by Cora Siré
“It could have and did, repeatedly.”
“Not to my family. The point is — ”
“What if you later find out your sister was brought to that prison, over there across the river? Where she was last seen or heard screaming as they tortured her for no reason other than someone didn’t like her, put her on some list, picked her up and — ”
“I see what you’re getting at, but — ”
“As a lawyer, you know it’s illegal, detaining people without cause, without habeas corpus. The years pass, your sister’s gone, you wait for some explanation or maybe you give up. Your parents cannot. Their daughter was last seen in that prison. For them it’s a sacred reminder…in lieu of a grave.”
“Isn’t that what your memorial is supposed to represent?”
“To tear down La Cuarenta would be the final negation that she existed.” Flaco turned from the window to face the lawyer. “You work for Pindalo. Your job is to promote the project. But you’re paying with your soul, understand? I can’t stop the bulldozer. Pindalo’s taken care of that. So what the hell are you doing here?”
Javier Martinez left in a hurry and Flaco took a sedative. He called Sara into his office, explained his focus was on preparing for the unveiling of the sculpture and asked her to convene his grad students for a meeting. Then he walked over to the studio in the faculty of fine arts. Inside, the apprentices were bent over marble panels. Luis Corva moved between them, verifying the chiselling of names. Flaco caught his attention and they stepped into the hallway. “How’s it going?”
“It’s difficult to keep them consistent.”
“On time?” Flaco had been pressing to finish the work by the Day of the Dead.
“Should be.”
Flaco told him about the rector’s orders.
Corva cursed. “My works are in sculpture gardens all over the place. New York, Frankfurt, Buenos Aires and Lima…this was supposed to be different.” He pointed out that the piece was specifically designed for the space in front of the prison.
Flaco suggested they walk to the proposed site behind the Humanities building.
Corva refused. “You should have worked this out before I even started the piece.” The blame hit Flaco squarely on the chin. He let the sculptor spew venom at him, didn’t mention that if they defied the rector and tried to unveil the piece across the river, it would be torn down within the hour. Then he convinced him, “Just take a look at the space, man.”
They reached the expanse of lawn bordered by trees. Across the river, men with pickaxes hacked at the prison walls. Flaco tried to invent the merits of the site, that it would be visible from the casino’s windows, that generations of students would appreciate the work. “And for now, yours will be the only sculpture out here.”
After another sedative he met with the students, telling them straight. “The casino’s on. Nothing can stop it.” They were furious, arguing that Flaco had capitulated too easily, accusing him of never really supporting opposition to the land development in the first place. They asked to continue the meeting without him. Before he left, he spoke of his plans for the unveiling of the sculpture. He had to beg for their help, extracting commitments from each of them. Even Sara balked. In the end, the only reason they agreed to help, he figured, had to do with the upcoming end of semester exams and term papers. They wanted good marks.
In the evening, Flaco left the campus for Barrio Norte. He should have called first but he seemed to have lost control over time, was acting only on impulse now. His anger at the rector, compounded by the stinging fury of Corva and his students, festered into self-recrimination. He drove La Vieja over to Alma’s, hoping for consolation. As he parked the car he noticed Eduardo’s man in a black Renault, well positioned to observe the comings and goings at Alma’s house. He felt the security guard’s eyes on his back as he entered the gates. Eduardo had delivered and so had he. His brother was probably the only person in Luscano not disappointed in him today.
Alma opened the door, wearing a sleeveless top and shorts, and led him to the courtyard where Gabriel sat on a chair smoking. Alma left for the kitchen. Newspapers and books were scattered on the tiles. Flaco had expected to find Roma here, resented the comfort with which Gabriel lounged in his wicker chair. He sat down and reached for one of the books on the coffee table, a collection of poems by Delmira Agustini. “She’s working?”
“Yes, I am.” Alma returned with three demitasses on a tray.
Flaco picked up the porcelain cup. It reminded him of Hannelore, delicate but strong enough to contain the steaming liquid. Alma described her plans to visit the archives in Montevideo, apparently with Gabriel. This unsettled Flaco but what could he do? He spoke of the unveiling and asked them both to attend. “Saturday, November first. We’ve worked out everything except the music.” He looked at Alma. “Emilio mentioned you’ve been working on a piece.”
“My father’s composition. He set my poem to music. But I don’t — ”
“You don’t have to read it. Emilio says he found a singer.”
Out of nowhere, she pointed at Flaco, raising her voice. “Remember, Flaco?” She clenched her hand into a fist as if she wanted to punch him. “Remember what happened the last time I let you talk me into something my gut was telling me not to do?”
“You’re going to kick a guy when he’s down?” he asked, slumping into his chair. “Hijo de mil putas.”
Gabriel pointed to the scar on Alma’s shoulder. “It’s the ones that did this to her. They’re the sons of whores.”
Palms on his forehead, Flaco rocked, the wicker chair creaking under his weight.
It was clear to Alma that Flaco was having some kind of meltdown. He looked terrible, like he hadn’t slept or eaten properly for days. But she had to make him understand. Night was falling. She should turn on the lights but she preferred this shadowy scene, with Gabriel nearby for moral support.
Alma conveyed the cost of writing her testimony. Instead of working on the Delmira Agustini book, she’d lost weeks, her mental energy focussed on six days in January 1991. “And for what? Do you think it’s going to bring back the disappeared?” She didn’t wait for answers, kept talking, telling about her encounter with Patrón Pindalo. She was glad when Flaco responded with alarm, was aware that Gabriel seemed stricken. Too bad. She described the guilt she felt that others had died while she had survived. The residual fear of facing the man who’d tortured her and the dirty feeling of being an informer, even as she understood the importance of bearing witness. “Those responsible, dispensing the orders, they’ll never be brought to justice. They’re too powerful, Pindalo and his cronies.” The old man’s words had stayed with her. “It could happen anywhere.” It could and did and what made Flaco think Luscano was special?
Alma hurled the blame and anger at Flaco until, exhausted by it all, she simply said, “I have to return to Montréal with something to show for my sabbatical.”
Flaco nodded, his face grim. “I promise you if Lalo Martín fails, and I have never before admitted this possibility even to myself, I’ll find a way. We could publish your testimony, shame Luscano and — ”
“You don’t give up.” Alma stood up. “Flaco, it’s my writing, my words. You don’t decide. You’ve got the Molino name behind you. You’re as untouchable as Pindalo, yet you have the nerve to pressure me.”
Alma left the courtyard. She didn’t know what Gabriel and Flaco were thinking, didn’t really care. She rummaged around the kitchen, found a glass, a bottle of water left by Roma in the fridge.
The two were still frozen in their chairs when she returned with a glass of water.
Alma held the glass out. “Should I throw it in your face?”
It was that teasing voice that brought him out of it. “Just try, chica.”
They heard a commotion in the hallway, the rattling of tins and bottles, and Roma came barrelling out
. “Flaco, you’re here too? Jesus, Alma, you don’t rest. Merluza tonight, fresh from the docks.”
24
Alma sat on the bed, typing on her laptop. A few rays of sunshine dappled the duvet cover. Through the open window she heard the gate creak and footsteps. It was just before eleven. Roma had left for work an hour ago. She listened, heard a soft tap-tapping on the door. Alma slid off the bed, crawled along the floor towards the window. This was the time the mailman usually came. Maybe he was bringing a postcard from Todos Santos. Nobody, not Roma, her drummers or Gabriel, could fill the space in the house left by Xenia. No sound of letters being dropping into the mailbox. The person knocked again, loudly. Nothing like the sound of pounding fists. Flaco had said someone from his brother’s security firm was guarding the house, but still. Kneeling by the window, she looked out and caught a glimpse of a blue shirt, short hair over the collar. Alma stood up, brushing the dust off her knees, annoyed at herself for her paranoia.
She opened the door. “I was just in the area and thought I’d drop by.” César stood on the front step. On the street, a man got out of a black car and sauntered to the gate. “Everything all right?” he asked. Alma nodded and he retreated.
César handed Alma a business card belonging to Lalo Martín. Scrawled on the back with his signature, “Please accompany César immediately.”
The PFL occupied a misshapen edifice, once a colonial building to which several distinct wings had been added over the decades. Inside the entrance, a metal detector was manned by two armed guards in blue jackets. César showed them a laminated card, then led Alma past the throng milling by the wicket, where people waited to pick up their cédulas with an aura of hopelessness, as if they’d been there for days. The shabby corridors and the elevator smelled of La Cuarenta, a sour, institutional blend of bleach, sweat and something scorched, gun powder or the static of electrical currents.
Alma followed César down a long hallway. In the distance, a group stood quietly conversing, Flaco and Lalo Martín among them. Flaco’s face was flushed. When he saw Alma approaching he crossed his arms over his chest as if to contain himself, leaving Lalo Martín to speak. The Special Prosecutor explained that an interrogation was in process, that he wanted Alma to witness it, that he’d asked Flaco to come for moral support.
Why then did Flaco refuse to look at her?
Lalo Martín turned to César. “His lawyer showed up an hour ago. They had a private meeting. We’re just getting started.” He opened the door to a narrow room with metal folding chairs facing a one-way window. On the other side of the glass was a larger room, where Carlos Cruz, in his striped polo shirt and trousers, sat hunched at a table. His lawyer, in a dark suit and tightly knotted tie, sat next to him, relaxed yet focussed.
Across the table, a woman asked questions. “Why did you leave the military?”
“I had my fifteen years so I retired.”
“When was that?”
“In 2001, end of May.”
“What was your last assignment?”
“An office job at the base in Campo Gitano.”
The interrogator asked him to describe his duties. She was surprisingly young, her demeanour courteous. She did not take notes, relying on the recording device set on the table between her and Carlos Cruz. He gave bland descriptions of administration, paperwork, submissions.
Hearing his voice transmitted over the speakers into the room where Alma sat between Flaco and Lalo Martín was more than jarring. Her body stiffened, and she couldn’t settle into her chair. Following him around all these weeks, she’d never heard him speak. That nasal voice brought back the moment of her interrogation in La Cuarenta. Now it was his turn to answer questions. He had a lawyer to support him. She’d had nobody.
The interrogator asked about his previous job and the one previous to that, getting him to describe the months overseeing a remote border crossing into Paraguay, then a year at a munitions storage facility up the coast. His answers, although precise on dates and chronology, provided few details on his actual duties. Alma waited impatiently for the years of service to pass. She understood the reverse chronology, go for the most recent memory and work backwards, but wondered why the interrogator remained so passive, why she didn’t call him out when he skated over his precise roles, titles and promotions. It was tedious listening to his monologues between the questions, his voice precisely as she remembered. When they reached 1995, the last year of the junta, the interrogator asked where he’d been stationed.
“Here in the capital.”
“Your duties?”
“Transportation.”
“To and from La Cuarenta?”
He shook his head as if puzzled by the question. “Vehicles and logistics. In 1993, the army purchased a new fleet of tanks and jeeps. I was trained to operate them and then responsible for delivering them to various bases and training others.”
“And before that?”
“I was stationed in Government House, a staff job reporting to General Galtí. He travelled a lot. I accompanied him.”
“When did you start?”
“1992…early in the year.”
“And before that?”
“I was in Paraguay on assignment for most of 1991.”
“For?”
“Training.”
“What kind of training?”
The lawyer responded. “Luscano’s armed forces had a long-standing contract to train their personnel with the Paraguayan corps. Señor Cruz attended a program in the base near Asunción.”
The answer defied logic. Hadn’t Flaco said relations between Luscano and Paraguay weren’t exactly congenial? A good actor, Cruz let his lawyer answer the difficult questions. He never once glanced at the opaque window. He was careful. He knew he was being watched.
“What kind of training?” the woman repeated.
“Weapons, light vehicles, logistics.” Carlos Cruz shifted in his chair.
“Who else was with you? From Luscano.”
“My detachment.”
“Their names?”
The lawyer smiled. “You’re asking Señor Cruz to remember details from over a decade ago.”
The woman persisted. “You don’t remember a single colleague?”
“I was moved around so much. The army does this. It — ”
“You’re unable to name anyone from Luscano who attended the training in Paraguay with you?”
“No. I mean, yes, I am unable.”
“And the names of the Paraguayans?”
“Don’t remember.”
“When did you return?”
“December, just before the holidays.”
“Señor Cruz,” the lawyer said, “was reassigned to the General’s office.”
“Yes, I know,” the woman said. “It’s the preceding months we are discussing. Where was he in January 1991?”
“In Paraguay. Look, this is a waste of — ”
“And yet he can’t name a single colleague.”
“Evidently not.”
He lied so convincingly, Alma’s anxiety deepened into alarm. She turned to Lalo Martín. “You know he’s not telling the truth.”
“I do and so does she.”
The interrogator changed tack and went back through the officer’s career, his training, when and where he’d enlisted in 1986, at the age of twenty. He was just one year older than Alma and this realization came as a shock, that someone roughly her age had assaulted her, was capable of torture. The interrogator went back to the period of the junta, repeating her questions. Carlos Cruz answered with almost the same words as the first time. He was masterful. The obfuscation continued until the lawyer called for a lunch break. A guard escorted Carlos Cruz back to a cell.
Alma turned to Lalo Martín. “He’ll never admit that he was in La Cuarenta.”
“We’ll catch him
in some lie sooner or later.” He explained that the woman posing the questions was the best of his staff trained in the psychological tactics of interrogation. “She’s gauging his suggestibility, how willing he is to accept and act on suggestion, and his weaknesses, so that she can exploit them later. Deception,” he said, “is essential. Allow him to tell his lies so that we can use the improbable statements later. Then scare him into talking by disclosing the consequences of his lies. Fear makes people talk. But he’s not afraid yet by the look of it.”
César opened a notebook. “You’re sure that’s him?”
“The man who interrogated me at La Cuarenta is the same person being interrogated.” Alma paused. “He asked me a series of questions about my identity, then proceeded to extinguish his cigar on my shoulder. I recognize his face, the mole on his forehead, his voice and height. Carlos Cruz was in La Cuarenta on January 11th, 1991, the day before my release.”
César nodded, writing quickly, then handed her the notebook. Alma verified that he’d recorded her words verbatim.
Lalo Martín and César decided to return to their offices and research ways to discredit the alibi. Alma asked if they’d be continuing the interrogation after lunch. “We have to question him quickly,” Lalo Martín said, “until we have the legal grounds to detain him. But you don’t need to be here.” All they’d wanted from her was confirmation of the identity of Carlos Cruz. She tried to argue, but he refused. “It’s best if you leave now.” He asked Flaco to wait with Alma in the room to ensure she wouldn’t encounter Carlos Cruz in the hallway. Inside the interrogation room, the lawyer was working his cell phone. He glanced at the woman writing notes. “You’ll have to release him, you know that.”
“How many are you representing?” she asked.
“I imagine we’ll be seeing a lot of each other.”
The institutional stench stayed with Alma long after they left PFL headquarters. Flaco convinced her to join him for lunch at a nearby café. They both ordered pasta but Alma managed only a few forkfuls. The grease on her plate resembled the sheen on Carlos Cruz’s balding head. Flaco chewed quickly. She’d never seen him so tense.