that the entire region would fall like a house of cards.”
I couldn’t resist the temptation to add my two cents, albeit with a heavy heart: “In unison with the ballet dancers who collapsed onstage as soon as the lights faded, the curtains closed, and the middle class applauded.”
Without acknowledging the irony, Max digested my remark and went on. “Maybe so,” he said. “The difference is that there was no audience. Because the theater remained empty. Outside, the people were being roughed up as usual. Until, twenty years later, long after the spells cast by the Cuban threat and Allende’s rise to power, the theater would gradually fill up again. In a matter of months, the curtains would open to full halls. And the house of cards would go up again before everyone’s eyes, to the applause that would then celebrate the restoration of democracy.”
The student had clearly surpassed his master, as the ambassador in Montevideo faded into the shadows of the past. I listened in silence to Max’s conclusion: “Except that the people would remain abandoned in the streets. They were no longer beaten or tortured. But their conquests would amount to little more than that. Should you ever quote me on this, however, I’ll not only deny everything but say that I always sensed there was something off-kilter about you.”
I clapped my hands together six or seven times, in the slow, cadenced kind of applause that produces silences as expressive as the sounds. Applause that echoed mournfully in the middle of the night. It was moments like this that enabled me to see just how well Max understood his own tragedy — and the hell he had gotten himself into. Or so I thought.
“You know what’s even worse?” he asked, aware that he’d caught my attention. “That in twenty or thirty years, no one in Brazil will talk about this anymore. By the early twenty-first century, not even historians will be interested.
No one will broach the issue except in passing
. Bookstores will shelve works on the subject in the history section.
In alphabetical order
. Depending on the author’s name, an account of torture in Brazil in the 1970s might be located between a volume about gold mining in the colonial period and one on African influences in Brazilian folklore. If it’s there at all.”
“Could be,” I conceded. “
Because we’ll be busy paying the price of impunity
. Which will always be a part of the country’s realities from here on.”
Besides feeling powerless and indignant, I was furious with myself. And with fate, for having directed me to sit at Max’s table. I stood up. “Anything else? Or am I free to go, wishing you luck on the banks of the Seine?”
“There is indeed something else. Sit down, my friend. And see if you can handle it. Because it’s not very pleasant.”
He seemed intent on taking our conversation to its conclusion. “If some of the dead and the disappeared you and the press are always referring to,” he said after I sat back down, “not
all
, but
some
, could one day return from heaven or hell, or wherever they are, they would kneel before their friends and relatives,
they would kneel at their feet
, and beg forgiveness for the grief they caused. That
they
caused.”
“Max …”
“For the childishness of their actions,” he continued deafly, “for the stupidity of their decisions, for their immaturity in embracing lost causes. And for the way they let themselves be manipulated by the cunning old foxes of the left. They would be on their knees, begging forgiveness for the suffering they caused. Not of their victims, generally young soldiers (because these were the poor souls who died, not their superiors) or simple bystanders, like the unlucky managers of banks that were held up, or foreigners that the amateur guerrillas mistook for CIA agents. No. They wouldn’t have to ask forgiveness of these individuals, because they were just accidental victims, as we love to say in our line of
I couldn’t resist the temptation to add my two cents, albeit with a heavy heart: “In unison with the ballet dancers who collapsed onstage as soon as the lights faded, the curtains closed, and the middle class applauded.”
Without acknowledging the irony, Max digested my remark and went on. “Maybe so,” he said. “The difference is that there was no audience. Because the theater remained empty. Outside, the people were being roughed up as usual. Until, twenty years later, long after the spells cast by the Cuban threat and Allende’s rise to power, the theater would gradually fill up again. In a matter of months, the curtains would open to full halls. And the house of cards would go up again before everyone’s eyes, to the applause that would then celebrate the restoration of democracy.”
The student had clearly surpassed his master, as the ambassador in Montevideo faded into the shadows of the past. I listened in silence to Max’s conclusion: “Except that the people would remain abandoned in the streets. They were no longer beaten or tortured. But their conquests would amount to little more than that. Should you ever quote me on this, however, I’ll not only deny everything but say that I always sensed there was something off-kilter about you.”
I clapped my hands together six or seven times, in the slow, cadenced kind of applause that produces silences as expressive as the sounds. Applause that echoed mournfully in the middle of the night. It was moments like this that enabled me to see just how well Max understood his own tragedy — and the hell he had gotten himself into. Or so I thought.
“You know what’s even worse?” he asked, aware that he’d caught my attention. “That in twenty or thirty years, no one in Brazil will talk about this anymore. By the early twenty-first century, not even historians will be interested.
No one will broach the issue except in passing
. Bookstores will shelve works on the subject in the history section.
In alphabetical order
. Depending on the author’s name, an account of torture in Brazil in the 1970s might be located between a volume about gold mining in the colonial period and one on African influences in Brazilian folklore. If it’s there at all.”
“Could be,” I conceded. “
Because we’ll be busy paying the price of impunity
. Which will always be a part of the country’s realities from here on.”
Besides feeling powerless and indignant, I was furious with myself. And with fate, for having directed me to sit at Max’s table. I stood up. “Anything else? Or am I free to go, wishing you luck on the banks of the Seine?”
“There is indeed something else. Sit down, my friend. And see if you can handle it. Because it’s not very pleasant.”
He seemed intent on taking our conversation to its conclusion. “If some of the dead and the disappeared you and the press are always referring to,” he said after I sat back down, “not
all
, but
some
, could one day return from heaven or hell, or wherever they are, they would kneel before their friends and relatives,
they would kneel at their feet
, and beg forgiveness for the grief they caused. That
they
caused.”
“Max …”
“For the childishness of their actions,” he continued deafly, “for the stupidity of their decisions, for their immaturity in embracing lost causes. And for the way they let themselves be manipulated by the cunning old foxes of the left. They would be on their knees, begging forgiveness for the suffering they caused. Not of their victims, generally young soldiers (because these were the poor souls who died, not their superiors) or simple bystanders, like the unlucky managers of banks that were held up, or foreigners that the amateur guerrillas mistook for CIA agents. No. They wouldn’t have to ask forgiveness of these individuals, because they were just accidental victims, as we love to say in our line of
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