Disappeared
COLIN FALCONER
“A belief in the supernatural source of evil is quite unnecessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.” - - Joseph Conrad.
Prologue
Buenos Aires, Argentine
March 1976
SO MUCH DEATH. And yet it began, as it ended, with life. Two lives.
The doctor looked at them over his glasses, his face grim. “You should prepare for the worst. She has acute respiratory problems and we have noted a cardiac arrythmia. You must pray for her.”
Gabriella stared at him. Someone had scooped out her insides with their fingernails. She folded over, clutched the newborn closer to her breast.
Reuben put an arm around his wife, looked down at the child she held in her arms. She had the softly pink radiance of new life, and huge eyes, brown and liquid. She started to cry, as if she understood the death sentence that had been pronounced on her twin.
Reuben felt the child's fist close around his finger. It was so very tiny. This is all my fault, he thought. He had placed those he loved at risk and now God was showing him that what had been given could so easily be taken away.
“There is no hope?” Reuben asked.
“There is always hope.” The doctor's black-framed spectacles flashed in the strip light. “But I am saying we have done everything we can. Now it is the hands of God.”
He would not meet their eyes. He was young, perhaps younger than Reuben himself. He just wanted to get this done, move on to another patient. “You have one healthy daughter, at least.”
“Can I see her?” Gabriella said.
***
Eva had dewlaps of skin at the back of her neck and her brown skin hung loose. She looked like the blind birthling of a rabbit. Reuben could count her ribs through her skin and the identity tag around her ankle was the size of his wedding ring. How could something so small possibly survive? An oxygen tube had been taped to her cheek. She was crying; an odd, gasping cry, like the barking of a seal.
“Eva,” Gabriella murmured.
Her limbs kicked in distress, her face screwed up in a monkey-wizened grimace of pain. There was a tiny birthmark on her cheekbone; it looked like a tear drop. That means she will be crying all her life, a superstitious nurse had told him. Not if I have anything to do with it, he had said.
Gabriella handed him the twin, Simone. She patted Eva's bottom, crooning to her, and when that did not work she scooped her up in her arms and tried to gentle her but little Eva arched her back and screamed even louder, her face crimson with rage and pain. Her chest heaved. Her lips were blue.
“Put her down,” Reuben said.
Eva kicked more desperately. Her toothless mouth gasped for air, eyes screwed shut.
“Put her down!'
Gabriella obeyed, lowering Eva gently into the crib, then stepped back, a knuckle thrust in her mouth. Her eyes were wet.
Reuben did not know what made him do it. A flash of intuition perhaps, seeing himself as Eva in the pulsing jelly warmth of Gabriella's womb, feeling the spongy softness of her twin, her nudge and embrace. From the very beginning Eva had been not one, but one half of two.
Now, in this first and desperate struggle, she was alone.
He placed Simone beside her sister in the crib. Her left arm somehow draped itself across Eva's shoulder. Almost at once the terrible crying stopped.
***
Two days later the doctor found the Altmans still at vigil over their daughters.
“Eva is responding well to treatment,” he said. “You will be able to take her home in perhaps another two days.”
Reuben did not look up. He was staring at Eva and Simone. They had their thumbs in each other's mouths. “Thank you, doctor.”
He smiled, taking the credit.
“Three days ago you told me she was going to die. It's a miracle.”
“In my experience, children, even small infants, can be very resilient.”
“She stopped crying as soon as we put Simone in the crib with her.”
The doctor's smile irritated Reuben. “Yes, of course'
The twins were asleep. Reuben, the atheist, said a silent prayer to the God he no longer believed in and made a silent vow he would never put them in danger again.
A vow he knew even then that he could not keep.
PART ONE
ARGENTINE: 1974-1976
Chapter 1
Buenos Aires, Argentine
March 1976
OF THE FIFTY OR so guests attending the party at the Altman house that afternoon, Julio Castro was the only one who had taken carnal possession of the mother of the twin girls being paraded for the benefit of family and friends. He was not listening as Reuben's father made his speech or the rabbi put on his shawl to give his blessing. All he could think was: But Gabriella, I loved you.
She looked radiant. She was wearing a dress of white silk with ruffled shoulders, and long white gloves that accentuated the dark honey of her arms and shoulders. A cascade of dark and luxuriant hair fell around her shoulders, framing a face of angelic beauty. A poor girl's bounty. Do you blame her, Julio? You always knew she would do better than you. But every time he looked at her, he felt a pain that burned like an ulcer.
Reuben called him over to the huddle now formed around the parents for the photographs. Gabriella offered him a chill smile. He wondered if she could even begin to guess at the pain she had caused him.
As the flashbulbs popped Julio tried to imagine her naked, but even that memory was gone now, a faded scent. Carmen kissed Gabriella on both cheeks. Reuben clapped him on the shoulder and hugged him. He had on an Italian suit and Gucci loafers and Mar del Plata tan.
Everyone was smiling, even Julio.
Those children should have been mine.
Chapter 2
September 1974
THE HISTORY OF BUENOS Aires can be found in the telephone book: Calderon, Rosetti, Mason, Muller, Levi. Successive waves of immigration from Spain, Italy, Britain, Eastern Europe and Syria have created a hybrid more cosmopolitan than any other South American city. There is a saying in Argentine; the Mexicans are descended from the Aztecs, the Peruvians from the Incas and the Argentinians from boats.
The inhabitants of Buenos Aires call themselves porteños, people of the port, and a porteño, they say, is an Italian who speaks Spanish, lives in a French house and thinks he's British. The historical influence of centuries of British investment is evident. The town clock in front of Retiro station is a replica of Big Ben, a gift from the British government; the red letterboxes could have come straight from Oxford Street, the moulds having been imported from Britain decades before. And there is that most British of institutions, the club; there are polo clubs, rugby clubs and yes, British clubs. In the twilight of the seventies the small expatriate community still ate afternoon tea from Madeira tablecloths, and drank pink gin and spoke English with Home Counties accents.
But that was just the city's patina, for underneath the reality was raw and frightening. Most porteños still held dual nationality from Spain or Italy and their moral code was machismo. An attractive woman still heard sexual proposals shouted across the street. It was regarded as an art form and there was even a name for it; the piropo. The gut temperament of the Argentine did not come from Westminster but from the saddle of the conquistador and the bloody sand of the Colisseum. Inside the polo-playing porteño there beat a savage heart.
By 1974 the great General Juan Domingo Perón was dead. His body lay in state for so long mourners were forbidden from kissing the decomposing corpse. His third wife, a former nightclub singer known as Isabelita, took over as President. The fragile fabric that had held the country in place quickly began to unravel.
For two years Ar
gentine had been racked by strikes, student riots and terrorism. The Montoñeros, the radicalised wing of the Peronist party, had undertaken a bombing campaign. They kidnapped rich businessmen and foreign executives for ransom to finance their activities By that Spring they had raised almost forty three millions dollars.
In response, Isabelita's Minister for Social Welfare organised the Allianza Anticomunista Argentina, the Triple A, thugs in dark glasses and open-necked shirts who cruised the suburbs in unmarked green Ford Falcons with machine guns, conducting their own abductions for revenge or reprisal. The country plummeted towards anarchy.
No one, rich or poor, was safe from the terror. In Munro, a working class suburb, the wife of a factory worker had her baby snatched from her arms as she walked into a grocer's shop. She was forced to empty the meagre contents of her purse onto the footpath to get the child back.
No one was safe. You didn't even know who the enemy was.
***
He had seen her for the first time in one of those dark little bars on Reconquista. She was easily the most beautiful girl in the place, breath-taking in a swirling red dress and black leather shoes. She was smoking a cigarette, which she held between her middle and ring fingers, her left hand poised beside her cheek. Her fingernails were scarlet, her eyes like steel.
She was with another girl, who perhaps on her own might have been thought attractive, but besides Gabriella looked merely plain.
The tango singer was singing in lunfardo, the Spanish-Italian hybrid that was the patois of Buenos Aires. She snarled into the microphone, while a man with long, greasy hair sat beside her playing the bandoneón, a cloth spread across his shiny black trousers. Like all tango songs it was a tale of a man born under a tortured star; a song of treachery and suffering and unrequited love.
Julio watched as a number of young hopefuls like himself approached Gabriella and tried to talk with her, but she ignored them, not even offering them the solace of a glance. He also noticed how, at each approach, her friend bit her lip, her face betraying her envy.
She wasn't so bad, Julio decided. Her low cut black top revealed a good pair of bolsas.
He studied his reflection in the mirror above the dusty bar. He ran a hand through his hair and liked what he saw. He had been told he looked a little like the tennis player, Ilie Nastase. He opened his shirt to the second button, picked up his drink and sauntered across.
“Would you like a drink?”
Gabriella's friend looked up, surprised, and for a moment he thought she was going to spill her tinto over those wonderful breasts. “Me?” The eager look in her eyes saddened him. A certain amount of disdain was more becoming.
He spared not even a glance for the beauty sitting on the other side of the table. “Of course.” He bestowed a smile.
He bought her another tinto, cut with soda water as was the custom, and sat down at their table.
Her name, he discovered with bitter irony, was Carmen. She was a quiet girl with good manners but very shy. She had bruised lips the colour of plums and her fair hair was cut to her shoulders. The crucifix that lay between her breasts made him think of sex and the confessional, which was perfect. There was sweat on her lip.
She told him she worked in a bank in downtown Buenos Aires and shared an apartment in Boca with her friend across the table. Julio heard her name for the first time: Gabriella.
Julio gave Garbielle a nod and a smile and immediately returned his attentions to the unlikely Carmen. But as they talked he watched the beauty from the corner of his eye. He prayed he had not miscalculated.
Indeed, almost every other man in the room must have thought so, for now they descended, thinking that with Carmen entertained, Gabriella would be more welcoming of their advances. But she treated their gambits with the same casual disdain.
He could feel her watching him, wondering why, of all the men in the room, he was impervious to her charm. Beautiful women are so vain, Julio thought. Even when they don't want you, they want you to want them.
After a while Gabriella looked pointedly at her watch and whispered something to Carmen. “My friend wants to go,” Carmen told him. “She has to get up early in the morning.”
“When can I see you again?”
Even then Carmen seemed surprised that he should have asked her. “I'll give you my number.” She took a pen from her handbag and scribbled her phone number on the back of a coaster.
As the two women left the nightclub - men were staring at Gabriella like dogs after raw meat - he guessed every other male in the room thought he was blind. Whatever way it went, there was no harm done. He had rescued Carmen's pride and this Gabriella had learned a lesson in humility.
And as for himself, well ... he was a genius.
Chapter 3
THE CAFÉ TORTONI was an institution in Buenos Aires. Black and white photographs of the café's famous patrons hung on the dark-panelled walls, writers and former presidents like Jorge Luis Borges and Pedro Arumburu. Electric fans hummed on the walls. There was the click of billiard balls from the back room.
Reuben was reading La Naçion. The government had closed down the Montoñeros' newspaper, La Causa Peronista and their leader, Mario Firmenich, had announced in a closed press conference with foreign journalists that he was taking the movement underground. That was bad news; it meant more violence. Two police had already been killed that week in Rosario and Quilmes.
He saw Julio and raised a hand in greeting. He asked the waiter to bring two more espressos.
Julio flopped down into a chair. There were dark rings under his eyes.
“Look at you. You look like shit. What's the matter? Are you in love?”
“Worse. I'm broke.”
“Where did you go last night?”
“To Reconquista. There was this amazing woman.”
Reuben laughed. With Julio there was always an amazing woman.
***
The waiter brought their espressos and the scalding, bitter coffee revived Julio's spirits. This friendship he shared with Reuben always surprised him. Although they were fellow students the circumstances of their lives could not have been more different. Julio was poor, smart and gifted; Reuben's father owned a bank and the best that could be said for him by his university tutors was that he was good at rugby. His fair hair came from his Polish mother; he was not obviously Jewish. His blue eyes were remarkable in a country of brown-eyed criollos and olive skinned Latins.
Reuben had settled among his less privileged fellow journeyman at the university with the diffident and easy-going charm that money can bestow. He attracted women without effort. Old money has a scent that sticks to the clothes, Julio observed. It is like wearing a really good cologne.
When he first met him, Julio defended himself the only way he knew how; by treating him with contempt. Reuben Altman, had never had to struggle like the rest of them, because his father paid him an allowance, had even bought him his own car, a red Chevrolet. Julio had to work nights at a waiter and took the bus everywhere. Reuben had the world at his feet. Julio had a rundown apartment and rent almost two months in arrears.
But Reuben was neither arrogant nor boastful so it made him difficult to dislike. He made jokes about himself; he called himself the Brat from Barrio Norte, or Reuben Getty. He was even generous with his money. Julio told himself - and anyone who would listen - that he was just trying to buy friendship and so he spurned the free drinks at the student hangouts in Boca.
It took a broken nose and two cracked ribs to change his mind about him.
***
Julio's passion, aside from women, was rugby. He played wing for the university first team. That year they reached the final of the inter-university championships and would play off with Belgrano for that year's trophy. But the night before the game their full back was taken to hospital with acute appendicitis. Reuben Altman was drafted in from the reserves as his replacement.
Julio did not even speak to him in the dressing rooms before the game.
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When the match started it was soon clear that Belgrano's game plan was to target the new full back. In their very first attack their five eighth put up a bomb, a high kick aimed towards Reuben, who was standing just five yards in front of the goalposts. Reuben waited patiently underneath it, his eyes never leaving the ball. He took it cleanly on his chest a moment before three big Belgrano forwards hit him. He went down under the ruck.
There goes pretty boy, Julio thought with perverse satisfaction.
After the play moved on Reuben lay unmoving in the dirt then slowly got to his feet and limped back to his position on his own goal line. There was a ripple of applause from the crowd.
Twice more in the first half the Belgrano five eighth put up bombs. Twice more Reuben held his ground, knowing what was coming. He never once took his eyes off the ball. Both times they hit hard, the Belgrano forwards hit him hard, once while he was still in mid air.The third it happened even Julio winced. Reuben got up very slowl, blood streaming from his nose.
Julio experienced a grudging admiration for the spoiled little rich boy.
Late in the game the ball was passed wide to Julio who sidestepped two Belgrano tackles to score. Univeristy won the game 17-12 and Julio and Reuben were chaired off the ground by their team mates as heroes. A bond was forged between them.
Later, when Julio learned that Reuben had played out the game with two cracked ribs and a broken nose, his contempt for the Brat from Barrio Norte disappeared. When Reuben shouted drinks that night, Julio accepted. They got drunk together and afterwards fell laughing down the steps of a bar on Reconquista.
***
“You didn't go to your lecture today,” Reuben said.
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