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“Like what?”

“I don’t know. A car.”

“We don’t have a car. We walk. Or take the subway.”

“A TV set.”

“Everybody has a TV. What are they going to give me for a TV?”

Laura separates my fingers and kisses them, one by one. Then she blinks three or four times. She doesn’t look at me.

“I understand, Nico. I do.”

She goes to a wood cabinet and takes out a bottle of Bacardi white rum. She pours some in my glass and a little bit in her own glass.

“Then I don’t have any option, except to see how much this fucking cop loves me.”

37

RAÚL ALARCÓN, Little Kinky Flower, called Adrián Bettini to thank him, enthusiastically, for having included him in the campaign. “I’m the most popular man in Chile,” he said. “People kiss me in the streets. A taxi driver didn’t want to charge me for the ride—‘If you’re brave enough to confront Pinochet, why not me? I’m going to vote No. And I’m going to convince everyone who takes my taxi that they should vote No. Great, Don Flower. Really great!’

“Thank you, Don Adrián.”

“There’s nothing to thank me for,” Bettini said, looking through the window at a gray car without license plates parked across the street from his house. The driver lowered the window, and his companion — whose face he wasn’t able to see — lit a cigarette for him. The driver half opened the door and activated the mechanism to push his seat back. He made himself comfortable and blew a puff of smoke through the window.

“Nothing to thank me for, Mr. Alarcón. I’m the one who should thank you.”

“Me? But I’m nothing. A poor little kinky flower.”

“People think that you’re a hero. A great future is waiting for you, my friend.”

The companion of the man in the gray car got out, crossed the street, walked to Bettini’s door, and looked at the number. Then he compared it with the one written in his notebook and gave the driver a thumbs-up, signaling that it was okay.

“A great future, my friend,” Bettini repeated.

He gestured Magdalena to go to the balcony and take a look at the car.

He covered the mouthpiece of the phone and whispered to her, “Go and buy something at the grocery store and take a good look at the driver’s face.”

“Don Adrián, do you think that we’re going to win the plebiscite?”

“The plebiscite, sure,” Bettini said, blowing a kiss at his wife. “But I don’t know if they’ll accept the outcome.”

“They have no option, Don Adrián. The foreign press is here, and the reporters told me that they’re going to stay until election day.”

The driver’s companion was now looking at Magdalena, who was crossing the street on her way to the grocery store. He put his finger just below his eye, signaling the other to pay attention.

“Tell me something, Mr. Alarcón …”

“At your service, Don Adrián.”

“By any chance, do you have a friend with a small house outside Santiago? In the countryside, or on the coast?”

“Sure. Fernández, in Papudo. Why?”

“Well, the weather is so nice and I’ve seen you looking a little pale. Why don’t you go to the beach for a few days, to sunbathe and rest?”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Then Alarcón cleared his throat and asked, “Is there anything wrong, Mr. Bettini?”

“No, nothing. Nothing.”

“Excuse me for asking, but … are you afraid?”

“No, my friend, no,” Bettini answered, while looking for the number of the Italian consul in his address book.

“Because, as for me, I can say that …”

“Shit scared?”

“Well … not as much as shit shit-scared, but … close. I’m sorry, Don Adrián. I didn’t want to bother you. It was only to thank you … for having believed in me …”

Bettini smiled bitterly. He didn’t tell him what he really had to tell him: “I didn’t believe in you. I doubted you all along. Until last night, I was sure that you were a complete fool.”

“Bravo for your waltz, Little Flower.”

“I did nothing, Don Adrián. Strauss is the great one.”

“Take care. Is everything okay at your place?”

“Everything’s perfect. You know … People love me.”

“Much deserved.”

Bettini hung up and called the Italian embassy at once.

Little Kinky Flower hung up and looked again, worried, at the black car parked a little farther down the street, near the square.

38

A FEW DAYS BEFORE the elections, sociologists published the results of their polls.

Sixty-five percent of the undecided had now decided to vote No.

This, added to the great majority that would vote No regardless, the poll numbers assured that the option against Pinochet would win the plebiscite.

The team commanded by the minister of the interior didn’t show any reaction or flexibility in the face of the new wave of popularity that the No was riding. They appeared on numerous TV programs, benefiting from the government’s TV monopoly, and they never tried to address the undecided — only their own most fervent supporters.

Pinochet continued to trust Minister Fernández and his advisers, who presented him only the polls that looked favorable. The No campaign was harmless, and sociologists, who were giving the victory to your enemies, my general, are a gang of laid-off delinquents.

One of those laid-off delinquents had written, “The gods blind those whom they wish to destroy.”

At Bettini’s house, everybody’s spirits had been lifted almost as much as in every Chilean province. In a country where the main entertainment was TV, the emergence of the No in the media lessened the loneliness that was haunting the lives of every person or family. The long-standing hopelessness was somewhat softened.

For the first time, sociologists explained to Bettini, people were feeling that TV was talking to them instead of ignoring them. Those fifteen minutes were a big bang of stellar images that didn’t vanish immediately after the transmission. They kept on producing new constellations, new bursts of energy everywhere. The grave grimace had relaxed; the bitter expression on their faces had given way to smiles.

Up to that moment, what wasn’t shown on the screen didn’t seem real. People felt that the fictitious, banal characters on the TV shows were more real than themselves. They had only silence. They didn’t have authorization to live, only to witness the lives of those unreal beings they watched every night.

That brushstroke of democracy that Pinochet had allowed had broken the dam. The strategy that seemed a harmless little game had sparked the longing for a future and happiness. Slowly, Bettini was starting to believe it, too. But his success was becoming more and more dangerous. From American films, he had inherited a word that he used only when he was among trusted friends—fucking. Now he was able to talk about his fucking success with a half smile. The days before the elections he barely slept at all. There was an excess of adrenaline around him, which didn’t allow him a single moment of calm.

There were rumors that the military, aware that the eventual outcome might not favor Pinochet, were going to send all this democratic comedy to hell and not announce the results of the plebiscite. Others said that they were going to fabricate acts of terrorism to have an excuse to suspend the elections.