Talking In Whispers Quotes

Andres, son of an arrested folk singer and Isa and Beto, twins, running their travelling puppet theatre, grow tired of talking in whispers.

“He suspected a lot was broken. His arm maybe as well as a rib or two. But my spine, my legs? His goos arm worked for him. It gave leverage to his back. There was pain, but not agony. Shift your legs. Try them. Go on, move. They muscles at first refused to co-operate. Am I paralysed?

“The afternoon sunlight frames the head of Miguel Alberti, the Silver Lion, as he stands to speak. He wears a white suit. In his hand he hold a green panama. ‘People of Chile.... Compañeros!’ His arm is a spear, upraised. ‘Comrades in hope.’ Cheers roll under the caverns of the stadium like sea breakers.”

“Andres knew for certain that his friend Horacio was dead. The shots had pierced the side window of the car. There had been the swerve, no brakes applied, and then the ditch. Andres had been thrown clear, into the dusk of evening, but Juan, his father -they had got him, dragged him from the capsized vehicle.”

Sixteen-year-old Andres becomes a wanted man and the target of security forces after the driver of a car that he is travelling in is shot and his father is taken away.

“They all laughed, nervously, and the first seeds of trust were sown. Andres was invited to hop in among the twins’ menageries of puppets. There were more a dozen of them, jiggling on long strings suspended from wooden racks built into the roof of the van.”

“It was not until Beto, Isa and Andres had reached the south western outskirts of the city that they heard the gunfire. Beto celebrated. ‘People are fighting back! Maybe the Resistance haas climbed out of its mothballs.”

Then Andres meets an American journalist who provides him with evidence that will be ‘more valuable than bullets’ against the oppressive military regime.

“They drove under stars on a winding route that crossed and re-crossed the river. Farm hamlets lay black in sleep; copses of pine shaped the skyline. And always, against the drone of the van’s engine as it laboured through the gears, came the roar of the Maipo, amplified by the walls of the canyon.”

“On the journey back to Santiago, they listened to the van radio. The military authorities had taken over all broadcasting stations. One message was repeated over and over again: the death of Miguel Alberti was a tragedy for the nation.”