Violeta, p.23
Violeta, page 23
My son was harbored there for five weeks, sleeping on a camping cot in one of the offices, awaiting news of Vania Halperin. He spent every single minute imagining the nightmare that the young woman was surely experiencing, the interrogations, torture, rapes, trained dogs, electric shocks, rats. If they didn’t find her fugitive brother, they might even arrest her parents and torture them in front of her.
Thirty-three days later one of the Belgian missionaries arrived at the embassy with news that the body of the young woman had turned up in a morgue. There was no doubt it was Vania; her parents had identified the body. Destroyed by grief and guilt over having survived without her, Juan Martín left for Europe with the false documentation that the Norwegian embassy provided him.
And then, after he was safe in Norway, I received the most unexpected visit: Harald Fiske, the bird-watcher I’d met at Santa Clara just after the coup in our country. He brought me the news and a brief letter written by my son minutes before leaving for the airport with an embassy employee. It was a cold missive, with no personal details, notifying me that he’d soon be able to give me the information I required about the product. He was writing in code.
“For the moment, he still doesn’t want his father to know where he is,” Harald told me.
I’d endured the anguish over not knowing the fate of my only living child with relative calm and infinite patience for almost four years, but when it hit me that this Norwegian man had seen my son only a few days prior, my knees buckled and I fell into a chair, sobbing. The feeling of relief was like the rush of adrenaline caused by terror, a void in the center of my body followed by a surge of fire through my veins. My piercing shrieks brought Etelvina running, and soon the rest of the family was gathered around me, crying, as the messenger watched our emotional release, paralyzed with discomfort.
Harald had been at his diplomatic post in Argentina for a year, alone now, since he’d gotten divorced and his children were attending university in Europe. He’d flown from Buenos Aires to give me the news of Juan Martín, how he’d escaped just in time, his life in Buenos Aires up until the Dirty War broke out and he had to go into hiding, his work as a journalist, his discreet existence under a false identity, his friends, and his love for Vania Halperin.
“He didn’t want to leave without her,” he told us.
We didn’t know it then, but the seven years of Argentine genocide would leave more than thirty thousand persons murdered or forcibly disappeared.
Another year passed before I was finally able to reunite with Juan Martín. He’d arrived in Norway with his heart in shreds, scared and depressed, but the Norwegian Refugee Council, which had been established after the Second World War, was there to help him. A representative was waiting for him when he got off the plane to show him to the small studio apartment he’d been assigned in downtown Oslo, equipped with the basics for a comfortable stay, including warm clothes in his size, since he’d left the southern hemisphere in summer and it was the dead of winter there. The council, and in particular this nice man, would be his lifeline for the first months, providing money for daily expenses, guiding him through the bureaucracy of getting a resident’s visa and identification under his real name. They taught him the societal norms and how to move through the city. Then they put him in contact with other Latin American refugees and enrolled him in language classes. They even offered him therapy sessions, since immigrants were eligible for mental health services to help them adapt to their new circumstances and move on from the past. Juan Martín explained that he’d escaped in time and hadn’t experienced great trauma. More than therapy, he wanted to work; he couldn’t sit idly by receiving charity forever.
I went to Norway to visit him, accompanied by Etelvina and you, Camilo; you were not even six years old and I doubt you remember. In the long years I’d spent without seeing my son he had changed so much that if he hadn’t come up to us in the airport we would’ve walked right past him. I remembered him as a skinny, awkward, long-haired boy, but I was met with a solid, balding man wearing glasses. He was twenty-eight, but he looked closer to forty. I felt lost before that stranger, and for a moment that seemed to last a century, I wasn’t able to move. Then he finally pulled me to him in a huge hug, burying my face in the rough wool of his sweater, and we went right back to being the same as always, mother and son, friends.
Juan Martín no longer lived in the small studio; he’d moved to an apartment on the outskirts of the city and was employed by the Norwegian Refugee Council as a translator and host. He now helped other refugees like him, especially those from Latin America; he had the advantage of sharing the same language and a common history.
My son took a week off work to show us the country, which I would return to many times over the following years. On each trip I noted the changes in Juan Martín’s life: how he learned to speak Norwegian with a terrible accent, how he adapted and made friends, one day introducing me to Ulla, the young woman who became my daughter-in-law and the mother of two of my grandchildren. From his description of Vania Halperin, I think that Juan Martín’s second love was the opposite of his first. Ulla was a girl tanned by the summer sun and the winter snow, athletic, strong, happy, and free of the existential and political dilemmas that plagued Vania.
Distance erases the contours and colors of memory. I have letters and photographs of the family that Juan Martín built in Norway; he calls me on the phone and has come to see me in recent years, when I no longer had the strength for such a long trip, but when I think of my son I can’t seem to conjure the exact details of his features or voice. His years in the north of the world have alienated him from this land, and he now seems as foreign to me as Ulla and their children. He’s much better off in his peaceful adopted country than in this chaotic one. They say that people in Norway are happier than in any other part of the world except Finland. I got used to loving Juan Martín and his family from a distance, without expectations. In theory, I envy large families like the ones my grandparents and parents had—with the requisite Sunday lunches at Camellia House and the security of living in a tight-knit community—but in reality I don’t miss it.
Dementia began to take hold of José Antonio. He had a series of small strokes, in addition to his weak heart, high blood pressure, hearing loss, and a thousand other ailments that combined to separate him from reality. The symptoms started well before the diagnosis came; first he got lost on the street or forgot what he’d eaten, then he got lost inside the apartment and forgot who he was.
“You’re José Antonio, my husband,” Miss Taylor said repeatedly, showing him photo albums and telling him about his life, the events enhanced to make his memories happier, but it was a futile effort.
He became afraid of Crispín, thinking the dog would eat him; it was true that the Doberman looked menacing but he was as tame as a bunny and had lived with us for years. The most painful thing about José Antonio’s condition was the fear. He wasn’t only scared of Crispín but also of being alone, or abandoned in an old folks’ home, or that he didn’t have enough money, or that there would be a fire or another earthquake, that someone would poison his food, that he’d die. He recognized Miss Taylor but he sometimes asked who I was and why I came to lunch every day without being invited. Once he went out naked, with only his hat and cane; he made it down to the first floor and strolled onto the street. A pair of kind neighbors brought him back before the police had to.
“I was going to the bank to get my money, so they don’t steal it from me” was his explanation.
While Miss Taylor and I were greatly distressed to see the illness transform José Antonio into a stranger, Etelvina and you, Camilo, took it in stride. You’d answer the same question a hundred times, console him when he started crying for no reason, distract him when he got scared. He recognized you, but he thought you were his grandson and got mad when Julián Bravo showed up claiming to be your legitimate grandfather.
Several years later, Crispín began to suffer from dementia. You never wanted to admit it, Camilo, but that’s what happened. Animals can lose their minds too. Just like José Antonio, the dog got disoriented inside the apartment, he forgot that he’d eaten, barked for no reason with his nose against the wall, was terrified by the vacuum cleaner because he thought it was another earthquake, and didn’t recognize me. The friendly dog, who had always welcomed me with a choreographed dance, began to growl every time I entered the house.
My brother died at age eighty, after having spent more than four years in a parallel dimension. He had neither peace nor joy in the final stage of his life, a dark time for him, when we rarely heard his loud laugh. He didn’t have love either, because he couldn’t accept it; he would get angry with Miss Taylor and rejected her affections, insulting her in terms I’d never heard him use with anyone. He’d always been tall and strapping, but his ill health reduced him to a skinny old man; this enabled us to overpower him when he became aggressive, flailing his cane at anyone who came near. His eyes lost their sparkle and light; he behaved like a spoiled child. His wife endured him with her typical Irish stoicism; she mourned the loss of the man who had pursued her for decades with the perseverance of an invincible lover, and had adored her as faithfully as the best of husbands. That’s how she wanted to remember him, not as the furious old man he’d become.
José Antonio’s death was painful because he was terrified of dying and fought it off for several long weeks. We all suffered as he struggled to breathe, the air rattling in his chest, writhing, complaining, and shouting for as long as he still had a voice. It was a relief when finally, exhausted, he surrendered. Seeing his corpse, stiff and cold, his skin that yellowish tinge of the dead, the role he’d played in my life, and how much I owed him, hit me like a typhoon. I had very little contact with my other four brothers—who had all died some years ago—but José Antonio had been a sturdy tree that had protected and shaded me ever since the day I was born; he’d assumed responsibility for me that distant morning when I found my father in the library.
A year later it was Josephine Taylor’s turn, bowing out with her usual courtesy and discretion. She didn’t want to be a bother. She’d been fighting cancer for a while; according to her it was the traces of that tumor the size of an orange from so many years before. It’s unlikely, since the orange was removed when she was a young woman and she didn’t get cancer until half a century later. She could’ve tried a round of chemotherapy, but she decided that without José Antonio her life lacked purpose, and at eighty-six she was too tired to fight. I can picture her on those final days, a little old lady like something out of a fairy tale, old-fashioned, lovely, sitting beside the window with a book open in her lap, even though she could no longer read, and Crispín lying at her feet.
You undoubtedly remember that day vividly, Camilo, because you’ve relived it many times in your nightmares, waking up crying, upset and mumbling, “Miss Taylor.” You’d returned home from school rumpled, scruffy, and sweating, as always; you dropped your bag on the floor and whistled for Crispín, calling his name, thinking it strange that he hadn’t come to greet you. You passed through the kitchen where Etelvina and I were engrossed by a telenovela, quickly kissing us hello before continuing into the living room. It was winter, so it was already dark outside and we had lit the fire. There, illuminated by the flames and a weak table lamp, you saw Miss Taylor in her chair. Crispín was by her side, his big black head resting on her lap, but she was completely still. You immediately understood what had happened.
PART FOUR
REBIRTH
(1983–2020)
21
Facunda gave me the news by phone before it appeared in the paper, buried in a footnote. She’d found out through her indigenous relatives, who ever since the time of the Spanish conquest, five hundred years ago, had used the same method of passing information by word of mouth. Censorship, so efficient and terrifying, wasn’t enough to quell the outcry. It was the first time bodies of disappeared persons had been discovered; these hadn’t been tossed into the sea or blown up in the desert, but sealed inside a mountain cave.
A French missionary and activist named Albert Benoit, who lived in a shantytown where the government repression was particularly harsh, found out about the mass grave in the privacy of the confession booth. He was one of those dissident priests who kept count of the victims; he had been arrested and tortured a couple of times and was ordered by the cardinal to keep out of sight and not cause a commotion, but he hadn’t listened. Unlike the Catholic Church in Argentina, our priests didn’t aid the dictatorship and instead tried to strike the difficult balance between denouncing abuses and protecting those who defied the regime. One of the murderers, a police officer in the rural area near Nahuel who had retired and now lived in Benoit’s shantytown, confessed what he’d done and provided the exact location of the cave, on a hillside in a forested area. He gave the priest permission to pass the information on to his superiors.
Benoit wanted to check the authenticity of the claim before he turned to the cardinal, so he traveled to the south. With a pack on his back, a compass in his pocket, and a pick tied to his bicycle, he set off in the direction indicated, skirting police checkpoints. Once he’d left the towns behind, he stopped worrying about the lockdown measures, because there were no guards. He followed a barely visible path, which seemed to have been abandoned for years, and when it was finally swallowed by vegetation, he oriented himself using the compass and prayers.
Soon the terrain forced him to leave his bicycle and continue on foot, thankful that it was summer, since it would’ve been even harder to advance in the freezing rain. He slept the first night in the open air and walked the better part of the following day until he finally found the entrance to the cave, blocked with boards and rocks, exactly as his parishioner had described.
It was getting dark and he thought it best to wait until the following morning. He’d miscalculated the time it would take him to get there, so his scant provisions had run out and he’d gone several hours without food, but a brief fast would do him good, he thought. The land was uneven, green and more green, all dense vegetation and water everywhere: puddles, lagoons, streams, waterfalls rushing over cliffs, accumulated rainwater, and melted snow. Unlike the tropical rain forest, which he’d known in his youth as a missionary near the border between Venezuela and Brazil, this region was cold even in summer; in winter only the most expert local guides knew how to cross it.
The air smelled of humus, fragrant native trees, and fungus clinging to the trunks. He intermittently glimpsed the red and white flowers of climbing vines hanging high in the branches. All day long he’d heard the tremendous riot of birds, the screech of the eagle, the murmur of animal life hidden by the foliage, but when night fell, the world went silent.
He felt an abyss of loneliness in that uninhabited landscape and he prayed aloud, “Here am I, Jesus, getting myself into trouble again. If I find what I’m looking for I’ll have to disobey the cardinal’s order to remain quiet. You understand, don’t you? Please don’t abandon me now, when I need you most.” He finally nodded off inside his sleeping bag, shivering, hungry, sore. He wasn’t used to physical exertion since the only sport he played was soccer with the kids in town, and every muscle in his body was screaming for rest.
With the first light of dawn he drank water and slowly chewed the last almonds he had left, then he began the task of removing the rocks, pulling the weeds, and using his pick to pry off the boards that blocked the mouth of the cave. When he’d removed the final obstacle, a fetid gust of wind from inside forced him to retreat. He took off his shirt and tied it around the lower part of his face. He once again invoked Jesus, his friend, and entered. He found a narrow tunnel, just tall enough for him to duck into. He carried a flashlight in his hand and a camera hanging around his neck. It was hard to breathe, and with each step the air was thicker and the stench more intense. He was entering a crypt, but he pressed on because the place was exactly as described. Soon the tunnel opened into a wide dome, where he could stand up straight. Then the beam of his flashlight fell on the first bones.
The details of what I’m telling you, Camilo, weren’t published until several years later, when Benoit’s story finally came to light. No one knew his name or the role he’d played, because if his identity had been made public he’d have paid a very high price for his courage. In his testimony, the cardinal refused to answer any questions that might incriminate the priest, who was protected by the confidentiality of confession. The whole truth finally came out once democracy was restored. Benoit wrote his account of events, there was an exhibition of the photographs he took that day and many more—some shots of the bones in the prosecutor’s office and other remains laid out at the police station—and they even made a movie about it.
With the evidence in hand, the cardinal moved so quickly that the government didn’t have time to stop him. He was aware that, in addition to his moral authority, he was backed by the Church’s two thousand years of earthly power. It was one thing to arrest and sometimes kill priests and nuns, and another much more serious crime for the government to make enemies in the upper echelons of the Catholic Church, including the pope’s representative in our country. In those years of government repression, the cardinal had learned how to stealthily help the victims, which tallied several thousand. He had even created a special vicarage with this mission. He gathered a secret delegation to investigate the cave, which included a Vatican ambassador, the director of the Red Cross, a member of the Human Rights Commission, and two journalists.
