Distant Star (9 page)

Meanwhile Carlos Wieder was still up in the sky, struggling with the elements. Beside the airstrip glistening with rain (the scene was worthy of a Second World War film) only a handful of friends remained, and two journalists who in their spare time wrote surrealist poems (or super-realist poems, as they preferred to say, aping a rather precious Spanish usage), their eyes fixed on the light plane veering around under the storm-clouds. Wieder himself was perhaps unaware that his public had so drastically diminished.

He wrote, or thought he wrote:
Death is my heart
. Then:
Take my heart
. And then his name:
Carlos Wieder
, undaunted by rain or lightning. Undaunted, above all, by incoherence.

And then he had no smoke left to write with (for some time it had looked as if the plane were on fire, or drawing out wisps of cloud, rather than sky-writing) but still he wrote:
Death is resurrection
, and the faithful who had stayed by the airstrip were bewildered, but they knew that Wieder was writing
something
. They understood or thought they understood the pilot’s will, and they knew that although they couldn’t make head or tail of it, they were witnessing a unique event, of great significance for the art of the future.

Then Carlos Wieder landed without the slightest difficulty (witnesses said he was sweating as if he had just emerged from a sauna) and was reprimanded by the officer from the control tower and certain other high ranking officers who were still wandering among the remnants of the cocktail party, and after drinking a beer without sitting down or talking to anyone (giving monosyllabic replies to every question), he went back to the flat in Providencia to prepare the second act of his Santiago gala.

The foregoing account of the air show may be reliable. Or not. Perhaps the generals of the Chilean Air Force were not accompanied by their wives. Perhaps the Captain Lindstrom airstrip was never set up for a display of aerial poetry. It might be that Wieder wrote his poem in the sky over Santiago without asking permission or warning anyone, although it seems unlikely. Perhaps it didn’t even rain that day in Santiago, although there are witnesses who, at the time, were sitting idle on park benches looking up at the sky or staring out of the windows of lonely rooms, and who still remember the words in the sky and the purifying rain that followed. But perhaps it all happened differently. In 1974, hallucinations were not uncommon.

The following account of the photographic exhibition in the flat is, however, accurate.

The first guests arrived at 9:00 in the evening. Most of them were old school friends who hadn’t seen each other for some time. At 11:00, twenty people were present, all of them moderately drunk. No one had yet entered the spare bedroom, occupied by
Wieder, on the walls of which were displayed the photos he was planning to submit to the judgment of his friends. Lieutenant Julio César Muñoz Cano, who years later was to publish a self-denunciatory memoir entitled
Neck in a Noose
relating his activities during the early years of the military regime, informs us that Carlos Wieder behaved normally (or perhaps
abnormally
: he was much quieter than usual, to the point of meekness, and throughout the night his face had a freshly washed look). He attended to the guests as if he were in his own home (everyone was getting along splendidly, too well, in fact, writes Muñoz Cano). Wieder was very pleased to see his friends from the air force academy, it had been such a long time; he had the good grace to comment on the morning’s incidents without according them, or himself, any particular importance; he cheerfully tolerated the jokes (unsubtle at best and often in frankly poor taste) that are invariably told at such gatherings. Now and then he disappeared, shutting himself in the spare bedroom (and this time he did lock the door behind him), but he was never gone for long.

Finally, on the stroke of midnight, he climbed onto a chair in the living room, called for silence and said (these are his actual words according to Muñoz Cano) that it was time to plunge into the art of the future. He had changed back to the Wieder they knew: imperious, self-assured, his eyes somehow separate from his body, as if they were watching from another planet. Then he made his way to the door of the spare room and began to let them in one by one. One at a time gentlemen; the art of Chile is not for herds. According to Muñoz
Cano, he said this in a jocular tone of voice, looking at his father and winking first with his left eye, then with his right. As if he were a boy of twelve again, giving a secret sign. Calmly, Wieder senior smiled back at his son.

The first person to enter the room, logically enough since she was the only lady present and had a headstrong, impulsive temperament, was Tatiana von Beck Iraola. Tatiana, writes Muñoz Cano, came from an illustrious military family, and was, in her own slightly mad way, an independent woman, who always did as she pleased, went out with whom she fancied and held outrageous opinions, which were, in many cases, highly original if often contradictory. Years later she married a pediatrician, went to live in La Serena and had six children. In a passage whose melancholy tone is subtly tinged with horror, Muñoz Cano describes Tatiana as she was that night: a beautiful and confident young woman who went into the room expecting to see heroic portraits or boring photographs of the Chilean skies.

The room was lit in the usual way. There were no extra lamps or spotlights to heighten the visual effect of the photos. It was not meant to be like an art gallery, but simply a room, a spare bedroom temporarily occupied by a young visitor. There is, of course, no truth to the story that there were colored lights or drum beats coming from a cassette player hidden under the bed. The ambience was meant to be everyday, normal, low-key.

Outside, the party continued. The young men drank as young men do, like the victors they were, and they held their drink like Chileans. The laughter, recalls Muñoz Cano, was
contagious, without the slightest hint of menace or anything sinister. Somewhere a trio began to sing, arms around each other, one playing a guitar. Propped against the wall in groups of two or three, other guests talked about love or the future. They were all pleased to be there, at the aviator-poet’s party; they were pleased with themselves and pleased to be friends of Carlos Wieder, although they weren’t sure they quite understood him and were aware of the difference between him and themselves. The line in the corridor kept breaking up; some guests had finished their drinks and went back for more, others got caught up in reaffirmations of eternal friendship and loyalty, a providential surge of fellow-feeling sweeping them back into the living room, from which they returned with flushed cheeks to take their places in the line again. The smoke was thick, especially in the corridor. Wieder stood firm at the doorway. Two lieutenants were arguing and shoving each other (but gently) in the bathroom at the end of the passage. Wieder’s father was one of the few who patiently kept his place in the line. Muñoz Cano, as he admitted in his confession, kept pacing nervously back and forth, filled with foreboding. The two surrealist (or super-realist) reporters were talking with the owner of the flat. As he came and went, Muñoz Cano caught snatches of their conversation: travel, the Mediterranean, Miami, tropical beaches, fishing boats, voluptuous women.

Less than a minute after going in, Tatiana von Beck emerged from the room. She was pale and shaken – everyone noticed. She stared at Wieder as if she were going to say something to
him but couldn’t find the words. Then she tried to get to the bathroom, unsuccessfully. After vomiting in the passage, Miss von Beck staggered to the front door with the help of an officer who gallantly offered to take her home, although she kept saying she would prefer to go alone.

The second person to enter the room was a captain who had been one of Wieder’s teachers at the academy. He remained inside. Wieder shut the door behind him (the captain had left it ajar) and stood there smiling, with an air of growing satisfaction. In the living room, some of the guests asked what on earth had got into Tatiana. She’s just drunk, said a voice that Muñoz Cano didn’t recognize. Someone put on a Pink Floyd record. How can you dance when there are no women? It’s like a fags’ convention here, someone said. You’re not supposed to dance to Pink Floyd, it’s for listening, came the reply. The surrealist reporters whispered to each other. A lieutenant proposed they all go and find some whores straight away. Muñoz Cano says that at this point he felt as if they were outside, under the night sky, deep in the countryside, or at least that is how the voices sounded. In the hallway the atmosphere was even more tense. There was hardly any talking; it was like a dentist’s waiting room. But who, wonders Muñoz Cano, has ever seen a dentist’s waiting room where the
rotten teeth
(sic) are standing in line?

Wieder’s father broke the spell. He made his way forward politely, addressing each officer by name as he excused himself, then went into the room. The owner of the flat followed him in. Almost immediately he came out again, went up to Wieder,
seized him by the lapels, and for a moment it looked as if he would hit him, but then he turned away and stormed off to the living room in search of a drink. Now everyone, including Muñoz Cano, pressed into the bedroom or tried to. There they found the captain, sitting on the bed. He was smoking and reading some typed notes that he had torn off the wall. He seemed calm, although ash from his cigarette had dropped onto one of his trouser legs. Wieder’s father was contemplating some of the hundreds of photos with which the walls and part of the ceiling had been decorated. A cadet who happened to be present, though what he was doing there no one could explain (perhaps he was the younger brother of one of the officers) started crying and swearing and had to be dragged out of the room. The surrealist reporters looked disapproving but maintained their composure. Muñoz Cano claims to have recognized the Garmendia sisters and other missing persons in some of the photos. Most of them were women. The background hardly varied from one photo to another, so it seemed they had all been taken in the same place. The women looked like mannequins, broken, dismembered mannequins in some pictures, although Muñoz Cano could not rule out the possibility that up to thirty per cent of the subjects had been alive when the snapshots were taken. In general (according to Muñoz Cano) the photos were of poor quality, although they made an extremely vivid impression on all who saw them. The order in which they were exhibited was not haphazard: there was a progression, an argument, a story (literal and allegorical), a plan. The images stuck to the ceiling (says Muñoz Cano) depicted a
kind of hell, but empty. Those pinned up in the four corners seemed to be an epiphany. An epiphany of madness. In other groups of photos the dominant mood was elegiac (but how, asks Muñoz Cano, could there be anything “nostalgic” or “melancholy” about them?) The symbols were few but telling. A photo showing the cover of a book by Joseph de Maistre:
St. Petersburg Dialogues
. A photo of a young blonde woman who seemed to be dissolving into the air. A photo of a severed finger, thrown onto a floor of porous, grey cement.

After the initial hubbub, suddenly everyone fell silent. It was as if a high voltage current had run through the flat leaving us dumbstruck, says Muñoz Cano in a rare moment of lucidity. We stared at each other as if at strangers; our faces were still recognizable, of course, but different somehow, despicable and expressionless like the faces of sleepwalkers or idiots. Some guests left without saying good-bye, but among those who remained in the flat a peculiar atmosphere of camaraderie developed. And at that particularly delicate stage in the proceedings, a curious thing happened, adds Muñoz Cano: the telephone began to ring. Since the host failed to react, he answered it himself. An old man’s voice asked for a certain Lucho Alvarez. Hello? Hello? Is Lucho Alvarez there, please? Instead of replying, Muñoz Cano handed the phone to the owner of the flat, who after an interminable pause asked, Does anyone know a Lucho Alvarez? The old man on the line, surmises Muñoz Cano, must have gone on talking or asking questions, possibly to do with this Lucho Álvarez. Nobody knew the caller. A few of the men let out absurdly high-pitched, nervous laughs. After listening in silence
again for some time, the owner of the flat said, There’s nobody here by that name, and hung up.

No one was left in the room with the photos, except Wieder and the captain, and in the flat there were no more than eight people in all, according to Muñoz Cano, including Wieder’s father, who didn’t seem particularly disturbed (as if he were dutifully attending a cadets’ party, which, for some reason that escaped him or was none of his business, had gone wrong). The owner of the flat, whom he had known since he was a boy, was avoiding his eye. The other survivors of the party were talking or whispering amongst themselves, but stopped when Wieder senior approached. He attempted to break the awkward silence by offering them drinks, hot or cold, and sandwiches, which he made in the kitchen, calmly, on his own. Don’t worry, Mr. Wieder, said one of the officers, looking at the ground. I’m not worried, Javierito, he replied. Just a hiccup in Carlos’ career, that’s all it’ll be, said another. Wieder’s father looked at him as if he didn’t know what he was talking about. He was kind to us, recalls Muñoz Cano; he was on the edge of the abyss and he didn’t know it, or he didn’t care, or he was hiding it extraordinarily well.

Then Wieder emerged from the spare bedroom and went to talk with his father in the kitchen. no one heard what they said, but they weren’t in there for more than five minutes. When they reappeared, both had drinks in their hands. The captain also came out to get a drink, then shut himself in the room with the photos again, insisting that he was not to be disturbed. At his suggestion one of the lieutenants made a list of all the
guests who had been present. Someone referred to an oath. Someone else started talking about discretion and the word of a gentleman and a soldier. A soldier’s word, said a man who until then had seemed to be asleep. Another took offence and said the danger lay not with the soldiers but with the civilians, alluding to the pair of surrealist reporters. I’m sure our civilian friends know what’s best for them, replied the captain. The surrealists hastened to agree, affirming that, as far as they were concerned, nothing had happened in the flat that night; they were men of the world, after all. Then someone made coffee, and some time later, but still quite a while before dawn, three men in uniform and one in civilian dress knocked at the front door and identified themselves as Military Intelligence agents. Those who had remained in the flat let them in, assuming they had come to arrest Wieder. At first, their presence inspired respect and a certain fear (especially on the part of the reporters), but as the minutes went by uneventfully, without a word from the agents, who were completely focussed on their work, the survivors of the party began to ignore them, as if they were servants who had come to clean up ahead of time. The agents shut themselves in the bedroom for what seemed an eternity with the captain and Wieder, one of whose friends wanted to go in and “give him moral support,” but the agent in civilian dress told him not to be an idiot and to let them work in peace. Through the closed door, curses could be heard, the word “mad” repeated several times, and then only silence. Eventually the Intelligence agents left as quietly as they had arrived, carrying three shoe boxes provided by the owner of the flat, containing
the photographs from the exhibition. Well, gentlemen, said the captain, before following them out, I advise you to get some sleep and forget everything that happened here tonight. A pair of lieutenants stood to attention, but the rest were too tired to observe protocol or any kind of ritual and they didn’t even say good night (or good morning, since day was breaking). Just as the captain left, slamming the door behind him, Wieder emerged from the bedroom (the timing, had anyone been in a state to appreciate it, was worthy of a sit-com) and walked across the living room to the window, without so much as a glance at the others. He drew the curtains (it was still dark outside, but a faint glow could be seen in the distance, towards the Cordillera) and lit a cigarette. What happened, Carlos? asked Wieder’s father. No answer. For a moment the silence seemed definitive, as if they had all fallen asleep on the spot, staring fixedly at Wieder’s silhouette. The room, Muñoz Cano recalls, felt like a hospital waiting room. Finally the owner of the flat asked, Are you under arrest? I guess so, said Wieder, without turning to face them, looking out at the lights of Santiago, the sparsely scattered lights of Santiago. With painfully slow movements, as if he had to gather his courage, Wieder’s father drew near and finally gave him a quick hug. Wieder did not respond. Why the drama? asked one of the surrealist reporters. You can shut up, said the owner of the flat. What do we do now? asked a lieutenant. Sleep it off, replied the host.