The Good Liar Meets His Executioners
for Nelson Azócar, Valparaíso, Chile
The first time
the good liar
met his executioners
was at the military tribunal
after the coup.
Before the row of officers
withered stiff as scarecrows,
he grew more polite and forgetful
with each name tolled
on the list: "No, senor. No, senor."
On the wall, the portrait of General Pinochet,
mustache and sunglasses, glowering.
The good liar returned home that day,
but singers of red songs
reddened the waters of Chile
face down in the current,
and the executioners kept vigil
over blazing pyramids of books,
so a passport was forged
with a plan to leave Chile by sea.
Somewhere the waves
rumbled a prayer for him
like a chorus of monks.
The second time
the good liar
met his executioners
was at the dock,
hunched in a peacoat
with a sack on his shoulder.
A pistol dug into his neck,
chamber clicked
like a bored sergeant
cracking his knuckles.
A guard disbelieved the passport
stamped Merchant Marine,
the list of names quivering
in his other hand.
"My name is not on that list,"
the good liar said,
and since his executioner
could not read
without trailing a finger slowly
across the page
the pistol relaxed, leaving
the imprint of the barrel,
and only the passport was burned.
Somewhere the sea lions
lumbered from the surf
and waited all night for him.
The third time
the good liar
met his executioners
was at the house of his mother.
Now his name was on the list,
troops rifle-jabbing him
still in his underwear
to the pickup truck,
family on the sidewalk
begging to give him
at least the dignity of his pants,
neighbors listening with bowed heads.
On the way to the firing squad,
a balding hill where every skull
recalled the bullet's cloud of ink
flooding the brain,
the good liar invented fables
of a colonel he knew,
barbeques in the backyard
and dating his daughter,
boasting to the other
condemned companeros
loud enough
for curious executioners to believe.
The truck circled back
and left him at the jail instead,
thirty men in a room
jostling for a peephole to breathe
or a rubber pot rocking with piss.
Somewhere the ocean boiled for him,
as if here a giant octopus had wrapped itself
around a warship full of admirals.
After bail, the good liar
smuggled himself away from Chile,
the green waved lifting him.
You have to be a good liar, he says.
in the sanctuary of steaming coffee
he tells what he knows three times,
what the lie is,
who the liars.
(c) Martín Espada. All rights reserved.
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