Multiple Choice Page 3

B) 5

  C) 1, 2, and 3

  D) 4 and 5

  E) 2

  58.

  (1) I didn’t want to talk about you, but it’s inevitable.

  (2) I’m talking about you right now. And you’re reading this, and you know it’s about you.

  (3) Now I am words that you read and wish did not exist.

  (4) I hate you.

  (5) You would like to have the power of a censor.

  (6) So no one else would ever read these words.

  (7) I hate you.

  (8) You ruined my life.

  (9) Now I am words you cannot erase.

  A) None

  B) A

  C) B

  D) C

  E) D

  59.

  (1) They found the breast cancer when she was sixty-five years old.

  (2) They had to remove one of her breasts.

  (3) Not long after that, the Alzheimer’s started.

  (4) She didn’t recognize her children, or her grandchildren, not anyone.

  (5) She didn’t even recognize me.

  (6) But she never forgot she was missing a breast.

  A) None

  B) 1

  C) 2

  D) 4

  E) 5

  60.

  (1) I only saw my mother’s father three times in my life. It’s unclear how many children he had: more than twenty, fewer than thirty, according to my mother’s calculations.

  (2) The first time I saw him, he came to our house at night, when we were about to go to bed. He introduced us to Verónica, his youngest daughter. She was four or five years old, younger than I was.

  (3) “Say hi to your aunt Verito,” he said to me and my sister. And then: “I’ve got your birthdays written down. I never forget my grandchildren.”

  (4) They left around midnight, driving away in a Renoleta. It was cold. My mother had to lend Verito one of my sister’s sweaters.

  (5) “They’ll never give that sweater back,” my mother told my sister over breakfast, containing her rage, or maybe just resigned.

  (6) The second time I saw him, some time later, was on my mother’s birthday.

  (7) She was happy. I remember that absurd and true sentence: He will always be my father.

  (8) The last time I saw him was in a hospital. He shared a room with three other dying old men. My mom told me to go in and see him, to say good-bye.

  (9) I looked at the old men; all of them looked alike. I tried to recognize my mother’s father, but I couldn’t. I stared at them for a while, and then I left.

  A) None

  B) 3

  C) 4 and 5

  D) 7

  E) 8 and 9

  61.

  (1) While we’re making tea, Mariela tells me that when she was in school, there was a pregnant nun.

  (2) I ask her when, where. “At Mater Dei. I was really little, in the fourth grade.”

  (3) Mariela’s eyes are brown. For a second, I manage to picture her face when she was little.

  (4) “They kept her hidden away, but we saw her once. They asked us to keep the secret.”

  (5) I ask her if they kept the secret. “I don’t know about my friends,” she replies, “but I did.”

  (6) “You’re the first person I’ve told,” she says.

  (7) “Thirty years later?”

  (8) “Yes, thirty,” she says.

  (9) She looks down at her hands. I also look at her hands.

  (10) She pinches or caresses a breadcrumb. She lights a cigarette.

  (11) “No,” she says then. “Thirty-five.”

  A) None

  B) 3

  C) 9

  D) 10

  E) 11

  62.

  (1) In Chile, no one says hi to each other in elevators. You get in and pretend you don’t see anyone, you pretend you’re blind. And if you say hello, people look at you strangely, sometimes they don’t even return the greeting. You share your fragility in silence, like a sacrifice.

  (2) How hard would it be to say hello, you think, while the door opens on an in-between floor. There are already nine, ten people, and no one else can fit. Someone’s headphones are playing a song that you know and like.

  (3) It would be easier to embrace the woman standing there in front of you. What you and she share is the effort to avoid touching each other.

  (4) You remember getting punished once when you were little, maybe eight years old: you’d been caught in the girls’ bathroom swapping kisses with a little classmate. It wasn’t the first time you and she had kissed each other. It was a game, a kind of dare. A teacher saw you, scolded you, brought you to the principal’s office.

  (5) Your punishment was to stand face-to-face, staring into each other’s eyes and holding both hands, in the middle of the playground for the entire recess, while the other children yelled and teased you.

  (6) She cried from the shame. You were on the verge of tears, but you kept your eyes on her face, you felt a kind of sad fire burning. Her name, the girl’s, was Rocío.

  (7) How long was that recess? Ten minutes, maybe fifteen. You never again spent fifteen minutes looking into another person’s eyes.

  (8) It would be easier to just embrace the stranger there in front of you. You are both looking down; you are taller than she is. You focus on her black, still-wet hair.

  (9) The tangled strands of that long, straight hair: you think about the hair that you used to untangle, carefully, on certain mornings. You learned the technique. You know how to untangle the hair of another person.

  (10) Now almost everyone has gotten off the elevator, and only she and you are left. With each new space that opens up, you take the opportunity to move apart. You could stand even farther apart, each of you clinging to your corner, but that would be demonstrating something. It would be the same as embracing.

  (11) She gets off one floor before you. And it’s strange and somehow horrible that when you see your body multiplied in the mirrors you feel the immense relief that you feel now.

  (12) “In Chile, no one says hello to each other in elevators,” you say that night, at a dinner with friends from abroad. “They don’t in my country, either,” everyone answers, maybe out of politeness. “No, really, in Chile no one says anything. People don’t even look at each other in elevators,” you insist.

  (13) “Everyone fakes their absence. Old friends, enemies, or lovers could be in the same elevator and never know it.”

  (14) You add generalizations about Chilean identity, rudimentary sociology. As you speak, you feel you are betraying something. You feel the sharp point, the weight of your imposture.

  (15) “In Chile, no one says hi to each other in elevators,” you say again, like a refrain, at a dinner where everyone competes to be the best observer and to inhabit the worst country.

  A) None

  B) 4, 5, 6, and 7

  C) 8 and 9

  D) 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11

  E) 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15

  63.

  (1) I was his friend, I was his pal. I knew him. And it’s not true what they say about him. Some things, sure, but not all of it. I care about what they say, it hurts. It’s as if they were talking about me.

  (2) It’s true he thought fags were revolting, but he never fired anyone for being one. We all knew Salazar was batting for the other team—you only had to look at him. But he was lazy. My buddy fired him for being lazy, not for smoking pole.

  (3) It isn’t true that he mistreated the maid. There was a reason she kept working in his house so long. He used a bell to call her; sometimes he said “please” when he asked her for things. And every Christmas he gave her a brand-new, spotless uniform. And in February he brought her to the house in Frutillar. The old lady got a one-mo
nth vacation, all expenses paid.

  (4) And what is the problem, if I may ask, with the bell? Do you mean to tell me it’s better to call the maid by shouting at her?

  (5) It’s true he didn’t like Mapuches, but it’s just that these days you have to respect everyone. I mean, come on, you can’t say anything—everything offends someone, and everyone’s a victim. And my buddy was consistent. He said what he thought and that was his only sin.

  (6) And what’s the big deal with the Mapuches, anyway? They lost the war, same as the Peruvians. They lost, that’s it. The Bolivians, too—now they go around crying about how they don’t have access to the sea, yapping on and on about maps. They’re like little kids begging their parents for candy.

  (7) Today you’ll find people saying they didn’t know about the disappearances, or the torture, or the murders. Of course they knew. My buddy knew, I knew, everyone did. How could we not? I remember years ago, we were in Rome, in a real swanky hotel, and this exiled guy comes over to us holding hands with a thin little redhead. I didn’t much like the guy—I thought he was pretty dense and uppity—but my buddy ended up making friends with him, and later on they did some business together.

  (8) My friend didn’t discriminate against anyone. He could do business with any kind of person, he didn’t care about race or creed or anything political. He didn’t go around asking for favors. My buddy worked his whole life.

  (9) Never, in forty-nine years of marriage, did he fool around on Tutú. He didn’t even fuck that secretary, Vania, who drove him crazy flashing her panties at him all the time. I remember he told me, pretty desperate, that if he went to bed with Vania he wouldn’t be able to look Father Carlos in the eye. Later we found out Father Carlos was a bigger lady-killer than any of us.

  (10) I want to repeat this, because it goes to show the kind of moral stature my friend had: He never once fooled around on Tutú—he didn’t even go to whores. He just didn’t like them. To each his own, I guess.

  (11) He didn’t just donate to Legionaries of Christ—I think my friend was like a drug addict with donations. He was always helping out his neighbors, the guy was just sick with solidarity. And at the end of the year, he gave every one of his employees a gift basket that was nothing to sneeze at.

  (12) Whatever they may say of him, it’s easy enough to bad-mouth him now that he’s dead. But I would like you all to know that my friend isn’t all that dead, because he still has me, come what may. I’ll always defend him. Always, buddy—always.

  A) None

  B) All

  C) 4

  D) 9 and 10

  E) 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11

  64.

  (1) They ask my name and I answer: Manuel Contreras. They ask me if I am Manuel Contreras. I say yes. They ask if I’m Manuel Contreras’s son. I reply that I am Manuel Contreras.

  (2) Once, I took the phone book and tore out the page with my name, our name. I counted twenty-two Manuel Contrerases in Santiago. I don’t know what I was looking for: company for my misery, maybe. But then I stuck the page into the paper shredder. Having common first and last names hasn’t done me any good.

  (3) How does it feel to be the son of one of the biggest criminals in Chilean history? What do you feel when you think about your father, sentenced to more than three hundred years in jail? Can you sense the hate of the families your father destroyed?

  (4) I can’t answer these questions, the ones people always ask. With rage, but also with genuine curiosity. I guess it makes people curious.

  (5) It makes me curious too. What does it feel like not to be the son of one of the biggest criminals in Chile’s history? What does it feel like to think about how your father never killed anyone, never tortured anyone?

  (6) I must say that my father is innocent. I should say it. I have to say it. I’m obliged to say it. My father will kill me if I don’t say he is innocent. The children of murderers cannot kill the father.

  (7) I decided not to have children. I had my father to worry about. He’s sick. His declining health is a public matter; it’s been in all the papers.

  (8) When my father dies, then I can have a life and a son. He’ll be Manuel Contreras’s son. But I won’t name him Manuel. I’ll tell his mother to pick a different name. I don’t want to be Manuel Contreras’s father.

  (9) I’ve had enough just being Manuel Contreras’s son. I don’t want to be Manuel Contreras’s father too. Better yet, let it be a girl.

  (10) This is not me talking. Someone is talking for me. Someone who is faking my voice. My father will die soon. The person faking my voice knows this, and doesn’t care.

  (11) Maybe by the time the book this fucking voice faker is writing gets published, my father will be dead. And people will think that there is something true in what my fake voice says. Even though it isn’t my voice. Though I would never really say what I’m saying now. Though no one has the right to speak for me. To make a fool of me. How easy it is to laugh at me. To blame me, to feel sorry for me. It has no literary merit.

  (12) Clap for the writer, how ingenious. Clapping for him the way you have to clap for that kind of person. But clap him right in the face, with both hands, until you can’t tell anymore where the blood is coming from.

  (13) Now he’s saying that I give orders, that I know how to torture. That I’m a chip off the old block. Now he says I’m telling you to stick a pitchfork up his ass.

  (14) Now he’s saying I don’t have the right to challenge my destiny. That I’m one of the walking dead. That I’m saying things I’m not saying. That I even thank him for saying them for me. Now he’s searching for words to tattoo on my chest using the biggest drill he has.

  A) None

  B) 9

  C) 10, 11, and 12

  D) 13 and 14

  E) 14

  65.

  (1) With the money he won in the lottery, the old man decided to fulfill his lifelong dream, but since his lifelong dream had been to win the lottery, he didn’t know what to do. In the meantime, he bought himself a Peugeot 505 and hired me to drive it.

  (2) I went to pick him up one Saturday, and the plan was to hit the racetrack, but he was watching Sábado Gigante on TV and didn’t feel like going out. He handed me a beer, and together we watched the segment “So You Think You Know Chile?” Don Francisco was traveling through Ancud and Castro, interviewing people who lived in some stilt houses, helping to cook a curanto, making a lot of effort to tug a Chilote wool cap over his extra-large head.

  (3) “That’s what we’ll do,” he told me, like he’d had a revelation: “We’re going to tour Chile in the new car.” I asked him why not travel the whole world, like Don Francisco himself in “The Spotlight Abroad.” He replied that before seeing the world, one had to really see one’s own country. I asked him where we would start, in the north or the south. “In the north, man, the north. What do you mean where do we start? This shit goes north to south.”

  (4) His opinion at the end of the trip: “Chile is a beautiful country. People are always complaining about the lack of freedom and the dictatorship and all that, but they don’t realize that Chile is a beautiful country.”

  (5) I liked seeing my country too, but I don’t remember that much. I drove like a zombie, to the beat of the old man’s terrifying snores. Sometimes, out of the corner of my eye, I’d see the glint of drool in his open mouth. When he was awake, he didn’t like to listen to music, just some cassettes with jokes by Coco Legrand. I came to hate Coco Legrand—his jokes, his voice, everything.

  (6) I remember the cold near Los Vilos, where I smoked alone on the side of the road while five meters away, in the backseat of the car, the old man fondled two sad, big-titted whores. I remember when I woke him up on the beach at Cavancha and he thought I was a mugger. In Pelluhue a giant wave almost swallowed him, and I had to dive into the water in my underwear to save him. In Pichilemu he
started to scold two pot smokers who were pacifists but still wanted to kick his ass. I also had to defend him in Talca, Angol, and Temuco.

  (7) I remember the fear I felt in restaurants when the old man started to harass the waiters. My only moment of freedom was when he came down with some kind of stomach illness and had to be hospitalized in Puerto Montt. Those days I was fairly happy, but maybe only for a few hours, parked close to downtown, eating cheese empanadas while I listened to Los Angeles Negros and Los Prisioneros and the rain fell. And in Cañete. I was also happy in Cañete, but now I can’t remember why.

  (8) The old man paid me well, I have to admit. Afterward he went to travel around Europe and the United States, and we lost contact. Then one day he called me to ask if I knew anyone who could ghostwrite his autobiography for him. I told him I could do it myself, that I’d become a writer. It wasn’t true, but I needed the money. He believed me.

  (9) We agreed on a rate per word; the only thing he cared about was that the book was fat. I started to write his story. We met every morning and I listened to him. He was so presumptuous, such a poor observer, so arrogant, but I listened to him and took plenty of notes. “The Spanish are friendly,” he might say to me, for example. “The Spanish from where?” I asked him. “What do you mean from where, asshole? The Spanish from Spain,” he replied.

  (10) I also had to interview his children, a man and a woman more or less my age, who had helpless faces and claimed to love and admire the old man, as did his ex-wife, a woman who always held a rosary in her right hand and who talked up a storm. It was clear they were lying, and I couldn’t understand why they collaborated. Later, I learned that my boss had doubled their monthly allowances.

  (11) One time I asked him, without any mean intention, if he thought the money had changed him. “You really ask some idiotic questions, kid. Of course it did,” he replied. “Money changes everyone.” Later I asked him for his opinion on Pinochet, which I already knew, I only wanted to make sure. It was 1987, one year after the assassination attempt, a year before the referendum. I warned him that Chilean public opinion about Pinochet was going to change in the coming years whether he won or lost the referendum, and that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to come off as a fervent supporter of the dictator. “Let it be very clear in my book that I think Pinochet saved Chile, and that I want those mongoloids who tried to kill him to rot in hell,” he answered.