Santiesteban
Angel Santiesteban, Translator: Unstated
After the Black Spring, when they arrested the 75 Government opponents,
through my younger sister I met one of them who had been released due to
illness. And visiting his house, I noticed that his daughter was an
absolute beauty. I think it was a mutual sympathy from the beginning and
she agreed to take a walk with me, and then become my girlfriend.
To tell the truth, I joked about the dissidents, at least those who
visited her house. Most of them were looking for political backing to
leave the country for the United States. My girlfriends' parents would
sell, in their own handwriting, "evidence" later presented to the United
States Interest Section, for possible approval to acquire the status of
those championed by the United States. They would also sell the
donations offered by U.S. Interest Section: radios, cameras, tape
recorders, office paper, and the continuously supplied books for an
Independent Library.
Those people were repugnant to me for their dishonesty. Mercenaries who
mercilessly took advantage of what was at their fingertips. I noticed
that the wife, my mother-in-law at that time, wasn't a member of the
Ladies in White. She said she was against it and considered them enemies
because they had different ways of seeing reality. Something that seemed
odd to me, but reasonable, it was her own free will.
Months later, my girlfriend told me she had been approached by an
official from State Security and asked to cooperate with them. She told
me she had refused, assuring them she was apolitical. She insisted to
the official that she could understand that his intention was to know
about me: What was I doing? Who did I interact with? She refused, it
wasn't possible that they were more interested in me than in her
parents. Security would surely try to get her to betray them, I ended up
saying.
She laughed, convinced that I was wrong. There were seconds of silence.
I assumed she was trying to tell me something I couldn't grasp. She
confessed that it wasn't the first time she had talked with the
"agents," almost letting me know that she was a frequent collaborator. I
inferred that she had betrayed her parents. But the biggest surprise was
when she told me about a telephone call of her mother's, who, before
making it said she needed privacy and asked her to leave the phone
booth. Thinking she was cheating on her dad, she managed to sidle up
without her mother noticing, and heard her talking to an official and
identifying herself as the agent Victoria.
I then recalled the stories about her mother showing up near the
Combinado del Este prison, demanding to be allowed to see her husband;
that in some Roundtable TV episode and in the newspapers she'd been
mentioned as a dissident. And it all seemed so disappointing to me.
I didn't see my girlfriend again. The last time I ran into her coming
back from the U.S. Interest Section, she had in her hands approval to
enter the United States. Since them I realized that it's not worth it to
believe secrets exist. They know more about us than we do about
ourselves. The best thing is to freely express what you feel and what
you want.
And accept the consequences, of course.
10 August 2011
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