Maya's Notebook: A Novel (43 page)

Daniel Goodrich and his father
attended a conference of Jungian analysts in San Francisco, where the main subject was Carl Jung’s
Red Book
(
Liber Novus
), which has just been published, having been in a bank vault in Switzerland for decades, hidden from the eyes of the world and surrounded by great mystery. Sir Robert Goodrich spent a fortune on one of the luxury replica editions, identical to the original, which Daniel will inherit. On the Sunday, Daniel went to Berkeley to see my family and give them some photographs of his stay in Chiloé.

In the best Chilean tradition, my grandma insisted he had to stay the night in her house and put him up in my room, which has been painted a calmer tone than the strident mango color of my childhood and divested of the winged dragon that used to hang from the ceiling and the malnour
ished children on the walls. My picturesque grandmother and the big house in Berkeley, more cantankerous, rheumatic, and flamboyant than I’d managed to describe, blew the guest away. The tower of the stars had been used by the tenant to store merchandise, but Mike sent a bunch of his repentant delinquents to scrape off the dirt and put the old telescope back in its place. My Nini says that reassured my Popo, who had been wandering around the house, bumping into Indian crates and bundles. I abstained from telling her that my Popo is in Chiloé; maybe he hangs around several places at once.

My Nini took Daniel to visit the library, the aging hippies on Telegraph Avenue, the best vegetarian restaurant, the Peña Chilena, and, of course, Mike O’Kelly. “That Irish guy is in love with your grandmother, and I think she might not be totally indifferent to him,” Daniel wrote to me, but I find it hard to imagine that my grandma could take Snow White seriously, who’s a poor wretch compared to my Popo. The truth is that O’Kelly is not that bad, but anyone’s a poor wretch compared to my Popo.

Freddy was at Mike’s apartment, and it sounds like he’s changed a lot over these months; Daniel’s description doesn’t match that of the boy who saved my life twice. Freddy’s in Mike’s rehab program, sober and apparently in good health, but very depressed. He has no friends, never goes out, and doesn’t want to study or work. O’Kelly thinks he needs time and we should have faith that he’ll be okay, because he’s very young and has a good heart, and that always helps. The kid showed no interest in the photos from Chiloé or the news of me; if not for the fact that he was missing two fingers, I’d think Daniel got him mixed up
with someone else.

My father arrived that Sunday at noon back from some Arab emirate or other, and had lunch with Daniel. I imagine the three of them in the old kitchen, the white serviettes frayed from use, the green ceramic water jug, the bottle of Veramonte sauvignon blanc, my dad’s favorite, and my Nini’s fragrant
caldillo de pescado
, a Chilean variation on Italian
cioppino
and French bouillabaisse, as she herself describes it. My friend concluded, erroneously, that my dad cries easily, because he got very emotional when he saw photos of me. He also concluded that I don’t take after anyone in my little family. He should see Marta Otter, the Laplander princess. Daniel experienced a day of stupendous hospitality and left with the idea that Berkeley is a Third World country. He got along well with my Nini, though the only thing they have in common is me and a weakness for mint ice cream. After weighing up the risks, they both agreed to exchange news by telephone, a means that offers minimal danger, as long as they don’t mention my name.

“I asked Daniel to come to Chiloé for Christmas,” I announced to Manuel.

“For a visit, to stay, or to come and take you away?” he asked.

“I don’t really know, Manuel.”

“What would you prefer?”

“That he stay!” I responded without a second’s hesitation, surprising him with my certainty.

Since it came to light
that we’re related, Manuel tends to look at me with moist eyes, and on Friday he brought me chocolates from Castro. “You’re not my boyfriend, Manuel, and get the idea out of your head that you’re going to replace my Popo,” I told him. “It never even occurred to me, silly gringa,” he answered. Our relationship is the same as it was before, without endearments or shows of affection and with lots of sarcasm, but he seems like a different person, and Blanca has noticed it too. I hope he’s not going to get soft on us and turn into a doddering, sentimental old man. Their relationship has changed too. Several nights a week Manuel sleeps at Blanca’s house and leaves me alone, with no more company than three bats, two eccentric cats, and a lame dog. We’ve been able to talk about his past, which is no longer taboo, but I still don’t dare to be the one to bring it up; I prefer to wait for him to take the initiative, which happens with certain frequency, because now that the lid’s off his Pandora’s box, Manuel needs to get these things off his chest.

I’ve been able to sketch quite a precise picture of the fate that befell Felipe Vidal, thanks to what Manuel remembers and the detailed report his wife gave to the Vicarage of Solidarity, where they even have in their archives a couple of letters he wrote to her before he was arrested. Violating the security regulations, I wrote to my Nini via Daniel, who got the letter to her, demanding explanations. She answered me by the same route and filled in the blanks in my information.

In the chaos of the early days after the military coup, Fe
lipe and Nidia Vidal thought that by keeping a low profile they could carry on their normal existence. Felipe Vidal had hosted a political television program during the three years of Salvador Allende’s government, more than enough reason for him to be considered suspicious by the military; however, he hadn’t been arrested. Nidia thought democracy would soon be restored, but he feared a long-term dictatorship; as a journalist he’d reported on wars, revolutions, and military coups, and he knew that violence, once unleashed, is uncontainable. Before the coup he sensed that they were on top of a powder keg ready to explode, and he warned the president in private, after a press conference. “Do you know something I don’t,
compañero
Vidal, or is this a hunch?” Allende asked.

“I’ve taken the country’s pulse, and I believe the military is going to rise up in arms,” he answered straight back.

“Chile has a long democratic tradition, nobody takes power by force here. I know how serious this crisis is,
compañero
, but I trust the commander in chief of the armed forces and our honorable soldiers. I know they’ll carry out their duty,” said Allende in a solemn tone, as if speaking for posterity. He was referring to General Augusto Pinochet, who he’d recently appointed, a man from a provincial military family, who came highly recommended by his predecessor, General Prats, who had been removed from office by political pressure. Vidal reproduced this exact conversation in his newspaper column. Nine days later, on Tuesday, September 11, he heard the president’s last words over the radio saying farewell to the people before dying, and the sound of bombs falling on the Palacio de la Moneda, the presidential palace. Then he prepared for the
worst. He didn’t believe the myth of the civilized conduct of the Chilean military; he had studied history, and there was too much evidence to the contrary. He had a feeling the repression was going to be terrifying.

The military junta declared a state of war, and among the immediate measures imposed was strict censoring of the media. No news circulated, only rumors, which official propaganda did not attempt to quash; sowing terror suited their aims. There was talk of concentration camps and torture centers, thousands and thousands of people detained, exiled, and killed, tanks leveling working-class neighborhoods, soldiers shot by firing squad for refusing to obey orders, prisoners thrown into the sea from helicopters, tied to pieces of rail and sliced open so they’d sink. Felipe Vidal took note of the soldiers armed with weapons of war, the tanks, the din of military trucks, the buzzing of helicopters, people brutally rounded up. Nidia ripped the posters of protest singers off the walls and gathered up the books, including innocuous novels, and went to throw them in a garbage dump; she didn’t know how to burn them without attracting attention. It was a futile precaution; hundreds of compromising articles, documentaries, and recordings of her husband’s journalistic work existed.

The idea that Felipe should go into hiding was Nidia’s—that way they could worry less. She suggested he go down south, to stay with an aunt. Doña Ignacia was a quite peculiar octogenarian, who had spent fifty years receiving dying people in her house. Three maids, almost as old as she was, seconded her in the noble task of helping the terminally ill with distinguished surnames to die, those whose own families couldn’t or didn’t want to look after them. Nobody vis
ited that lugubrious residence, except for a nurse and a deacon, who came twice a week to dole out medicines and communion, because the place was known to be haunted. Felipe Vidal didn’t believe in that sort of thing, but by letter he admitted to his wife that the furniture moved on its own, and it was hard to sleep at night due to the inexplicable slamming of doors and banging on the ceiling. The dining room was often used as a funeral chapel, and there was a cupboard full of dentures, spectacles, and medicine bottles left behind by guests when they departed for heaven. Doña Ignacia took in Felipe Vidal with open arms. She didn’t remember who he was and assumed he was another patient sent by God, so she was a bit surprised by how healthy he looked.

The house was a square colonial relic made of adobe and tiles, with a central patio. The rooms opened off a gallery, where dusty potted geraniums languished and hens wandered around, pecking at the floor. The beams and pillars were twisted, the walls cracked, the shutters unhinged from use and tremors; the roof leaked in several spots, and gusts of wind and souls in purgatory tended to move the statues of saints that adorned the rooms. It was the perfect antechamber to death—freezing, damp, and as gloomy as a cemetery—but to Felipe Vidal it seemed luxurious. The room he was given was as big as their whole apartment in Santiago, with a collection of heavy furniture, barred windows, and a ceiling so high that the depressing paintings of biblical scenes had to be hung at an angle so they could be appreciated from below. The food was excellent; Aunt Ignacia had a sweet tooth and spared no expense on her moribund guests, who stayed very quiet in their beds, war
bling as they breathed and barely touching their meals.

From that provincial refuge Felipe tried to pull some strings to clarify his situation. He was unemployed; the television station had been taken over and the newspaper he wrote for was shut down, the building burned to the ground. His face and his pen were identified with the left-wing press. He couldn’t even dream of getting work in his profession, but he had enough savings to live on for a few months. His immediate problem was to find out if he was on the blacklist and, if so, to get out of the country. He sent messages in code and made discreet enquiries by phone, but his friends and acquaintances refused to answer him or got tongue-tied with excuses.

After three months he was drinking half a bottle of pisco a day, depressed and ashamed because while others were fighting clandestinely against the military dictatorship, he was dining like a prince at the expense of a demented old lady who stuck a thermometer in his mouth at regular intervals. He was dying of boredom. He refused to watch television, so he wouldn’t have to hear the military edicts and hymns. He didn’t read, because all the books in the house were from the nineteenth century, and his only social activity was the evening rosary when the servants and his aunt prayed for the souls of the dying, in which he had to participate, because that was the sole condition Doña Ignacia insisted on in exchange for room and board. During that period he wrote several letters to his wife, giving her the details of his existence, two of which can be read in the archives of the Vicarage of Solidarity. He began to go out gradually, first as far as the door, then to the bakery on the corner and the newspaper kiosk, and soon for a stroll
around the plaza or to the cinema. He found that summer had burst out and people were preparing to go on vacation with an air of normality, as if helmeted soldiers patrolling with automatic rifles were a regular part of the urban landscape. Christmas went by, and the year 1974 began far from his wife and son, but in February, after five months living like a rat, without any proof that the secret police was on the lookout for him, he calculated that the time had come to return to the capital and put the broken pieces of his life and family back together.

Felipe Vidal said good-bye to
Doña Ignacia and the servants, who filled his suitcase with cheeses and pastries, overcome with emotion because he was the first patient in half a century who instead of dying had gained twenty pounds. Wearing contact lenses, with his mustache shaved off and his hair cut short, he was unrecognizable. In Santiago he decided to occupy his time by writing his memoirs, since the circumstances were still not favorable for finding a job. A month later, his wife left work, stopping to pick up their son Andrés at school and buy something to cook for dinner. When she got back to the apartment, she found the door smashed open and the cat lying across the threshold with his head crushed.

Nidia Vidal followed the usual route, asking after her husband, along with the hundreds of other anguished people who stood in lines outside police stations, prisons, detention centers, hospitals, and morgues. Her husband was
not on the blacklist; he wasn’t registered anywhere, he’d never been arrested, don’t look for him, señora, he probably ran off with his lover to Mendoza. Her pilgrimage would have continued for years if she hadn’t received a message.

Manuel Arias was in Villa Grimaldi, which had recently been inaugurated as headquarters of the DINA, in one of the torture cells, standing up, crushed against other motionless prisoners. Among them was Felipe Vidal, who everyone knew from his television program. Of course, Vidal could not have known that one of his cellmates, Manuel Arias, was the father of Andrés, the boy he considered his son. After two days they took Felipe Vidal away to interrogate him, and he never came back.