A Long Petal of the Sea(83)
“My brothers-in-law have made fortunes in recent years, Victor. My father looked down on them: he said my sisters had married well-dressed idiots. If he could see his sons-in-law now, he’d have to eat his words,” Felipe added.
“This is a paradise for business and businessmen,” said Victor.
“There’s nothing wrong with making money if the system and laws permit it. But you, Victor, how are you?”
“Trying to adapt and understand what’s happened here. Chile is unrecognizable.”
“You have to admit it’s much better. The military putsch saved the country from Allende’s chaos and a Marxist dictatorship.”
“And to prevent that imagined left-wing dictatorship, an implacable right-wing one has been imposed, Felipe.”
“Listen, Victor, keep those views to yourself. They don’t go down well here. You can’t deny we’re much better off, we have a prosperous country.”
“But at a very high social cost. You live abroad, you know about the atrocities that are never mentioned here.”
“Don’t start with that refrain about human rights. That’s such a bore, Victor,” Felipe interrupted him. “They are excesses committed by a few stupid military men. Nobody can condemn the governing junta, much less President Pinochet, for those exceptions to the rule. The important thing is that the country is calm and we have an impeccable economy. We were always a country of layabouts, but now people have to work and make an effort. The free market system favors competition and promotes wealth.”
“This isn’t a free market, because the labor force is repressed, with their most basic human rights suspended. Do you think this system could be implanted in a democracy?”
“This is an authoritarian, protected democracy.”
“You’ve changed a lot, Felipe.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I remembered you as more open, iconoclastic, quite cynical and critical. Against everything and everyone, sarcastic and brilliant.”
“I still am in some respects, Victor. But as you grow older you have to take up a position. I’ve always been a monarchist,” Felipe said with a smile. “At any rate, my friend, be careful with your opinions.”
“I am careful, Felipe, but not with my friends.”
* * *
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TO ALLEVIATE THE EMBARRASSMENT he felt at treating medicine as a commodity, Victor worked as a volunteer in a makeshift consulting room in one of the Santiago shantytowns. They had sprung up with the migration of workers from the countryside and the saltpeter industry half a century earlier, and had since multiplied. About six thousand people lived crammed into the one where Victor worked. There he could assess the repression, the discontent, and the courage of the poorest people. His patients lived in shacks made of cardboard and wooden planks with beaten earth floors, and had no running water, electricity, or latrines. They had to endure summer dust and winter mud surrounded by garbage, packs of stray dogs, rats, and flies. Most of them had no proper work, earning a minimum for survival in desperate jobs such as scavenging in the garbage heaps for plastic, glass, and paper to sell, or doing heavy manual work for the day in anything that came along, trafficking or stealing. The government had plans to eradicate the problem of the shanties, but the solutions kept being delayed, and in the meantime they raised walls to hide this wretched spectacle that made the city look ugly.
“What’s most impressive are the women,” Victor told Roser. “They’re steadfast, long-suffering, more combative than the men, mothers of their own children as well as the relatives they take in. They put up with the alcoholism, violence, and abandonment of their transient partners. But they don’t give in.”
“Do they at least get some help?”
“Yes, from churches, especially the evangelical ones, from charities, and volunteers. But it’s the children I’m worried about, Roser. They grow up out of control, often go to bed hungry, attend school when they can, not always, and reach adolescence with no more prospects than gangs, drugs, or the street.”
“I know you, Victor. I know you’re happier there than anywhere else,” was Roser’s reply.
It was true. By the third day of serving in this community together with a couple of nurses and other idealistic doctors who worked shifts, Victor rediscovered his youthful enthusiastic flame. He would return home weary as a dog, heavyhearted and with many tragic stories, yet impatient to return to the consulting room the next day. His life had a meaning as clear as during the Civil War, when his role in this world had been beyond question.
“If you could only see how they organize themselves, Roser. Those who are able contribute something to the common pot cooked in giant cauldrons on braziers in the open air. The idea is to give everyone a hot meal, although sometimes there’s not enough to go around.”
“Now I know where your salary goes.”
“It’s not just food that’s needed, Roser. We also need everything in the consulting room.”
He explained that the shantytown dwellers kept order themselves to avoid raids by the police, who usually came in heavily armed. Their impossible dream was to have their own houses and plots of land to live on. In the past they had simply taken over land and stubbornly resisted being thrown off. These “takeovers” began with a few people arriving surreptitiously. Then more and more would appear, in a stealthy, uncontainable procession that advanced with their few possessions on carts and wheelbarrows, in sacks slung over their shoulders, and what little material they had for a roof, pieces of cardboard, blankets, carrying their children and followed by their dogs. By the time the authorities came to see what was going on, there were thousands of people installed, ready to defend themselves. But in the current climate, that sort of thing would have been rash to the point of suicide: the forces of law and order could come in with tanks and open fire without a second thought.