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James Watson
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Talking in
Whispers
James Watson

C Collins Readers
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without prior permission.

www.CollinsEducation.com
On-Uno Support for Schools and CoHopos

©James Watson 1983

ISBN-13 978 000 330028 4

ISBN-10 0 00 330028 5

20 19 18

First published by Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1983

Published in 1986 by
Collins Educational
An imprint of Harper Collins Publishers
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London W6 8JB

Cover design by Paul Manning

Printed in China
 In memory of
Miriam Bayliss of Belper
1899-1982

and in tribute to the work of

Amnesty International
 V
. V

■
This story takes place in Chile, some¬
where between the present and the
future. The characters are the creation of
the author but events such as those por¬
trayed here have happened, are happen¬
ing and will continue to happen, not only
in Chile but in many countries where the
force of arms rules the people instead of
democracy and the rule ofjustice.
Today it’s you who give the orders
What you say is said
And there is no argument
Today my people go around
Talking in whispers
Eyes on the ground . . .

In spite of you
Tomorrow will be
Another day.

Chico Buarque
.
 One

In the great stadium of Santiago twenty thousand people lift

hands and voices in salutation. Their chant rises as one
voice:
‘Mig-uel! Mig-uel!’
The afternoon sunlight frames the head of Miguel Al¬
berti, the Silver Lion, as he stands to speak. He wears a
white suit. In his hand he holds a green panama.
‘People of Chile . . . Companeros!’ His arm is a spear,
upraised. ‘Comrades in hope. ’ Cheers roll under the caverns
of the stadium like sea breakers. ‘The Generals have prom¬
ised to sheath their swords. We are once more winning the
argument for democracy in this proud land . . . Tomor¬
row, the people of Chile will go to the elections. As sure as
my hair is silver and my memory long, they will vote to
send the soldiers back to then barracks—where they be¬
long!’
The Silver Lion whirls his hat in the air. ‘Freedom will be
reborn. Not just for the few—but for all. The prison doors
will open and the spirit of justice, and of equality, will fly
forth with the strength of the condor!’
‘Tomorrow—tomorrow!’ chant the crowd.
Miguel, the people’s choice for president, spins his hat
high into the blue spring sky. It flutters. It hovers—a green
bird of peace in silhouette against the massive grey wall of
the Andes.
A sturdy arm reaches higher than a dozen others, a youth
. with a red and black band around his forehead, laughing
with delight as he clutches the green dove. The crowd offer

9
congratulations with drums and bugles as the youth waves
the hat triumphantly and plonks it at a jaunty angle on the
head of the girl beside him. ‘Try this for size, Isa!’ She turns
and the sun catches the smiles of twin brother and sister.
‘Tomorrow!’ The girl lifts her brother’s hand towards the
sun. The crowd thunders its joy.
From tomorrow, all will be different.

Andres knew for certain that his friend Horacio was dead.
The shots had pierced the side window of the car. There had
been the swerve, no brakes applied, and then the ditch.
Andres had been thrown clear, into the dusk of evening, but
Juan, his father—they had got him, dragged him from the
capsized vehicle.
Four of them, with guns.
They were searching for Andres now, among the
brambles and scrub where the ground rose up from the
winding valley road. He was a witness.
He had scrabbled along the ditch on hands and knees. It
was littered with sharp rocks. He dug at the crisp topsoil,
then powdered it over his face. He reached the first bend in
the road. He lunged in among blackberry bushes.
All at once, the ditch and the slope above it were sprayed
with machine-gun fire. Earth burst up into clouds. Trees
spat bark.
‘Come forward, boy—with your hands up!’
‘There was no one else. Just the two of us. ’ That wasjuan,
trying to protect his son.
‘We counted three. We followed you from the stadium,
Larreta—we know.'
‘Only my guitarist, Horacio Rivera, and myself. We
dropped off my son.’
Through the gimlet space of the brambles, Andres saw
his father beaten to the ground with the butt of the machine-
gun. ‘You, Larreta, will pay for your lies, and you’ll suffer

io
for your songs. The Minstrel of the People has given his last
concert for the Silver Lion.’
Andres smelt earth, spring-dry, and the scent of pines.
They were searching for him, rummaging through the
brambles, kicking spaces, scraping boots against rocks,
pushing rocks aside; rocks that rolled down gradiants,
bouncing towards the deep roar of the river.
Who are they? A Death Squad? More probably, Security.
Our friends the CNL*
‘Hernandes?’
‘Sir?’ Very close.
‘See to the car.’
Andres heard Hernandes grunt. He had scratched himself
on the brambles. In revenge, he aimed a burst of gunfire
into the shadows.
‘What about the boy?’
‘See to the car, we can’t bullshit around all night.’
‘He’ll talk, Sir. They’re that kind of family. ’ If Hernandes
now chose to track leftwards, he would step on top of
Andres who stuck his face in earth. He could hear his heart,
his pulses.
‘Not hair nor hide of him round here, Sir,’ called another
man. ‘He probably caught one. ’ He too aimed into shadows
and fired. ‘That’s two.’
Hernandes was reluctant to give up the chase. ‘Unless
he’s a cat with nine lives. ’ He had looked left. He stared into
undergrowth. He stared directly at Andres: he stared but he
did not see. He spoke to the fugitive he sensed still breathed.
‘There’ll be a next time.’
‘Hernandes—the car!’
Hernandes swore under his breath. He dropped down the
slope to the Security car and took two tins of petrol from the
boot. He opened the driver’s door of Juan Larreta’s old
Chevrolet. He poured petrol over the body of Horacio. He
drenched the musical instruments ofjuan’s trio, Los Obsti-
★ Chile’s secret police, formerly called the DIN A.
nados—the Obstinate Ones. He turned the steering wheel.
‘Give her a push.’
Two Security men pressed their weight behind the
Chevy, manoeuvring it slowly to the edge of the road.
Below, were rocks, a precipitous fall and then the river.
‘Stand back.’ Hernandes lit a match. He threw it into
Horacio’s face. ‘Bloody redneck!’
Corpse and car were ablaze. The Security men gave the
Chevy a final push. It tipped, burning, then exploded as it
overturned. It angled out into space. It struck rocks and
water simultaneously with a terrific bang.
Andres’ last view of his father was of him being punched
and kicked into the Security car. He watched it accelerate
away in a wild sweep, dust shooting from its rear wheels,
tyres howling as they met the tarmac of the road leading
back to Santiago.

Andres stood as the pines, as the stone cliff above him.

Tears of grief transformed the landscape to a sea-wash of
greys and browns and fading blue. Horacio, whom he’d
known since childhood, who’d been singing his new com¬
position only instants before the bullet silenced him: gone
for ever. And Juan, father, friend—best of companions—
snatched away to the prisons of a living death.
I should have let myself be taken. There’s no honour in
this, skulking in brambles, with only a scratch to show for
my bravery. If I’d given myself up at least I’d have driven
with him. On the last journey.
He gazed down at his scratches, not one but many.
Honour? He shook his head. Bravery? This happens, and all
you can do is spout like a tight-ass recruit at the Military
Academy. His mouth was caked with earth. He coughed
violently.
He advanced several steps, out of the profound blackness
of the shadows. At first glance, Andres’ lanky frame looked
frail; he was all sharp angles—bony shoulders, wide hips,

12
protruding knees: everything suggested ungainliness. Yet
in movement he cancelled out such an impression. He was
lithe and balanced, light on his feet, agile, but most of all his
physique suggested staying-power and resilience.
He glanced at the wrist-watch given him by his British-
born mother, Helen. It had belonged to her Scottish father
who had once—Andres never stopped boasting—played
football for Glasgow Celtic. Andres had played midfield for
his school team and had had a trial for Santiago Youth. His
future, though, until this evening, lay with Los Obstinados.
In just over half an hour the Silver Lion was due to give
his last election speech, in his home town of San Jose; and
but for the action of the Security, Juan, Horacio and Andres
would have been there too, with Braulio the drummer, to
play at a celebration concert in the town square.
I must get to Sanjose, fast. Tell Miguel what’s happened
to Horacio and Juan. He’ll speak out. He’ll shame the
generals.
Andres climbed down to the river, keeping a distance
from the still-burning Chevy half in the River Maipo, half
out. He drank. He washed the disguise of dry-dust from his
face—and then suddenly he stood up, listening intently.
Transport!
He clawed a route back up the river bank. Walking, this
journey could take him all night. If I can thumb a lift—yet
what driver in his right mind’ll stop for a stranger in the
dark? In Chile, these days.
Still, he tried to reassure himself, I’m no threat. Too
skinny to scare anybody.
What Andres did not admit to himself was that his eyes,
always intense, often fierce and challenging, would not
assure strangers that to be in this young man’s company was
to be without risk. As Braulio used to say of Andres,
‘You’ve got a stare that could make rivets melt.’
‘That’s because I feel things passionately.’
Braulio would nod approvingly, wisely. ‘Just be careful

13
that with sparks like yours you don’t set people alight.’
Braulio would be at San Jose, waiting, anxiously
wondering. Sparks or no sparks, Andres needed this lift. He
stepped out into the road, thumb held high.
An ancient van rattled up the hill towards him, wheels
wobbling, one side-lamp unlit. With my extra weight
inside, it’ll probably need pushing. Andres eased back on to
the grass verge as the van approached.
Will it, won’t it?
He tried to peer in at the occupants. They weren’t stop¬
ping. He shouted: ‘Please!’ The van passed, almost slow
enough for him to jump aboard. He ran after it, waving. For
a moment he thought the van was speeding up to escape
him. Then, as though the driver had abruptly changed his
mind, it pulled across the road and came to a halt beneath
the dark shoulder of the hill.
Andres stopped running. He stood quite still. Don’t scare
them off. They’re watching you through the rear mirror.
He raised his hands to show that he carried no weapon.
Both of the van doors opened at once. A girl, and a youth
with a bright-coloured hair-band, came round the van to
look at him. The youth held a starting handle—just in case.
They had spotted the still-burning Chevrolet -at the
river’s edge. ‘That yours?’ called the youth.
Andres was silent. In Chile under the military junta you
trust the truth only with close friends. And sometimes not
even then. ‘Nothing to do with me ... I missed my bus to
San Jose.’
As they were obviously not going to come any closer,
Andres took a careful pace forward, then a few more. He
stopped before he became a threat. ‘If you’re heading that
way, it’d be a great help.’
He saw that the youth and the girl were twins—identical
twins. They were tallish, very handsome, proud despite
their rickety old van. He was close enough to read the
roughly-painted lettering on the side: MARIONETAS DE

14
LOS GEMELOS (Marionettes of the Twins).
‘I think I’ve seen you.’ He pointed at the sign. ‘At the
market of San Miguel.’
They were pleased. They exchanged smiles. The youth
nodded. ‘You’re the first to see our new sign. It’s in
celebration of—’
‘Ssh, Beto,’ cautioned his sister.
‘Oh what does it matter, Isa? He’s not going to run and
tell the CNI ... are you, Senor?’
Andres shook his head. ‘I remember you had a skeleton,
with a skull that kept bouncing up and hitting people. And
an ostrich—’
‘Orlando—’
‘That pecked people’s noses.’
They all laughed, nervously, and the first seeds of trust
were sown. Andres was invited to hop in among the twins’
menagerie of puppets. There were more than a dozen of
them, jiggling on long strings suspended from wooden
racks built into the roof of the van.
‘You’re in luck, ’ said Beto, coaxing the van into life again
and moving off. ‘San Jose’s precisely where we’re heading.
The town’ll be packed for election day.
‘We hope to do at least three shows,’ added Isa. ‘You
don’t sing or dance, do you?’
‘Dance? No. But I can sing a bit—play the charango.’
Andres broke off He was giving away too much to stran¬
gers.‘Well, anyway ... I used to.’
Beto overcame Andres’ embarrassment by ignoring it.
‘Our company’s planning to expand. We could do with a
singer and a charango player. ’
Andres did not answer. He was all at once choked with
the memory of Horacio, the most talented guitarist and
charango player in Chile, in all South America, Juan often
said; and of Juan himself, sweetest of singers, who would
soon be singing a song of another sort at the hands of the
CNI.

15
 Beto had not driven far before he pulled off the road into a
lay-by scooped out of the hill. ‘Supper. Care to join us?’
Andres concealed his impatience to get to San Jose with¬
out delay. And anyway, he was famished. Isa reached
between her feet. ‘It’s not much.’ She snapped a long crisp
loaf into three, sliced the pieces and inserted circles of garlic
sausage. She dropped a tomato and a wedge of cheese into
Andres’ hand.
‘Beer?’ Beto flipped the rubber cork from a litre bottle.
He stared at Andres as he handed him the beer. ‘If I poke a
lot of questions at you, my sister’ll do a kneecap job on me. ’
He paused. He waited.
And Andres waited, uncomfortable.
‘We’ve got a great conversationalist here, Sis.’
‘Eat up and shut up.’
Beto whistled. ‘Yes, boss ... You wouldn’t think,
would you, stranger, that I entered this world nine and a
half minutes before Big Momma here? Which should have
qualified me to wear the pants in this family.’
Andres did not care for the impression he was giving—
defensive, untrusting, without warmth. He smiled. ‘I’m an
only child. I’d have liked a brother or a sister.’
‘Sisters are born bullies.’ Beto did not mean it seriously.
His wink indicated that this was a line he took in order to
provoke a lively argument. ‘They’re always so generous
with advice.’
Andres turned to Isa. ‘And brothers, what are they like?’
Isa’s face reminded him of the painting of an Inca princess
he had seen in Peru, in a palace that soared into the kingdom
of the clouds; a princess with large, solemn and distant eyes.
Her hair was in two plaits curled up round her ears like
rams’ horns.
He sensed the strength in her silence. Yet her voice was
mellow and humour touched the corners of her mouth as
she spoke. ‘Brothers take running jumps at things—and
then think about the distance when it’s too late. ’

16
 Beto gave a vigorous nod of assent. ‘Exactly. If she’d had
her way, that sign on the van would have had to wait till the
Silver Lion won the elections. So I told her—it’s in the bag,
and up went the sign. ’
‘Do you think it’s in the bag?’ Isa asked Andres.
‘I was beginning to believe it was. ’
Beto switched on the cab light. He looked hard at
Andres. ‘I’ve been puzzling ever since we picked you up.’
He glanced at his sister. ‘We’ve seen him some place,
haven’t we?’
Isa switched off the light. ‘There you go again. ’
Beto’s curiosity was in full flow. He gave a tweak to
Andres’ cord bomber jacket. ‘You’re a Towny, that’s for
sure ... a student?’
‘Beto!’
‘Okay.’ Beto relented. He started up the engine, though
his eye was still on Andres through the rear mirror. ‘Well I
can tell you this, Towny—if I think we’ve seen you, Isa
knows we have.’

They drove under stars on a winding route that crossed and

re-crossed the river. Farm hamlets lay black in sleep; copses
of pine shaped the skyline. And always, against the drone of
the van’s engine as it laboured through the gears, came the
roar of the Maipo, amplified by the walls of the canyon.
Suddenly the road ahead of them was blocked. At the
entrance to a village that narrowed the route to no more
than the width of two cars, several vehicles stood in a
motionless tailback. Beyond was a crowd of people, almost
silent, as though they had gathered for a funeral procession.
Beto halted in line. ‘Now what?’
The drivers had got out of their vehicles. They were
talking to people in the crowd, all staring or pointing away
out of the village as if the source of their concern lay in the
direction of San Jose. Beto got down. ‘I’ll see.’
He followed the dip in the road, past the first cars in line

17
and went to the perimeter of the crowd. Isa and Andres
watched him as he spoke to a villager. They observed his
instant response to what he was told—of shock, of anger.
He raised his arms, grief-stricken.
Beto came racing back. As he ran, he shouted the news. It
blunted against the silence. He did not repeat his message till
he was abreast of the cab. He flung in the words: ‘The Silver
Lion’s been shot dead. At San Jose . . . Dead! He was
making his speech . . .’
Andres clipped his hands to his eyes. He felt the breath
gush out ofhim. Only hours ago, he had shaken hands with
the gentle philosopher-poet, the man who had defied the
threats of the Junta, who had scorned the Death Squads,
who had roused the people with his golden oratory.
‘They’ve blamed the Communists,’ said Beto, unbeliev¬
ing. He was in tears.
The village crowd had opened a path for two policemen
on motorcycles. The crowd was ordered to disperse. The
police began to check the documents of the drivers in the
tailback.
Beto put the van into reverse. He backed up the road a
few metres. He turned. He watched the police through his
wing mirror. He was shaking. ‘We’ve got to decide what to
do . . . Now, everything’s changed—everything!’
Beto pulled off the road on to a farm track behind a
protective curve of pines. He climbed out and the others
followed, at a distance, keeping their distance.
It was Isa’s way, as it was Andres’, to take bad tidings in
silence; yet Beto’s way was to talk out his pain. ‘I’ll leave
Chile . . . Go to Europe—I can’t stand this. Not Miguel’s
death. Another good man, another Allende—buried!’
Beto dropped to the ground. In his anguish, he ripped at
the earth. He threw the soil about him like a mad dog
hustling for a lost bone. He stopped only when Isa went to
him, raised him to his feet, put her arms under his arms and
rested her head against his.

18
 ‘What’ll we do, Isa?’
‘We must go back to town. Now.’
‘But in the future, I mean?’ His eyes went past his sister to
Andres. He spoke to his sister. ‘Who is he, Isa?’
Her gaze and his were one. She turned the question.
‘What will you do? Our route lies back to Chago.’
Andres was desolated. He had no words. No plans. He
shrugged. ‘Just drop me off.’
Isa made a decision for all of them. She took Beto by the
arm. ‘Towny will spend the night with us at the mill. We’ll
leave thinking till tomorrow.’

On the journey back to Santiago, they listened to the van

radio. The military authorities had taken over all broadcast¬
ing stations. One message was repeated over and over
again: the death of Miguel Alberti was a tragedy for the
nation. The elections fixed for tomorrow would be post¬
poned indefinitely. In the meantime, the people of Chile
were urged to keep calm:
‘The Junta declares a State of Emergency to come into
effect immediately. Until further notice all public
assemblies are banned. For a limited period only, the
activities of political parties and trade unions will be
suspended.
‘From tomorrow a curfew will operate in all towns and
cities in the Republic, extending from 21.00 hours to
06.00 hours each day. Those persons without special
passes, seen abroad between forbidden hours, will be
liable to arrest. ’
The newsreader had paused for a moment as the first
chords of the Chilean national anthem signalled the end of
his broadcast.
‘People of Chile—the price of honour and justice is
eternal vigilance. The Resistance Movement must be
crushed once and for all. Let us therefore stand together,
in unity, against the enemy within.

19
 ‘This broadcast comes to you by order of His Excel¬
lency General Zuckerman, commander of the armed
forces, President of the Republic.
‘God Bless Chile!’
It was not until Beto, Isa and Andres had reached the
south western outskirts of the city that they heard the
gunfire. Beto celebrated. ‘People are fighting back! Maybe
the Resistance has climbed out of its mothballs.’
Andres strained his ears and his eyes: the sounds of
combat were sporadic—a burst of machine-gun fire, an
answering crack of rifles, then a deeper, more powerful
thud of shells. ‘Those are tanks.’
Beto slowed the van. The road had been deserted but
now it was busy with traffic—most.of it racing in the
opposite direction, out of the city. ‘What do we do, go back
to Puente Alto and doss down for the night?’
‘Press on, I’d say,’ suggested Andres. ‘Before they stick
up road blocks.’
‘And get blown to bits on the Alameda?’
He’s right, Beto,’ said his sister. ‘If we turn round now
we’ll only have to face the same problem in the morning.’
‘That gunfire’s straight ahead.’
‘Then turn east. Not every street in San Miguel will be a
battlefield.’
‘That’s what I’d hoped you’d say.’ Beto speeded up. ‘If
I’d suggested it, you’d have called me a hot-head.’
The street lights were out. Only traffic signals shed any
illumination in the black, deserted city. The van had been
threading a quiet route, in third gear, sometimes second,
through a maze of narrow streets when Beto braked hard.
‘Cristo!’ Andres pitched against the front seat. The pup¬
pets slithered along their runners.
The gunfire had re-opened its clash with the night di¬
rectly in front of them, a street away. ‘We’re in the thick of
it!’ Beto crashed the gears into reverse. The van stalled.
Nothing for the moment was visible: the combatants

20
were firing along the line of the junction of roads. Yet the
gunfire was so close and so intense that it seemed no longer
ahead, where the streets crossed, but all around them.
And then, as though somebody had thrown an electric
switch, the fury of sound ceased. There was an uncanny
hush, a waiting, a probing: was the enemy dead; was there
any further need of bullets; was the action over?
‘ Wh-what do we do?’ asked Beto in a whisper and a lather
of sweat.
Isa unlatched her door. ‘Take shelter, I think.’
‘Leave everything?’
‘They only need to come round that corner,’ warned
Andres.
Together, they left the van, high and dry in the middle of
the road, engine still ticking with heat. They found refuge
in a garden porch, third house along from the street corner.
A pungent smell of eucalyptus hung in the darkness.
The rival armies—if they still existed—=held their fire.
The intruders held their breath. Far off, towards the city
centre, there was more gunfire. From the north came the
sound of planes, of helicopters.
Beto challenged the silence. ‘What’s keeping them?’ He
turned to his companions. ‘This is getting us nowhere,
hanging about. Somebody . . . somebody Ought to take a
look—up there.’ His proposal was not greeted with wild
enthusiasm by the others. ‘After all, I’ve done the driving.’
Andres felt, in Beto’s mind, he had been volunteered for
the job. ‘Stick my head round the corner, do you mean?’
‘If it’s clear, we get moving. ’
Isa was brisk, decisive. ‘I’ll do it.’ She left them, only for
Andres to overtake her to the second house porch. ‘You
stay.’
‘No. ’ It was Andres’ turn to be resolute. ‘Because I owe it
to you. And to my Dad.’ He was already sprinting to the
last house. He was not more than ten strides from the
corner. Here’s praying. He wondered—am I really doing

21
this for Dad, for glory or just to show off in front of this
dream of a girl, proving I’m as brave—or as stupid—as
Beto?
Another second and I might go on to prove how much
deader I can be than Beto.
He was at the very joining edge of the street. He noticed
that where his flattened palm took comfort from solid
walls of stone, there was a spray-canned message in white
letters:

SAVE THE JUNTA TIME AND BULLETS—

SHOOT YOURSELF!

Andres hesitated to look round the corner of the building.

But Isa, right behind him, nudged him into action. He eased
his right eye into the open—his eye told all a fraction of an
instant before his ears took up the story.
The cross-street stage crashed open with the roar of steel
tracks over stone.
‘Tanks!’
His voice was a shout, for nothing but a bomb would
have penetrated the din of cannon fire which now raddled
the streets. He hurled himself away from the corner, against
Isa, taking her to ground with him. ‘Head down!’
For seconds only: they were too exposed. They scram¬
bled. They ran. The gunfire became so deafening, so touch¬
able, that it seemed to have thrown a wall around them, first
barring their escape, then capsizing over them.
Three tanks, two forward, one to the rear, clanked and
droned from left to right, and after them came a score of
infantrymen ducking behind the reinforced steel of their
riot shields.
Andres, Isa and Beto had gathered, in numbed helpless¬
ness, in full view of the soldiers—in full view that is if one of
them should as much as turn his head. Yet the viewing slits
of the tanks and the eyes of the soldiers remained fixedly
forward. The three statues of flesh shook, gasped—but

22
were not seen. Isa was first to move as the last of the soldiers
passed from stage left to stage right. ‘Into the van.’
Mouth open, goof-eyed, Beto was still half-buried in a
dream of bricks and bullets. ‘But. . .’
‘No buts—we go!’
Beto obliged. In the driving seat he switched on the
ignition.‘We’ll die . . .’
Isa commanded: ‘Not reverse—forward.’
‘Across that? Are you mad? Tell her, Towny, she’s mad.’
Andres was as terrified, as shattered as Beto was. Yet he
shrugged. ‘Try it.’
‘If you’d like me to drive, Beto,’ Isa said softly, guile¬
fully, ‘you could bunk down in the back.’
Beto wiped his mouth, but revved the van. ‘The way you
want it is the way we’ll have it.’ He plunged down on the
accelerator.
‘God bless the Silver Lion—and God bless us!’

23
 Two

The gates of the National Stadium in Santiago have been

opening and closing all through the night. The streets
leading to the stadium are cordoned off by armoured cars.
Those living close by are not allowed out of their homes
because of the curfew; but from their shadowy windows, as
dawn lifts over the Andes, they are able to watch the
covered trucks entering the stadium in endless convoy.
On board the trucks are human cargoes, each batch of
prisoners escorted by guards with machine-guns. The gates
open and the vast empty stomach of the stadium swallows
up the prisoners.
Somewhere beneath one of the main grandstands an
officer has ripped the name of the stadium manager from his
office door. He replaces it with a notice in large capitals:
INTERROGATION CENTRE.
He calls to a guard. ‘I’ll take the foreign vermin first.’

The scream woke Andres. It was his own scream. In his

nightmare, he was nine again. Two days off his ninth
birthday, to be exact. He saw the pistol, aimed from a
moving car. He saw his mother fall. He saw her fall and he
saw the car speed away.
When Andres rushed to her she did not known him. One
second—and gone. The White Knights—did they do it?
The killer squads who had been threatening Juan with his
own death if he continued to sing songs attacking the rich,
attacking the generals for their tyranny?

24
 Before his very eyes, Helen—Highland Helen as Juan
called her—with her back to the road, a tree to the side of her
in full summer leaf. Half-turned at a call, struck in the throat
and heart.
They never found out. She was buried and there was no
evidence, no clues. The police did not care. But the people
at the hospital where she nursed—they came, they crowded
the graveside; the hospital for the poor, until the Junta had
shut it down.
Of course the Security too were at the graveside: they
took the names of all the mourners.
At the sight of her, fallen, how he had raged. How he had
yelled and wept. He had flung himself towards the ambu¬
lance. He would have been carried along by it had not the
men relented, allowed him beside his dead mother, let him
cover her with his arms.
He came to, not in the ambulance, not by the graveside
where Juan, Horacio and Braulio had sung Helen to earth,
but on a mattress on a sloping wooden floor. He saw bars,
high up, filtering pale light.
‘Steady does it, Towny. It’s only us—Beto and Isa. You
got a parting in your hair from a stray bullet. You were
lucky.’
It hurt. Andres raised a hand to his head. There was a
huge sticking plaster just below the line of his hair. ‘That
close!’
Beto grinned. ‘You should have seen the hole it made in
the van.’ He patted Andres arm. ‘Don’t fret. We checked
your brain—it’s still intact.’
Andres felt as if he had been crowned with a red-hot
poker. He moved and he was suddenly dizzy. He lay back.
‘Was I raving?’
‘Not a bit,’ asserted Beto unconvincingly.
‘Just a little,’ admitted Isa. ‘But what does it matter?
You’re among friends.’
‘Thanks.’

25
 Andres stared about him: bare, whitewashed walls; a slit
window; just this mattress on the gnarled wooden floor; a
workbench; puppets, still skeletons of wood, hanging from
crossed-wood frames; freshly-painted stage backdrops
spread round the walls. ‘This your own place?’
‘It’s home . . .’Isa poured out a dish of soup from a pan
simmering on a camping stove. Beto helped lever Andres
into a sitting position, back against a wall that had shed
much of its plaster to reveal the wood beneath.
‘A mill?’
Beto explained. ‘Three-tenths of a mill. The rest was
bombed in ’73 after they got rid of Allende. We’ve this old
storeroom to sleep, eat and squabble in, and a place under¬
neath for the van. ’
‘Plus a view of the city as fine as any you’d get from San
Cristobal,’ added Isa.
‘Nobody knows we’re here, of course. We ship in our
water, our own oil lamps. And so far—touch wood—we’re
left in peace.’
The twins watched Andres as he ate his soup. Beto
rocked forwards and backwards on an upturned box, glanc¬
ing from sister to guest. ‘Can I tell him, Sis?’ he asked
eventually. ‘I’ve to push off to the laundry in a minute,
so . . .’
‘Secrets?’ asked Andres.
‘Quite the opposite—young Senor Larreta. Quite the
opposite.’
‘You guessed.’
Isa knew all along. But you were still on the tip of my
tongue . . . until this morning’s paper. You’re famous!’
Beto reached behind him and brought out a copy of The
Mercury. ‘If this rag is to be believed—Andres, isn’t it?—
then we are at this minute nattering to a ghost. Here, read
your own obituary—page two, below the fold.’
Andres put down his soup, trying to stay calm. He
scanned the front page headlines:

26
 JUNTA STEPS IN TO SAVE COUNTRY AFTER
REDS SLAY ALBERTI
ELECTIONS POSTPONED INDEFINITELY
CHILE UNDER CURFEW

He turned to page two. There was a blurred photograph

of Los Obstinados, pictured giving a street performance—
Juan singing, Horacio with guitar, Braulio on drums. The
headline read: CAR DEATH OF BALLAD SINGER
JUAN LARRETA.
In smaller type he learned of his own journey into the
next world: Vehicle in flames on San Jose road. Larreta’s
son, Andres, and other members of Los Obstinados—
Horacio Rivera & Braulio Altuna—die in fire.
The Mercury went on: According to police evidence,
Larreta had been drinking heavily. A well-known alcoho¬
lic, he had refused medical assistance on numerous oc¬
casions.
Andres fought to hold his anger as the lies continued:
Larreta’s popularity as a singer had been in serious decline
since the death of his British-born wife, Helen, seven years
ago. Larreta claimed that his wife was shot by a so-called
‘DeathtSquad’, but the facts later proved that she had taken
her own life.
Andres lunged from the mattress only to stumble over
against Isa; his head burnt; his brain spun.
With firm but gentle hands Isa eased him back on the
mattress. ‘Do you expect the lap-dog of the generals to
publish the truth?’ He felt her palm cool against his fore¬
head.
Soothed, Andres read on. He smiled. ‘As a matter of fact,
The Mercury's got something right for once.’ He read out
the final paragraph:
‘Larreta’s sixteen year old son Andres had himself been in
trouble lately with the authorities. He was expelled from his
senior school for subversive activities: he was chairman of a

27
Human Rights Committee, linked with Amnesty Inter¬
national. The Committee was declared illegal three months
ago following a banned march on the Ministry of the
Interior, demanding news of political detainees.’
‘Well, Isa, ’ said Beto, ‘it looks as though we’ve given bed
and board to a real barrel of trouble.’ He folded his arms.
‘You’re gelignite, Towny—so even if you’re not dead,
you’d better pretend to be for the next few weeks. ’
‘You can stay here as long as you like,’ offered Isa.
‘But you must stay put. Head down, nose in, mouth
shut.’
Andres shook his head. ‘You’ve been great friends—I’m
deeply grateful. But I’ve things to do. I can’t disappear into
the woodwork till it’s all oVer. My father has many friends.
My job’s to tell them what’s happened, to get them to
help.’
‘The Security know you’re not dead, Andres,’ said Isa.
‘They’ll watch for you. They’ll tail you. Whoever you go
to, you’ll put in danger.’
‘If I’m tailed, I’ll stop. Please understand!’
Though he was late for work at the laundry, Beto sat
down again. ‘We do understand. Only too well—searching
and searching, but never finding.’ He was almost in tears
and Isa took his hand, folding it into her own.
She explained: ‘Our parents, our uncle, a cousin . . . they
used to run the puppets. They must somehow have caused
offence. ’
‘They disappeared,’ Beto burst in, ‘and we’ve never
heard of them since. Not a thing!’
‘How long ago?’
‘Eighteen months. Every day for a year we went to the
offices. Nobody knew anything. Nobody cared a damn.’
Beto was up. ‘I’ve got to go . . . I’m sorry for you, Andres.
I m sorry for us. Because there’s nothing worse than wait¬
ing and waiting and not knowing.’ He spat the words:
They know that! If people just disappear, you don’t have to

28
try them. You don’t need evidence against them. You don’t
even need to feed them in prison. And now I’m off.’
Beto left a silence as vast as the desert in the Big North.
Andres watched Isa go to the workbench. She had finished
dressing a new puppet. She held it up. It was a metre in
length, a male figure in military uniform festooned with
medals. The face was wide, swarthy, with a waxed mous¬
tache and bushy black eyebrows. ‘Meet General Zuckero!’
The General danced into life, and out came a fruity and
uncannily accurate imitation of the voice of the President
of Chile. ‘Friends and countrymen—you can tell the num¬
ber of enemies there are in our midst by a very simple
device. You count the detestable litter that is flung every¬
where in our city. Until the litter-louts own up—we arrest
everybody!’
Andres laughed. ‘You plan to use him?’
‘What do you think? One shake of his leg in public and
we’d be inside the House of Laughter for the rest of eter¬
nity.’
‘Yet you made him just the same.’
‘After a while, you come to hate talking in whispers.’
Andres stared at Isa. ‘Do you know what the luckiest
thing is that’s happened to me in the last few hours?’
Her eyes met his. She read his thoughts. ‘That’s what I
feel too.’

The next morning, early, Andres set out under heavy

rain-clouds to call on Juan’s friends and to tell Horacio’s
family of his death. He walked for half an hour before he
sighted any part of the city that he recognised.
The gun battles of two nights before between the military
Junta and Resistance fighters seemed to have become
ancient history as the shops opened for trade, as traffic got
into its usual jams, as shutters rattled up, as sun awnings
were levered into place.
And yet, thought Andres—nobody’s looking into any-

29
body else’s face. Today we are talking in whispers, eyes on
the ground. The words from a song by Chico Buarque
returned to Andres as he walked through a city which, just
below the surface, was riven with fear:
Today it’s you who give the orders
What you say is said
And there is no argument
Today my people go around
Talking in whispers
Eyes on the ground . . .
The song, though, was not one of despair. It was one of
hope, an inspiration to resistance. How did it go?—yes:
You’re going to pay double
For every tear shed
From this sorrowing of mine
In spite of you
Tomorrow will be
Another day . . .
The words cheered Andres; they sharpened his purpose.
I’m not alone. I’ve always got to remember that—I’m not
alone!
His journey skirted the district of Providencia, one of the
wealthiest areas of the city. He noted angrily the number of
national flags waving in celebration of the Junta’s ‘victory’
from elegant, second-storey windows.
And here, Ladies and Gentlemen, among the toffs of
snob-hill, we have the General Zuckerman fan-club. He's
the very Model of a Modern Military Man; on Sunday he
saves the nation; on Monday he murders his enemies; on
Tuesday he’ll torture the innocent; on Wednesday—well,
never mind what he’ll be up to on Wednesday.
For a moment Andres watched the flags curl in a
strengthening wind from the Andes: a storm wind. Okay-
folks, you can unlock your jewel boxes and your bank
vaults—the Silver Lion is dead!
Along the Avenida Bernardo O’Higgins, called the

30
Alameda because it was once lined with hundreds of poplar
trees, there were tanks and armoured cars at every road
junction. Yet what struck Andres about the centre of town
was the air of normality. Apart from the guns, you’d think
nothing had happened.
The streets were bustling with people. The fashionable
shopping centres were doing business as usual. The car
horns of impatient drivers were as noisy as ever. Andres
was not sure whether he should be amazed, angry or simply
resigned that, scarcely twenty-four hours after the murder
of Miguel Alberti, the people’s choice for a civilian presi¬
dent, the people should now be gazing in shop windows,
drinking coffee at pavement cafes, trying on new hats,
eating ice-cream.
He stared at the world as it passed and his eyes grew more
fierce, the knot of anger inside him more tight. Saturday
night, my father was kidnapped; today, where is he—what
has happened to him? Am I the only one that cares?
As if expecting an answer, Andres looked up at the white
statue of the Virgin Mary that adorned San Cristobal, the
great hill dominating the heart of Santiago. The sky had
darkened. It was going to rain. Perhaps that was a sign of
the Madonna’s displeasure.
And there was another sign: ahead of him, Andres saw
two soldiers of the Black Berets cross the street and make
towards a youth with long, shoulder-length hair. They
called to him. At first he did not hear them, did not notice
them. Their boots, quickening over the pavement, caused
the youth to glance round. Immediately, he started to
run.
Andres felt his own legs quickening. He’d better stop!
The youth crashed into pedestrians coming in the opposite
direction. He sidestepped off the pavement. The traffic was
heavy and forced him to head along the gutter. The Black
Berets screamed at him to stop, surrender. The crowd
seemed indifferent to the chase. Some merely made way.

3i
Others protested, tried to shove the youth into the road
with their arms.
One of the soldiers stopped. He raised his rifle. His
warning voice was swallowed in the roar of the traffic. He
fired. The youth was hit in the middle of the back. His arms
went out. The impact of the bullet carried him off balance.
He reeled towards the pavement. A second bullet struck
him in the head and carried him straight into an oncoming
taxi.
Andres was among the crowd, but his voice came pitch¬
ing out ofit, shrill, shaken: ‘You murderers!’
The taxi had skidded, carrying the body of the youth over
the pavement and into a row of passers-by. Ignoring the
carnage, one Black Beret dragged the dead youth by the
collar from the bonnet of the taxi.
The second Black Beret turned on his accuser, on Andres,
who had dared to voice the thoughts of all those who had
witnessed his cold-blooded execution of an innocent young
man.
He encountered a sea of blank and horrified faces. Swifter
than he had ever been on the football field, Andres had
turned, moved, cut left and become a window-shopper
under the blue awning of one of Chago’s most expensive
jewellers.
He was breathing hard as though he had been chasing the
funicular to the top of San Cristobal. Idiot! He accused
himself of risking his life pointlessly. Yet he answered
himself. Somebody had to say it.
He scrutinised the events going on behind him by watch¬
ing their reflection in a huge silver trophy in the jeweller’s
window. The Black Berets were bundling the dead youth
into the taxi.
Andres recognised the trophy. It was the Two Hemi¬
spheres Cup soon to be played for by teams from South
America and Europe. He felt a wretched sadness. In his top
drawer at home, he had tickets for the first match, between

32
Chile and England. He had looked forward to the tour¬
nament for months.
There was also a ticket for Juan: and Juan’s seat would be
empty. And a ticket for Horacio.
And Braulio—the maddest-keen football fan in all Latin
America, would his seat at the stadium be empty too?
Andres swung round. There were tears in his eyes. He
saw the slumped remains of somebody’s son. All at once, it
was too much. Still with the scene before him, he retreated
several steps. Then he about-turned. He slipped through
the crowd, unnoticed.
He headed north, to the poorer quarter, and to Horacio’s
place. As he walked, the rain began. It seemed to carry the
salt of the far-off Pacific. With it came a freshness which
Santiago only ever seemed to experience when the rain fell
and dismissed the smog that hung over the city in a per¬
petual cloud.
In his sadness, in his wetness as the rainstorm burst over
him, Andres recalled lines by Chile’s greatest and most
loved poet, Pablo Neruda:
Do you want to be the lone ghost walking by the sea
blowing his pointless, disheartening instrument?
Andres nodded, wiping the rain from his eyes. Is that
how I’ll end up—a lone ghost walking by the sea? And yet
how did the poem go on?
someone would come perhaps
someone would come,
from the crowns of the islands, up from the red sea
depths
someone would come, someone indeed would come.

No answer. Not someone. Not anyone.

Andres had pressed the doorbell of the little terraced
house where Horacio lived with his parents, his grand¬
parents, brother and three young sisters. Usually one ring
would summon eager heads from the windows, the door,

33
round the corner, up the street—but now all was silent and
deserted.
The rain had become torrential. The sky had dropped a
grey darkness over the rooftops, making all but the foothills
of the Andes disappear. Andres rang again several times. He
noticed a movement from next door. A side window
slipped gingerly open.
Andres tried a smile. ‘Buenas dias, Senora! I’m Senor
Rivera’s friend. I’ve an important message for his family.’
The old woman’s eyes were as narrow, as suspicious as
the slit of window. The men were arrested last night. ’
‘Not the grandfather?’ The old woman nodded. ‘But he
was eighty!’
‘They give the women a beatin’ too. Gone to relatives.’
‘Do you know where, Senora?’
She shook her head. ‘Not my business.’ She wouldn’t
have told him even if she’d known. She closed her window.
He turned to go. Her phrase haunted him: not my business.
I wonder how often I’ll be hearing that again.
Thus began Andres Larreta’s miserable pilgrimage. He
had drawn up a list of names. After Horacio’s family came
Braulio’s, then those of Juan’s friends in the city. The
message was simple—Juan is still probably alive; please help
me fight for his release.
At Braulio’s whitewashed corner house in the Turkish
Quarter—where there were plenty of Arabs but no Turks—
there was no answer to Andres’ knock and no old lady to
report on the destiny of Braulio’s wife, Anna.
The view through the letterbox told Andres that
Braulio’s home had also been on the list of the Security
forces. It was wrecked: furniture overturned, plates and
glasses hurled across the room, drawers emptied, their
contents scattered in all directions. The hallway was littered
with books, manuscripts, photographs.
On a single white sheet of paper close to the door was a
spot of blood. Andres grieved, as much for his own home as

34
Braulio’s. He thought of his own precious things—his
books, his records, his charango, his new camera which
Juan had bought him only weeks ago for his birthday; and
the photo albums Andres had been compiling of his trip
with Los Obstinados—to Peru.
Everything precious, they destroy.
For several minutes Andres sat under the porch out of the
ram. It was Braulio who had taught him how to play the
charango, a small folk instrument like a guitar. Very
thoughtful, Braulio, very silent until something angered
him, or amused him. Then the friendly giant would ex¬
plode like petrol in a bottle, flush red as these geraniums
being battered by the rain, wave his arms like a windmill
and go round lifting everybody off the ground as if they
were sacks of wool.
Braulio could bend nails with one hand. He could hold
four billiard cues between his fingers and thumb and lift
them till they were parallel with the floor. Yet it was gentle
Braulio who, stung on the back of his hand by a wasp,
allowed the creature to withdraw its sting and fly away.
Andres laughed at the memory, for Braulio had proved
allergic to wasp stings and spent a week in bed afterwards,
missing two concerts and a match for the Musicians Soccer
eleven against an Actors’ eleven.
Where are you now, Braulio—hiding out in San Jose?
Over the border, or locked up by the CNI, awaiting stings
far worse than a thousand wasps could give you?
Andres told himself he must move on, catch the names on
his mental list before they too disappeared in the rain. Yet he
did not budge. The vision of the youth with the long hair,
shot from behind, hurled itself back at him over and over
again.
He’d done nothing—except be afraid. Was it just his long
hair that had made the soldiers pick on the youth? Was long
hair somehow another threat to the State?
Andres buried his face in his arms which crooked like

35
 fortress walls around his knees. It would be so easy to
despair, to accept the real and horrible fact that he would
never see his father again. He looked up. The street was like
a river.
He suddenly noticed he was being watched. He stared
across the street at a stocky, elderly man, swathed in a cycle
cape. Like Andres, he was sheltering from the storm under a
house porch. He was of Indian stock, an Araucanian Indian,
the most ancient of all Chile’s inhabitants, and once the
fiercest people in the whole continent of South America.
The strangers gazed at each other across the river. Andres
felt a bond between them. You lost your kingdom to the
Spaniard. I ve lost my father. A thought stirred in him and
provided a flicker of hope.
This street—it could be the Araucanos’ river, the Bfo-
Bio, the frontier they defended against the Spanish con¬
querors for three hundred and fifty years—one of the
longest wars in history. And peace didn’t come till 1888
after the Indians had been practically wiped out.
Now the Araucanos were scattered throughout Chile,
the men often working in bakeries, the women as domestic
servants. They had lost everything.
Yes, Andres said aloud, raising a hand in friendly signal
to the old man across the new B10-B10. ‘Everything but
their pride. He stood up, glad to see his gesture returned.
All right if the Araucanos could fight their corner for
three hundred and fifty years, it’s high time Andres Larreta
risked getting his feet wet.’

Feet truly squelching, clothes drenched and dripping down

his skin, Andres scoured the city in search ofjuan’s friends.
And his failure was total. It was as if, at the abduction of
Juan Larreta, everyone who knew him had also vanished
into thin air.
Occasionally Andres was admitted into homes by fearful
wives, mothers, daughters, and the answers were always

36
the same: He was arrested ... He has taken cover ... We
have heard nothing. Although there was much sympathy
for Andres’ plight, people were relieved—sometimes
eager—to see him leave.
He was trouble. He knew it. He understood.
I am an outcast.
The offices of Juan’s music publisher had been shut
down. The company which recorded his songs carried on
its front door a handwritten note announcing suspension of
business till further notice.
Andres went round the back of the building and found a
caretaker emptying rubbish. The exchange was brief:
‘You’re Larreta’s lad—get the hell out of here while you
can!’
‘He’s alive—not smashed up in a car crash like The
Mercury said. I’ve got to get people to rally round, petition
for his release.’
‘Hopeless, son. Everybody who knew him will have been
on the hit-list too. My boss was snatched this morning.’
‘Where do you think he’ll have been taken?’
The caretaker replaced the dustbin lid as though it were
strapped with explosive. He whispered so that even the
warehouse cat could not eavesdrop. ‘I guess by now the
prison ships’ll be bursting at the seams, like last time. So it’s
a toss-up. If your father’s lucky, it’ll be the National Sta¬
dium.’
Andres wiped the soggy hair from his eyes. ‘And if he’s
not lucky?’
The caretaker drew a finger-blade across his throat.
‘Then it’ll be the House of Laughter, God keep him!’
Andres shuddered. The very mention of the House of
Laughter, a Chilean nickname for the secret headquarters of
the CNI, filled every citizen of Santiago with dread.
‘My father’s got no information the CNI would want,’
said Andres. ‘So why take him to the torture?’
. The caretaker shrugged. ‘To those bastards, screams are

37
sweet music. Your Dad should know, shouldn’t he?’ He
was referring to one ofjuan’s songs, banned by the Junta. It
began:
Do not feel sorry for the torturer
He is happy in his work . . .

All the way to the National Stadium, Andres watched

trucks pass him, crammed with prisoners. It was like match
day, for the streets teamed with hundreds of people heading
in the same direction, looking for someone—arrested in the
night or gone missing.
There were hundreds more at the stadium, waiting out¬
side a ring of troops; relatives, friends, neighbours, desper¬
ate for information. Please, Officer, can you . . .? My son,
he . . . There must be some mistake . . . Will they
announce the names? This food parcel, soldier, would it be
possible to . . .?
‘Back, back everybody!’ ordered an officer. ‘You know
the score. Go to your homes!’ Yes, the people of Santiago
knew the score. It was a long time ago now, yet few would
have forgotten the months and years of terror following the
assassination of President Allende in the Moneda Palace—
the mass arrests, the executions, the deaths in this very
stadium.
They had come for Juan. They had beaten him up in the
showers below the main stand. They had taken him for
torture. They had kept him in a lightless cell for a year.
Only Helen’s persistence, supported by Horacio, Braulio
and many friends—writing letters, making appeals, draw¬
ing up petitions—brought about Juan’s release. Without
being charged with any offence.
Now who’ve you got to help you, Juan? No Helen, no
Horacio, no Braulio . . . Just me, against the generals.
David versus Goliath. Andres managed a pale smile. Of
course, David won, didn’t he? His smile broadened. All I
need is a sling and a well-aimed pebble.

38
 He gazed at the weapons of the troops and his smile
disappeared. Pebbles against machine-gun bullets . . .?
Hm, Goliath may have lost, but all the Goliaths of this
world who followed him learnt from his mistake—never
fight fair.
Andres stayed clear of the crowd. He watched the arrival
of another truck. The soldiers did not care if their brutality
was witnessed by hundreds of people. Those prisoners who
hesitated as they climbed from the truck were hastened on
their way with rifle butts.
‘Move, scum!’
Suddenly Andres broke forward, seeking a gap in the
wall of people. ‘Braulio!’ There was no doubt. His friend
had jumped from the truck. He was handcuffed. ‘Braulio!’
Andres fought to get through the crowd.
Braulio Altuna stood a head taller than the other prisoners
in line. A stream of blood had congealed down one side of
his face.
Andres forgot his own danger. He must get to Braulio, at
the very least let him know that somebody had proof that he
was alive.
‘Please—please let me through—my friend is out there!’
Andres looked to be having no luck in prising a way
through the crowd when he spotted a tall man in a white
mack, making better progress.
‘Permiso! Give us a passage, folks—it’s for a good
cause.’
An American.
Andres tucked himself in behind the man, burly, fair¬
haired, with out-thrust arm, shoving a sideways path to¬
wards the truck and the gates of the stadium.
Andres got so close to the American that he could have
picked his pocket. He glanced down and saw that the man
was holding something behind him, wrapped in a carrier bag.
For an instant, Andres decided the American had a gun.
Yet the compulsion to make contact with Braulio proved

39
greater than Andres’ fear that he might have landed himself
in a shoot-out.
The object which the American slipped from the carrier
bag had indeed many more shots than a pistol. A camera!
He’s a pressman. Andres felt a thrill of hope. Here comes
the American cavalry! He was right behind the pressman.
He shouted in Spanish:
‘Give him room!’ And then in a low voice only audible to
the American: ‘The world’s got to know what’s happening
here.’
‘You bet it has.’ The pressman took Andres in in one
friendly—even grateful—glance. They were comrades.
Together they breasted a way through the crowd.
‘That’s my friend—the tall one. ’
The last prisoners were being driven down from the
truck. One was not fast enough to please his guards. He was
hurt, hobbling, gripping his side in pain.
‘Step on it, you red scab!’
The American’s camera was in the air. A rifle butt swung
against the stumbling prisoner.
Click-whirr, click-whirr—the scene was banked, re¬
corded.
Braulio had turned, stepping out of line. He protested at
the guard’s action and immediately drew soldiers round
him like wasps to honey.
Click-whirr, click-whirr. The toppling of Braulio was
captured. Here was evidence for the time when villainy
would be brought to justice.
Yet here also was terrible danger. The American photo¬
grapher had himself been snapped by the eye of the officer
commanding the troops. ‘Christ, they’ve spotted me!’ He
lowered his camera swiftly below the shoulders of the
crowd. He shifted, half-face, towards Andres. He seemed
paralysed by fear.
The American pushed the camera into Andres’ hand.
‘Take this—I’m finished.’

40
 ‘But—’
‘I beg you. The film in that camera . .
The officer and his men were clubbing a passage through
the crowd towards the American. Andres ducked the
camera through the open zip of his jacket. ‘Who shall I say?’
He was being carried away from the pressman by the retreat
of the crowd.
‘Chailey—Don Chailey!’ He yelled the name of his news¬
paper too but the words did not carry to Andres who found
himself squeezed step by step away from the oncoming
troops.
The crowd had saved Andres. It had no power to delay
sentence upon the American. The soldiers were all round
him. Momentarily his fair hair could be seen between their
helmets. Then his arms went up above his head. He folded
under a rampage of blows. He was hammered to the
ground. He was kicked in the body, in the head, his hands
stamped upon, his ribs skewered with iron-shod boots.
And now they were searching for his camera. They were
demanding answers from the crowd, accusing them, turn¬
ing their violence upon the innocent, frisking everyone
who could have been within orbit of the American.
For an eternal second, Andres stood and watched. He saw
Don Chailey dragged towards the stadium entrance. He
saw him flung into one of the turnstiles.
Andres trembled as if touched by an electrified fence. Till
now, he had wandered helplessly, insignificant. Soaked to
the skin, he had arrived at the final blank wall and the closed
gate. His brain, his heart, his passionate resolve—they were
nothing in face of the Junta’s untouchable strength.
But now ... A chance in a million, an encounter lasting
no longer than two minutes, had changed everything. He
was in possession of something the military would like to
get their hands on—proof of their brutality. What’s more,
Andres was witness to what the Black Berets had done to a
citizen of'the United States of America.

4i
 The Americans don’t pour millions of dollars into Chile
for us to beat up their newspapermen.
Andres was at the street corner, poised for flight. All at
once he had a purpose, a direction, a next step. He tapped
the camera reverently. Somehow I must contact the Resis¬
tance. What’s in this camera might be just as valuable as
bullets.

42
 Three

Caution and common sense urged Andres to return to the

mill and to his friends, Isa and Beto. Together they would
decide what must be done with Don Chailey’s photo¬
graphs. Yet Andres was drawn, as if by a magnet, towards
the little house in the Via Rivadivia which he and Juan had
shared since the death of Helen.
He soothed the anxiety within him: I’ll go soft as a
whisper. Beto had warned him that the house would be
watched by the secret police for Andres’ return.
‘You can spot a plain clothes man anywhere, ’ Andres had
answered.
‘And if they’re holed up in the house opposite?’
‘I’m not that important.’
As he reached the Via Rivadivia, he stepped back in
shock. In his mind’s eye he had expected to see the street as
he remembered it—friendly and quiet, whitewashed, with
the occasional balcony adorned with baskets of flowers; a
sleepy street with blue-grey cobbles and trees casting tran¬
quil shadows.
Instead, he witnessed a street under siege. Directly in
front of him were a jeep and a military van. Beyond, in the
centre of the street, a raging bonfire. He glanced up and saw
blankets spread over window-sills like signal flags. There
were at least ten soldiers on guard. Others were moving
from one house to the next. So far there were no blankets
hanging from the windows ofjuan’s house.
Our turn, I think. A crowd had gathered in the street and
Andres had no difficulty concealing himself.

43
 Weak sunshine had succeeded the rain, kindling steam
from the pavements into a visual echo of smoke from the
bonfire. Juan’s bedroom window was thrown open. A
second later—out came the books, the whole of Juan Lar-
reta’s library, and Andres’ collection too, no doubt, hurt¬
ling through the sky, a rainstorm of knowledge, of ideas, of
songs and poetry; flittering, soaring, smacking the pave¬
ment, sometimes shedding pages, sometimes falling as
neatly as if placed there by a loving reader.
And the books were shovelled towards the bonfire.
Andres spied a few titles as they ploughed into one
another on the ground: The Eagle and the Serpent, War and
Peace, Neruda’s poems, a biography of Mozart, the story of
the Beatles, the drawings of William Blake, Film Directors of
Chile, a life of Bolivar and, to Andres’ momentary amuse¬
ment, momentary grief—Alice in Wonderland, given him by
his mother years and years ago.
Andres wanted to laugh. So the Junta is even afraid of
Alice in Wonderland. One day I’ll write a song about this:
‘Thejunta through the Looking Glass’. Yet he did not laugh.
The scene before him of vicious and insane destruction was
no laughing matter. '
All Juan’s songs in manuscript were being murdered.
The officer supervising the book-burning called to the
crowd above the crackle of the bonfire. ‘Thus, by order of
the Junta, the property of all enemies of the state will be
seized and destroyed.’
He paused for his words to sink in to the heads of his
listeners. He watched the crowd whose eyes remained fixed
upon the continuing avalanche of books, upon the flames,
upon the pages curling, turning black, dissolving.
‘The entertainer Juan Larreta was a traitor—to the nation,
to the Holy Church and to the name of decency. The In¬
terior Ministry has banned the publication of his work and
the performance of his songs.’
The officer waited, as though half-expecting a backlash

44
of protest. Like the others, Andres silenced his opinion and
saved his skin. Like the others, he felt cowed, ashamed,
almost unclean.
He had listened to lies and he had not responded. He had
not even whispered a protest.
The silence pleased the officer. He chose to interpret it as
assent. Perhaps for a moment, in his heart, he had expected
the crowd to defy him. Perhaps also in his heart he knew the
lies he spoke. Yet he had won. He had declared injustice to
be acceptable, and the crowd had let him get away with
it.
Except, that is, for an old man at the rear of the crowd. He
cried out, lonely, shrill, but courageous: ‘Larreta was a
good man. He spoke to the people’s hearts.’
The old man’s words were as petrol to the flames. ‘Step
forward—that man, step forward!’
The crowd was reluctant to open up for the old man.
Andres recognised him. An Indian, who worked at the
bakery down the road. Juan had sung at his grand¬
daughter’s wedding.
He stood forward, bare-headed, in a suit that had grown
old with him. He was bundled, without protest, without
words, into the army van.
The officer delayed returning his pistol to its holster. He
wagged it in the face of the crowd. ‘Any more heroes?’

Andres’ first comment as Isa unbarred the mill door to him

was: ‘I’ve got something to fight with!’ He held up the
camera. ‘Not bullets, but evidence. ’
Beto and Isa were also in a mood of burning anger. The
laundry where Beto worked had been gutted by a fire¬
bomb. ‘The rats’ve come out of their sewers,’ he said. ‘The
vigilantes, doing their dirty-work under the protection of
the army.’
Isa’s school for under school-age children of working
families had been closed down, by order of the police. The

45
woman who ran the school had been taken in for question¬
ing. ‘And I just stood there. Like a dummy in a shop
window. I feel ashamed. And guilty.’
‘They’d have taken you too, Sis,’ Beto soothed, ‘ifyou’d
said a single word. Right, Towny, what’s in that camera of
yours?’
‘For one thing, a picture of my friend Braulio being
beaten to a pulp outside the stadium. The rest—we’ll have
to find out.’ Andres fished in his jacket pocket, still soaked
from the storm, and took out a handbill printed on lumi¬
nous yellow paper.
‘Against your advice, I went home.’ He unfolded the
leaflet. ‘This is all I’ve got left ofjuan’s possessions, and my
own. Everything else, the troops burnt. In a very touching
ceremony in front of the neighbours. ’ He smoothed out the
leaflet.
Isa took it. ‘Just the way they looked at the stadium.’ The
leaflet bore a photograph of Los Obstinados—Juan, Hora-
cio and Braulio—and announced their recent northern tour
to Antofagasta, Arica and across the border to La Paz and
Lake Titicaca.
‘They loved us in Peru,’ said Andres wistfully. ‘Juan was
offered enough concerts for a year. But he came back to help
the Silver Lion win the election. ’ He shrugged, half smiling.
‘Horacio used to say, if Dad put money on a nag in a
one-horse race it’d still come in last.’
The twins laughed. ‘So?’ Beto asked. ‘How’s this going
to help?’
‘Because it’s printed by Horacio’s cousin, Diego. The
address of his printshop is on the bottom. He showed me
round once. He’s the only person I know who’s got the
equipment to develop and print these photos. What’s more,
they say he’s a member of the old Resistance.’
Isa looked troubled. ‘Then Security will be watching his
place, round the clock.’
‘The front, maybe,’ agreed Andres. ‘But you reach his

46
back door through a maze of passages. It’s a risk, but it’s
better than hanging about at home waiting for old age.’
‘After curfew, troops are shooting on sight,’ reminded
Isa.
‘I’ve got to do something. Got to! I owe it to Juan and
Braulio. And I owe it to Don Chailey. . . ’ He broke off. He
stared at his friends. ‘You think I’m sticking my nose into
trouble again, don’t you?’
The twins were getting used to him. They didn’t chide
him. Isa said, ‘It’ll be more than your nose in trouble if you
don’t change out of those wet clothes.’
‘Where is this Diego’s place?’ Beto asked.
‘Half an hour’s walk. ’
‘Then first we eat,’ Isa decided. ‘We’ll still have time to
reach Diego’s before curfew.’
‘We? I’m not asking you two to risk your necks. Why
should you?’
‘That’s not the sort of question to ask friends, Andres.’
She pushed a towel into his hands. ‘And perhaps because in
future we’ve decided to share people’s danger, rather than
sit at home worrying what’s happened to them.’
Beto grinned. He put on the drawl of an American movie
cop: ‘We want a slice of the action, Man.’

Nightfall, minutes after curfew. Three figures among dust¬

bins to the rear of Diego Rosales’ printshop. One of them at
the door, lightly knocking.
Waiting, but no answer. Too dangerous to knock louder.
Andres whispered to the others: ‘Door’s open.’ His hand
dropped to the latch. He pushed, and the scene was dark¬
ness.
Beto was beside Andres. ‘Lock’s been broken . . . the
CNI?’
‘Who else?’ Andres was thinking, Diego at this moment
might even be sharing a cell withjuan.
Isa was ahead of him. ‘Let’s look.’ She edged the door

47
wider. It squeaked once, then lay silently back on its hinges.
‘See anything?’
‘Not yet. But I can feel what they’ve done.’
The place was a ruin. The street-side window gave
enough light to outline the scene of devastation. In the
centre of the room stood the shattered hulk of an offset litho
printing machine. The type founts which lined the room
had been ripped from the walls and hurled in all directions.
There were mounds of paper, burned; furniture, smashed;
ink-tubes daubed on every surface.
‘They must have used sledgehammers.’
‘Pick-axes, actually.’ The voice stunned the intruders. It
came from below ground.
‘Diego?’
‘What’s left of me. ’ Horacio’s cousin climbed achingly up
the basement steps. He held a torch muzzled by an old sock.
‘Andres Larreta, Diego—do you remember me?’
The printer straightened up from the steps. He grasped
Andres’ hand and shook it warmly. ‘I didn’t think they
made ghosts so solid these days. The Mercury said—’
Andres interrupted to quell Diego’s rising hopes. ‘The
CNI. They shot Horacio. They snatched Juan . . . I’m
sorry.’
‘And yet you—’
‘He’s the cat with nine lives,’ smiled Isa. She held out her
hand. ‘This is Beto. I’m Isabel.’
‘Twins, eh?’
‘My bodyguards,’ said Andres.
Diego sighed. ‘That’s what I could have done with.’ He
glanced about him. ‘As you can see, my guests didn’t stay
for supper.’
They all laughed: true Chileans, making light of despair.
‘What can I do for you folks—print you a poem of praise
to thejunta, one line long?’ As he shuffled towards his press,
Isa and Beto noticed how crippled he was, that his spine
seemed locked, forcing him to move at an angle, dragging

48
his left foot a little. He felt their eyes on him. ‘I walk like this
to scare off the crows. ’
Yet Andres knew: Diego had been imprisoned and tor¬
tured after the overthrow of President Allende by the
generals. His spinal cord had been permanently damaged.
But not his spirit; not his humour.
‘We brought you this.’ Andres took Don Chailey’s
camera from a plastic carrier bag. ‘I got it from a Yankee
photographer before the Black Berets dragged him into the
stadium. He’s probably dead by now.’
Diego turned the Nikon SLR camera over in his hand.
‘Expensive. Not used for taking wedding snapshots.’
‘There’s a picture of Braulio Altuna. He was one of the
prisoners. They were beating him and . . . well, it’s all
there—evidence. ’
‘He handed you the camera—-just like that?’
‘He’d no alternative. Anyway, we’d become friends.’
Andres paused but nobody challenged him. ‘Who knows
what else could be on that film?’
In the pale amber light Diego’s eyes shone with excite¬
ment. He held up the camera. ‘I have an instinct, a feeling.
Fact is, friends, I’m getting—vibrations!’
Isa indicated the carnage left by the CNI hurricane.
‘Aren’t you in enough trouble, Diego?’
‘I’m clean,’ Diego replied chirpily. ‘They found nothing.
Because I believed this election was a fraud from the start.
Too good to be true. Zuckerman and his brother butchers
agreed to it simply to persuade the democrats to come out of
the woodwork. Now they’re being picked off by the
thousand. ’
‘But your equipment?’
‘I’ve stuff hidden all over the city. ’ Diego tapped his nose
with his forefinger. ‘Come downstairs.’
The CNI had not spared Diego’s basement in their search
for evidence against him. ‘Just occasionally fate deals you a
little bit of luck.’

49
 ‘You call this luck?’ exclaimed Beto. ‘It’s worse than
upstairs.’
‘True, those boys tried hard. Ripped out my phone.
Overturned my stove. Smashed my fridge. Stole all my
spaghetti. But when it came to the pinch—gallant. Look!’
Diego pointed to two adjacent doors, stencilled in white
letters: GENTLEMEN and LADIES. ‘They trampled over
everything, but they stayed out of the Ladies.’
Diego hobbled forward. He pushed open the door
marked LADIES to reveal his photographic dark-room, its
equipment intact. His moustache quivered above an ear-to-
ear grin. ‘Long live the Resistance!’

Don Chailey’s photographs were to prove even more .sen-

sational in content than Andres, Diego and the twins could
have imagined. ‘Andres, you’ve struck a gusher,’ was
Diego’s first amazed response. He had been examining the
developed film with a magnifying glass. ‘We’ve got some¬
thing here that could rock Zuckerman and thejunta back on
their Nazi heels.’
To enable the others to see the photo frames, Diego
slipped the head of the film into the projection device on his
enlarger. He switched on the enlarger light, at the same time
turning off the dark-room light. All that could be seen now,
in eerie negative, was what Don Chailey had witnessed
through the lens of his camera.
The first picture was a telephoto shot of the Silver Lion,
Miguel Alberti, on the speakers’ platform at the stadium.
Behind him were election placards and a sea of faces. The
next picture focused down on one face in particular—
swarthy, black moustached, unsmiling among those round
about him who were cheering and waving.
‘Mr X, I presume.’
The next picture jolted Andres to the heart. It was of
Juan, and at each side of him, Horacio and Braulio, mouths
wide in chorus. Juan’s craggy face beamed with spiritedness

50
and relish for the song and the vast crowd’s response.
‘I’ll make you a copy of that, Andres,’ offered Diego.
‘There’s that face again,’ said Isa. ‘What’s he holding?’
‘Looks like a walkie-talkie,’ thought Beto.
Diego hesitated before moving on to the next picture.
‘Now this one will take your breath away.’
The photograph showed the murder of Miguel Alberti in
the market place at San Jose. The Silver Lion had stretched
out his hand to the crowd. He had suddenly flicked back his
head. Don Chailey had pressed the shutter at the instant the
assassin’s bullet struck Miguel’s throat.
‘My God!’
Diego’s whisper came hoarse and almost inaudible. ‘His
murder. And look-—his murderer!’
The man with the walkie-talkie. Captured in profile.
Slightly blurred, yet unmistakably holding a revolver.
‘That man’s Security. No question,’ insisted Beto.
‘No question,’ echoed Diego.
‘Then . . .’Isa looked closer at the murder scene, at the
murder weapon fitted with a silencer. ‘Then thejunta killed
the Silver Lion. ’
Andres could not take his eyes off the face of the mur¬
derer. Could this also be the commander of the Security
men who had snatched Juan away? There was a resemb¬
lance. ‘So thejunta puts the blame on the Communists . . .
Which gives them the excuse to, to . . . ’ He felt sick with
grief.
Diego’s hand rested comfortingly on his shoulder. ‘To
pull the chain on all their enemies. ’
‘Forjust seeing these pictures,’ said Isa, ‘they’d kill us.’
Diego chuckled and broke the tension. ‘If that’s the case,
what punishment do you think they’d dream up for the
poor idiot who published the pictures?’
Don Chailey’s next photo zoomed in on the assassin,
revealing him in full face, and capturing, for the last fleeting
instant, the barrel of his gun.

5i
 Evidence.
The camera had pursued him, trapped him in its lens
again and again. It spied him beating a way through the
stunned crowd. It snapped him so close that the stitch marks
of a neck wound were plainly visible.
‘Reach me the firewater, Beto,’ requested Diego. ‘My
head’s like a ten-pin bowling alley.’ He uncorked the half¬
drunk bottle of Aguardente and took a gulp. ‘I mean, if
these pictures got on to the front pages of the world’s press!’
He handed the bottle round. ‘Of course, only a man who’d
taken complete leave of his senses would process this stuff.
Huh, only a chump who thought the House of Laughter
was a joke shop on the Alameda.’
The last of Chailey’s photographs were of army activity:
arrests in the street; the battering open of doors; a woman
struck attempting to prevent soldiers taking her son away; a
man discovered hiding behind wooden barrels—and the
soldiers pushing the barrels on top of him.
And, of course, the attack upon Braulio.
‘Talking of damn-fool heroes, this Yankee was one. He
must have been crazy, taking such risks. And for what? For
glory?’
‘For the truth, maybe,’ said Isa. ‘Because he saw injus¬
tice.’
Diego took another swig of the firewater. ‘He’ll get no
thanks for his bravery.’ His face was bitter and furious.
‘Today the shops were open as usual, doing a roaring
business. Who cares?’
Andres had no doubts. ‘You do, Diego. And we do too.’
‘Four of us among a million . . . Perhaps ten, fifteen if we
count absent friends.’
‘There are thousands of Chileans who’d salute Don
Chailey for what he did. ’
‘But how many would stand by him in his hour of need,
eh?’ Diego stared hard, searchingly, at his friends. He read
their thoughts, their resolution. ‘You lot are as crazy as the

52
Yankee. You’re standing there—I can see it in your eyes,
and you’re queuing up for the Pendura. You actually want
to be tortured!’
He wrested the bottle from Beto, to whom he had only
just passed it. He emptied it with a huge gulp. And all at
once, he was calm. ‘You want to help? Okay, but under¬
stand this—there’s no going back.’ He paused. He glanced
from face to face. ‘Are you in this together?’
‘No,’ answered Andres. ‘Just me. Isa and Beto have
risked enough already on my behalf. ’
‘We’re in!’ Beto’s tone brooked no contradiction. ‘Our
own parents—they disappeared too. We’re sick of waiting. ’
Diego was now quite relaxed. ‘Very well. The long and
the short of it is that I need a printing press.’
‘And we’ve transport,’ said Isa.
‘Excellent. Then all I ask is for you three to do a spot of
fetching and carrying for me. If I take one step outside this
place, I’ll have two pistol-packmg shadows wherever I
g°-’
Diego explained that, immediately the elections had been
announced, he had decided to dismantle the smallest of his
three printing presses. He had wrapped up each part and
taken the pieces to friends and acquaintances—but only
those who had never been in trouble before with the police
or Security.
‘Trusties, if you like. People who live such quiet lives that
the CNI don’t know they exist. But friends of a free Chile
all the same.’
‘You want us to call on them,’ Beto asked, ‘pick up the
parts?’
‘Not exactly, though the plan I have in mind is just as
risky.’ He coughed. ‘For you, that is.’ Diego assured the
three volunteers that if they did not care for his plan, there
would be no bad feeling if they decided not to go ahead with
it.
‘It’s brazen—and that’s why it could succeed. ’ He smiled,

53
almost cheekily. ‘All you’ll be needing is a cool head, lots
of luck—and . . He leaned forward with exaggerated
secrecy. ‘And a porter’s uniform.’

54
 Four

In the stadium of Santiago the number of prisoners has

reached six thousand and there are new arrivals every hour.
For each lorry load there is an official reception: prisoners
are ordered along a corridor beneath the main stand. This
corridor is lined with troops—the Black Berets, who beat
the prisoners with their rifles. A broken arm, a smashed
elbow these are a small price to pay for avoiding a shat¬
tered skull.
Those who fall are kicked and beaten. They crawl and
they are kicked and beaten again. For the wounded there are
no doctors. For those who die under the onslaught, there
are the baths where their bodies are stacked until other
soldiers detailed for the task cart them away.
The guards in the stadium are as tense, as trigger-happy,
as the prisoners are afraid. Even a stare, a suspicious move¬
ment, earns a blow from rifle butt or truncheon.
The prisoners face death as sudden as a precipice. And the
step before the precipice is madness—that same fear people
experience when an enemy within threatens to hurl them
over the edge against their will.
Such an impulse has gripped a prisoner in the upper level
of the stand. Fie has cupped his face in his hands. His voice
shrieks out across the stadium: ‘Death to the Fascist
murderers!’
All eyes find the man. All eyes see him climb the rail,
high, giddy, towering above the slopes of tiered concrete
below. All eyes see the man launch himself into space.
Though his body does not move on landing, the Black

55
Berets take no chances. They batter him. They drag him.
They curse at his death as if somehow they feel cheated
by him. The Commandant waits at the entrance to the
grandstand tunnel. He shoots the dying protester in the
head.
‘Down with Fascism!’
It is unbelievable. Amid such terror, witnessing brutal
death, yet another man has volunteered for his own execu¬
tion.
‘Who was that?’
The stadium listens.
The man stands up. ‘I did.’
‘Come over here!’
Calmly, slowly, the prisoner walks towards the Com¬
mandant.

On the stroke of midday at the Central Station of Santiago,

a young porter in a peaked cap and ill-fitting uniform rose
from checking a wheel on his empty parcel trolley. He
looked about him, his heart thumping.
The north-facing concourse of the station was, as usual,
packed with crowds arriving and departing. The only sign
of martial law was a bored soldier, machine-gun over his
shoulder, pacing unhurriedly between the ticket counters at
one side of the entrance and the left-luggage lockers at the
other.
Andres and the twins had waited three days—three
happy, peaceful days together—before Diego’s signal for
action came: ‘It’s on. Friday. Prompt at twelve.’
Andres could see, at an angle, the outside of the station.
There, in spring-white sunshine, wagged the tufted orange
head of Orlando the Ostrich, one of the star performers of
the Marionetas de los Gemelos.
A small audience had gathered to watch Isa as she deftly
controlled the puppet and at the same time played a tune on

56
a mouth organ. Her green panama lay upside down on the
pavement, inviting contributions.
Beyond the queue at the taxi rank were two policemen, in
olive uniforms. They were chatting to each other but also
watching Isa and Orlando. One of them crossed the fore¬
court, rather more compelled by Isa’s beauty than the capers
of the dancing ostrich.
Andres bit his lip: he’s going to move her on. Beto had
been right, so much could go wrong with this plan of
Diego’s. Yet they were committed. There was no retreat.
He checked through the plan again in his head: Diego’s
friends had all been successfully contacted. They would
bring the parts of the printing press and leave them in the
left-luggage lockers, then cross the forecourt and drop the
keys to the lockers into Isa’s panama. ‘Plus a little cash!’
Andres’job was to retrieve the keys and, protected by his
official porter’s uniform, unlock the mystery items, place
them on the trolley and then wheel them out of the station.
Beto would be waiting in the van to load up. Isa would
join Beto and Andres—and they would drive away.
Simple!
And crazy, Andres was beginning to think.
Orlando was causing laughter in the crowd by letting his
long neck and head follow the notes of the mouth organ—
sweeping the pavement with his beak on the low notes,
reaching for the Andes on the high notes. Even the police¬
man smiled.
Andres’ eye was diverted to the lockers. A woman, calm,
inserting a shopping bag into the locker, turning, looking to
neither right nor left, moving towards the arc of sunlight
and into the crowd of spectators.
The policeman still watched Orlando’s performance. He
chuckled as Orlando thrust out a red, skinny leg to a small
child who shook his foot vigorously and laughed with
delight. The woman waited, then she crossed in front of the
crowd, dropping something into the panama.

57
 Somebody else at the lockers. A middle-aged man, short,
very nervous, locking away a small suitcase, putting his
hand to his head, wiping away sweat—and suddenly spying
the soldier; on the verge of panic.
Go on, go on, urged Andres silently. Do itT The man
looked so flustered and so guilty that for an instant it seemed
as if he might rush to the policeman and beg to be arrested.
He edged forward into the crowd. He immediately got his
shoes pecked by Orlando.
Pesos fell into the green panama—and something else.
Two down, five to go. ‘Thanks . . . and good luck!’ Isa
said, resting her mouth organ for a moment.
‘Here, you! Porter!’
Andres almost jumped out of his skin. ‘M-me?
‘Yes, you—porter!’ It was the soldier. He had spotted
two attractive fashionably dressed girls step from a taxi.
They each carried a heavy suitcase. The soldier’s boredom
had vanished. There was a swagger in his step. ‘Help these
lovely senoritas with their luggage, sonny.’
‘Me—but!’
‘If you don’t want my boot up your ass—snap to
it!’
‘I’ve to look after . . . my trolley, Officer.’
The soldier was too flushed with the smiles of the girls to
tolerate excuses. He piled their cases on to Andres’ trolley.
‘Which platform, my beauties?’
The girls were as frightened of the soldier as Andres was.
‘Nine, I think.’
‘Then nine it is.’
Andres had no choice: he must obey. If he was a porter,
then he must port. He sighed. He would have liked Isa to see
what was happening, but her back was turned; and there
was another figure at the lockers.
He almost pushed his trolley into the shins of a station
supervisor. ‘Sorry, Sir.’
The supervisor stepped aside. His thoughts were else-

58
where, yet he glanced at Andres. And the glance became a
stare. ‘You the new one?’
Andres felt himself choking on his own saliva. He nod¬
ded. ‘New—yes.’
‘See me directly you’ve finished this job.
‘Well, I—’
‘Directly!’
Andres nodded. He gulped for breath. H; thought that he
had got away. ‘What are you doing with that?’
‘Doing?’
‘With the trolley . . . Leave it. Leave it and carry the
cases.’
Platform nine. These cases were heavier than barrelfuls
of water. What’ve you got in here, ladies—machine-guns?
An anti-tank gun? All I need now is a slipped disc.
‘Here, Senor,’ called one of the girls just as Andres was
beginning to think they had booked seats on the engine
itself. ‘Compartment A, Seats 18 and 19, por favor!’
There was an elderly lady already in the compartment.
She was reading General Zuckerman’s speech to the nation
printed in bold type on the front page of The Mercury,
tracing each line with her forefinger.
‘Excuse me, Senora. ’ Twice Andres tried to lift one of the
cases on to the luggage rack. The second time brought him,
off balance, right down into The Mercury and the General’s
fine words. ‘Terribly, terribly—’
‘You oaf!’
‘So sorry—I’m new.’ He tried again with the case and
succeeded. The second rattled metallically as he heaved it on
to the rack. He looked at the girls. He smiled. ‘Sounds like
you’ve got the kitchen stove in there.’
‘Presents, ’ was the reply. One of the girls thrust a tip into
Andres’ hand. ‘Muchas gracias!’
‘De nada.’
‘Young man.’ The elderly lady was holding out a hun¬
dred pesos note. ‘Fetch me a coffee, if you please.’ She

59
pointed across to the next platform where there was a
mobile drinks stall.
‘But Senora—’
‘Don’t “but” me . . . just slip over there and fetch the
coffee—black, with a level teaspoonful of sugar. ’
Andres willed himself to be firm. ‘That’s platform eight,
Senora. My territory’s platform nine and I’m not permitted
to cross the tracks.’
‘Young man-—you get that coffee this instant or I will
complain to the guard.’
He took the money. He could ill-afford to argue or to
answer complaints. He decided he would go and simply not
return. He went out into the corridor. At the open carriage
door he slipped off his peaked cap and peered out. He jerked
his head in again swiftly.
The supervisor was pounding down the platform—and
with him were a policeman and an officer of the Black
Berets. Andres crossed the corridor. Platform eight was
empty: it was his only way. He pushed down the window.
From the outside he twisted the door handle. Locked!
Hearing Andres’ efforts, the elderly lady had come half
way down the corridor. ‘What’s keeping you, boy?’
‘The door, Senora—somebody’s left it locked.’
‘Then use your wits. Climb out of the window—see, he’s
taking his stall away!’
‘This is highly irregular, Senora. But if you insist.’
‘I do insist!’
Andres obeyed. He cocked his leg out of the window. He
lowered his head and shunted himself forward. ‘Hell!’ A
train was coming in to platform eight. It shimmered in an
arcade of steel and light. Andres dropped on to the track.
The train was slowing. He could hear the squeal of breaks.
‘Huh, the things people ask porters to do!’
He hopped over the rails and, from the safety of the
platform, watched the train pass where he had stood
seconds before. Was it milk and no sugar she wanted, or

60
 sugar and no milk? The train blocked the old lady’s view of
that inept young man who was striding clean past the drinks
stall with the hundred pesos note still clutched in his hand.
The ticket collector did not give Andres a second
glance—and there was the trolley waiting patiently for him.
I’ve two minutes if I’m lucky before the supervisor blows
the whistle on me. Andres touched his cap to the bored
soldier as he wheeled the trolley across the vast concourse
towards the lockers. He paused. He looked out into the
sunlight.
Bless her! Isa had not shifted from her post.
Time to make a move.
The new performer is Silvestro, a gangly, skull-grinning
skeleton whose head emits a comical shriek as it springs up
from wobbling shoulders.
‘You want change, Senor?’ Isa asks as Andres ap¬
proaches, displaying his hundred pesos note. Andres nods.
He closes out the light as he stoops towards the panama.
There are hands, two bodies, a shift of movement. Keys end
up in Andres’ left hand. With his right he drops the note into
the Panama. ‘Muchas gracias.’
‘My pleasure!’
The instant Andres turns towards the lockers, Isa brings
her show to a close. There is applause, a rain of pesos into
the panama. She empties it. She spins her puppets round on
their strings, rolls up the controls and replaces Orlando and
Silvestro in her case. She walks with the case to the edge of
the pavement. She goes left past the queue for the taxis.
Andres has opened the first locker. He recovers the parcel
arid lays it, with desperate calm, on the trolley. The second
key proves difficult. Come on, blast you! Then he realises
he is trying to insert it upside down. Idiot. Oaf. The old
woman was right.
The locker door swings open. Large, awkward parcel,
this;-and heavy. Labelled, WITH GREAT CARE. On to
the trolley. Next locker—a canvas holdall, containing

61
several items. Heavy as the girls’ cases. Rattling a bit, too.
‘Keeping you busy, are they?’ It is the nosy soldier, right
behind Andres.
‘Always busy.’ He has to decide—to stop and talk or to
carry on. He goes to the next locker, opens it. Just a small
parcel, but of an odd shape.
‘Overstayed, have they?’
‘Overstayed?’
‘Well, gone over their time.’
‘Oh yes, yes.’
‘What happens if nobody comes to claim them?’
Locker number five—an item so small it hardly seemed to
be worth leaving in such a spacious cubicle. ‘My job’s just
to—’
‘Anybody check out the content of these things?’
‘Oh yes.’ Andres is running with sweat. He drags at his
collar. He half turns. He wants to remind the soldier that
there are plenty of better things a sentry can do with his time
than spend it chatting to a junior porter.
He is to be spared more of the soldier’s breath on his neck:
a black van screeches into the station forecourt. ‘Here’s
trouble—our pals the arm-twisters.’ Clearly the soldier
doesn’t care for the Security any more than Andres does.
The rear doors of the van open. Three plain-clothes men
descend. At the same moment, the officer of the Black
Berets strides out through the gate of platform nine. Two
policemen follow him, escorting the girls Andres helped
only minutes ago.
The girls are handcuffed.
‘What a waste!’ mutters the soldier. ‘There’ll be no
lipstick or high-heels where they’re being taken.’
Behind the prisoners comes the station supervisor.
Andres opens locker number seven. The parcel seems to
contain rollers. He adds it to his pile. He feels on his back the
distant yet burning gaze of the supervisor.
As the girls are bundled violently into the Security van,

62
the supervisor calls to Andres. ‘You—porter! The voice
cuts through a station announcement of the departure of the
train from platform nine. Whoever expects to greet the girls
off the train at Valdivia will wait a long, long time.
‘You’re wanted,’ calls the soldier. ‘The gaffer.’
Andres surveys his route to freedom. Thirty paces into
sunlight, then left past the taxi rank. He surveys the route to
captivity. He sees also a surge of passengers coming out
from platform ten, crossing the path—and the vision—of
the station supervisor.
It’s got to be now.
A family, borne down with luggage, passes between
Andres and the soldier. He begins to move. He wheels the
trolley, his back to everything, his face leaning towards the
sun.
He hears the shouts. But there are announcements. He
feels the rush of people between him and the supervisor. He
does not look round. He is pushing the trolley as though he
is in a pram race with a prize of a fortnight s holiday in
Disneyland. He is out, on the pavement, passing the swell¬
ing queue for the taxis. Pushing, steering, watching his
cargo and the way ahead, till he is at the station corner.
Come on, Beto—come on!
Beto’s van is stuck at the traffic lights, waiting for a right
filter into the station forecourt. He has already picked up
Isa. He sees Andres and the trolley.
The girls have been locked in the black van. Their cases
are guarded by two policemen. The officer of the Black
Berets has his arms folded. Apparently he refuses to give up
the cases to the Security. Protocol!
The station supervisor has his hands on his hips at the
station entrance. And on his mind is the young porter who
has disappeared with railway property. He looks right and
left. He does not see Andres. He turns right. He walks a few
paces. He stops. He changes course, brooding, getting
angry.

63
 The lights change for Beto. Isa squats next to the rear
doors of the van, ready to fling them open.
Come on, Beto—come on!
The supervisor is striding left now, past the taxi rank. He
pauses. He glances towards the line of traffic crossing the
square.
Beto brakes hard. The doors open. Isa is out, helping
with the parcels. ‘Well done, Towny!’ cries Beto.
‘I think I’m being followed.’
Arms now folded, the supervisor is baffled. No trolley.
No porter. Not to be beaten, he continues towards the
station corner.
‘That’s the lot.’ Isa and Andres leap aboard, Isa pulling
the van doors to. ‘Move!’
Beto needs no prompting. He is accelerating towards a
gap in the traffic. The supervisor has walked several paces
further. He is about to give up and return the way he came
when he sees the empty trolley.
‘Well I’ll be . . .’ The sun is in his eyes. He shades them.
He stares out.
‘That’s him!’ cries Andres, ducking.
‘Did he see us?’
Andres slumps into the back of the van. ‘Any more of this
and I’ll need a heart transplant.’

Such was Beto’s joy at their success that, as he pulled out

into the fast traffic of the Alameda, he burst into song. And it
was ajuan Larreta song:
‘Over this dry-sweet land
My body lies scattered
My head in the desert
My feet in the southern snows
My eyes in the castles
Of the blood-red sky. ’
Andres approved. He would have joined in had he not

64
been struggling out of the porter’s uniform into his own
clothes.
Isa, however, was staring at the wing-mirror of the van.
‘Don’t count your chickens,’ she said eventually. ‘I think
we’re being tailed.’
‘Oh no!’
‘That breakdown truck.’
The Alameda was carrying them east, with the great hill of
San Cristobal on their left.
‘I’ll turn off. See if they stay with us. ’
Andres kept his head down. A tide of fear washed coldly
through him. Things had been going too well. But he
wasn’t going to upset the driver. He must spend the next
moments thinking ahead.
Beto braked smoothly. He signalled a right turn into a
busy shopping street. He groaned. ‘No luck—they’re right
behind . . . Isa, what do we do?’
Isa stayed calm. ‘Don’t speed up, that’s for sure. They
don’t seem in any hurry, so relax.’
‘Relax?’
‘Now bear left.’
‘Still with us?’ asked Andres, hoping for good news.
‘Right up our backsides! Hell we’re in a jam.’
‘How many of them?’
‘Two. Thinking of taking them on?’
‘Listen,’ said Isa. ‘Either they saw us put the stuff on
board and plan to track us to our destination—’
‘Or?’
‘They’re following us because they’ve nothing better to
do.’
Beto was almost in a fever, glancing so much in his rear
mirror that he was ignoring the traffic in front of him. He
braked hard, a whisker away from a collision. ‘Y’see? We’re
trapped.’
‘I can think of one thing we can do, ’ said Andres. ‘To save
the printing press.’

65
 ‘Save the press?’ howled Beto. ‘It’s us we’ve got to save!’
‘We can do both.’ Andres’ confidence pacified Beto. He
stayed silent. ‘I know one place . . . We might just shake
them off long enough to get rid of the cargo.’
‘Okay, Towny. Your wish is my command. ’
Andres instructed Beto to head south and west. ‘The
town drops away and there are fir woods. ’
Isa nodded, recognising the location which Andres de¬
scribed. ‘Hills and bends—it’s a chance.’
Beto forgot his own fear as he listened to Andres’ plan.
‘So at these fir woods, I speed up, win some distance. When
our friends are out of sight, we stop, you take the press in
the sacks and do a vanishing trick into the trees. ’
‘And you two carry on. Do your puppet show as usual.’
‘We’ll come back for you later,’ said Isa.
‘No. I’ll hide the stuff. Then I’ll make my own way back
to the mill. ’
‘It’s a devil of a distance. You’d not make it before
curfew.’
‘I’ll be careful.’
Isa had a better idea. ‘There’s a refuge we know, less than
an hour from the woods.’ She described the route to the
Seminary of Our Lady of Mercy. ‘Ask for Father Mariano,
and just mention our names.
Andres smiled widely. ‘Bed and breakfast in a semi¬
nary—say no more!’
The Security truck continued to follow Beto at a leisurely
pace. At the outskirts of the city, the roads were almost
empty, except for the occasional fast car heading west to the
hills and the ocean.
Isa slipped into the rear of the van and helped Andres pack
the various sections of the printing press into two tough
sacks.
‘We’re getting close to the spiral road, Beto,’ warned
Andres. ‘In a couple of kilometres there’s a right bend into
the trees. Then the road dips and twists.’

66
 Beto eased his foot down on the accelerator. The distance
between van and truck increased slowly. The truck did not
accelerate: what did it matter so long as the van was in
sight? ,
The trees had arrived,- and the sharp right bend. ‘Now!’
shouted Beto giving himself the starting order. He rammed
the accelerator to the ground.
‘How far, Andres?’ asked Isa.
‘Next bend.’ .
‘Next bend it is, comrades!’ cried Beto, hunched in
excitement over the steering wheel. ‘Then all brakes go.
The next corkscrew bend whipped up into the van s face.
‘They’re nowhere!’
Andres had fixed himself against the roof and sides of the
van. He might never see Isa and Beto again. That, rather
than the danger ahead of him, seized his thoughts.
‘It’s now, Towny!’
An almighty shudder rocked the van as Beto chose his
landing ground. For an instant the van threatened to career
right over the edge of the road. Yet the brakes held,
bringing the vehicle to a lurching standstill on the hard
shoulder next to the trees. ‘Away you go!’
Andres pushed open the rear doors. He jumped out,
followed by Isa. They dragged the sacks, clanking, on to
their shoulders. They were in among the trees, out of view
of the road.
‘Take care, caro!’ She kissed him. He watched her dart
from shadows into soft afternoon sunlight. She waved. He
saw her face as she pulled the van doors to, as Beto zoomed
out into the road again.
Getting a kiss like that was worth the risk. He touched the
spot. ‘Bless you, Isa!’ He moved in a flicker of shadows,
humping one sack, dragging the other. He stopped. He
could hear the Security truck. In no hurry—that’s good. He
took extra cover behind a tree trunk. He watched the truck
pass.

67
 From the occupants, not a sideways glance.
Some detectives! There must have been tyre marks on the
road, yet the driver never looked beyond his elbow. Go to
the bottom of the class.
Andres was not prepared to chance the sanctuary of only
five lanes of pine. He crouched. He drove himself forward
through the trees, head lowered. Then without warning,
without hint or gasp, there was an empty space beneath
him.
His hands let go the sacks at the instant of falling. He
reached out. At nothing. For there was nothing, except
feeble tree-growths extending from the sheer wall of sand¬
stone.
He fell. Fast enough and far enough to knock himself cold
among tree roots and a scree of red shale.

‘Petrol’s running low,’ grumbled Beto as the van

approached Puente Alto.
‘The school’s just up the hill and off to the left. Another
five minutes and the kids’ll be out. ’
Beto sighed. ‘I wonder if the CNI like puppets.’ He
slowed, he turned. ‘Look, Sis, if they arrest us—’
‘If they arrest us, we never mention Andres. ’
‘I’ll try to remember that as they’re sticking the electrodes
all over me. ’
‘And you never believe them if they tell you that I’ve
confessed. It’s a trick they play.’
They were approaching the main gates of the school of
San Bernardo. ‘Let’s change the conversation, shall we? I’m
going hot and cold already.’
The Security truck had also steered across traffic into the
quiet road of San Bernardo; quiet that is, until the school
bell struck.
Isa smiled. She glanced in the mirror at their pursuers.
‘Saved by the bell!’
‘For the present. ’

68
 The school children were hurtling out into the play¬
ground. As the first of them reached the gates they were met
by the sound of the quena and of Silvestro the Skeleton
doing a wild dance on the pavement.
‘Welcome to the Marionetas de los Gemelos, friends!
shouted Beto. ‘The finest puppets in South America!
Famous throughout the world and beyond!’
If the Security had planned an arrest, they would have to
postpone it, for the whole school, it seemed, was now
surrounding the Marionettes of the Twins, clapping hands
to Isa’s tune.
In the cab of the Security truck, the driver s fingers
moved on the steering wheel, following the beat. His
partner also nodded to the rhythm.
Neither of them realised that the tune they were enjoying
so much was written by Juan Larreta, one of the Dis¬
appeared.

The son of Juan Larreta awoke without a tune in his head,

but with a view of his toes protruding from his shoe like a
hot-dog from its bread. He raised his body on one elbow,
looking for ketchup. He did not feel broken.
When he was eleven he had fallen out of a juniper tree
trying to rescue his friend Costas’ pet monkey, Don Quix¬
ote. It was then he had learnt what a broken bone actually
felt like. These were just bruises, skin ruptures where rock
and shale had gone for him like those two full-backs in his
trial for Chago youth.
He was alive and he was grateful. He gazed up at the point
where he had become aviator without wings. He felt his
head. Isa’s plaster over his wound was still intact.
Miracles do happen. He moved himself. Nothing se¬
rious, merely a jab of pain as he reached sitting position. I
must have been out for the count for ages. It’s getting dark.
I’ve to shift myself. But I need a bit more rest.
The hideaway was worth remembering. The wall behind

69
Andres continued on two sides. The ground was covered
with scrub. On the fourth side of this amiable prison there
was a slope guarded by tall red willows.
He examined the rock above him. Beneath an overhang¬
ing tree stump, prickly with new outgrowths, there was an
arch of rock. Here some animal had scooped out a home for
itself. I could hide the press in there. Come back for it later.
Andres stood up. He brushed himself off. He tried walk¬
ing, five steps forward, turn, five steps back. Painful, but he
was all right.
He climbed the easy route to the top of the rock wall and,
almost without parting the grass, retrieved the sacks from
the quarry edge.
The main thing is to be able to remember this spot again.
He went through the trees towards the road. Easy—a
sign warning drivers of the dangerous bend ahead. He
measured the distance with his eye. Thirty paces.
He returned to the rock face and the overhang. Using a
sharp stone Andres dug the existing hole deeper and wider.
Mustn’t leave this lot for long or it’ll go rusty. He buried the
sacks. He covered them over with shale. He stood back,
balancing on his toes.
Andres’ thoughts returned to his father, Juan, and his
brief good cheer faded. Am I doing this for you, Dad, and
all the others . . .? Or just to keep you out of my mind?
He was about to climb back to the upper ground when
suddenly wood pigeons burst out of the top branches of the
firs.
Something coming.
Andres heard trucks. They had turned off the main road.
They were close. He dived to earth. He could almost feel the
trucks through the thin partition of trees. They were mov¬
ing down, in a semi-circle, roaring in first gear.
And I thought I was in the middle of nowhere. He could
see the track now, a route of mud twisting and descending
steeply. Army trucks!

70
 Andres knew that he must put distance between him and
the hiding place. If he was to be caught, it mustn’t be here.
He came down the bank of shale. He crossed through the
trees. A thick passageway of firs opened downwards into a
quarry.
What can they want down there?
He followed, softly over beds of pine needles, then
stopped where the trees did. Reflecting the darkening sky
was a wide pool in the quarry bottom.
Prisoners.
There were two trucks. They had halted where the mud
track skirted the pool. The prisoners were being ordered
down at gun point and made to line up along the edge of the
water.
At first Andres thought the prisoners might have been
brought here to do forced labour, to dig shale, perhaps, or
break rocks, as happened in films. He refused to consider
the alternative—the thing soldiers did in real life in quarries
hidden away from the eyes of the world.
The prisoners were made to face the water.
No!
In seconds, it happened: three soldiers with machine-
guns, firing from the hip. A burst of a few moments long,
sending terrified birds soaring up and away, catching the
last rays of the sun on their feverish wings.
The prisoners were dead. And the quarry was silent.

7i
 Five

The machine-gun fire echoed in Andres’ brain. The shock

exploded in his stomach. He could not keep still, yet his legs
would not hold him. He saw the dying. He saw them as
they fell; some where they stood, like slow-sliding rocks;
some hurled into death like doors smashed from their
hinges.
Andres has seen his mother die, and all the grief of that
moment came back, shaking him till his teeth chattered.
I. . .
He would not close his eyes. He would not turn away. He
owed it to the dead. He owed it to her, to them.
I am a witness.
He watched the finishing-off. He watched the officer go
from body to body. Where there was movement, a tre¬
mor—one shot.
Thirty men: living souls despatched into air, without
memory, without record. Just thirty more to add to the list
of the Disappeared. Thirty corpses rolled into the shallow
grave of water.
Persons Unknown.
Andres watched the soldiers climb aboard the trucks. He
felt freezing cold, as though his blood had been drained
from him. He watched the trucks come up the mud track
towards him. He was not exposed, but he was close. Yet he
did not move. He was ice. He saw the soldiers smoking. He
saw their faces. He saw no meaning.
For minutes he did not move. Only his brain functioned.
To die so suddenly. Not even to be granted a last cigarette, a
prayer. To be sent into the darkness while out there, on the

72
fashionable boulevards of Santiago, the cash tills rang
merrily and martinis were served at pavement cafes in the
balmy spring air.
A toast to thejunta.
To the saviours of the nation.
General Zuckerman is God.
God’s in the presidential palace.
And all’s right with the world.
Andres’ first instinct was to run, to escape the presence of
the forlorn dead. He could do nothing for them. Yet he
stayed. The breeze discovered tears in his eyes. It made
them drop on to his cheeks.
Run, little boy, said the breeze. And keep your mouth
shut about all this. These men no longer matter: they did
not exist.
Andres spoke out loud: ‘ Adios, little boy!’
You are going down.
I am a man.
You are going down?
I must know.
You are a fool.
I am a witness. And I have a father. I must go down.
The road wound in a sharp loop but Andres cut straight
across a bank of muddy reeds. He ignored the warning
thought that the soldiers might have posted a guard at the
top of the track. Too bad. I’m committed.
He slowed, momentarily afraid of approaching the
bodies. I must. He stopped. Got to! What are you scared
of—that they’ll grab you by the ankle?
I will count the bodies and if I can discover their names
. . . Move! Go closer. Touch them.
No!
Then how will you ever see their faces?
The water was at Andres’ feet. Its coldness grabbed his
ankles, not the fingers of the dead.
Eyes open—move!

73
 This first body had been carried two metres backwards
by the force of the bullets and half-floated in the water.
Andres bent towards it. His hand sought a hold on the
shoulder. He let go.
You can—you must!
He pulled the body against his legs. He heaved it over and
water fell from the face.
Notjuan.
Search him. Andres unbuttoned a short cottonjacket. He
felt for the inside pocket. There was nothing. He reached
for the dead man’s hand. One ring—that’s all.
Tug it off.
That’s theft.
It’s identification: see, initials.
He pulled at the ring. He depressed the skin of the finger,
swollen around the gold. ‘Come off, damn you!’
Obediently, the corpse released its identity.
All at once, Andres was filled with anger—at himself.
Why are you doing this? Why are you lumbering yourself?
All that matters is to learn ifjuan is among the dead.
If not, let the dead bury their dead.
He cursed himself, but still went from body to body as
though each one meant something to him, as though each
one had been a friend.
And the heads turned, and the faces turned, and the water
streamed from their dead hair and from their closed eyes;
and their limbs slopped in the pool.
Puppets all!
Where eyes remained open in stark terror and shock,
Andres closed them. Ten, fifteen bodies—and still notjuan.
At the sixteenth, however, as the corpses rolled into light,
Andres staggered back.
‘Don Chailey!’ He was certain. There could be no mis¬
take. The fair hair. The mark of the beatings: his swollen
eyes, his smashed nose. ‘Don! The bastards . . . the bas¬
tards!’

74
 He dragged the American to shore. He felt inside the
wallet pocket of Don’s brown leather jacket.
Nothing.
In turning the body over on to its face, Andres discovered
his hands were covered in blood. Don’s wallet was gone, his
jacket pockets empty. He tried the photographer’s rear
trouser pocket—and struck lucky. The Black Berets were
so keen to send you into the next world, Don, they didn’t
search you properly.
He found Don Chailey’s press card. It bore his picture
and proved him an accredited photographer of the Baltimore
Express & Times. Tucked behind the card was a snapshot of
his family—his wife, and two small girls.
There was also a page ripped from a reporter’s notebook
and folded. The paper was soaked with water. Very gently
Andres opened it out. The words, written in ball-point pen,
were smudged but readable: Saturday, approx. 7-3° P-m-
Silver Lion murdered by agent of Security. Arrest of
Miguel supporters—fraudulent. Followed assassin. Black
Peugeot. Santiago—old colonial house. Pillars in front. HQ
of CNI? People call it House of Laughter. The Chileans
specialise in black humour!
And there was a last, heart-felt appeal, hastily scribbled:
The Americans must stop giving aid and succour to bloody
tyrannies such as Zuckerman’s. Our own fears are our
worst enemies, not the reds . . .
Andres refolded the paper. He placed it in the plastic
wallet containing the press card and the snapshot. They
snatched my father from a Peugeot . . . coincidence? He
slipped off Don’s wedding ring. At least you were spared
the torturer, Don.
Juan Larreta was not among the remaining dead. Andres
felt little relief. He remembered something Diego the
printer had said: 'Unless we fight back, all roads in future
will lead to the House of Laughter.’
Andres nodded in agreement. Or in a pool of mud.

75
 He collected what items he could from the dead. There
were twenty-eight bodies. He had the names of seventeen.
News of their deaths would give no comfort to their loved
ones. But Andres knew: nothing was worse than uncer¬
tainty.
Not knowing—that is the most painful thing in the
world. I must do this; report the dead. For no one else on
earth will.

Beto could not believe his eyes. ‘They’re backing off!’

The Security truck had remained parked at the side of the
road throughout the puppet show of the Marionetas de los
Gemelos. Along with the children of the school of San
Bernardo-, they had been treated to, as Beto announced it, ‘a
sensational star-spangled show’ featuring Silvestro the
Skeleton, Orlando the Ostrich and a host of other ‘top-
ranking artistes’ ranging from a white woolly llama to a tipsy
gypsy violinist.
The twins were about to commence their repertoire for
the second time around when the Security truck revved up
and began to reverse down the street. ‘Huh!’ Beto concealed
his joy. ‘So we’re not good enough for them any more,
eh?’
‘Somebody’s pulled their strings,’ decided Isa. ‘Time for
our finale. ’
Happy and satisfied, the audience of children dispersed,
calling their thanks, imploring the Marionetas de los Geme¬
los to visit every day after school.
A few pesos from passers-by, and from the children, had
mounted up in Isa’s green panama. ‘Enough to pay for the
petrol.’
Beto gazed along the empty street. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever
been so scared—them just waiting and waiting. I mean, if
they suspected us, why didn’t they pick us up?’
Isa finished putting the puppets away. ‘I only hope
Andres has been as lucky.’

76
 The special evening edition of The Mercury provided an
explanation of the Security’s sudden loss of interest in the
performance of the twins’ marionettes. The front-page
headlines trumpeted good news from the Junta:

SECURITY IN TRIUMPHANT FIVE-HOUR GUN-

BATTLE WITH TERRORISTS
Sixty Self-styled Resistance Fighters Slain in Street Shoot-
Out after Secret Headquarters of Red Faction Dis¬
covered.
ONLY RING-LEADERS ESCAPE—THOUGHT TO BE SEVERELY
WOUNDED.

And with special emphasis, printed white against black:

CITY OF SANTIAGO PLACED ON ALERT.

‘There’s going to be one almighty clampdown. ’ Beto had

stopped the van and bought a copy of The Mercury. They
were heading home to the mill, in thick traffic.
‘Just what the Junta ordered,’ said Isa laying the paper
aside. ‘Nobody can prove if those wounded leaders exist or
not. But it gives the Security the excuse to raid every house
in town.’
Beto grunted. ‘I guess it’s time we hung the flag from our
window. The rich are doing it, so why can’t we if it’ll
protect us from the CNI?’
Isa laughed. ‘First because we don’t have a flag. Second,
because we don’t have a window.’ Her good cheer faded
instantly. Her thoughts were on Andres.
Beto understood. He scooped up his sister’s hand in his.
‘Don’t you start worrying about Towny. Remember, he s a
cat with nine lives ... Or seven, maybe six. But he’ll get
through.’
Isa sighed. ‘Beto, if you’d been wounded . . . and you
were on the run—who’d be the first person you’d think of
who’d help you?’
"Pbere was a long pause as Beto changed traffic lanes to

77
pull right. Ahead, the hill of Santa Lucia, usually drifting
with lovers, now ringed with troops, shone white and
green and pink in the dying sun. ‘You mean apart from you
and the mill?’
Isa’s silence pressed the message home. ‘Of course—
Father Mariano at the seminary.’
Isa nodded, her fingernails pressing deep into her palm.
‘That’s why I think I gave Andres the world’s worst,
stupidest advice.’

‘Father Mariano?’
‘Who are you?’
‘Andres Larreta. My friends Isabel and Beto of the
Marionetas de los Gemelos told me you’d—’
‘Quick, inside, my son.’
The iron-studded wooden door of the Seminary of Our
Lady of Mercy opened wide enough for Andres to slip
through, then closed with a bang that emphasised the
uncanny silence of the street outside.
‘I have to tell you—this'is not a safe refuge. If you’re on
the run . . . ’
Andres forced a calm smile. ‘Purely a social call.
Father.’
Mariano looked much older than his thirty years. He was
ashen white. His hair receded and there was an unhealthy
flush in his thin cheeks. He did not wear a priest’s robe, but
an open-neck shirt and jeans.
‘Isa and Beto—they are not in trouble?’
Andres shrugged. ‘I think everybody I know is in
trouble.’
‘Then you are wanted by the police?’ Before Andres
could answer, Mariano recognised the name. ‘Larreta?
Not—’
‘Juan Larreta’s my father.’
‘What a tragedy—the accident.’
‘He was taken by Security.’

78
 ‘Then Horacio—’
‘Dead. They shot him in Dad’s car.’ Andres must have
looked exhausted for Mariano put his arm round his
shoulder.
‘I never met your father, but Horacio I’ve known since
we built mud castles in the same slum. There’s a hole in the
ground outside San Martino where we tied for Marbles
Champion of the Universe. ’
Mariano pointed towards the sloping roof above the
cloisters. ‘Horacio used to come and do one-man shows for
us. Thanks to him, we were able to get that roof repaired
last month. ’
He led Andres across a kitchen garden surrounded by a
pillared arcade. There was a fountain in the middle whisper¬
ing soft night music. ‘Smell the soup already? Sister Teresa
says the Almighty gives her a nudge whenever hungry
guests are about to arrive.’
Andres raised his mud and blood coated hands. ‘I look
like a sewer rat. ’
‘Wash first, then eat.’
In the small, whitewashed refectory, Andres attacked the
supper of chicken broth provided him by Sister Teresa.
Between mouthfuls of fresh bread and delicious chunks of
chicken, Andres caught a glimpse of the wry smile on
Mariano’s face. He paused. ‘I’m sorry—were you about to
say grace?’
Mariano laughed. ‘Do the Larreta’s say grace? I’d be
surprised considering so many of Juan’s songs make fun of
Mother Church.’
Andres put down his spoon. He was tired and ready to
take offence. He knew Mariano was referring to Juan’s
recent popular song which began:
When the churchmen dine
At the richman’s table
The poorman’s sure
To go without.

79
 ‘He’s never attacked the worker-priests. Only those
who—’
‘Please, please!’ begged Mariano, full of gentleness. Our
differences are nothing compared to what we have in
common.’ He shoved the spoon back into Andres hand.
‘Eat up, Comrade.’
‘I’m not a Communist either. ’
‘Who said you were? Is there something wrong in
comradeship? Do the Communists have a monopoly of
brotherly love?’
Andres relented. He toasted Mariano with a last spoonful
of soup. ‘Comrades it is!’ He finished off his meal with an
apple from a bowl decorated in the manner of the Incas. He
stared at its bold, angular patterns of blue and red, keenly
hoping Mariano would now ask him to tell his story.
But the priest remained uncomfortably silent. Eventually
he broke the growing tension by saying, ‘The less we know
of your business, Andres, the better. You understand?’
Andres replied by emptying his pockets on the table.
Without comment, he laid out Don Chailey s press card and
the photo of his wife and children. Beside them he placed
the mementos he had recovered from the other bodies in the
quarry—wedding rings, a crucifix, a plastic-bound book, a
letter in an envelope, an unpaid fuel bill, a paperback novel,
its pages soaked yet still with a smudged, ink-written name.
Priest and fugitive stared at each other, and Andres kept
on staring until he forced Mariano to examine the memen¬
tos. His eyes never left the priest’s face. He dared him to
resist. Finally, he took out the sheet of paper from Don
Chailey’s notebook. He unfolded it. He placed it, face up,
on the table. He pushed it across to Mariano.
He observed the look of fear in the priest’s eyes. ‘Read it!’
And then more softly, ‘Please. ’ He watched the priest’s face.
He watched for a change in its expression. He saw only a
tightening of the mouth.
Andres spoke challengingly. ‘You shouldn’t have let me

80
in. I’m trouble. ’ He expected Mariano to explode on him—
accuse him of endangering the lives of everyone in the
seminary.
Mariano’s voice came out dry, faint. ‘The Archbishop
has ordered us to co-operate with thejunta. I am to deny all
assistance to those deemed enemies of the State.’
Andres was at the table before him, like a gambler
frantically protecting his winnings. ‘If that’s the case—’
‘Easy, Andres—relax!’ Mariano’s hand dropped firmly
over Andres’. ‘Leave them, my friend. Sister Teresa will
hide these things where not even the Archbishop will be
able to find them. Trust us, Andres!’
Desperate for rest, Andres sat down. ‘Forgive me.’ He
tried to smile.
Father Mariano showed him to a plain cell on the first
floor, and bade Andres good night.

It was in the minutes before sleep that Andres missed Helen

his mother most deeply. Her words to him as a child were a
ticker-tape through his brain: ‘May the old grey wizard
grant you sunshine dreams.’ That old grey wizard must
have been on strike, for Andres’ mind was like the Alameda
at rush-hour. It whirled and crashed with images of the past
few days. Every pulse in his body seemed to be drumming,
drumming in the silence.
An uneasy sleep seemed to last barely a second before
being swept aside by nightmares. He found himself off the
bed, on cold seminary tiles. He was soaked in sweat.
He got up, crossed to the window and sucked in gulps of
cool air. He stared out over the fountain.
He knew he had to cling on to some sort of hope. Thank
God for Isa and Beto, for friends. Without them, I truly
would be a ghost. I can’t return to school, go to college. I
can’t get work. One whisper of my name. . . and I’ll end up
in the stadium or the prison ships of Valparaiso.
It would have been in Andres’ interests at this point to

81
return to bed, lay his head on the pillow and attempt once
more to close his mind to the world. He chose instead to
linger on at the window, savouring the faint scents rising
from the seminary garden—and he saw what it would have
been advisable not to see.
A wounded man was being carried through the cloisters
to the open door of the sick room. Mariano clutched him by
the shoulders. Sister Teresa and another nursing sister held
him by the legs. There was a third woman, young, holding
the man’s hand, scarcely with the strength to walk.
The man gave a shriek of pain as the stumbling carriers
rounded the corner of the garden. In the light spreading
from the sick room, Andres saw that the man still grasped a
machine-gun.
And on the flagstones there was a splash-splash of
blood.
‘Steady. . .’
‘Rest a moment.’
‘Almost there, Hernando.’
‘He must have a doctor, Father.’
‘During curfew?’
‘He’s lost so much blood.’
‘We’ll see ... I know someone.’
They carried the wounded man into the sick room and
the door was closed behind them. Andres waited. This is
becoming a habit—I’m a witness again. Father Mariano
soon reappeared. He was wearing a long trench coat and a
trilby and looked more like a member of the Security than a
man of the cloth.
Something else the Archbishop has ordered him not to
do.
Andres imagined the streets outside, and the perils await¬
ing any person rash enough to defy the curfew. ’Course, if
he is a member of Security . . . Andres straightened up so
abruptly that he knocked his forehead—and his patch—
against the iron handle of the window. If he is ... He found

82
himself swallowing several times a minute. He was sweat¬
ing again.
‘Good evening, Capitano. I’ve two fat pigeons for you.
Plus a few trinkets that might interest you . . .’ This fat
pigeon endeavoured to stay calm; not get his feathers in a
twist. Just the same, Andres worked out a possible route of
escape. A ridge of stone ran from beneath his window to the
high rear wall of the seminary. It was broad enough to back
along.
He wondered, would it be better to leave now? A bit
ungracious. And ungrateful. I’ll only run when I have to. As
he waited, he was alert and exhausted at the same time. He
remained at the window and fought to keep his head from
slumping on to his arms.
The chimes of the seminary clock tolled the half hour.
That’s two lots—or is it three? He was suddenly listening.
Here’s something! Andres leaned out of the window, his
legs ready to spring.
A woman.
Sister Teresa had anticipated the return of Mariano. She
came out of the sick room and the stream of light which
followed her helped Andres to get a clear look at the
newcomer. She wore a dark mackintosh and a headscarf.
She carried what was probably a doctor’s bag. ‘God bless
you for coming,’ said Sister Teresa. ‘He’s very bad.’
‘I may not be able to do much, I’m afraid, if he needs
hospital care.’
‘Anything you can do to patch him up, doctor—we’d be
so grateful.’
Andres stood back, out of sight. Does she know the risk
she’s taking? The very thought of it brought damp to his
forehead. Of course she knows!
He returned to bed. He was intrigued: how many reasons
did she weigh in the balance before she agreed to break
curfew, risk arrest and torture, to bring comfort to a
wounded stranger—a wanted man?

83
 Better not to think about it. You decide what’s right, then
act. He sighed. Helen would have done the same. His eyes
were closing. And so would Isa. He was drifting into sleep.
She’ll be worrying . . . I’ve got to be on those mill steps first
thing tomorrow . . .

If Andres had known that the whole of Santiago had been

put under siege as a result of the gun-battle between the
army and Resistance fighters a few hours before, he would
not have slipped back into his dreams so readily. If he had
known that at this moment platoons of the Black Berets
were ransacking the city for those who had escaped, he
would not have felt so secure among the tranquil walls of
the Seminary of Our Lady of Mercy.
He did not know that the most wanted man in Chile lay
one floor beneath him. What is more, in the blissful ignor¬
ance of sleep, he had no inkling that the district outside the
seminary was being systematically searched, street by
street, house by house.
At precisely two minutes after the seminary clock struck
five, Andres Larreta was to be brought up to date with
events: there was a thunderflash of sound—of the outer
door battered, of shots aimed into the lock, of harsh shouts,
of boots clattering tenfold over cloister tiles, of yells and the
rustle of battledress.
‘Lights!’
Father Mariano, sleepless, vigilant, stood by the corner of
the cloisters. ‘Capitano—stay your men! This is a house of
God.’
‘A nest of vipers more like! Search the building.’
Andres was up, struggling into his pants, hopping across
the room. His shirtsleeve was inside out. It tore with the
force of his panic. He reached the window, shoelaces un¬
tied. The window was wide open. He crouched. He could
see the soldiers.
Now take your own advice—act, don’t think! It would

84
need only one soldier to glance up, and I’m a gonner. He
hitched himself on to the window-sill. He reached out with
his right hand. He pushed forward with his shoulder. He
held his breath. Half-way. Looking down, giddy. A single
sound and their rifles would be on him.
Act—don’t think! He shut his mind. He pressed his back
to the seminary wall, still holding the window shutter. He
let go. He watched his slowly moving feet and not the long
fall down.
To his right, the high rear wall of the seminary. From this
ridge of stone, a two-metre climb. But there were foot¬
holds.
Led by their officer, the soldiers had crashed into the sick
room. Andres listened. There were seconds of silence be¬
fore the shouting began again. ‘Where is he, Father? Where
in hell have you hidden him?’
‘Hidden who? I don’t know what you mean.’
‘You trash! You red trash!’ The officer blazed out his
wrath. ‘The traitor Hernando Salas—he was brought
here. ’
‘We have no patients at the moment, Capitano, as you
can see.’
Mariano’s reply, in which he sidestepped the truth, in¬
furiated the captain of the Black Berets. He was attacked.
Andres heard Sister Teresa’s scream of fear and protest. He
had reached the end wall. He found a foothold where
cement had fragmented from the bricks. They were beating
up Mariano; and no doubt Sister Teresa too. Andres levered
himself up on to his stomach. He heard the beating, the
cries, the grunts. It mattered little how much noise he made.
The soldiers had dragged Mariano out of the sick room.
One of them held his arms back round a pillar. ‘Give,it
him—give it him hard!’
Andres lay along the top of the wall, a black hump against
the lightening horizon.
‘‘There was a doctor—we have evidence. Now talk!’

85
Mariano was beaten across the chest with a rifle barrel. ‘No
doctor! No doctor!’
Andres slipped over the wall, holding himself with
crooked fingers. A long drop—but what alternative was
there? He fell as he heard Mariano’s scream. He fell past the
sound, away from it, into a black alley. They’re killing
Mariano and I’m running away! The jolt of body with
ground was almost silent but caused an inner blast as
Andres’ left knee gave him an uppercut and sent him
sprawling over grit and stone. He was upright, quivering
but in one piece. Hobbling but advancing. The alley clothed
him in blind darkness. Made it! The seminary wall was well
behind him. Another near miss. Another closed chapter. He
felt pain and a candleflame of elation.
Then: ‘Halt!’
Andres slowly raised his hands above his head.
‘Do not move, boy!’
Four Black Berets stared along the barrels of their rifles,
each one trained on Andres Larreta’s heart.

86
 Six

In Santiago, and all over Chile, the mass arrests continue

throughout the night. Helicopters whirr under bright stars,
scouring the city rooftops with searchlights. Armoured cars
chase shadows at breakneck speed. Tanks crush corner
pavements, swinging their cannons down empty streets.
District by district, the hunt for the escaped Resistance
leaders continues. In the name of this pursuit, soldiers break
down doors, beat up those who protest, take many away.
They plunder many secrets harboured behind closed gates:
people in hiding are flushed out and taken to awaiting
trucks.
And in the wake of the troops, follow the vigilantes, the
Death Squads of citizens who commit atrocities under
licence from the Security. They choose their own routes
about the city, and their own methods of terror.
They burn. They kill. They celebrate.
‘God bless thejunta!’

Isa shot up from sleep as though the roof were caving in.
‘Something’s happened! Something’s happened to Andres.’
Beto lunged from his bedroll behind the mill door,
thinking they had been attacked. ‘Where—where are
they?’
Isa was beside him. ‘Get up, Beto. We must do some¬
thing—’
‘Angel, it’s . . .’ She was clutching him, pulling him up.
‘It’s a dream!’

87
 She would not release him. ‘They’ve got him—I
know!’
Beto closed his hands round his sister’s face. He closed his
elbows in along her arms, holding her firmly. ‘Sis, you’ve
been having a nightmare. It s a quarter past five in the
morning. And if anything /ms happened to Towny, we can’t
stir from here till curfew’s over. ’
‘To hell with curfew.’ She wrenched herself away. She
started to get dressed. ‘If it’s only a nightmare—good. But
I’m going to the seminary to make sure.’
‘Not till after six!’
‘Now!’
It was Beto’s turn to dive across the room. He grappled
with his sister. They overbalanced and crashed on to the
floor. His weight and his determination calmed her. ‘Hey
. . Andres doesn’t need help from panickers.’ He was
amused. He stared at her, easing his grip but not shifting his
position till he was sure her mood had changed. ‘Do you
know what? You and me are switching characters.’
He let her up. ‘I’m supposed to be the one who jumps in
feet first without thinking. You’re supposed to be Miss
Cool, working things out.’ He sighed. There was space
between them. ‘I guess you must be in love.’
‘Jealous?’ she said, provoked.
‘A little.’
She was suddenly tender, sorry for her action and her
words. ‘It’s just that I know—they’ve taken him. And I’m
upset because I think we let him do too much, take too
many risks.’
Beto was resolute. ‘The truth is, we don’t know any¬
thing. This is defeatist talk. And it’s unlike you. ’ He paused.
‘What we need is breakfast.’ She beat him to the kettle and
the coffeejar. ‘It’s my job!’ Beto protested.
‘Not this morning it isn’t.’ Isa was cheerful again. ‘I want
you to sit down, because I’ve a small confession to make.
And I’d prefer you sitting down when I tell you.’

88
 She lit the camping stove. She filled the kettle from a
plastic water container. ‘It’s about the photographs
Don Chailey’s pictures.’
‘So?’
‘Well you thought Diego had them.’ She spooned coffee
and sugar into two mugs.
‘He does, doesn’t he?’ Alarm had crept into Beto’s voice.
‘One set of them, yes.’ She watched the slow flush on
Beto’s face. ‘And we’ve got the other.’
‘We? But, you never . . .’
‘Told you, no. In the circumstances I thought it best not
to.’
‘The van?’ She nodded. He was up. ‘You mean—those
photos. . . those photos!’
‘If you don’t sit down, you won’t get any coffee.’ Isa’s
half-smile was bewitching but always a little sad; but her
full smile was merry as a fairground. ‘Now tell me, be
honest, would you have kept as ... as iron-nerved as you
did when the CNI were following us, if you’d known Don
Chailey’s photographs were under your feet?’
Beto did sit down. He took his coffee and a hunk of
buttered bread. He stared into space. ‘They’d have shot
us . . .’
‘Probably. And now we’re going to make them pay
dearly for their carelessness.’
Beto gazed up at his sister, dumbly, dazedly. ‘We are?’

There had been too many other prisoners for Andres to get a
beating-up all to himself. Numbed with shock at his cap¬
ture, he remembered little of the packed journey in a truck
across the city, or of the timber hut he and hundreds of
others were jammed in before the military could decide
what to do with them.
They were so crushed together it was impossible to lie
down, only crouch. There were as many old men as young
men, too terrified to speak, except through dark, scared

89
eyes. An eerie silence. That is until an old man appealed to
the guards to permit him to go to the lavatory. He was
ordered to use the bucket in the centre of the hut. He
protested and they dragged him out. He did not return.
From that moment no one argued against using the bucket.
It overflowed but still the prisoners accepted: the stench and
the crush were a small price to pay for holding on to the
precious jewel of life.
Accept, accept—learn to accept. Where had Andres heard
that? From Juan, no doubt. So Andres accepted. He laid his
head on his knees. He seemed to have nodded off for hours,
though real time had moved on scarcely seconds.
Andres lifted his cheek from his knee. He turned his face.
He pressed his teeth into his knee: don’t drift. Don’t slip
away. Fix Isa’s smile over the goalposts of your brain.
Goalposts! That’s not bad, considering. Might make a
song. How about that? She kissed me once on the goalposts
of my brain. It’s a winner.
Yet—pain, from a blow in the back by a rifle butt; cramp
in the limbs, a throbbing head. Hold—hold on. Map the
future. We’ll tour. The Marionetas de los Gemelos, plus
one. We’ll write songs, skits, plays. We’ll make people
laugh and clap their hands. We’ll sing songs of hope. We’ll
resist.
He could not hold the spirit in him long. He looked about
him and the shout of his defiance was a whisper, feeble and
uncertain. To think, somewhere out there the sun’s rising as
usual.
Soon after dawn, an officer arrived with a list. He read
out a dozen names. ‘You will accompany me.’ He spoke to
the guard who thrust his way between the squatting and
crouching prisoners.
‘Me?’ Andres blinked up at the guard.
‘On your feet!’
For a breathless second Andres felt the leap of joy inside
him. Were they planning to let him go? After all, he was

90
only a sixteen year old, a boy, here among men. Yes, he
would be a boy again if it suited him.
A voice behind him dismissed his joy: ‘Tell us if it hurts,
lad.’
The drill yard was still barbed with shadows, but the
sunlight radiated above the grim barrack roofs. Another
truck, fewer prisoners, two guards. No view permitted.
‘Down on your stomachs!’
Andres, being by far the youngest bf the prisoners, was
an object of interest to the guards. ‘What’s he done, nicked
stuff?’
‘No, he’s sort of special. They nabbed him at the semi¬
nary for red-necks.’
‘Salas—did they find him?’
‘Not a puking button of him. They must’ve used witch¬
craft.’ The guard accepted a cigarette from his colleague.
‘But they got the priest . . . and the Junta knows how to
handle traitors who skulk behind the protection of Mother
Church.’
As soon as Andres stepped from the truck he knew he had
seen this place before. He had expected a prison, high walls,
watchtowers; or the National Stadium itself. He had not
expected a gracious house in an avenue of gracious houses,
with pillared entrances and balconies.
He recognised the place from Don Chailey’s photograph:
welcome to the House of Laughter.
To the secret headquarters of the CNI. To the torture
rooms.
Andres stood still and in cold terror. The truck had
deposited its cargo of prisoners alongside the house, behind
four-metre high fencing, no doubt electrified. The elegant
facade of the house concealed ugly rows of prefabricated
buildings to the rear, single-storey, with opaque glass
windows reinforced with wire mesh.
The prisoners were lined up. ‘Name!’ called the officer,
holding a clipboard. He repeated each name aloud, slowly,

9i
as he wrote it down. Andres’ heart was ram-ramming like a
loom. When his turn came he stared up into the sun:
‘Benedetti.’
‘Age, Benedetti?’
‘Sixteen.’ He swallowed. At least this was the truth.
‘Full name.’
‘Hugo Benedetti. ’
‘Identity card?’
‘Lost it. ’
‘Lost it, Sir.’
‘Yes, Sir. Lost it.’
The officer stared at Andres with a look which indicated
he had heard this story a thousand times before. He did not
answer. He signalled to the guard. ‘Get them inside.’
Solitary, in the narrow cell, Andres fought to control his
shivering. It’s not that cold; things will be worse. It’s this
feeling of being cut off, ofno one knowing where I am. You
could tell me all about that, Juan, I reckon.
Isa will be waiting, and Beto. I’ve stood them up—but
they’ll understand. The twins are my only hope now. My
candlelight in the barbed wire. Another song? Too cold to
compose songs now; and too frightened.
The cell was two paces across and four deep. The con¬
crete floor was awash, stinking. Probably overflow from
sewers—or maybe these people are so inhuman that they
don’t even leave a bucket.
At first Andres concluded there was nowhere to sit, but as
his eyes got used to the dark he noticed a board which could
be let out on chains from the wall.
He sat back on the board, raising his feet from the wet
ground. Nothing good’s going to turn up from now on. I
must accept that. I know things. Fact is, I’m a mine of
information. I’ve got to try to persuade them that I’m
useless to them.
For Andres what was to come would not be entirely
unexpected. Both Juan and Braulio had suffered imprison-

92
ment and what the authorities called ‘correction’.
Knowing what might happen to him was no comfort to
Andres, but at least he hoped they would not take him by
surprise. ‘You blab,’Juan had told his son. ‘You have to.
You talk and you keep on talking. It’s once you stop talking
that they give you the pain. You tell them everything but
what really matters.’
How, though, do you judge what really matters? And if
you admit a little, surely they will suspect there is more?
And when you give them more, they will demand more.
Andres remembered Braulio’s comment: ‘For the torturer,
everything is never enough.’
It was almost a relief to hear the cell door unlocked. ‘Out! ’
Andres slipped from the bench. There was light to see the
soldier drop a cigar end into the stench-water of the cell. A
sharp push and Andres was in a corridor lit by naked bulbs.
He was commanded to halt at an unmarked door. They
waited, each side of it, guard and prisoner, silent. The door
opened. Andres was thrust in as though he had made some
gesture of resistance. He felt the stirring of useless anger.
Steady, do not give them any excuses to attack you. Do
not make it easy for them.
The room was long, bare, the blinds drawn, everything
dark save for a powerful desk-lamp throwing a wedge of
light on to an empty floor. The actors in this drama re¬
mained in shadow. Andres counted three men, possibly
four, before a hood was dropped over his head.
This was a shock. He half-struggled as the hood was
tightened round his neck. His arms were brought behind his
back and handcuffs clipped around his wrists.
Why take all this trouble?
Suddenly, abruptly, Andres heard his own voice, as if
coming from a total stranger. ‘You can’t do this. I’m only
sixteen—the Constitution states—’
The chance to quote from the Constitution of the demo¬
cratic republic of Chile was denied Andres. A fist from

93
nowhere hurled him over, dark into dark, head and
shoulder on to cold stone.
The voice of the first interrogator was calm, in mono¬
tone, difficult to locate: ‘The Constitution does not extend
to this place. There are no human rights here. That is why,
here alone, the nation is safe from its enemies. The only
privilege granted to you is to breath. It is a privilege we shall
honour only so long as it suits our purpose. Do you
understand?’
Should Andres say it? He could not hold back the words:
‘But I can’t breath—this hood. ’ Would they batter him again
for insolence, for showing courage? He waited. He felt a
trickle of pride, for he had broken a rule and no blow came.
‘Loosen the hood.’ Andres was allowed back on to his
feet. ‘What is your name?’
‘Hugo Benedetti.’
‘School?’
‘No school. Moved about too much.’
‘Last school.’
Pause. ‘San Martino.’
‘We’ll check the register. Your home?’
‘No home.’
‘Stop stalling you little swine—answer the Doctor’s
questions.’ This second voice was high-pitched, irritated,
full of bad temper and impatience. Two voices, then.
Andres named them—the Snake and the Hog.
‘If you do not answer precisely,’ warned the Snake, ‘you
will receive the treatment.’
‘I’m telling you what’s true.’
Hog: ‘You’re lying. What’s your name?’
‘Hugo Benedetti.’
Snake: ‘We have reason to believe that is not your name.’
‘My friends call me Beni—after Benedetti. Why I’m
vague, well. . . my home—my parents are separated. I ran
away.’
‘Name of school?’

94
 ‘San Martino.’
‘Describe it.’
Andres knew a little of San Martino. His friend Costas
had a cousin at the school. They had sometimes visited him
to buy cut-price records off him. ‘There are shields on the
railings. One of them with the condor, and the lads are
always—’
‘Enough.’
Andres had the impression that the Snake was in front of
him, at the desk, while the Hog prowled round him. His
voice was closer, all at once at his right ear: ‘What were you
doing at the Seminary of Our Lady of Mercy after curfew?’
‘I wasn’t—’
Before Andres could continue, Snake interrupted. He too
seemed to have come close. ‘We shall speak of that in a
moment. Tell us what you were doing before you went to
the seminary.’
‘I didn’t go to the seminary—’
‘Before!’
‘I tell you I—’
Hog screamed: ‘You were seen! You were captured a
stone’s throw from the rear walls.’
The Snake continued with his own line of questioning.
‘What were you doing before . . . before you were cap¬
tured?’
‘Trying to find somewhere to bunk down.’
‘Before curfew—the hours before curfew?’
‘I was out of town. ’ He received a vicious blow across his
head for this reply.
Hog: ‘You’ll have to do better than that, scum. ’
‘It’s true. Out of town. Working, you see.’
‘Working where?’
‘With . . . actors. Travelling players. Scene shifting—
and I sing a bit. Then when the army made its move
I—’

This angered the interrogators so much that two pairs of

95
hands were laid on Andres. He was dragged over a chair and
pinned against the wall of rough brick.
Snake, aroused: ‘The army made its move—what the
devil are you implying? That there was a conspiracy to
overthrow the Constitution?’
‘Nothing, Sir. All I know is that we weren’t allowed to
go on giving plays. We disbanded. I thumbed a lift back to
Santiago.’
‘From where?’
‘San Felipe.’
‘We will check. And what is the name of these players?’
It came out as though another mind was doing Andres’
thinking for him: ‘The Good Companions.’
‘How many?’
‘Five, with me—six.’
‘Names.’
Andres realised, the more he lied, the deeper he dug the
pit for himself. But he was set on a course now and there
was no altering it.
‘Names!’ bellowed the Hog as Andres hesitated.
‘Later,’ snapped the Snake who was clearly the senior of
the two interrogators. ‘What were you doing at the semi¬
nary?’
‘Well, the curfew—’
‘What were you doing?’
‘I was hungry. No idea it was a seminary—-just a place I
could get something to eat, maybe a bed for the night.’
‘Who told you about it?’
‘The lorry driver.’
‘Lorry driver?’
‘Who gave me a lift. ’
‘So you admit you went to the seminary?’
Andres had a second to decide—should he at least admit
what they knew? He nodded under the hood. ‘I found out it
was some sort of religious place.’
‘Earlier you denied being there. ’

96
 ‘I was afraid.’
Hog: ‘That means everything you’ve said is a pack of
lies.’
‘No . . . but you are confusing me with all these ques¬
tions.’
The Snake was distant again, as though he had crossed
back to the desk. ‘Who provided you with food at the
seminary?’
Andres knew he could not go on lying, not from this
point. All he could do was omit what information might be
vital. What did they know? That was what counted now. It
was to be a game of cat and mouse.
‘A priest gave me food.’
‘Father Mariano?’
‘He did not tell me his name. ’
‘What time exactly did they bring in the wounded man?’
The silence was deathly. Andres could hear his heartbeat.
He could hear the ticking of a clock. He could hear the
Hog’s thick breathing. ‘The only other person I saw was
one of the nuns. I went to bed and . . . ’ He paused.
‘Go on.’
‘Then the soldiers came.’
‘Where did they take the wounded man?’
‘I saw no wounded man.’
Hog had Andres by the jacket, lifting him, shaking him.
‘The wounded man, scum, the wounded man!’
‘No one—nothing!’ He was slapped full in the face and his
nose spilled out its blood.
The Snake’s calm, relentless voice pierced the confusion
of movement, and sound and pain. ‘You were conveying a
message from Father Mariano to the Resistance, to the
remnants of Miguel Alberti’s outlawed party.’
‘No—no message.’
Andres was beaten from the back and from the front
simultaneously. A kick behind his knees scattered him on to
the ground. ‘Answer!’

97
 ‘No message.’
‘Who did Mariano send you to?’
‘What was the message? Spill the beans, boy, or we’ll
have your bones bouncing all over the floor.’
The Snake took a cooler route into the heart of Andres
Larreta’s defence. ‘If you were not carrying an urgent
message, why descend a five metre wall in the dead of
night?’
Andres was choking on his blood. He could not staunch
the bleeding from his nose because his arms were fastened
behind him. He tried to tilt his head back, but the Hog had
him by the hood and the hair. ‘Answer the Doctor!’
‘I was escaping.’
‘So we agree—you were carrying a vital message.’
‘No! Just escaping. There were the soldiers. Shooting. I
was afraid. My room was next to the wall. I panicked.’
Snake once more approached with stealth. ‘How is it that
when you were captured you had no identity papers on
you?’
‘Lost them—in the fire. ’
This answer so infuriated the Hog that he would have
beaten Andres senseless if the Snake had not commanded
him to leave the victim alone.
The Snake’s voice soothed as it spiked: ‘You must beware
my colleague’s temper. He has the fury of a bull when he is
confronted by the red rag of the liar. ’
Andres pressed on with his lie as if doing this might lend
it respectability. ‘The fire destroyed everything—three
nights ago, all the company props, costumes . . .’His voice
faltered into silence. He was down a cul-de-sac and he knew
it.
‘I think,’ said the Snake, in unchanging monotone, ‘that
we have gone as far as we can with gentleness. You are
unco-operative. You sing a little, yes. And you have led us a
song and dance so far. ’ His voice was cold, like dry ice. ‘You
have wasted our time.’

98
 The Snake made a signal. Other hands approached,
dragging Andres up, shifting him about the room. His
hands were unlocked—for that he was grateful, but they did
not allow him to raise one of them to scrub the blood from
around his face, now bathed in sweat.
All his limbs were grasped. They were splayed out and
chained to a frame of metal, like a bed without a mattress,
only upright. It is to be torture then.
This is the Pendura. I am a side of beef. They suspend me
till my arm joints set alight. It is not fair: and I must not cry.

The pain Andres felt, Isa shared, in the heart, desperate with
waiting. Beto had wanted to drive her to the seminary, but
Isa had insisted: ‘Your job’s all we’ve got to live on.’
‘It’s stupid to get parted. What if you don’t come back?’
She had ruffled her fingers through Beto’s hair. ‘You’ll
have to paint a new sign on the van—the One-Twin
Marionettes.’
‘Don’t joke!’
Just the same, Beto had gone quietly, to help clear the
debris caused by the fire-bomb that had wrecked part of the
laundry premises. The owner had dared to put an election
poster in his window, supporting the Silver Lion. As he
admitted to Isa and Beto, ‘It’s the price you pay in Chile for
backing the loser.’
Isa had driven through Santiago to the seminary and
found the nursing sisters in mourning. Father Mariano had
been taken for questioning, the seminary ransacked.
Sister Teresa, an old friend of Isa’s, nursed a broken arm.
Her face was so badly bruised that her left eye was not
visible for the swollen eyebrow and cheek. ‘I was lucky,’
she said.
Of the young man who had begged shelter the night
before, there was no news. ‘He vanished. Escaped, we
hope, but . . . Well, they say the troops had the seminary
cordoned off. ’

99
 Teresa led Isa into the kitchen garden, to the fountain and
goldfish pond. ‘A very brave young man, your friend, Isa.
He brought us some things to keep. Evidence, he said—of a
massacre of prisoners. ’
‘Can I see them?’
They reached the fountain and Teresa smiled through her
bruises. ‘Over the years we’ve got rather good at hiding
things.’ She stooped and pulled out a square of stone from
the wall of the pond. ‘The Black Berets enjoyed them¬
selves so much, they’ll be back, so it’s better these aren’t
found. ’
She handed Isa the package of mementos, including the
last possessions of Don Chailey. ‘The American ambassa¬
dor won’t be pleased to learn that an American photo¬
grapher was executed without trial by servants of thejunta.
Your friend Andres saw it all happen . . . He has a nose for
danger, it seems.’
Isa nodded, taking the mementos. ‘It follows him
around.’
‘He means a lot to you?’
‘He was beginning to.’
Teresa sighed. ‘How often we have to talk in the past
tense. . . ’
Isa chose to ask, ‘And Mariano—is there any news of
him, Teresa?’
The nursing sister crossed herself. There was despair in
her voice. ‘Mariano has a serious heart condition. If the CNI
torture him, we will never see him alive again. ’
At the gates of the seminary, the two friends kissed each
other goodbye. ‘What will you do now, Isa?’
‘Under the front seat of the van, I’ve got Don Chailey’s
photos.’ Isa raised the mementos with reverence, as though
they were communion wine. ‘And I’m going to make all
these things talk!’

The pain across Andres’ shoulders and down his neck had

ioo
become excruciating. If only he could put his feet on the
ground, touch it with his toes, ease his weight for one
second.
He could smell the garlic on the Hog’s breath. ‘We want
quick answers, you red scum, and plenty of them. We want
names—get me?—names!’
Snake: ‘Let us begin again. You were conveying a mes¬
sage. We are not particularly concerned with the nature of
that message as we have a very good idea what it was. But
you will now tell us to whom you were conveying that
message.’
Andres’ armpits were burning. The slightest movement
in the rest of his body caused the pain to worsen. ‘No
message.’ His voice was a whimper. It told him how they
had reduced him in a few minutes. No points to be scored
now; no victories. ‘The Father just told me . . . escape . . .
escape while you can.’
Yet again, the Snake altered tack: ‘What is the name of the
doctor who came to the seminary last night?’
‘Doctor?’
Andres’ whole body convulsed as he was hit in the
stomach. His arms blazed with agony.
‘The doctor!’
The ^pain was too much. ‘Yes, yes . . . there was a
doctor. ’ Andres suffered a further blow. Talking, that keeps
their fists away.
‘Man or . . . woman?’
‘Didn’t see. ’
‘Talk!’
‘Man!’
‘You lie!’
‘Man!’
The interrogators backed away a step. In a rustle of voices
they discussed tactics. They kept Andres hanging. He
wondered, will I pass out?
Then, Snake: ‘Take him down. Evidently at San Martino

IOI
they failed to teach him the elementary lessons of telling the
truth—or warn him of the consequences of deceit. ’
Andres was dumped on the floor.
‘The wires, I think.’
‘Water!’ commanded Hog.
Wires and water? Andres did not need it explaining. He
had heard and read enough of torture by electric shock. He
knew well enough why water was being poured on the
ground beneath his naked feet.
He felt a loop of wire being pressed over the big toe of his
left foot. His shirt was ripped open and another wire clipped
to the nipple of his right breast.
His time had come.

102
 Seven

‘Colonel Rugeros? Might I be permitted to ask an urgent

question?’
At an international gathering of journalists brought
together in the Ministry of Information in Santiago, an
American reporter called Jack Normanton has interrupted
the carefully prepared speech of a spokesman for the mili¬
tary Junta of Chile.
‘It is about a colleague who has gone missing. ’
Normanton and the other pressmen have just been in¬
formed that, following the tragic assassination of Miguel
Alberti by Communist terrorists, order has been fully
restored in the country. The banks are open, the wheels of
industry turning as usual. Tranquillity and justice prevail
once more. The curfew will continue only so long as it is
absolutely necessary to destroy the Enemy Within.
What is more, the Two Hemispheres Cup competition
will proceed as planned.
‘My name is Normanton, of the Philadelphia Star, sister
paper to the Baltimore Express & Times. My missing col¬
league is a photographer called Donald Chailey.’
There is nothing in Colonel Rugeros’ brief which has
prepared him for this question. ‘I am afraid that the Minis¬
try—’
‘Chailey is missing, Sir, after flying to Santiago to cover
the elections.’
The Colonel consults an adviser, a plain-clothes man
wearing dark-lensed glasses. He stares down the ornate,
chandeliered room at Normanton. ‘We have no informa¬
tion on this man.’

103
 The American persists. ‘Colonel—my paper’s instruc¬
tions to me are to leave no stone unturned until Mr Chailey
is found.’
Another reporter stands up. ‘I flew into Santiago on the
same plane as Don Chailey, Colonel. We booked into the
same hotel. There’s been no sign of him since Monday
night.’
‘It’s our guess,’ comes in Normanton, ‘that he might be
held in the National Stadium. So far your officials have
refused point blank to make any enquiries.’
Once more Colonel Rugeros consults his adviser. He
whispers. There is a firm shake of the head. He straightens
up. He surveys the sea of hands, a blitz of potentially
embarrassing questions. ‘This press conference, gentlemen,
is now at an end. ’

Andres was thrown off his feet with the shock: it stabbed
him along his toe, right up his leg, making him shake
violently so that his knee bent automatically and his head
sprang forward.
‘Who else did you see in the seminary?’
‘Nobody.’
Now the electric convulsions surged through his toe, up
his body; and through the body from the nipple. The
current seemed to have twice the power it began with. It
was all through him, ripping him in all directions.
His legs caved in.
The top part of his body shot over.
He saw blue and white lightning. He was on the
ground, in the wet. And he knew he could not take it.
‘Mercy!’

‘Mr Normanton? I have a message for you.’ The American

reporter of the Philadelphia Star had returned to the offices of
the international press agency where his paper had been
allocated a desk and a phone.

104
 He was tired and angry. ‘Those bastards have set a tail on
me . . . Any news of Don?’
The secretary handed him a note. ‘A very determined
young woman phoned. A Santiaguena. She wouldn’t give
her name, but she said she had information about Mr
Chailey.’
Jack Normanton read out the words of the message.
“‘Quinta Normal. Peanut seller next to the museum.
Three p.m.”’ He smiled. ‘Very cloak and dagger! What’s
this Quinta thing?’
‘A leisure park, south-west of here. It’s got a lake with
boats and the museum she mentions.’
‘Meet by the peanut seller, eh? Not one of the CNI’s
childish little tricks, do you think?’
‘She was genuine. She read out the details of Mr Chailey’s
press card. It had a photo of his wife and children in the back
. . . Oh, she told me to say you should look out for her
green panama.’
Jack Normanton was thoughtful. ‘Green panama? Didn’t
the Silver Lion wear a green panama?’

‘Scum—you’ll tell us the entire and absolute truth!’

‘I’ve told it you.’
‘Mariano was harbouring a terrorist—who was he?’
The shocks came again. Andres screamed again. His
muscles burned, contracted. He bit his tongue. He was
screaming without control, with thunder in his chest. And
yet, unbelievably, his mind stayed where it was, un¬
molested, a little black box inside something nothing could
get at. Resting like a mouse in a hole.
It surveyed the scene. It was cool, cool as early morning.
It had picked up two important messages: these men did not
know the name of the wounded Resistance fighter whom
Mariano had helped; they might guess, but they did not
know.
The second fact was that they did not really know who

105
 had treated the wounded man. They suspected it was a
woman doctor. Yet they had no proof. No one had con¬
fessed.
Yet.
They stopped. Andres was dizzy. The mouse in its hole
was now more like a bird in a cage, somewhere out there,
hanging, not part of him any longer. If they go on, if the
electric continues, will my mind float off, cage and bird,
through the sky of black wall?
The Snake and the Hog consulted each other once
more. Then, close now, Snake asked, ‘How was the man
wounded?’
‘I don’t know . . .’ Then, to head off another spasm,
‘Shot, I think. I was upstairs, asleep. I didn’t see.’
Hog was about to turn up the current. ‘Wait,’ cautioned
the Snake. His voice fell almost to a whisper, but his venom
was at its most potent. ‘How did you know the wounded
man was not Diego Rosales?’
‘Not Diego Ros . . .’ Andres broke off. He was falling
headfirst into the trap. A fault, a crime, but his mind was so
confused, the aching in his limbs so terrible.
‘You knew it was not Diego Rosales, which means that
you are well acquainted with Sehor Rosales!’
‘No—’
‘Ring-leader of the Resistance.’
‘No!’
A charge of electricity shuddered his body. He was a
puppet, handled not with love and skill and care, but by a
mad operator, his strings yanked in fury. In the chaos of his
brain he seemed to feel the strings. And they were attached
to his knees, to his hands, to his ears, jerking his head
violently from side to side.
The Hog, with satisfaction: ‘He knows. Probably knows
the whole gang of them. ’
Snake: ‘You were running with a message to Diego
Rosales, from his wounded comrade-in-hell, Hernando—

106
confess! You will tell us where this Diego is hiding out.’
Andres fought for control, for control of the strings. His
body had no answer. The electric shocks came down the
strings and the limbs answered. They leapt, they shook.
But his brain—so far they had not managed to attach a
string to his brain. ‘Yes I did see the man.’
‘Ah, what did I tell you?’ The Hog was a hyena.
‘But they didn’t call him Diego. I was saying ... I don’t
know any Diego.’
‘What did they call him?’
‘Not Hernando.’
‘You lie!’ Down the strings came the darts of electricity.
Again, in defiance of orders from his brain, Andres’ mouth
opened; the scream sprang forth. ‘They called him . . .
Horacio.’ Good Horacio was dead. He alone seemed safe
from the torturer.
‘Horacio?’ The interrogators were puzzled. Andres
sensed this in the delay of their next question. Did the name
suddenly strike a bell with them that they paused; did they
even half believe him?
If there was any luck in this miserable world, thought
Andres, he felt he deserved a grain of it.
‘Horacio what?’
‘I don’t know . . .Just Horacio.’
A second grain of luck—the torture-room door opened.
A young voice: ‘We checked at San Martino, Doctor.’
Not a grain of luck after all: Andres awaited the worst.
‘Very well, was the boy lying?’
‘We’ve no information, Doctor, I’m afraid.’
‘What the devil do you mean?’
‘The school director was arrested yesterday, along with
eight of his teachers. There is no access to records.’
‘Then blow them open. ’
‘I’m sorry, Sir, but all the records were taken away by the
assistant chief of police. ’
‘Zombie!’

107
 Hog: ‘What about the actors, the Good Companions—
any lead on them?’
‘All theatrical groups have been compulsorily suspended,
Sir, by order of the Junta.’
‘There’ll be a register, man—no actors were permitted to
practise without a licence.’
‘We’re working on it, Sir. But the whole entertainment
business has gone to earth. ’
Snake was coldly furious. ‘Everywhere you look,
treachery. I tell them, we shall never exercise control, win
obedience, make this nation great through discipline, till we
have more treatment centres, till we have access to the entire
population.’
‘Yes, Doctor. . .’The messenger swallowed nervously.
‘The worst news, Sir, is that Mariano is dead.’
‘Dead? We hardly touched him.’
‘Father Mariano suffered from an acute heart condition,
Sir.’
Hog, unconcerned: ‘We were not to know.’
‘Not to know?’ The Snake’s voice climbed the scale,
from the cool to the trembling. ‘Not to know? It was
our job to know.’ His voice became a screech. ‘We killed
him!’
‘Number Two killed him, Doctor, not us,’ corrected
Hog.
‘He died in my care. ’
Andres was astounded. He could not believe what he
heard. Here was the chief torturer mourning over the death
of one of his victims.
The Snake was up, pacing the torture room. ‘No man has
ever died at my hands. I pride myself in that. They suffer a
living death. They confess. I break them—but they do not
die.’
Hog now seemed to have taken on the role of the smooth,
unflappable interrogator. ‘Did Mariano make his confes¬
sion?’

108
 The messenger scraped a boot nervously on the stone
ground. ‘To his Maker, Sir . . . But not to us.’
Andres’ spirit was a shooting star, raking the blackness
with light.
‘Nothing?’
‘He maintained to the end, Sir, that he gave shelter to a
man named Horacio.’
Silence.
‘Did he tell you this boy’s name?’
‘No name, Sir. Just a street urchin, he said, hiding from
the guns.’
The roles of the interrogators were once more reversed.
The Snake had faded, become extinguished, his interest
gone. But the Hog flung off all control. He seized Andres.
He roared not as the hog, not as the hyena but as the bull. He
seized Andres as if suddenly he were all prisoners, as if he
represented every wrong answer, every defiant spirit every
act of simple courage, every refusal to betray a loved one,
every resistance to tyranny. He beat him. He dragged him.
And yet it was his own cries which were the loudest, his
own wailing; his boundless despair.
When the Snake next spoke, the Hog ceased his beating.
Even this seemed to be an act, a performance, something
prearranged. A last kick hurtled Andres Larreta into uncon¬
sciousness. .
The Snake had returned to his desk. He sat behind the
yellow beam of light. Only his hands were visible. His long
white fingers locked together. ‘Get out of here! And take
that. . . that street urchin with you.’

The Junta had not so far prohibited the sale of roasted

peanuts, and in the great park of the Quinta Normal the
peanut sellers were doing good business under a bright sun.
Soldiers stood guard near the museum but not at the
entrance to the park, as Jack Normanton paid off his taxi
and looked about him.

109
 He was not surprised at the apparent calmness of Santiago
despite last night’s wholesale arrests, despite the trail of
terror left by the Death Squads. It had been the same in El
Salvador, he remembered: in the capital city, spending as
usual; in the countryside, the army butchering the peasants
in hundreds.
Of course Chile was different. So officials never stopped
asserting. Chile was civilised, not like El Salvador or Guate¬
mala or Nicaragua or Bolivia. ‘Contrary to what thejunta’s
enemies say, ’ declared the morning edition of The Mercury,
‘our rulers are firm but fair. There are no political prisoners
in Chile. There are no torture chambers, and reports of
so-called Disappearances are lies spread by Communist
infiltrators.’
The Mercury, however, warned its readers to be ever-
vigilant: ‘The Enemy Within remains powerful, and the
loss of certain liberties is a small price to pay for the nation’s
self-defence. ’
One of the Enemy Within was watching Jack Norman-
ton as he strolled over to the peanut seller closest to the
museum. She was also watching two soldiers at the
museum entrance.
The peanut seller served from a pram-like vehicle, the
upper part of which resembled a boat, and the peanuts were
being roasted on the boat-deck.
Jack Normanton bought a portion ofpeanuts. He glanced
up through the blue film of smoke and saw Isa, in her green
panama, in the shade of a plantain tree.
Without hurrying, nibbling as he went, Normanton
moved as far away from the view of the soldiers as possible.
At the boating lake, he stopped. He sat down on an iron
chair by the water.
He turned his face into the sun; he saw her coming,
darkish-skinned, long-legged, slender, her features shad¬
owed by the green panama that rested aslant long black
hair. She sat beside him. She carried a plastic carrier-hag

no
which she placed protectively between her feet.
She did not look at him. ‘Are we safe?’
Normanton grinned. He took the tension out of their
meeting. ‘I'm not going to answer a stranger s questions
unless I’m given the secret password.’
Isa smiled. ‘I’m talking in whispers . . . will that do?’
‘Very catchy. And very good advice at this moment. Are
you wanted by the police?’
‘I would be if they knew what was in this carrier-bag. ’
‘About Don Chailey?’
‘You could have been followed.’
‘I took three taxis. Lost them after the second . . . Can I
buy you a coffee while we talk?’
‘I think we’re safer here, if you don’t mind.’ Isa told Jack
Normanton about the mementos Andres had rescued from
the dead in the quarry. She handed him Don Chailey s press
card and photograph. ‘Andres hid out last night at the
Seminary of Our Lady of Mercy. He told them the story
before . . .’ She broke off.
‘I know—the seminary was raided. The Information
Bureau fervently deny it, but everybody knows they took
the priest, Mariano.’
‘It was my fault!’ Isa stared fiercely at the water, twist¬
ing her knuckle in the palm of her other hand. ‘I sent him
there. ’
Normanton spoke gently, consolingly. ‘Your fault that a
house of God was plundered in the middle of the night?’ He
paused. He sat back. ‘Means a lot to you, eh, this young
man?’ .
Isa met the reporter’s eyes for the first time. Instead ot
replying, she fished in the carrier-bag once more and drew
out a large buff envelope. ‘You can print these on your front
page—if you dare!’
With tremulous excitement Jack Normanton sifted
through Don Chailey’s photographs. He whistled in
amazement. ‘I can’t believe it! Je-sus!’

hi
 ‘Can you use them, Mr Normanton?’
‘Use them? They’re world news. They’ll be on every
front page from Alaska to Australia.’
‘In return, will you help me find my friend Andres, and
his father Juan Larreta—please!’
‘Everything I can do, I will do.’
‘There’s one more item.’ Isa produced Don Chailey’s
camera. She did not immediately hand it to Normanton, a
brief hesitation the reporter was quick to observe.
‘Keep it for your friend Andres,’ he said, returning it to
the carrier-bag. ‘After all, Don gave it to him. And it’s well
deserved.’ The reporter was up, exhilarated. ‘These pic¬
tures are a cause for celebration—how about some of those
roasted peanuts?’

There had been no celebrations, no treats for Andres

Larreta, and no treatment for his injuries. Dumped, rib
broken; maybe more than one. Eyes swollen, flesh to the
bone; blood in trickles from his hair, his nose. Groin afire
with pain.
Half-conscious, mouthing words yet inaudible. Words
of terror, of nightmare. Slung into wet. Lying, strings
loose.
Tough guy?
Andres the puppet, performance ended, fallen from his
one-wheel bicycle, without applause. No songs. No more
songs. No arm strong enough, no fingers unlocked
enough, to strum the charango. Blue lightning and white.
And finally black.
Out.

Back at the mill, the twins exchanged'heated words. ‘But

Isa, I thought you’d be pleased.’
‘If things were different, of course I’d be pleased.’
‘We’d only be away a couple of nights. It’s work—two
performances, a good audience. And we need the fee!’

112
 ‘I won’t leave Santiago till I know for sure what’s hap¬
pened to Andres.’
‘We might never know. ’
‘Then I’ll never leave!’
‘That’s stupid.’
‘So be it—but I won’t desert him.’
‘Look, we owe it to the orphange in San Jose. We
promised them a show. ’
‘We owe more to Andres.’
Beto stood up. He clattered the dinner plates together. ‘I
knew it would happen. Sooner or later.’
‘Knew what would happen?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘I want to know—what would happen?’
Beto sat down on the bench, his face a mask of woe. ‘If
you can’t guess, then I’m not telling you.’
She moved from the mattress where she had been sitting.
She rested her elbows on Beto’s knee, and she looked up at
him full of love. ‘You think Andres has come between
us^-that I’m more concerned about him than I am about
you?’
He shrugged. ‘Than us . . . The puppets. Our life.
Everything we used to— Isa rose and stifled his complaint
with a pitying, caring hug. Her arms were tight around
him, her lips against his cheeks.
‘Idiot!’
‘Maybe so . . . Yet three of us, Isa—will it work out?
Don’t they say three’s a crowd?’
Isa’s hands framed her brother’s face, her thumbs hover¬
ing above his mouth as if to censor more words of doubt.
‘Whoever they are, I’m sorry for them. It’s not love if other
people get pushed out. And love’s not something that gets
smaller if you divide it up. I’ll never believe that!’
Beto was soothed, though still on his guard. Isa under¬
stood. And she accepted, she had been too swift to reject his
idea, too careless of his feelings. ‘Okay, you win. First we
do a show at the San Miguel market tomorrow—then we
treat the orphans at San Jose. ’
Beto’s mask of woe vanished. ‘Really?’ His natural
bounce was back. ‘I’ll tell you this, Andres would approve.
After all, he’s a partner now, isn’t he?’
Isa kissed her brother. ‘Yes, a partner.’

Darkness, and a military truck left the gates of the House

of Laughter, heading south and west towards the Maipo
River. A truck carrying a human cargo of prisoners who
had outlived their usefulness, some already dead, others so
close to death that the difference was of no importance.
Towards the river, and along it for several kilometres,
then swinging on to its shallow, white-stone banks. There,
the dead and the dying were tipped like refuse; left under the
cold stare of the stars. Bodies upon bodies.
Utterly motionless—save for one hand, an arm, weakly
but relentlessly dragging at the pebbles. And then a leg,
slow, disengaging itself, tugging, working with the arm,
heaving, scraping, rolling out from under.
Free; to prove it, a foot splashing in a ribbon of oil: Hugo
Benedetti, alias Andres Larreta. A cat half way through its
ninth life.
He lay on his undamaged arm. There was a hoop of iron
through his chest. His dislodged ribs, perhaps. He felt a
coolness and in the dim shadow of his floating mind he
sensed water; and the message reminded him his foot was
bare, his foot still burning from the electric.
He heard the mouse in the hole in his head and it was
scratching. It was saying, they’ve let you go. That can only
mean one thing: you’re not going to pull through.
He suspected a lot was broken. His arm maybe as well as a
rib or two. But my spine, my legs? His good arm worked
for him. It gave leverage to his back. There was pain, but
not agony. Shift your legs. Try them. Go on, move. The
muscles at first refused to co-operate. Am I paralysed? His
head dropped back on the shingle. He was exhausted.
I’ve just not got the strength. His throat was opening and
closing, emitting a sound half like a cough, half like some¬
one choking on a plum stone. He rested. I mustn t sleep.
Mustn’t nod off. Can’t actually die if I’m awake. He forced
up his head again. He gazed at his companions. They were
asleep and they were dead. His chin touched his chest. His
eyes were almost shut.
No! I’m not ready. I’ve things to do. Andres Larreta lives.
Half lives. He raised a knee. It worked. He raised the other
knee. Bless you both!
Yet he flopped down once more, gutted of energy and
strength. Rest but don’t sleep. He rolled his head slowly. In
the night mist he could see the twinkle of city lights. I’ve got
to put distance between me and my companeros. They’ll
not be missing me. I’ll be safer alone.
One Good Samaritan is all I need. In the meantime, his
good arm worked for him again. It propped him up.
In the morning, I’ll thumb a lift.
He was up on his knees. They held. His back held, stiff. If
I’m asked what happened to me, I’ll say . . . It s a long
story!’ In agony, painfully slow, grunting, Andres set his
engines going. He whipped himself with words: shift, blast
you—heave! Gallop, you lazy load of horse dung. He was
up, dizzy, swaying, tall as El Plomo, capped with eternal
snow. ,
He moved. One pace. Oneforjuan. Stop, sway. Another
pace. One for Horacio. One for Braulio. One for Don. And
for Isa? Ah! He sucked in breath. H£ stumbled forward,
across the shingle on to the grey-white stones, the sky
above him swinging like a boat in a storm.
Don’t look up.
Don’t look down.
Straight ahead. Focus. Grit those teeth. But they hurt. I
think I’ve lost one. Where the river bends—that’s your aim.
Away from the corpses.
 ‘Done it!’ This far. It’s a miracle, legs. A miracle, feet.
There ought to be cheers, yet there’s silence; and I think I’m
falling . . .

‘Papa! Papa—look!’
At the top of the shore, framed in early morning light,
stood a girl, about eight years old. She stared down the
white shingle of the Maipo. She had hoped to see a shark—
one of those her brother had told her about, which swam up
from the ocean on moonless nights. Instead, she was about
to save the life of Andres Larreta.
‘Papa, it’s a dead boy!’
‘Come away, Rosa.’ Her father, a farmer from the
south west, was filling up the radiator of his old, open-
back van, loaded with produce for market. ‘It’s none of our
business.’
But Rosa was already skidding down the mud bank to the
pebbles. She slowed as she got near the body, still as a
shadow. Papa—Papa. I think he’s alive.’ She was close
enough to touch Andres, sprawled on his left side, cradling
in sleep his wounded right arm. She woke him with her
footfalls on the pebbles.
‘Are you really, really alive?’
Andres opened one eye, then the other. If he had not been
in such pain he would have laughed. But to laugh—he
knew—would kill him. Yet he tried to speak. This girl was
his hope. His only one. ‘Not really really,’ he croaked. ‘Just
really . . . ’
‘What happened to you?’
Andres mouth opened. It shut. He merely gawped at her
out of listless eyes. ‘Fell over.’
‘Just fell over?’
‘Fell over San Cristobal. . . please!’
‘Papa—Papa! He’s so hurt. ’
The farmer had come down, but he did not venture as
close as his daughter. He was wary, afraid. He said nothing.

116
 ‘We’ve got to help him, Papa.’
The man stood, a shadow in shadow, though his panama
was touched by the sun edging above the giant wall of the
Andes. ‘You’d better come now, Rosa. We can’t get in¬
volved.’
‘Oh Papa—no!’
‘We’ve the stall to put up. We must be moving.’
‘But he’s hurt. . .likeTonio.’
‘Tonio’s dead. Come now.’
‘Please!’ called Andres.
‘I’m sorry. I’m a poor farmer.’
Yet Rosa persisted. She stayed her ground. ‘Toniohadno
one to help him ... he would want us to help this boy.’
‘Rosa!’ The farmer was torn between compassion and
fear. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘He is like my brother. My brother’s dead—so we help
him.’
‘Like Tonio—but not Tonio. These are bad times.’
‘We help,’ insisted Rosa, stubborn, underlip stuck out,
eyes brown and round as buttons.
The farmer had begun to walk. His daughter followed,
clutching his arm. ‘Rosa. . .’
‘Why not, Papa?’
‘The Proclamations—I read them to you, didn’t I? If this
boy is wanted by the authorities and we help him, then we
are traitors. We can’t afford to disobey the orders of the
Junta.’
‘You hate the Junta, Papa. You spit on the names of the
generals. The soldiers of the Junta killed Tonio. Her hands
still kept her father’s arm in bondage. She hung on it. ‘We
do this for Tonio!’
‘But the market, Rosa.’
Market? Andres stirred. He lifted his head from the
pillow of stones. ‘San Miguel?’ The blood in his veins had
seemed to have stopped flowing, no longer rivers but
canals.
 He was suddenly recharged. He raised himself. There
was a show to see at San Miguel: the Marionetas de los
Gemelos. He coughed out the words, ‘At the market . . .
my friends!’
The farmer stared at Andres. Indeed he did resemble his
son Tonio—his thick, shiny black hair, his handsome eyes.
He made his decision but not before he had scanned the
riverbanks for watchers, for spies. ‘Fetch the first-aid box,
Rosa, and the wine. Quickly!’
Andres felt the farmer’s sinewy arms reach under his back
and his legs. He was up and carried, lowered gently on to
the tufted grass in the shade of reeds.
‘Bullet wounds? No. A beating up?’
Andres tried to smile. ‘Slipped on a banana skin.’ He
quivered as the farmer touched his arm.
‘Okay, okay . . . And your ribs?’ He sighed. ‘You badly
need a doctor. ’
Rosa returned bearing a much-dented black box which
had to be prised open with a penknife. It contained ban¬
dages, lint and a large bottle of methylated spirit. She
handed her father the wine.
‘I think thisv will do you more good than bandages.’
Andres choked on the first gulp yet gathered enough breath
to swallow a second. ‘Take it slow.’
Andres felt the wine sweep through him, driving out the
shivers.
At last, he was back among friends.
Throughout his interrogation, Andres had managed to
keep his true identity, his name, a secret. One day the
authorities would acknowledge that a certain Hugo
Benedetti was missing, believed dead. That made two of
him gone; two of the Disappeared.
Now, though, Andres did not wait to be asked. ‘I’m
Andres, son ofjuan Larreta.’
The farmer had started strapping up Andres’ ribs with
elastic bandage. He paused. ‘Larreta? The singer?’ He sat

118
back on his haunches. He shook his head. ‘A tragedy, that
accident.’
‘My father’s alive!’ retorted Andres, almost fiercely. ‘But
he dines out with the CNI.’
The farmer made the sign of the cross. ‘God protect him,
then.’ He took a moment from his bandaging to clasp
Andres’ hand. ‘And to think, we nearly didn’t stop for the
son of Juan Larreta. Hear that, Rosa? You can tell your
Mamma. . . And maybe for once she’ll admit her Francisco
did a sensible thing. ’
He laughed. ‘More wine, Andres. And I shall have a drop
myself. Fetch some cheese, Rosa, the bread and the meat—
for this day we celebrate!’
 Eight
Dawn, Sunday. It is a little over a week since the killing of
Miguel Alberti. Though the armed forces have not yet
captured all of the Silver Lion’s friends and supporters, the
prisons of Chile are full. They have arrested politicians,
trade unionists, poets, priests, scholars, factory workers,
journalists, teachers, farm labourers, lawyers, by the
thousand.
There are many dead, many awaiting ‘treatment’ at the
hands of the overworked torturer; and there are many
streets yet to be searched. To the faceless servants of the
Junta the order has gone out: death to all who oppose.
Leave is cancelled for the army, the police and Security
until Hernando Salas, leader of the so-called Resistance, and
a long list of his accomplices have been arrested. Santiago is
under military occupation: there are road-blocks on all
routes into the city as the morning traffic begins to roll.
Every vehicle is being stopped and inspected.
The soldiers are tired, hungry, bored; and in their
harassed, feverish eyes is the threat of sudden death.

If it wasn’t for the pain in my ribs, I reckon the pain in my

arm would be unbearable. Andres lay under an oily blanket
wedged between wooden crates of vegetables, eggs and
fruit. He was being bumped, bounced, rocked and shaken,
for Francisco’s van had long ago cracked all its springs.
He was overwhelmed by heat and the whiff of onions.

120
His eyes stung. The gas was beating up his nostrils. Worst
of all was the effect of the wine he had drunk on an empty
stomach. While restoring a semblance of strength in him, it
had flushed through Andres’ brain, propelling it away from
his control like a boat without oars.
If the damned army come anywhere near me, I’ll breath
onions and wine over them, mow them down. Thejunta’ll
be so scared they’ll take the next plane to Timbuctoo.
His head was adrift, and with it, his voice.
What are you doing?
I’m going to sing.
Thejunta have banned singing.
But the voice was out there, disobedient, trilling one of
Juan Larreta’s forbidden songs:
‘When Crocodile the Torturer
Demands the name of your friend,
When you hear your loved one was
Burnt like toast on the Barbecue . . . ’
‘Hush, lad!’ cried Francisco through the open window of
the cab. ‘The military aren’t holding auditions for opera
singers.’
‘Sorry.’ Andres shut his eyes.
Everywhere, as Francisco drove through the suburbs of
Santiago towards the commune of San Miguel, tanks stood
guard. Routes began to converge and traffic thickened.
‘Security ahead!’ called Francisco.
Andres’ voice had made another dash for fame. Here—
come back! But it was too late:
‘There’s a rich man up my nose
There’s a rich man down my pants
Every place I wander
There’s a rich man in my light. . . ’
This time Francisco’s yell was stern: ‘Shut it! Unless you
really want us stuck up against a wall. ’
Andres grappled with the clown that had leapt from the
wine like a genie. The van was slowing. Andres heard the

121
scrape of army boots on the roadway. He turned his head to
hear more.
‘Papers . . . Gratias. Destination?’
‘San Miguel market, officer.’
‘Stallholder’s certificate?’
‘All there.’
Andres felt the sweat trickle from his forehead to his ear.
His arm and ribs were throbbing, the surfaces of his throat
sucked dry, bonded. This is worse than being at a concert—
I’m about to cough. Concentrate! On something, on any¬
thing. He clamped his eyes shut. Those blue carpets of
flowers in the desert, after the rain showers. A miracle.
‘Just veg on board? Let’s see.’
‘Fruit. A few chickens.’
Andres’ mind at last obeyed. It concentrated. It moved as
lightning back to the House of Laughter, to the torture
room.
‘Your child?’
‘I’m Rosa.’
‘You’re overloaded, do you know that, farmer?’ Traffic
was piling up behind the van. The soldier hesitated. ‘I ought
to book you.’
Francisco shrugged. ‘Things are hard. If I don’t sell all
I’ve got—’
‘Papa, see! There are sharks.’ Rosa was down from her
side of the cab, pointing. ‘Sharks, likeTonio said.’
Francisco and the soldier gazed along Rosa’s dancing
hand. ‘There, there!’ Below their noses, concealed only by a
wisp of straw, was Andres’ foot.
The soldier grinned. ‘Well, I’ll be damned. She’s right!’
On the far side of the Avenida, a long-backed lorry had
halted for inspection by the commander of the patrol. It
carried not only sharks but a swordfish, a small whale, a
sting-ray and several dolphins. ‘Sharks all right, child,’
laughed the soldier. ‘But stuffed sharks. Don’t worry,
they’ll not bite your arms off at the elbow. ’ He called across

122
to the driver of the lorry. ‘Puttin’ ’em back in the Pacific,
eh?’
The driver found it hard to joke with a man armed with a
machine-gun. ‘They’re for cold storage,’ he replied, ner¬
vous.
‘Where from?’
‘Museum of Natural History. It’s been shut down.’
‘Nobbled by the bloody navy more like.’ The soldier had
forgotten all about Francisco’s overloaded van. ‘Those
pansies—they think they run the whole shooting-match.’
He gave Rosa a swing in the air before planting her back in
her seat. He slapped the roof of the cab. ‘On your way,
farmer!’
For Andres, the motion of the van became like a dark
opening, a cavern, the mouth of a tunnel, approaching him
at speed. Is it sleep—or something worse? I must hold on,
yet I am sliding. My arm is useless. My good arm seems to
be trapped. Locked behind me.
Hold. You must.
I am dying.
Hold fast. But to what? He was sliding, slithering—and
then all at once there was a foothold. And the foothold was
Francisco singing one ofjuan’s songs:
‘In the forests of the city
I wandered
And people touched my arm
We’re lonely, we’re lonely
For the truth.’
The vast market square of San Miguel was already chock-
a-block with stalls. Hundreds of coloured awnings were in
place and scores more were being unrolled as protection
against the hammer of the sun.
‘Andres, lad—can you stand up?’
‘I think he’s asleep, Papa.’
‘We’ll have to move him or there’ll be sunstroke to add to
his troubles.’

123
 Andres felt a dash of water over his face. It helped. He
licked at it. He turned his head away from the sun. He heard
his own voice. ‘Give us a hand—I’ll manage.’
‘These trousers, get them on. Gently now. Stand against
me. Good arm over my shoulder. That’s the way.’
‘Got trousers.’
Francisco wasn’t arguing. He lifted Andres’ left leg and
removed the badly-torn trouser, mud covered, blood
soaked; then did the same with the other leg.
‘Can’t pay . . .’
‘Belt’s included. Now the jacket. Doesn’t match the
trousers, but at least there’s no blood. ’
‘Myself, I. . . ’
Andres overestimated his ability to raise even his good
arm. He missed the arm of the jacket. It was the shadow
again. He could not focus on the hanging sleeve and Rosa
had to guide his hand into it.
‘We’ll leave the other, Rosa. Just put it over his shoulder. ’
‘I’ll manage . . .’
He didn’t manage. He gave weight to his legs and his legs
flopped under him, weak as blankets. Francisco lowered
him against the front wheel of the van.
‘Is he dying, Papa?’ Rosa stood in a golden frame of light.
‘Don’t let him die!’
Is this it, then? Can this really be . . . the feeling of limbs
melting to water? Eyes open! Keep them that way. But
people sometimes die with their eyes open. In the quarry
they did.
Still, death’s quicker with eyes shut. That’s got to be a
fact.
He was conscious of other faces than Francisco’s and
Rosa’s staring down at him, of the stallholders, swarthy
farmers, a plump lady in a black shawl, a youth stripped to
the waist, an old man with a cane. Their images shuffled
together, shimmering in and out of the light, in and out of
focus.

124
 ‘If he’s on the run, Francisco . .
‘Just a lad—had an accident.’
‘Been beaten up, more like.’
‘Kicked to pieces, poor sod.’
‘You’d best keep him out of sight, friend. The place is
crawling with Black Berets.’
‘And Security pigs in plain clothes, waiting to cart folks
off to the Villa Grimaldi.’
‘He’ll not be wandering far.’
‘By the looks of him, his days of wandering is over. ’
Enough of whispering. ‘I am Juan Larreta’s son—Juan
Larreta!’
‘Hush, Andres.’
‘It’s true. But . . . according to the Junta, I’m . . . I’m
already dead and buried. So don’t worry yourselves about
me.’
No one answered. No one moved. Juan Larreta—the
words had cast a spell. There were nods now, though
nothing was spoken. The circle broke up. A hand reached
down. It patted Andres on the head. ‘Courage, lad.’
‘Good luck to you then, Juan Larreta’s son. ’
‘I once worked down the mines. Larreta gave us a free
concert when the bosses locked us out. ’
A bottle of wine was thrust to Andres’ mouth. He tried to
shake his head. I’m already drunk almost to death. Yet he
took a sip so as not to offend. ‘Gracias.’
‘You’re welcome. Keep it—keep it.’
The stallholders would not leave till they had shaken the
hand of Juan Larreta’s son. Then they dispersed to their
stalls as the trickle of early customers became a pressing
crowd.
Francisco’s hands were under Andres, propping him up.
‘We’re going to be busy, son. You sit in the cab and rest.
Okay?’
Andres obeyed. In the cab he pulled up his knees and lay
crouched on the bench seat. He covered his head with his

125
good hand to prevent the sun boring a hole through his
skull. Here’s the shadow. Here’s the cave mouth. Here’s
where the printing press is buried. Only you know where it
is, son of Larreta. Only you will make the printing press
speak. You and Isa together. And Beto.
‘Papa! Papa!’ Again it was Rosa who wrested Andres
from the creeping talons of the undertakers. ‘Papa—there
are puppets! Please, please let me go and see them . . .
There’s a silly skeleton. And its head keeps flying up and
knocking the man under the chin. Please, Papa!’
Andres stirred. Puppets?
‘Isa. . .’
He tumbled on to his bad arm. The agony cracked open
his eyes. They beamed with hope, with joy. It’s got to be.
Isa! He pressed his head out of the cab window.
‘Francisco—Francisco, por favor!’
‘Rest, my young friend.’
‘No, no—the puppets . . . Los Gemelos—my friends!’
‘It’s risky to move—dangerous.’
‘It’s my chance. Let Rosa take me..Please!’
‘You’re in no fit state—’
Andres was quivering wjth life. ‘I could jump over El
Plomo on one leg. Let me!’
Francisco pulled open the van door. He extended an arm
round Andres’ waist. ‘El Plomo can wait till we get your
feet facing in the same direction. Lean on me.’
The shadow had retreated, yet the world swam and
circled. This was sea-sickness and flu rolled into one. There
was more wine at his lips. He gulped at it. The ground
beneath him rocked.
‘Get your balance, son.’ Francisco released his grip.
Andres swayed, but he did not reach out for support. ‘Not
bad . . . Rosa, take him!’
A small, eager star of flesh slipped into his palm, grasping
him with fierce strength. ‘Ready, Andres.’
‘Slowly, child, take him slowly—steady!’

126
 ‘Ofcourse, Papa.’
‘Bless you, Francisco. And all my thanks!’
‘God go with you, son ofjuan Larreta!’
How am I doing this? How am I walking the tightrope
between the housetops? Mustn’t look down. One foot at a
time. Makes sense. One foot in front of the other.
But this pain . . .
It burns. It beats. It throbs. I am cold yet I am sweating.
My head’s like a shower. I can’t see. The light is a shadow. It
is a truncheon. My shoulder is screaming. My ribs are
falling down my inside. All of me is collapsing. Like
Horacio’s concertina.
Rosa saved him a dozen times from pitching headlong
between the market stalls. She was a prop of steel. Without
her, the whole mine would come down in thunder. She was
in him, part of him, a substitute for his ribs. He followed her
movements, her pauses, her acceleration, her turning side¬
ways.
They had walked through a red mist of shadows into the
strangest, the wildest of sounds: into a chorus of laughter.
In Santiago, where hundreds had been shot, thousands
arrested, where the cries of the tortured fell on deaf ears in
the showers of the city stadium, in cellars below Londres
Street, on the top floor of the Military Academy, in the
prison ships off Valparaiso—laughter? Have people gone
mad?
‘There, Andres! It’s a hungry ostrich now. He’s pecking a
lady’s nose.’ The laughter was that of adults as well as
children. It swelled, and through it pranced the tune of the
quena played by a girl, dark and tall and fresh as the
morning, in a white blouse and an embroidered skirt of
vertical red and black stripes.
Andres could see nothing, but he heard. You ve made it.
You beat them. You got back. To those you love. Yes,
love.
Compaheros!

127
 The voice of Beto rose in mock protest at the antics of
Orlando the Ostrich. ‘Now you give the senora her nose
back this minute! Come on, come on, you villain, spit it
out!’
Laughter, rocking; heads bobbing.
‘Oops, it’s disappeared. Where’s that sniffling old nose
got to? Can’t do without a nose, eh, Senora? Whatever
would you have to wipe your handkerchief on?’
‘Rosa?’ The half-blind man sensed the fading of light, the
weakening of shapes. ‘I think I’m . . .’ Andres was reeling.
She held him. ‘Please—is there a van? Where the puppets
. . .?’ He staggered and he shook. The trembling had come
upon him. In his knees, down his spine, at the junction of
his throat and head.
‘Yes, there’s a van. You want—’
‘Please.’
There was a surge of fresh laughter as Orlando attacked
the senora’s ear, pecking and sucking. ‘Beau-oo-tiful ear!
Sweeter than Yankee pears on the General’s table.’
‘Dump me at the van, Rosa.’
Beto’s nerve at mentioning General Zuckerman, un¬
elected president of Chile, earned him a clatter of ap¬
plause.
One risk fired another. A voice in the crowd yelled, ‘It’s
the Yankees who pay for His Excellency’s earrings too—
but they make him wear them through his nose!’
A great cheer greeted these sentiments.
We don t want their guns—and we don’t want their
bloody tinned pears either!’
Beto hesitated. He glanced at his sister. They were stir¬
ring up rebellion. Already there might be someone in the
crowd carrying his words of insult to the Security; and yet
he was amazed to see the puppet now brought from the van.
‘Not Zuckero!’
^ ‘Yes—Zuckero!’ Isa asserted. Proud as a peacock, the
General strutted into the sunlight, medals gleaming.

128
moustache fluffed and groomed, helmet polished and
plumed.
In his right hand Zuckero wielded a toy sabre with a flag
of Chile attached to the point.
Brother and sister had argued at length—and heatedly—
over whether they should even bring General Zuckero to
market. ‘Being reckless won’t help Andres,’ Beto had
cautioned.
‘We have to fight, Beto. In whatever ways we can.
Otherwise, aren’t we accepting? Aren’t we being collabor¬
ators?’
‘I don’t want to go to prison.’
Isa had smiled, stubborn. ‘We’ll keep the engine run-
ning.’
The crowd responded to the appearance of Zuckero with
gasps of delight, and with laughter when he raised a hand to
salute and knocked off his helmet flowing with llama wool
dyed purple.
‘Shame on you, General.’ Immediately Isa replaced the
helmet with a military peaked cap which fell straight over
Zuckero’s eyes.
‘Arrest this cap at once,’ screeched the General in a
nerve-jangling voice, while Isa’s lips hardly moved a frac¬
tion. ‘Put it in irons. It is a traitor to the Republic.’
The crowd roared and cheered and clapped. Deeply
anxious, Beto scanned their faces: was there a spy among
them?
‘So what’s new, you old blood-sucker?’ challenged the
wag in the audience. ‘How many widows and orphans have
you made today?’
The General swung his sword so wildly in the air that he
got the blade caught in his medals. ‘Damned impertinence!
One day the nation will thank me for thinning out the
population. What’s more, I alone have rescued Chile from a
fate worse than death.’
The crowd jeered and cat-called.

129
 ‘From Democracy, you mean,’ called the wag.
‘Exactly! From reds and poets and queers and meddling
priests and human rights. From long hair, from untidiness,
from litter-bugs, especially those who print nasty leaflets
and stick them over my Proclamations . . .’
‘Friends,’ cried the wag, turning to the crowd. ‘I sus¬
pected it all along, our beloved General is none other than
Father Christmas himself!’
Isa laughed with the rest. She made the General nod his
head in warm assent. ‘If only this ungrateful nation would
realise it, my friend. In future, thanks to compassionate Me,
every single day will be like Christmas Day.’
‘Then tell us, Mighty General, what you’ll be putting in
their Christmas stockings at the House of Laughter?’
The crowd was suddenly hushed, expectant, a little
fearful.
‘Lost for words, are you, General?’ The crowd waited. A
wreath of prickly silence encircled it, cutting it off from the
hum of the market.
‘I think that’s enough, Isa, ’ whispered Beto. ‘Time to go. ’
Isa was remembering their mother and father—dis¬
appeared. She was remembering other relatives and
friends—disappeared. She was remembering Andres.
This was for him. ‘In their Christmas stockings, Senor?
Why, we put the finest electricity!’ There were those in the
crowd who looked about them anxiously. This talk was
exhilarating. It was bold. It was welcome. But it was also
treason. Yet Isa persisted. ‘And we put it through their toes
as well!’
Andres had touched Rosa’s shoulder. ‘Now Rosa.’ Her
hand took his. She guided him. Skirting the crowd, to¬
wards the van, towards the open doors. He could hear the
voices continue, but he could no longer take in their mean¬
ing. His head was a boulder on his neck.
‘Here, Andres.’ There was a space, a dark hole to burrow
in—to die in? He sensed Rosa’s lips against his cheek. He

HO
leaned forward, she steadying him, in among the solemn
vigil of puppets, staring through and past him.
I’m back, friends . . . Need restringing.
Rosa lowered him, climbing into the rear of the van with
him, resting on her knees as she edged him inwards,
pushing an old rug under him, tidying him, finding a roll of
blanket and covering him with it.
After making a pillow for him, Rosa kissed Andres again.
‘Our Tonio was nice like you.’ She scrambled out into a
wall of sunlight.
‘A million thanks, Rosa.’
She closed the van doors. She turned the handle.
General Zuckero had put the crowd into a fighting spirit.
It was as though they had forgotten—or chose to forget—
that he was a puppet. He was submitted to a hail of
questions and comments, about loved ones arrested, about
reports of bodies found along the Maipo, about the murder
of the Silver Lion, about the executions in the stadium of
Santiago.
Did the CNI kill Miguel Alberti, with the aid of the
American CIA? Why have you shut down the universities,
the hospitals for the poor, the free playschools—why?
Where is my son? Where is my husband? Where is my
father?
In numbers, the crowd discovered strength, yet several
voices gave the signal of alarm. ‘Watch out police!
‘You’d better scram now, Gemelos,’ urged the General’s
sparring partner. ‘Or they’ll have your insides!’
Two policemen were elbowing and palming a way
through the market crush. Their revolvers were drawn. A
woman protested as the police knocked over trays of brown
eggs. She shook her fist. She was ignored.
Beto and Isa bundled the puppets behind the van seats,
crumpled, strings tangled—but they had only seconds to
survive.
The police were shouting, though not yet sure who their
target was. The crowd, having savoured the pleasure and
the release of protest, did not obediently disperse. They had
been impressed at Isa’s courage in mocking General Zuck-
erman and his Junta, and aroused to indignation.
Instead of opening a path for the advancing police, the
crowd knitted together. Isa’s ally, who’d risked his own
neck with his provocative comments, decided to start up
the next entertainment: he invented a sudden attack of
screaming appendicitis. His arms shot out, his legs sent him
sprawling.
‘Doctor, doctor! Fetch a doctor!’
‘Doctor! Doctor!’ went up the cry. Everyone wanted to
help. The police were impeded, but not rejected. ‘Help,
Officer—that man’s had an attack.’
‘He’s an epileptic!’
‘Just keeled over!’
‘Let us through!’ commanded the police.
Yet it was the crowd which was in command. ‘Over
here, Officer. He’s passed out. ’ The police werejammed in,
thrust towards the groaning man. Imprisoned around him.
‘Give him the kiss of life, Officer!’
Beto was at the wheel of the van. There was a cordon of
people between him and the police. Ahead, there was space,
magically presented to him by sympathetic storeholders.
‘Here goes!’ The engine coughed into life. He shoved the
gearstick into first.
He glanced through the rear mirror—and saw one face, of
a child waving. Her eyes were sad. She called something,
faint, undiscernible.
‘You, Sis, have gone crazy!’ He accelerated, slowed,
turned. But am I proud of you!’ The market crowd had
closed behind them. ‘And they make me proud too—they
saved us.’
Isa nodded, her face tense, flushed. She pressed her
fingers together into a double-fist. ‘That showed, Beto—
people can fight back!’

132
 ‘How Zuckero stirred them up!’ Beto gave the van’s
dashboard a hearty slap. ‘We did it—two little worms, two
little mice!’
‘If only Andres could have shared this with us.’
‘He’d write a song about us—how we lifted our eyes up
from the ground . . . Sanjose, then?’
On the western edge of the city Beto was flagged down
into a queue of traffic waiting for inspection. He was feeling
cheerful. ‘Well for once we’ve nothing to hide.’
Two soldiers of the Black Berets approached, one to each
side door. ‘Where’re you heading, beautiful?’
Beto answered, ‘Sanjose, we’re—’
‘Not you, duck-face. I was talking to the lady.’
Isa did her best to smile. ‘Duck-face is right. We’re going
to Sanjose. ’
‘We could provide you with better entertainment right
here in Santiago, gorgeous.’
Isa did not answer. She stared in front of her. The soldier
also stared, challengingly. ‘Too good for common soldiers,
are you, princess?’
She turned and her eyes were mild, almost pitying.
‘Nobody’s too good for anybody, Officer.’
‘I’m not an officer, just—’
‘And I’m not a princess, so let’s respect each other as
ordinary human beings. ’
The second Black Beret guffawed and banged his gun
butt against the cab door. ‘You tell that to our commander,.
Senorita. He treats us like a bunch of niggers off the slave
ships. ’
The first soldier did not smile, did not soften. ‘Purpose of
journey to Sanjose?’
‘A children’s show—puppets.’
‘No cabaret?’ winked the second soldier. ‘No strip-show
for the over-eights?’
‘Just puppets—an ostrich, a dancing skeleton . . .’
‘Any passengers in the back?’

133
 Beto shook his head, nonchalantly. ‘Not at the last count,
Officer.’
There was a long queue of traffic building up behind the
van. The second Black Beret was for letting Beto and Isa
pass on. The first soldier, however, remained sour and
suspicious.
‘We’ll see. ’ He strolled to the rear of the van. ‘ Y ou should
take better care of your equipment, Mr Puppeteer.’ He
wrenched at the door handle. ‘Costumes half hanging out.’
Isa’s knee, sharp against her brother’s, reminded him it
was polite when Black Berets were trying to be helpful to
leap down, stand at attention and be grateful.
A length of curtaining had spilled over the number plate.
Beto shrugged, still utterly calm. ‘Puppets are practically
human ... if they don’t get the applause they think they
deserve, they go into tantrums and kick things all over the
place.’
The soldier bundled the curtaining back into the van. He
was about to take a look inside when he saw Isa beside Beto.
He gazed up from her slender brown legs to her high-
templed face: truly an Inca princess.
The traffic was waiting.
He shut the van doors. He followed Isa to the cab. He
watched her alight. He closed the cab door after her, almost
bewitched. ‘If you’re not too good for a common soldier,
Senorita, maybe you’d spare him just one smile.’
Isa obliged—and for a split second the air around her
seemed to glow.
‘Okay,’ relented the soldier, his eyes never leaving Isa’s.
He slapped the cab door. ‘Vamoos!’

After the exhilaration of escape—shock, at realising how

close they had been to arrest; how close to a violent end to
the life they had known. They drove in silence, trembling a
little, and cold.
‘What an idiot—what a duck-face I was to crack that

134
joke,’ confessed Beto eventually. ‘“Not at the last count.”
They could have shot me for cheek.’
‘True, Beto. But I loved you for it!’
Beto’s tension exploded into a laugh. ‘And then I go
babbling about puppets having tantrums!’
Isa laughed with him. ‘Kicking curtains all over the
place!’
Beto roared. ‘And he actually seemed to believe me!’
They left the city behind. The road rose and wound
above the river between cultivated fields, orchards and
plantations. With each kilometre from the city, the air grew
fresher, the light somehow brighter, the colours sharper.
‘You know where we’re getting near, Isa?’
‘We’ll stop, I think. ’
‘If that’s what you want. ’
It was only seven days since the twins first encountered
their friend Andres here on the San Jose road, though it
seemed to be a century ago. They passed the spot, far below
at the river’s edge, wherejuan Larreta’s Chevy was lapped
by the Maipo.
‘For old time’s sake,’ Beto decided, ‘we’ll have our lunch
where we first broke bread with Towny.’ He pulled in
towards the red shoulders of a tall, open-faced quarry.
Isa sighed. She got down. ‘It’s not real anymore.
Nothing’s real. ’
Beto was gentle, lovingly tender. ‘Go sit down, Sis. I’ll
bring the things.’ He watched her through the frame of the
open door. She walked up the slope to the quarry edge
where she could see over the valley. She sat down. She
stared out sadly, and then rested her head on her arm.
They had fought a good fight, Beto concluded, but
nothing had been changed: Andres was gone. There would
be no more like him.
‘Poor Isa!’
A gust of fresh mountain air had done a cat-spring into
the. rear of the van. It bustled about the head of Andres

135
Larreta, bearing scents of the earth which acted on the
wounded puppet like smelling salts.
He was not quite gone: in fact he was conscious.
From the rocks of swollen flesh which imprisoned his
eyes, he spied a fraction of the world. It was light. It was
blue. It was living.
He stirred. ‘Anybody . . . anybody at home?’
It was a whisper, but it acted upon Beto like a hand-
grenade in his ear. His jaw dropped open. His neck went
stiff, then loose. He turned clumsily, as though the shock of
hearing Andres’ voice had reduced his mind and body to
slow-motion. He wheeled, colliding with the open cab
door.
He stared. Through the cab into the rear. Still wide open,
his mouth emitted a soundless cry. He grasped the door. He
broke through the slow-motion barrier by catapulating
himself forward, around the van, tearing at the handle.
‘Curtains! No wonder the curtains . . .’
He flung open the van doors. He stumbled forward, on
his knees, reaching for the puppet that was almost human,
for the puppet whose tantrum so nearly spoilt one of the
rarest miracles in all Chile—an Appearance.
Beto grasped the wounded puppet. He discovered its
pain, and changed a bear hug to the touch of a butterfly. ‘Oh
my God, Towny—what’ve they done to you?’
‘Isa? Where’s Isa?’
‘Steady. Grab my wrist. Good. Marvellous. You’re
breathing!’
‘Through a straw . . .’
‘Lean on me.’
‘Isa?’
‘Don’t fret. She’s waiting.’
‘I think I’ll last.’
‘You’d better!’
On his feet, but all his strength was Beto’s.
‘Can you walk, Andres?’

Ob
 ‘Try me. ’
There were tears in Beto’s eyes. They had made it—yes,
all three of them. They were together again. ‘We’ll patch
you up, Towny. Isa knows how.’He kept shaking his head.
‘This I can’t believe . . .’ They hobbled. The roar of the
Maipo drowned their footsteps.
‘This’ll do, Andres.’ He was sobbing, and somehow
smiling. The two friends paused, a few paces behind Isa.
Her back was turned. Her head on her knees. The unifying
flow of the Maipo seemed to pass like a current of electricity
between them all.
Isa raised her head. She stared out, listening as much with
her eyes as her ears. She stood up, slowly, not yet turning.
Andres’ own tears flopped over his lids, though his face
bore a grin as wide as the Maipo.
Beto wanted to cry out with joy. Instead, he let Andres’
be the first voice; let him announce his homecoming.
‘I think I made it, Isa!’

137
 EPILOGUE

In the stadium of Santiago a massive crowd awaits the

arrival of the teams in the opening match of the Two
Hemispheres Trophy competition. They have been treated
to a march of military, naval and airforce bands, and a'
colourful display by American-style majorettes.
Of the thousands of prisoners once kept here, there is no
sign; no indication that on these terraces the army murdered
prisoners in hundreds, shot them, clubbed them to death;
no clue that beneath the stadium, in changing rooms ren¬
dered spick and span for teams of many nations, men and
women suffered torture, that new arrivals were forced
along these corridors under the bombardment of rifle butts.
No sign, no evidence.
It seems that none of it actually happened, just as the
atrocities committed after the assassination of President
Allende in 1973 did not happen. The stories spread by the
enemies of the Junta were lies, calumnies, invented to
discredit honourable men.
The tiles in the showers are spotless; there is no blood in
the gutters. No skulls were broken here.
Whatever they tell you, is lies.
There is a rapturous welcome for the home team, Chile,
and also for the visitors, England, as they trot out from
the entrance tunnel, flicking practice balls across the green
turf. It is a welcome similar to that which greeted Miguel
Alberti, the Silver Lion, philosopher and poet, candidate for
the presidency of Chile, who would have sent the generals
and the admirals and the airforce marshals back to their

138
barracks if he had been elected; but who was felled by secret
command of thejunta when he was within hours of victory.
The national anthems are played. The teams are inspected
by the Vice-President of the Republic, the chief of the
Chilean navy, accompanied by the British Ambassador, a
close friend of the Zuckerman family.
No sign, no evidence. The memory is erased from here,
among banners and klaxons, of the thousands conveyed in
covered trucks to concentration camps throughout Chile,
to the deserts of the Big North, to islands in the cold south,
to Quiriquina, to Pisagua, to prisons from Arica to Magal-
lanes.
No sign, no evidence; no sign on the British Ambassa¬
dor’s face of the distasteful task ahead of him in the next few
days when he would be obliged to enquire—yet again—
about Mr William Beausire, a British-born businessman,
one of the Disappeared, and of two English tourists gone
missing during the night Santiago was searched end to end
in the hunt for Hernando Salas.
The hands of thejunta are guiltless of blood. In the Box of
State, General Cesar Zuckerman, aglitter with medals,
sporting a moustache identical to that worn by a certain
puppet of a similar name, is surrounded by ministers—
every one of them in uniform, every one resplendent in
medals and gold braid.
The General is relaxed. He leads the applause. Order in
Chile has been restored: the right order; and all’s right with
the world. The sun glints on his medals.
Earlier today General Cesar had granted an interview to
the Archbishop of Santiago. He had assured the Archbishop
that Security knew nothing of the priest, Father Mariano.
Allegations that he had died at the hands of the torturer were
a slander against the State.
The Archbishop was dismissed from the General’s pres¬
ence with a sharp rebuke: ‘It is not acceptable to me,
Archbishop, to be told that your priests take it upon them-

139
selves to be critics of the government. Church and State
must be as one against the common enemy. My advice to
them—and to you—is to preach a little less about human
rights, and a little more about public duty. ’
The white and scarlet ball is on the centre-spot. The
captains have tossed a coin. The referee blows his whistle—
a whistle very like the one used by the commandant of the
prisoners, only the rules of the game were different.
‘Your Excellency?’ As the match gets under way, and
England mount an attack that forces a corner, the Director
of the State information Services has hurried down the steps
of the State Box. ‘A matter of extreme urgency, Senor
Presidente.’
‘Later, later,’ snaps the President, waving aside the
leather document case which is thrust under his nose.
The Director of Information persists. ‘Do not take my
word for it, Your Excellency—simply look!’ He opens the
document case. It contains this morning’s edition of the
Baltimore Express & Times.
The front page story is written by Jack Normanton,
recently expelled from Chile; and the front page picture,
spanning five columns, is of Miguel Alberti at the moment
of his assassination.

When the home team go one down to a scrambled England

goal just before half-time, the President of Chile is not there
to mourn it; nor are his ministers.
The State Box is deserted, except for the British Ambas¬
sador, clapping politely. The members of the Junta of the
Republic of Chile have more pressing matters to discuss
than football.
And at half-time, the crowd discovers there is something
else to read than the match programme: hundreds and
hundreds of leaflets are being passed from hand to hand.
They too carry the tragic picture of the Silver Lion being
gunned down by an agent of the CNI; they carry Don

140
Chailey’s testimony, his eye-witness account of the killing.
Among those distributing the leaflets—printed on a
pirate press dug up like treasure from a secret cave—are
twins, one a girl in a green panama, accompanied by a youth
with his arm in a sling.
All over Santiago, all over Chile, the leaflets are finding a
welcome—from under the counter at newspaper kiosks,
discreetly across cafe tables, furtively in dark recesses of
churches; and tomorrow they will be passed around in
factories, in the shipyards, down the copper mines.
Soon they will be as thick as salt flies over the warm
springs of the High Plateau.
The match will continue. No Chilean would exchange a
top-class game of football for a rebellion. And the traffic
will still flow. The shops will go on being full, and the
restaurants packed with pleasure-seekers.
But for those who resist, there will be a beginning. Once,
Andres Larreta had loved football. Up there in the east stand
are four empty seats which should have been filled by his
father Juan, himself and his friends Braulio and Horacio. He
had dreamt of seeing this great match.
The times, though, are no longer ripe for dreams. Andres
bears the scars of torture. His face is straight. It is neither
hard nor soft. It is the face of his age.
There is fighting to do . . .
It is no good waiting for others. There must be an end to
whispering. And now. Andres surveys the crowd. He is
watching for Isa—whom he loves. He smiles as he sees
her green panama bobbing above the sea-ripple of the
crowd.
Together.
And Beto. And Diego. All of us.
Yes, fighting to do.
And hearts to be won!
Chile have equalised. Andres cheers with his country¬
men. And he cheers for them. Out of the corner of his eye,
he sees the soldiers within the perimeter fence of the sta¬
dium. They are trying to destroy the leaflets.
There are tears in Andres’ eyes, for his lost father; but
they are not tears only of despair.

142
Talking in Whispers
James Watson

Sixteen-year-old Andres becomes a wanted

man and the target of Chilean security forces
after the driver of a car in which he is
travelling is shot and his father is taken
away. Then Andres meets an American
journalist who provides him with evidence of
a terrible miscarriage of justice, evidence
that will be "more valuable than bullets"