Mascara by Ariel Dorfman

Author:Ariel Dorfman [Coetzee, Ariel Dorfman; with a new afterword by J. M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-60980-258-5
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2011-01-04T05:00:00+00:00

I want you to fix your eyes on this snapshot. Do you recognize anybody? Do you recognize the person who is operating? Looks like you, doesn’t it, Doctor? Or are you going to deny, do you dare to deny, what your hands are doing? You don’t? Another question, then. Would you like that patient, the woman you operated on that day, to receive a copy? Or should I send it to her husband, Colonel Zagasto? Or would you rather that the photo be sent to one of the thousands of other city residents whose faces you have been purging all these years—without the inquisitive presence of my camera? Yes, Doctor. I also have a list of your patients.

How did I do all this?

You are forewarned: I could have done it on my own. It is true that I no longer have my files. True that you have dispersed my contacts. And true also that my errand boy, Tristan, is now at somebody else’s insidious beck and call. But even so, Malavierro, your fortress is not inaccessible. Anyone persistent, ready to be rendered invisible by holding his breath, could have negotiated an entry into the hospital where you usually operate, could have crossed the eight additional security checks, mounted the staircase that leads to your private chambers, neutralized the infrared alarm rays. Anyone could have witnessed from one of the dark walls the ceremonies that I witnessed that day. Just so you know: if tomorrow I do not have Oriana by my side like a living howl, tomorrow if I feel like it, tomorrow I can once again smuggle myself, this time without anyone’s aid, into your operating room.

So you won’t misconstrue the fact that I asked for that aid, so you’ll believe that on that Sunday when I left my office, I hadn’t even thought of it, so you’ll know that what was burning up my eyes was that dossier of Oriana’s and nothing else. It was not fear that drove me to turn to the one person who was not on the list that Tristan Pareja had slipped into your hands, the one person you couldn’t use against me, the last secret contact that I never mentioned to anybody: former Inspector Federico Jarvik. That’s not what he’s called, of course—but most of the names that I mention here are not the real ones, except for the name you inherited from the fornicators who produced you, Mavarello, and I keep confusing that one.

Why should I make your task easy? Haven’t you declared in interviews that names are no more than “a muddled and precarious mixture of syllables,” whereas the face is eternal? Haven’t you said that? Haven’t you said that even the face of someone who was born with the most undistinguished features in the world, that even that face you could transform into something wonderful? If what you say is true, then you should be able, as I am, to identify every person immediately without needing to know what sad, fragile sounds their parents gave to them—like branding cattle, Doctor—at birth.

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