Hades, Argentina

by Daniel Loedel

  The endless hours after my second and third days, unable to eat, unwilling to sleep because morning would come too soon if I did. The additional attempts to reach Isabel to no avail, and the time I spent lying on my bed afterward, listening to my records or the samba that came from Beatriz’s room and plying myself with her weed and a bottle of Chivas Regal the Colonel had bought me. (“Verde’s a party animal!” the men often exclaimed when I entered, because I stank of booze. “A party monster!”)

  Every call I got from the torture room too, of course. There were tasks Aníbal hadn’t mentioned in our interview, like helping bind prisoners to the table before a session and throwing water on them to reduce the electrical resistance of their skin. Or, on occasions we knew they wouldn’t sing and the goal was solely to make them suffer, putting a rubber truncheon in their mouth to prevent them from destroying their tongue.

  And then there were the “vaccinations.” These were actually injections of sodium pentothal, a knockout tranquilizer used for surgeries. On transfer days, as I learned that Wednesday, when the truck arrived and Aníbal called me to his office to give me the list of prisoners—five that first time, no names, only numbers—Triste would get them from their cells and line them up and, in the role of “doctor,” I’d inject each one so they could be taken more easily. Where, no one told me explicitly, but I knew. The prisoners, I could tell from the tears gradually wetting their blindfolds or escaping down their cheeks as they waited for my syringe, must have known too. After all, their clothes were left behind, their possessions.

  They weren’t allowed to speak. But one, a boy near my age, asked me in a whisper if it was poison. I told him it wasn’t.

  * * *

  I’d worked three weekday shifts. On Thursday, Aníbal told me he’d be switching up the schedule: I’d take most weekends and get days off during the week. “The men don’t want you giving up your education, Verde,” he said. “And they don’t want to give up their weekends, the lazy shits.”

  My fear remained just as intense. With each hour came another risk of failure to dissemble, to convincingly trade barbs with the men or hide a grimace at a spasm on the table. I kept waiting for them to notice, to say something. The only one who did, later that morning after I helped him with a session, was the Priest.

  “Not the easiest work in the world, is it?” he said warmly, a smile creasing his bald, amiably round head.

  “No,” I admitted.

  “And not the likeliest type of work for a man of the cloth either, I suspect you’re thinking.”

  “It does seem”—I groped uneasily after the right word—“specialized.”

  The Priest laughed. “I suppose you could say that,” he said generously, as if I could say anything in his presence. “I was a chaplain in my youth. And, actually, I found myself disillusioned with the army at a certain point and left. Perón with all his young women after Evita died, all those internal squabbles among the armed forces. Everything seemed so petty. But then,” he continued, shifting tone with the practiced cadence of an orator, “with Castro in Cuba, and Allende in Chile, and the communists defeating the Americans in Vietnam, and all these terrorists attacking officers. Suddenly the fight felt so much larger to me. Argentina was threatened. Democracy was threatened, Western values. Christianity—since the Second World War, it’s been in retreat. And, well, here we are.” He breathed deeply, taking in the torture room with pride. “It’s important to keep the bigger picture in mind, my son. Our work here—these are small battles in a larger war, you see? And the war is what you have to consider. Meanwhile,” he went on, gently taking my arm and leading me to a closet in the hall; he opened it and indicated a mop and bucket, “would you mind, Verde? I like this place to conform to certain norms. We may dirty our hands here, but what we do—it is clean.”

  * * *

  That day, Isabel finally called. Or rather, left a message for me at the pensión in the middle of the afternoon when she likely knew I wouldn’t be there to answer. The message: Meet at the entrance to the Japanese Gardens at 18:00 on Friday. Nothing more.

  She was late. I couldn’t believe that on top of everything else she was late.

  When she arrived, she was already raising her hand to stop me from whatever tirade she expected me to go on. Something else I could scarcely believe: I heeded her.

  We circled the pond until Isabel directed us to a bench by its side. It was getting cold, and few others were about—probably why she was more willing to meet in parks now than in places like appliance stores. As soon as we sat, paying no attention to the picturesque flowers, the bonsai trees, or the charming red footbridge, I started in: “You knew what they were doing, didn’t you? You knew and you asked me to work there. How could you do that to me, Isa?”

  “Do that? To you? What about what they’re doing to them, Tomás? It’s not about you, none of this is about you. This is war.”

  “It’s not war. It’s annihilation.”

  “And what, you’re afraid to be annihilated? Can’t you think about anyone else?”

  “Can’t you? If it’s so fucking honorable to help this way, why didn’t you just ask me outright? Don’t pretend this is about other people, this is about your misery and purposelessness and finally having an antidote to them. You’re happy, I can see you’re happy, Isa.”

  She shook her head like she pitied me. Maybe she did.

  “I’m happy because I’m trying to help people, Tomás. Fighting for them. Fine, I used you—betrayed you, even, if you want. Are you going to betray them?”

  What I wanted right then was to betray her. I’d only gotten involved in the first place for her, not for those other people. That my selfishness could have gotten so tied up in some greater good didn’t seem fair. Nor that Isabel’s could.

  And yet. And yet and yet and yet—the phrase thudded through me perniciously. Let me go, I pleaded to whatever part of my brain wouldn’t, that kept beating that drum. Let me go.

  It didn’t.

  “What do you want from me, Isa? The names of the people they’ve taken? The names those people give?”

  Isabel nodded. Then added: “And anything you can do to ease their pain.”

  * * *

  There wasn’t much I could do. Especially since I was afraid to be caught doing anything outside my job description that wasn’t vicious or cruel. Even when I found out that other guards occasionally gave prisoners snacks or other small treats, my trepidation persisted, as I didn’t compensate for such indulgences the way they did in the torture room. I couldn’t necessarily rely on the prisoners to keep any kindness of mine a secret either; they could turn on each other with stunning rapidity—some even became “markers” who went on kidnapping raids to earn better treatment. Which meant I was too scared to bring them anything but their standard food rations. Too scared to ease or briefly take off their blindfolds as well. Too scared to give the women tampons, since those were certain to be discovered. I couldn’t even offer the tiny caresses I’d seen some prisoners give each other stealthily in their common cell or when they were made, on Rubio’s lazier days, to torture each other in a two-birds-one-stone way.

  All I felt I could do was take advantage of the Priest’s morbid fantasy of bringing the place up to the standards of a hospital and clean. Clean the bathroom. Clean the utensils the prisoners ate with. Clean their clothes every once in a while and hang them on the balcony to dry. More often I cleaned and dried the towels the guards used to wipe their sweat—anything to provide an excuse for me to get that needed breath of fresh air. The balcony was one of the few solitary sites at Automotores, since the Priest, who could withstand the rot of prisoners but not the smell of cigarettes, didn’t permit the men to smoke even out there.

  Clean the garage. Clean the kitchen. Clean the blood off the floors so the men wouldn’t dirty their shoes and the prisoners didn’t walk through it barefoot. (Even when they weren’t
beaten, they still often bled from the lacerations the straps made when their limbs were thrashing.) Clean the guard quarters. Don’t clean the prisoners’ cells but do clean their wounds to avoid infection. (That at least was part of my job—keeping them alive.)

  I wasn’t naturally a clean person—it wasn’t a compulsion I had in any other sphere. An unintended benefit was that it gave me the reputation as a hard worker. Not all the men liked it—“What are you sucking up for?” Rubio asked me when I stayed late washing dishes. “There’s no report card here, Verde”—but those who mattered more did. The Priest cooed with pride at my mopping, and after one of my shifts, Aníbal told me, “Little did I know the Colonel would give me such a committed employee. When you see him next, tell him I’m impressed. You may not do the dirty work, but you sure as shit do the rest, Verde.”

  * * *

  At the end of May, my mother insisted on visiting. I tried to put her off, but I’d been doing so for two months already and hadn’t gone home for Easter, and she threatened to stop paying for my room at the pensión. “You either see me there or you see me here, Tomás,” she said with unusual authority, and I told her I’d see her here.

  Among the complications it raised was that I knew she’d also want to see the Colonel. I hadn’t seen him myself since starting at Automotores. Partly I was avoiding it, afraid of revealing my state or making a slip in conversation. But partly it was his doing. No calls or invitations, only a postcard from Rio de Janeiro of the open-armed Christ Redeemer statue overlooking the city that read: Churchman beating freethinker here too, alas. It was dated May 24, and I hadn’t heard from him since.

  But when I phoned, Mercedes picked up like nothing was the matter, saying simply that it’d been too long since I’d been in touch and going to get the Colonel.

  “Why, if it isn’t Señor Shore,” he said. “And here I feared you’d died.”

  “You feared I’d—”

  “Kidding, Tomasito!” he exclaimed. “Joder. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “My mother’s coming to town,” I answered stiffly.

  “Well, why so grim about that? We’d love to host her, of course.”

  “She’s going to stay at a hotel—she insists,” I added honestly. My mother wasn’t the type to impose, except occasionally upon me. “We’ll make a dinner date. It’s just that she—she doesn’t know about what I’m doing, my job,” I faltered. “I’d appreciate it if—”

  “Of course, Tomasito. You know I don’t like to worry your mother. Your secret’s safe with me.” He said it with such ease it threw me, and before I could thank him and hang up, he added, “How is it working out for you, by the way? That secret.”

  I looked around the common area. A business student from Lima sat at the dining table, engrossed in a textbook. A kettle was whistling loudly from the kitchen.

  “Aníbal said to tell you he was impressed with me.”

  “Oh, did he? How nice. Especially for Aníbal. And do you feel you’re getting what you wanted out of it?”

  “Getting what I . . . ?”

  “You know, learning, worldly experience and the like. Didn’t you say you wanted more than money out of it?”

  I breathed. Switched the receiver to the other ear to give myself more time, but I still couldn’t answer. If the Colonel knew why I’d wanted to work at Automotores, I assured myself, he wouldn’t have gotten me the job.

  “Of course, we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want,” he said at length. “Especially not on the phone! I should know better, shouldn’t I? I’ll let you be off. Just don’t forget, if you change your mind: I can always keep your secrets safe, Tomás.”

  * * *

  Another issue with my mother coming was that I had to ask Aníbal for that Saturday off—a change in my schedule. And by a strange turn in logic, figuring I should tell him any truth I could so that he wouldn’t suspect my lying in other realms, I explained my mother was the reason.

  I braced myself for invective or worse. We were in the hallway outside the torture room, Elvis playing loudly within. Aníbal was going through the prisoner’s wallet and barely raised his eyes at me. “Look at the fucking beak on this Jew, eh,” he said, dumping an ID card on the floor. Next he flicked a photo of the prisoner’s children after it. “Ugly Russian brats. Anyway, Verde, sure—whatever you need for your old lady. We’re all family men here.”

  * * *

  I was tense and surly throughout my mother’s stay. Blaming schoolwork and stomach problems—I’d had diarrhea on and off since beginning at Automotores—I refused to join the meals I’d set up at the Colonel’s and Pichuca’s. Both seemed too stressful to me, and I knew Isabel would find her own excuses not to show up at the latter.

  I took my mother to a Mahler symphony the Colonel got us tickets to (I fell asleep during the second movement), and I introduced her to Beatriz, pretending we were much closer than we were, since she was desperate to meet friends of mine. But most of my mother’s trip I made her sit silently across from me at cafés while I read, or brought her on walks in which I said little and showed her nothing of interest. (“That’s my local confitería. . . . This is Avenida Santa Fe. . . . No, I don’t know what that monument is.”)

  “What’s wrong with you, Tomás?” she asked me at last, when I wordlessly picked her up at her hotel on Sunday evening. “In La Plata we got along fine.”

  “Nothing’s wrong with me,” I said.

  “Is it Isabel’s influence? Pichuca says she’s worried about her, Nerea too. They’re never at home, they’re—”

  “Goddamn it, why do you have to pry all the time, Mami? Don’t you know that’s why I left, to get you out of my hair?”

  She gave me a confused, heartbroken look. “That’s not why you said you left.”

  “Well, I’m saying it now. Mind your own business.”

  She was supposed to drive back Monday morning. But she wound up leaving that night, after I spent another dinner shoving uneaten pasta aimlessly around my plate.

  * * *

  I returned to work on Tuesday. It was lunchtime when I arrived, and the entire group was eating together in the kitchen—a rarity.

  “Your visit with mami go okay?” Rubio asked, snickering.

  “What’s wrong with a visit from his mami?” The Gringo came to my defense. “I want more visits from my mami.”

  “You and the merchandise probably have that in common, Carlitos,” Aníbal said with a laugh.

  “Now, now,” the Priest replied. “You know they don’t have mothers, Aníbal. Not here, not with us. The prisoners, when they are in our possession, should have no identities. They are no one.”

  Silence, as the men contemplated this grand concept. I started to clear their plates.

  “Your mother must be very proud, Verde,” the Priest said as I went to the sink.

  “She’s the one who taught me to clean,” I said, making myself nod.

  * * *

  It turned out most of the names I got at Automotores weren’t even likely to be of use to Isabel. As part of Operation Condor, our targets were suspected socialists, Marxists, communists, and their specific Argentine offshoots, particularly the ERP, the People’s Revolutionary Army. They were the equivalents of Montoneros, but for a different cause: they didn’t want Perón in Argentina; they essentially wanted Castro in Argentina. Indeed, the possibility that Cuban-style communism would spread to Latin America was the one that concerned the United States and its proxies most. No matter that the People’s Revolutionary Army’s actual army had been routed in Tucumán the year before, we were to eliminate every last trace of the ERP. Along with their supporters, which typically meant unionists and laborers and anyone else who had agitated for better wages or conditions. Recalling that American businessman in love with Ford’s venture in the Amazon, I formed the hunch that the dictatorship had backing from more tha
n the military sector alone.

  Montoneros were technically beyond our scope. And though it hardly stopped us whenever we landed on one, there were few in Automotores’ possession. Most of our prisoners were involved with labor movements, and those who weren’t often weren’t even Argentine but foreign exiles who had fled other Latin American countries after military coups and were to be handed back to the Uruguayans and the like. (“We’re behind the times!” the Gringo exclaimed to me, delineating the nuances of our purview. “Chile and Uruguay have a three-year head start on us. And Brazil, la puta madre—they got a fucking decade.”)

  My next meeting with Isabel was in the Barrancas de Belgrano. Per her instructions, I got off and on the subway at least twice to see if anyone was following me—should someone else get off and on, I was to head home. I arrived without incident, but the Barrancas was so little different from the Bosques that it was hard to feel we were fooling anybody. The elaborateness of the arrangements seemed silly, as futile as collecting names of abducted Montoneros. And when I joined Isabel on the shaded bench where she sat, I immediately started pleading the uselessness of my position to her.