No Matter What You Say, You Might Disappear

for Wolfgang Müller

Buenos Aires, late 70s. Ten at night was curfew time during those days. My friend Alejandro and I had just finished our last glass of port or scotch at the train station’s café, we walked outside and waved farewell to each other as we took our individual paths leading home. I walked, because at ten o’clock all public transportation went out of service. After barely three blocks a police van stopped and the driver got out of the vehicle. The toned officer approached me and asked for my ID card.

I had nothing to hide, but I lied and said that I had forgotten my wallet at home. ‘Well, I’m sorry kid’ – he replied – ‘but you’ll have to spend the night in a cell until curfew ends, and while you wait we’ll do a background check.’ I had heard about these background checks before.

As the back door of the van opened many furtive eyes shining in the interior of the dark cage greeted me. Several different smells, masculine and those of the other kind, reached me from all four corners of the tight and damp place. I couldn’t see any of the faces, but I was able to smell their breaths. No one spoke, and I wondered if there was, among these people, someone I knew, but the thick curtain of darkness separated me from everyone and prevented me from seeing beyond the silhouettes. Knowing someone, I thought, would make me feel a little calmer. In moments like these, perhaps wrongly, one reviews one’s past and imagines one’s future, and in the light of this feeling I allowed a muffled sobbing sound escape from my lips; a feminine hand touched me, and her fingers wrapped around my fingers. It was the first time I was being arrested, and in the mind of a youth these people who were accompanying me to prison were dangerous criminals, but I didn’t feel that way and, in fact, later on in life I came to understand that, possibly, none of the passengers in that van were either criminals or dangerous.

At the police station we were ordered to descend from the van one by one, and on each of our heads a hood was placed. We disappeared. We could no longer see or be seen, speak or be heard. And we were led to individual cells where we waited our turn in the company of no one, but without hoods.

As the hours went by, screams permeated through loud music and filled every inch of my cell. I had heard before about this ‘background check’ technique that had the sole purpose of loosening the tongues of those being interrogated. I felt terrified, and a warm liquid began running down my left leg. I didn’t feel ashamed. The fear of being the next prisoner under the bright light in the interrogation room was much greater than any sense of dignity. Acceptance (so they tell me) is the beginning of coming to terms with one’s present; tranquility follows, and I regretted not having kissed and hugged tightly my grandparents earlier that day. I missed them terribly.

Suddenly a door opened and through the loud sound of “Libertango” playing, I heard a hair-raising cry. Then complete silence. The cry had disappeared. The officer closing the door behind him was the same who asked for my ID on the streets, and a sense of hope came to me. As he passed by my cell I stopped him. ‘You know what, boss?’ – I said – ‘I was so frightened earlier when you asked for my identification that I lied to you; I do have my ID with me. Here it is.’ And I handed it to him. He looked at the card, and turned his eyes towards mine; the expression on his face became almost that of a human being. He unlocked the cell, grabbed me by the arm and pulled me out brusquely, leading me away while hitting me in the back of the head with an open hand and yelling: ‘Come on, you stupid kid, I’ll drive you home myself before the music begins again. Come on, you stupid kid.’