Navidad & Matanza Read online

  JFV: And from my side they get their manners, then. (Everyone laughs happily.) In any case, as a family, we’re characterized by our taste for fine things. This includes board games, which are proof of the beauty of human ingenuity, of the human mind, which is a marvel, which we also see in video games. It’s the same with nature. Every now and then, my wife, Terelenita, and I, we long for some landscape or climate we’ve not seen for some time. So we travel. For example, at the end of last year we were watching an American Christmas movie, as a family, everyone together in the projection room, when suddenly we were struck by a powerful nostalgia for snow. It’d been several months since we’d experienced that cold, white, exquisite substance; we missed that feeling of enormity. Except for Bruno, who is a skiing fanatic—when there isn’t any snow in Santiago he’ll go spend a weekend in Europe or Colorado. (Bruno nods, closing his eyes.) He took second place in the ’91 season. So, we all went to Switzerland. Why not? We said. We went for a few days. We still laugh recalling when Bruno tried to teach Alicia how ride a sled. He tried to show her how under a pine tree because it was starting to snow. It was really funny. All of a sudden they realized that the sled had disappeared. They thought someone had taken it without them noticing, but no. The sled went down the hill on its own! Even I was worried when I saw the empty sled show up at the chalet. Tell me that isn’t funny. (They all burst out laughing.)

  SEA: So you must already have a trip planned for this summer.

  JFV: The children want to go to the beach. They love swimming in the sea, they look like fish, it’s really quite a sight. Yes, we just want to get in the car, head to someplace nearby where the sea is calm, and get in the water. I love swimming in the sea, when I was very young I even swam competitively, at university level. Besides, both Terelenita and Alicia enjoy the sun, they like to tan. That’s why they’re so beautiful. But the point is to be together. It’d be nice to take a little trip inside the country and find somewhere to relax. Our beaches are just as beautiful as the great Caribbean or Mediterranean resorts. You have to appreciate what you have, that’s why we’ve already planned to go together as a family—like always—and enjoy the summer here on the central coast. We like to travel, to move, but the most important thing is to be together and to be grateful for the beautiful family we’ve created.

  32

  HOSTERIA VERGANZA is located on Highway 5 South, at the exit for the city of San Fernando. It’s the closest thing to a hotel you can find between Rancagua and Talca, and so it caught the attention of Boris Real—a lover of comfort, after all—who interrupted his trip to Navidad to stay there on the night of January 12th, 1999. None of the employees remember him, except for Alvaro, the bartender who sometimes plays the piano, because on that night he had to prepare nine double-shots of whiskey and twenty-nine grenadines for the end table where Boris Real and another man, a blonde American or European, sat until sunrise. They conversed quietly, they seemed relaxed, says Alvaro. Every time one of them emptied a glass, they burst out laughing and signaled me, snapping their fingers. The rest of the time they wore impassive expressions. Around sunrise, it seemed to me, they spent two hours staring at each other without blinking. But when the morning light began coming in through the windows, I saw that they each were holding a butter knife in their right hand, and, taking turns, delicately tapping out a tune on wine glasses. At first the sounds were almost imperceptible, but after a few minutes I began to hear sharp, deep, undulating scales. When they were producing a clear melody, one of them half closed his eyes. Seeing this, the other nodded and stopped playing. It seemed like a game, like something invented by children who discover that the piano in the hallway actually works. But this conflicted with their appearance, their impeccable dark suits, their white shirts, their ties, their gelled hair. Around seven-thirty, without a word, they got up from the table. Taking the napkins from their laps, they brushed some crumbs off their jackets. They left some five-dollar bills on the table. The blond man bent over and picked up a heavy, black wooden case that was sitting next to his chair and handed it to the other man. They shook hands. Then they walked down separate hallways to their rooms. Two hours later the blonde man left. The other man left after breakfast, in a Corvette or a Porsche, a car that made an impression on the parking lot attendants.

  I reviewed the hotel’s register for January of 1999. As I expected, the man to whom some sources attribute the kidnapping of the Vivar siblings wasn’t listed. At least not as Boris Real or Francisco Virditti. I asked about the foreigner who’d shared his table the evening of January 12th. Alvaro, the bartender, pointed at the name of Edgar Lee, a Mormon pastor who—visiting Region Six—spent two nights at the Verganza, accompanied by a woman who spent half the day bathing her small child. The housekeeping staff hadn’t forgotten them either—the couple had asked to have the sheets changed fourteen times; it was also speculated that they’d stolen some hand towels from the bathroom. Two lines below, on the same page of the register, appears the name of another foreigner: Patrice Dounn. The famous master of the theremin—an unusual instrument whose operation relies on magnetism—who, days later, would perform at the VIP resort in Navidad and Matanza, on the same night that Bruno and Alicia Vivar disappeared. The employees of the Verganza do not remember a dark-skinned guest from that time, despite the fact that the Congolese Dounn is definitely black, as a photograph from n° 695 of World Music Express proves. A different page in that same magazine has an article on the theremin: appearing there is a photograph of the black, wooden case, heavy and rectangular, which musicians often use to transport the instrument. It is, without a doubt, the same case that appeared in Alvaro’s story; the same case that, in the vicinity of San Fernando, the Mormon pastor Edgar Lee—the American poet, dead in 1950—gave to Patrice Dounn, the Congolese thereminist who, on that exact date, was participating in the performance of Symphony No. 4 for orchestra (and optional chorus, theremin et alia), by Charles Ives, in London’s Royal Albert Hall. This would’ve been an extravagant way to move ten million dollars of hadón, an illegal substance better known as “the ecstasy of hate,” upon whose discovery the International Police (Interpol) justified shutting down the festival in Matanza and Navidad on the 19th of January 1999.

  34

  A FEW DAYS BEFORE the publication of my article in SEA, I got a phone call at the journal’s office from a one Juan Carlos Montes. I hadn’t thought again about the Vivar family, but during that phone conversation I felt, what I’d call now, my first suspicion of the mess the kidnapping of the siblings would uncover. And a certainty: I too would get dirty. Or that I was dirty already. For his part, Montes had no problem beginning the conversation with a lie.

  – I live down the street from the Vivar’s home. I saw a car with your journal’s logo on the door and hoped that finally a journalist with a sense of smell had arrived.

  In reality, as I verified later, Juan Carlos Montes not only lived on a different street than he claimed, he lived in a different country.

  – Sense of smell?

  – I’m calling to find out what sort of story you’re writing. If it’s not too much trouble, of course.

  – Forgive me, but I don’t know what you mean by sense of smell.

  – A nose.

  – Obviously. I don’t understand why you’re calling.

  – Do you like your job at SEA?

  – Sir, if this is regarding a story you should speak to the editor. It doesn’t seem like . . .

  – Listen to me. My son was a classmate of Bruno’s, the oldest child of the Vivar’s. One day Terelenita called us to invite him to a birthday party. I don’t know, I guess he was turning five.

  – Don’t make me hang up. I’m not interested.

  I lied.

  – At seven in the evening I went across the street to pick up Juan Carlitos. As always, the front door was open and no one greeted me. No doubt Juan Francisco and Terelenita were in their room, you know what I mean.

  – No. And I don’t see the
reason for this conversation. I must insist.

  – Please, don’t interrupt me, I don’t have much time. As I was saying, I went to see if there was anyone in the living room, but the house was empty. A lot of noise was coming from the garden, where the kids were running around and swimming in the pool, watched over by men who looked like house staff. Then all of a sudden I looked at the chimney. It was a reflex. Or I was somehow compelled. I’d seen something that caught my attention, a piece of skin among the flowers. It was hanging from the chimney, it was summer. The piece of skin was . . .

  – What?

  – A nose. They’d torn off someone’s nose and left it stuck to the chimney.

  I was silent.

  – I don’t know if you know who I am. I’m a surgeon, although I don’t practice my specialty. I knew right away that it’d been torn off recently. It was still warm.

  – A nose?

  – Yes. Do you understand now that this little journal where you work doesn’t provide you with what you need to write good stories?

  – Hang on.

  My secretary needed something; I dealt with it as quickly as possible. I picked up the phone:

  – Mr. Montes, I’d like to meet with you to discuss this at greater length.

  – Yes, yes. But, please, let me finish. I tore a page from a notebook that was in a wastebasket and wrapped the nose inside it. I was about to put it in my pocket when I heard the children screaming.

  – What happened to the nose?

  – I left it there, in the living room. I think a big dog came and started chewing on it, something I seem to have seen as I ran as fast I could out to the garden because my son Juan Carlitos had a cramp and was drowning. That’s what an employee told me, a butler who worked in the house. I wanted to see my son, but ten large men dressed in suits surrounded the pool. The children were running around wildly, screaming: “The fish, the fish.” They were terrified, as if they’d seen a monster. It was horrible. There was a lot of fear and violence and hate, I don’t know if I can explain it, a lot of fear and hate in that house.

  – Okay. And what happened to your son?

  – Juan Carlitos? I couldn’t see anything because those guards—who said they were butlers too, but who were speaking into walkie-talkies the whole time—surrounded my son and carried him to a car. They said they were taking him to a clinic, but they didn’t say which one. I never saw any of them again. Those fucking criminals evaporated. That was fifteen years ago and I’ve never seen him since. That’s why I’m calling you.

  – They took your son?

  – They told me he died. Vivar swears my son was never in his house, and he hasn’t allowed me to speak to that woman, Terelenita. I filed a report and the police briefly opened an investigation. Shortly thereafter they told me he was dead. The judge said his body might be found in mass grave of disappeared-detainees in Pisagua, but that was another lie. I’ve spoken with many people and found nothing: my case will never be on television or in the newspapers. I don’t want them to discuss the state my wife is in. It pains me even to speak of it.

  – Mr. Montes, may I call you later to set up an interview? This is serious. What’s your phone number?

  – Uh, no, not now. I just want attention put on the Vivar’s. I’ll call you. Goodbye.

  Juan Carlos Montes hung up. I never heard from him again. The old woman who answered the phone at the number from which the call had been made swore at me every time I told her who I was. After what happened in Navidad and Matanza I thought there was an obvious link between the disappearance of the Vivar siblings and Juan Carlitos Montes. But I was wrong. One night in April of 1999, after eating dinner with a friend, I told him about the bizarre story I was interested in writing. My friend, a salesman for a pharmaceutical company, was surprised when I mentioned Juan Carlos Montes.

  – Montes? I know Juan Carlos Montes. He hasn’t disappeared. He won’t leave me alone. He’s the product manager of Masters Lab in Chile.

  According to my friend, this individual’s father, Juan Carlos Montes senior, lived in California; he owned the business.

  – A man of means; there’s a reason you can’t track him down.

  Of course, the game’s pieces didn’t fit together. If this were the same Juan Carlos Montes who’d been kidnapped, according to the story of the man on the telephone, he’d be nineteen years old now. Maybe he was a whiz kid. A boy genius, I said. No, my friend responded, with a smile that reflected the words the man from the telephone had repeated. Hate, fear.

  – You have to understand the side effects of hadón, the extremely addicting and popular drug: rapid aging and then death.

  I asked him if there was a cure for this addiction. My friend raised his wine glass and made a toast:

  – There is nothing that frees us from death, but yes, there is something that frees us from its side effects.

  I looked at him, waiting.

  – Only perfect love dispels all fear, he quoted.

  39

  FROM: Lunes

  TO: Domingo

  DATE:

  SUBJECT: I heard Alicia singing softly in the elevator, I slipped out and disappeared silently down the stairway, like a disease I felt and continue to feel. The virus of language, the constant use of the illative connotes an obsession.

  As always, she’ll remove her keys from her backpack full of books, put the key in the lock, enter. But the dark apartment will be filled with a damp, heavy odor that’ll make her think of death by drowning, about the water that might exist after such a death, at least about the water that existed before.

  I made the horrible sacrifice of ascending in that frightening elevator, and it was all in vain! At any rate, I ran into a cousin of mine in the hallway, such is life. I’m not even sure if this is the right apartment.

  XOXO

  Lunes

  •

  FROM: Martes

  TO: Domingo

  CC: Lunes

  DATE:

  SUBJECT: I might kill her. Better yet: she might never die.

  I THINK I HAVE DISAGREEMENTS WITH THE DIRECTION THE NOVEL IS GOING.

  Before sending you my chapter (I’ve arrived in the silver room to write my chapter and I notice a disastrous absence: I left the sheet the board is printed on in my dorm), I wanted to send you my observations about the novel-game. It seems necessary to better define the connections, the movement the connections engender, and the trajectory of the characters. Causes-connections-characters. To me it seems useful to compare the mass of connections to a tree. The coherence of each bifurcation (ramification-connection) is stable at the outset, when they are branches. But as the growing tree branches out and bifurcates, in addition to specifying the content of each point, the branches begin to intermingle and cross over each other. But this only works when the origin of each branch is well defined. In this way, you can better sketch out the direction of a novel, with characters and stories, without having a surprising connection distort the narration. This makes the movement of the story easier to follow for the reader, and narrows down the millions of interrelations that appear when looking at a mass of, on their own, flat connections. Another point that seemed a little bit dicey to me was the inclusion of religious citations. Domingo, if you want to include particular beliefs in this sort of work, I think it’s necessary to clearly define their purpose, especially when it is a purely religious message. When divulging a message, until that message is clear, it suffers; better not to offer mere glimpses that in the end serve no narrative function (really they’re just a distraction because they have no contextual significance).

  I’m very pleased with what I’ve read and for that reason and that reason alone I’ve taken the liberty of criticizing the points that don’t live up to my expectations. Which says a lot, because in general my expectations for some people are very high. Well, Domingo, I hope this doesn’t seem boring or disappointing, that’s all. Chao.

  •

  FROM: Miercoles

&nbs
p; TO: Lunes, Martes, Jueves, Viernes, Sabado, Domingo

  DATE:

  SUBJECT: She’ll open the curtains and before she sees how the sun dips below the horizon, even before she sees how her hand ceases to be a hand, passing behind the window’s glass to touch it from outside, perplexed, she’ll see hundreds of hanging towels. She must’ve seen the bathtub early in the morning, when, for no reason, she’d gotten up to go look at herself in the bathroom mirror and to see B above her, below her, leading her toward the dunes, in spite of her odor. She must’ve looked at the bathtub and noticed that I’d left dozens of towels soaking in water of an unpleasant color and aroma. She believes this heap of cloth (can you wring out something that is still underwater?) to be an image from a dream, disappeared in the deepest sleep. So she’ll think these towels, stamped with the faces of her friends from the game, pinned to the wall and oozing onto the wallpaper that I chose, are part of a nocturnal terror that will inevitably dissipate when she thinks: No, it’s not death, it’s life, I’m awake, dry, soft, he’s at my side snoring, if I tell him I had a dream, he’ll open one eye, embrace me weakly and say: Tell me what you dreamed.

  You know? It makes no difference that the rest consider me your invention. The joke doesn’t work because two of them know me. Or is it three? Or four? Do you remember? You drank too much whiskey that night in Domingo and Lunes’ room. Everyone was there but Sabado, Sabado wasn’t invited. Remember? I remember because I was there, more than ever I was there. We played a board game, something involving throwing dice and pondering possible lives, imagining and giving those lives coherence. I don’t remember very well, I wasn’t paying attention because I dedicated myself to spilling whiskey on the floor of that stupid dormitory, and to stepping in the puddle so that everything got filthy. You remember. Look yourself in the eyes. Don’t act like someone who has no memories or emotions. Remember the funny and stupid face Domingo made when he asked you to clean the floor, the stain, and you ignored him. But I looked him silently in the face, mocking myself at the same time, then everyone realized that I was sleeping with you. I don’t care if they think I’m quiet just because I don’t prattle on like they do. I occupy myself with what’s important, you dedicate yourself to the other, to pleasing.