Timote: A Novel

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 Gaby has sat down in front of a typewriter. What kind is it? An Olivetti, a Remington? Let us suppose it is a Lettera 32. Does she write the communiqués or were they already written? It would be usual for them to have already been written. No one can write the future. Or foretell it in communiqués. Probably— it’s one possibility—it’s Ramus who has gone from La Celma to the house where Norma is and has returned. Who moves around without our knowing very well where. Probably he’s the one who has informed her about the development of events. Gaby types up the first communiqué or gives final form to the outline Fernando had already written. The result is what follows: perón returns communiqué no. 1 to the people of the nation: Today at 9:30 am, our Command operation proceeded to detain Pedro Eugenio Aramburu, fulfilling an order stemming from our procedure to submit him to Revolutionary Justice. Pedro Eugenio Aramburu is charged with treason to the country and the people and with the assassination of twenty-seven Argentines. At this time, Aramburu represents a player in the regime that has the goal of putting him in power to deceive the people once again josé pablo feinmann 122 | | with a false democracy and legalize the handover of our country. In due course, details of the trial and the sentence passed will be released. At such a sad time for our Argentina, which sees its governments auctioned off to the highest bidder by its leaders, who enrich themselves immorally at the expense of the poverty of our people, we the Montoneros call for armed resistance against the government of right-wing thugs and oligarchs, following the example of General Valle and all those who generously gave their lives for a Free, Just, and Sovereign Fatherland. perón or death! long live the fatherland! juan josé valle commando operation montoneros Gaby leans back in her chair. She looks over the text. She can’t believe it. Shit. They did it! The uproar this is going to produce in the country. The journalistic toadies in the newsrooms are going to shit their pants when they read this communiqué. It will be passed from hand to hand. They won’t know if it’s authentic or not. Or worse—if it’s authentic, they’re not going to have the guts to publish it. And if they do, they’re going to be scared for their lives. Arrostito is not wrong. The communiqué makes the whole country tremble. Years later, in the midst of the terror of the Videla regime, another text will show up in the newsrooms: Rodolfo Walsh’s Letter to the Military Junta. It didn’t upset anyone. At the magazine Gente, they passed it around laughing so hard they choked. Get a load of this crazy! Who does he think he is? Him alone against the military junta. The commanders must be trembling in their boots. That Irishman was always a little crazy. By t i m o t e| | 123 now they should have put him in an oven. That magazine was full of “voluntary hangmen for Videla.” There are many ways to kill someone. When the army finds it necessary to produce the death of Arrostito, Gente will publish a cover that is studied and will be studied as an impeccable example of the banality of evil. There’s a photograph of Gaby and, covering it partially, a bureaucratic stamp, an office stamp applied with a heavy hand, with brutality. The printed word is “Dead.” But Communiqué no. 1 from the Montoneros makes everyone shudder. Things are grave. Over at Gente it’s possible they’ve repeated a phrase that years ago caused the kidnapping of a foreign ambassador in Guatemala : What must we make of ourselves in order to survive? Exactly what they did make of themselves. To her misfortune, few had to discover it as fully as Gaby. After the “Aramburu blow,” she got turned into a myth. That explains why she ended up staying so long in the ESMA Navy dungeon. Her torture is drawn out because they don’t want to kill her. She’s a trophy. The navy shows her off with pride. They’ve got her. They got the “cunt” of the Montoneros. That how they put it: the cunt...