Erased Faces (34 page)

As a foreigner, Adriana had more freedom than anyone. The government was anxious to prove that it was the insurgents who had caused such chaos and was inviting foreigners to the scene to record the mayhem. Her camera was welcomed; her photos were supposed to show to what extent the rebels had punished their own people.

As she walked, she looked up to see walls crumbling from bombings, strafing and fires. Streets were empty of civilian cars; only military vehicles clogged the intersections and plazas. Her nose filled with the stench that had polluted everything, putting her on the verge of retching. People's faces, she saw, were stiffened by fear and rage. No one spoke or looked up, and there were hardly any children to be seen.

Adriana, nevertheless, was not entirely free to wander the streets of the town because she and the other foreigners were closely
watched. Once, when she neared Juana to exchange a quick word, an officer appeared from seemingly nowhere, making her freeze and turn away from what she was about to do. The man's glare was intimidating, full of suspicion.

“There's no need to speak to the natives,
señorita
. Let me assist you.”

She struggled to normalize her pounding heart by pointing her camera at a small statue that had been reduced to rubble. After several shots, she felt in control of her voice.

“
¡Gracias!
I would like to take photographs of the town and perhaps even of people.”

Taking her bag in hand, the man steered her in the direction of the center of town. Adriana, knowing that Orlando and Juana watched her every move, felt confident, not fearful.

“Teniente
Palomón Cisneros at your service. May I ask your name?”

“Adriana Mora.”

“A good name, but you're not Mexican, are you?”

“No, I was born in the United States. It was my mother and father who were from Mexico.”

“Ah, yes. There are many like you. Even I have family up there. Let me show you the way, so you can take as many pictures and ask as many questions as you wish. You'll see for yourself the atrocities the rebels have committed, even against their own people. Do you have a strong stomach?”

Adriana paused to study the man's face before responding. It was that of a native: dark, leathery skin, oblique eyes, high cheekbones, a stringy mustache that shadowed a wide mouth with thick lips. She wondered why he allowed himself to be instrumental to the misery of his own people. She turned away before responding to his question, knowing that she would never forget his face.

“Yes. I've seen terrible things. I'm ready.”

Over and again Adriana glanced back furtively whenever the lieutenant was not looking; she wanted to assure herself that Juana and Orlando were not far off. But the last time she had a chance to check, they were out of sight, and she realized they were separated. As they
moved, she saw that the place was teeming with other foreign reporters, each of them with an escort, and this returned her confidence.

The officer guided Adriana past the central plaza, through streets leading to the marketplace. As they approached the open square, she became aware of the rank odor of decaying flesh saturating the air. She abruptly stopped walking, as if riveted to the cobblestones. A flashback had pushed her mind back to a locked apartment.

A little girl is standing on a chair, feeling overcome by the vile smell clogging her nose. She pounds on the door, but no one hears the thumping of her small fists
.

Adriana reached in her pocket for a handkerchief to hold against her nose and mouth. Despite the handkerchief's protection, she was forced to open her mouth to take in air.

“
Señorita
, I told you that you had to have a strong stomach. Do you want to return to the palace, where there's more calm and where you may take whatever shots you need?”

The little girl runs to hide under the bed, trying to escape the foulness that follows her with its sickly fingers, creeping into her nose and trickling down to her throat
.

Adriana's eyes had begun to water as she struggled to suppress her nausea and the painful image of herself as a child. Saliva gathered in her mouth, forcing her to gulp it down until she knew that she could no longer hold it. She turned away from the lieutenant and spit gobs of it onto the curb.

“Are you sure you want to go on?”

“Yes. I'll be okay in a minute.”

She realized that they were approaching a killing field and no matter how horrific it was, she could not turn away. Adriana pressed herself to close down her memories and take control of her sickening stomach. The officer took the lead as they turned the corner onto the main marketplace, where she saw a ring of photographers, people jotting notes in pads, armed men in uniforms, all of them staring at something under a canvas canopy. The lieutenant stopped and glanced sideways at Adriana.

“Look for yourself! This is what the
liberators
have done!”

Adriana nudged her way through the onlookers until she came upon a scene so terrible that she felt her breath catch in her throat and an impending asthma attack. As she tried to regulate her breathing, she struggled with the horror brought on by images of her dead mother and father.

Stretched out side by side on the ground were fourteen cadavers, females as well as males. Their hands, fingers painfully gnarled, were bound at the wrists, and each victim had a gaping wound in the forehead. The heat of the day had already brought on advanced stages of decomposition so that flies and insects buzzed around the bodies, some feeding on distorted, stiffened mouths, wide-open or clamped-shut eyes. The bodies looked hard, limbs rigidly twisted in grotesque ways.

The little girl looks at her mother's puffy face. Its mouth is purple and hard, and she has a big red hole in the side of her head. The girl runs to the kitchen and sees her father's dangling arm
.

Adriana turned away from the scene she found intolerable. Then, on the verge of running away, she forced herself to stop and waited for the strength to get a grip on her crumbling nerves. She thought of Juana, of Orlando, of her mission to record the events of the war. These thoughts gave her a measure of control, and she returned to the site, feeling more in control.

When Adriana focused, she saw that an attempt had been made to put items on each body that could be construed as an insurgent's uniform: a cap, a gun belt, a hastily slipped on shirt. Despite this artifice, it was obvious to the onlookers that the dead had been civilians and that they had been executed, one by one, with a shot through the head. She pulled her eyes away from the grim sight and saw countless spent casings littering the ground. She bent down and picked one up and held it in a fist.

“These bodies are not insurgents.”

“No. They are the victims of the insurgents.”

“Then why has someone tried to make it look as if they are rebels?” Momentarily taken by surprise, the officer remained silent. He rubbed his eyes in an effort to gain time to come up with an answer, so as to explain the blunder, but chose instead to side-step the issue.
He sucked his teeth, letting Adriana know that he was irritated by her question.

“
Señorita
, this is war. Strange things happen. I guarantee that these poor souls were murdered by the insurgents.”

“Are these not army casings?”

Adriana held the spent bullet up to the officer's face who, without answering, took Adriana by the elbow and began maneuvering her away from the site. She resisted, and as she pulled away from him, she took hold of her camera and began snapping photographs of the murdered men. She had taken several shots despite the officer's displeasure. There were too many witnesses present for him to force Adriana to stop.

“I'm finished. I'll return now to the municipal palace. I know my way, thank you.”

Adriana left the man standing as she walked away at a brisk pace. She turned back to look at him several times and she saw that he was standing, feet planted apart, in a posture of indecision. Before he could make up his mind to follow her, she sped around several corners, picked up speed until she was jogging, heading for the church where Orlando and Juana would be waiting for her.

Adriana took some wrong turns, but finally she found the church and went down to the door leading into the crypt. She tried the latch; it was open, and she cautiously entered the darkened room. Adriana stood with her back to a wall, so still that she hardly breathed while her eyes became used to the gloom.

Pale light filtered through the window, cutting through the darkness, and forms slowly began to take shape: a table with a broken leg in the far corner, two mismatched chairs to its side, other broken things strewn about the floor. When her vision finally adjusted, she made out a bulky object. She realized that it was a sarcophagus. The stone coffin sent a chill through her. She forced herself to look elsewhere. Her eyes scanned the room, stopping at the wall where Juana, Orlando and she had waited out the attack. The objects she was now making out had been in the chamber when they were there, but she had not even noticed them.

After a few moments, Adriana was certain that neither Juana nor Orlando was in the room. She went to the far wall and sat down on the floor, relaxing her back against the stone wall. She had to be patient, she told herself. Fatigue began to overcome her and she closed her eyes, just to rest them, but the dreadful scene she had just witnessed replayed behind her eyelids. Distorted faces grimaced; split, purple lips opened in silent screams; gnarled fingers clasped and unclasped as they appeared to reach out from the stone coffin. These forms were pushed aside by the inalterable memory of her dead mother and father, of herself as a child trapped and terrified. One by one, the images paraded behind her closed eyes, and though she did not want to look at them, their invasion would not stop.

Horrified, Adriana curled her body, in defense against the grim forms that floated above and around her. She prayed that Juana and Orlando would soon come. She needed to be with them, to weep with them for the loss of those innocent women and men, for the memory of her dead mother and father. When her eyes snapped open, she looked up to the window and realized that it was dark outside. She looked at her watch and confirmed that the evening had moved toward night and her
compañeros
still had not appeared! Suddenly cold and numb from sitting on the stone floor, she shifted her body, bringing her knees up against her breasts, where she reclined her head to think of what to do next.

Adriana was folded in on herself when she heard the creak of the door. She quietly rose to her feet, alert and waiting to see who had come into the chamber. Her eyes were adjusted to the dark, so she was able to make out Juana's form as she moved forward.

“Juana?”

“Yes.”

The women embraced for a long time, feeling each other's heart pounding, until Juana abruptly separated herself from Adriana. She gestured for them to sit down. When she spoke, her voice was husky.

“Orlando has been captured.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes. I saw it happen.”

“How?”

“He was betrayed.”

“One of our own?”

“No. Someone else. I don't know who, but not one of our own. We were heading in this direction; he was a few paces in front of me when three men approached him. They were dressed like civilians, but I could tell they were spies. After they stopped him, I heard one of them say, ‘Aha! We finally found you. Did you think you could murder Don Rufino and live to be an old man?
¡Indio desgraciado!'”

“When did it happen?”

“Hours ago. I followed to see where they put him. A long time has passed.”

Adriana sucked air through her teeth. She looked at Juana and saw fear etched on her dark face. It was the first time Adriana had detected dread in Juana, and that, in turn, frightened her.

“What are we going to do?”

“We have to stay close to him.”

“Where is he?”

“In the garrison. In the municipal palace.”

“Let's return for weapons so we can free him.”

“No. We're better off looking like ordinary women. Besides, there's no time. We know how to get into that place from the bottom chamber, so that's what we'll do. There's a chance we can get to him.”

The women got to their feet and embraced, trying to inspire courage in each other. Then they left the crypt to retrace the path they had taken the night of the battle. It was past midnight when the women finally reached the side of the municipal palace. It was dark, but they saw at a glance that it was thick with guards and military police. When they crept around to the other side, they found the same fortifications, so they decided to approach the front of the palace. They sped around the corner only to bump into a throng of people milling in fear and confusion. Towering neon lights had been erected to flood the plaza so that people appeared to multiply as their shadows darted back and forth, churning like agitated insects.

Juana, no longer caring about her own identity, took hold of Adriana's hand and led her into the crowd. The situation was chaotic; neither woman could make out the babbling and gesturing that was going
on all around them. Juana, still holding her partner's hand, moved close to a Chol man and tugged at his sleeve.

“Amigo
, what's happening? Why are there so many people here?”

“Haven't you heard? The
chingones
captured a prisoner.”

“A rebel?”

“I'm not sure. All I know is that they're calling him a traitor, and he's going to be executed.”

“A traitor to whom?”

“To them. Who else?”

Juana backed away from the man and turned to look at Adriana. The women knew that they were too late, that nothing could save Orlando. Caught up by the press of the crowd, they allowed themselves to be swept to the inner fringe of the square, where a squad of shooters was already lined up, waiting to execute their task. Adriana and Juana looked, trapped in the horror of knowing that their
compañero
was about to die. They stared, helpless to do anything except to stand by him.