|
of a lesson. It would just take
one moment to say it. "There's something I want to ask you. I've noticed
that you never mention girls the way most men here do, and you never look
behind at a woman who passes on the street, and there's something I've
wanted to ask you, you may guess what it is ... Do you understand.
?Entendes?" And if he had said yes, perhaps I would not have wanted him as
much as I did in this twilight time when I taught him English and did not
know about him. Maybe I wanted whatever part of him was unavailable. Maybe
if he had understood I would have despised him. Maybe I am being too hard.
The generals were in power then, and nobody stayed out late, even
though the cafes and bars in the streets around us remained open, eerily
waiting for the lone customer who had missed his train to finish up and
go, or for time to pass, or for something to happen. But nothing happened.
Or, as we later learned, a great deal happened, but I never witnessed any
of it. It was as though the famous disappearances we hear so much about
now took place in a ghost city, a shadowy version of our own, and in the
small hours when no sounds were made or traces left. I knew—or thought
that I knew—no one in those years who disappeared, no one who was
detained, no one whowas threatened with detention. I knew no one at that
time who told me that they knew anyone who was a victim. And there are
others who have written about this and come to the conclusion that the
disappearances did not occur, or occurred on a lesser scale than we have
been led to believe. But that is not my conclusion.
My conclusion centers on the strange lack of contact we have with each
other here. It is not simply my problem, it is a crucial part of this
faraway place to which our ancestors—my mother's father, my father's
great-grandfather—came in search of vast tracts of land: we have never
trusted each other here, or
[<
<
6.
>
>]
|