“I agree.”
Right at the moment when Bettini was about to open the door, the girl jumped out of bed and hugged him tightly.
“Dad?”
“Patricia?”
“If you lead the campaign for the No, then I’m going to vote No.”
13
PATRICIA BETTINI is kind of a hippie, but she doesn’t want to have sex with me before we graduate from high school. She sees the end of high school as a moment of liberation. She thinks that all good things in life will come together — going to college, having sex, and, of course, the end of Pinochet.
It’s like when Catholics make a vow. She got it into her head that if she can hold on for the next six months, she’ll get a great score on the aptitude test, get accepted into the architecture program, and Pinochet will be overthrown.
Last Tuesday we were supposed to get together, but she didn’t show up. Later that evening, I called the same number and a voice said, “I’m sorry, kid, we have no news about your father.” On Wednesday, early in the morning, it’s drizzling again, like last week. Some buses go through the Alameda Avenue toward Barrio Alto, where blue-collar workers, maids, and gardeners go to work at the rich people’s houses. The smoke from the exhaust pipes rises and mixes with the stagnant gray air.
Nobody seems to be doing anything to change the situation. They are paralyzed, just like me.
Actually, I obey my dad. He’s a philosophy teacher, and if he said that we’re in the Baroque syllogism, I believe him. While I’m at the school gate, staring at the sidewalk looking for a lit cigarette butt to smash, I have a brief daydream. I’m walking into the classroom a little bit late, and Professor Santos is taking attendance, and when he calls my name, I say, “Here.”
I’m a little late, but I get to class in time to get a piece of paper with questions that Professor Valdivieso is handing out. He wants us to explain how one can ascend, according to the allegory of the cave, from the world of shadows to the brightness surrounding the ideas.
My classmates work in silence, filling in the first page fast.
I hear the paper rustling every time they turn the page to write on the other side. I know the allegory of the cave by heart, and Dad and I have read Plato’s dialogues a few times. He plays Socrates and I play the other character, but instead of answering I keep on thinking about Patricia Bettini, about Dad’s raincoat, the one he took from the chair the morning they came for him, and about the lyrics of Billy Joel’s song, “Just the Way You Are.”
Five minutes before the class ends, I think I was able to remember the entire first stanza of Billy Joel’s song. I write it down in Spanish on the test page, while I sing it in English:
Don’t go changing, to try and please me
You never let me down before
Don’t imagine you’re too familiar
And I don’t see you anymore.
I wouldn’t leave you in times of trouble
We never could have come this far
I took the good times, I’ll take the bad times
I’ll take you just the way you are.
I don’t write anything at all about the allegory of the cave.
“How are you, Santos?” Professor Valdivieso asks me when I hand him the test.
“Still here,” I say and walk out to the schoolyard amid my classmates.
14
WHEN BETTINI LEFT the place, he was determined to tell Olwyn that he was going to quit. After all, the sum of factors yielded the same product: a demoralized population, acceptance of the dictatorship, discouragement mixed with tedium, isolated heroic acts of resistance crushed by the regime, not even one bright idea to start the campaign, and Dr. Fernández’s voice resounding in his head like a bitter warning: “If you want to give me a thrill, don’t agree to lead the ad campaign for the No.”
He entered Olwyn’s office without a greeting so that he wouldn’t have to regret it.
“I cannot think of anything,” was the only thing he said.
“How come?”
“This country’s emotionally devastated by Pinochet. People feel hopeless. I resign.”
“Your task is to come up with a campaign that would give them courage.”
“Courage! They see everything gray!”
“Think of a strategy that would make them see the future in a different color. I’m sorry, but I cannot waste my time with you right now. I have to work my butt off to keep the sixteen political parties that are with us together, to keep the coalition from breaking apart, and you dare to come with your little metaphysical quibbles?”
Bettini let himself fall in the old leather sofa. “I feel so lonely, sir!”
“But why? The Chilean people and sixteen political parties are on your side!”
“I’d rather have just one opposition party with a clear identity, instead of this jumble.”
Olwyn struck a hard blow on the table. He seemed to have lost his patience. “ ‘Jumble’! Where did you get that word, Bettini?”
“From my daughter, sir.”
“From your own daughter?”
“Yes, sir, my own daughter.”
“By Saturday, at the latest, I need the logo for the No, the jingle for the No, and the poster for the No.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to have a whiskey.”
“You’re a genius! Couldn’t you think of anything at all?”
“Just stupid things. Things like ‘Democracy or Pinochet.’ ”
“What a bore!”
“Instead, I came up with a good one for the campaign in support of Pinochet, ‘Either me or chaos.’ It has all the precision that we don’t have. Besides, people don’t want freedom. They only want to consume. They look at the commercials, totally captivated, and get into debt so they can buy everything. And Pinochet tells them that if he loses, the shelves will be empty.”
Olwyn stared at him while rubbing his hands together, like a priest.
“Would you feel more comfortable working for the Yes?”
15
THE VOLUNTEERS who wanted to testify about how they were enduring the dictatorship gathered in the studios of Movie Center Productions — mothers of disappeared children, women who had been raped, teenagers who had been tortured, blue-collar workers with kidneys beaten to a pulp, deaf old people, jobless men and women who had lost their homes, students thrown out of the university, pianists with broken wrists, women whose nipples were bitten by dogs, office clerks with absent looks, hungry children …
A fifty-year-old woman accompanied by a guitarist approached Bettini. “I want to dance a cueca on your TV show.”
“A cueca is fine,” the advertising agent said. “It’s something cheerful.”
“This young man’s my son, Daniel. He’s a guitarist.”
“Hi, Daniel.”
“This cueca is for my husband, a missing detainee.”
“Whom are you going to dance the cueca with?”
“With him, sir. With my husband.”
She pulled a white handkerchief out of her blouse, and holding it with her right forefinger and thumb, waved it delicately. The boy played the first strums, and in a high-pitched voice she sang the first verse: “My dear, there was a time when I was happy …”