Navidad & Matanza Read online

  52

  IN THE AREA OF Navidad—Cardenal Caro Province in Region Six of the Liberator Bernardo O’Higgins—few locals have any desire to remember the summer of 1999. So, when questioned about the international event that took place in the neighboring town of Matanza, the residents look out to sea and murmur: Hmmm, yes, it was entertaining, there were so many gringos. I just did my thing, you know, I can’t ignore my work, especially these days, everything’s so hard. So I didn’t see much. Like I’ve got the time to be worrying about some tourists. But yeah, I think a friend of mine had something to do with it.

  The first time I traveled to the area, during the final months of 1999, I was disappointed not to find physical traces of the Transensorial Beyond Seasons Celebration, which I’d learned about from a television news program—the only one—investigating the disappearance of the Vivar siblings, before the coverage disappeared as quickly as they had. I thought that in Navidad and Matanza I’d find a trail left by the organization, propaganda on the walls, who knows, maybe some building that was built specifically for the event that had later been donated to the community. I searched wasteland areas, abandoned fruit stands, and at the municipal dump without luck for the detritus that, according to what I read in the international press, this transnational organization often left behind: posters, wax replicas of Hollywood actors, chicken carcasses without heads or extremities, jars of oil and acrylic paint, digital TVs, hair, overalls, suntan lotion, empty bottles, seaweed, used rolls of film, T-shirts and visors, burnt oil, stickers, lights, fast food wrappers, blankets, containers, colored lights, mirrors, plugs for American voltage, rubber gloves, tablecloths, Taiwanese cuddly toys, costumes of seventeenth-century French aristocracy, magazines, preservatives, exercise machines, microphones and headphones, sheets, holographic recordings, bicycles, beef jerky, unicycles and tricycles, dry leaves, towels, Styrofoam, bins of Panamanian fruit and vegetables, computers with biological processors, large white shirts, novels from every age in eight different languages, syringes, rackets, clay, encyclopedias, balls for various sports, fossils, hovercrafts, soaps, shampoos, DVDs and CD-ROMs, fetuses, straps and belts, couches, tons of tofu, folding parchment screens, car parts, bags of chalk, dozens of Catholic and Protestant Bibles, copies of Enuma Elish, Korans, Angas, Vedic books, Popol Vuhs, Mormon books, Tanajas, books of the origin of the Sikhs, Mishnas, books of Chilam Balam, Tao Te Chings, Talmuds, Bhagavad Gitas, Dhammapadas, Confucionist books, Kijikis, Nihongis, Tibetan and Egyptian Books of the Dead, Engishikis, Upanishads, books of Urantia, triptychs, eddas; kilos and kilos of sand.

  I asked more than thirty locals what they remembered about the previous summer, and invariably they told me about their families or about the lack of opportunities in the province, and sent me to some neighbor who may have been involved in the event. Finally, at a service station, strategically located between the towns, the attendant—a man of forty-some years, who preferred not to make his identity public—told me that, although he wasn’t directly involved with the organization (as his friend had said), he’d gone to “the mobile party” four nights in a row, where he worked as an assistant to a Chilean-African musician who played “a peculiar instrument.” Or at least he thought the instrument was peculiar—he told me, later, sitting in the service station’s cafeteria—because the sound it made was so sharp that it made something move in the pit of his stomach, like being tickled. Except for the last time, because he was too furious, he said with a smile, anticipating my series of questions. The instrument in question was the theremin of the Congolese Patrice Dounn, the other identity of the man I prefer to call Boris Real.

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  I SPENT THREE afternoons in January of 2000 sitting in a plexiglas booth, just over three feet wide, at a gas station between Navidad and Matanza. Behind me, there was a list of prices written in marker across the transparent surface and, above my head, there were products with brand names I thought had disappeared in Chile: Hilton Lights, Survivor, Pacific, Colo-Colo, Jockey Club, Ari, Nevada, Balu, Control. It was the only place I could sit and wait for the service station attendant. Every now and then some cars would pass by on the highway. The man wore a yellow jumpsuit and spent his time humming unintelligible music, alternating his activities between the broom, the ticket counter, and the oily floor of the mechanic’s garage. At two in the afternoon, with a cheap book in his hand, he went to eat lunch in Navidad. The service station was left inexplicably vacant. At three the man came back, marked his time sheet and slid underneath a dusty Volvo that was parked in the garage. At one point, I thought I heard him snoring.

  He enjoyed his job, he told me later, after the first beer. That first day I showed up at one in the afternoon, turned on my tape recorder and began to question him about Boris Real. He looked at me with surprise and said nothing. A fat man in a straw hat arrived in an oil truck, he greeted the attendant and asked him to fill the tank, then he left. A couple minutes went by and I didn’t know whether to say something or to leave. A thrush landed a few meters away, it hopped around, jerked its head nervously, pecked at the ground. The man watched the movements of the bird. It hopped twice more and flew away. Only then did he speak to me: Not yet, gancho, wait till I get off, and buy me a beer. Then I’ll answer you, can’t you see I’m working. I asked him what time he’d be done with work and he replied that it depended on the traffic. During the middle of the week it was hard to know how many vehicles would pass by, he added.

  That first day, waiting for him in that plexiglas booth, I picked up and read the book he’d taken with him at his lunch hour. The title was James Versus the Spider, a strange novel—horribly translated—whose premise postulated that in reality James Dean hadn’t died in his famous accident, but that he’d ended up in a coma. Years later, for an exorbitant sum, his relatives auctioned off the unconscious body of the actor, selling it to a private clinic in Salt Lake City. In secret, the clinic began a series of genetic experiments paid for by large pharmaceutical laboratories. The novel ended when the scientists failed in their DNA calculations and instead of cloning the perfect human being—beautiful, astute, sensitive, intelligent—they gave life to a tiny spider which was inserted, through the nose, into the president of the most powerful communications network in the United States, to feed on his brain and to direct the fate of the planet.

  At sunset, in my car heading to the bar located on Matanza’s small square, I asked the man from the service station where he’d bought that strange novel. A woman gave it to me, man. He was referring to a friend, or maybe a lover. We passed a few more minutes in silence. Then, to my surprise, he added: She loved to say that our friendship was just like that story.

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  DURING THE SUMMER we traversed the beaches of Chile’s central coast in the Cadillac or the Porsche. I’d stop in a beach’s parking lot and Bruno would get out of the car while I reclined in the drivers seat, shut my eyes and with closed lips sat humming old songs. I remember that we argued: Memory is made of music, he said; Memory is made of names, I maintained. I lay there with closed eyes, taking a drag on my cigar every now and then. That was the only movement alerting someone watching from outside that I wasn’t sleeping. Sometimes I sat up, searching for Bruno among the swimmers. Then I’d guess, with a glance, which girl he’d chosen that afternoon.

  58

  ACCORDING TO WITNESS reports, Bruno Vivar would dive into the sea alongside various young women. He’d tell them a charming joke, pretend to drown or swim out a ways commenting on the size of an approaching wave, until one of the girls took the bait. Violeta Drago (27) tells how one afternoon in January of 2001 she saw a boy’s body floating in the surf. It was a cloudy morning on the small beach of Algarrobo, only a few people felt inspired to go in the water. More confused than afraid, she says, she swam toward the body and took it by the waist to pull it back to solid ground. But when she touched it she knew immediately that it was a prank. There in front of the amazed girl, the inanimate body began to move. Bruno lifted his he
ad from the water and smiled at the young woman. I’m cold, he said to her. Then it began to rain. Violeta left him there and swam furiously back to the beach. Those features, childlike and blue with cold, corresponded to the description of Bruno Vivar. His face was contorted, gaunt, says Violeta. If he was trying to act like a corpse, he very nearly succeeded.

  59

  THE BAR MIRIADA—just like that, without an accent mark—sits on Matanza’s small square, next door to Don Julio’s butcher shop, on the only urbanized block in town. Before I sat down, I paused for a minute, staring at the name written on a brass sign above the door. As a joke, I asked the man from the service station—who had come along, and was willing to answer my questions about Boris Real, on the condition that I bought the beers—if Miriada referred to the bar’s owner, assuming it was another orthographical error to be added to my list of provincial oddities: miriada for miríada, in other words: myriad, numberless, legion, quantity, abundance, infinity, plethora, excess. Maybe Miriada was the wife of Don Julio, the mother of Julito, or maybe it was the name of a waitress who’d broken his heart. No, said the waitress, who brought four liter bottles of Cristal pilsner for my guest and a brandy with gin and ginger ale for me. There’s no one named Miriada here. It’s what we call the tiny worms that eat the ears of corn, added the man from the service station. The trees used to be full of miriada in August, right at the end of winter. That’s where the name comes from. Used to be, before what? I asked. Before the gringos showed up with their laboratories.

  I pretended not to know which gringos he meant. It’s fine, the man told me, wiping away the foam that had fallen from his lips. Do you want to ask me questions or just chat? We can talk about the African musician or about gringos, you decide, I have to work tomorrow and I can’t spend all night drinking, I’ve got someone waiting for me at home: TV and a book. There would be enough time to inquire about the organizers of the “mobile party,” I thought. Under the table, in a pocket of my bag, I pressed the button on the tape recorder, and told him that I didn’t want to be a bother.

  During the months of January and February of 1999 the locals had a lot of free time on their hands because the organizers of the Transensorial Beyond Seasons Festival had gotten the city council of Navidad and Matanza, in exchange for generous compensation, to suspend all commercial, civic, and social activity. The idea was to avoid all competition and consolidate control of the towns, forcing everyone to use the corporate logo of the international organization. In practice this meant that the restaurant on the fisherman’s cove became part of a fast seafood chain; the bars and diners temporarily turned into pubs, taverns, cafés, tearooms, cabarets, trattorias, food courts, cafeterias, wine shops, lounges, casinos; and the service station, among many transformations, became a Gas Station. So the man spent those days sitting on a stump across the highway from the service station where he’d worked for so long. Accustomed as he was to spending his days in that place, he just sat and watched as massive tanks, and engines, and generators arrived. I like my job and I didn’t want to be put out like that without getting to see why, he said. Every now and then a foreigner dressed in yellow and green overalls would approach him and attempt, in his words, to frighten him. But he just sat there, not understanding the language, until they left him in peace.

  After a week of this routine, a convertible appeared on the highway. It was a small jewel, a collector’s item—said the man from the service station—even though by then every kind of vehicle had already arrived and none would’ve surprised him. One time the ground even shook when a huge truck pulled up hauling a military tank, and then another one transporting several ATVs that had no wheels, they looked like rubber caterpillars. The man from the service station would’ve quickly forgotten the Porsche Spyder if it hadn’t slowed down and stopped in front of him. Before the smiling and suntanned man driving could finish asking him, ridiculously, where he could find a service station, the Spyder shuddered and died. Merde—exclaimed the Congolese. Just what I need: en panne. Where can I get fuel? Maneuvering around obstacles, they pushed the car two kilometers to the man from the service station’s home. They arrived at nightfall. The foreigner was so tired that he fell asleep sitting up, at a chair in the kitchen while spooning sugar into his coffee. Oddly, though he was snoring, he never let go of the case that contained his musical instrument.

  They got acquainted while pushing the Spyder, under the pleasant sun of that early summer evening. Dounn told the man from the service station that he’d driven all the way from Miami, he was in a hurry, and he needed an assistant to organize his performance with the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra in three days’ time.

  60

  THE MAN FROM THE service station allowed Patrice Dounn—alias Boris Real, alias Francisco Virditti—to stay in his house, in exchange for a little cash, after finding him asleep at the kitchen table. The Congolese had spilled the sugar. He stood up and began talking, in good Spanish, about money and the long hours he’d spent driving. At no point did he realize that his cheek and the right side of his forehead were coated with grains of sugar, nor that the impression of the plastic tablecloth was stamped on his right hand. He asked which room he should take and then disappeared with his luggage down the hallway. While he was preparing some food, the man from the service station heard his guest talking on a cell phone. It’s not that I like to eavesdrop, he assured me, but my house is made of wood, and I was living alone at the time, so I was used to hearing everything.

  After more than an hour, Dounn reappeared in the kitchen. He was more composed: dressed in a very elegant dark suit, his hair gelled, and his instrument case in one hand. He tasted the plate of rice with clams and Swiss chard that the man offered him along with a glass of boxed wine. He found everything “very tasty.” Toward the end of the meal, he asked his host to turn down the volume on the television and inquired who lived in the other rooms. No one, replied the man. Before his mother died, the house had been a hostel. After her passing, he explained, he hadn’t wanted any more kind-faced strangers in his house, so he closed the business. Now he had four guest bedrooms. Two matrimonial suites, one narrow bunk bed, and two twin beds. Dounn asked him if he’d be interested in accommodating some of his friends—a family—who were also coming to the festival that weekend. A couple and their two adolescent children. The man from the service station agreed, he needed the money. The Vivar family would be there in half an hour. Later the owner of the house would discover that the Congolese was very precise with his words: he’d only “accommodate” them, whatever that meant, because the Vivar’s kept their luggage at the Royal Lethargy Grand Hotel and also slept—at least the parents did—in the executive suite they’d reserved there.

  After he ate and finished off another glass of boxed wine that the man from the service station had offered him, Patrice Dounn proceeded to clear the kitchen table. Diligently he washed the dirty plates, glasses, and silverware, and cleared away the other things: the cruet, a journal of universal history that his host was reading, his own cell phone. He even removed the plastic tablecloth, which he folded neatly and placed in a corner of the kitchen. On the clean table he set down the black instrument case. He’d begun to open the clasps when suddenly he stopped and looked at the man from the service station, who was watching him from the door, a cigarette between his fingers. For the first time he understood how spiders and insects feel when someone observes them before stepping on them. That’s how don Patrice looked at me, he said. He maintained eye contact for a few seconds until he could no longer stand it. He went into the hallway, asking the foreigner if something was wrong. Nothing, said Dounn, I just want to know if I can trust you. Yes, of course, whatever you need, was the host’s reply. Then the Congolese added: This goes with you to the grave, understand? And he opened the case.

  Inside there was no instrument. Just small cans made of a thin material, without label, arranged vertically. Dozens of cans. The host—maybe instinctively, he didn’t know—hurriedly dug
through a drawer of knives to find a can opener for the visitor. Then he left the kitchen, heading to the bathroom. He wasn’t feeling well.

  When he came back, both Patrice Dounn and his case had disappeared. He didn’t see any sign in the garbage of the can that’d been opened, judging by the can opener—washed and dried meticulously, although still damp—sparkling on the table. The door to the guest’s bedroom was closed. Again the man from the service station felt “fear in my gut and in my eyes and my hair. I’m telling you, my hair was standing on end. But then the urge to vomit passed, and I wanted to run, to head to the beach, to chase after women, or dance to a slow song.”

  But he never managed to do anything, because suddenly he heard someone pounding forcefully on the front door. It was the foreigner’s friends. They were upset because they’d spent more than ten minutes calling and no one had come out to greet them. “One lady, one gentlemen, and two teenagers, they seemed to have been arguing among themselves. They were constantly interrupting each other, even the little girl would aggressively grab her father’s shoulder every time she wanted to say something.” They explained to him that they’d already spent two days in Navidad and that they wouldn’t be spending the night at his house, although of course he’d be compensated. They were counting, however, on his discretion, the gentlemen told him in a low voice, while taking his hand for a second. When he withdrew his hand, in his palm, the man from the service station found a twenty-dollar bill. They asked about Dounn. The man said he didn’t know, that he’d disappeared unexpectedly. Then they got back into a luxury Japanese sedan and left. Only Elena, Juan Francisco, and Bruno. When he went back into the house the man from the service station found Alicia sitting on his living room floor, looking through the book he was reading at the time. Always science fiction, really cheap editions that he bought in Pichilemu, he told me. How boring, said Alicia, and she asked what his name was. Then she wanted to know about his job and if he had any children. The girl took a cigarette from the pack that he had in the kitchen and put it in her mouth. The man offered her a light. Alicia made a noise, her tongue against her teeth. She said she didn’t smoke, that he should leave her alone. Please, tell me where the beach is, I can’t find it.