That night, I found Dora Montes on the forecastle deck, in an area reserved for the very few first-class passengers. She was drunk. I told her she was in no condition to strip, and I took her back to my cabin. We made love until Johnny Paredes came in. Dora, unlike many drunks whose bodies go limp or unsynchronized, was taut and moved with mathematical precision. Christ, said Johnny Paredes when he turned on the light, I’ve been looking for you for hours, your sister told me you wanted to kill yourself. Then he sat on his bunk and we all started to talk. According to Dora, she was just sad and she had no plans to kill herself (only fools did that), let alone take off her clothes in public. My sister must have made that up to get you to come after me, she said, looking me in the eyes. I can come back in an hour, if you want, said Johnny Paredes. No need, said Dora, get in your bunk and go to sleep. Johnny turned off the light and got undressed in the dark. Good night, he said. Good night, we said. It was too dark to see anything, but I knew that Dora was smiling.
The next afternoon Dora made love with Johnny Paredes. That night, she came back to make love with me, and when we reached Arica, to celebrate our arrival on Chilean terrain all three of us made love together, which was a disaster. Johnny and I kept watching each other surreptitiously and in the end Dora burst out laughing.
We reached Valparaiso at night and for reasons unknown they wouldn’t let us disembark until the next morning. That night, Dora Montes, her secretary, Johnny Paredes, and I stayed up late on deck talking, gazing at the lights in the mountains, and listening to Chilean radio. I remember that Johnny told stories about gang members in Caracas, probably made up; Dora and her sister told stories about Central American nightclubs; and I said that in Panama I had seen Last Tango in Paris and met a black waiter at the bar on the ground floor of my rooming house who had seen every single movie made in Mexico and who advised me not to go back to Chile. Dora and her sister didn’t say anything. But Johnny seemed interested. Why did he tell you not to go back? I don’t know, I said. He was black, skinny, and I think he was gay. He said he liked me. Oh, said Johnny, now I get it. He even told me he knew how to resell the boat ticket so I could go back to Mexico. Stop right there, said Johnny, it’s plain as day.
The next day we left the ship. Johnny Paredes was met by his aunt from Viña del Mar. Dora and her secretary were met by two big men with mustaches and dark suits. Our goodbyes were formal. Then I shouldered my backpack and set off on foot for the train station.
4.
The Coup
I was dreaming about a woman with bright eyes when shouts woke me. It was Juan de la Cruz, a painter and sculptor of virgins, whose house I was staying in. My first thought was that I was being kicked out or that I had a phone call from Mexico, something serious to do with my mother’s health, maybe. Then I realized that Juan de la Cruz was moaning, not shouting, and that he was tearing at his hair with one hand as he shook me by the shoulder with the other, though his voice barely rose above a whisper, as if he was afraid he would be overheard. I jumped out of bed naked and asked whether there was a call for me. The painter sat down on the bed that I had just abandoned and said not to worry, my mother was fine, or he guessed she was, and then he said that he wished he could be with my mother right now, or even my father, or begging for change around Chapultepec (which is something that makes an impression on tourists—Juan de la Cruz had been in Mexico not long ago). The military has risen up, he said, it’s all over. My first feeling was relief. My mother was fine, my family was fine. I got dressed and went into the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth, followed by the painter, who summed up for me over and over again what had happened so far, and then we had a cup of tea together. I asked what he planned to do. What can I do? he said, I’m an artist, it’s all over.
I didn’t see it that way, and before I left I took my Caborca knife from my backpack and put it in my pocket. This was a working-class neighborhood of single-story houses with back and front yards, stretching endlessly along the highway south from Santiago. On the other side of the highway rose a new shantytown with narrow unpaved streets, linked to the neighborhood and its shops via a few very high pedestrian walkways. Along both sides of the highway were many vacant lots.
There was no one outside, but I knew that the painter’s neighbors were Socialists because people came into their yards at night to talk and we’d spoken once. So I crossed the street and knocked on their door. I wasn’t a Communist or a Socialist but it didn’t seem like the kind of day to be choosy about your comrades. The Socialists were orphans. One was seventeen and the other was fifteen and they were having breakfast when I got there. They lived with an older brother, who was twenty and who had left for the factory a while ago. They offered me a cup of tea and at first I got the impression that their brother had gone to work. Then I realized that he hadn’t, that nobody was going to work that day.
One of the Socialists said that the local Communist cell was handing out weapons and coordinating the actions of all the leftist groups, and after we finished our tea we went there. The cell’s headquarters were at the house of an ordinary workingman, a fat little guy who was clearly rattled by the presence of so many strangers in his dining room. At times he seemed about to cry, though at the critical moment he always pulled himself together. The Socialist brothers had been there before, and they introduced me succinctly: a comrade, they said, and the fat man and his wife said good morning, comrade, shrugging their shoulders.