Disappeared

by Colin Falconer

  “I don't know.”

  “They only have to check, don't they?”

  “You didn't use a pseudonym?”

  “I liked seeing my name there in print.”

  Reuben put a hand on his shoulder. “So much for fame. No one was interested in Nuevo Hombre except the fucking police.”

  “What am I going to do?”

  “If you're really worried, you could get out of the country.”

  “How?”

  “Ask for asylum. Mexico.”

  Julio stared at him. “Mexico?”

  “They have an embassy in Belgrano. You have to go there late at night. Once you're inside the government can't touch you.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  Reuben gave him a smile that could have meant anything.

  “Mexico,” Julio repeated. He stared into his whisky. “Perhaps they won't find the articles.”

  “Perhaps.” Reuben said but he didn't sound convinced.

  “I'm such an idiot,” Julio said. He started to cry. Reuben put an arm round his shoulders. The shadows crept across the room and the night fell on Buenos Aires.

  ***

  “What did he want?” Gabriella asked later, after he had gone.

  “Advice.”

  “I don't like him coming here.”

  He looked up at her, surprised. “Why?”

  “That chanta.” Chanta: a line shooter, a guy who thought he was more important than he really was.

  “Julio's okay.”

  “Sure. Just let him be okay somewhere else.”

  Reuben was bewildered at Gabriella's vehemence. Why did he have to endure her money grubbing brother and her priest, but it was not okay for his friends to come here? But he was too tired to argue about it.

  Too tired and too scared.

  Chapter 17

  WHEN JULIO LEFT the apartment, he walked aimlessly for a long time, finally found himself back in the city, walking along Florida. It was the most famous pedestrian shopping mall in South America, it was said, the offices of Aerolineas at one end and the Harrods department store at the other. He skirted the mud-covered duckboards that had been thrown over a hole in the sidewalk outside a Calvin Klein store.

  He pressed his nose against the glass. This is all most of us will ever do, he thought. Inflation was running at over three hundred per cent and the people crowded into the villas miserias did not have enough food to eat. But Julio could no longer summon his student rage at such iniquities. Tonight the most precious thing on Florida was his own life. He supposed that he and Reuben were not so different after all.

  He wandered for hours, lurching from one whiskería to another, haunted by the sweaty dread of torture and death; he imagined a green Valiant waiting in the street outside his apartment, men dragging him towards a table with leather straps, the final bullet in the head. Not even Reuben could save him now.

  Chapter 18

  DOCTOR EDUARDO ARTIME came out of the bedroom and closed the door gently behind him. He went into the study. Angeli was waiting by the window, looking over the pool and the manicured lawns.

  “A drink, doctor?”

  “Thank you.”

  Artime sat down on the burgundy leather Chesterfield and stretched his legs in front of him, his high forehead creased into a frown. He had been Francesca's doctor since she was a child, physician to her entire family; he could be trusted. He took out a bottle of Chivas Regal and poured two fingers, neat, into a tumbler. He handed it to him.

  He sat down behind his desk. He was aware of an uncustomary disadvantage. He did not like talking to any man, especially on a matter of such delicacy, when he had not seen his file. He would make a point of calling a friend of his in the Ministry and having Artime's dossier sent over.

  “Well, doctor?”

  “There is nothing physically wrong with her.”

  “I realise that.”

  Artime sighed. “She has suffered great loss. She is grieving not only for a child, but also for the loss of her womanhood. This is beyond my scope of expertise I am afraid. I can perhaps refer you to someone who specialises in such things. It can be handled with the utmost discretion.”

  “A psychiatrist, you mean?”

  Artime sipped his whisky, nodded.

  “I don't think so.” Psychiatrists! Subversives, all of them, spreading the filth of that dirty Jew, Freud!

  “Your wife needs help. This tragedy has deeply disturbed the balance of her mind.”

  “Is there nothing you can give her to snap her out of this?”

  “There is no drug I can give her to make her the way she was before this happened, if that is what you are asking. I can sedate her if she is having trouble sleeping, but that is only a temporary solution.”

  “Sedate her? All she does now is sleep.”

  “It would appear she poses no risk to herself. If however ...”

  “Go on.”

  “If she becomes too depressed ... well, you should perhaps ask the servants to watch her closely.”

  “Suicide, you mean?”

  Artime reached into the pocket of his jacket, took out a fountain pen and scribbled a name and phone number into his notebook. He tore out the page and placed it on the coffee table between them. “I have known this woman a long time. If you change your mind about some ... therapy ... she does excellent work. I shall tell her to expect your call. You can be sure of her utter discretion.”

  Angeli picked up the piece of paper. Dr. Mercedes Barrington. An address on Paraguay and a telephone number.

  Artime finished his drink, stood up and went to the door.

  “Antonia will show you the way out,” Angeli said.

  The door closed quietly behind him. Angeli went back to his vigil by the window, his fists opening and closing at his sides in impotent rage. He picked up Artime's empty glass, weighed it in his hand like a ball and then suddenly, and with great force, hurled it at the wall.

  ***

  Julio spent the morning staring at a blank page in his typewriter. By lunchtime the article he was writing on forthcoming preparations for the 1978 World Cup was no closer to being finished than it had been when he arrived that morning. Although only a casual smoker he bought a packet of cigarettes at a kiosco during his lunch break and smoked them steadily through the afternoon. He could not think.

  When he got home to his apartment that evening he turned on the television and stared at it until the end of transmissions. Then he drank steadily until one o'clock in the morning and went to bed.

  But he couldn't sleep. He kicked off the sheets, went to find some aspirin in the kitchen for his headache. He couldn't breathe, felt like he was having a heart attack. He looked at his watch. This was when they came, the death squads, in the middle of the night, they dragged you naked out of bed and threw you into a green Ford Falcon. He heard a car backfire in the next street and he screamed like he had touched a live wire.

  Perhaps he had already left it too late. Perhaps he was already a dead man.

  ***

  A crude cardboard sign hanging on the elevator said: OUT OF ORDER. Reuben slapped the flat of his hand against the wrought iron gates. Por Dios! He did not have the strength for three flights of stairs, not today. He ripped up the cardboard sign and threw it across the foyer. Everything was to shit in this damned country.

  When he reached the apartment he could hear Eva screaming on the other side of the door. I don't have the patience for this. Before the twins were born he would have poured himself a stiff drink, gone into the study, closed the door, wound down slowly. Gabriella knew him well enough by the time they were married to let him alone at the end of the day. But with the twins and he had no peace at home either.

  When he walked in Gabriella was kneeling in the middle of the living room carpet with safety pins in her mouth changing diapers.

  He threw his briefcase on the floor.

  Gabriella looked over her shoulder. “Buenos tardes,” she said, looking at her w
atch. “Or is it buenos noches?”

  “Don't start on me.”

  “Bad day?”

  He didn't answer her. He wished she would make the children shut up. He went to the sideboard, picked up the whisky decanter. He poured three fingers in a tumbler and drank half of it in one swallow, neat.

  If there had ever been any doubts about the junta's intentions, they had been dispelled by what he had seen tonight at the kiosco where he stopped each evening to buy his copies of L”Opinión and the English language Buenos Aires Herald. There were two neo-nazi magazines, Odal and Militia, on the racks. This in a city which boasted the world's seventh largest Jewish community. Never mind he had not set foot inside a synagogue since his bar mitzvah, he understood that he was a target now. As if they didn't have enough to worry about.

  Gabriella watched him, warily. She put the girls in a cot by the window. “Can you watch the girls for me? I'll get dinner.”

  “I don't want any dinner.” He threw himself on the sofa. There was a newspaper lying on the coffee table, a slim four-sheet with mimeographed pages, La Voz del Razón printed across the top in Gothic typeface. He thought it was some grim practical joke.

  “What's this?”

  “It's just a newspaper.”

  “What's it doing here?”

  Simone started to cry. Gabriella picked her up and soothed her. “You don't have to shout.”

  Reuben stood up, held the newspaper in front of her face. “Are you crazy? Where did you get this?”

  “I saw it lying on a chair in a confitería on Florida. I wanted to read it.”

  Reuben could not believe his ears. Didn't she know what had been going on? Was she deaf and blind? “How could you be so stupid? Do know what happens to people who are caught reading one of these?” He took the newspaper into the kitchen, lit the gas burner, and held it over the flames.

  Gabriella watched him, Simone still screaming in her arms.

  “Can't you shut her up?”

  “What's wrong with you?”

  “What's wrong with you? You think it's okay bringing this sort of shit into our home?” He carried the burning newspaper to the sink. “You want the police knocking on our door in the middle of the night?” He had never imagined before this that she took any interest at all in politics. As long as they had a nice apartment, and she had nice clothes to wear and babies to look after, he thought she was happy. She was just a girl from the villas, right?

  The flames licked around his fingers. He dropped the remains into the sink and flushed the ashes down the wastepipe. Then he leaned on the edge of the drainer, exhausted by his own rage. He hung his head. He was not sure how much longer he could keep doing this.

  Eva quietened and Gabriella took a step closer. She put her head on his shoulder. “Please tell me what's wrong?”

  Reuben ran a hand across his face. “Nothing. I'm just tired.” He brushed past her and went into the study, closing the door behind him.

  Chapter 19

  TWO MORNINGS A WEEK, Gabriella left the children with her maid and spent a few precious hours shopping, or having coffee and pastries with friends at a confitería, or, as she had this morning, at a private health club gymnasium on Esmeralda and Alvear. She parked her black Citroën in the street outside.

  It was a cold autumn morning. Julio turned up the collar of his jacket against the bite of the Atlantic wind. He leaned on the bonnet and waited for her.

  After half an hour she finally appeared. She was wearing a black silk track jacket and pants over a pink leotard, and she was carrying a sports bag in her left hand. There were damp sweat patches on the leotard and her hair was wet.

  She was fumbling in her jacket pocket for her car keys when she saw him. “Julio?”

  “Hello Gabriella.”

  “What is it? What's wrong? Is it Reuben?”

  “Reuben's fine.” He nodded towards a bar further up the street. “Can we go some place and talk?”

  “I don't think so.”

  “It's important. Please.”

  “No.”

  “Please. Really. This ... this can't keep.”

  ***

  The steamy warmth and chatter of the whiskería was welcome after the chill of the street. Being this close to her again was disturbing. Her jacket was open and he could see the tan valley between her breasts.

  She saw him staring and zippered the jacket all the way to her neck. “What is this about?”

  The waiter brought two coffees, espressos, with two glasses of water. Gabriella pulled her cigarettes from her sports bag and lit one. He smiled.

  “What's so funny?”

  “You spend all morning in a health club and then you light up a cigarette.”

  She let out the smoke in a long stream and then leaned her elbow on the table, the cigarette poised. A casual toss of the dark hair. He stared at her scarlet fingernails, how did she manage that with two babies to look after? “Don't play with me, Julio. You said you had something important to tell me.”

  He leaned closer. “Are you happy with him?”

  A quick intake of breath. “I'm going.” She picked up her cigarettes and tossed them in her bag. Her hands were shaking. “If you dare show your face at our apartment again I shall tell Reuben everything. Do you understand?”

  “Don't worry. You won't see me again after tomorrow.”

  “You're leaving?”

  “I'm in trouble with the authorities. Some articles I wrote back in my student days. I'm going to apply for political asylum in Mexico.” This was grandstanding, of course. “So, you see, you did make the right choice. Reuben won't ever rock the boat, he knows where his bread is buttered. He can sit up there in his nice apartment and read Molina and Hemingway while the rest of us run from the death squads.”

  “You are so wrong about him.”

  “Would he ever stand up to the government like I did?”

  She leaned in, her expression vicious. She seemed about to say something, changed her mind.

  “Anyway,” he said. “I just wanted to say goodbye.”

  “You're breaking my heart.”

  “I'm sorry, Gabriella. For what happened.” He drained his cup in one swallow and took a mouthful of water, rinsing away the grounds. “I hope you'll think about me sometimes.”

  “I have to go. Goodbye, Julio. I won't wish you good luck because you don't deserve any.” She started to walk off, stopped and turned around. “He's your friend, you know.”

  “I know. And it's killing me.”

  “Cretino,” she said.

  After she had gone Julio ordered a whisky, even though it was not yet even lunchtime. To hell with her, to hell with all of them. To hell with friends, and to hell with women. He would celebrate his last day in Buenos Aires. Tonight he would sleeping inside the Mexican embassy.

  Chapter 20

  REUBEN STOOD AT THE window, holding a cup of café crema. A watery yellow sun filtered into the apartment.He looked down into the street. A senior executive from the Ford motor plant lived in a Spanish villa across the street. Two bodyguards had been hired to protect him and they sat side by side on the wall, smoking cigarettes, their pump action shotguns resting in the crooks of their arms.

  “I may be home late tonight,” Reuben said. “I have a meeting with some bankers from Indamex this evening. I'll probably take them to dinner.” He kept his face turned away for the lie.

  “We hardly see you these days.”

  “I have a bank to run.”

  Gabriella sat down on the sofa to feed Eva. She looked tired; she had been up all night with Simone, as usual. He wondered if there were ever two twins more unalike. All Eva ever did was sleep, all Simone ever did was yell. “Will you call me?” she said.

  “Sure. I'll try not to be too late.”

  He went into the bedroom to finish dressing. It was cold today, so he slipped on a tan camelhair coat. He picked up his briefcase.

  Gabriella gave him a wintry smile when he came out. Did she su
spect? “Have a good day.”

  He kissed her on the cheek. “Goodbye, caro.”

  He went downstairs, got into his car. It was not in his nature to lie easily. Tonight, he promised himself, would be the last time.

  ***

  She will never be as beautiful as my Gabriella, Reuben thought, as she took off her clothes and slipped into bed beside him. No one will ever be as beautiful as Gabriella; but this is what I need right now.

  She straddled him, took his face in her hands and kissed him. He lay there, let her do what she wanted, miserable at his own deceptions. When she pulled him on top of her, he gripped the wrought iron lattice of the bed and rode the waves of his own need, his hands bunched into fists, and as soon as it was over he rolled away from her and bunched the pillow in his fist and wanted to scream.

  “What's wrong?” she whispered. “Reuben, what is it?”

  He couldn't help it, he had to have this. A man has needs. She reached around him, stroked him, kissed his back, his shoulders, his neck. It's all right, Reubenb, she whispered, over and over. It's all right. Por Dios, now he wanted her again! Hating himself, he watched this other man, this stranger, do it to her a second time and then he collapsed into a seamless sleep. Usually he woke within a few minutes, showered and dressed and drove home. But on this night he slept the sleep of the damned.

  Chapter 21

  THE TWINS WOKE Gabriella just before three o'clock for their feed. She stumbled from the bed, still half asleep. She would often wake in the middle of the night and feed both twins in the dark and not even remember the next morning. But tonight something made her switch on the bedside lamp.

  Reuben's side of the bed was empty.