Purgatory

by Tomás Eloy Martínez

  ‘Of course, Orsten. I saw it with my own eyes.’

  ‘But I didn’t break it, Charlie. It was an illusion. It never left my hand. Cinema is that same magic raised to the highest power. In your country, Charlie, magic is possible: Martians, the apocalypse, prophets walking on water. Your people believe in all these things, even those that don’t exist.’

  ‘That’s not how it is, Orsten. In Argentina, people want to hear El Gordo Muñoz19 commentating on the matches, cheering the goals. What is a sports commentator supposed to do if there are no matches, no goals?’

  ‘Charlie, a truly great presenter can make and unmake reality as it suits him. Do you really think that this guy Muñoz has never imagined games, missed shots, fouls? He’s seen thousands of football matches in his life. All he needs to do is take the best, the most exciting moments. And if he allows his imagination free rein, he could create unforgettable matches, games that no one could ever play. I’ll make a deal with you, Charlie. I’ll bring my magic to this documentary, you pay me with your magic.’

  ‘I still don’t understand, Orsten.’

  ‘You don’t understand, Charlie? I make the film for you for free, with the best World Cup anyone’s ever seen, and you and your generals will make the disappeared appear.’

  Dupuy stalked out of the house indignantly. In the distance, the lights of Los Angeles looked like fireflies. Sullenly, he contemplated the tree-lined streets, the downtown skyscrapers, the glittering bars. In some dark corner of the city, he thought, Argentinian extremists were hiding. They had injected their poison into the files Welles had piled on his table and flicked through from time to time. It had to be them, he was sure of it, there were cockroaches scuttling everywhere. The World Cup would shut them up, it would wipe them forever from every map, condemn them to perpetual disappearance.

  The following night he took the flight back to Buenos Aires. He was no longer interested in Welles now. He would make the documentary with another director and personally instil the spirit of Riefenstahl into whomever he chose. He would get someone like Mitchum on board, that would be easy. The trip had been useful if only for the fact that it had confirmed that reality is a creation of the senses, something men had known for centuries but constantly forgot. There are no disappeared in this country, the Eel would say, no one is disappearing, and under the spell of his insipid voice everyone denied the obvious; and the more people were disappeared into non-existent dungeons, the less their absence was noticed. I’ll bombard the comandantes’ offices with new ideas, thought Dupuy, I’ll suggest they persuade the people to see the World Cup as something more than just football. They need to think of their team not just as eleven players against another eleven players, but to consider every match as a fight to the death between two countries, between the flag they worship and the flags of foreign countries. We’ll need to come up with images, metaphors, he thought. That was what Welles had said, and though the director would not have liked the idea, in this they were in agreement.

  In less than a month, it will be New Year. That would be an ideal opportunity to test the credulity of people, to see just how effective Orson Welles’s illusions could be. He asked two like-minded journalists to meet him in his office and asked them if they could dress up as Joseph, a carpenter, and his wife, the Virgin Mary. The investigation would take them two days, writing it would take another two. No, La República would not publish the article: it would be circulated only among the elite. He would take charge of placing it with a magazine that sold hundreds of thousands of copies and ensure they were well paid. The fake Virgin Mary was to improvise the clothes they needed to wear and write dialogue for them. He would have to approve the text, it was a confidential matter. That night, the woman rang his doorbell. Her hair was covered by a blue shawl and she was wearing a loose white dress and crude sandals. She had padded herself and looked to be seven or eight months pregnant. Dupuy showed her into his study and offered her a glass of water or fruit juice. ‘I’d prefer a whisky,’ she said. She took off the shawl and draped it over an armchair. She showed him photographs of Joseph wearing coarse canvas trousers and a dark shirt and sandals. He was growing out his beard. ‘This is what we’re going to say: “I’m María, a housewife, and this is my husband José, he’s a carpenter. We’re expecting a baby on December the 24th. Joseph is unemployed. Could you help us?” ’ ‘The beard is good,’ said the doctor, ‘but I think it would be better if you didn’t wear the shawl. You need to be less obvious, to challenge reality, instil the symbolism in the minds of the readers, don’t you think? The dialogue is good. And José can carry a carpenter’s tool of some sort, a ruler, a saw so people don’t think he’s a tramp.’ ‘Don’t worry, Doctor,’ the woman said, and finished the glass of whisky before she left.

  José came to see him a week later. ‘We’re exhausted,’ he said. ‘We’ve been to Victoria, to Carapachay, to the railway works in Remedios de Escalada, and having failed there, we tried our luck in Córdoba. We were turned away everywhere we went. The place where they treated us best was a filthy dive bar – they gave us food, rancid cheese and stale bread. There were two drunks in the bar who made fun of María. “So you’re going to give birth on the 24th, on Christmas Eve? Who do you think you are, the Virgin? I could easily believe you’re a virgin, you fat fuck. Get out of here.” María, who’s a devout Catholic, said, “God forgive you, how could you take me for Our Lady?” and that’s when things went sour. I couldn’t convince her to stay. I finished the article myself and have brought it to you, Doctor, just to fulfil our obligations.’ ‘Does the article explain everything exactly as it happened?’ asked Dupuy. ‘Word for word,’ said José. ‘Neither of you understands anything. Go back and write it again. Write about people being helpful, say they invited you to eat with them, offered you work, gave you clothes for the baby. I’ve already earmarked seven pages in the magazine for the piece. Just because you failed in reality doesn’t mean I have to fail.’

  One of the admiral’s henchmen had infiltrated the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. It was at a meeting in the Church of Santa Cruz and as he left he kidnapped one of the mothers and two French nuns. The following day, the papers said that the Montoneros had claimed responsibility for the kidnappings and were demanding ‘the release of 21 subversive delinquents’ for the safe return of the hostages. It sounded like one of Dupuy’s ruses, but the doctor was insulted that these copycats had been so sloppy in their work. He put in a furious call to the admiral. ‘What idiot came up with the idea that the Montoneros would refer to their own comrades as delinquents?’

  Did he have to do everything himself? Unless he was absolutely meticulous, even his best plans seemed foolish. In a speech he had not had the opportunity to read, the Eel rashly admitted that there were four thousand extremist prisoners. He spoke without thinking, that’s far too many, thought Dupuy. He wrote the script for a fake documentary showing military operations against subversive troops who were launching attacks on the northern border using Soviet-issue missiles and mortars. In the film, they would be repelled by the military and mown down on the battlefield. National cinema had already created battles in Savage Pampas and The Gaucho War which people still remembered. It would cost nothing to breathe new life into epics like this and use them to justify the four thousand dead. He took the plan to the admiral, who was against the idea. ‘Forget about the Montoneros, Doc. We don’t need them any more. We need to show the people that Argentina has enemies with bigger firepower, ruthless despots determined to steal parts of the country from us.’ ‘Stroessner?’ Dupuy ventured. ‘How could you think such a thing?’ said the admiral. ‘The President of Paraguay is an ally. I was thinking of someone less cunning. A brute like Pinochet, for instance. The Argentine people don’t like him, and the Chileans will be a pushover.’

  Welles, thought Dupuy, had not been so wrong after all. The people of Argentina will believe what they’re told and the newspapers and the radio will say what they’re told to say. Even an illiterat
e like Pol Pot has almost succeeded in creating the reverse situation in Cambodia: a Communist peasant society. What’s stopping us from marching forward on our crusade (he loved the word crusade), doing the same thing, but under the banner of the one true God?

  Welles had made a deeper impression on him than he had realised. His editorials in La República were no longer starchy analytical articles where military chiefs and businessmen could read between the lines. He now rarely quoted Descartes, Leibniz and St Augustine, preferring Eliphas Lévi and Madame Blavatsky. He did not mention Horangel’s20 astrological predictions, though he read them. He talked about symbolism, about the influence of the stars, the relationship between numbers and letters, and, which was more astonishing, even the comandantes took his economic predictions seriously.

  Alone in the house, Emilia wandered through the rooms where the things her mother had left behind were fading, the cane, the bed jacket she wore when she got up, the bedpan, the television with its still-flickering grey images. She visited her at the old people’s home twice a week and every time she left her mother sitting out on the terrace with the other old people she was racked with guilt. As a teenager she had been fascinated by the things she didn’t know and drew maps as though she were writing poems: maps of imaginary cities that existed only in books, or of countries wiped away by the dust of history. Now, none of this mattered: as an adult, she had moved from one disenchantment to the next. She spent her days between itinerant maps which disappeared even before they were fully formed.

  When the nurses brought her mother out onto the terrace, Emilia would stroke her hair and tell her stories. She talked to her about the first time she had met Simón in the cellar bar where Almendra were playing songs that now sounded dated, sang the lyrics to her in a voice so soft the nurse could not hear, recounted the plots of movies they had watched together and of which Emilia remembered only fleeting images. She talked to her as she might to a doll, or to the daughter she had never had. And as she talked, she stroked her hands while her mother stared into the distance with her beatific Mona Lisa smile. Sometimes, she seemed to wake up, she would echo ‘Ah yes, Simón, your Simón’, but they were just sounds, like the first babblings of a baby. She was wasting away, if it were possible for an old woman who was already no more than a shadow of herself to waste away.

  One of the doctors advised Emilia to take Ethel back to the family home from time to time. He explained that sleeping in their own bed, being in a familiar place surrounded by people who love them, could work miracles for people suffering from mental illness. ‘There’s no chance that she will ever be who she used to be,’ said the doctor, ‘the damage is irreversible, but if anything is going to help her, it’s love.’

  ‘Baruch atah Adonai,’ muttered Ethel.

  ‘Blessed is the Lord,’ translated the doctor. ‘Your mother is a very religious person. She repeats that prayer several times a day.’

  ‘That’s not the way she used to pray. Could she have converted?’

  ‘How could she have? She’s in no fit state. She calls on God the only way she knows how, the way she remembers.’

  ‘Taking her home would create problems. We’ve given away most of her clothes. My sister is about to get married. I’m out working all day and so is my father.’

  ‘Think about it, discuss it among yourselves. Three days, maybe a week every now and then would be enough. And don’t worry about the clothes, she doesn’t need much.’

  That night, Emilia raised the subject with her father and Chela who let out a scream. ‘Who is this doctor? Is he crazy? Has everyone gone crazy? Didn’t you tell him that I’m getting married and that if she’s here it’ll be a disaster?’

  Her father considered the idea. He dropped by the sanatorium only rarely, claiming that it upset him to see the ruined shell that was the woman to whom he had given his name. He asked if they bathed her every day, whether they were feeding her properly, then he left. She had never heard him say a loving word. He loathed expressions of affection, or maybe (thought Emilia), he used them only when saying things he did not truly believe.

  ‘I told the doctor everything,’ Emilia said. ‘Mamá won’t be coming back until after you’re married. And she won’t be coming back permanently. She just needs to come home from time to time for short periods. You won’t even know she’s here. I’ll look after her, and if I’m not here, we’ll bring in a nurse.’

  She was still working as a cartographer for the Automobile Club. She earned a pittance but enough for her to live modestly without having to rely on her father. If she had known at the time that every month Dupuy deposited a sum equal to her salary into her account, she would have thrown it back in his face. When she was asked to work overtime, she gratefully accepted even though the money was pitiful. She was making plans to go out into the world to search for Simón. She would close her eyes and indicate a point on the map, telling herself that this was the place where her husband was hiding, the place from which he would return. She was hoping for a chance revelation, just as Bible readers hope to find illumination in the first line they happen on.

  Contrary to what Emilia expected, Dupuy did not reject the doctor’s recommendation out of hand. He said that he would think about it and make his decision the following evening. His daughter never knew who he spoke to during those hours, nor how he came to the conclusion she least expected. Her only thought was that, at a time marked by frequent social gatherings, single men were the subject of gossip. More than once, the Eel had said that though he sympathised with Dupuy over Ethel’s illness, nobody understood why he didn’t simply take his daughter to such parties. ‘Emilita is a treasure, we’ve known her since she was a little girl, and she’s a pleasure to talk to. Don’t hide this precious jewel away from us, Doc,’ the admiral agreed. ‘Between us, we’ll teach her to enjoy life.’

  Dupuy did not believe his daughter worthy of quite so much attention unless it seemed she was basking in his reflected glory. However, it was not a bad idea to be seen at Mass with her, to take her to the theatre. The comandantes were right. Unaccompanied men aroused suspicion, and the Church would not give its blessing to him remarrying while Ethel was still alive. Emilia was a jewel, why not show her off?

  He summoned both his daughters and told them that he would not object to their mother coming home to stay occasionally only if Emilia would agree to move back into the family home to look after her, and give up the fantasies that had her languishing in San Telmo and agree to be his escort when he asked her.

  Chela became alarmed.

  ‘Don’t worry about anything. Your wedding comes first – after that we can think about bringing her home. As your sister says, there’s no reason not to, it’s only for a couple of days a month. I can’t see why you would have a problem with it since you won’t be living here.’

  He turned to Emilia.

  ‘But I don’t want any problems either. While she’s in this house, Ethel will have to stay in her room like the vegetable she is. If I see her or hear her, I’m sending her straight back to the home.’

  ‘What about my job?’ asked Emilia.

  ‘You’ll have to gradually give up working. Make up your mind: either you look after your mother, or we go back to the way things were.’

  ‘But a nurse—’ she managed to protest.

  ‘I’ve thought about this carefully,’ Dupuy interrupted her. ‘I am not prepared to tolerate strangers in my house.’

  What Emilia had not expected was the trap she had set for herself. Love and good intentions had forced her to trade one cell for another; this one, her father’s, was the bitterest.

  She would forget her troubles by burying herself in her work. She needed every penny she could make, needed it desperately so that one day she would be able to leave. She was a married woman, an adult. She had to throw off this yoke. She no longer even knew how to find her way around this city, a city she had once moved through heedlessly with Simón on her arm. What had been a street two years bef
ore was now fences and rubble; beneath the houses tunnels opened up, and in some places the Buenos Aires of the past seemed to have come back to life, watering troughs, horse-drawn carriages and hitching posts, things she believed had disappeared forever. Almost daily the Automobile Club redrew the maps of whole neighbourhoods, scarred by a network of motorways that was being built. She told them that she would have to take care of her mother and that soon she would only be able to work part-time. A number of areas needed to be remapped and she was lucky to be assigned Parque Chacabuco, where her mother’s nursing home was. She would take her time, visit her every now and then, and gradually tell her the good news. ‘Mamá, we’re going to be sleeping in the same room again, like we used to,’ she would tell her, ‘I’m going to take care of you again.’ She had to make the most of these conversations about the world outside, which was changing so quickly.

  Buenos Aires was different now: the newspapers called it progress, but the only progress Emilia could see was the steady advance of misery. The mayor had refugees forcibly evicted from the makeshift shanty towns. If they resisted, he had the electricity and water cut off. Tanks would burst through the walls of houses, rolling implacably over mattresses, stoves, half-cooked meals. She would not tell her about that, she would tell her simply that almost nothing was where it had been.

  The area assigned to Emilia was a network of short streets and narrow tree-lined alleys: a corner of the city condemned to death. In a few short months, cartographers would have to draw their maps, fill in the blank spaces currently bounded by dotted lines. It was Monday. The heavy rains of the previous week had alleviated the sweltering January heat. Emilia got off the bus and walked across the park. She walked self-consciously, knowing that she was being watched but unable to tell from where. Perhaps from the porches, the balconies, the roofs of the houses. Her father always said that the best watchmen were those who never let themselves be seen, and she saw no one but she was certain she was being watched, she could feel eyes boring into the back of her neck. She stared at the little map she took from her bag. The alleys spread out in a fan on one side of the park: their names – Science, Good Order, Progress, Commerce – the last embers of positivism. She took out her drawing pad and prepared to makes notes. A sudden noise startled her. Behind her, a huge wrecking ball smashed through the wall of a nearby house, throwing up a cloud of dust and debris that settled on a family having lunch on a piece of rubble-strewn waste ground. The table was set: a chequered tablecloth, ruined milanesas covered with gravel and brick dust. The man sitting at the head of the table got up and eyed Emilia warily. ‘Hey, señora, señorita,’ he said, still chewing, his mouth enlivened by a single yellow tooth, ‘are you here from the council about the census?’ ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ said Emilia. ‘I’m making a map of the area.’ ‘Oh, you’re from the land registry, it’s the same thing. Could you find out for us when they’re going to pay for the expropriation? They said they were going to send the money today, said there would be vans to take us to a new house, but nothing’s happened, we’ve been waiting since first thing this morning. Our neighbours here left last week’ – he threw his arms wide, gesturing to the waste ground – ‘and those behind here have already been paid. You can see how we have to live. It’s hell. Some people were lucky, they were given a month to leave. They tell me it could have been worse. An old woman in the Pasaje de las Garantías dropped dead when she saw the trucks rolling in. Fifty years she’d lived in the same place, cooked her meals in the same kitchen; she was the last to leave, she stayed behind to watch the collapsing roofs, the chicken coop, the plants in the garden.’