by Andrés Barba
Or, to put it another way: Your current freedom is the guarantee of our future freedom. The children were free in the exact place where we were wounded—that of mistrust. When the time came, our children would assume the role of the thirty-two, not changing a thing: it was a matter of time; they were heirs. The shocking thing was that the deal had been made passively: the children of San Cristóbal seemed to assume the deaths perpetrated by the thirty-two, in some abrupt reversal of roles. Again, García Rivelles, this time in an almost Nietzschean tone:
“I made you, you made me; we’re even. Or perhaps not. It’s my blood that runs down your knife.”
I don’t think many people have dared to consider the altercations as freely as García Rivelles does in that essay. She proves herself capable of something near impossible: jettisoning all of the commonplaces that surround childhood so as to consider what happened in San Cristóbal in a new light, one that stems solely from the events themselves. But in order to expose a commonplace, one must first have experienced it, and in order to surpass it one must have employed it. The world of childhood was crushing us with its preconceived notions, which is why a large part of the irritation people felt for the thirty-two had less to do with whether it was natural for children to have perpetrated an act of violence than it did with the rage triggered by the fact that those very children had not confirmed their sugar-coated stereotypes of childhood.
Be that as it may, the worst was yet to come. Perhaps the greatest irony is that deep in our hearts we’d never stopped suspecting as much, not even for a minute.
Chronicles and narratives are like maps. On the one hand, you have the bold solid colors of the continents—collective episodes that everyone remembers—and on the other, the depths of private emotions, the oceans. It happened one Sunday afternoon, two or three weeks after the plenary session at which the Rehabilitation Board was created. Maia and the girl were both home. It was very hot, but this was the rainy season and our bodies had grown used to it. We felt bloated and moved in an oddly cadenced way, our muscles slack and our minds dazed. The sound of cicadas was deafening and, as it had rained early that morning, the humidity was stifling. We’d made pasta for lunch, and afternoon found us dozing in a post-Sunday-lunch melancholy.
When the doorbell rang I was on the verge of not answering it, but in the end I got up. Maia and the girl were asleep. I opened the front door to see a mestizo man of about my age, elegantly dressed and handsome despite how short he was. He conformed to the local standard of male beauty: clean-shaven, pointy-chinned. He asked for me, in a markedly San Cristóbal accent, and I told him that he’d found me.
“I’m Maia’s father,” he said.
It took me so long to react that he added:
“The girl’s father.”
It wasn’t solely a question of the declaration being unexpected, it was the situation in and of itself. The features I loved in the girl, those same exact features, in this man were impersonal: small nose, brown smear for a mouth, dense eyes. And at the same time that his disjointed features were floating before me, I felt envious of them, as though I couldn’t help but want them for myself. I asked him the most absurd question imaginable:
“Do you want money?”
The man stared back in shock, but also with the passivity so characteristic of San Cristóbalites that it makes them seem wise when in fact they are merely cautious.
“I wanted to speak to you.”
I stepped out of the house and shut the door, and we walked two hundred meters in that sun to the riverwalk, without saying a word. My urge to get him away from the house was so great that I didn’t stop to consider how ridiculous the whole situation was. I glanced sidelong at him a couple of times as he walked beside me. When I first met Maia I’d asked her repeatedly about the girl’s father, but she’d always dodged my questions. Once when I’d insisted ad nauseam, she told me that as far as she was concerned he didn’t exist, that she didn’t even know where he was and that she wanted me to be the girl’s father. For the first year we were married, the man’s ghostlike presence caused me to suffer in silence, but in the end I gave in to the evidence that he had disappeared entirely. So what was he suddenly doing here? He wore white linen trousers and a short-sleeved shirt unbuttoned to the chest; he looked fashionable and purposeful, if a bit flashy—the sort of flashiness acceptable for a trader, not an affluent man. When we stopped by the river and I turned to look at him, I saw why Maia would have been attracted to this man. He was peaceful as a tree. I couldn’t help but picture them together.
“I’m sorry to have bothered you,” he said in a submissive tone, and when I made no reply, he continued, “You’re in charge of the children.”
“You mean the jungle children?” The situation was so disconcerting I was unable to take in even the basic meaning of his words.
“One of them is my son.”
It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. The images in the media after the Dakota Supermarket attack had led many families whose children had been missing for some time to convince themselves they’d identified the face of their son or daughter. Their understandable desperation made them believe, when there was no logical reason to believe. I myself had attended to some of those families and processed the documentation they brought us; many of them had been missing for years, and it took no more than a bit of arithmetic to realize it was impossible for these children to be the same age.
But this man was different. This man was like me. Worse, he was disconcerting, anonymous and yet absurdly familiar at the same time. The girl’s face was contained within his, and Maia had slept with him, perhaps even loved him. He slipped a hand into his pocket and pulled out a leather wallet. Then he held out the photo of a boy of twelve, so like the girl it was stunning.
“His name is Antonio,” he said, as though that settled everything. “You know where they are, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t. Nobody knows.”
He eyed me distrustfully.
“I know he’s with them.”
The situation became instantly intolerable: the heat, my jealousy, the familiar tone he was taking with me. I felt cornered, rabid. As I turned to leave, he did something unanticipated. He grabbed the neck of my shirt, his expression heated, and said:
“You have to find him, do you hear me?”
All my life I’ve been a tranquil man, but on the few occasions I’ve experienced violence—as I did in that moment—it has always manifested as a burning sensation in my skull. Suddenly words sound different, thoughts become emotions, you stop understanding how you got there; it’s like a feeling of dislocation. I shoved him so violently he nearly fell on his back. I was furious, but he was desperate. He sprung at me again and, because I didn’t realize what he was trying to do, I threw a flustered punch that landed at the top of his left ear. It was like hitting a horse’s flank and feeling the density of an animal’s bone against my knuckles. He didn’t even groan, simply straightened up, and with a humility that I couldn’t understand at the time (though I do now: it was the humility required of desperation), he slipped into my pocket the photo of his son. As I tried to catch my breath, still in a daze, we stood in silence for a few moments, unsure of what to do. He touched his hand to his ear and then looked to see if there was blood; I leaned on the riverwalk railing and glanced around, afraid that someone had seen us. There was no one. The Eré flowed past, tons of water producing a muted sound. I was ashamed of having hit him. He had simple eyes, a simple nose, a simple mouth and chin. He was the girl’s father. Now I knew I had nothing to fear. The man’s desperation was like the river’s presence, like the energy generated by that colossal mass carrying millions of tons of water and sand. He’d crossed some imposed limit. I intuited—I knew—that he and Maia had spoken at some point since our arrival in San Cristóbal and that Maia had forbidden him from approaching our house. I intuited—I knew—that, despite the fact that he may have wanted to see the girl, he must have rebuilt hi
s life, and clearly had other children, Antonio among them. I wanted to ask him to forgive me but was unable to and took a step toward him. He didn’t move.
“We’re going to find them all . . .” I said, attempting to remember his name and realizing that in fact I didn’t know it. He must have intuited this, because he said, “Antonio.”
I walked back home slowly. I remember trying to return the photograph and him putting it back in my shirt pocket; I remember that in order to keep from looking at him, I fixed my gaze on an enormous leaf, the kind people call elephant ears, and that it seemed I could feel the soft, fleshy consciousness of the vegetation, the jungle that crept into the city again and again, as though awaiting the slightest opportunity to restake its territory. When I got home Maia was still asleep. She seemed younger than before, as young as when I’d first met her in Estepí. I lay down beside her and she opened her eyes upon feeling my weight on the mattress.
“You’re sweating,” she said. “Where were you?”
“Taking a walk.”
That was all she asked. Reaching out her index finger, she wiped away a drop of sweat with her fingertip. For the first time, I thought that perhaps she’d made that same gesture with Antonio. That exact same gesture. And how many others. It seemed sad not to invent new gestures for each person we love, to have to carry around the same tedious gestures.
I was afraid that Maia would discover the boy’s photo in my pocket and so took off my shirt, gazing at her all the while. She misinterpreted the move and took off hers. Playing along with the misunderstanding, I got all the way undressed. She did the same. Despite her age, Maia had a childlike appearance: small breasts, a body with almost no hips, like a boy. When she was naked it was as if any part of her body could look out. Her stomach often palpitated.
I entered her with a kind of harshness, kissing her neck to keep her from looking at me. I could feel something perverse inside of me, as though what excited me was the fact that I knew she’d spoken to Antonio behind my back. We knew each other so well, knew how to find each other, knew one another’s curves and angles. It was clear that we intended to be quick and efficient. And we were. But I also felt a desperation in her, something less habitual: in the middle of our familiar choreography, she held me tightly, and for a second I thought she was trembling. Then she lay her chin on my shoulder and whispered that she loved me.
After we finished, we lay staring up at the ceiling fan. It seemed we had so many things to talk about, and at the same time nothing to say. Perhaps one of the greatest surprises about marriage is precisely that: the inevitable formality, even when you know the other’s body and habits better than your own. Light filtered in through the blinds’ slats and projected a curve beneath her nose, a sort of smile. I once again marveled at the inscrutability of my wife’s face.
“Do you regret having married me?” I asked.
I had never asked anything even remotely along these lines. It was one of those flawed questions, born of simple egotism and insecurity. I’d always managed to avoid them, but for some reason this time was unable. I was wounded.
“You are my love.”
“That doesn’t answer the question,” I prodded.
She smiled. A fragile smile, like heartache, an involuntary gesture.
“Of course it does,” she said.
I think about those weeks and all I see is that boy’s face. I’ve still got the photograph, but for some reason his image looks different there than in my memory. And it’s that imagined face (as opposed to the photograph: an ordinary boy with a furrowed chin) that comes to mind when I close my eyes. His face is an oval, like the girl’s. Their features are similar too, though on him they look bolder, as if what’s still veiled in the girl, in the boy has already taken on a pre-adolescent air.
When I looked for him in the video footage from the supermarket I spotted him instantly. He was slightly shorter than the others and had a distinct haircut, straight across the middle of his forehead, like a bowl. It could only be him. He was one of the first to walk in, and also one of the killers. At a certain point, he approached Feni Martínez (one of the victims) with staggering nonchalance and plunged a carving knife into her stomach, three times. Then he froze, watching as she collapsed and bled out on the floor. Unlike the second murder committed during the attack, the one perpetrated by Antonio Lara does not look like a game; there’s a horror to it that does not fade. It’s almost ceremonial, studied. He stands looking at his victim for several seconds and then crouches down to observe her from up close, or perhaps to tell her something. At the last second, the two of them take the measure of each other with their eyes. The boy reaches out a hand but does not touch her. It has a sinister feel, this gesture. Twisted and yet utterly childlike.
The image of Antonio occupies the entirety of my memory of those weeks. The physical image, the mental image, as though the one fed off the other via some internal channel, growing more engorged each day. I couldn’t look at the girl without seeing him hovering over her every expression. I felt as if at any moment blood would out, that she’d put an ear to the ground or close her eyes and hear his voice in her dreams, like the Zapata kids had. Perhaps the Zapatas hadn’t been lying. Perhaps it was true after all and there was some tremendous flow of dreams and thoughts coming from the jungle into our homes.
When I was alone in my office at city hall, I would take out the boy’s photo and hold it beside the one of Maia and the girl. Together they had a strange power, a static charge. I’d seek out the girl when I got home, more desperately than I normally might, and she would avoid me. This was painful, but I would tell myself she was on the brink of becoming a young woman and that withdrawal was normal at her age. I understood, and yet for some reason everything made me uneasy. I saw signs everywhere: in the girl, on the street, in the heat, even in positive things—Maia’s affability, the river’s beauty, the empty silence every time the cicadas in the jungle stopped singing.
Maia, at the time, was practicing Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, one of the most beautiful pieces I ever heard her play. She was confident about making first violin in a local orchestra, but her ambition got the better of her and the piece slightly exceeded her abilities; it was too rigorous, the melody’s phrases so precise that one tiny error would throw the sense of the whole composition into disarray. I watched her attempt it over and over, a piece that almost no one was going to understand, and it seemed to me that the phrasing of the score was getting under her skin. Sibelius’s melody was like a network of veins, simple and unwavering like a cascade of pressures, diminutive expressions.
That was when it started happening. When the children started disappearing. Our children. At first no one believed it, they seemed like isolated cases, unrelated. It was assumed that sooner or later they’d reappear, that the police would phone from some gas station, holding the kids by the hand, or that someone would see them in front of somebody’s house and notify the local officials, but the hours ticked by with an agonizing quality. We’d have preferred a kidnapper. A murderer even. Any kind of horror we were familiar with. The first case took place on March 6, Alejandro Míguez, nine years old, son of a cardiologist and a post office worker; the second, two days later, Martina Castro, daughter of a couple employed by city hall’s cleaning service; the third, Pablo Flores, eleven years old, son of a young widower, a financial columnist at El Imparcial.
They disappeared between March 6 and 10, 1995. Looking back now at the local press coverage from that period is almost infuriating. The articles talk of the children’s disappearances and next to the photos report news on child mafias and express kidnappings. Their silence about the thirty-two serves as the perfect barometer for the degree to which we avoided all mention of what we dared not think about. Even Víctor Cobán seemed unnerved and wrote a column full of banalities on the dangers of allowing our children to roam freely, as we did back then, as though the only problem were not holding their hands while crossing the street or letting them play unsup
ervised in parks across the street from our houses.
What must it take for three well-raised, middle-class kids with no significant family trouble—some of them anxious by nature, if we’re to believe their parents’ testimony—to run away from home, sneak out a window or crawl under the shrubbery, in order to join the pack of kids hiding out in the jungle? Even assuming we managed to find out how they succeeded in contacting them, what led them to run away? What electric current jumped from those children to ours? The kids who didn’t succeed in joining them—the ones who were caught in flagrante with a foot out the window, ready to flee—were themselves unable to explain it very well. On being interrogated they started crying, obfuscated, as if the question were so vicious that it outweighed whatever had led them to try to run away to begin with. They said they wanted to be with their friends, but when asked what friends, they described places and situations that would have made it impossible to reach them.
Also much commented on at the time were certain episodes, filmed by cameras in commercial establishments and private homes alike, in which the children appear, always at night. Several instances of food theft were verified, and all indications point to it having been them, but of all the images included by Valeria Danas in her biased documentary The Kids, only one comes from that particular week: a home video taken by a frightened father in which a group of four can be seen jumping the fence at a house and then speaking to a boy leaning out a window. The image has the graininess of night: first a group of kids is seen with their little noses raised to the window, clustered together so tightly it’s as if they were a single being; then the beguiled boy, in the solitude of a king.
Each time I see this image I try to recall the strategies children use to beguile, the ones I’d observed in the girl in the early days, when I’d take her to the park in Estepí—the always clumsy formulaic routine, the approach and withdrawal; the risk of exposure and the beauty of triumph over another’s will; the feeling, so hard to communicate but so easy to see, that one has gotten the other’s attention. The dialectic of seduction, in children, is much more instinctive than it is in adults; it’s set to a different temperature, possesses a different logic, and, of course, a different violence.