until ten. The bathroom was as repugnant as the bed, but I took a shower anyway, shivering, because there was no hot water, and the air conditioner blasted out Siberian drafts. I got dressed in the same clothes as the day before, thinking I should find somewhere to wash the few bits of clothing I had in my backpack, and then I peeked through the hole in the wall at the other apartment, the “office,” where there was no one to be seen. It was dark, only a tiny bit of light finding its way in between the planks across the windows, but I found the switch and turned on the overhead bulbs. In the fridge there was nothing but small packages sealed with tape, a half-empty bottle of ketchup, and several out-of-date yogurts with green mold starting to grow on them. I went through the rest of the rooms, dirtier than the other apartment, not daring to touch anything, and discovered empty bottles, syringes, needles, rubber bands, pipes, burned glass tubes, trails of blood. Then I understood what the butane torches in the kitchen were used for and confirmed that I was in a den of drug addicts and dealers. The most sensible thing would be to get out of there as soon as possible.

The metal door was unlocked, and there was nobody in the hallway either; I was alone on the floor, but I couldn’t
leave because the electric gate in the stairwell was locked. I went over the apartment from top to bottom again, cursing my nerves, and didn’t find the remote control for the lock or a telephone to call for help. I began to tug on the planks across one of the windows in desperation, trying to remember what floor I was on, but they were nailed down securely, and I couldn’t even manage to loosen any of them. I was about to start screaming when I heard voices and the creaking of the electric gate on the stairs, and a moment later Brandon Leeman came in with his two associates and the boy, Freddy. “Do you like Chinese food?” Leeman asked me as a greeting. On the verge of panic, I couldn’t speak, but only Freddy noticed my agitation. “I don’t like it when they lock me in either,” he said, with a friendly wink. Brandon Leeman explained that it was a security measure—nobody should enter the apartment in his absence—but if I stayed I’d get my own remote control.

His bodyguards—or associates, as they preferred to be called—and the boy settled down in front of the television to eat with chopsticks, straight from the cartons. Brandon Leeman shut himself in one of the rooms to shout at someone on his cell phone for a long time and then announced that he was going to lie down and disappeared through the hole into the other apartment. Soon Joe Martin and Chino left. I was left alone with Freddy, and we spent the hottest hours of the afternoon watching TV and playing cards. Freddy did a perfect imitation of his idol, Michael Jackson, for me.

At about five Brandon Leeman reappeared, and a little while later the Filipino guy brought a driver’s license belonging to a certain Laura Barron, twenty-two years old,
from Arizona, with my photograph.

“Use this while you’re here,” Leeman told me.

“Who is she?” I asked, examining the license.

“From now on, Laura Barron is you.”

“Yes, but I can only stay in Las Vegas until August.”

“I know. You won’t regret it, Laura, this is a good job. One thing, though, nobody can know you’re here—not your family, not your friends. No one. Is that clear?”

“Yes.”

“We’re going to spread the word that you’re my girlfriend, to avoid problems. Nobody will dare to bother you.”

Leeman ordered his associates to
buy a new mattress and sheets for my bed, then he took me to a lavish hair salon in a private health club, where a man with earrings and raspberry-colored pants exclaimed in disgust at the strident rainbow of my hair and diagnosed that the only solution would be to cut it off and bleach it. Two hours later I looked in the mirror and saw a long-necked Scandinavian hermaphrodite with mouse ears. The chemicals in the bleaching products had left my scalp in flames. “Very elegant,” said Brandon Leeman approvingly, and drove me on a pilgrimage from one mall to the next on the Boulevard. His shopping method was disconcerting: we’d go into a shop, he’d make me try on various outfits, and in the end he would choose just one article of clothing, paying with large-denomination bills. Then he’d take the change and we’d go to another place, where he’d buy something I’d
already tried on in the previous one but that we hadn’t bought. I asked him if it wouldn’t be easier to buy everything in the same place, but he didn’t answer.

My new trousseau consisted of several sporty outfits, nothing provocative or bright—a simple black dress, daytime sandals and another gold, high-heeled pair, a bit of makeup, and two big handbags with the designer logo clearly visible that cost, according to my calculations, as much as my grandmother’s Volkswagen. Leeman got me a membership at his club, the place where I’d had my hair done, and he advised me to use the gym as much as possible, since I would have more than enough leisure time during the day. He paid in cash from rolls of dollar bills held together with an elastic band, and nobody thought it strange; from the looks of things in this city cash flowed like water. I noticed Leeman always paid with hundred-dollar bills, although the price might be a tenth of that, and I couldn’t find an explanation for this eccentricity.

At ten that night it was time for my first delivery. They dropped me off at the Mandalay Bay hotel. Following Leeman’s instructions, I headed for the swimming pool, where a couple approached me, having identified me by the brand of handbag I was carrying, which was apparently the sign Leeman had given them. The woman, wearing a long beach dress and a necklace of glass beads, didn’t even look at me, but the man, in gray pants, white T-shirt, and bare ankles, shook my hand. We chatted for a minute about nothing; then I discreetly passed them their order and received two hundred-dollar bills folded inside a tourist brochure, and we went our separate ways.

From the lobby I called another client on the internal ho
tel phone, went up to the tenth floor, passed under the nose of a guard stationed beside the elevator who didn’t give me a second glance, and knocked on the door. A man of about fifty, barefoot and in a bathrobe, told me to come in, took the little bag, paid me, and I left in a hurry. At the door I crossed paths with a tropical vision, a beautiful mulatta in a leather corset, very short skirt, and needle heels; I guessed that she was an escort, as high-class prostitutes are called these days. We looked each other up and down, without a word.

In the immense hotel lobby I finally took a deep breath, satisfied with my first mission, which had turned out to be very easy. Leeman was waiting for me in the car, with Chino at the wheel, to drive me to other hotels. Before midnight I’d collected more than four thousand dollars for my new boss.

At first glance, Brandon Leeman
was different from other addicts I met during those months, people who’d been destroyed by drugs: he looked normal, although fragile, but living with him, I understood how sick he really was. He ate less than a sparrow, could keep almost nothing down, and sometimes lay so still in his bed that I didn’t know if he was asleep, unconscious, or dead. He gave off a peculiar odor, a mix of cigarettes, alcohol, and something toxic, like fertilizer. His mind was going, and he knew it; that’s why he kept me at his side—he said he trusted my memory more than his own. He was a nocturnal animal, spending
the daylight hours resting in his air-conditioned room, in the evenings usually going to the club for a massage, a sauna, or a steam bath, and at night tending to his business. We saw each other around the gym, but we never arrived together, and the order was to pretend not to know each other; I wasn’t allowed to talk to anybody, which was very difficult, since I went every day and always saw the same faces.

Leeman was demanding with his poisons, as he said, the most expensive bourbon and the purest heroin, which he injected five or six times a day, always with brand-new needles. He had as much as he wanted at his disposal and kept to his routines, never falling into the unbearable desperation of withdrawal, like other poor souls who dragged themselves to his door in the final stage of need. I witnessed the ritual of the white lady—the spoon, the flame of a candle or a lighter, the syringe, the rubber strip tied around the arm or leg—admired his skill at jabbing collapsed, invisible veins, even in his groin, stomach, or neck. If his hand was trembling too much, he’d resort to Freddy, because I could not bring myself to help him; the needle made my hair stand on end. Leeman had used heroin for so long that he tolerated doses that would have been lethal for anyone else.

“Heroin doesn’t kill, it’s the addicts’ lifestyles that do: poverty, malnutrition, infections, dirt, used needles,” he explained.

“Then why won’t you let me try it?”

“Because a junkie is no use to me whatsoever.”