Blood of the Dawn Read online

  “Yes, Lieutenant.”

  “Is the photographer on her way to the capital?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant, the navy helicopter arrived soon as we radioed them.”

  “If they’d reacted just as quick when these people asked for help, the story would have been different—these places are always forgotten. Sergeant, take care of getting my Uzi cleaned. Dismissed.”

  “Lieutenant, could I bother you with one more thing?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The soldiers have been on the move and fighting for weeks, now. They deserve a little something to take their mind off things, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Sergeant, do what you will to keep your men happy, but I don’t want to hear one word about it.”

  She was a lump on the floor. It didn’t matter what her name was, they were only interested in the two holes she had. Sheer emptiness to be filled up. They knew all there was to know about this lump. But really, she meant nothing to them. Her four limbs were enough: with them she could be held down, immobilized, restrained. They wore black leather boots and khaki clothes, balaclavas covering their faces. It was all the same, she was just a lump.

  Blows to the face, abdomen; legs stretched out to infinity. Fucking mountain whore. They line up to enjoy their part in the spectacle. No orifice is spared in this bloody dance. Lousy Indian. Only pain in this lump, like a tightened knot that could never come undone. How much longer could it go on? If only they’d stop now. Stop, stop, stop. Your turn, soldier, finish the job, finish it off. How much longer could they keep it up? Give it to her hard, these Indians can take anything. How many more of them? It hurts a lot. It’s too much. There are too many of them. Now you’ll see how delicious it is when a sergeant gives it to you from behind, you’ll never feed those terrorists again. Spurs tearing the fragile walls, which support and keep on supporting the procession despite the blood and excrement making their way between her legs.

  A plate of food; it is no trouble to dish up a plate of food, Modesta. You are always the one who nourishes, who provides. Whoever comes to your table will be welcomed, always, because you are the provider, tending to others, like the earth in which your generous broad beans, your silky-bearded corn, and your rock-shaped potatoes grow. Animals are made for sating man’s hunger. The soldiers have asked for lunch, so you set about gathering together what’s needed; you have to fix them something to eat. Another little hen that was poor Justina’s. You cook it quick smart, otherwise you might be next. You cut into its neck with a blade. You’d like to do the same to the soldiers to put a stop to their abuse. You want to cry but squeeze your eyes shut and breathe deeply. You offer some coca leaves to the Apu and then stuff them into your mouth. You don’t want to end up at the bottom of the ravine like half your community. You need to keep yourself alive because you’re all little Abel has left. No matter who comes, they always kill us. The coca leaf is bitter; you swallow the saliva and cry, your mouth numb. The hen has stopped kicking.

  More soldiers, and that music they always have playing in the background. My body reacted to almost nothing, had shut down to it all. They questioned me, wanted to wring out of me every last drop of information. How many of us there were, where we were. I wasn’t about to tell those dogs anything. There was nothing they didn’t do to my body. Anything could be a tool to inflict pain and humiliation. Water, electricity, cigarettes, wires, buckets, urine, their arms, hands, legs. All of it hurt, but my mind stayed strong and kept it together, unlike my limbs, which were almost dislocated from all the yanking. This bitch is tough, they murmured. Hold her under again, see if that gets a reaction, they said. Now cut off the other nipple to make a pair, they shouted at the soldier who was staring at my breasts. They were quick to cauterize any wounds so I wouldn’t bleed to death, the cunning assholes.

  I couldn’t get used to the pain. It was simply there, like hunger or thirst could simply be there. Something else to break me. Always there. Hit, interrogated, cut, bruised, broken, bitten, rammed, lacerated, stabbed, muddied, kicked, humiliated, dirtied, divided, tied up, dunked, suffocated, choked. I was confident of our triumph despite my body’s shrieks of defeat. Sometimes I go to the capital to get orders from the Central Committee. My body talked; it wasn’t me. They told the officer. They would prep me for transportation to a jail in the capital. They would not break me, they would not break me, they will not break me…

  A mouthful of air. And another. And another. But it doesn’t stop, Modesta, it doesn’t stop. You put up with the breathing, but it’s uncontrollable. It starts spreading through your whole body. It goes from your chest to your arms. They shout. In the distance, they shout. It’s about to start again. There it is. Taking over your whole body. All of it. Fear. Pure fear in your veins. It buries into your soft tissue and holes up there. What’s this? Electricity? Dizziness overcomes you, you’re about to fall but you don’t. You know you have a seed inside you that you don’t want. What’s going to come out of you? Your head spins round and round but you don’t fall. Your chest hurts, your chest caves in and your lungs stick to your back. They get tangled in your ribs. You’re going mad. The faces were always the same, the same eyes, the same voices, the same hands, the same cocks. All the same. Everything hurt in the same way. Get off, get off me, the only thing you could say while they savaged you, ripping into your middle as they had done to so many other women in this very hamlet, in hundreds of hamlets. You always screamed, but knew in advance it was useless. Made a battlefield, your body has become acutely vulnerable. You’re still you. Your nails, your hair, your teeth chatter. Your legs tremble, you want to run but can’t leave. The food. Quick, the food, they say. Dive into that pot and disappear. Boil yourself up with those chickens. Let your flesh turn white white white. It’s already white. Deathly white. Your hand shakes. Your arms shake. The pot shakes. Fear. The floor shakes. How many more times? How many more days? What’s going to come out of you? If only someone would steady you, hug you, take care of you. You press your mouth shut but your teeth won’t stop. They won’t stop won’t stop won’t stop. You’re going to die. You don’t want to die. You’ll die. It would be preferable to die. Breathe. Live. Breathe. Tremble. Live.

  I don’t want to move. I can’t move. Everything hurts. I wish they would leave me like this, still, motionless. In a static shot. I want to shut myself in a capsule, in the fetal position. My body is open and exposed. I can’t leave this bedroom. Outside, even the breeze might knock me down. All the world around me as if it wants to push its way inside me. I watch it from afar. In the distance. A capsule, a shield, a shell. Far off. The world can and will keep on without me. I’m here and I’m me, but the world goes on. Parties, people, clubs, soldiers, newspapers. No one hears a thing. They don’t see it, either. It’s as if I’m not here, but everything goes on and on and on. The world doesn’t spin, just keeps on. Who even cares where it’s off to. Everything hurts. I don’t want even the sheet to graze me, or the quilt. Nothing. Any graze is a threatening sword. I press my legs together. I’m an open wound. Close up, body. Close up, before the world gets in. Close up.

  the bonds strengthen like this bloody womb everyone together we’re all one inside her she who won’t look at us now or talk now soaked bloody chest the women everyone brothers everyone the entire troop in her in them in the whores the indians the terrorists the journalists the daughters the mothers all of them it grows more until what point it looks like it’s not enough it grows it hardens on everyone everyone huge and hard present your identity card open her divide her slice her penetrate her cut her everyone brothers just a hole that’s what they’re for rip into it break it your turn you and you and him and him and them everyone brothers ranks comrade soldier combatant drive into her sergeant revolution army committee navy it grows more a bit of fun it grows more we multiply in the pampa the mountains huge like the hills we burst in river emptied joint forces we divide the mountain we fracture the dawn we penetrate the land we slash the sky we open everything up not
hing is closed to us we’re brothers

  “The experience of all liberation movements has shown that the success of a revolution depends on how much the women take part in it.”

  LENIN

  Here they are again, Modesta. They’re approaching, you know how their steps sound when they’re hungry not for your food but for you. For you, Modesta, for you. You know the beat of boots, rhythm of a cicada thrum, are a bad sign. But this time you don’t manage to get little Abel out of the house. There isn’t the time. Your son, there in the room, Modesta. Abel scoots under his bed, quick as a guinea pig. They don’t give a damn about your pleas. Just lie down, you know how this goes. Just calm down. They’re on top of you already, Modesta. You pray before your son’s eyes, Modesta. Your son’s eyes. Two eyes, five soldiers. It’s nighttime, you think, maybe Abel can’t see anything and the light from those two candles doesn’t reach his eyes and your body. Five soldiers, they don’t even shout anymore, don’t sling insults, they act as if it’s a transaction. So many times. You don’t scream anymore. What for. As if they were taking a dump. Abel’s eyes. You see a gleam. You turn your face. Soldier sweat. There’s your son, looking your way. He’s looking at you. Does he see you? What does he see? Is his mother what he sees? An onslaught inside you and you smile, Modesta. Your son’s eyes. You smile. Five soldiers, but you smile. Your body split in two. You smile for Abel’s eyes. You clean yourself off, Modesta. Your son’s eyes. Do you feel anything, Modesta? What are you looking at, Indian? You turn your head. You were looking at something, damn it, what the fuck were you looking at? The soldier turns and sees him there. Abel. His eyes. One soldier stays inside you, the others pull Abel from beneath the bed. You didn’t want to look, but you saw it when your son stopped seeing, when they turned out his light forever. Abel, his light gone. Never again. His eyes bulged out like balloons. They zip up their flies and take Abel to the health post at the base. A child shouldn’t see these things, the soldier who is still inside you says. He might grow into a pervert, he adds emphatically, thrusting one more time and spilling all over your insides.

  You think about death with a regularity that astonishes and disgusts you. At the same time, you hate it as much as you could hate anything, though you know death is not just any old thing. The thing to remember is it’s just that: a thing, an object, something material. Who knows, maybe you could try selling it to someone. Get some benefit out of it. Who would want to buy it from you? No one would pay for your death. But even if it’s worth just a few coins, it’s truly yours, your death, truly yours. The only thing that really belongs to you.

  dah dit dah dit behind dah he snaps his fingers liquor in his blood everyone in the capital dah dit dah dit he dances with three of them now it’s down to two he dances with her applause she straightens her hair dum dum dum Do you remember how it went? she raises her arms dum dum dum crosses her legs dah dit dit dit spins spins spins everyone else applauds smiles sings they think we’re in the mountains let’s dance dum dum dum spin again spin again dum dum move your feet they look at each other smile he she three now two all the women want to dance with the leader they dance circle of comrades mao lenin marx watch us from their position on the wall dah dit dit dit give it your all comrades applause now everyone hold hands dah dit dum dum holding on out in foot forward foot back to the side moving forward in a circle dum leadership dum leader and another comrade singing applause applause applause dum dum dum jump jump jump everyone in a circle look at the camera dum dum in hiding jubilant

  Don’t they watch the news? They own newspapers, news bulletins, magazines, but they don’t see it. Don’t they know what’s happening? They’re killing people, so many people, so much blood. Pain. Revulsion. Blood. Rage. It’s an avalanche about to surge into our faces, on our doorsteps. Did you hear about Ana María’s brother-in-law, the army general? The news spreads. They killed him on his way home from the ministry. It looks as if they followed him and then peppered his car with bullets. The avalanche has arrived. What is there to understand when nothing is as it seems, when the words for things go missing and get replaced with others that don’t fit? They’re even killing generals, just imagine what could happen to the rest of us. Things that don’t make sense. The music gulps down the questions and hacks them up, transformed into cigarette smoke. Skin and breath. Faces and bodies. The photos were in all the newspapers, the poor man, they destroyed him. Ana María avoids talking about it, has thrown this party to take her mind off it. No one asks her anything directly. They don’t approach her, either. I decide to breach the distance and give her a hug. Surprised, she stays there a moment, not letting go of me. Then she smiles with some difficulty. Mel, tell me everything you saw in the mountains. How do I tell her? I don’t even know how many of them there were. I was a rag, darling, a rag. There was a woman among them. I saw her. But I lie. I did count them. Later I cursed myself for having done so. One, two, three, four and they kept on. They kept going, kept going, five, five, five, six, how many, I was a wound, a rag, four, two, three, one, five, five, five. Useless to keep on counting. My body still doesn’t want to count.

  The sun. So much sun on this summer’s day. I stretch out on the sand and there’s nothing for it but to remember, as soon as the heat seeps between my legs and the sea breeze laps freely at my skin. If the breeze keeps up its lapping it will create a snaking electrical current. That electricity that starts in my middle, like when I was in kindergarten. I was three, maybe four. The teacher told us to cut paper into geometric shapes to paste on a piece of cardboard. When the pots of paste were opened, the party started. I loved the smell of the white paste and sank my nose into the thick and sticky milk. I sank into that milk, never my mother’s milk. She was no longer around and her face had gone from my memory. Fed up with cutting and sticking the pieces of paper, I dropped the scissors and stood up. I pressed my pelvis against the table, rubbing myself, anxious, faster and faster. I balanced on that surface and the delicious, shooting vertigo opened a path. A maelstrom in my middle. I didn’t have a name for it, I just let myself be swept away by that electricity, which grew stronger and burst from my center through the rest of my body. My arms bent with the effort of supporting my weight and maintaining that strategic balance. I would have kept on like that for hours if the teacher hadn’t pulled me away from the table and out of the classroom. Unplugged from pleasure. I was drenched in sweat and, without her needing to say one word, I took myself off to the detention room. Now, remembering and imagining that picture—the girl rubbing herself against the table like an ardent pigeon—I can’t help but laugh. Might I have taught my fellow classmates and my teacher something? It’s incredible how relaxed and free we are when we’re still innocent. For the few minutes it lasted, I delighted in the sensation that I still didn’t have a name for. No fear of anything, not the least bit of censorship. No one else existed. On that cold table, in the middle of my pleasure, I was the center of the universe.

  I rise back to the surface. Violence has birthed me again. Speak, body. Cry out, body.

  When I developed the pictures, it was as if everything had taken on a different dimension. In some it seemed like the photographic fixer had favored a definition of certain bodies over others. Few faces were possible to distinguish, but there was one in particular that stood out. It was a girl, very young, standing there, her gaze focused on nothing. Around her, several bodies, out of focus. Some people are running, also out of focus. The sharpness of her image draws attention to her expression: it’s not incredulous, not angry, not distant, not accepting, not in pain. She has seen something like this before. It’s as if she is beyond the massacred bodies, has arrived at an understanding that escapes the rest of us. The sense of having gone beyond some limit. I’d like to ask her: What did you come to know? Why did all this happen?

  Another group of photographs seemed cut off, as if the images demanded to escape the frame—prolonging the gazes of the men, women, and children contained within those four drawn borders. There’s t
he one of the town hazy with smoke. The smell I’ll never be free of. These are photos that push you to look outside the frame, that gesture at all that hasn’t been captured. How much is outside the frame? What stories will get away?

  Community member Carlos Quechán has accused your husband of being a terrorist informant, a sergeant notifies you. You try to explain the resentment and fury Carlos harbored toward your husband. They’re outright lies. How could they believe him? Where could you go look for your Gaitán? Wherever your husband has got to by now, there’s nothing you can do. Just forget him. Nothing, Modesta, nothing. You won’t see him again.

  You pick up off the floor the pieces of you that are left over. Sometimes you’re in your right mind, sometimes you feel empty. You forget what you think; you wish you’d go mad. Your head hurts a lot, your body hurts. You haven’t felt right since that day in the communal room, when they killed Justina and the others, when the whole world got turned the wrong way up. Pachacuti. Earthquake. World standing on its head. It’s not what it used to be, now everything’s something else.

  A little girl came out of you. Who knows which seed she sprouted from. You fill a bowl with broth from the day’s sacrificed chicken. The noodles look like bullets floating in the green plastic bowl. Water with white noodles. After the first sip, a river of tears flows from your eyes, uncontrollable, as if they’ve turned into waterfalls. The tears don’t stop. You feel as if in that river all the pain of your body is flowing out. And you want to talk.