PAUL DONOVAN is chilled by the contemporary resonance of Harper Lee’s coming of age tale amidst racism and white supremacy in this excellent production
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The Errands
By Leo Boix
GEOFF BOTTOMS recommends the unashamedly light-hearted escapism on offer in this stage version of the 1963 film
Full of mysterious religious references and radical sound design, the Scottish duo’s new offering is candidate for album of the year, suggests SIMON DUFF
MARY CONWAY revels in a powerful reminder that human lives are not defined by physical perfection
PAUL DONOVAN recommends the fine performances in this account of the pre-war meeting between the US president and the British king
TECLYN AROD relishes an intimate celebration of jazz improvisation that mixes local and national musicians
In the suburb where my house is
there was neighbour, a torturer
of pregnant women, who liked using a cattle prod
in the secret centres,
he was a police doctor,
at the Banfield Well,
he used hair gel and trimmed his moustache meticulously.
He held Jacobo Timerman’s
tongue to stop him swallowing it
while they tortured him.
Every morning he would leave
very happy to run his errands,
with his pedigree little dogs, a Dalmatian, a red setter,
to get the paper, buy bread, cigarettes,
he even invited my dad onto his boat
to sail in the Tigre river delta
and share yerba mate, peperina
while the sun crushed the camalote grass.
With the son of this torturer
we even went skateboarding, smoked Marlboros,
they came to our birthday parties
to blow out the little candles,
they had velveteen armchairs,
and a well-ordered display of weapons
which hang together on the entrance wall.
But the torturer,
was eventually found out
they shot him one morning
20 bullets in his body,
they wanted revenge
for the babies he’d given away as presents.
When they fired, the oppressor used
his wife
as a human shield,
he ended up in a wheelchair
unable to say a word,
he dribbled from his mouth.
The attack happened exactly as I’m telling it,
on the corner where my house is,
it is there they sprayed V for victory
the bullet holes are still there
the street was called Magallanes,
and now Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo,
but I had already emigrated to England.
- Leo Boix is an Argentinian journalist and poet living in Britain. At the beginning of December, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires located the 119th child of those taken at birth in torture centres and later in the month a former member of police intelligence and his wife were imprisoned for having registered as their own a child whose Chilean parents “disappeared” 30 years ago during the military dictatorship.
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