Violeta, p.21
Violeta, page 21
“What happened to him?”
“He got to our house last night. I don’t know how he managed to cross several provinces in the middle of the lockdown. He didn’t come here because this will be the first place they look for him. We have him hidden, but he needs to get out of the country.”
“Julián is the only person who can help with that.”
“No, Violeta. Your son says that Julián is complicit with the military and works for the CIA, who’s behind all this.”
“He’d never turn in his own son!”
“We’re not sure about that. José Antonio thinks we can hide Juan Martín at Santa Clara, at least for a little while. No one will look for him on the farm. But how can we get him there? The trains aren’t running, there are checkpoints everywhere.”
“I’ll take care of it, Josephine.”
My only recourse to save Juan Martín was to turn to his father. I managed to convince him to come to Sacramento to talk to me, even though he was very busy in those turbulent days, as he told me.
“How many times did I warn that boy to be careful? And now you come begging me for help! Isn’t it a little too late?”
“That boy is your son, Julián!”
“Look, Violeta, there’s nothing I can do. You want me to risk my career? They watch me. If Juan Martín could get to Sacramento in full lockdown, he can find a safe place to hide himself.”
“I thought he could go …”
“Don’t tell me anything! I don’t want to know where he is or where he’s going. The less I know, the better. I can’t be an accomplice to this.”
“For once it isn’t about you, Julián. Right now Juan Martín is all that matters. Don’t you see that they’re killing people?”
“We’re at war with the Communists. The ends justify the means.”
Julián Bravo was a scoundrel who had a terrible relationship with his son. Eventually, though, just as I’d predicted, he grudgingly helped me to get Juan Martín out of Sacramento. It took him under two hours to get me a travel permit from the regional commander. Those were other times, Camilo. Now you can find out someone’s identity in under a minute and even the most intimate details of their life, but in the seventies that wasn’t always possible. A second travel permit was issued in the name of Lorena Benítez, nanny.
Thirty-six hours later, as soon as the curfew lifted at 6:00 a.m., I put you into the car, with the clothes we would need and a bit of food, and went to pick up Juan Martín at one of the Rustic Homes warehouses, where my brother had hidden him. The last time I’d seen him he looked like a hairy prophet, but the person waiting for me now was a tall thin woman, her hair tied back with a ribbon and wearing a blue apron: Lorena Benítez. Despite the disguise, you immediately recognized your uncle and threw your arms around his neck. Luckily you were not able to speak yet.
We drove without a word until we left Sacramento, passed the first checkpoint, and got onto the highway headed south. The soldiers on duty were nervous, aggressive boys, armed to the teeth, who read our permits slowly since they were practically illiterate. They examined my ID, made us get out of the car so they could give it a detailed search, even removing the seats, but they threw only a passing glance at the supposed nanny. Our infallibly classist society and the typical machista disrespect for women helped get us through that first checkpoint as well as the others along the way.
I asked Juan Martín why he hadn’t turned himself in; those who gave themselves up freely had nothing to fear, as they’d said on television.
“What planet do you live on, Mom? If I turn myself in, I could disappear forever.”
“What do you mean, ‘disappear’? I don’t understand.”
“Anyone can be arrested—they don’t need a reason—and then they deny ever having detained you. No one knows what happened to you—you become a ghost. They’ve killed several students from my department and taken more than twenty professors.”
“Well, they must’ve done something wrong, Juan Martín,” I stammered, repeating the phrase I’d heard so many times among my circle of friends.
“They’ve done the same thing I’ve done, Mom: They’re defending the democratically elected government.”
The train from Sacramento to the farm usually took a little over two hours and it was normally three or four by car. But we were stopped so many times along the way that we spent almost seven hours on the road to Nahuel, exhausted and our nerves frayed. Luckily you slept almost the entire way in the arms of Lorena Benítez, the nanny, who never aroused any suspicions.
We arrived a few hours before the curfew went into effect, though it wasn’t really enforced in that remote region. Torito and Facunda welcomed us without comment, although it must’ve surprised them to see Juan Martín dressed as a woman. I think they automatically understood that it was a matter of life and death. My son told them in few words what had happened in the capital and the rest of the country. Santa Clara was an oasis of calm.
“I have to get across the border,” he told them.
You, Camilo, arrived hungry, dying of thirst, and with your diapers soaked, and went straight into the arms of Etelvina Muñoz, Facunda’s eldest granddaughter. Narcisa, her mother, had had her at age fifteen. The girl helped her grandmother raise her siblings and worked on the farm; she had a broad back, strong hands, a round face, and an enormous intelligence. She had never gone to school but could read and write thanks to Lucinda Rivas, who had taught her what she could before she was defeated by old age, and finally death.
That night you slept curled up on a cot between Facunda and Etelvina, and I slept with my son on the wrought-iron bed that had belonged to my mother. I lay for hours in the dark, aware of every sound outside, fearing that a military jeep or police car might pull up at any moment and take Juan Martín. I went over and over the mistakes I’d made as a mother, how I’d so often failed my son because I was too concerned with work and I let his sister hog all the attention, recalling the little boy with the idealistic spirit who clashed with his father from such a young age. I finally slept for a few hours around dawn and when I woke up, Facunda had already prepared breakfast; Etelvina had taken you with her, perched on a hip, to milk the cow, and Juan Martín was helping Torito with the other animals. The morning was cool and dew sparkled on the leaves as a bluish mist rose up from the earth warmed by the sun. The penetrating aroma of fresh bay leaf brought back vivid memories of my childhood at Santa Clara, a time that would always be sacred to me. We spent the day close to the house so that we wouldn’t draw attention, although the property was fairly isolated. We dug some clothes out of an old trunk that José Antonio had left behind years before. The pants, boots, and moth-eaten sweaters would be good enough for the fugitive.
We gathered around the table with cups of tea and Facunda’s fresh baked bread, as Juan Martín told us about the cursory trials and arbitrary executions; of detainees tortured to death; thousands and thousands of people arrested and dragged away in broad daylight, in plain sight of anyone who dared to look; of the holding cells, military bases, sports stadiums, and even entire schools filled with prisoners; of the makeshift concentration camps set up to hold the detainees, and other horrors. I thought it couldn’t possibly be true, because, until then, our country had been a shining example of peaceful democracy on a continent ravaged by tyrants, dictatorships, and coups. I thought it was merely Communist propaganda. And yet I knew there must’ve been a very good reason for my son to flee disguised as a woman.
At dusk, Torito began to pack the necessary items in the bundle he always carried when he went on his trips.
“You’re coming with me, Juanito,” he said to my son.
“Do you have a weapon, Torito?”
“This,” the giant man replied, showing him the butcher knife he used for everything, which he always took with him on his adventures.
“I mean a firearm,” Juan Martín said.
“This isn’t the Wild West, no one here has guns. I don’t suppose you plan to go around shooting things up,” I interrupted.
“You can’t let them take me alive, Torito. Do you promise me?”
“I promise.”
“My God, son! What are you insinuating?” I shouted.
“I promise,” Torito repeated.
They left as soon as it got dark. It was a warm spring night and the full moon gave off enough light for us to watch them walk away in the opposite direction of the road. I had the terrible premonition that this would be a permanent goodbye, but I kept myself from voicing it because we shouldn’t call down misfortune, as my aunts always said. Torito was a few years shy of seventy, according to our calculations, but I didn’t doubt that he’d be able to climb those mountains and cross the invisible border on foot, with nothing but the clothes on his back, two blankets, and basic equipment for hunting and fishing. He knew the forgotten footpaths and mountain trails that only the old local guides and some indigenous people still used. Juan Martín, on the other hand, who was some forty-five years younger, was unprepared for that adventure, and could be easily done in by fatigue, panic, cold, or a fall off a cliff. He was an intellectual, had never excelled in sports, and had a cautious nature, so different from his sister. Nieves would’ve been in her element fleeing from an enemy.
19
I spent thirteen days at Santa Clara awaiting news of my son and Torito, alongside Facunda, Etelvina, and Etelvina’s younger siblings. Narcisa had taken off with her latest boyfriend, leaving her litter of children in the care of her oldest daughter and her mother, and she wasn’t able to get back; she was who knows where when lockdown went into effect. Every hour that passed was a torment. I counted the minutes and marked the days on a calendar, wondering why Torito was taking so long to return. It had been more than enough time for him to get to the border and back, unless something terrible had happened. I spent the better part of those days scanning the road and the surrounding fields, so anxious that I didn’t have the energy to take care of you, who crawled half naked among the chickens, eating dirt like some feral creature. The other kids were much older and annoyed by the baby following them around everywhere. Trying to keep up with them, you took your first steps, Camilo. I didn’t see them, or hear you say your first word: “Tina,” since you couldn’t pronounce Etelvina. And that’s what you’ve called her ever since. Facunda kept up her usual routines: She tended the garden and did the chores, she made pies and empanadas to sell, went to the market, chatted with her friends in Nahuel, and returned with the latest news. There was a troop of soldiers quartered two kilometers from Santa Clara, she told me. They had taken a group of tenant farmers away in military trucks and no one knew what had happened to them. The landowners had recovered their confiscated farms by force and were retaliating against the poor farmers who had occupied them through evictions, beatings, and arrests.
There wasn’t a single vacationer or tourist to be seen, even though the summer heat had settled in; the plazas and beaches were empty, as were the hotels, with the exception of the Hotel Bavaria, where the military and government officials stayed. In Nahuel the soldiers used the butts of their rifles to herd up a group of young people and make them whitewash the murals painted with political propaganda. They broke a man’s jaw in the market for using the word “comrade,” which was now outlawed, along with the terms “the people,” “democracy,” and “military coup.” The acceptable term was “military proclamation.”
“They’re arresting all men with beards or long hair, then beating them and shaving them. Women aren’t allowed to wear pants, because the soldiers don’t like it, but how are we going to plow the fields and clean out the stables, then?” Facunda asked.
People were scared, and no one wanted trouble; the most prudent thing to do was to stay inside. That’s why it surprised us when a foreigner showed up on the farm, tall as a basketball player, with enormous feet, skin tanned by the sun, white-blond hair, and blue eyes, speaking Spanish like he’d learned it from a dictionary. He introduced himself as Harald Fiske and asked if we had a telephone, because the Nahuel phone center was closed at that time of day. He was one of the bird-watchers who turned up every year, inexplicably, since our variety is pathetic compared to the orgy of multicolored feathers in the Amazon Basin or the Central American jungle.
Harald Fiske was forty years old, with the ungainly body of a boy who’d just gone through a growth spurt, and premature wrinkles from excessive sun exposure. He carried a huge backpack, three pairs of binoculars, several cameras, and a thick notebook full of writing in code, like a spy. He was so oblivious that he was actually chasing after birds during those dark days of the nascent dictatorship, in a nation where the very air we breathed was restricted. He planned to pitch a tent and camp on the beach.
“Listen, don’t be stupid. Do you want them to kill you?” I asked.
“I’ve been coming to this country every summer for years, ma’am. I’ve never been robbed,” the man insisted.
“In place of robbers, we have soldiers now.”
“I’m a diplomat,” he said.
“Your passport won’t do you much good if they shoot before they ask to see it. You’d better stay here.”
“I can let him use Torito’s bed, but if he comes back tonight you’ll have to sleep on the floor,” Facunda said.
And that’s how the man entered our life, Camilo. He was employed with the Norwegian foreign office, stationed in Holland with his wife and two kids. He said he loved Latin America, that he’d traveled it from north to south, and that he liked our country especially. Facunda took him in like a dopey son, and from then on whenever he came to the south to watch his birds he stayed at Santa Clara.
After thirteen days of fruitless waiting, Yaima came riding up on the back of a mule. The indigenous healer, who for decades had been unscathed by the passage of time, was at last showing signs of deterioration. I hadn’t seen her since Aunt Pilar’s funeral, and in truth I imagined she must’ve died, but despite her appearance of a centuries-old witch she was still as strong and lucid as ever. She’d known me since I was a prepubescent girl, but she’d never shown the slightest interest in me, which is why I was surprised when she arrived with a message for me. Facunda offered to translate, since the woman’s Spanish was as limited as my knowledge of her language.
“Fuchan, the big friend, was taken by the soldiers.”
Facunda fell to her knees, sobbing, and my thoughts went immediately to my son.
“Fuchan was with another man, a young man. What happened to him, Yaima?” I shook her.
“We saw Fuchan. The other one we didn’t see. There will be a ceremony for Fuchan. We will tell you.”
That meant that the tribe had given Torito up for dead.
If Torito had been alone, he must’ve been returning home and that meant that my son might’ve escaped. I didn’t want to imagine even for an instant that the good man had kept his promise to prevent Juan Martín from falling into the hands of the military by any means necessary. We had to save Torito, and the only thing I could think to do was turn to Julián. With his connections, he could surely find out what had happened to Torito and his son. After all those years, we still didn’t have a phone at the farm and we feared that the public phones in Nahuel might be bugged, but I didn’t have a choice.
I called Julián’s usual hotels in Sacramento and the capital and left him messages saying I’d call back later that night.
“I suppose you’re calling me about Camilo’s baptism. His uncle will be the godfather, right?” he asked before I could say a word.
“Yes …” I answered, confused.
“How is his uncle?”
“I don’t know. Can you come?”
“I’m staying at the Hotel Bavaria tomorrow. I have a meeting near there. I’ll stop by to see you.”
This absurd dialogue in code confirmed the degree of repression we were living with, just as Juan Martín had forewarned. If Julián didn’t feel safe, no one was safe. For three years the right-wing propaganda had been sermonizing about the horrors of a Communist dictatorship. Now we were experiencing the real-life terrors of a Fascist one. The military junta claimed that these were only temporary measures, but that they would continue indefinitely, until Christian and Western values were restored to the nation. I held on to the illusion that our country had the most solid tradition of democracy on the continent, that we’d been a model of civic duty in the world, that we’d soon have elections and democracy would be reinstated. Then Juan Martín could come home.
Julián swore that he wasn’t able to get any information about Torito, but I didn’t believe him. He had contacts in the highest circles of power, and I was sure he could make a simple phone call to find out who had detained him—whether it had been the police, the special forces, or the military—and where he was. It should’ve been as important to him to save Torito as it was to me, if only to find out what had happened to our son. Imagining the diverse ways Juan Martín—and Torito—could’ve died was torture for me.
“You always think the worst, Violeta. I bet he’s dancing the tango in Buenos Aires,” he said.
His mocking confirmed my suspicion that he knew something and was hiding it from me. I hated him for it.
It was useless to stay on the farm waiting for news. I said goodbye to Facunda, who had become the nominal owner of Santa Clara, managing what little remained of the property, and I returned to Sacramento. At the last minute, Facunda asked me to take Etelvina with me, because stuck on the farm, her granddaughter was destined to a life of hard labor, poverty, and suffering.
“She can help raise Camilo. You don’t have to pay her much, but teach her everything you can—she’s eager to learn,” she told me.
That was forty-seven years ago, by my calculations, Camilo. I never imagined that Etelvina would be more important in my life than the sum of all the men who have loved me.
José Antonio needed me in Sacramento; we had a lot of work ahead of us to save what remained of the company. The military junta was carefully auditing our collaboration with the previous government, and in the meantime the contract for My Own Home was on hold. We were summoned several times to the office of a colonel, who interrogated us like criminals, but in the end they didn’t arrest us. We lost a lot, because we’d invested in new machinery and materials to produce homes in record time, but we had other projects in the works. I can’t complain: I’ve never wanted for money, and I was always able to make a good living.
