the last prisoner

8/8/2019 The Last Prisoner

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The Last Prisoner

A novel

by Susan Beth Miller, PhD

"If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him."--Jean-Paul Sartre

"This man knows somethingabout healing. That the heartmust be torn open againin front of compassionate witnesses.That the accused must also step upand reveal themself.That no matter how high-pitchedthe shrieks, how barrenthe voice, everything must beheard, everything must beheld, in the same room."

--Ronna Bloom, "Truth and Reconciliation," from PERSONAL EFFECTS, PedlarPress, 2000.

A small train, an ancient rattling steaming thing, it barely held to a loopingmountain track. The mountain dwarfed the toyish train till it became inRodolfo's eyes a pink caterpillar inching over an elephant's hide. Rodolfosquinted, followed the movement, and felt throughout himself a sweatingterror that the creature would peel away from the mountain and curl intospace, a caterpillar shrugged free by a leviathan. Then the scene was

Ximena. The prisoner, Ajacopi, lay naked on the floor, his body a brownstain on gray cement. He lay stinking in his sweat and Rodolfo sat atop himmaking the little man bear his weight, Rodolfo's butt over Ajacopi's mouthstealing his breath, Rodolfo's hands pinching the Indian's manhood, all thewhile the heat of the day thief to his own breath.

Rodolfo woke rubbing his mouth across the orange sofa's back cushionhearing the rattle and bang of the front door flapping three meters from


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where he lay. "Oh, the wind," he thought--his mind itself the weakest puff ofair--and wiped the bloom of sweat from his forehead. The day was too hotfor any comfort. The heat must have confined him in his sleep and bulliedhim into that dream. His head pounded and his mouth was sour from a pasteof growing things that lay across his tongue. He sat and untucked his shirt

which was badly twisted and soaked with perspiration and tore it off, angrilyfreeing himself as if from a winding sheet.

The dream had him working his last full day at Ximena Prison. In reality, ayear had passed since that final week and a year plus three days had passedsince the date that lived in his memory as the one the President died,murdered by thugs, changing everything. He heard Berta's footfall acrossthe ceiling and cawed at her, "Where is my paper?" because he wanted tolook at the reports on the dog fights and the cocks. His father had checkedthe fights every day at the same hour until the day he passed. His fatherwas a man of great habits, Mateo his name. Mateo Hector was a man ofmilitary mind and he was Rodolfo's guide, his Southern Cross.

"Don't holler at me," the woman yelled back from above, hollering herself.

Her voice was sharp as if she were giving orders. That burned his ass, sinceup until one year before, giving orders was his job, and decent money camehis way for it, as well as the honor of keeping his country as God intended.The Indians liked to ask his people, How do you know what God intended?But he and his kind did know, they knew down to the marrow of their bonesand the Indians angered him with their insolent questions. When he went to

church--going at times alone because his wife and son were shallow-mindedand so they were restless sitting long hours in the pews--he prayed to bereminded and instructed about His order and not influenced or led astray bythe arrogant ideas the Indians broadcast.

Still she was yammering. "We are lucky still to have a newspaper," sheshouted down. Since the revolution, with everything turned on its head,every other sentence from her mouth was how they were lucky still to havethis thing or that, whether a stove to burn wood or a three-legged stool or asimple newspaper. He did not feel lucky, especially when he saw the Indians

greedy as infants as they snatched up everything, which was just what he'dpredicted would come to pass if they got the control they wanted. They werethe termites that gnaw apart a great tree, each one easy to swat or stomp,their strength in an army's numbers.

For him, that was a despicable image. He hated bugs and lived in a landoverrun with them. He'd heard places exist where a man can recline on abed of grass and nothing traipses over him but an ant or a spider no bigger


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than a thumbnail. But here, he needed to patrol the house nightly andflatten whatever insects he found. Now that his son, Daniel, was ten, he hadhim join in the campaign. The boy was squeamish still about crushing whathe found, so Rodolfo took that job, laughing at the boy's frailty. Once theyfound a tarantula big as the boy's hand.

Berta tromped down the stairs and tossed the paper onto the floor besidethe sofa, so he had to sit up and bend down to retrieve it.

"Thank you," he said. Only in his private thoughts did he say "female dog."

The headline was printed boldly today and read GOVERNMENT OFFERSAMNESTY. The large letters shouted, but he did not grasp their importance.Sleep and anger fogged his brain with a sense of confusion about what"government" this was. And what amnesty? Who was to be exonerated? Forwhat offense? His eye went to the column, to the article there. The new"government of the people"--that was what they called themselves, the sonsof bitches--was offering to review petitions for amnesty from all thoseofficials of the criminal government involved in "crimes against theindigenous people." All failing to come forward by October 10, sundown, willbe subject to prosecution to the full extent and power of the law and topenalties up to and including a sentence of death by hanging. Amnesty isoffered for the sole purpose of determining and publishing a truthful recordof events, which is essential to the healing and reconciliation of the nation.

A dense cloud can stop and stand atop a mountain peak. It holds its position

and gives passage neither to air nor light. His mind settled upon these lineslike such a mass. He knew there was good reason he should attend to thewords but he did not. Nothing moved within him until he turned to checkingthe competitions and saw that his dog and his fighting bird both were losersin yesterday's events. His favorite bird was a muscular brown-speckled cock,Razorclaws. How many times had he won with that bird? Piss on it, PISS ONIT. His mind exploded and he threw the paper onto the round, peg-leggeddining table and paced the room, then retrieved the pages and read againthe words detailing the amnesty requirements.

Mary, mother of Christ. He should not have to think about this. He should bea hero to his country and a guardian of its future, but instead he was one ofthose they dubbed criminal. He could not believe the struggle had turned sofar against him that they expected him with his own lips to betray his peopleby coming forward at the initiation of Indians, to an Indian tribunal. Whowere they to hold a goddamned tribunal? They act as if they are Romangenerals, great men of history, but they are the ones who kidnapped theyoung President and his wife--took them from their house, gagged and


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blindfolded, put them into the trunks of cars, then drove them up onto thealtiplano and slit their throats, letting them bleed to death.Only three days passed from that grizzly event to the fall of the government.His blood boiled sunrise to sunset through those three days. He was nothimself at that time. It was the wrong time for Estefan, his Captain, to

pressure him.

Estefan had called him into his office; it was a large room at the north end ofthe barrack, beyond the string of six tiny cells that the prisoners occupied. Asecond larger room at the opposite end of the barrack served forinterrogations. Rodolfo looked at the Captain's small square window wishingthe interrogation rooms where he spent his hours were open to the fieldsand sky like this, but only this room and the one at the other end of thestructure had the luxury of a window where a man could look out onto somecolor, maybe lift his head and see a hawk sitting on the wind. Two bottles ofNorth American whisky on the cabinet sparked his envy, but he consoledhimself with the thought that another year at the job and he, too, mightafford such indulgences.

"Look here," Estefan said and pointed to a vase on his government-issuemetal desk. "Look at these dahlias, from my own garden, Hector. Perfection,aren't they? Look at the scarlet color and the rolled silk of each petal. Look.Come, look." He made Rodolfo lean closer so that Estefan could convincehimself his detective was absorbing the full beauty of the scentless flowers."That's what you can do with a little horse shit and highlands sunlight. And agardener's heart of course." He prodded his chest with his thumb in self-

acclaim.

"Magnificent," Rodolfo said.

"Look at that color," Estefan murmured, then shook his head. "Words can'tdescribe it--the hue of the blood of kings." Then Estefan winced and Rodolfoassumed the Captain had heard his own words and thought of the blood oftheir President, shed three days before in that murderous attack.

Estefan lifted a hammered silver frame from his top desk drawer. "This is my

wife," he said of the plump woman with orbs of rouge decorating her darkcheeks and a bush of black hair springing from her scalp like an obscenity."Have I shown you before? My Sarita. She is a flower, too, the mostbeautiful of women, and a woman of culture as well."

A hundred times Rodolfo had seen that photo pulled from the drawer. Hekept his mouth shut.


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"I have a family a man can be proud of, Hector. I'm a man others envy--there's no reason to deny it. My beautiful wife, my home and gardens, myson who is a first rank soccer player. I am a luckier man than most, smiledupon by fortune."

"Yes," Rodolfo said, impatient to leave. "Who wouldn't envy you...your finewife, the garden so beautiful, dahlias such as these--like silk?"

"All right. Enough," Estefan said, turning all business and leaving Rodolfo towonder had he overstated his praise, giving it the ring of falsity, but no,these abrupt turns had always characterized the Captain's mentallocomotion.

"What is your report today? What have you gotten from the sons of bitchesthis bloody week that you didn't have last week?"Rodolfo rattled his throat. "Not as much as I had hoped for."

"We never get as much as we hope for," Estefan said, still buoyant. "We'dlike to open them like zippered pouches wouldn't we and dump their gutsonto the floor. That way we could sort through the innards like a maninspects for gold in his pan." He guffawed so hard he drooled and Rodolfopretended not to see. Rodolfo thought of the time a prisoner spat at him--hitting him right in the eye--and he flushed at the recollection. That man hadpaid; that man had been a fool.

The Captain said, "You have something for me don't you, from at least one

of them? You have something for your Captain, I presume, one shinynugget, one gem at least?"

"I have a few things of value, Sir." Rodolfo injected confidence into his voice."Cell D told us the north villagers have been using their young girls to setthe pit traps the soldiers fall into, which causes them to twist or break theirankles--twice the Indians caught a man still in the traps and stoned him todeath. The men dig the pits on and off during the work day and the girlscover them with vegetation when they go into the jungle evenings to collectfirewood. We had to push him hard, but he also told us they use an old trick

of sending information from town to town by way of strings knotted to tell astory. With the knotting, even the illiterates can get the message so thetechnique is crucial, it's important, I'm sure you can see that. Certainpatterns of knots have known meanings--often marking locations--and comeup again and again."

"They've been doing that since Inca times, Hector. There's nothing remotelynew in that or crucially important, as you like to say. What else do you


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have? What about the spying they've done on our post? Which village isdoing that?"He was tempted to lie and pretend to know, saying Santa Margarita or SantaRosita, but how long would the lie stand up? He had no way of knowing inthat moment how shortlived his entire operation would be. He shook his

head and kept his eyes subverted.

"Nothing? Shit. Nothing? I told you to pursue that."

"Nothing yet, Sir. D names one town today and a different one yesterdayand tomorrow, so we have difficulty knowing what is true and what isgarbage."

"Jesus Christ, Hector, you're supposed to know how to tell the difference.That's part of a technique you should know in your sleep. You're just abullshitter, aren't you? You don't have anything to say. You bring me thesame crap every damn report. And that crew you've put together, with thatodd bird, Rubn. What is he? A Jew? Or a homosexual I've heard some say."

"No, the knots..."

"The knots are nothing, they're bullshit, I told you. I need something new,something substantial I can put into my week's end report to justify thisdamn operation. The army spends money to keep this place going, Hector.Do you want to lose your job when they say we're not worth the upkeepbecause we do squat here? Do you think they're interested in giving charity,

in keeping your kids in shoes out of human kindness?"

"No."

"No one there is in a lenient mood since our Presidents death. If you can'tget the information, maybe we need someone else, someone with the ballsfor his occupation."

"I can do it, Sir," he said, torn between hurt and crackling anger.

"How much patience do you want from me? I've forgiven you enough foryour endless mistakes and accidents."

"I'll take care of things, Sir."

"Then go at it again with that Ajacopi," he said, rising from his seat."Breaking him would be worthwhile--there's information in that small head, Iknow it. Diamonds of information."


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The flip reference to his mistakes, his accidents, stung Rodolfo. He knewwhat was meant. The Captain was reminding him of the time he'd roped ahuge half-breed around the neck, just about hanging him but not to thepoint of breaking the neck because the man's toes reached the ground and

held him up a little. Rodolfo had decided to let him sweat in that position awhile so he'd gone out of the cell and told the pale woman,Lindy...Lindea..whatever the name, to leave the room, too--he wanted her inthe hall so she wouldn't be looking at the fatboy with pity eyes. She wentinto the hallway and Rodolfo went outside to have a smoke where a few ofthe day laborers were wolfing down their lunches. They offered him somechips and a beer and he sat with them all laughing it up like school kids. Heforgot about the big halfbreed inside, forgot altogether, intoxicated by thesun and the beer.

An hour or so passed and the others picked themselves up to get back totheir work and suddenly, Oh Jesus! it came to him how he'd left the guy. Ina blink, he was back to the cell, the woman sitting idly outside the door, andwhen he walked into the cell he knew it was no good. The guy wasn't deadexactly but might as well have been. He was unconscious and his color wasblack as an olive. The woman slipped in behind Rodolfo and he shouted ather, "You imbecile, why the hell didn't you call me--all this time goes by andyou know he's hanging there--why the hell didn't you call me?" She lookedat him oddly but kept her silence. He saw contempt in her eyes and turnedfrom her and called Rafi in for help cutting the huge man down and loweringhim to the rock hard floor. They watched over him, Rodolfo pacing for an

hour, the door locked against passers-by, but it was no good, there was noreturn of consciousness and Rodolfo had no alternative but to report theincident as calmly as possible and let the man be trucked out to theinfirmary an hour's ride from there. The fatboy didn't die but he didn't regainmuch function either and there was no question of them making further useof him.

Estefan blew into a rage at Rodolfo for his carelessness, his idiot mistakes,and for putting together such an inadequate squad with a feeble old manand a queer Jew, with only one of the four, the youngest, a half-decent

specimen of manhood. After that Rodolfo bought a watch and he used itcompulsively to track the time whenever he left an interrogation room with asession unfinished. But the whole thing lived on for him in shame andwhenever something recalled him to it, shame crept into his skin; he hadwasted a good informant due to stupidity. He recalled how his father ragedwhen his mother burnt the tortillas; he wielded that same brand of furyagainst himself.


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When he saw the seepage from Ajacopi's rotten head trickle onto the harddirt floor, he knew this mistake dwarfed the other.

This one was calamity and might ruin him because Ajacopi had been prizedby Estefan who bragged about the big cat he'd bagged, his head stuffed with

gems for the taking. And once a man began boasting, he didn't wantcircumstance or its allies to prove him a fool.

Rodolfo rubbed his hand hard across his forehead, sensitive fingers trackingtiny cysts beneath the skin. That Indian's head, he thought. That soft, ill-formed, weakly head had been his downfall. He sat back on his spongysofa--a boulder would have offered a more comfortable seat--and buried hisown properly-shaped, close-cropped head in his hands. Jesus, Lord. Whatcomes now? What next, with this accursed amnesty aiming to haul them intothe streets in humiliation? He thanked God that

Mateo Hector was gone from this earth, eyes shut against these sights. Hebeat his head against the wall, not too hard lest the wall crack, too.

Since the collapse of the government, he had lived with the danger thatsomeone in the new government might find him out as one of those whosehands had touched Ajacopi, a man to whose memory others of his type littheir vile incense. Berta said,

Father Lomas burns incense in the church but Rodolfo knew the Indian stuffsmelled different. The stuff the Indians burned behind their houses,

squatting over the dirt, made his nose twist in disgust. Now with thisamnesty his danger multiplied tenfold because surely it would take only oneman coming forward, seduced by safety, for those who kept their silence tohang, like chickens in the market. He would prefer the firing squad. Hewould. He would prefer the clean steel bullet to speed him to his maker.

If some tribunal, flush with new power, were to probe him about thecircumstances of the stubborn bugger's death, he would have little to say.How could he speak about something that barely passed as an event to him?He thought of his father's death, the magnitude of that event, the grief of it.

That was a moment writ in time, but this, no, never, and the idea he shouldsee it as momentous reddened him with anger. Who was this Ajacopi? heroto a bunch of unscrubbed Indians, his skin rough as bark, eyes opaque,vastly shortchanged in beauty and balls compared with one of Rodolfo'sspirited game cocks. Surely there was something wrong with the man'sconstitution that his skull could crack so easily--like the head of a child or afrail octagenarian, not a man in his middle years whose bones should be likeiron.


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He thought of Estefan, himself riled and confused by the recent discovery oftheir President's bloody remains, and how he had insisted the day before theAjacopi incident that Rodolfo produce new information by the nextafternoon. But the dwarf Indian lying in front of him with his head split could

give him nothing, not a piss in a pot, and so Rodolfo could give his Captainnothing.

Berta reentered the room on bare feet and stood before him, her face setand serious. "Daniel is in trouble at the school."

"Again?" he asked. "In trouble again? Wasn't the little shit in trouble lastweek?"

"Two weeks ago...he hit Eduardo Meron with a stone."

"And now? What now?"

"They say he spoke with disrespect to Headmaster Perez. The headmaster isvery angry, he's smoking mad. You are the father, Rodolfo. You straightenthe boy around and put a stop to this, before we lose all respect in thistown."

He laughed. "Yes, yes, I will speak to him but now I have other things todo." He tapped the newspaper and told her, "There's something here that istrouble--for me, your husband." In his mind, he called her 'my silken flower'

and heard Estefan's guffaw.

"What will you do?" she asked.

"Youve read it? You know about it?"

"While you rattled the air with your snoring. You think I just sit while yousleep?"

He thought of Galo--the worm, the puniest spirit in their group of four.

Surely he would stumble over his own boot laces running to confess to thisamnesty board. Rodolfo wanted no part of any confession. He wanted to biteback his own words, but wondered could he act without the others. He hunghis head, pondering, forgetting his wife.

"What will you do?"

He shrugged. "Call the others, I suppose. We must get together, we must


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act in concert--otherwise it's no good."

"Yes. As always, act in concert. How you stick together, you four brave men,it's a sight to behold, it's like a religious vision."

"Don't be crude."

She spat on the back of her hand. "There," she said. "If you want crude,there, that's what my heart holds today and that is just the beginning."

He could not believe it. She spits. At her own husband's words, she spits. Heshook his head. He had no words left but sank into thinking of themonstrous bad luck that let the Capitol give way to the Indian infestation thevery next day after the interrogation soured and Ajacopi lost his wretchedlife. Had time divided the two events, the Indians would have forgottenAjacopi. Some other red man of greater stature would have died in someother prison and the scrutiny would have fallen where that man dropped,leaving Ajacopi forgotten and Rodolfo free as a condor.

"You will speak to your son?"

"Yes, yes. Now. I'll go right now. Is now soon enough for you or should I doit yesterday, like a magician?"

He went slowly to Daniel's room without a single word readied. The boy layon his belly, a handsome, sturdy, indolent lad his feet circling in the air as he

read a comic book about aliens. He loved these books and saved his coins tobuy them. "Daniel," Rodolfo said, from the head of the boys bed. "You threwa rock at Meron?"

Daniel rolled onto his back and arched his neck, his face glowing withpleasure at the sight of his father. "He's a lying cheat," the boy announced,proud of himself and happy to share his judgment of the matter. He flippedonto his elbows.

"You don't throw rocks in the schoolyard. Don't you know that? You've made

your mother upset."

"That happened two week's ago, Papa. Meron's forgotten it. Mama should."

"Damn. But this week something too, something again. You disrespectedyour teacher?"

"Perez is a pig. He's half-Indian, Dad, and they expect me to listen to his


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mumbo-jumbo."

Rodolfo tightened his brow, confused. "He's your instructor, he's headinstructor--will you bring shame on us all? Keep yourself out of trouble now.For one week. So I can have peace with your mother."

"All right, Dad," the boy said, grinning. "For you, I'll be good. I know how."

He wandered back to the front room, his mind returning to thoughts of theamnesty that sparked him to go to the phone and dial up the old man, Galo,however Galo's line was engaged. He dialed and dialed until the bleatingbecame an intolerable squawk in his ear. Then he tried Rubn, but Rubn'stelephone was out of order, the line dead, so he knew he must go around tothe man's queer dwelling if he wanted to talk to him today, and he was notin a temper to wait. He could try reaching Rafi, their fourth, but Rafi was likea boy to Rodolfo and so he felt no urgency to confer with him. He didn't evenhave a number for the fellow, didn't know if he had a phone--Rodolfothought he lived on some sort of boat.

He stalled off going into town to locate Rubn's place and tried Galo onemore time but the old grandpa's line was still bleating so he started drinkingwith a swig of pisco to pass some time, telling himself he was entitled tofortification since he must go lay eyes on the odd creature called Rubn aftera year of freedom from that frightening sight. Maybe Estefan had been rightabout him--a Jew was he? A homosexual? He'd said his family came fromParaguay. Certainly he was some sort of freak.

Soon Berta got on him about the pisco and Daniel started up whiningbecause Rodolfo wanted to watch his futball match on television but the boywanted cartoons from the States on the other station. He should haveknown better than to try and relax in that house, he thought, so he went outand untied Luci, their burro, from the eucalyptus tree, and lead her out ofher shade and climbed on her splay back to head into town. He rode hereven though Berta said he was too heavy and strained her back. Hearing thedoor slam a second time, he knew what was coming.

She'd come out of the house to shake the rugs and seen him mounted onLuci. She started her yelling. "For shame, you bastard, for shame."

'Then tell me why I feed her if not to ride her? What's the use of a goddamass if not to carry weight on her back?" He shouted his words withoutturning his head to her reddened face, knowing the air between them wouldswallow his voice before it found its way to her. "Jesus protect me from theanger of women," he muttered under his breath.


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The path into town was uphill and they moved at a pace so slow only Lucicould achieve it. Everything from Rodolfo's house was uphill unless hetraveled the long distance down to the lowlands and the broad stretch ofjungle that led to the big river, then on to the coast. Anywhere within a half

day's journey on foot or burro was up into the dry hills. The trip to townwould take him an hour. Then he'd ask around for Rubn's place, maybe gothere straightaway, maybe stop and eat or entertain himself awhile in one ofthe bars.

Rubn had moved his three dozen drawings from the front room to thebedroom because he'd lain awake brooding that the front room's bright lightmight yellow the paper or fade the good ink he'd traded a half-month'ssalary for. In the bedroom was a single window, a half-meter square. Itspane of wavy glass he could shade easily with a cloth, so the drawings weresafe from concentrated sunlight. Just last winter, hed replaced the oldplastic with that glass, when his job had provided him with money enoughfor luxuries.

On the south bedroom wall, he hung as many of the pictures as would fit,hanging them edge to edge like tiles in a mosaic.

His project completed, he could lie on his back on the bed and look past hisfeet to the wall beyond finding it papered from ceiling to floor with hisdrawings. In hanging them, he'd tried to preserve the order in which hedrew them so that a viewer might see the changes in the subject's muscle

tone and skin and hair that occurred in rational sequence as the days ofimprisonment passed. Then came the man's unexpected death. For all ofthem, it was a tragedy, but Rubn felt it was a tragedy for him especiallybecause it brought an absolute and premature end to his best sequence ofsketches, the one that turned out to be his last sequence.

Now he had leisure to study his drawings. He believed they were quite goodbut they would have pleased him more had he not missed certain momentsin the flow of events, the fault mostly of his occasional days away from theinterrogator's job. He wished he'd sacrificed those days off for the sake of

his project. That opportunity lost, he sometimes lay in bed and rebukedhimself for failing to honor sufficiently the work his pen had created. Eachdrawing contributed to the corpus of information about how the human bodysuccumbs to pain and injury. The gaps in his record reprimanded him, buthe told himself such gaps must exist for any great record of events. Hethought for example of the Shroud of Turin--what an isolated fragment ofhistory that was. Still, he regretted the breaks in continuity he'd allowed andfound that they disturbed the beauty of the whole as a missing tooth distorts


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the set.

Rubn was an artist of pain, but only the suffering of the body engaged him.The mind's worryings did not arouse him except as they recorded what thebody lives. And the philosophy of pain--the asking why and how--that did

not excite his interest either. He was one who believed the physical bodygreater than the ideas we hold about it--those being no more than windowdressing. The mind is derivative, the body essential. Like a scientist or anillustrator, he recorded what is. How do the limbs move, how do the musclesrun under the skin, what cries emit from the mouth, what fluids slip from thebody openings, and is the process different in man and woman, in old andyoung, in fit or frail? When do the eyes shed tears and when are they drylike bone? That constituted the entirety of what he wanted to know--thereality of pain, its phenomena. His desire, his hunger (he felt right in callingit that) was for data. He was the seeing eye, witness to the body in painboth as it resists and as it succumbs.

He would have liked to photograph what his eyes imbibed. He could havebought a camera from one of the shops or one of the tourists and put itssharp eye to work; then he might have made a book from the photographs.But photography was verboten at Ximena, where they worried aboutinquiries and reports. His own interest was apolitical, both then andthereafter. He was fortunate that one such as he, indifferent to politics,could keep a prison job and be left alone to make his observations. Thoughsome of the men, and once even the thin woman with the ropy blonde hair,made rude remarks about his sketches, the sketches he valued so highly

because they gave him the information for his final ink drawings. As long ashe did his job in questioning the prisoners and applying the physicalcorrections, his position at Ximena felt secure. He did not care whatinformation Rodolfo did or did not manage to extract from the prisoners, atthe behest of Captain Estefan, though Rodolfo himself cared fiercely about itand went mad when too long frustrated. Rubn did as he was told in helpingRodolfo but only to keep his position and carry on with his project.

After the President was murdered, Rodolfo's fuse was clipped shorter still,but to Rubn that death meant nothing. Why should he care about a plump,

pompous young man who liked to prance about before the televisioncameras? He was all noise and surface, all performance--Rubn could findnothing of real interest in him. His death?--well, that part was interesting ina way but there was little in the life that engaged.

Though done at Rodolfo's behest and surely never sought, the physical partof Rubn's work was a boon to him at times, because information existedthat came to him with his hands laid on the skin, or pressed to the


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shortening muscle, that he could get no other way. And for that hewithstood the unpleasantness of the manual work.

Once the prison shut down and the job was gone, his pleasures becamefewer, though still he could study and arrange his pictures and savor his

food, which he took care in preparing, and he enjoyed red wines as well. Hebought himself a Tashica camera in a stall at the market and he wouldphotograph the food dishes before he consumed them and that way hecaptured the colors, forms, and surfaces, whether glistening with juices orpowdery dry. He was able to eat whatever he desired and gain no weightbecause his parents had passed him their tendency to remain lean. And hewas lucky to have decent funds still because the prison job had paid well andhe'd saved much of what he earned.

If he lay down, he would soon slumber though only an hour had passedsince the suns sleep. He would sleep and he would find tranquility. Odd, hethought, to desire such a lackluster state, but yet he did. Lying on the pallet,he examined his naked feet as he waited for rest. He had never noticed howlovely they were, with the uniform coloring of the skin and the tight cordsthat lined the top like spokes. He was an artist of the body and yetremarkably he'd never noticed any of that. He was noticing now but alreadyhe was dozy and soon to sleep because his mind had lost itself, the wholebody a spoke in a wheel and turning turning, his mind the soft ball of glasson the end of a glass blower's rod, pulling and stretching, his dream flowbeginning and it was a knocking and legs walking, it was he, he was walkingto the door, peering out through the peephole and behind the minute glass a

woman's cameo brooch and a stretched face looking like someone he knew.

What!! He jumped. Someone banging down the door? Who couldpossibly??--he expected no one. It was a mistake, he was sure it was, adreadful mistake to disturb him just as he set sail down the river of sleep.Someone beating on the wrong door, startling him when already he wasdrifting into dream. Now it would be hours before he-- "I'm coming," heshouted, his speech watery with sleep, angry with dislocation, "I'm coming."Flying flying, he lashed his robe around him on the run seeking the door toadmit someone out of the night, though he wanted only to sleep the sleep

he'd just sampled.

A face was framed in the minature oval of glass. His door held a peepholelike at the wealthiest houses but only because he'd drilled the hole andinserted the tiny round of precious glass himself. The glass distorted like theconvex of a spoon but he loved the framing. He knew this face but could notplace it in such small scale. Still, he got a bodily flow of bad feeling as if hisnervous system, in its wisdom, did know, did recognize and react. He'd


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come this far and so he opened the door and, with a full look at the manwho stood in the apartment house hallway, the name filled him. Rodolfo. Oh,how sorry he was to see him, a monster of a man, a coarse brute who'dtreated Rubn ill whenever he felt a need to kick at the world. And here hewas, standing at Rubn's own door. How dare he come and present himself

at his home like that and tear apart the lovely fabric of his sleep?

Rodolfo grunted, not offering even a cordial greeting. "It took me forever toget here on the damn ass." He motioned to the somnolent animal roped to aleaning utility tree. "You've read the paper today?"

Rubn shook his head trying to clear away sleep. The open door admittedthe smell of oranges; he had eaten them for dessert and discarded the peelsin the hallway trash. Without an invitation, Rodolfo proceeded into Rubn'sfront room. "Always the odd bird," Rodolfo muttered and resurrected forRubn all his compatriot's cruel and crude ways. Rodolfo brought into thehouse a stink of alcohol that fought with the oranges' bouquet. He walkedacross the floor, his back to Rubn while he spoke.

"There's something in the paper you need to see."

"In the paper?" Rubn asked.

"That's right."

Rubn had never before seen Rodolfo in a drunken condition. His

unsteadiness emboldened Rubn. "What? What's there that would matter tome, and in the middle of the night, Rodolfo?"

"More than you imagine...unless you weren't present when that son of awhore Ajacopi's head split top to bottom like a melon...if you weren't there,then you won't be interested. If you weren't present at Ximena Prison in theyear of our Lord nineteen hundred and ninety-nine, don't bother readingwhat's here in the paper, right under my finger."

Rubn could see the melon Rodolfo described. It falls from the back of a

wagon and splits raggedly, colored flesh exposed, juice running to theground, instantly disappearing. He nodded. "That crack-up ended my sketchsequence--in a miserable half-second."

"Oh, Jesus. I hope you've burned those fucking scribbles. You're like a childwith your little pet project."

He clutched his heart with both hands and edged toward the entrance to his


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bedroom, flooded suddenly with gratitude that somehow he'd known tomove his pictures out of the sun's light and out of the light of theseblistering eyes. He blocked

Rodolfo boldly and told himself, Let him think a rumpled bed sheet brings

me embarrassment.

"You're a lunatic," Rodolfo said, and Rubn obscured his fury behind thefrozen face he'd learned at Ximena.

"Look," said Rodolfo. "This is the story. There's an amnesty offer come out,and we need to decide as a group what to do, whether to come forward totheir so-called "truth commission" or not. Can you imagine? An Indian 'truthcommission! Is that a joke?" Rodolfo sat down on the floor, his intoxicationovercoming him.

Amnesty? The idea aroused him. "As a group?" Rubn never thought ofthem as grouped, as linked. His family--well, his parents--they were agroup, to him they were the very idea of a group, something closed,encircled. They were all he knew of groups. "Come to the chair, Rodolfo." Heoffered his hand but Rodolfo shook him off, nevertheless climbing to his feetand settling into the chair. Rubn took the one beside him.

"It can't work to have one come forward and fart out some confession andthe others not. We'll all of us have to meet somewhere and figure this out.Won't that be a pleasure, all four of us together again!"

Five, Rubn thought, because he had a recollection of that custodian, thatwoman, the quiet blonde whose eyes spoke often but her mouth, seldom,yet she was sassy if she did spoke. He used to wonder what she saw withher odd eyes that were sometimes fierce, sometimes somber, but alwaysround and peculiarly flat if that is possible so that they seemed to him likeslowly-panning lenses of a camera or a telescope and not like human eyes.He kept silent about his vision of that woman and turned his effort tohurrying Rodolfo on his way.

"It's that African, Tutu, who's started all this with his Truth andReconciliation squads," Rodolfo complained. "Now it's a damned fat--fad.He giggled, the alcohol whirling his brain and senses. A fad."

"It's the fashion?"

"Yeah, sure, it's the fashion in revolutions. What a pile of crap."


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Rodolfo went to the door and tottered out, his stance wide, dribblingcontempt behind him along with instructions for a meeting they must haveat the Boca.

He's gone, thank God for that, Rubn thought.

He was alone again, gladly, happily, so now he could lie back down acrosshis bed, encircled by his pictures, and imagine this Truth Commission ofwhich Rodolfo spoke. He had never heard of such a thing and couldn't graspwhat it meant for them. Rodolfo had said the Commission was offeringamnesty in exchange for the stories brought forward. To tell hisstory...hadn't he longed for just that? But not to gain any man'sdesculpation, no, only to explain how it was, how it is, with men and womensuffering in bodily pain. Would this be his opportunity to put his works ondisplay and walk attentive listeners through the process of destruction--destruction of resistance--he'd come to understand. His heart quickenedwith excitement, he even noticed a pulsing within his normally quiet penis.

He visualized the four of them approaching the Commission. Perhaps theCommission itself would be four men, darker complected than he, Galo, andRafi; only Rodolfo of their four could blend among the Indians. He and theother three kneel like subjects before royalty, but on a floor that is coldcement. Suddenly he understands the Commission's task as kin to his ownproject of exploration and documentation; they must make a record ofevents and make it as true and complete as they can.

If they want to know exactly what happened to Ajacopi's body that finalday--which way it twisted and turned, what his position was when he burpedup the string of bloody spittle that swung from his mouth then settled to thefloor, how his eyes seemed to float like dead fish in a pool after the blow tohis head, then he, Rubn, would be the one to inform them. He'd captured itall with his eyes and recorded it with the bold movements of his pen. He hada beautiful drawing he'd made from a pose he captured on the man's lastnight, which ironically was their last night as detectives. The rebels marchedinto the capitol the next day and the prison staff fled to their houses and hid,hoping their longstanding disciplined silence about their surnames and the

surviving five prisoners' eagerness to return to their villages would protectthe staff from any retribution.

And till now they had been spared, though he never stopped imaginingpunishment--the four of them captured and hung, captured and thrown intoa remote prison, captured and strung up from the wrists, captured andslashed to the bone or--worst of all--captured and circled in rope and set ona burning pyre and no one in witness to record their last moments as he did


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for the Indian who came to his death in their custody.

If the Commission asked him to testify to the minutest particulars, he wouldtell them that the smallest cell, the one Ajacopi often occupied after his armhealed from the break he'd come with, measured one meter twelve by one

meter twenty. He might tell them how he considered the problem that sucha space would create for the man trapped within, who must find a way totolerate extreme bodily confinement for weeks or months. In the space thecaptive had, he could not lie down, not even on the diagonal could he stretchout to his full length. Oh, the builder had been a man who knew how tosharpen a man's agony. The prisoner could lie with bent knees, but he wouldlong to force back the walls with his feet in order to lie flat. Often a prisonerlay rolled up on a side, or sometimes with shoulders and forehead pressed tothe cold ground as if in obeisance.

An irony of the interrogators' job grew from the size of the interrogationroom. Because it needed to be large enough to hold a prisoner and a groupof interrogators, it was three times the size of the confinement cell, whichmeant that the woman's arrival at the prisoner's door to take him tointerrogation promised him an opportunity to be out of his box. But wherewas he going? And what would occur in the other space?

Rubn wondered could you lose your mind just from the thought youcouldn't lie your body flat on the floor. No matter how your muscles desiredit, you could not do it; you were stopped by walls of stone. He imaginedhimself a prisoner and made himself a board running wall to wall on an

incline; he could lay on the board and be the long leg of a triangle and inthat way finally lie flat--feet above head, blood rushing to the head, or headabove feet, feet swelling. At the moment of his discovery, he delighted in hiscleverness.

One night, Rubn deliberately stayed long past his shift and into the hours ofdarkness wanting to observe how the men got through their nights. He hadto go undetected in order to see them in their natural state, not posing for asketch, so he slipped up to a small crack in the new prisoner Ajacopi's wallusing the cover of a moonless sky. He thought he might see the man in

agony, writhing, perhaps yelling in his native tongue, riveting Rubn's eyesand ears to the scene. But Ajacopi was sitting cross-legged, his hands openand entwined in his lap, his back flat to the wall, head rolled back so that hiseyes--whenever they fluttered open--looked toward the join of the wall andthe ceiling. He looked at that moment restful and untroubled and the sight ofhim taunted Rubn. He could not know the man's mind. Was he truly atpeace? Or were his tangled thoughts only concealed from those who fixedhim with their eyes?


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"You have children?" Ajacopi one time asked when they were alone togetherawaiting Rodolfo's return to the interrogation room Ajacopi spoke then in hiscaptors' language, of which he knew many words.

"No." Rubn gave an answer, because unlike Rodolfo he saw no point indenying the man conversation or cursing him each time he moved his lips inspeech or sound.

Ajacopi nodded, his facial muscles sagging in disappointment. "You haveonly pictures," he said. "An artist's children." He surprised Rubn with hisassessment. "Parents?" Ajacopi then asked. "You have parents living?"

"My mother."

"Parents who love their child, but maybe they don't know what the son doesto put wine on the table."

Rubn felt unsettled, even tricked. "Her life is far from here. They wereprivate, very private people."

"Their thoughts are veiled. Well, a man can choose that, can't he, unlike ananimal. A man has to have trust to reveal his thoughts, unless he is a fool,which many are." Ajacopi chuckled.

"My parents never were people of great passion--that's all."

"That's a tragedy. Why live if you don't have passion for anything?"

Rodolfo's steps cut the air. Rubn knew the sound of those boots.

"That one's got passion," Ajacopi said. Passion against others lives.

He could offer the Commission recollections such as these. Maybe theywould find some historical meaning in them. Rubn himself preferredpictures, not strings of words.

A long shadow bounced ahead of Rodolfo, cast by the full moon at his back.Luci's gait was so awkward carrying him homeward that Rodolfo couldn'thold his seat.

"Steady," he told her and slapped the back of her neck with his palm. Hedidn't care to end up face down in the road. He had a picture in his mind ofthat, and not a nice one, but he couldn't recall who it was he saw lying in the


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dirt, head rolled to the side, vomit circling the mouth like a clown's lip paint.It could be a man, or was it a woman in that memory-picture--who could tellwhat hid behind a clown's garish face paint?

Ajacopi said, I am a man. Rodolfo recalled those low-spoken words that

came clear as water. The Indian said those words and Rodolfo was laughingboth inside and aloud. Perhaps it was the same day the ugly little mancracked his head. Who remembered? Rubn, that queer duck--he'd just nowmanaged to block Rodolfo's access to his back room, his bedroom it mustbe. What would Rodolfo find worth caring about in the man's bedroom? Butnever mind--he liked seeing Rubn nervous as a laboring insect. Hah! Thatwas why Rodolfo kept crowding the pervert, forcing him back toward thatroom where his secret lay hidden--he wanted to watch him perspire. Did hehave a lover concealed in there, another like himself, lying naked in the bed?Rodolfo would not want to walk in on that, or maybe he would--it would be asight to behold. He'd probably be drawing queer pictures of his lover's ass orsomething, before they fucked one another. Thinking back, he was half-certain he'd smelled a stale sourness about that room that could only meanone thing. The man was disgusting. Just knowing him was painful.

Rubn likes pain, Rodolfo thought. How perverted that is! Me, I like results.Our work is like squeezing a pimple till it bursts. The work doesn't have tobe pretty, it's not art, it's not Michelangelo or Diego Rivera. That sickbastard, Rubn, fancies himself a scientist. Once he told Rodolfo he wassorry they had no electricity machine that would allow him to apply a precisevoltage and take its measure. He must have heard that some of the other

interrogation units had electric shock machines. "Maybe you can rig one up,"Rodolfo told him. "Write to the President and see will he buy you anelectricity machine. Surely they have some in the capitol. You'd be helpingout the cause." He added, "If you shock them hard enough, they haveconvulsions. They have fits just like epileptics. Did you know that?"

Rubn nodded. "But seizures disturb the memory."

"Oh, that won't do," Rodolfo said. "Hah--that would be a big fuck up, in ourprofession."

Luci's back was slathered with sweat, the sweat thickened with dust. Thegunk soaked through Rodolfo's pants as they plodded homeward. They hadno saddle for the animal. That might have kept his seat drier but Bertarefused to buy one, saying, "We have to stop riding her." A picture flickeredin his head of a bony guy they'd strung up by the wrists for two and a halfhours, one shoulder already drawn from the socket and the guy growlingwith pain. Rodolfo let him down because the man's moaned and shoutedwords told Rodolfo he was ready to give him what they wanted, but Rubn


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was unhappy and reminded Rodolfo that the guy in the next cell had hungfor three hours. He wanted a precise comparison, three against three andthought some sort of protocol existed to support that. He didn't comprehendthat time doesn't mean shit. Each man is made of different muscles,different bones and a different mind, so saying one man can go three hours

without caving doesn't tell you what three hours will do to the next man, itonly tells you next time you want something from man number one youbetter have three hours to do your job. The other bugger might startshrieking and offer you anything you want before you've finished wrappingyour cord round his wrist or he might hang there till he dies, moaning all thewhile, I am a man.

Luci's plodding carried him down the path which was dotted with sharp-edged moon shadows of rocks and scrub. He prayed to the Lord for somerain--told Him don't spend it all down in the jungle but save some for us onthe high ground because the dry air burns the eyes and dries the nose insideuntil it bleeds along with the cracked lips. But the Lord as always was slowto give them water and Rodolfo would ask for it but he wouldn't make it hisbusiness to complain to the Almighty like the women did or spew nonsenseabout the Lord's tears watering the land.

Luci finally got him home, after two hours on the trail, and at home he foundthey were both of them out ... so good, he could relax. He'd done his job,hadn't he? He'd gone and seen that cretin Rubn. So now he was going to sithis ass on the sofa and have another whisky and in the morning call androust Galo to go out to talk to Rafi on his floating tin tub. The green-back

flies buzzed him there on his own sofa like he was food for supper. Dirtycreatures, they agitated his mood. If he were a gringo, he wouldn't live insuch a hovel. At least there would be screens on the windows, but who inthis country had a screen to put on a window?

If a man had a window screen here, he would guard it like a treasure. Ascreen was a luxury, something only the rich would have. And where wouldyou find a rich man here? Galo came closest of the men he knew. If Rodolfohad a screen he wouldn't fix it on the window and wait for some robber torip it out; he would trek down to the river before dawn to pan for a chunk of

gold. He was a man of imagination and not a worm like Galo, so he wouldthink of something special like that.

He woke in a bed flooded with sunlight, Berta's rumpled nest alreadyvacated. He didn't recall putting on his nightclothes or getting into the bed;he didn't recall her returning home or climbing in beside him. His headthrummed with pain, but he labored out to the living area to call the oldgrandfather. Still no dial tone. Good. Berta all the time said, We are lucky


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still to have the phone and lucky for the phone service given what moneyyou bring in these days. It warmed the heart of a man to have a woman sofull of lovingkindness.

Because Mary was asleep, Galo took off at a run, because he mustn't allow

the phone's summons to disturb her. Already mid-morning, sun burningoutside the window, and his dear Mary was sleeping. Curled under the grayquilt that her Grandy gave them for their wedding, she looked like a lamb.He couldn't allow the phone to wake her. So he ran like a man chased bylightning.

Always lately she would say, "Galo, I need my sleep, I must have sleep,"and her words were so weary and impatient he did not disbelieve her.

"Are you sick, sweetest?" he asked her one time, because she had slepttwelve hours and the sun had climbed far up one side of the sky and ontothe top of it.

"No. I'm not sick," she answered, her voice slow yet live as electricityjumping between two wires. "I need to sleep. Can't you understand that?Just close the light."

"Of course, my dear," he said. Mary's Ma always said he was a gentleman,but his wife wasn't one to appreciate that in him, not these days. But nevermind, he would cater to her as he'd always done.

So it is better, he thought when the phone rang, it is much much better thatthe phone not wake her and wake in her the irritation she seemed all thetime to feel, poor thing. He was around the corner and would get to it beforeit rang a third time, the sound piercing the air more insistently with eachring, like a crying baby. Ach. Now he had hold of it. Ach. You can drop thereceiver hurrying so. One time he did that, cracked it nearly in two on ametal box. And what a bad scene that was with the children, who wereyoung then, yelling, "Look what Dad's done" and then months and monthsgoing by before they could get the phone company to replace it and Maryperturbed the whole time. Jesus--she could be a hard woman, she could

crack a man's balls. But okay ... the equipment was okay now and pressedto his ear and Mary was sweetly sleeping.

"Galo here." Out of breath he was, like an old horse in the mountains, buthe'd stopped the ringing at least. It rang so loud it looked like it wanted tolaunch itself from the carriage. Lord, I'm breathing so gaspy, he thought,and wondered, will whoever this is hear that gaspiness in my voice? At leastthey wouldn't hear his heart beating fists against his chest wall. That sound


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was saved for his own ears. "Hello," he said.

"Is that you, Galo? That's you?"

He heard a thick-tongued voice he did not recognize, yet the sound of it

worried him. "Who is it? Yes, this is Galo. Mary's here but can't come to thephone."

"Doesn't sound like you, old man. This is Rodolfo Hector calling."Oh my God. Rodolfo?? Rodolfo Hector?? Oh my God. Now he wished he hadlet it ring and taken the consequences with Mary. Because this was not aman he wanted to talk to, this Hector. He'd not seen him for a year, sincethey were both of them interrogators for the Police, Detectives Squad B, andhis voice caused Galo to tremble.

"Go ahead and sound delighted to hear from me why don't you," Hectorsaid. Sarcastic he was, always always sarcastic.

Nothing ever changed.

"Rodolfo," Galo said. "My good friend. Buen dia. How are you?" Always Galowas polite. Though his heart shivered like a man naked in a cold rain, hewas polite and friendly and prided himself on that, though at times hewondered had that benevolence, that sensitivity and openness in his naturebeen the cause of his troubles because it left him at every hour worryingover his family, his community, his country and how they would fare in the

hands of the Indians who were uneducated and backward and somehow justunpalatable--unpalatable, that was it, like something you took into yourmouth and it left a bad taste. And his worries about keeping his loved onessafe and well-shielded from all that unpleasantness of those people and theirstrange and secretive ways led to certain affiliations and fromthere...nothing but trouble. He should have been more practical, he shouldhave thought more about himself and his future years before he took on theprison assignment. He would have been better off to stay behind a deskanother fifteen years, then retire. The things he saw at Ximena and had totouch and was obliged to participate in--God in Heaven! Mary never

appreciated what such sights took out of a man like him whose nature wassensitive.

"We need to have a meeting," Rodolfo said, his voice the same bricked wallGalo remembered too well, though slowed and slurred by drink, from thesound of it. The thought of sitting in a room with him again...ach, he feltanger come and pull up a seat beside his fear.


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A year ago they were the Detectives Second Squad trying to do right bytheir country and now what were they, and what was he, but a man whoplaced papers inside of files A through Z, and God knows what Rodolfo wasdoing but at least he was not in jail where all of them so easily could be, notas jailers now but as inmates. Just think of that. Prison! for a man like him

who'd married a woman from a fine family and always been helpful and law-abiding to a fault. To a fault--one could ask Mary's mother who at least sawthe gentlemanliness in him though in other ways her words for him were notkind. Now every morning, when he walked out from his house, his walksprightly for fifty years, he thought of how a man like him, a quiet law-abiding family man, could end his days in a barred cell never again to seehis own grandchild. He'd look up and down the street and wonder whoamong those he saw could be coming to drag him to prison, or maybeworse. Maybe a shot gun raised to his head and a shallow hole chiseled outof the dry dirt of the high plain. He feared prison would be worse thandeath--he was a delicate man, not a hard-boiled creature like Rodolfo who,as much as the coarse Indians, might stand up to such a life.

And all of this weighed on him so badly he would have liked to sleep awayhis hours if he could, like Mary who'd shut her eyes to the world since thatblurred picture appeared in the paper nine months back showing an Indiannamed Ajacopi. It was printed right there that the man died in custody in theXimena prison of the Northwest Department where Galo worked with Rodolfoand the younger two men who made up their Central Interrogation UnitDetectives B Squad. Mary didn't ask him about Ajacopi any more than sheasked him about his days at work or the people with whom he worked but

she handed him his glasses and held the paper up toward his face andlooked hard at him with that withering look that was hers alone.

He wondered did God give Mary some special apparatus just formanufacturing that look. That would have been a poor plan on the Lord'spart because that look could sear a good portion of His creation in amoment's time. He wanted to shout a defense at Mary and say, these thingshappen, the work we were required to do isn't a science--things go wrong.But another part of him said, Yes, my God, the whole thing came apart andcame undone, the whole ghastly interrogation, and we did knock the man's

head into the wall so go on and blame me, you're right to blame me, I am asguilty here as elsewhere. He imagined bending down before her, hisforehead flush to the ground, and receiving her leather strap across hisback.From the day the photo circulated in the paper, he saw her giving more andmore of her day to sleep as if she and sleep had entered into an intimatepartnership.


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"Youre saying that you and I need a meeting?" he softly queried Rodolfo. "Iam surprised to hear that, my friend, when we have not met in all thesemany months." He silently regretted the telephone wires the governmenthad strung from town to town, even into the rural districts high into themountains.

"All of us need to meet. You, me, Rubn, and the kid. Don't you read thebloody newspaper?"

Galo didn't care to tell him he found the news of the day too frightening toread. When he saw how the Indians still were mourning their lost leadersand he knew that one of those they lamented died in front of him, practicallyin his arms, that put him in a panic. "Not so much--my eyes are weak," wasall he could think to say.

"Well, there's something going on that concerns you, grampa. There's anamnesty offer from the fucking government--the Indian thug government--an amnesty for criminals which means it's for the likes of us, you and me."

Galo hated how Rodolfo loved referring to them that way, as if they werecommon criminals, but the man could not be influenced by softness orreason. Anyway, Galo felt too stirred by the content of Rodolfo's message toconcern himself with its delivery. "An amnesty? An amnesty?" To him, thatsounded good. That sounded very, very good. In fact, a feeling of lightnessinfused his being and his heart raced faster than an old man's heart shouldgo. "That sounds good, Rodolfo."

"Why? Why so damn good? Why such a fucking relief? Are you still scared bythe sound of your own fart as you walk down the street? So you can't wait togo in front of these bigass Indians and do your farting for them. Fart out thebig confession you've got in mind?"

"Hah, hah, the sense of humor--but really, isn't it good about an amnesty,Rodolfo? It sounds good to me, very very good."

"We need a meeting. There we can talk about what's good and what's shit

because if one of us is going to spill the Ajacopi story, then everyone's got togive it up. Understand? That's the way it has to be, for reasons even a lame-brain like Rubn could discern."

"Why not get a pardon if we can, Rodolfo?"

"Because what glitters isn't always gold. Especially in a world run by'indigenous peoples.' How do you know they won't get the goods from us,


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then stand us in front of a pit and shoot holes in our heads, with plenty ofbacking across the countryside for their barbarism? Or maybe we have an'accident' in their custody? Or this government crumbles and the next bunchto take over uses the amnesty agreement to wipe their filthy butts."

"I hadn't thought of that." Suddenly he was nothing but fear. Rodolfo wouldcertainly be right. Rodolfo had the cunning of a wild beast.

"What they hope will pass as a government is a two-legged stool--at best.You can't trust it. So I want you to go and see Rafi because I've alreadyvisited that pervert Rubn which was no picnic believe me, going to thatfoul-smelling apartment where he's sequestering God knows what in hisback room. Your visit to Rafi should be a joy relative to that, a goddamn joy.We need to all of us discuss this business and then whatever one man does,we all do--we march together, we march in a straight line--and that's how itwill be, all will act together, and if you've got some idea you might want togo out on your own, remember what they called me in the prison.Remember what the prisoners called Rodolfo."

"Dont worry, my friend. I'll telephone Rafi. I'll do it right away."

"Forget the telephone. You get off your ass and go see him face to face. Iwant you to look him in the eye. Tell him he must be at a meeting day aftertomorrow, at one o'clock at the Boca. I don't give a good goddamn what elsehe's got to do. I don't care if he's got a date with some willing young flesh.Tell him this takes priority, even over his dick, his better half--hah!. I don't

care if he's naked with a fucking movie starlet from Hollywood, California.He'll be there, and you'll be there trailing after him, ready to kick his ass orclean it if I tell you to."

"You've had a drink or two, Rodolfo. That's it."

"Yeah, yeah, you let me worry about what I put in my goddamned mouth."

Galo hung up the phone and was left in the quiet house and suddenly hewanted to jostle Mary awake and shout, What are you doing sleeping all day

like royalty when your husband is in trouble? He pushed the thought awayand figured he could wash the dishes now, then dust the living room andwipe down the windows with vinegar so Mary would see and smell his effortswhen she woke. Maybe her attention to all the nice things he did to keeptheir house clean would distract her from asking about the call.

He began the cleaning and thought how Mary used to patter around thehouse straightening things in a loving way so that he got in the habit of


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calling her, "mother Mary." One day she snapped at him and said, "Galo,can't you see how that's not the thing to call me, not any more." Becausethey had had a loss, you see, of their third child, their son Manuelo only twomonths of age, and she was suffering mightily from that, which was whatshe meant when she made that sharp remark. This all happened ten years

past but time had stopped somehow at that point, at least the time in whichhis life with Mary was marked. Since Ximena, things were worse still. Oftenhe'd come home and find her propped up sick in the bed. When the prisonshut, he became the one to tie the apron around his waist and clean thehouse, either he did or no one at all did because they no longer had moneyfor a serving girl.

He went to the sink and picked up the dishrag and squeezed the pink liquidsoap onto the cloth seeing in his mind the pink fluid spill from the Indian'smouth onto the floor where Linya, the woman attendant, would have to wipeit away. That sort of thing was part of her job, though often Galo sawdisgust overtake her face. Oh. La fuerza, la fuerza. That was what theycalled Rodolfo, the force. He remembered now. Yes, that was it. He got asick feeling recalling that burp of pink fluid because it was like with the baby,Mary's little baby, when she found him slate-colored in the cradle with thepuddle of pink spit-up beside him on the nice sheet. What could a person doabout something like that? You couldn't do anything at all. She said shewasn't angry at him, that would be unreasonable because what could aperson do about bad fortune or being forgotten by the Lord? Nothing,nothing at all, yet Galo would never forget her screaming and screamingwhen she walked into the room and saw the baby dark like coal. She

screamed and screamed like an empty container trying still to pour out itscontents, screaming like the Indians sometimes did when their pain got toosevere under the interrogations. But theirs was just bodily pain, nothingreally, because all that was needed to end it was the cutting of a cord or theremoval of a clamp from the tongue or a stick from the eye. Nothing wouldend Mary's pain because the child was dead. Even when the grandchildcame, her suffering didn't abate.

"Don't worry, Galo," she whispered hoarsely months after the tragedy, lyingin bed barely opening her eyes her lids heavy with the closeness of death.

"Don't worry, I don't blame you, you must not blame yourself for this." Inlater months she said, "Please stop--please please please stop, you don'thave to take responsibility for the child. Stop clawing at yourself, it helps noone, surely it does not help me." As time passed she seemed annoyed withhim. "You needn't be in a panic. Stop running around in circles. I can't bearto be around you."

How could she say such a thing? he wondered. Even now, he could feel how


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he frowned at her words. Why did she have to demean him? Why dideverybody wish to demean him? Was he born a punching bag? What personwould want to be responsible for something as disturbing as a child's death?What person would want the whole world angry with him? Would anotherwoman, another wife treat him so? He was an unlucky man.

He had put Manuelo down for his nap but he wasn't even in the room, noteven in the room when she found him. The doctor at the clinic said no onewas at fault, it just happens sometimes to babies, this sort of thing, it'sNature's way and Nature is pitiless to humankind. It happens, and no onebut God knows why, the nurse said, but Galo couldn't let it go, no matterwhat they said. So now, when it came to Ajacopi's death, it made nodifference to him if any tribunal understood what happened on the prisonfloor. It was Mary's understanding that he sought, oh his dear Mary, hisangel, his lamb. He would make her a cup of tea after he finished thedusting.

The water heated on the burner. He sat to rest and remembered returninghome the night the Indian died. Often after work he drove Rodolfo to histumbledown house because otherwise the man had a long walk in the darkand even Rodolfo deserved some pity. But that night, spent by the accidentand the hours of waiting that followed, he could not be with them anylonger. As soon as the paperwork was completed and they were released byCaptain Estefan, he muttered some goodbyes and hurried out.

He got behind the wheel with relief but soon was wretchedly stalled in a

jam-up of several rusted cars and a turquoise pickup and a scattering ofbony cattle. Marking time, he worried how to tell Mary. He tried in his headto mollify her saying, "Come now Mary, why do you trouble yourself so? Theman was after all an untaught Indian and he wanted to bring down thesociety we know. Things had to be done, we couldn't let the government fall,could we?" But every time Galo got to the slaver of pink fluid on the floor, hegave up, because Mary would see Ajacopi as a helpless baby and wouldnever understand the trouble men like him could make.

Galo felt a disquieting detonation of inner rage. He was angry at the Indians

who would destroy a decent way of life and communalize all Galo had,letting anyone's grubby hands grab on and claim it as their own. Whatjustice inhered in that? And what was wrong with Mary not to pity him in hisdilemma? At least in his own mind he could ask, Don't I, Galo, have anobligation to stand like a man and take my part in the struggle? Should Ileave it all to crude men like Rodolfo or boys like Rafi?

A Commission of Truth and Reconciliation had been formed, that's what


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been one other bad incident where a prisoner had been hung not to deathbut to where he was past interrogating and so he was useless. After the pinkfluid splatted to the floor, Ajacopi again moaned and Galo knew this one wasnot quite dead either, but soon afterward the Indian fell silent and slack andGalo thought Rodolfo could order Rubn to drive a nail through the man's

wrist and he would not feel it.

"Galo," Mary called from the next room. "What time is it?"

"Almost noon, Love."

She came into the room, her white gown rumpled, her face swollen withsleep. "Didn't I hear the phone?"

"Earlier," he said. "I've put water on to boil. Have some tea."

"Who was calling? Someone for me?"

He shook his head. "Look. I've cleaned a little."

"Yes," she looked about the room. "It's nice. You're thoughtful."

Her voice seemed mild. He was grateful. "I'll make you coca tea. I'll have acup with you."

"Who telephoned? Someone for you?"

"Yes. Don't worry yourself."

"Who was it? You get so few calls. Usually it's one of my women calling."

"That's true. It's the women who do the calling, except when there areemergencies or business to transact."

"This was business?"

Galo sighed. "I suppose. It was Rodolfo Hector from the prison. My oldsquad leader. He's sending me on an errand."

"He calls you now, after all this time?"

"It might be a good thing, Mary. There's a commission formed for amnesty.Rodolfo's got me driving to the lake this afternoon to inform one of theothers from our group. We're to have a meeting and talk it over, strategize."


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Mary nodded and sat down at the table, her palms rubbing her scalp abovethe forehead, her fingers pushing back through her hair like two combs. "I'dbeen hearing rumors about a Commission on Truth. This is the commission,then, and the time to come forward with the truth. It's good, it's time for

everything to be said."

Rodolfo knew the old man would go to Rafi and hold himself steady longenough to look Rafi in the eye, just as Rodolfo had instructed. Meanwhile,Rodolfo could place his head to the table and get some sleep because he'ddrunk too much and needed rest, needed to close his eyes which burnedrelentlessly with the dust.

The wind was high and rocked the boat against the trunks of half-submergedtrees that ringed the lake, but Rafi had habituated to the rhythm of life onthe water and was unbothered. He prepared and ate his lunch of thick beansoup, which sloshed side to side in one of his mother's pottery bowls. Hecleaned the dishes and laid them on a cloth, then stretched on his pallet onthe deck and thought about the classes he would take finally in the statetourism program and wondered would they open doors for him.

Mid-afternoon, while he lay pacified by the sun and waves, who climbed upto his deck and brought him bolting from the pallet but the old grandfatherfrom the detectives' group, hat dangling in his hand, his face gone green andsickish from the water's motion.

"I've found you resting," Galo said. "So nice to rest in the afternoon, like myMary enjoys. Do you mind...?"

"No, come," Rafi said.

Galo righted an aluminum chair that was tossed on its side and perched onit. "Our mutual friend Rodolfo asked that I come and speak with you. Iapologize for the disturbance of your peaceful thoughts."

Rafi felt suddenly ashamed that the afternoon found him inactive. What was

he, an old lady like Galo's Mary? He stiffened his posture. "Do you want abeer? Water?" he asked Galo, noting the contrast between the man's floweryspeech and the sick pallor in his face, but the old man did not seem to hearhim. Rafi understood why his friend Rodolfo would send the old man asemissary because Rodolfo was their decision-maker, their man of action, hewas the one who'd always known why it was important for them to go onworking in that wretched toilet of a place, Ximena.


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Though Rodolfo was his friend, Rafi felt no happiness at seeing the manRodolfo had sent to stand in front of him in the cool air that smelled ofrotting fish and pond weeds. In truth, he felt sick in the stomach himselfupon seeing the old man, because he wanted to put everything from thatplace and business behind him like the wake that recedes back of a fast

boat, the kind of boat Rafi could only long for, or captain in his dreams.

When the shutting of Ximena came so abruptly and booted each man backonto his own path, Rafi sensed he could no longer live cheerfully with Mamaand with Ofelia and Teresa, his cherished sisters. He bought himself a cabinboat with the money he'd saved from that dirty job and fixed it up so it wasgleaming and a bit showy and fine to live in, perfect for a young bachelor(though it wasn't yet fit to venture far across the lake). Ofelia and Teresashook their lovely heads at him and said they never could live on the waterand bounce all night on the waves, but he told them it's different for a man,for a man it's like rocking on the bosom of his beloved. His sisters blushed atthat and flashed their eyes to each other because they were unaccustomedto hearing their baby brother speak about women in words like poems. Hethought they might run off and chatter to Mama but that would be quite finewith him. He was an adult man entitled to such words. If he hadn't beenaltogether grown when the Detective Squad took him in, he was grown now.

So he stayed on his boat and motored it around the lake when fuel wasavailable and not too expensive and the boat was not leaking dangerously.When he tied up to a tree by the shoreline, he liked to station himself on thedeck and broadcast over the water the music he'd collected, most of which

came to his country from the States when the North Americans replacedtheir old vinyl with CDs. He played Elvis and Tammy Wynette and newerstuff like heavy metal and hip hop when he could get it.

"Here, you can sit," he said again to Galo, and the older man settled hisweight tentatively on the edge of the bench that ran down one side of thefifteen foot boat. When the water kicked at the boat bottom a bit, Galosprang up and suddenly Rafi wanted to shout, "Sit! Just sit. Sit on my boat,goddammit," but he instead asked evenly, "How is Rodolfo? You've seenRodolfo?"

Galo settled back onto the bench. "He's sent me because of something that'scome out in the paper." He raised his eyes to Rafi. "Maybe you knowalready, something about an amnesty that's been offered us from the newgovernment. That's why I'm here, I'm sent by Rodolfo to speak with you,about this amnesty."

"An amnesty?" Rafi put his hand on the wooden wheel and turned it a little,


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imagining a hard right and a leap out of the water, like a great whale's, ashis boat spewed out a bold wake behind it. Light flowed into his spirit. Anamnesty. Could that be the salvation he'd been needing?

"It's like a pardon, for the crimes they say were committed during the

revolution. We must decide whether to come forward with our stories or takeour chances with continuing in silence."

"I don't understand," Rafi said. "If there's a chance of pardon, why not takeit?" Rafi was disturbed by the doubt in Galo's voice--he was tired of doubt."What does Rodolfo say?"

"Only that we must have a meeting day after tomorrow and discuss it, andeach of us put his opinion out on the table where the others can examine it."

"But I'll tell you my opinion now. We go for the amnesty, now, today, beforethe chance is gone. Don't you see, this is it, a chance for us thats cominground again, like a winning number on a wheel." His skin flushed. Hestepped closer to Galo. He looked at the old man and wondered how much oflife was left for him.

Galo shook his head wearily but offered no words of explanation.

Rafi felt the weight of the other's desolation and panic wash through him."What, man? You think it's wrong to go forward?

It's more dangerous? Tell me, please. Is that what Rodolfo's saying?"

Galo shrugged. "Rodolfo is saying, Come to a meeting."

The uncertainty agitated him. Anger bubbled within him. "Then it's not asure thing, then forget it, let it alone--if there's doubt, if Rodolfo doesn'tknow, then let it be. Forget about amnesty. Just forget it. If there's no gainfrom a confession, who needs it. Damn it."

Since Ximena had shut down and whatever promise it held had melted

away, Rafi had tried to get back on track with the government tourismschool. Some of his friends from the high school--those with ambitions likehis--were already much of the way through the program, and that put themmiles ahead of Rafi. He heard from them that tourism is the future of thecountry because of its natural beauty and the cultural history as well. Heknew about the cultural history: when he was a child, he started touringpeople around to help his mother, whose foot was so swollen with herdisease she could not take opportunities to earn an extra dollar. He only


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wished that Ximena Prison had burned to ash like Sodom and Gomorrah.Instead, the place swallowed him up, and took along his future as surely asthe clothes on the back of a man whose fallen into a mine go down with him.

Rodolfo always said, You are doing the decent thing laboring here as an

interrogator, you are working for the cause of our people who arethreatened by an evil force. Daily, he told himself Rodolfo had to be right,and believed himself that it was right and proper that they work to holdsecure the future of the whole of their people and the coming generations,even though the work itself was disgusting to him, especially to his senses.The more Rodolfo talked, the more Rafi understood what was going on intheir country and for a time he counted himself lucky, almost blessed orchosen, to be one of those who'd opened his eyes to the situation with theIndians. He saw how he could become one of the ones educated about thecause instead of one educated in tourism which, under Rodolfo's tutelage,came to seem like a fribblling thing and one too dependent on the outsidersfrom the North and from Europe who came to them with their pocketsstuffed. The image of those bulging pockets flashed now and started Rafisheart racing.

Now Galo, already an aged and weak man, presented himself at Rafi'shideaway and offered his hand and took a seat on Rafi's bench to settle hisroiling stomach and wanted to tell Rafi while he slid his hat between histhumb and forefinger that the Indians' government had offered them anamnesty and they must meet together at the old Rio Boca Club and discussgoing forward to a tribunal for Truth and Reconciliation even though it might

do them no good."Rodolfo says you must come, you must take part in the discussion."Rafi wanted to whine like a child. "But we are living free," he said. "We areleft alone. Look at my home here and how my life is coming back again, likethe forest after it's burned." His life did not in fact feel like it was comingback to vigor but he couldn't grasp whether this amnesty would help itflourish or would it be yet another line of flames licking the tender growth.He couldn't bear that. He would be finished. "This is all about that one Indianwho cracked his head?" he asked. "The stubborn one who died on the cellfloor? The one of whom Rodolfo said, His skull was weak? All this is because

of him?" He shook his head. "How can that be fair, that all of us loseeverything over that one Indian?"

"The dead take up more space than the living. You die, you become amartyr, even if you are an Indian. But the head, the skull--the strength of it,the weakness, that I don't know. Rubn would know that kind of thing."

"Rubn! Not him again? I'll have to look at him? I don't want to, and Rodolfo


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will go crazy if he has to bear his sight. All forone Indian old as the forest." He'd disliked Ajacopi more than he'd dislikedthe others, most of whom he had forgotten.

Ajacopi was smaller than most, hunched rather hideously in the back, and

had a peculiar odor, as if he rubbed his skin with one of the oily darkmedicines the Indians concoct from things growing in the jungle, then storein jugs for years, secured against spoilage by a spoonful of rum. "I neverwanted this," Rafi said. "I wanted to be a guide and share all that I know ofthe city and its history?"

"What city?"

"Our city."

"This town? With one thousand people? This town needs a bureau oftourists?"

"They say it's growing very fast."

Galo thought the boy ridiculous but had little energy to dispute him. "So therecruiters forced you off your career track and had you take a job with themilitary instead?"

He shook his head. "I met Rodolfo in the bar one night. He told me the workwas to be a very good thing. It would set us apart from others and put us

above them. We would be like condors on the cliff."

Galo sighed. "Rodolfo was drunk when he phoned me, and had no patience.He said we must decide all together and move in unison, not each on hisown like cats in the forest. If we move alone, we put each other at risk andthis has become a life and death business."

Rafi turned away from him and hung his head. How profoundly tired he wasof life and death business. All he'd wanted from that hideous job was thedollars, because the prison paid good money and let him have nicer things

than most of his cohort. He'd bought several pieces of good furniture, all ofit brand new, and the best radio he could find anywhere in the city. Rodolfohelped him tolerate the work saying over and over that even though he wasstill a young man he would be making a respected contribution to the causeof their people and he would soon forget about the dirt beneath his nails--hishands had grown grimier than a common laborer--and he would stoptroubling his thoughts with the stench of the place and its peculiar Indians.


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Despite Rodolfo's words, he often got a bitter feeling because he'd been sentto keep such close company with people he'd been taught were ignorant anddirty, like all the Indian peoples all over the world whom the Lord madeearly in his Creation before he knew what he was doing. We should holdourselves separate from them. That was what he'd been taught, even when

his own mother hadn't a coin in her pocket. He knew the Indians as dirtfarmers or low class workers--they seldom had the ambition to rise abovethat. Why would he go voluntarily to a prison to work among them? Becauseof Rodolfo, he answered himself. Because of Rodolfo and how he touted thecause, until the tourist industry shrank to a less prideful purpose.

He was last to join the squad, which had been short one man until Rafiregistered with the police unit at Rodolfo's urging and thus made himselfavailable. To reach Ximena, hed crossed open fields of scrabble leadinguphill to a rocklike building full of wretchedness and panic that left him sickin his stomach. Only gradually did he learn not to regard the particulars. Hekept his vision clouded and his nostrils pinched like you do if you meet witha pile of crap a dog or llama left on the street.He began to preach to himself, telling himself that in this new and importantjob, he was like a surgeon or a dentist which means that the prisoner isscreaming but you stick to your job. You don't listen to the noises or look atthe streaming eyes to find the frantic heart inside the man's chest--you stayat your job and feel proud you can do that.

Knowing the prisoners were Indian made the work easier since he'd knownthem as silly, sour people empty of real feeling. As a child, one time he

encountered an old Indian man squatting nearly naked beside a puddle. Theman was digging with a stick for some silver foil in the mud under the water.Rafi thought the old man was looking for coins and he offered him a coppercoin he had in his pocket. Later, in front of the family stove, he told hisgrandmother about the man with the stick. She slapped his hand and said,Naughty boy, don't hand things to a dirty Indian or you'll soon be living howthey live. That way he began to learn about the Indians and learned to bewary of them. A lick of memory told him he'd been angry briefly at Grandmaand focused his eyes on the brown spots on the back of her hand as if she'dcaught some contagion herself but the next time he saw that old Indian he

skirted him widely and turned out his bottom lip.

'Do it like a professional'--that's what Rodolfo taught him as he explained atwhat point his new assistant should take hold of the rope that held a man'shands behind his back, wrist-to-wrist, and add another twist to it, till insome cases an arm might pull away from the hand. Rodolfo said he couldnot see his own son, Daniel, growing up with the fortitude to do the workthey did there in Ximena. That was the word he used--fortitude--and at


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night, when Rafi felt desolate lying in his bed in Mama's house, he recalledthe word and a warm feeling of pride spread through his body and into hisskin and allowed him to sleep.

In time he learned to feel nothing at all during the long days he spent in the

prison building--his heart had become a surface so smooth nothing couldgrab hold. He marveled at Rubn who hurried about in a state of fascinationwith the work at hand, as if he were a professional happily attentive to hisduties.

Rafi's feelings would kindle when he left the prison after the work shift andmade his way down the hillside and walked into Mama's house, recognizingsuddenly then that he was dirty as a carrion bird and stinking with the odorsof the place. A guy like him, good looking and amiable, shouldn't come hometo his mother's house wrapped in a skin of dirt and sweat,

the last prisoner

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