He wore a surgical gown over his cassock, a pristine white that matched his collar and his milky-bald head. He’d aged badly, grown so pasty he appeared to be decomposing, what with his bloated belly, his gouty-looking knuckles. The latter I glimpsed only fleetingly, before he snapped a pair of latex gloves onto his fingers with a sigh of pleasure.
“Ahhhh, Verde,” he cooed, like I was a former lover. “You always did try to have it both ways, play both sides. Who knew it’d be the living and the dead?”
His tone was silky as ever, smoothed and sinisterly inflected for false comfort. Rumor had it that prisoners who never saw his face called him el diablo materno. The motherly devil.
“That is what you want, is it not? To have your life and to have your Montonera’s?”
I didn’t answer or move, even as he circled around me toward the shelf with the radio and the picana.
“How do I know this, you wonder? When there are souls here that do not even know their own names anymore? There are moments I don’t either, I’ll tell you. But something has held for me still, all this time. My role as confessor perhaps, as redeemer. Though we’re all one another’s judges to an extent here, all press our dirty fingertips on the scales that weigh one another’s hearts, from time to time I find myself entrusted with more of a say. And you, Verdecito, are such a case.”
“Maybe because I had you killed,” I told him.
“Maybe,” the Priest said, with disturbing amicableness. He began fidgeting with the knob on the radio, springing to life a snatch of electric guitar and then an interval of garbled static, a bit of nationalist, late-1976 news, and then more static. “Maybe. It is one of those age-old rules, no, the connection between the murdered and the murderer? But in my own opinion,” he went on philosophically, “it may be simpler. A matter of convenience. Who else would take an interest in you? In administering your judgment?”
“Are you going to torture me, Father?” I asked, as if I had no choice about it, no way out despite the open door behind me.
He appeared momentarily confused. “Well. Not with the picana anyway,” he said. He had found the opera station, which was playing Figaro’s frenetic, upbeat aria from The Barber of Seville. “Pity, but that’ll have to do. Anyway, I’m sorry, Verdecito. Felipe gave you a more benign impression of the quest, did he? Sneak like Orpheus into the underworld, steal back one of its souls? Very like him, to be so deceitful. But you must have known it wouldn’t work that way. Another old rule, no? A soul for a soul? The balance must always be kept.”
The baritone skipped along, all those cluttered Italian syllables clattering through the pause: Qua la sanguigna . . . Presto il biglietto . . . Figaro! Figaro! Figaaaaaro!
“I don’t understand,” I said, though I was starting to. The Colonel’s plunge and proverbial coin toss, his talk of other choices and life being where you saved lives. With death, it’s more of a give-and-take.
“You get to do this part over, in effect,” the Priest said. “Not quite as it took place then, of course, things will no doubt be messier, more customized, if you will, for your edification. But you will get the chance you want, or claimed you did. You will get the chance to give the Montonera back to life, staying behind in her place.”
Figaro qua, Figaro là, Figaro su, Figaro giù . . .
“Doesn’t seem very like this place, no? Second chances, do-overs. But death is not so different from life in that way, Verdecito. Despite what many believe, in both worlds, the greatest curse you can sometimes face is freedom.”
“The Colonel told me it didn’t work that way,” I said.
“What way?”
“It didn’t come down to single choices.”
Hadn’t he claimed that? It had grown confused again, like so much else, gotten lost in all those mixed metaphors. Ceaselessly forking roads and mazes, Ferris wheels that kept on spinning.
“Well,” the Priest said, “did you believe him?”
No matter what anyone ever said to me, there was little I believed in less.
“Why this part?” I asked.
“Well,” he said again, thoughtfully, “I suppose to an extent you’ve been doing it all over again. But what came before this—you don’t really regret it, do you? Having me killed—not a whiff of compunction there. And saving Pereyra and the American girl—despite causing another man’s death, you still think it a good thing you did, no?”
I did, or tried to anyway. Two people were set free, and a few days after the incident, falling on the heels of the Uruguayan scandal, they wound up shutting Automotores down.
But among the lessons of this place was the oldest and most hackneyed: the road to hell was indeed paved with good intentions. When Automotores shuttered, the remaining prisoners were presumably shipped to other centers, and the Olimpo, this twisted garage ten minutes away, wound up taking its place. Perhaps they got a brief reprieve while Aníbal was reprimanded by his supervisors at SIDE, but afterward their treatment likely worsened.
“How you met your wife too, no?” the Priest said. It was true. When I left Rome for New York, it was to find Elizabeth. I wanted—needed—proof that I’d done some good, that my life might by extension serve some good. Elizabeth would be evidence of a kind, her gratitude and whatever life she was leading that she wouldn’t have had without me.
One of the Argentine exiles I met in Rome had made connections at the UN, trying to raise international awareness of the country’s situation. Though I had little interest in helping his effort, I did ask him to look into living arrangements for me in New York, which was how I wound up in Parkway Village. Unable to figure out which buses to take and afraid to ask, I walked almost three hours along Queens Boulevard before I got a subway that dropped me on the Upper West Side.
I didn’t find Elizabeth. She’d long since moved from the address on that driver’s license, and I couldn’t even confirm if she’d gone to any US official to report what had been done to her. That slim bit of beneficence was denied me too.
But the serendipitous turn was this: Claire lived at that address then; that was our first meeting. A couple years later I moved to Morningside Heights, and we bumped into each other again. “You look lost, Tom,” she said, grinning. And I was grateful, as I would continue to be, for her direction.
“No, Verdecito,” the Priest went on. “When you get down to it, this is really the only part you’d do over, isn’t it?”
The aria had started over at some point, as if the station played nothing else, and was now rounding off again: Ah, bravo Figaro! Bravo, bravissimo!
“A deal with the devil, you think Felipe made for you? No. All deals in this world are still with God. That is what I believe.”
“You haven’t learned much here, have you?”
“Oh no, Verde, I’ve learned too much, actually, far too much. I used to believe truth was a benediction, a shining light. But it is blinding. The same way it was for Paul on the road to Damascus—terrible, powerful. As a Jew, you may not know that story. But the lesson is it is a curse as well as a blessing.”
“And you still believe you’re blessed?”
He indulged a small smile. “I admit I have been made to doubt on occasion. To lose myself entirely, forget what is right and what is not and what side of the divide I am on. Good or evil, even life or death. But there is no faith without doubt, Verde. I tell myself, at the worst moments here, when I would pluck my very eyes out to remove the truth from them, that my faith is being tested. And it is strong.”
Just as the music swam back in, the Priest gave the knob of the radio a joltingly fast turn, and it spun off with a staticky beep.
“So now it is my test,” I said.
“Yes. In essence. As I understand it, though, it is not your faith that is going to be tested, but your love. Isn’t that right, Verde? Isn’t this all about love for you?”
He started circlin
g back around the room, continuing clockwise as if he needed to complete a full circuit. I watched him across the wire mesh table without speaking.
On reaching the doorway, he paused. “I do not hate you, Verde, for what it’s worth. Oh, I’ve had moments to be sure—cursed your treachery, your sneaky Jewish nature. No doubt it would give you some satisfaction if I did. But the truth is, none of this has ever been about hatred for me. Always, it has been about justice. And whatever your opinion, I believe you escaped it in ’76.”
“So do I,” I told him honestly.
“Well, then,” the Priest said, “don’t this time.”
He left. And when I followed him out some minutes later, I found myself in Automotores’ gloomy hallway again. I went out to the balcony and looked down Venancio Flores at the vacant train tracks, the noiseless school, the shops and kiosks, grated until dawn. Would it be as slow in coming this time as it had been in reality, I wondered, before returning inside, and concluded: Probably longer. Very probably, this night would never end.
NINETEEN
Rubio and I waited a whole hour in the kitchen, our dreary silence broken only when he suddenly got the milk out of the fridge and poured himself a cup. Aníbal arrived in a mood—stomping into his office, hair sleep-mussed and sweaty. He called Rubio in first and closed the door, and I kept waiting, slouched in my chair with my hands spread on the table, attention drifting from the dripping faucet to the grossly stocked pantry—those boxes of cereal and pasta I’d bought, the bags of Wonder Bread and mealy, rotting fruit.
I felt drained—of energy, thoughts, even any sense of danger. Whatever might happen in that office seemed tame compared to the interrogation tactics employed elsewhere at Automotores, and I felt strangely uninterested in whatever might happen to me afterward.
Rubio came out after some twenty minutes, and I went in. Aníbal seemed more relaxed—feet up, shoes off, the moldy odor of his socks infiltrating my nostrils. “Just go over it from the start,” he said, and I told the story in rote fashion, answering his questions more mechanically than I’d intended. Only when it came to my apologies could I summon anything like an actor’s ability: I offered them frequently, profusely, and genuinely.
“You seem scared,” he said at last.
“Of course I’m scared,” I told him, and he laughed.
“You fuck that American girl, Verde?” he asked me, still grinning.
I deliberated a moment about what to say. But by then it felt like too much time had passed, and I shook my head. “I wanted her to like me,” I said.
Aníbal observed me a minute—sympathetically, I believed, as if he understood such a plight. “I think she’ll like you better now,” he said, sighing. “You’re tired, Verde. I can see that. It’s Saturday—you were supposed to come back tonight, weren’t you? Well, take the weekend off. Monday too, why not? Come back Tuesday. We’ll know what’s what then. Go on,” he insisted when I continued sitting there dumbly. “It’s almost morning. Get some sleep.”
I stood uncertainly and staggered out of the office. Rubio had already gone, and others were there to take over our shift. Goat and Nose and two men I didn’t recognize—agents from SIDE, I supposed, or more of Aníbal’s own creatures, who could keep the incident quiet if he needed. They watched me as I went down the stairs.
There was no train at this hour, and instead of getting a cab I decided to walk. To my foggy mind, it made sense: exhausted though I was, I might not be able to sleep and, besides, I had to figure out what, if anything, I’d do next. The idea of real action still seemed remote, as if it had all been used up already. A que será será kind of mentality. Let come what may.
* * *
Fait accompli. A better term for my attitude during the hours I spent zigzagging northeast between Avenidas Rivadavia and Independencia. Another, from my high school Latin: Alea iacta est—the die is cast. Finita la commedia—the famous last line of some Italian opera or other. Every phrase that occurred to me seemed to come from a language other than my own. The one that resonated most strongly was the simplest: Too late. To me, leaving Automotores for perhaps the last time, it all already seemed too late.
Wide, endless streets devoid of pedestrians, drivers honking as I crossed against a light, blisters blossoming on my heels, kids exiting boliches and staring at me like I was about to keel over drunk or sick or was from another planet altogether. My brain formed impressions more than plans, and what plans it formed were small, a peculiar mix of the practical, the sentimental, and the irrational. Around five in the morning, I made my way to the Colonel’s café, Parada Norte. I told myself it was largely coincidence—the closeness to my pensión, its twenty-four-hour air—but no doubt part of me hoped he’d be there with his ham-and-cheese tostados, encouraging pleas for help and confessions.
No one was there, though, except the waiter. “Tomás, no?” he asked at my arrival, and for a second I thought it was the universe mystically reaching out to me, about to say, It’s time. Then he offered his hand and reminded me the Colonel had introduced us. “Cafecito?” he asked. “Glass of wine?” And I was so demented and out of sorts that I ordered both.
Afterward, I went to Puerto Madero, as close to the water as I could get, hoping to catch a glimpse of the sunrise. But the sky was filmy and gray, the view half obstructed by fencing. I watched the grimy water roll languidly over the garbage in the shallows, caressing the broken pipes and bottles and bathing them all indiscriminately.
I don’t know if it was the soothing effect of the water or the suicide’s tendency to wrap up affairs, to say good-bye, but from there I went to the train station in Constitución. I glanced momentarily at faraway locations on the departure board—Neuquén, Catamarca, Iguazú, all of which had border crossings with Chile or Brazil—and then got a ticket to La Plata. My mother deserved that much at least, I thought incompletely.
* * *
I told her when I arrived that I’d meant it to be a surprise. My voice was deadpan and unenthusiastic, but she played along, hugging me tightly in the foyer and thanking me for the kindness.
She looked unchanged, which was to say haggard and thin, saggy as an unused rubber band. She asked if I was hungry, and though I said I wasn’t, she started to warm up some pascualina, which she remembered as one of my favorite dishes. It was eleven in the morning but it felt like midnight, and I asked for some wine.
“Are you drinking too much, Tomás?”
“You’re kidding.”
I began to regret coming. I couldn’t discuss the fledgling thought I’d had of leaving Argentina—she wouldn’t support it, and she wouldn’t be of much help even if she did, never having left the country since she immigrated. I didn’t know how I’d explain it either: “Sorry, Mami, I fucked up and the milicos may be in touch about it soon”? They wouldn’t be, not with her. If they came for me or didn’t, either way she’d never hear a word.
Everything I’d learned, from collecting names for Isabel to seeing Pichuca’s reaction after Nerea went missing, should have taught me many times over how awful a fate that would be. But in my head—overwhelmed, depleted—nothing seemed preferable. Death might have scared me. But disappearance had shed its reality, and I almost thought it a nice, easy way for all this to end.
After lunch, I told my mother I’d take a nap. I wound up sleeping until the next morning. “Finals,” I explained when I came downstairs at last, muttering something about my particular difficulty with oral exams. Not even my mother could have believed me.
Another meal. Another stilted one-way conversation. She asked me if I’d be visiting any friends while I was in town, and I told her I would, that I should have called them already. She left me to do so, and I dialed the Colonel instead. No one answered. But the phone rang long enough that I could pretend I’d gotten through to someone, and when my mother returned, I told her I’d better get going, dropping names of people I hadn’t been in t
ouch with in nearly a year and heading out as if they were expecting me.
My wandering was largely like the night before last. But my mood was different, the occasional reflection I allowed myself. I remembered Sundays, visiting my grandparents or drinking on a crowded, litter-filled university lawn with my ex until after sundown. It’d been so long since I’d had a proper Sunday. I pictured myself as a child, playing in these tranquil, tree-lined streets with kids my age, going with my mother to the zoo or with my father to the observatory to gaze through the telescope at the celestial bodies he loved telling me about. The memories seemed as far away as those stars had, as twinkly and beautiful and beyond reach.
I wound up going all the way out to the Republic of Children and, in a fit of whimsy or nostalgia, getting a ticket to the theme park. Joining the families roaming the fake, miniature city, with its pink and aqua-blue façades and imitations of Moscow towers, I remembered when my parents had taken me here as a six-year-old. Begrudgingly they’d told me the place was Perón’s doing, providing what might have been my first association with his name. My father said the park was just like the man, “all show and no point,” and my mother nodded and added that Perón offered asylum to the Nazis—“populist just like them,” she said, accurately encapsulating the endless ethical morass that was Argentine politics. The decision not to tell her about my involvement with the Montoneros seemed better then, like I was sparing her. Like it’d be a gift to leave her with the belief that I was just a selfish, ungrateful kid like any other, and none of this was her fault.
Soon the gaudy, splashy colors, the spires rising vertiginously toward cottony clouds, the spectacular fakeness got to be too much. Without finishing the circuit, I went out through the entrance and took the bus back to my childhood home.
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