By Night in Chile

require the physical proximity of other writers. Jimmy loved his wife. María Canales loved her darling gringo. They had a pair of beautiful sons. Little Sebastián did not love his parents. But they were his parents! In her own dark way, the Mapuche maid loved María Canales and probably Jimmy as well. The men who worked for Jimmy didn’t love him, but they probably had wives and children whom they loved in their own dark way. I asked myself the following question: If María Canales knew what her husband was doing in the basement, why did she invite guests to her house? The answer was simple: Because, normally, when she had a soirée, the basement was unoccupied. I asked myself the following question: Why then, on that particular night, did a guest who lost his way find that poor man? The answer was simple: Because, with time, vigilance tends to relax, because all horrors are dulled by routine. I asked myself the following question: Why didn’t anyone say anything at the time? The answer was simple: Because they were afraid. I was not afraid. I would have been able to speak out, but I didn’t see anything, I didn’t know until it was too late. Why go stirring up things that have gradually settled down over the years? Later on Jimmy was arrested in the United States. He confessed. His confession implicated several Chilean generals. They took him out of jail and put him in a special witness protection program. As if the Chilean generals were mafia bosses! As if the Chilean generals had tentacles that could reach all the way to small towns in the American midwest to silence embarrassing witnesses! María Canales was all on her own. All her former friends, all the people who used to look forward to her parties cut her dead. One afternoon I went to see her. The curfew was a thing of the past, and it felt odd to be driving along those avenues on the outskirts, which were gradually changing. The house was no longer the same: all its former splendor, that untouchable, nocturnal splendor, had vanished. Now it was just an oversize house, with a neglected garden, completely overrun by towering weeds that had scaled the railings of the fence, as if to prevent the casual passerby from catching a glimpse of what was inside that building marked out for
    opprobrium. I parked beside the gate and stood outside for a while looking in.
    The windows were dirty and the curtains were drawn. A child’s red bicycle was lying on the ground beside the steps up to the porch. I rang the bell. After a little while, the door opened. María Canales half opened the door and asked what I wanted. I said I wanted to talk with her. She hadn’t recognized me. Are you a journalist? she asked. I’m Father Ibacache, I said. Sebastián Urrutia Lacroix.
    For a few moments she seemed to be traveling back through time, then she smiled and stepped out, walked across the front garden to the gate and opened it.
    You’re the last person I expected to see, she said. Her smile was not so
    different from the smile I remembered. It’s so long ago, she said, as if reading my mind, but it feels like yesterday. We went into the house. There was not as much furniture as before, and the rooms, which I remembered as luminous, were now in a state of decrepitude comparable to that of the garden and seemed to be filled with a reddish dust, caught in a time warp where sad, remote,
    incomprehensible scenes were played over and over. My chair, the chair in which I used to sit, was still there. María Canales noticed me looking at it. Sit down, Father, she said, make yourself at home. I sat down without a word. Then I asked about her children. She told me they were spending a few days with some relatives. And they’re well? I asked. Very well. Sebastián has shot up, if you saw him now you wouldn’t recognize him. I asked about her husband. In the United States, she said. He lives in the United States now, she said. And how is he? I asked. Fine, I guess. With a movement that suggested weariness and disgust blended in equal parts, she drew up a chair, sat down and looked out through the dirty windows at the garden. She was rather fatter than before. And not as well dressed. I asked how she was, what she was doing. Don’t you read the papers? she said, and then let out a vulgar snorting laugh, in which I detected a note of defiance that made me shudder. Her friends were gone, her money was gone, her husband had forgotten her and the children, nobody wanted to know her