Is it stupidity? Is it early remorse? Is it possible that he doesn’t know the area? Is it an unconscious impulse to seek out witnesses for the crime that he is going to commit? Does he want to give the condemned men a “sporting” chance, to leave them to fate, to luck, to each one’s individual shrewdness? Does he mean to absolve himself this way, by handing over each one’s fate to destiny? Or does he want the total opposite: to calm them down so it will be easier to kill them?
At least one of them is not calming down. It’s Troxler. He has finally managed to get one of the guards to look him in the eye and keep his gaze. But this anonymous guard does something else as well. He gives him a swift, deliberate, unmistakable blow with his knee. A sign.
So Troxler already knows. But he decides to play a wild card, to force a decision or at least put the others on their guard.
—What’s going on? —he asks loudly.— Why are you touching me?
A look of panic flashes in the policeman’s eyes. He is already regretting what he’s done. The corporal looks at him suspiciously.
—No reason, sir —he stammers.— It was an accident.
The truck has come to a halt.
—Six of you, get off! —orders the corporal.
Mr. Horacio is the first to step out, from the right side of the truck. Rodríguez, Giunta, Brión, Livraga, and one more person follow, each guarded by an officer. They can see their surroundings for the first time. They are on an asphalt road. There are fields on either side of it. Just in front of where they got off, there is a ditch filled with water and, behind that, a wire fence. The location, despite everything, is nearly perfect.
But then a commanding voice rises again from the police van parked behind them:
—No, not here. Further up!
They get them back on the truck and resume the journey. Troxler has taken up his distressed, mute post once again. He is now trying to catch the gaze of the other prisoners, to coordinate with them, to get their attention and rally for a frantic, surprise attack. But it’s useless. The others seem stunned, resigned, bewildered. They still don’t believe, can’t believe . . . Only Benavídez seems to respond to him. He is just as alert, tense, and anxious.
The truck carries on for three hundred meters more before stopping one last time, this time definitively. The seven-kilometer trip has taken almost thirty minutes.
The same prisoners get off. Carranza and Gavino as well. Maybe Garibotti and Díaz. Troxler will later confirm that Benavídez, Lizaso, and the anonymous NCO stay in the truck with him.20 Other testimonies are confusing, divergent, still contaminated by the panic.
To the right of the dark and deserted road, there is a small paved road that peels off and leads to a German Club.21 On one side of the street there is a row of eucalyptus trees that cut tall and bleak against the starry sky. On the other side, a wide wasteland extends out to the left: a slag dump, the sinister garbage heap of José León Suárez, tracked through with waterlogged trenches in winter, infested with mosquitoes and unburied creatures in summer, all of it eaten away by tin cans and junk.
They make the prisoners walk along the edge of the wasteland. The guards push them along with the barrels of their rifles. The van turns onto the street and shines its headlights on their backs.
The moment has come . . .
Footnotes:
20 Or perhaps it was “Mario N.,” that is to say Brión, whose last name Troxler didn’t know. But other survivors confirmed that Mario got off with them. The contradiction—typical of such situations—remains unsolved until today.