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and following the plane’s loops attentively like us, but in heartrending silence. For a moment I thought that if Norberto had tried to jump the fence, no one would have stopped him. All the other prisoners and guards were frozen, staring up at the sky. Never in my life had I seen so much sadness in one place (or so I thought then; now, thinking back, certain mornings of my childhood seem sadder than that lost afternoon of 1973).
    The plane came back and flew over us again. It traced a circle over the sea, climbed and returned to Concepción. What a pilot, said Norberto, not even Galland or Rudy Rudler could have done it better, or Hanna Reitsch, or Anton Vogel, or Karl Heinz Schwarz, or Talca’s answer to the Wolf of Bremen, or Curicó’s Breakneck of Stuttgart, or Hans Marseille himself reincarnate. Then Norberto looked at me and winked. His face was flushed.
    In the sky over Concepción the following words appeared: ET VIDIT DEUS … LUCEM QUOD … ESSET BONA… ET DIVISIT … LUCEM AC TENEBRAS. To the east the last letters trailed off among the pencil-shaped clouds proceeding up the Bío-Bío valley. And at one point the plane flew straight up and out of sight, disappearing completely. As if the whole thing were simply a mirage or a nightmare. I heard a miner from Lota ask, What’s he written, brother? Half the prisoners at the La Peña Center, both men and women, were from Lota. No idea, came the reply, but it must be important. Someone else said, Just some crap, but you could hear fear and wonder in the tone of voice. There were more policemen at the entrance to the gymnasium now, six of them whispering amongst themselves. In front of me, Norberto, clasping the fence, scraping and scraping at the ground with his feet as if he were trying to dig a hole, whispered, Either the Blitzkrieg has come again or I’m going totally mad. Calm down, I said. I couldn’t be calmer, I’m floating on a cloud, he replied. He took a deep breath and did, in fact, seem to calm down.
    Then, preceded by an odd crunching noise, as if someone had stepped on a very large insect or a very small biscuit, the plane reappeared. It was coming in from the sea again. I saw the pointing hands stretch out, the dirty cuffs rise to signal its passage; I heard voices, but perhaps it was only the wind, for in fact, at that moment, no one dared speak. Norberto squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them very wide. Our Father in heaven, he began, forgive us the sins of our brothers and forgive us our own sins. We are only Chileans, Lord, he went on, innocents, innocents. He said it loud and clear, with a steady voice. Everyone heard him, of course. Some laughed. Behindme I heard anti-clerical wisecracks. I turned around and tried to see who had spoken. Pale and haggard, the faces of the prisoners and policemen were turning like the wheel of fortune. Norberto’s face, by contrast, was a still center. A likeable face, sinking into the earth. Twitching occasionally like the face of a hapless prophet witnessing the arrival of a long-awaited, much-feared Messiah. The plane roared past over our heads. Norberto gripped his elbows as if he were freezing to death.
    I caught a glimpse of the pilot. This time he didn’t wave. He looked like a stone statue enclosed in the cockpit. The sky was darkening; soon the night would engulf everything. The clouds were no longer pink, but black with streaks of red. Over Concepción the symmetrical outline of the plane looked like a Rorschach blot.
    This time it wrote only one word, in larger letters, over what must have been the center of the city: LEARN. Then, for a moment, it seemed to hesitate and lose altitude, as if it were about to plummet into the roof of a building, as if the pilot had switched off the motor and were giving us a practical demonstration, a first example from which to learn. But only for a moment, the time it took for night and wind to blur the letters of the last word. Then the plane vanished.
    For a few