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seconds no one said anything. I heard a woman crying on the other side of the fence. Norberto was talking to two young girls, with a very calm expression on his face, as if nothing had happened. It looked as if they were asking him for advice. My God, they were asking a madman for advice! Behind me an unintelligible murmur started up. Somethinghad happened, but in fact it was nothing. Two teachers said something about the church running a publicity campaign. Which church? I asked them. Which church do you think? they said, and turned away. They didn’t like me. Then the policemen came out of their daze and made us line up in the yard for a last count. Other voices ordered the women to line up in their yard. Did you enjoy that? asked Norberto. I shrugged. All I know is I’ll never forget it, I said. Did you see it was a Messerschmitt? If you say so, I believe you, I said. It was a Messerschmitt, said Norberto, and I think it came from the other world. I slapped him on the back and said, Of course it did. The line was beginning to move; we were going back into the gymnasium. And it wrote in Latin, said Norberto. Yes, I said, but I didn’t understand anything. I did, said Norberto, I wasn’t a master typesetter for nothing you know. It was about the beginning of the world, about will, light and darkness. Lux is light. Tenebrae is darkness. Fiat is let there be. Let there be light, get it? Sounds more like an Italian car to me, I said. Well, you’re mistaken, brother. And at the end, he wished us all good luck. You think so? I said. Yes, all of us, every one. A poet, I said. Polite, anyway, said Norberto.

3
    Carlos Wieder’s first poetic performance in the sky over Concepción instantly won him admirers among the nation’s enterprising minds.
    Soon he was in demand for more sky-writing displays. Initially tentative, the invitations to participate in ceremonies and commemorations were soon being issued with greater frequency and the self-assurance befitting soldiers and gentlemen who know how to recognize a work of art when they see one, whether or not they understand it. Over the airstrip at Las Tencas, for the benefit of a select group of high-ranking officers and businessmen, accompanied by their families (the unmarried daughters were all hopelessly in love with Wieder, while their married sisters were inconsolable), as night was about to fall, he drew a star, the star of our flag, sparkling and solitary over the implacable horizon. A few days later, for a motley and democratic crowd milling among festive marquees at the El Condor air force base, he wrote a poem that an enquiring and well-read spectator described as
“lettriste
.” (To be more precise, the opening lines were worthy of Isidore Isou, while the unexpectedending would not have been out of place in a Chilean folk song.) One of the lines alluded obliquely to the Garmendia sisters. They were referred to as “the twins.” A hurricane and lips were also mentioned. Although the poem went on to contradict itself, it would have been clear to an informed, attentive reader that the girls were already dead.
    In another poem Wieder mentioned a Patricia and a Carmen. “Carmen” was probably the poet Carmen Villagrán, who disappeared at the beginning of December. According to a statement taken by investigators from the Catholic Church, she told her mother she was going to meet a friend and never came back. All her mother had time to ask was, Who’s this friend? As she went out of the door, Carmen replied, A poet. Years later, Bibiano O’Ryan identified “Patricia.” According to him, it was Patricia Méndez, seventeen years of age, who used to attend a writing workshop run by the Young Communists and who disappeared around the same time as Carmen Villagrán. The differences between the two were striking: Carmen read Michel Leiris in French and came from a middle-class family; Patricia Méndez, as well as being younger, was a working-class girl and a devout