Turbulence Page 3

  The first leg of the trip, down to Valparaiso, I traveled piled into the back of a Fiat with three “lefty” engineers. We stayed overnight in a desperately poor mining town. It had no electricity and many miserable stories to tell. From there, I continued on my own, hitching rides from truck drivers on their way to the woodcutting sites. I knew I might be taking a risk traveling into the woods like that on my own, but I trusted my instincts. And there was nothing to worry about. The drivers and their companions were friendly and almost falling over each other to be able to share how badly their lives had been affected by Pinochet’s economic policies.

  One of the laborers at the site took me to his home on a tractor, to interview his wife. He proudly showed me his two chickens, his goat, and five very cute young children. He explained how he extracted charcoal to heat his house, which was made of clay. It was still freezing inside. He was only paid three months a year. The other nine months he had to live off the woods, the chickens, and the goat.

  Back in my uptown office, I could not muster up the focus to produce a written report. I was too involved in local reality and too busy living a double life. So I decided to go back to Holland, where, within the cold and damp university walls of ancient Leiden, I produced my ambiguous conclusions. Although the government subsidies had indeed strengthened the foresting sector, the Chilean economy as a whole had become more sensitive to the ups and downs of the world economy. This turned out to be a good thing, however, as the world economy was on its way up at the time.

  As grateful as I was for the internship, I decided not to pursue a career at the United Nations.

  DAY TWO

  The sun is shining when I wake up. And I open my eyes to the strangest reality: the thick growth of plants all around me. The creepy, crawly insects. The sounds! The thirst. The all-encompassing, overwhelming thirst. I see dead “Numachi” next to me, his eyes half open. I move. It hurts. I try to sit up, but I fall back. My hips are on fire. Oh, those twigs! I check his watch: six-thirty.

  Further to the right I see the body of the Vietnamese girl. Her hair shines in the sun. I move my eyes. Farther down is a wing of the plane. It all comes back to me. I am in Vietnam. On vacation. With Pasje. Where is Pasje? No, I can’t think of Pasje. Pasje is dead. Pasje is dead. My Pasje is dead! I saw him. Dead. . . . And then? What did I do? How did I get out? I don’t remember. But I do remember Pasje. Dead. Strapped in his seat. With a smile. Like a sweet mummy. I panic. Help! Help me!

  A pain in my chest stops me. I can hardly breathe. I have to calm myself. Don’t think of Pasje. Breathe slowly. Don’t think of Pasje. Don’t cry. Crying will make you thirsty. Don’t look back over your shoulder. Look at the leaves.

  I rest my head and stare at the leaves. I feel the pain come and go in waves. I squint. I play with the sunlight through my eyelashes. How pretty. That filtered sunlight lighting up the dew on the leaves.

  I tune in to the sounds. A cacophony, each sound competing with the others. The sounds of the jungle. I try to single them out. Are those screaming monkeys? What the . . . ?

  I keep telling myself this is real. This is not a sound box. Or a movie. A movie about Vietnam. I have seen so many. The last one was Platoon. Where did I see it? A long time ago. When I was living in New York. At the Yale Club, with that Yalie who wanted to date me. Imagine those young American soldiers crossing here, packed with artillery, waiting for a Vietnamese soldier to jump on them at any moment from behind a tree. So many trees.

  No one is looking for me. I am all alone. Ridiculously alone. I remember how Pasje and I used to climb over the wall of the botanical gardens in Leiden to be “alone.” Once, we got caught by my friend Jet, but she didn’t know what we were up to. “I know what you are doing!” she screamed. “You are smoking pot!” Ha ha. We never did! We were just hiding the bottle of wine. She had no clue we were a couple. No more “we”! No more Pasje. Alone, alone. Don’t think! I am here. Alive. In the jungle. In the jungle, not a botanical garden. Isn’t it supposed to be muggy and hot? Why am I so cold?

  I look at my hands. What are those black, round things? Scabs? Oh, my God, they are leeches! I rub the back of my hands together to get them off. They won’t come off. Don’t look at them!

  I look at the leaves again. I can almost sense them. I remember how I always liked to stare at leaves, though in more urban settings, through windows. So different from the ones I see now.

  Too many leaves remind me of hiking. Hiking makes me hungry and long for food. Not now, though. I am just thirsty, so thirsty.

  Then suddenly it rains. And how! It is that kind of hard rain that punches you. It strikes my wounds, and it hurts my face when I look up with my mouth open. I almost gag, happily: so much water I get to swallow! The sun comes out as suddenly as the rain started. My T-shirt is drenched. I suck out some water. What a relief! I warm myself in the feeble sun rays that reach me through the leaves. I am cold. So cold.

  I look at my belongings. Neatly lined up next to me. Soaking wet. The camera. The makeup pouch. The Bic lighter. Lighter? Of course! The lighter! I can make a fire! Like Robinson Crusoe. I try to light it. Nothing happens. It does not even spark. It won’t. Ever. It is too wet. So are the twigs. It is too damp. I have made enough fires to know that. What do I need a fire for, anyway? To prepare food? There is no food. I can’t walk. Can’t even sit up straight. All I can see is grass, bushes, and plants. Make smoke signals? Like Hiawatha. This is what Pasje called me when I got those green boots, after the Native American girl: “My Minnehaha.” Don’t think of Pasje.

  Instead I think of the bond markets. Where would MYDFA, Brazil, be? But it is the weekend; there are no markets. I think of Jaime. What is he doing now? He is probably with his sons. Playing games in an arcade. Or playing “Who can pee the farthest?” It makes me smile. Silly Jaime. He’ll seriously wonder what’s up if he hasn’t heard from me by Wednesday afternoon. He’ll raise hell by Thursday morning. I’ll give him a few extra days to find me. I relax. Jaime. I check the watch again and again. I wait and wait. I focus on the leaves.

  My dead neighbor has a fifty-dollar bill sticking out of his breast pocket. I might need that. To bribe someone to help me. Not yet. Though I reckon he will soon become too unpleasant to sit next to, that I will have to move away somehow. I muse that he does not arouse my appetite, unlike that rugby team that crashed in the Andes and ate each other. I am thirsty, but not bloodthirsty.

  I’ll give them a week. I’ll need real water by then. And food. Otherwise I’ll die. Just like the others, just like Pasje. Don’t think of Pasje. Think of everyone else who loves us. How strange. So many people care so much about us, yet none of them know.

  I think of my brother Bernard. What is he doing now? Probably flying somewhere. I try to picture him in his air force uniform. I smile. Wherever he goes, he is the life of the party. What would he say if he were here? Give me some sound advice? He has helped me with social jungles. Always told me to keep my mouth shut, or at least use my brain before opening it. “Don’t talk about your travels when you come back home. People are not interested; they don’t want to know.” If only I make it home this time.

  I’ll crawl into the jungle if no one has come by Saturday. That is my plan! To survive until Saturday. Six more days.

  LEIDEN, 1984

  By the time I came back from Chile, I had seniority in our student house and got the biggest room. It looked out over the Rapenburg, Leiden’s best-known canal. My window faced the Academy Building of Leiden University. Alas, my mind could not have been farther away from Holland and its orange history.

  Ever since my return from Chile, Chilean protest music had been blaring from my stereo. I was “Chile-sick.” But I also had a real fever, a high one. So high that I stayed at home by myself while Pasje and the rest were out celebrating the 170th anniversary of our student club.

  The fever got worse, and when I went to our kitchen to fetch a drink of water, I got so dizzy I passed out. Next thing I knew, Pasje was liftin
g me up and putting me into a car. He took me to my parents’ house. They were away for the weekend. He put me in their bed and said he was going out to get dinner. McDonald’s.

  I ate a Big Mac and later threw it up in an ambulance. I passed out again soon after. This time I woke up in a hospital room with three other patients, old ladies, chorusing: “Child, you scared us with all that screaming you did! All night long, in Spanish and in Dutch. Child, you really did scare us. You were yelling something like, ‘I am not telling anything, even if you pull my nails out!’ What was that all about?”

  They treated me for malaria. Unsuccessfully. I got sicker and sicker and ended up in intensive care. I had a cocktail of diseases I had somehow suppressed for months: typhoid, amoebas, and hepatitis. I was quickly separated from the old ladies and put in a room by myself. Friends visited daily from Leiden, and my mother brought me homemade food. I got stronger bit by bit. Pasje was always by my side. How much I loved him.

  After three weeks I was finally wheeled out of the hospital. I took another three weeks to recover . . . almost recover. I remained vulnerable. In the following years, I kept passing out when things got too tough, physically or mentally. For a couple of minutes, my eyes would roll backward into Nowhereland. I might have returned to college too soon. I didn’t get much studying done. The letters were dancing before my eyes. I tried to return to an active social life, probably more than I should have. I was just happy to be back with Pasje. It seemed as if I had never been away.

  That is, until I found a letter in my mailbox with a plane ticket. My wealthier friends in Chile had taken up a collection. They all thought I should go back to fully recuperate. “The clear air and the warm climate will be better for you than the cold, rainy college life in Holland,” they wrote.

  Back in Santiago, I found the climate very different indeed. Pinochet was cutting down many of the newly gained liberties to stifle the various political movements that were rumbling underground. Parties from the left to the center-right had been organizing themselves in anticipation of the democratic future they believed to be near, but despite his earlier promise to reform, Pinochet had a change of heart. He was not quite ready to give up his absolute power. It would take another six years.

  My friend Noemi had been given permission to return to her country. But after thirteen years of exile in Amsterdam, longing to be among her old friends in Santiago, she found it hard to reconnect with some of them. They resented her for the economic affluence she had enjoyed in Holland. They had been struggling to survive Pinochet’s economic measures that favored the rich and had left them even poorer than before.

  Noemi was also very afraid—constantly looking over her shoulder, lowering her voice, seemingly at random. She warned me that many of the people I had befriended were in danger. Among them was Manuel Guerrero, the college professor I had spent much time with at the Taller Amistad. When he spoke at an underground protest at a university, we met up briefly and embraced. It was the last time we saw him.

  A week later, Noemi was on the phone, crying hysterically. Manuel was missing. They had taken him from his lecture room two days before. There was no news. She did not dare stay at her house, afraid they would come after her again. She asked whether she could please stay with me. She couldn’t. My Chilean host was too scared. An old colleague from the United Nations offered his guest room. We both moved there.

  After a week of anxiety and terror, Manuel’s body and those of two other subversivos were found by the road to the airport. Their throats had been slit.

  We went to see Manuel’s body at his family’s home. It was spooky. A thick layer of makeup covered his face. He had a white bandage around his neck. We were walking around the coffin, when I noticed his nails were missing. The tops of his fingers, which were crossed over his chest in the customary manner, were bloody and blue. They had pulled out his nails.

  I didn’t have time to process it. His family told me it was a comfort that there was a foreigner to bear witness. To see what had been done to their son, husband, father. They slipped me a videotape. Surely I would tell the world.

  In the funeral procession, I walked right behind the coffin. The cemetery was all the way on the other side of town. I walked next to the family, at the front of the large crowd, which got bigger and bigger. I could see for miles ahead, as I was so much taller than everyone else—literally sticking out. From a funeral, it turned into a march, from a march into a mass protest. It was truly impressive. By the time we reached the wide lane leading up to the cemetery, there were thousands marching with us.

  I was in a haze. I couldn’t believe that this pain was intentionally inflicted by a government! A military government that considered itself so civil.

  We entered the gates of the cemetery. There were people everywhere. I expected to see graves, but we moved toward a wall. Everyone began screaming: “Manuel! Manuel! Manuel!” Many, many hands shoved his coffin into one of the openings in the wall. I had never seen anything like it. People were crying; people were screaming. It was getting dark. Then, suddenly, the cemetery was surrounded by buses full of soldiers. The crowd quickly dispersed. Better get out of here! Noemi grabbed my hand, and—reluctantly but hastily—we made our way to the nearest subway station.

  Manuel’s sister went on a hunger strike in a church in the center of Santiago. With two other sympathizers, I went to pay my respects. That’s what one did to show solidarity. The atmosphere was awkward. There were all these educated people, civilized people, watched by an army of policemen (pacos), who, wearing their guns visibly and holding their bats in their hands, were ready to jump in. Where does a government like that draw the line? At what moment do they decide to intervene? I would soon find out.

  Demonstration, Santiago, Chile, 1984

  There was also a bunch of young men loitering in the church. Many looked like Che Guevara: beards and longish hair, the bourgeoisie’s idea of the “bad guy.” There were more of them outside, making noise with banners and slogans. They were living their cause. I gave some water to Manuel’s sister and hugged his family. When I was about to leave the churchyard, a military bus pulled up in front of the gates. Five pacos jumped out and surrounded the protesters. They started pushing them toward the bus. The pacos had rubber sticks and looked like they would not hesitate to use them. The protesters were screaming, but they all obeyed. They let themselves be herded into the bus like cattle.

  I was nailed to the spot, watching in awe, when suddenly one paco singled me out, grabbed my arm, and dragged me away. At first I was too flabbergasted to react and I let him push me toward the bus. I was already on the first step when I asked him in Spanish: “Can’t you see that I am a foreigner?”

  “Señorita, we know exactly who you are,” he answered, and pushed me even harder. His eyes told me there was no room for reasoning. Instinctively, I shoved him aside as hard as I could and began running. I saw his stunned face when I looked over my shoulder. I ran as I had never run before. For my life, just in case. I ran for at least fifteen minutes through the busiest part of town. To the Vicaria, the Catholic church, which was sympathetic to the democratic cause. I caught my breath and reported to the priest what I had seen.

  My heart, too, was with the cause, but it was not my path to follow. The least I could do, though, was carry the videotape out of the country. Manuel’s family had asked me to take it back home to Amsterdam, and give it to the Chilean movement. My heart was pounding in my throat when I passed the uniformed customs agents, but I got through.

  DAY THREE

  When I wake up, it is morning again. It is raining! I am so thirsty. I stick out my tongue. That helps a bit. I open my mouth as wide as possible. I savor every little drop that I manage to catch. Then the sun comes out. That is good news to a Dutch person, under any circumstance.

  I look at my surroundings again and again. Everything is green. So green it almost absorbs me. Pine, thick grass, moss, and plants all over.

  It is Monday. Jaime is
on his way back from New York to Madrid. He’ll arrive to the office late, straight from the airport. Where would the markets be? I am not supposed to care. Not until Wednesday. Then Jaime will surely move mountains. He will. I trust him to. And Helen. She will help him. She is my buddy. I think of Helen, small and smart. She does not let those dandy equity guys tell her anything. She tells them what to do. And she takes care of me. Makes sure I eat well.

  I look at the watch. It is seven a.m. I look at the man—not deliberately; he is just there, right next to me. Hey! What is that little white cord coming out of the corner of his eye? Is that a white worm? Of course! He has already started to decay! In this hot, wet place bodies decompose more quickly. Decomposition? Oh, my God. I glance back, and then I see them: maggots. All over his body. That is what that smell is. Decay! That horrible smell I then suddenly become fully aware of. That sickly, rotten smell! I move away with a jerk. Pain erupts in my hips. I check out my hands: no maggots. Just leeches feasting on my blood. Calm down. Don’t look.

  I take a deep breath. It makes sense. This is a greenhouse. Like a giant womb for all its species. This is natural. Nature. Birth and rebirth. The circle of life. The beauty of life. Don’t look at the maggots. Look at the beauty! I look at the trees, the plants, the leaves. As if I can, I inhale them and not the ferocious smell. This helps. I calm down.

  I decide it is time to move away from the man. I quickly snatch the fifty-dollar bill out of his pocket. I look at the watch. Can I take it? I’d have to grab his cold arm, maggots and all, and undo the strap. I can’t. I read a Dutch book as a teenager about a farm boy who spots a floating body in the river. He looks at the floater’s watch and says: “Go away or I’ll take you!” and then he grabs it anyway. Not me. I also remember the scene from Les Misérables in which the innkeeper ends up stealing from dead bodies in the catacombs of Paris. I saw that musical both on Broadway and in Covent Garden. Oh, different worlds!