By Night in Chile

and vanished. When I was putting sugar in my tea I saw my face reflected in the surface of the liquid. Who would have thought you’d come to this, Sebastián? I said to myself. I felt like flinging the cup at one of those immaculate walls, I felt like sitting down with the cup between my knees and crying, I felt like shrinking until I could dive into the warm infusion and swim to the bottom, where the sugar crystals lay like big chunks of diamond. But I remained hieratic and expressionless. I put on a bored look. I stirred my tea and tasted it. It was good. Good tea. Good for the nerves. Then I heard steps in the corridor, not the corridor by which I had arrived, but another one, leading to a door right in front of me. The door opened and in came the aides-de-camp or adjutants, all of them in uniform, then a group of batmen or young officers, and then the Junta in full made its entrance. I got to my feet. From the corner of my eye I could see myself reflected in a mirror. The uniforms shimmered a moment like shiny cardboard cutouts, then like a restless forest. My black,
    loose-fitting cassock seemed to absorb the whole spectrum of colors in an instant. That first night we talked about Marx and Engels. How they came to work together. Then we looked at the
Manifesto of the Communist Party
and the
Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League
. For background reading I gave them the
Manifesto
and
Basic Elements of Historical Materialism
, by our compatriot Marta Harnecker. In the
    second class, a week later, we discussed
The Class Struggles in France: 1848–1850
and
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
, and Admiral Merino asked if I was personally acquainted with Marta Harnecker, and if so, what I thought of her. I said I didn’t know her personally, I explained that she was a disciple of Althusser (he didn’t know who Althusser was, so I told him), and had studied in France, like many Chileans. Is she good-looking? I believe she is, I said. In the third class we returned to the
    Manifesto
. According to General Leigh it was an unadulterated urtext.
    He didn’t elaborate. At first I thought he was making fun of me, but it soon became clear that he was serious. I’ll have to think about that later, I said to myself. General Pinochet seemed to be very tired. This was the first class to which he had come in uniform. He spent it slumped in an armchair, jotting down the odd note, not once removing his dark glasses. I think he fell asleep for a few minutes, still firmly gripping his propelling pencil. Of the Junta, only General Pinochet and General Mendoza were present at the fourth class. Seeing me hesitate, General Pinochet gave the order to proceed as if the others were there as well, and, in a symbolic way, they were, since among those present I
    recognized a Navy captain and an Air Force general. I talked about
    Capital
(I had prepared a three-page summary) and
The Civil War in France
. General Mendoza didn’t ask a single question in the whole class, he just took notes. There were several copies of
Basic Elements of Historical Materialism
on the desk, and when the class was over General Pinochet told the others to take a copy away with them. He winked at me and shook my hand warmly before leaving. I never saw him in such a genial mood. In the fifth class I talked about
Wages, Price and Profit
and discussed the
Manifesto
again. After an hour General Mendoza was sleeping
    soundly. Don’t worry, said General Pinochet, come with me. I followed him to a large window, which looked out over the gardens behind the house. A full moon illuminated the smooth surface of a swimming pool. He opened the window. Behind us I could hear the muffled voices of the generals talking about Marta
    Harnecker. A delicious perfume given off by clumps of flowers was wafting all through the gardens. A bird called out and straightaway, from somewhere within the walls or from an adjoining property, a bird of the same species replied, then I heard a flapping of wings that seemed to rip through the night and then the deep silence returned, unscathed. Let’s take a walk, said the general. As if he were a magician, as soon as we stepped through the window frame and entered the enchanted gardens, lights came on, exquisitely scattered here and there among the plants. Then I talked about
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
, which Engels wrote on his own, and the General nodded at each stage of my