Space Invaders Read online

  I’m a hero. Every year, on May 21, it’s my job to be one. I don’t know why they choose me, I don’t look like Arturo Prat, but I’m as brave as he was and I’m just as willing to die for something or someone. Year after year I take part in this perpetual disaster that, it seems, will never end. In a moment of déjà vu, it’s my turn to die again on the enemy deck for my country and my honor. Just like last year, and the year before, and the year before that. I leave my ship of colored paper, I leap with my sword in my hand, but instead of dropping down onto the enemy ship, I land in the white sheet that is the sea. I don’t land on the Peruvian ship that we built yesterday in the classroom. I don’t do the thing I’ve practiced so many times.

  I search for the teacher in the audience, but I can’t find her. I want to explain that this isn’t my fault. It’s not that I don’t want to go into battle, but the white sheet has snared me. I fall into it and it swallows me up and hides me and lulls me to sleep. I don’t remember this white sheet. Someone put it here at the last minute. It wasn’t part of the play. It wasn’t part of this battle. I want to ask for help, but it wouldn’t look good. I’m a hero, not a coward. And though I know I’m going to die anyway, I resist and try to raise my head from the sea of cloth. I see my sailors over there on the ship. All of them are waving their right hands at me. It looks like a farewell. González hasn’t let go of the flag, she’s holding it and she flaps it like a big handkerchief. She comes over to the railing. Her face is wet with drops of seawater that she dries with a corner of the flag. But now that I think about it, those drops might have been tears.

  González is crying. They say her brother drowned. No one knows how or why. Maybe it was like this, wrapped in a white sheet like the sea. González tosses me the flag and I try to grab it. I pretend it’s a life preserver. The flag covers me, like the sheet. I twist, I roll, I’m carried away by the current, I drown and I sleep. I sleep deeply. It seems to me that I die under the tricolor fabric.

  I wake up.

  She’s sitting on my bed.

  I feel the weight of her body close to mine.

  Zúñiga, she says, you survived. I half hear her over the white noise of the television, which is still on. It’s late. I know I’m dreaming, but her voice in my ear is as real as the feather weight of the sheets on my body. It’s her. I can see her by the light of the television screen. Her black hair, the freckles on her nose, a white sailor hat and the burnt-cork mustache, smudged by her tears. You came back? I ask her and she smiles. Her hair smells faintly of gum. The television screen announces a new day’s programming. It begins with the national anthem and pictures of the whole country from Arica to Punta Arenas.

  I wake up again.

  There’s no television.

  I’m alone and I’ve grown old.

  Second Life

  I

  Santiago de Chile. 1982. The girl sits on a bench in the schoolyard, eating ham and cheese on a roll. Her seventh-year classmates run and play around her. A few months ago, ex-president Eduardo Frei Montalva, leader of the opposition to General Augusto Pinochet, died of unexplained septic shock at a private clinic. Soon after, operatives of the Central Nacional de Inteligencia shot union leader Tucapel Jiménez five times in the head before slitting his throat. Both stories made the headlines. Two copies of those newspapers are filed in the school library, in a fat binder on shelf number four in the third aisle. None of the children in the school have ever opened that binder. Now, in the schoolyard, the bell rings for the end of recess. The girl shakes the crumbs from her checkered smock and then rises. The children line up by grade. She joins her classmates and waits for a signal from the monitor to walk to her classroom. While she waits she looks at her red-painted nails. Her arm is on the shoulder of the classmate ahead of her, to mark the proper distance, and as she stands there she examines the polish, which has started to peel. The girl senses the gaze of the monitor inspecting the lines. Everyone begins to move forward, one after the other. The girl puts her hands in the pockets of her smock. No one notices.

  II

  Dear friend, hello! How are you? Did you like the postcard I sent you from Germany? I wrote you what day and time I was coming so that you could meet me at Pudahuel Airport but you weren’t there. Anyway we had a great time. Germany is big and beautiful. We took lots of pictures and ate lots of sausages. Germany is split in half by a wall. I only saw one side, the good side, it’s the only side you can visit because the other side is too dangerous. My little brother was fine, we were all worried about traveling with him, but nothing happened. He cried a little on the plane, but babies cry so even though I was embarrassed my mom told me it was normal. Moms aren’t embarrassed when their children cry. That’s how I’m going to be with my babies. The only terrible thing about the trip was that they operated on my dad’s ear. This is the fourth operation he’s had so that part was sad and we cried a little. He still hasn’t recovered from his terrible accident. But the doctors there are better and so they sent him to Germany to have the operation. The trip back was hard too because we had layovers, so the plane took off and landed and his ear hurt every time we went up or down. But I liked that because I got to see more places. I saw Paris, I saw Spain, which is really nice, and the last stop was Rio de Janeiro which was my favorite. I bought postcards, and I’ll send them to you one at a time when my uncle Claudio can take me to the post office. Uncle Claudio is a new uncle. Basically I’m not allowed to leave the house alone anymore so I have to go out with Uncle Claudio, who is an uncle from my dad’s work who takes care of me and comes with me when I go out, because my mom stays with my brother, my dad is at work a lot, and I can’t be alone out of the house because it could be as dangerous as crossing to the other side of the wall in Germany. I’ll go with him to the post office and I’ll send you this letter which hopefully you’ll answer very soon. On the trip I brought the letter you wrote me and I read it every night. I even showed it to my dad. Zúñiga wrote me a letter too but not by mail. He gave me a little rolled-up piece of paper before I left. It’s not very long but I brought it with me too to remember him by. I didn’t show his letter to my dad. He doesn’t like Zúñiga, he says his family is strange. I didn’t show it to my mom either because she says the same thing. I didn’t show it to anybody. I’ll show you later.

  Do you know what my middle name is? Zúñiga doesn’t know. I’ll tell you. It’s Marisella.

  Alright, my dear friend Maldonado. I can’t think of anything else to write.

  Now I’m going to the post office with my uncle.

  Sincerely yours.

  Love. Marisella.

  III

  We don’t know whether this is a dream or a memory. Sometimes we think it’s a memory creeping into our dreams, a scene that escaped from one person’s head, lurking in everyone’s dirty sheets. It might have been lived once, by us or by someone else. It might have been staged or even made-up, but the more we think about it the more we’re sure it’s just a dream that gradually became memory. If dreams and memories were truly different, we might be able to identify its source, but on our memoryless mattresses everything is mixed-up and the truth is that it doesn’t really matter anymore.

  First it’s me running with Riquelme along one of the second-floor corridors at school. Let’s go, Zúñiga, he says as we hurry down the stairs, trying not to make a sound. We’re heading for the front door. We have flyers in our pockets. Lots of flyers, a big pile. My hands are stained blue from the ink. We have to scatter them in front of the school without anyone seeing us. I’m not sure what they say; I guess it’s something about a march, a call to a big march against Pinochet, something unheard-of, something new, something really important, because it was my big brother who asked me to do this and when he did he said that it was a mission for the bravest of the brave and that I’m a brave man, which means I can do this, and more. So we sneak out of class and we get past the caretaker and before the bell rings for the end of the school day, we open our bags and scatter t
he flyers in front of the school so that everybody will see them when they come out. Parents, guardians, drivers, teachers, neighbors, little kids and big kids, will be able to read them on the ground, pick them up, and bring the information home. Hunger march, say the blue mimeographed letters. Again and again on the ground. All those flyers for all to see. Hunger march on the sidewalk, hunger march at the bus stop, hunger march by the kiosk, hunger march by the public telephone. The mission is a success. No one has seen us, so we can return to school triumphant and when we get out of class my brother will see what a good job we’ve done, and he’ll probably buy me some Chilean trading cards for my Spanish World Cup album.

  When we’re about to step back inside someone honks a horn at us. A red Chevy Chevette is parked out front. From inside a guy nods at us. He’s a dark man, with a mustache, a big nose, a pair of dark glasses that hide his eyes. He’s smoking a cigarette as he waits—because it looks like he’s waiting for someone. I don’t know him. I’ve never seen him before. Neither has Donoso, or Fuenzalida, or Bustamante. Riquelme has, though. He says it’s González’s uncle. A guy who drives her places, a relative or something. He brings her to school or wherever and then he takes her home. Maldonado says it’s someone from her father’s job, Don González’s job. Maldonado says his name is Uncle Claudio and he’s funny, he likes to kid around, and he let her smoke one of his cigarettes. Riquelme says that a week ago he came to pick González up at Riquelme’s apartment after they had been working together on a science project with Acosta and Maldonado. He was sitting in Riquelme’s dining room drinking a cup of tea and he talked for a long time to Riquelme’s grandmother. Riquelme says he’s nice, he promised to take Riquelme for a ride in the red Chevy whenever he wants. Probably he would let him smoke one of his cigarettes too. I’ve never been in a red Chevy. Neither has Riquelme. I once had a toy Chevy when I used to collect little cars. It was my favorite, but I don’t know where it is now. It got lost. The man in the red Chevy smiles at us from the car holding one of the flyers we’ve just scattered. He must have picked it up from the ground. Hunger march in the clutch of González’s Uncle Claudio. Riquelme nods back at him. I do too, though I don’t know him. I even raise my hand. I have a secret fantasy that he’ll take me for a ride in the red Chevy.

  IV

  The game is simple and we have an hour to play it. Everybody knows and that’s why we all show up on time. Our mothers and fathers are in the parent meeting and we shut ourselves in here, in this dark classroom belonging to the grade above or the grade below, never our own classroom. We like to come at night, though we aren’t invited. Our parents sit at our desks, answer to our names on the attendance list, and discuss things involving us with our teacher. Meanwhile, here, a few yards away, we’ve changed out of our uniforms and we’re wearing other clothes, our own clothes, real clothes, ready to be real and play our own game.

  The light is off in the classroom and the air thickens. Amid a darkness as black as night or death, we, the usual someones, stop being ourselves. Now no one is who they claim to be. No name is embroidered on the lapel of any smock. We’re different people. Shadows, hushed ghosts moving silently with arms and hands outstretched, trying to run into something. Donoso goes after Maldonado. He touches her shoulder, then her neck, he tangles his fingers in a mop of hair that he thinks is hers. Bustamante finds an elbow that’s connected to someone’s right hand—whose hand he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t ask, either. Fuenzalida’s face meets Riquelme’s, nose to nose. They breathe together, registering each other’s smell and taste, testing each other’s saliva. Zúñiga moves around the dark room in search of González. He pats heads, legs, arms, and he wants to call out, but names don’t work here, attendance-taking is left outside of the dark room, and González is no longer González, because now she’s part Maldonado, part Fuenzalida, part Acosta too. And a tongue slips into Zúñiga’s mouth. It’s a little tongue, though very intrusive, a tongue that could be anyone’s. And somebody laughs and somebody hides, and somebody laughs again, while someone else sneezes in a corner and someone collides with the chalkboard at the front of the room. Bustamante’s ears are burning, he feels like he’s about to burst. Donoso bites Maldonado’s neck, apparently he can’t help himself, and Maldonado howls like a cat. Zúñiga laughs because of the tickling, someone is tickling him or maybe no one is and it’s just laughter, pure laughter that seizes us all, while the quartz watch with the little light on somebody’s wrist counts down the minutes until the end. Then, in the last seconds of the game, come the clutches, the crushes, the squeezes, the tongues licking and seeking and not speaking, because here there are no words, no names, we’re just one body with many paws and hands and heads, a little Martian from Space Invaders, an octopus with multiform arms playing this game in a darkness that’s about to lift.

  The light suddenly comes on and the monitor is watching us from the doorway. We’re all exactly where we’re supposed to be, boys to the right and girls to the left. Some are reading books. Others are asleep in their seats because it’s late and tomorrow we’ll have to get up early to come back to school.

  V

  Apparently Zúñiga and Riquelme did something terrible. They were caught doing something, which is why they were suspended for a few days, which is why they aren’t here, says Maldonado. Zúñiga got into politics, and that’s why all of this is happening to him, says Acosta. What do you mean he got into politics? asks Donoso. He can’t get into politics, he’s too young, says Maldonado. He can because his parents are resistance leaders and his brother is in the resistance too, says Fuenzalida. What does it mean to be in the resistance? asks Donoso. Everybody in the upper school is a leader or a fighter in the resistance. Get with it, we’re not kids anymore, says Bustamante. We are kids, says Maldonado, we’re only twelve. We’re not, sometimes there’s no such thing as too young, says Bustamante. Anyway what is politics? Everything is politics. So what’s the point. Who cares. Basically there’s a reason you can’t get political, there’s a reason it’s forbidden by the government. It isn’t right for things to be forbidden. Who cares about that shit. Don’t swear. I’ll talk however I want to talk. Then I’ll tell the monitor. You’re probably the one who told on Zúñiga and Riquelme. I didn’t tell on anybody. I have no idea what Zúñiga and Riquelme are up to. Does anybody have any idea what Zúñiga and Riquelme are up to? Actually, does anybody have any idea what it means to get into politics? Be quiet, here comes the math teacher. Everybody in their seats, everybody sit down, everybody quiet. The door is opening. Good morning, boys and girls. Time for attendance. Acosta, Bustamante, Donoso. Blah blah blah. Open your books to page thirty-two. Teacher, before we start we want to ask you a question. What’s the question, what is it. What does it mean to get into politics. How old do you have to be. Silence. The teacher stares, startled. Silence. The teacher hesitates before answering. Silence. Fuenzalida dreams of him, of the silence that settled over the classroom, which she can hear as clearly as our voices. Silence. No one says a thing, not a seat creaks, not a sheet of paper rustles. Boys and girls, says the math teacher, this is math class and you’re here to learn, not to talk nonsense.

  VI

  Our little red toy Chevy crosses the schoolyard. It rolls past the statue of the Virgen del Carmen and turns at the corner of the soccer field on the way to the fountain. It bounces over some bread crumbs and past a few pebbles and an orange peel. Inside, from the backseat, we gaze out the window, smoking a couple of cigarettes. In this dream we’re tiny too, the size of the red Chevy, so we can do whatever we want because nobody can see us down here. We can paint our nails, roll down our socks, loosen our ties, take off our smocks. If we want to we can even let down our hair and hold hands. The monitor walks past. We see his giant black shoe. His sole is about to crush us, but the tiny red Chevy dodges him in an incredible maneuver and saves us from being squashed to death by his loafer. The monitor doesn’t even notice us, can’t see us from above, doesn’t suspect what we might be gett
ing up to down here in the backseat of the red Chevy. In the front seat, González’s uncle Claudio is at the mini steering wheel. He’s tiny like us. He’s the pilot of this dream, everyone’s fantasy, driving the tiny car at top speed, swerving around obstacles in the schoolyard like a real race car driver. On the windshield of the red Chevy, held in place by the wipers, is a flyer with blue letters. Hunger march, we read, as González’s uncle Claudio smiles at us in the rearview mirror.

  VII

  We’ve never done it before, but we’re doing it. We’re through the gate and we’re walking out of school in a pack. We follow one after another in a long line, but instead of filing into the classroom, this time we’re heading out. We move into place, each of us resting a right arm on the shoulder of the classmate ahead to mark the perfect distance between us. Our uniforms neat. Top button of the shirt fastened, tie knotted, dark jumper below the knee, blue socks pulled up, pants perfectly ironed, school crest sewn on at proper chest height, no threads dangling, shoes freshly shined. One step forward, then another, and another. We go marching, leaving the school behind, losing ourselves among buildings, buses, cars, office workers, street vendors, beggars. Eyes forward, gaze never dropping below shoulder height. Not retreating. Making our way through the center of the city, which embraces us. Alert to its movements, its smiles, the other people who join us along the way. Suddenly, in the middle of a broad avenue, two hands that aren’t ours begin to clap to an unfamiliar beat. One and two. One and two. Other hands that aren’t ours join in the clapping. One and two. One and two. And then, so as not to be outdone, we lift our hands from the shoulders of our trusty classmates and without knowing how, we’ve got it, one and two, beating out a new rhythm that seizes our bodies. Someone shouts something and someone repeats it. Somebody else shouts something and many others repeat it. We shout what’s being shouted. We don’t understand what it means, but that’s what we do. We howl a howl that comes from somewhere that isn’t our mouths, a chant invented and started by others, but made for us. One and two, one and two, our hearts beating in time to the words echoing off the buildings. Everybody clapping, the smell of sweat, of clothes washed in unfamiliar detergent, cigarettes, smoke, burnt rubber. And the line breaks apart. Acosta is separated from Bustamante and Donoso, and we lose Fuenzalida and Maldonado somewhere, as others crowd in between us. New uniforms appear, new school crests, new hairstyles, and the line gets longer, while next to us we see another long line, and beyond that another, and another. All of the columns forming a perfect and unbreakable square, a block that advances in lockstep, a single unit moving on the game board. We are the most important piece in a game, but we still don’t know what game it is.