She would never
arrive late and would always leave after us. I at one point thought she lived
there. Or that she was the owner of the building. We could not leave the
classroom without her permission. And
much less so go for a stroll around the school’s vicinity. During lunchtime, we
would stay close to the classrooms, walking through the narrow hallway or
looking at the wilderness. Just a tree here or there. Wherever we were, we
would see the meadow in all its magnitude. It seemed like there wasn’t another
building, other than ours. As such, we were anxious to explore it all. Even
though we had no hope of finding anything beautiful or interesting. We wanted
to know, however, where those men that day by day passed through school, towards
the meadow, were taken. They treaded sad and with their heads bowed,
handcuffed, surrounded by armed soldiers. In the early days we would ask the
teacher who those men were and where they went. She would remain silent for a
couple of minutes, as if she knew nothing. She would then answer: “They are
enemies of the State and are under arrest”. The answer didn’t seem clear to us.
We then wanted to know the meaning of “enemies of the State”. Finally, she got
angry. She didn’t want to hear a single question about those men. Faced with
this, we went on to finding within ourselves the answers to our own questions.
“They’re thieves”, some would say. “They killed little children”, said others.
We even insulted each other, in our desire to appear wiser, each of us claiming
we know the truth. We then decided to once again turn to the teacher. Yet again
she got angry. We insisted, insisted. Finally, she answered: “They wanted to
overthrow our government”. We became even more unsatisfied. After all, we
didn’t know what government was, or where it was located, for it to be able to
be overthrown.
During lunchtime,
we were back to arguing: “The government is that tall building in Marechal Deodoro street, where the
soldiers live”, one would say. “They are the streets, the factories, the back
cars and tall buildings”, said another. “But how is it that the enemies would
overthrow the streets?” We would waste our lunchtime in this endless
discussion. When those sad men passed by us, we too would get sad, and asked
ourselves where they went. Minutes later we would hear loud popping sounds and
get startled. “What was that?” The teacher would get irritated: “You are here
to study and not to concern yourselves with the soldiers’ trainings.”
One day, some of
us arrived before her. If we acted in a hurry, we could unveil everything. All
we had to do was follow the same path the soldiers and prisoners would travel
daily. Blissful, we ran, dodging the thorns and rocks. Already far, we looked
behind us and no longer saw the school building. The most fainthearted ones
wanted to go back. The great majority, though, insisted in our stroll. We had
to discover where those “enemies of the State” were taken. When we least
expected, we heard gunshots. We wanted to run, scared like birds. We would
shake in fear. Some began crying: “They’re going to kill us”. We decided – the more daring ones – to walk a
few steps toward the place where the gunshots must have been fired. We then saw
some soldiers with guns in their hands, looking at two men. Certainly, “enemies
of the State”. They looked like those that would pass by daily in front of our
school, sad, with their heads bowed, drenched in blood. Frightened, we came
back running. Tired, short of breath, we told of our adventure to the other
girls. The teacher, furious and afflicted, like an insane woman, began yelling:
“It’s all a lie; you saw nothing; here, nobody kills anyone.”
(*Traduzido por Vinicius Gomes)
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