Certainly, when the Ariel Dorfman character confesses his haunted previous, insisting he was answerable for Claudio Jimeno’s martyrdom, Adrián assures him that he’s unsuitable. It isn’t true that he died as a substitute of you, Adrián says. Your pal would have died even for those who hadn’t modified shifts with him. He wished to be at La Moneda, would have gone there anyway, no matter your individual actions. They murdered all of the president’s advisers. You couldn’t have saved him, similar to I, Adrián avers, couldn’t save Allende, although I used to be near him — two meters away — when he died.
As I transcribed the phrases that that character whispered to my fictional alter ego and avatar, as his invented voice invaded my authorial voice, a parallel tranquillity rose inside me, just like the sweetest aid from an ailment and ache that had lasted for a lot too many many years. He was proper. Or any person inside me (or the ghost of Claudio, of Allende, of the desaparecidos) was transmitting the balm of that apparent reality that I had refused to just accept or acknowledge although it had been staring me within the face all this time. Now, after journeying painstakingly by way of the trying glass of literary fabrication and wishful considering, this reality was having a medicinal impact on me.
I assumed with aid, as I completed writing the guide, “Effectively, that’s the tip of it,” not understanding there was nonetheless one other startling revelation awaiting me.
Then, in 2022, Claudio’s son, Cristóbal Jimeno, and his spouse, the journalist Daniela Mohor, printed a memoir, “La Búsqueda,” about their try and retrace Claudio’s ultimate days and execution.
It took me some time to learn their guide, however once I did I found, to my amazement, that Claudio had not slept at La Moneda the night time of Sept. 10, as I had believed all this time, however left his personal home at daybreak on the eleventh. So he will need to have, with out telling me, switched locations with another person. In no way as I had imagined his ultimate night time on earth.