The Fugitivities, стр. 80

again to marvel at its size. I shouted a little to hear the echoes. Then I noticed something by my feet. Along the bottom of the hold there were locking gears and grappling hooks for securing cargo to the floor. Tangled in one of the hooks was a large clump of hair. I could tell right away that it was a woman’s, by the length, by its luster and curl. I’m a painter. I’ve always been a close observer of these things. I could tell it was the hair of a young brunette. And as I kept walking, looking closely, I found more clumps of hair caught in the riggings. Hair of different colors, some men and some more clearly women. That’s when I knew. I mean, I knew before then. But that’s when I knew for sure. An officer appeared on the ramp; he must have heard me shouting. He asked me what I was doing. I told him I was just getting my sunglasses and I quickly made some joke and we walked back across the tarmac together laughing. No one ever asked me any questions. Not until years later.”

“What did you say when people did finally ask?”

“Some reporter found me in 1991. He came looking for names. He wanted to know about what he called ‘the death flights.’ I wasn’t concerned. The president pardoned everyone. I was untouchable. But that’s not the reason I kept my trap shut. The reporter offered me money in exchange for names, good money too. But those people don’t get it. They don’t understand there’s no price you can put on loyalty. I’m not a mercenary. I can’t be bought. I faced the reality of my time and I chose sides. And they were believers too. We were all wolves. Was it bad? Yes. They were alive when we dropped them. Drugged but alive. Our will was stronger. We had the virility of youth. We had the great forces of order, the state and the church, and the military on our side. The nation was imperiled. We had to clean our house…We had to reorganize…We had the will and it was a time of wolves when anything was possible and we were young and history was on our side and every sensation every action was vivid and extreme…”

The artist trailed off and there was an interminable silence. Jonah thought he heard the crack of a door slamming shut somewhere in the courtyard, but it could have been a branch snapping from a tree or a heavy book landing on a tile floor. The jolt should have prompted him to get up, but his muscles locked. The old man stared serenely across the darkness, his quivering lips parted ambiguously, expectantly, faintly amused.

What Salvador said of him was true. Jonah had never felt touched by the chill of evil. Atrocity and human suffering were spectacles that befell others. They came to him as breaking news, they bothered him, troubled his nerves for a time, but did not even come close to bringing him to the point of naming or even acknowledging anything like a willful, metaphysical malice that might at any moment take the form of a human face committed to irreversible destruction. He had never had a cousin gunned down, lost his family to a local warlord’s political ambitions, a passionate campaign of slaughter, a posse of racists on the hunt, or a man so broken he would put you in the dirt for four hundred dollars, for bragging rights, to defend his wounded honor. Yet these were the most obvious features of life for most people everywhere. Far more obvious than whatever enemy he conjured for himself when he invoked the specter of “late capitalism,” which was the nearest phrase to which he could affix the largest share of blame for the ills of the world while dimly perceiving that it also assured his own procession through it. The wheel of fortune had spared him from having to do truly ugly things. Many ugly things were done on his behalf. And many had also been endured. His body the gift of colossal, unending histories of violence. Salvador knew this, and he reached through the darkness to take Jonah by the hand and show him.

Before he knew it, Jonah was bounding down the stone stairs and making his way back across the courtyard and into the house. Laura was singing to herself, and he followed her voice to the kitchen where she was preparing dinner. As he entered the singing stopped. She could read on his face the end of a line of thought.

“You’re not staying.”

“No, I’m sorry, I have to go.”

She did not appear wounded, but moved into a suspended pause of judgment, a stay against a blow.

“I should have…I should let you out then.”

“Laura, I have to leave tomorrow. Could I see you once more before I go? Tomorrow morning. Please. It’s very important.”

“What for?”

“I have something. Something important to give you. I don’t have it here with me. If you can meet me tomorrow morning at the Basques’, I can leave it with you. And also, I want to get a chance to properly say goodbye.”

“You could say it now. You are saying it now.”

“I know, I’m sorry to be like this. I’m confused, really, I’m afraid…”

“You’re afraid. Well, I’m glad you could at least say it. Go on, then, I have things to finish up here. I’ll show you out.”

She walked him back out to the front and for a moment stood regarding him out on the street.

“Will you promise me to come tomorrow, at nine o’clock?” he asked.

“You don’t have to worry about it.”

“So, you’ll come?”

“I always come for the men who deserve it.”

She had no more words for him, and he found himself drifting down the foreign streets alone, one cigarette after another lighting the way to his relative shelter.

When he got back to his room at El Vasco, he couldn’t