Multiple Choice (4 page)

65.

(1)  With the money he won in the lottery, the old man decided to fulfill his lifelong dream, but since his lifelong dream had been to win the lottery, he didn't know what to do. In the meantime, he bought himself a Peugeot 505 and hired me to drive it.

(2)  I went to pick him up one Saturday, and the plan was to hit the racetrack, but he was watching
Sábado Gigante
on TV and didn't feel like going out. He handed me a beer, and together we watched the segment “So You Think You Know Chile?” Don Francisco was traveling through Ancud and Castro, interviewing people who lived in some stilt houses, helping to cook a
curanto,
making a lot of effort to tug a Chilote wool cap over his extra-large head.

(3)  “That's what we'll do,” he told me, like he'd had a revelation: “We're going to tour Chile in the new car.” I asked him why not travel the whole world, like Don Francisco himself in “The Spotlight Abroad.” He replied that before seeing the world, one had to really see one's own country. I asked him where we would start, in the north or the south. “In the north, man, the north. What do you mean where do we start? This shit goes north to south.”

(4)  His opinion at the end of the trip: “Chile is a beautiful country. People are always complaining about the lack of freedom and the dictatorship and all that, but they don't realize that Chile is a beautiful country.”

(5)  I liked seeing my country too, but I don't remember that much. I drove like a zombie, to the beat of the old man's terrifying snores. Sometimes, out of the corner of my eye, I'd see the glint of drool in his open mouth. When he was awake, he didn't like to listen to music, just some cassettes with jokes by Coco Legrand. I came to hate Coco Legrand—his jokes, his voice, everything.

(6)  I remember the cold near Los Vilos, where I smoked alone on the side of the road while five meters away, in the backseat of the car, the old man fondled two sad, big-titted whores. I remember when I woke him up on the beach at Cavancha and he thought I was a mugger. In Pelluhue a giant wave almost swallowed him, and I had to dive into the water in my underwear to save him. In Pichilemu he started to scold two pot smokers who were pacifists but still wanted to kick his ass. I also had to defend him in Talca, Angol, and Temuco.

(7)  I remember the fear I felt in restaurants when the old man started to harass the waiters. My only moment of freedom was when he came down with some kind of stomach illness and had to be hospitalized in Puerto Montt. Those days I was fairly happy, but maybe only for a few hours, parked close to downtown, eating cheese empanadas while I listened to Los Angeles Negros and Los Prisioneros and the rain fell. And in Cañete. I was also happy in Cañete, but now I can't remember why.

(8)  The old man paid me well, I have to admit. Afterward he went to travel around Europe and the United States, and we lost contact. Then one day he called me to ask if I knew anyone who could ghostwrite his autobiography for him. I told him I could do it myself, that I'd become a writer. It wasn't true, but I needed the money. He believed me.

(9)  We agreed on a rate per word; the only thing he cared about was that the book was fat. I started to write his story. We met every morning and I listened to him. He was so presumptuous, such a poor observer, so arrogant, but I listened to him and took plenty of notes. “The Spanish are friendly,” he might say to me, for example. “The Spanish from where?” I asked him. “What do you mean from where, asshole? The Spanish from Spain,” he replied.

(10)  I also had to interview his children, a man and a woman more or less my age, who had helpless faces and claimed to love and admire the old man, as did his ex-wife, a woman who always held a rosary in her right hand and who talked up a storm. It was clear they were lying, and I couldn't understand why they collaborated. Later, I learned that my boss had doubled their monthly allowances.

(11)  One time I asked him, without any mean intention, if he thought the money had changed him. “You really ask some idiotic questions, kid. Of course it did,” he replied. “Money changes everyone.” Later I asked him for his opinion on Pinochet, which I already knew, I only wanted to make sure. It was 1987, one year after the
assassination attempt, a year before the referendum. I warned him that Chilean public opinion about Pinochet was going to change in the coming years whether he won or lost the referendum, and that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to come off as a fervent supporter of the dictator. “Let it be very clear in my book that I think Pinochet saved Chile, and that I want those mongoloids who tried to kill him to rot in hell,” he answered.

(12)  I asked him what he thought about Don Francisco. “Don Francisco was always my inspiration,” he replied. “Don Francisco has traveled all over the world,” I told him. “But no one invites Pinochet anywhere.” I don't know why I said that to him. He sat there thinking. I warmed to the subject, and added that Don Francisco had shown us the Chile that Pinochet destroyed. “Go fuck your sister,” he replied.

(13)  I said nothing; I was used to that kind of humiliation. At the end of the day, I was only a ghostwriter. I worked for two more months and finished the book. Three hundred fifty-nine pages. I'm ashamed to confess that I was proud of some passages, that they struck me as well written, even eloquent. The book was garbage, but at least there were some parts that were, to my mind, inspired, and some elegant, almost baroque turns of phrase. He paid for a printing of five hundred copies.
My Journey Through the World and My Nation
was the title he chose.

(14)  I thought I would never see him again. For fifteen years I heard nothing from him, until one day he called me
out of the blue. I asked him how he'd gotten my number. “A man has his ways,” he said. He told me he was sick and could die soon, and he wanted to correct some things in the book for a second edition. I asked him if the first one had sold out. “I still have about a hundred books,” he said, “but that's not enough.” “What is it you want to correct?” I asked him. “Just the grammatical errors,” answered that old piece of shit.

A)  None

B)  All

C)  Any

D)  A

E)  B

66.

(1)  I have six children: four boys and two girls. One of the girls is a lesbian, but I love her anyway because she's a good person. If I classify my children according to those terms, four are good and two are bad. One hundred percent of the girls: good. The boys: fifty percent bad.

(2)  Classified according to their ages: The oldest is forty-five years old and the youngest twenty-nine. According to their mothers: Eleonora (two boys and the two girls), Silvana (one), Daniela (the youngest).

(3)  I suggested names for all my children, but I only managed to get my way in two of the six cases.

(4)  Children of mine with moles on their faces: three. With a cleft chin: two. Long eyelashes: two.

(5)  Four of my children came to see me in the hospital when they removed my left kidney. The other two didn't, but they called.

(6)  Percentage of my children who have at some point said to me
I hate you
: 33.3.

(7)  Percentage of my children who declared their hate for me not with words but with action (a punch in the left eye): 16.6.

(8)  Children of mine who have asked my forgiveness: four.

(9)  Two of my sons learned to clip their fingernails and tie their shoes before they were three years old. I taught all of them to drive before they were eighteen.

(10)  Children of mine who have run over dogs: two. Children of mine who have run over people: one.

(11)  Children of mine who work in the public sector: two. Private: two. Neither public nor private: two.

(12)  Chilean presidential elections in the year 2013, my children's votes in the first round, with 100 percent reporting:

Michelle Bachelet: two

Marcel Claude: zero

Marco Enríquez-Ominami: zero

Tomás Jocelyn-Holt: zero

Ricardo Israel: one

Evelyn Matthei: one

Roxana Miranda: one

Franco Parisi: zero

Alfredo Sfeir: one

null votes: zero

blank votes: zero

(13)  My children's votes in the second round: three for Bachelet, one for Matthei, one drew a dick on the ballot, and one daughter didn't vote.

(14)  Children of mine who have spent more than two consecutive nights in jail: zero.

(15)  Children of mine dependent on drugs: five. Fluoxetine: two. Clonazepam: two. Lithium: one. Children of mine with flat feet: 100 percent. Children of mine with flat feet who refused to use insoles: two. Children of mine operated on for appendicitis: three.

(16)  Five of my children are myopic and four of those also suffer from astigmatism.

(17)  Of my five children with vision problems, two wanted surgery but couldn't afford it. Three use glasses, two prefer contacts. Of the three who wear glasses, two have thick rectangular frames. With the other one, it's no use: He has round frames, even though he knows people with round faces should wear square or rectangular frames.

(18)  In general, when I have them all over for lunch, two of my children talk about politics and two about soccer. The oldest tends to relate his interminable amorous entanglements, and the other remains in absolute silence, just like when he was a boy, always looking at his plate as if he were rigorously analyzing the food.

(19)  Children of mine who sometimes ask me for loans to buy medicine: two. To go to the track: one. To pay debts: two.

(20)  Children of mine for whom I'd give my life: at least three.

(21)  Children of mine who were planned: four.

(22)  Children of mine who, in times of distress, tell me their problems: three. Children of mine to whom, in times of distress, I tell my problems: two.

(23)  Children of mine who will be present at my funeral: six.

(24)  Children of mine who will spit on my grave: one.

(25)  Children of mine who have children: zero.

A)  None

B)  Any

C)  All

D)  21

E)  25

Next you will read three texts, each of them followed by questions or problems based on their content. Each question has five possible answers. Mark the one that you think is most
appropriate.

After so many study guides, so many practice and proficiency and achievement tests, it would have been impossible for us not to learn something, but we forgot everything almost right away and, I'm afraid, for good. The thing that we did learn, and to perfection—the thing we would remember for the rest of our lives—was how to cheat on tests. Here I could easily ad-lib an homage to the cheat sheet, all the test material reproduced in tiny but legible script on a minuscule bus ticket. But all that superb workmanship would have been worthless if we hadn't also had the necessary skill and audacity when the crucial moment came: the instant the teacher lowered his guard and the ten or twenty golden seconds began.

At our school in particular, which in theory was the strictest in Chile, it turned out that cheating was fairly easy, since many of the tests were multiple choice. We still had years to go before we'd take the Academic Aptitude Test and apply to university, but our teachers wanted to familiarize us right away with multiple-choice exercises, and although they designed up to four different versions of every test, we always found a way to pass information around. We didn't have to write anything or form opinions or develop any ideas of our own; all we had to do was play the game and guess the trick. Of course we studied, sometimes a lot, but it was never enough. I guess the idea
was to lower our morale. Even if we did nothing but study, we knew there would always be two or three impossible questions. We didn't complain. We got the message: Cheating was just part of the deal.

I think that, thanks to our cheating, we were able to let go of some of our individualism and become a community. It's sad to put it this way, but cheating gave us a sense of solidarity. Every once in a while we suffered from guilt, from the feeling that we were frauds—especially when we looked ahead to the future—but in the end our indolence and defiance prevailed.

__________

We didn't have to take religion—the grade didn't affect our averages—but getting out of it was a long bureaucratic process, and Mr. Segovia's classes were really fun. He'd go on and on in an endless soliloquy about any subject but religion; his favorite, in fact, was sex, and which teachers at our school he wanted to have it with. Every class we'd do a quick round of confessions: Each of us had to disclose a sin, and after listening to all forty-five—which ranged from
I kept the change
to
I want to grab my neighbor's tits
to
I jacked off during recess,
always a classic—the teacher would tell us that none of our sins were unforgivable.

I think it was Cordero who confessed one day that he had copied someone's answers in math, and since Segovia didn't react we all contributed variations of the same:
I copied on the Spanish test, on the science test, on the PE test
[laughter], and so on. Segovia, suppressing a smile, said that he forgave us, but that we had to make sure we didn't get caught, because that would really be unforgivable. Suddenly, though, he became serious. “If you are so dishonest at twelve,” he said, “at forty you're going to be worse than the Covarrubias twins.” We asked him who the Covarrubias twins were, and he looked as if
he were going to tell us, but then he thought better of it. We kept at him, but he didn't want to explain. Later, we asked other teachers and even the guidance counselor, but no one wanted to tell us the story. The reasons were diffuse: It was a secret, a delicate subject, possibly something that would damage the school's impeccable reputation. We soon forgot the matter, in any case.

Five years later, it was 1993 and we were seniors. One day, when Cordero, Parraguez, little Carlos, and I were playing hooky, we ran into Mr. Segovia coming out of the Tarapacá pool hall. He wasn't a teacher anymore; he was a Metro conductor now, and it was his day off. He treated us to Coca-Colas, and ordered a shot of pisco for himself, though it was early to start drinking. It was then that he finally told us the story of the Covarrubias twins.

__________

Covarrubias family tradition dictated that the firstborn son should be named Luis Antonio, but when Covarrubias senior found out that twins were on the way he decided to divide his name between them. During their first years of life, Luis and Antonio Covarrubias enjoyed—or suffered through—the excessively equal treatment that parents tend to give to twins: the same haircut, the same clothes, the same class in the same school.

When the twins were ten years old, Covarrubias senior installed a partition in their room, and he sawed cleanly through the old bunk bed to make two identical single beds. The idea was to give the twins a certain amount of privacy, but the change wasn't all that significant, because they still talked through the partition every night before falling asleep. They inhabited different hemispheres now, but it was a small planet.

When the twins were twelve they entered the National Institute, and that was their first real separation. Since the 720 incoming seventh-graders were distributed randomly, the twins were placed in different classes for the first time ever. They felt pretty lost in that school, which was so huge and impersonal, but they were strong and determined to persevere in their new lives. Despite the relentless barrage of looks and stupid jokes from their classmates (“I think I'm seeing double!”), they always met at lunch to eat together.

At the end of seventh grade, they had to choose between fine art and music; they both chose art, in the hope that they'd be placed together, but they were out of luck. At the end of eighth grade, when they had to choose between French and English, they planned to go with French, which, as the minority choice, would practically ensure that they'd be in the same class. But after a sermon from Covarrubias senior about the importance of knowing English in today's savage and competitive world, they gave in. Things went no better for them in their freshman and sophomore years, when students were grouped based on ranking, even though they both had good grades.

For their junior year, the twins chose a humanities focus, and finally they were placed together, in Class 3-F. Being classmates again after four years apart was fun and strange. Their physical similarity was still extraordinary, although acne had been cruel to Luis's face, and Antonio was showing signs of wanting to stand out: his hair was long, or what passed for long back then, and the layer of gel that plastered it back gave him a less conventional appearance than his brother's. Luis kept the classic cut, military style, his hair two fingers above his shirt collar as the regulations stipulated. Antonio also wore baggier pants and, defying the rules, often went to school in black sneakers instead of dress shoes.

The twins sat together during the first months of the school year. They protected and helped each other, though when they fought they seemed to hate each other, which, of course, is the most natural thing in the world: there are moments when we hate ourselves, and if we have someone in front of us who is almost exactly like us our hate is inevitably directed toward that person. But around the middle of the year, for no obvious reason, their fights became harsher, and at the same time, Antonio lost all interest in his studies. Luis's life, on the other hand, continued along its orderly path. He kept his record spotless, and his grades were very good; in fact, he was first in his class that year. Incredibly, his brother was last and would have to repeat the grade, and that was how the twins' paths diverged again.

There was only one school counselor for more than four thousand students, but he took an interest in the twins' case and called their parents in for a meeting. He offered the theory, not necessarily true, that Antonio had been driven by an unconscious desire (the counselor explained to them, quickly and accurately, exactly what the unconscious was) not to be in the same class as his brother.

Luis sailed through his senior year with excellent grades, and got outstanding scores on all the university entrance exams, especially History of Chile and Social Studies, on which he got nearly the highest scores in the nation. He entered the University of Chile to study law, on a full scholarship.

__________

The twins were never as distant from each other as they were during Luis's first months in college. Antonio was jealous when he saw his brother leaving for the university, free now of his uniform, while he was still stuck in high school. Some mornings their schedules coincided, but
thanks to a tacit and elegant agreement—some version, perhaps, of the famous twin telepathy—they never boarded the same bus.

They avoided each other, barely greeting one another, though they knew that their estrangement couldn't last forever. One night, when Luis was already in his second semester of law, Antonio started talking to him again through the partition. “How's college?” he asked.

“In what sense?”

“The girls,” Antonio clarified.

“Oh, there are some really hot girls,” Luis replied, trying not to sound boastful.

“Yeah, I know there are girls, but how do you do it?”

“How do we do what?” said Luis, who, deep down, knew exactly what his brother was asking.

“How do you fart with girls around?”

“Well, you just have to hold it in,” Luis answered.

They spent that night, as they had when they were children, talking and laughing while they competed with their farts and burps, and from then on they were once again inseparable. They kept up the illusion of independence, especially from Monday to Friday, but on weekends they always went out together, matched each other drink for drink, and played tricks switching places, taking advantage of the fact that, thanks to Luis's newly long hair and now-clear skin, their physical resemblance was once again almost absolute.

Antonio's academic performance had improved a great deal, but he still wasn't a model student, and toward the end of his senior year he began to get anxious. Though he felt prepared for the aptitude test, he wasn't sure that he would be able to score high enough to study law at the University of Chile like his brother. The idea was Antonio's, naturally, but Luis accepted right away, with no blackmail
or stipulations, and without an ounce of fear, since at no point did he consider it possible that they would be found out. In December of that year, Luis Covarrubias registered, presenting his brother Antonio's ID card, to take the test for the second time, and he gave it his all. He tried so hard that he got even better scores than he had the year before: in fact, he received the nation's highest score on the Social Studies test.

__________

“But none of us have twin brothers,” Cordero said that afternoon, when Segovia finished his story. It may have been drizzling or raining, I don't remember, but I know that the teacher was wearing a blue raincoat. He got up to buy cigarettes, and when he came back to our table he stayed on his feet, maybe to reestablish a protocol that had been lost: the teacher stands, the students sit. “You'll still come out ahead,” he told us. “You don't know how privileged you are.”

“Because we go to the National Institute?” I asked.

He puffed anxiously on his cigarette, perhaps already somewhat drunk, and he was silent for so long that it was no longer necessary to answer, but then an answer came. “The National Institute is rotten, but the world is rotten,” he said. “They prepared you for this, for a world where everyone fucks everyone over. You'll do well on the test, very well, don't worry—you weren't educated, you were trained.” It sounded aggressive, but there was no contempt in his tone, or, at least, none directed at us.

We were quiet; it was late by then, almost nighttime. He sat down looking absorbed, thoughtful. “I didn't get a high score,” he said, when it seemed there wouldn't be any more words. “I was the best in my class, in my whole school. I never cheated on an exam, but
I bombed the aptitude test, so I had to major in religious education. I didn't even believe in God.”

I asked him if now, as a Metro conductor, he earned more money. “Twice as much,” he replied. I asked him if he believed in God now, and he answered that yes, now more than ever, he believed in God. I'll never forget his gesture then: with a lit cigarette between his index and middle fingers, he looked at the back of his hand as if searching for his veins, and then he turned it over, as if to make sure that his life, head, and heart lines were still there.

We said good-bye as if we were or had once been friends. He went into the cinema, and we headed down Bulnes toward Parque Almagro to smoke a few joints.

__________

I never heard anything more about Segovia. Sometimes on the Metro, when I get into the first car, I look toward the conductor's booth and imagine that our teacher is in there, pressing buttons and yawning. As for the Covarrubias twins, they've gained a certain amount of fame, and as I understand it, they never separated again. They became identical lawyers; I hear it's hard to tell which is the more brilliant and which the more corrupt. They have a firm in Vitacura, and they charge the same rate. They charge what such good service is worth: a lot.

 

67.  
According to the text, the Covarrubias twins' experience in their new school:

(A)  Marked their final break with the values their parents had instilled in them.

(B)  Was traumatic, because it forced them to make rash decisions and separated them for good.

(C)  Gradually shaped them into productive individuals who contributed to Chilean society.

(D)  Transformed two good and supportive brothers into unscrupulous sons of bitches.

(E)  Marked the start of a difficult period, from which they emerged stronger and ready to compete in this ruthless and materialistic world.

68.  
The best title for this story would be:

(A)  “How to Train Your Twin”

(B)  “To Sir, with Love”

(C)  “Me and My Shadow”