Opinion | The Regret That Haunted Me for 50 Years

Indeed, when the Ariel Dorfman character confesses his haunted past, insisting he was responsible for Claudio Jimeno’s martyrdom, Adrián assures him that he is wrong. It isn’t true that he died instead of you, Adrián says. Your friend would have died even if you hadn’t changed shifts with him. He wanted to be at La Moneda, would have gone there anyway, regardless of your own actions. They murdered all the president’s advisers. You couldn’t have saved him, just like I, Adrián avers, couldn’t save Allende, even though I was close to him — two meters away — when he died.

As I transcribed the words that that character whispered to my fictional alter ego and avatar, as his invented voice invaded my authorial voice, a parallel tranquillity rose within me, like the sweetest relief from an ailment and ache that had lasted for far too many decades. He was right. Or somebody inside me (or the ghost of Claudio, of Allende, of the desaparecidos) was transmitting the balm of that obvious truth that I had refused to accept or acknowledge even though it had been staring me in the face all this time. Now, after journeying painstakingly through the looking glass of literary fabrication and wishful thinking, this fact was having a medicinal effect on me.

I thought with relief, as I finished writing the book, “Well, that’s the end of it,” not knowing there was still another startling revelation awaiting me.

Then, in 2022, Claudio’s son, Cristóbal Jimeno, and his wife, the journalist Daniela Mohor, published a memoir, “La Búsqueda,” about their attempt to retrace Claudio’s final days and execution.

It took me a while to read their book, but when I did I discovered, to my amazement, that Claudio had not slept at La Moneda the night of Sept. 10, as I had believed all this time, but left his own house at dawn on the 11th. So he must have, without telling me, switched places with someone else. Not at all as I had imagined his final night on earth.