Mr. Horacio doesn’t know how long he was playing dead. Half an hour? An hour? His sense of time was completely altered. All he knows is that he did not leave the spot where he’d fallen until it started to get bright out. That was probably at around seven-thirty. On June 10, the sun rose at 7:57 a.m.
He lifted his head and saw the field covered in white. Along the horizon, he could make out a solitary tree. Nine months later he was surprised to find out that it was not just one tree; rather, the branches of several trees at the far end of an undulating terrain were creating this optical illusion. Incidentally, the detail proved to this writer—if I still harbored any doubts—that Mr. Horacio had been there. The only place from which that strange mirage can be observed is the site of the execution.25
On one side of the “phantom tree,” at the edge of the town of José León Suárez, he spotted the chapel whose bells he had heard ringing when they were about to deliver the coup de grâce . . .
He stood up and made a great effort to start running in that direction. He was numb. The cold was brutal. At 8:10 a.m. the temperature was -3°C.
Along the way he came to a muddy ditch that was impossible for him to get past. He had to grab a sheet of corrugated metal from a pile of garbage and place it across like a bridge.
Leaving the wasteland behind, he went into town. He walked about eight blocks. He thought it was only two. He saw a bus heading down a cross street. He thought it was red. It was yellow. He thought it was the number 4. It was the number 1.
He got on.
—Where does this go? —he asked, just like Giunta.
—To Liniers.
In a small pocket of his pants he had salvaged a small sum of money from the ravenousness of the police. He was able to pay for his ticket. It sounds like a fairytale: they gave him a ticket with a palindromic number on it . . .
He got off in Liniers. He walked into a bar. He ordered a coffee. They were still warming up the machine so there wasn’t any. He went to another bar. They gave him a double espresso and a double shot of sugar cane spirits there.
Only then did he feel like his soul was returning to his body.
***
How did Sergeant Díaz escape? We can only speculate. What we know for sure is that, two months after the massacre, he was still alive, hidden in a house in Munro. That’s where the police commissioner of Boulogne arrested him. He was sent to Olmos. He is the only survivor I was never able to reach.
And the “NCO X”? Did he exist? Who was the man that Troxler and Benavídez saw being shot dead in the truck? One of the twelve whom we already know of, but who was a stranger to them? The mystery remains to this day.
Without a doubt, the massacre left five dead, one critically wounded, and six survivors.
***
The sun had come up over the dreadful scene of the execution. The corpses were scattered along the main road. Several had fallen into a ditch, and the blood in the stagnant water seemed to transform it into an unbelievable river floating with strands of brain matter. A good while later, they emptied one truck of tar there and another of lime . . .
There were Mauser cartridges everywhere. For many days after the fact, the boys of the neighborhood sold them to curious visitors. Faraway houses were left with marks from stray bullets.
The first to stop by the road that morning were unsuspecting townspeople on their way to work. After that, word spread through the town and a horrified, sullen crowd began to congregate around the atrocious sight.
Completely absurd accounts of what had happened were circulating in hushed voices.
—They were students —one person declared.
—Yes, they were going to attack Campo de Mayo . . . —said another.
Most were silent. The men took off their hats, a woman crossed herself.
Then everyone saw a new, long and shiny car coming along the road. It stopped suddenly in front of the group and a woman peeked her head out the window.
—What’s going on? —she asked.
—These people . . . They’ve been executed —they responded.
She made an ironic gesture.
—Very well done! —she remarked.— They should kill all of them.
An astonished silence settled over the crowd. Then something traced the form of a parabola in the air and crashed onto the polished bodywork of the car in a cloud of dirt. After the first clump made contact, there was another, and then came the deluge. Howling and furious, the crowd surrounded the car. The driver managed to floor it.
The dead bodies were left out in the open until ten in the morning. At that point an ambulance came and took them to the San Martín polyclinic, where they were flung carelessly into a warehouse. Rodríguez was riddled with bullets; Garibotti had just one bullet wound, in his back. Carranza had many, including in his legs . . .
The night watchman at the depot was accustomed to the sight of dead bodies. When he arrived that afternoon, though, there was something that deeply shocked him. One of the executed men had his arms out by his sides and his head leaning on one shoulder. He had an oval face, blond hair, the beginnings of a beard, a melancholic expression, and a trail of blood coming from his mouth.
He was wearing a white cardigan. It was Mario Brión and he looked like Christ.26
The man stood there dazed for a moment.
Then he folded Brión’s arms across his chest.
Footnotes:
25 I had been very intrigued by this topographical trace that Mr. Horacio kept mentioning and that I had never managed to observe during my three or four visits to the garbage dump. That was until I went with him one day. Soon enough, after the two of us had looked for it for a good while, I saw it. It was fascinating, worthy of a Chesterton story. Moving fifty paces in any direction, the optical effect would disappear, the “tree” would split into many trees. At that moment I knew—it was an unusual kind of proof—that I was at the scene of the execution.
26 The night watchman’s exact words to Mario’s father many months later.