Cerro Los Placeres, Valparaiso, Chile, September 1973
It was time.
His Term of Grace was over.
The dogs of the Lord were coming.
The dogs of the Lord were coming and he did not want them to find him naked. Tired but alert, William Pettigrew tugged a shirt over his head and pulled on a pair of torn Wrangler jeans. Stepping out of the bedroom, he counted the six steps to his front door, trying to ignore the tightening knot in his stomach. Hopping from foot to bare foot, he mumbled the lines of a prayer by a Trappist monk called Thomas Merton: ‘My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going…’
The Domini canes arrived in a flurry of engine noise and exhaust smoke. There was the squeal of rubber on tarmac, the crunch of boots on gravel, angry shouts and fearful cries. When they finally stopped outside the house, Pettigrew felt a wave of serenity wash over him. ‘There is no point,’ he mumbled to himself, ‘in hiding under the bed when a man with a machine-gun knocks on your door at two o’clock in the morning. Instead, you answer it.’
A soldier jogged towards him, rifle raised. He looked little more than a boy — seventeen, eighteen at most. Catching the youth’s eye, Pettigrew acknowledged the sadistic twinkle in it, the almost pantomime menace in his voice. He breathed in the smell of body odour and refried beans mixed with Torobayo Ale.
Dropping his gun to his side, the boy jumped in front of the priest and spat in his face. Pettigrew flinched, but didn’t wipe it off.
The first blow sent him crashing to the ground. He tried to breathe slowly, through his mouth, trying to ignore the fire alarm going off in his brain and the fire in his crotch as the pain raced round his body on a surge of adrenaline.
In the shadows, someone laughed. A callous voice cried: ‘That’s got to hurt!’
‘ Bienvenido a la Caravana de la Meurte,’ the young soldier said grimly. Another gob of phlegm splattered on the ground in front of Pettigrew’s face. He looked up. The slack grin on the soldier’s face said it all.
Welcome to the Caravan of Death.
Enjoy the ride.
Pushing back his shoulders, Pettigrew stood up straight in front of the new Inquisition.
From his studies at the Catholic University in Santiago, he knew that, in these parts, the first Papal Inquisition officially ended only in 1834. It had lasted for more than 600 years.
Now it was back.
‘It is time for me to die.’
Death, however, is not a specific moment. It is a process that begins when the heart stops beating, the lungs stop working and the brain ceases functioning. In this case, he knew that it was going to be a long, slow, painful process. He had shown the insolence and malapertness of the heretic, and now his false designs were to be crushed. The prophet, the dreamer, must be put to death and the execrableness of his false doctrines purged.
He didn’t possess the apostolic humility, austerity, the holiness required for anything remotely approaching salvation.
It was too late for zealous preaching.
It was too late for voluntary confessions.
Now there was nothing to do but embrace the pain.
Instinctively, in their souls, the soldiers knew that no man must debase himself by showing toleration towards heretics of any kind. Pettigrew braced himself for another kick. He knelt forward, getting as close to the boy’s boots as he could without making it look too obvious. If he didn’t get much backlift, the boy wouldn’t be able to get much force into the next assault and maybe it would just be a glancing blow. Rocking gently on his knees, he could smell the boot polish. It had been smeared across the toes of his scuffed boots, like make-up on a corpse. If he’d bothered to rub it in properly, he thought idly, I might have seen my face reflected back at me. Instead, there was just darkness.
The boots took a step back. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and waited.
The kick never came.
After a few seconds, the soldier stepped away and turned towards a yelping noise that had started up somewhere to his right. It sounded like a dog hit by a car, but Pettigrew knew that it wasn’t. Cursing and screaming, a woman he didn’t recognise was being dragged down the street by her hair. The boy soldier jumped forward and, without breaking stride, let fly with a casual half-volley, like a kid kicking a stone along the street. His right boot landed somewhere near her mouth and Pettigrew watched her face explode in a mess of crimson, like something out of a Sam Peckinpah movie. The yelping and cursing stopped, replaced by a low, frothy moan.
The soldier studied the toe of his boot and carefully began cleaning it on the back of his left calf, smearing a mixture of blood, snot and nasal cartilage across his olive-green fatigues. Satisfied with the result, he turned back to face the priest, eyes glazed. Stepping closer, he pointed at a large puddle of green paint over to Pettigrew’s right, which was spreading slowly across the scrub of the tiny front yard. The eight tins of Eden Green paint had been a birthday present from his sister. They had been stacked by the door for several months now, waiting for him to get round to painting the outside of his house, a three-room shack his friends and neighbours had helped him build two summers ago. The soldiers had clearly found them too much to resist, kicking them over as they’d jumped down from their trucks.
‘Get down!’
William Pettigrew looked at him uncomprehendingly.
‘Lie in it, fucker!’
The priest looked at the paint and hesitated.
‘Get on with it,’ the youth’s face turned pink as he struggled to find the right words, ‘motherfucker!’
Another boot caught Pettigrew in the small of the back. Forced down into the puddle, his shirt and trousers were immediately soaked in the cloying green paint. Lying still, he felt a small pulse of satisfaction that he had managed to get dressed before opening the door. To be both naked and green would have been a terrible embarrassment.
Of course, it was also a waste of good paint, but that seemed a total irrelevance now, since it wasn’t as if he would be coming back to start the decorating.
A boot tickled his ear. ‘Why didn’t you stay away, dickhead?’
It was a good question.
William Pettigrew was well known locally as a so-called ‘Red Priest’, a liberation theologian and, therefore, a troublemaker. That meant that he was always likely to be on someone’s list. When the coup began, his friends had warned him that he would be a target; that he should lie low, maybe even leave the country for a while. Pettigrew was lucky — he had that option; he had a passport and he had money. He could go back to Great Britain and leave this all behind. On several occasions, the Archdiocese and the ecclesiastical governors had made it clear to him that this was a course of action of which they would approve.
He had toyed with going to Scotland — his great-greatgrandfather had been an innkeeper in Montrose — to see for himself where the Pettigrews had first come from. But, deep down, he knew that was just a fantasy. He would never run away.
In the event, he did leave Valparaiso… for a little while. After a couple of nights of listening to the shooting, he had headed for a village twenty kilometres up the coast, where he spent a couple of nights on a friend’s floor. The whole thing quickly seemed melodramatic and self-indulgent — cowardly, even. By running from his fate, he had put himself in a prison of his own making. After all, Cerro Los Placeres was his home. There was nowhere else to go. There was nowhere else he wanted to be.
He knew that he had to suffer with the people here, share the suffering of the powerless, the impotent. He knew that he could offer his neighbours no solutions to this terrible situation. He didn’t know the answers. But he could walk with them, search with them, stay with them. Die with them.
His only weapon was forgiveness. Forgiveness is fuelled by love; violence is fuelled by fear. Love is the antidote to fear. And he knew that love is what he would need in his heart when he arrived at the gates of Heaven.
So he came back.
For a couple more days, he went about his business in Valparaiso unmolested. It seemed that no one cared about William Pettigrew.
Until now.
Another kick brought him back to the present. More words were whispered in his ear:
‘You are an idiot as well as a pervert.’
‘Do you think God cares what happens to scum like you?’
‘You should have fucked off back to England, while you had the chance.’
‘The Church shrinks from blood but we do not.’
After a couple more kicks, and a few smacks around the head with a rifle butt, Pettigrew’s hands were tied firmly together in front of him. Careful to avoid getting any of the bright green paint on their fatigues, two soldiers hauled him towards the rear of a canvas-covered truck. Half-lifted, half-pushed, he was bundled inside. There were maybe ten or twelve other people already in there, but no one that he recognised in the gloom. They instinctively shied away from him, fearing any association that could make their situation worse. Righting himself, he found a space near the tailgate. Shouting and laughing came from outside the truck. Inside there was only a pensive silence, laced with a heavy dose of fear.
Five minutes later, the tailgate was closed and the canvas flaps at the back of the truck pulled down. Someone shouted to the driver that they were ready to go, and the truck rumbled into life. After a few more seconds they set off, travelling at a steady pace of not much more than twenty miles an hour. Out of the back, through the gaps in the canvas, Pettigrew could see that they were being closely followed by a group of three soldiers in a jeep. One was manning a machine-gun mounted on the back, just in case anyone decided to take their chances and jump. No one did.
It was clear that they were heading south, towards the port area. Pettigrew had been what they called a ‘worker priest’ in Valparaiso’s Las Habas shipyards for almost a year, so he knew this route well. He also knew why they were going there. A couple of naval vessels had arrived in Valparaiso two days before the socialist government had been overthrown. With the President, Salvador Allende, dead, and ‘leftists’ of all descriptions being rounded up, rumours quickly began circulating that these ships were being used as overflow facilities for the prisons.
‘A nice bit of sea air — and free board and lodging,’ someone had joked at the time. ‘A lot better than Londres Street,’ the man had added, referring to the Communist Party headquarters in Santiago which, as everyone knew, was now being used as a torture centre.
Pettigrew had looked at him askance.
‘Like a little vacation really.’
Really? Well, his vacation started here.
They moved slowly through the streets. The city seemed desolate even for the middle of the night. Lights were out. Windows were closed. Doors firmly bolted shut. People were curled up in their beds, worried that they might be next, wracking their brains for any behaviour, any words, that might lead to a midnight visit and a one-way trip to Las Habas.
Even the dogs that habitually prowled the dustbins looking for food had the sense to take the night off.
Inside the truck, someone started sobbing. Another began quietly reciting the Lord’s Prayer. At the end, there were a couple of ragged Amen s, followed by more silence. A woman close to Pettigrew squeezed her rosary so tightly that the string broke and the beads fell to the floor, scattering at their feet. She glanced at Pettigrew and shrugged. He said nothing. They both knew that it was far too late for God.
They made four more stops on the way. Pulling up outside houses that the priest didn’t recognise; picking up men and women whom he didn’t know. At each stop, two or three more people were shoved into the back of the truck. There was some shouting, a few screams but no real complaints and no resistance.
By the time they reached the dockside, the truck was full. The driver slowed his speed as he pulled onto one of the piers. Through the gap in the canvas, Pettigrew caught a glimpse of a distinctive four-mast schooner, the Dama Blanca. The White Lady was a familiar sight in Valparaiso, being the training ship for the cadets at the city’s Arturo Prat Naval Academy. He had even been on board once himself, during an Open Day early in 1972. Visitors were given a tour of the bay, some free rum and a rather boring lecture on Arturo Prat and his good works.
This time, no doubt, the programme would be rather different.
Despite everything, Pettigrew managed a smile when he recalled Agustin Arturo Prat Chacon. Prat was a very Chilean kind of hero. He took a bullet between the eyes in 1879 while fighting the Peruvians.
Almost 100 years later, there were 162 streets named after the great man in Chile. In Valparaiso, there was an Arturo Prat statue as well. By all accounts, Prat was much taken by the liberalism of the times. His academy was supposed to teach future naval officers ‘academic, moral, cultural and physical education’. Pettigrew wondered which part of the curriculum they were covering tonight.
Their truck trundled past a group of twenty or so people who had been rounded up by the military. Some were lying face-down on the quayside; others were kneeling. All had their hands clutched behind their heads. Half a dozen armed sailors stood around them, keeping guard, smoking, sharing the occasional joke. Above them all, a group of maybe thirty navy cadets stood at attention on the main deck of the ship itself, watching closely despite keeping their gaze fixed firmly on some invisible point in the inky sky.
The truck came to a gentle stop and the canvas covers at the back were thrown open. Without being told, people started getting off. ‘I hope you know how to swim,’ one of the soldiers joked as Pettigrew jumped down from the truck onto the cold cobbles.
As soon as it was empty, the truck headed off into the night, no doubt in search of its next passengers. Stretching, Pettigrew looked around. The pier was kept in darkness, the only light coming from the ship’s portholes and from the orange street lights in the town above. He shivered as a chill breeze cut in from the sea. Without being told, he sank to his knees on the dockside, keen to fit in. Most of his fellow travellers followed suit. He bowed his head and was quickly rewarded by a blow to the neck with the stock of a sailor’s rifle. Without complaining, he looked up and carefully studied his tormentor. The latter was tall and pale, with thin wrists, a small mouth and green eyes. His tunic was unbuttoned at the neck and an unlit cigarette dangled from his mouth. Avoiding the red priest’s gaze, he recorded Pettigrew’s existence and silently moved on. Pettigrew watched him wandering through the kneeling group, casually offering the occasional blow, seemingly as engaged as a man pruning his roses.
It was another fifteen minutes or so before the detainees were formally handed over to the ship’s commander. Even at times like this, we Chileans like our ceremony, Pettigrew mused. He was almost surprised that they didn’t have a brass band on hand to provide a musical accompaniment. They were pushed up the gangplank under a hail of kicks, blows and curses.
On the deck of the ship, his hands were untied and he was told to crouch with his hands behind the back of his neck. As the final prisoners shuffled on board, he counted twenty-six men and twenty-two women. He guessed that their ages ranged from something like fifteen to sixty-five. They were arranged in eight rows of half a dozen each, facing away from the pier. Wandering between the rows came a dozen or so guards carrying lances, sticks with steel points. Overseeing the group, perched on a raised deck-hatch to Pettigrew’s left, were two teenagers manning a machine-gun that looked as if it had come from the First World War. If they had opened up, they could have taken everyone out in about ten seconds.
Once everyone was on board, the order was given for the prisoners to strip. A few bemused glances were exchanged, but again no one complained. Not wishing to be hit again, Pettigrew quickly dropped his trousers and wriggled out of his underpants. Pulling his paint-covered shirt over his head, he folded his clothes neatly, out of habit, and placed the pile at his feet. A cadet quickly scuttled over and took his clothes away. Standing as straight as he could manage, with his arms folded, he tried not to watch the others get undressed. The near silence was occasionally broken by a burst of gunfire from somewhere in the city. At one point, he heard another truck on the jetty. It stopped near to the ship but no one else came on board the White Lady.
Finally, everyone was done. Naked and standing grimly to attention, people tried to make themselves seem as small as possible, almost trying to will themselves somewhere else.
All except for one woman: standing in the row in front of Pettigrew, she stood defiant, back arched, legs planted apart, hands on hips, staring down any sailor who cared to take her on.
She was an amazing sight, hairy, with a backside you could eat your lunch off, large breasts and nipples like bullets. He was ashamed of himself, but it was impossible not to stare.
Forgive me, Father, he thought, for I have sinned in my head.
Pettigrew willed himself to look at his feet and think about… Montrose, about football, Jesus, the Church, agrarian reform… anything to keep his mind off his groin. Others clearly had the same problem. There was some mumbling among the ranks, and he turned to see that a youth standing next to the warrior woman was struggling with an enormous erection. The poor soul went beetroot red in the face as he tried — and failed — to hide it between his legs. The guards roared with laughter and took turns at trying to hit his penis with their sticks; one threatened to shoot it off. But they quickly grew bored with the game and, thanks to God, the errant member eventually subsided.
As dawn began to break, a new group of sailors appeared, carrying hoses. Someone shouted, ‘It’s time for a wash you dirty bastards!’ With a flourish, they turned high-pressure jets of seawater on the prisoners. The ranks broke as everyone tried to get out of the line of fire, while the guards stabbed them with their sticks to keep them under the jets. Water immediately went up Pettigrew’s nose and in his mouth, and he was constantly gagging, on the brink of drowning. A jet of water hit him directly on the head and the pain was terrible. His eyes and ears felt as if they were being stabbed.
After about twenty minutes, they finally turned off the hoses. That’s when he really felt the cold. His hands and feet were numb and he could see one poor woman beginning to turn blue. Everyone was hopping from foot to foot to try and stay warm. He imagined they looked like lunatics dancing on a trip to Hell.
Some time later, they were taken down below and herded into a space maybe forty feet long and twenty feet wide, lit by three bare light bulbs. There were no portholes. At each end was a sliding metal door, with an armed guard stationed immediately outside. Each person was told to take one thin blanket. There were enough hammocks for maybe half of them, with a canvas dividing off the quarters for the women. Beside the doors were four large buckets to serve as their toilet. The lodgings had clearly been used before. The floor was still sticky with fluids that Pettigrew did not want to inspect too closely. There had been some attempt to clean the place up for the new arrivals but, at best, it had been half-hearted. The smell of disinfectant only partially covered the smell of piss, shit and body odour. No one wanted to think about what had happened to the previous guests.