by Lewis Shiner
«Before we start,» Mateo said, «I have one question. Did this guy Beto hurt you in any way?»
Elena had the grace to stare at him as though he was crazy. She looked at me again for an instant, as if she couldn’t help herself, and there was tenderness there. «No,» she said. «Beto is a caballero. A good, sweet man.» Then she shook her head as if to say, And that is the problem.
«Bueno. First, I need to know how much you already know. You know the real name of the man who raised you, no?»
«The man who raised me? You mean my father?»
Mateo looked at me. «Well, that answers that question.»
«Do you work for him?» Elena asked.
Mateo laughed. «I’m his worst enemy. His worst nightmare.»
That was the moment when, at last, I became truly afraid. What had I let into Elena’s refuge? I had no proof of anything he’d said. And twice he’d promised to kill me.
Elena said, «The answer to your question is, I was eight years old when we changed our name. We never said the name del Salvador in the house again.» She rubbed her nose. «Except once. So I always knew his real name was Osvaldo del Salvador. What I didn’t know, until six months ago, was who he was, what he’d done.
«It was because of the repeal, all the talk about the trials. I heard him on the phone, talking to Cesarino. And I put it together.»
«Why couldn’t you tell me that?» I said. «Do you think I would have held that against you?»
She shook her head and looked at Mateo. «Why did you say, ‘the man who raised me’?»
«Because he’s not your father.»
Elena closed her eyes. I could not imagine the force of the emotions going through her, though I saw flickers of them come and go. Gratitude, maybe? Confusion, betrayal, certainly. What I didn’t see was any resistance or doubt.
«Tell me,» she said.
«Beto says you want the truth, even if it hurts.»
«Yes.»
«This is worse than you can imagine. I want you to know that before I start.»
«You don’t know my imagination.»
«Bueno. This is going to take a while. I suggest we make ourselves comfortable. I would like to get these wet shoes off. Maybe you could find me a cafecito.»
*
Un montón means “a heap” or “a lot,” and the story is that the first montoneros were indigenous tribes, attacking Spanish outposts in overwhelming numbers. The name passed on to the rural guerillas in the civil wars that took up much of the nineteenth century in Argentina. But the montoneros that everyone remembers are the ones from the 1970s.
They started as the left wing of the Peronist party, the party of Juan Perón, who’d been forced into exile in 1955 by the military. So overwhelming was the love of the poor for Perón that government after Argentine government declared his party illegal, not just the military dictatorships, but also the hapless civilian governments in between, all of them struggling in vain to hold the country together. In 1973, when the party was allowed on the ballot again, the new Peronist president quickly resigned in favor of Perón himself. More than three million people showed up at Buenos Aires’s Ezeiza airport on June 20, in the depths of winter, to welcome him home.
One of them was Mateo, 22 years old and fresh out of college, his head full of Karl Marx and sudden new hope for his country. He came early and saw friends from college there, friends who were members of the montoneros. He was standing with them when Perón’s plane landed. They had a huge banner with the word MONTONEROS on it, and they unrolled it and moved toward the stage. There was a struggle going on for the soul of the party, someone had just explained to Mateo. The right wing, who wanted to open the country to foreign investment, was determined to get Perón on its side at any cost. The montoneros and the Perón youth meant to show him how strong they were, that the future of Argentina lay with them.
Mateo stood aside and let them push forward, because it was not really his cause, not his struggle.
Then the shooting began.
Mateo could make no sense of it at the time. Afterward he learned that snipers hidden on the platform and in buildings on both sides had opened up on the montoneros and the Perón Youth. At least 13 people were murdered outright, at least 300 more wounded, though the actual numbers were probably higher.
Mateo only knew the terror of lying on the ground, the bullets hissing and whining above him like willful, poisonous creatures hungry for death. He felt them pass in the crawling of the skin along his back, heard the ugly wet thud as they buried themselves in human flesh, smelled the butcher-shop stench of blood in the cold air, not knowing if the blood was his own.
Eventually the shooting stopped and the chaos became total: the screaming of the wounded, the weeping of the survivors, the shouts of outrage, the police sirens, the panicked noise of the impenetrable crowd.
At the first sound of gunfire, Perón had ordered the hatch closed on his airplane and refused to come down. Later, he blamed the leftists for the massacre. In fact, it had been carefully planned and executed by the leaders of the right wing, including Perón’s own personal secretary, José López Rega. The snipers came from the inner circle of López Rega’s secret police, the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance, the infamous Triple A, and these were the first shots in their war of extermination against the montoneros.
For Mateo, it was the moment that changed him from bystander to soldier.
The montoneros were not pacifists. They had already kidnapped, tried, and executed former Argentine president Aramburu and killed a handful of others. After Ezeiza, they gave up all pretense of limits.
The violence repelled Mateo at first. Then, after he saw the extremes of the Triple A, he convinced himself it was necessary.
At the same time, he was unable to give up his other true love, which was tango. He would steal away from training exercises to go to milongas. That was where he met Elena Bianchi.
His first impression was that she was too beautiful to be trusted, that she was superficial, bourgeois. Her passion for tango was undeniable, however, and when he finally talked to her, he found her intelligent, compassionate, and well read. She supported the montoneros in principle, she told him, although she opposed the extremes of their violence. This before she knew that he was a member.
He fell hard for her and she was seduced by the danger that he lived in. She never relented in her opposition to violence and refused to actively participate in any of his missions. Neither did she reproach him for his beliefs or ask him to change.
Perón died in 1974 and his widow took over. López Rega now had a completely free hand. They called him El Brujo, the Sorcerer, because of his occult obsessions. His hatred of communism made him popular with the United States, and US companies began to set up in Argentina and drive out local businesses, something Perón had bitterly opposed in his early years. The Triple A moved into the open and began killing suspected montoneros on the streets, or kidnapping and torturing them. All the techniques that the Videla dictatorship would later make universal were perfected under López Rega.
Mateo was forced underground. He visited Elena at most once a month. The last two days they had together were in November of 1974 and they spent them dancing to the record player in her flat, making love, making plans to get out of Argentina.
In January of 1975, in the damp heat of summer, the Triple A caught him on his way to Elena’s flat. A traitor in Mateo’s cadre had informed on him. The task group waited for him in the lobby of Elena’s building, four of them, wearing bits and pieces of police uniforms, carrying M16s the United States had provided for them. They hooded him and beat him and took him out to the street. As this was before the era of the Ford Falcon, they only had a borrowed police car. They threw him in back and drove off with the siren blaring.
Elena saw them carry him out and called Mateo’s emergency contact in the montoneros. Mateo’s contact had two men and some guns and they were not far away. They made their best guess as to the neares
t detention center and intercepted the police car. There was a gun battle in the streets. Two Triple A men were killed and the other two wounded. Mateo’s contact and another montonero were killed. Mateo’s right knee was shattered by a bullet and he was also hit in the thigh and the left forearm. The bullets from an M16 are 5.56 mm, about the size of a .22, with such enormous muzzle velocity that all three bullets went completely through Mateo’s body.
The remaining montonero got him away from the scene and drove him to one of the doctors who was sympathetic to the cause. The wounds in the thigh and forearm were not terribly serious, but there was little the doctor could do about Mateo’s knee. The organization smuggled him out of the country, to Mexico and then to Cuba and back to Mexico again. It was there, a year later, that he heard Elena was dead.
The men who killed 30,000 were pardoned, while Mateo was still wanted for murder because of the two dead kidnappers. He drifted around Central America for 25 years, teaching school in Guatemala, working in the oil fields in Venezuela. Never married, never stayed in one place more than two or three years.
It had been three years since he came back to Buenos Aires. Very slowly he had reached out to some old friends. Some didn’t want to know him. A few did what they could for him, a little money, a little food, a rental apartment in a rough part of town.
One of them was a tango teacher from the old days. Though Mateo could no longer dance because of his knee, there was unexpected pleasure in talking about the music and the old times.
Three weeks ago the teacher had called and said to meet him at Salon Canning. Mateo was walking to his old friend’s table when he saw her for himself. Elena, not in her fifties as she would have been if she’d lived, but Elena as she was the last time he’d seen her. Her nose was different, something about the eyes, but her mouth, her hair, her body, the way she carried herself, the way her head went back when she laughed—it was her.
Mateo did the math. If his Elena had gotten pregnant the last time they’d been together, the child would be the same age as this woman.
All he knew was that his Elena had been taken by the Triple A, that she had died in the Club Atlético detention center. Someone who’d survived six months there had seen her, and later heard she was dead. The news passed to the few montoneros left after the coup in March of 1976 and they had gotten word to Mateo in Mexico.
After seeing the young Elena, Mateo had contacted Las Madres de la Plaza, and their organization had searched their files. They didn’t have a lot of information, but it was enough.
*
Elena interrupted him. «Ay, Dios mío,» she said. «Oh my God. Oh my God.»
Mateo scowled at her. His eyes were red and he looked to be on the verge of breaking down. «At the Club Atlético she told them she was pregnant. They tortured her and raped her and beat her anyway, but somehow she didn’t lose the baby. They took the baby away after it was born and then they disposed of Elena. Probably the usual way—they probably dropped her, still alive, out of a helicopter over the Atlantic Ocean. After slitting her belly open so she wouldn’t float back up.
«The man who tortured her and murdered her—»
«Please,» Elena said, «no…»
«The man who killed her took the baby home to raise as his own. He named her Elena, I guess in tribute to her mother.»
When Mateo finished, it was utterly quiet in the room. Elena cried in silence, her face in her hands, tears dripping onto the knees of her pants and leaving dark blotches.
Mateo sniffed and wiped his nose with his left hand, as he had earlier. He leaned back into the couch. His eyes focused on something far away.
Adriana had slowly settled onto the floor while Mateo talked. She seemed to be in shock. She slowly recovered herself and knelt next to Elena, pulling her into a hug. Elena sobbed onto her shoulder. I wanted it to be me that held her. The chances of that ever happening did not look good.
Elena whispered to Adriana, who looked at Mateo. «That’s everything, yes? No other revelations?»
«That’s all,» Mateo said.
Adriana nodded. «Elena says to thank both of you very much and asks if you would go now.»
Mateo took a piece of paper out of his pocket and put it next to his empty coffee cup. «That’s my phone number. She can call me if she wants. I…I would like…» He couldn’t finish. He put on his wet shoes and stood up.
It seemed impossible that I would simply walk away from her. Adriana escorted us outside and handed me my umbrella. She locked the glass door behind us and then shut the inner door. We were out on the balcony again, in the rain, which had not stopped.
*
We had to walk four blocks to find a street big enough that there were taxis. I memorized the apartment number, the street, every landmark I could find, even as I knew in my heart that I would never get to use them.
In the cab I said, «Is Mateo your real name?»
«More or less.»
«What does that mean, ‘more or less’?»
«We all had code names, noms de guerre. Mateo is the name I’ve always used.»
I was comfortable with his speech patterns now, getting at least the gist of everything he said. «And the name you were born with?» I asked.
«You don’t want to know. It puts me in danger and you in danger.»
A few minutes later I said, «What happens now?»
«Tonight, tomorrow? I can’t tell you. Sometime in the next few days or weeks or months, I will bring Osvaldo del Salvador down. I will have my revenge, and I will make sure he knows who I am and what he did to me. And after that? It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters after that.»
He asked the cab driver if he could smoke and the driver shrugged and said, «Open the window if you do.»
He rolled the window down and lit a cigarette. It smelled like a fire at a garbage dump. A drop of rain appeared on his glasses.
He glanced at me and said, «You can help, if you want.»
«Me?» I stopped myself before I asked if he was crazy. «I don’t think so.»
We rode in silence while he finished his cigarette, then I said, «Do you want me to drop you somewhere?»
He shook his head. «I’ll take the Subte. I’ve got time. I’ve got nothing but time.»
«If she calls you…»
He looked at me. His eyes were black, empty, desolate. «Yes?»
«Will you let me know?»
He found another piece of paper in his pocket, a Xeroxed flyer for tango classes that he’d picked up at one of the milongas, and we traded phone numbers.
I had the cab drop us at the San Juan Subte stop. Halfway down the stairs, Mateo turned and raised one hand to me. I waved and he disappeared into the station.
*
I walked down to the supermercado on Calle Bolívar to finish the shopping I’d set out to do hours before. When I got back, it was four in the afternoon. I got out of my wet clothes and showered and shaved in the futile hope that it would inspire me.
I sat on the bed and listened to the rain echo in the airshaft. My thoughts were drastic. What if I turned all my money into cash and got on an airplane? Maybe to someplace tropical, like Puerto Rico?
I stretched my pecs and forearm muscles, did some yoga to control my breathing. The pain in my head was no worse than a three. Restless and bored, I went to the locutorio down the street and checked my email, then read about the montoneros online. I didn’t see Mateo’s name, but everything that I read supported his story.
In 1976, Videla and the other generals specifically cited the montoneros as one of the major reasons they seized power. It was true that the montoneros had gotten out of hand in the days of López Rega, with one bloody assassination after another, making it seem for a time that the government could no longer guarantee the safety of its citizens. More importantly, they couldn’t prevent the kidnap and ransom of foreign businessmen, which was the way the montoneros raised money. Big business—US business—demanded that their government partners eliminate
the problem, or step down in favor of someone who could.
The loss of control was merely temporary. In fact, the Triple A was incredibly effective and by the time of the coup the montoneros were all but wiped out. By kidnapping and torturing anyone suspected of leftist sympathies, Videla’s death squads ensured that there would be no new recruits.
After a while I had to stop reading. When I first learned about El Proceso, I couldn’t believe the lack of attention it got in the history books. The number of the dead was considerably lower than in the European Holocaust, but the level of brutality was comparable. The main difference was that the US was complicit in El Proceso, from the money we put in the government treasury to the CIA advisors we sent to teach torture techniques.
The torture was the worst. How could one human being do that to another? How was it possible to listen to someone scream, and keep on inflicting pain? To know that humans were capable of it, to stare at the undeniable evidence of it, was more than most people could stand. So they looked away and I did too.
On impulse I took the Subte to el Obelisco, changed to Linea B, and rode to the Callao station. From there I walked back east on Corrientes through the district of book and record stores. It didn’t take me long to find a copy in Spanish of Jorge Amado’s Tienda de los Milagros, Elena’s favorite book. I started it a few minutes later over empanadas at a tiny three-table restaurant.
I couldn’t face the thought of a milonga and I didn’t want to go back to my empty apartment. Nobody showed any interest in my table, so I lingered for an hour, reading, then moved to another café for agua con gas, and so on down the avenida, staving off my loneliness with the noise of the crowds until after 9, when the dinner rush filled every restaurant in the district.
Back in San Telmo, I undressed and read in bed until midnight, long past the point where I’d lost the sense of the words and my eyes were closing on their own.
*
I woke to a buzzing noise. I was disoriented and it took me long seconds to realize that someone was ringing for me downstairs. I stumbled to the intercom and said, «¿Quíen es?»