Hippie

“The one sent from that Communist country, Yugoslavia, to put an end to democracy in Brazil? She’s getting what she deserves” came the bad cop’s response.

His paralyzing fear threatened to return, but Paulo needed to keep himself under control. He needed to discover how to escape this nightmare. He needed to wake up.

* * *

—

Someone placed a box with some wires and a crank between his feet. Another person told him they called it a telephone—they only needed to tape the metal clamps to his body and crank the handle and Paulo would get “a shock no man could handle.”

Suddenly, seeing the machine before him, he hit upon his only way out of there. He abandoned his submissive posture and raised his voice:

“You think I’m afraid of a little shock? You think I’m afraid of a little pain? Well, don’t you worry—I’ll torture myself. I’ve already been to the nuthouse not one, not two, but three times; I’ve had all sorts of electric shocks, I can do the job for you. But this isn’t news to you, I’ll bet you know everything about my life.”

When he’d finished, he began to dig his nails into his flesh and draw blood, tear skin, screaming the entire time that they knew everything, that they could kill him, he didn’t care, he believed in reincarnation, he would come back for them. Them and their families, as soon as he made it to the other world.

Someone came and restrained him. Everyone seemed horrified at what he was doing, though no one said anything.

“Stop this, Paulo,” the “good cop” said. “Can you explain the map to me?”

Paulo spoke in the voice of someone who was having a psychotic episode. He screamed as he explained what had happened in Santiago—they needed directions to the tunnel that connected Chile and Argentina.

“My girlfriend, where’s my girlfriend?”

His screams grew louder and louder, in the hope that she could hear him. The “good cop” tried to calm him down—by the looks of it, at that time, the very beginning of the so-called Years of Lead, the agents of repression hadn’t yet reached their peak brutality.

The man asked him to stop shaking. If he was innocent there was no reason to worry, but first they needed to verify everything he’d told them—he would have to remain there a little while longer. The man didn’t say how long, but he offered Paulo a cigarette. Paulo noticed that the others had begun leaving the room, they weren’t interested in him anymore.

“Wait for me to leave. When you hear the sound of the door closing, you can take off your hood. Every time someone comes and knocks on the door, put it back on. As soon as we have all the information we need, you can leave.”

“What about my girlfriend?” Paulo screamed again.

He didn’t deserve this. No matter how bad a son he had been, no matter how many headaches he’d given his parents, he didn’t deserve this. He was innocent—but, if he’d had a gun, he was capable of shooting all of them then and there. There’s nothing worse than the feeling of being punished for something you haven’t done.

“Don’t worry. We’re not some monster rapists. We only want to put an end to those who want to put an end to our country.”

The man left, the door clicked shut, and Paulo removed his hood. He was in a soundproof room, one outfitted with a metal doorsill. That’s what he’d tripped over on his way in. There was an enormous one-way mirror to his right—it must have served to monitor whoever was being held there. There were two or three bullet holes in the ceiling, and one of them looked to have a strand of hair coming out of it. But he needed to pretend none of this interested him. He looked at his body, at the scabs forming from the blood that he had shed; he ran his hands over his entire body and saw that nothing was broken—they were masters at leaving no permanent traces, and perhaps that was why his reaction had alarmed them.

He imagined that the next step would be to call Rio de Janeiro and confirm his stories abou

t the mental institution, the electric shock therapy, each step he and his girlfriend had taken—her foreign passport might either protect her or spell her demise, seeing as how she came from a Communist country.

If he were lying, he would be tortured nonstop for days on end. If he were speaking the truth, perhaps they would reach the conclusion that he really was just some drugged-up hippie from a rich family and let him go.

He wasn’t lying, and he hoped they wouldn’t take long to discover this.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been there—there were no windows, the light never went out, and the only face he’d been able to catch a glimpse of was that of the torture site’s photographer. Were those barracks? A police station? The photographer ordered him to remove his hood, placed the camera in front of his face in such a way to conceal that he was nude, ordered him to stand profile, took another photo, and left without exchanging a single word.

Even the knocks on his door defied any schedule that might allow him to ascertain a routine—at times, lunch was served only a short time after breakfast, and the hours often dragged until dinner arrived. When he needed to go to the bathroom, he’d knock on the door, replacing the hood, until, mostly likely through the one-way mirror, they figured out what he wanted. At times he would try to speak with the figure who led him to the bathroom, but he received no response. Only silence.

He spent most of his time sleeping. One day (or night?) he tried to make use of the experience to meditate or concentrate on some higher being—he recalled that San Juan de la Cruz had spoken of the dark night of the soul, that monks spent years in desert caves or high up in the Himalayas. He could follow their example, use what was happening to try to transform himself into a better person. He had worked out that it had been the hotel doorman—he and his girlfriend had been the only guests—who had reported the couple. At times, he felt like going back and killing the man as soon as he was free, and at others, he felt that the best way to serve God would be to forgive the man from the bottom of his heart because he knew not what he was doing.

But forgiveness is a delicate art. Throughout all of his travels he’d sought to be one with the universe. But this didn’t include, at least not at that moment in his life, putting up with those who always laughed at his long hair, stopped in the street to ask how long it had been since he’d had a shower, told him that his bright-colored clothes showed he wasn’t secure in his own sexuality, asked how many men he’d slept with, told him to quit being a bum, stop the drugs, and find a decent job, to do his part to lift the country out of its economic crisis.

His hatred of injustice, the desire for revenge, and the lack of forgiveness didn’t allow him to focus as he should have, and soon his meditation was interrupted by sordid thoughts—sordid but justified, the way he saw it. Had they told his family?

His parents hadn’t known when he planned to return, but they wouldn’t have thought anything of his prolonged absence. Both his father and mother always blamed it on the fact that he had a girlfriend eleven years his senior, who sought to use him to fulfill unspeakable desires, to break the routine of a frustrated socialite and foreigner in the wrong country. She was a manipulator of young men who needed a mother figure. Paulo was not like all his friends, like all his enemies, like everyone else in the world who lived their lives without causing problems for anyone, without forcing their families to explain their sons’ lives, without being looked at like those people who hadn’t raised their children right. Paulo’s sister was studying chemical engineering and distinguishing herself as a top student, but their pride in her was not enough, for his parents were much more worried about returning him to the world they knew.

Anyway, after some time, it was impossible to say how much, Paulo began to think he deserved everything that was happening to him. Some of his friends had joined the armed resistance knowing what awaited them, and only he had paid the consequences—his punishment must have come from the heavens, not men. For all the distress he’d caused, he deserved to be naked on the floor of a cell with three bullet holes (he’d counted), looking deep inside himself and finding no strength, no spiritual consolation, no voice like the one that spoke to him at the Gate of the Sun.