Subversive maneuver

 

Subversive maneuver

Story

Source: Literary Magazine of the University of Guadalajara, Mexico

 

Fernando Ampuero

After having received a fierce beating and being left with bruised faces and multiple wounds and bruises on their skin, the three men entered the cell. Two of them looked very young—they were boys of barely twenty years old—and the third, who limped on his right leg, looked to have reached fifty. The dark and small room smelled strongly of urine and had no cots or benches. Shivering from the cold, in pain, the men sat on the floor. They sat together, as if to keep warm, and together also to reflect on the seriousness of their common situation, which left them with no hope.

 

They knew that the interrogations and beatings would soon resume. And that, for that very reason, their captors, in order to soften them up — "We're going to break them down, to destroy their morale," whispered an equally young man — had shown them electric prods and sharp surgical instruments. That was what was coming.

 

The three men, for security reasons, had not informed anyone of their whereabouts — the surroundings of a fortified barracks in the pampas — and no person, no peasant, no soul in pain, would be able to testify that they had been arrested, and even less that they had been found with incriminating evidence:

 

plans of the barracks and explosives. So what could happen to them was what had been happening all the time since the beginning of the conflict: disappear. Without traces, without any news.

At this prospect, the lame man shouted for the jailers.

 

Some men approached with annoyed expressions, and he told them that he wanted to speak privately with the lieutenant in charge.

 

They took him out of the cell and led him to a well-ventilated office.

 

"What do you mean?" asked the lieutenant.

 

"I'm going to talk," said the lame man. "But on two conditions: first, I ask that I be treated as a collaborator, and second, that my two companions be killed."

 

"I accept your collaboration," was the calm reply he heard. "However, I don't understand your other request... Do you want us to kill your people? Why?"

 

"They can't stay alive, because in prison or wherever else they end up, they'll accuse me: they'll say that I'm an informer."

 

"I understand," shook his head the lieutenant. "You don't want the truth to be known."

 

—The truth? I don’t know what the truth is. There are many truths. Each person has his own.

The lieutenant looked into the lame man's tired eyes and thought for a moment. Then he stretched out both arms, as if stretching. It was four in the morning.

 

"Done," he said. "We'll kill them," and ordering some armed soldiers to keep an eye on him, he added, "Wait here..."

 

The lieutenant left the office and ten minutes later two explosions were heard.

 

"They're already dead," he said shortly after.

 

"Dead? Dead?"

 

"Coup de grâce."

 

"I want to see their corpses."

 

The lieutenant looked him in the eyes again, but this time he concentrated on the depth of his dark circles and the small wrinkles around his eye sockets.

 

"Let's go to the yard," he said. And they all left in a group, the lieutenant in front and then the lame man, who walked flanked by the soldiers.

 

They arrived in time to see other boys in uniform loading the lifeless bodies onto a wheelbarrow, on their way to a mass grave or perhaps a hole in the ground.

 

The lame man stopped to look at them: both had bullet holes in their foreheads. With an imperturbable expression, he then turned to the lieutenant.

 

"I have to tell you one last thing," he said. "These comrades you have killed were my closest friends. One was my youngest son and the other my nephew. I asked you to kill them because they would not bear the pain and they could tell a lot. You will no longer have that opportunity... Now, lieutenant, I am the only one left, and I do not intend to speak. You can do with me what you want, but I assure you that I will not speak. <

With affection,

Ruben