The blows rained down incessantly, all over her body. She preferred this to el submarino. She would rather suffer thousands of blows than suffocate, millions of blows than face la máquina again.
“Names, give us the names! Who was waiting for you in Retiro? Who was your contact? Where are the guns? Where are you hiding the ammunition?”
The man held her head and dealt her a sharp blow to the hollow of her ear with the knuckles of his right hand. Julia felt the world spin. She couldn’t take any more. She had to end this right now, push the man over the edge, and find release in death.
She regained consciousness with the feeling of coming up from a bottomless well, unable to breathe. There was a plastic bag over her head; it was sticking to her face like a suction cup. She could feel herself going mad. She had to die soon. But the man was splashing her with a substance that sizzled as it touched her skin. He was burning her alive while simultaneously beating time to an aria.
Julia lost all control. Unable to die, she shouted out names, dates, and places, everything she kept in her memory, swept along in a paraphrenic hallucination. All the names, all too distant, all already dead, all the fruit of delirium. In her madness Julia clung to a thread, a strained, secret voice from the other side of the mirror, in a world beyond her psychosis, a voice as sharp as a sting: Theo’s voice.
When the man drew a razor blade across her body and began to peel the skin back, magnifying her torment, she finally passed beyond the limits of what she could endure. Her voice was an endless piercing wail. There was nothing left but death. She dreamed she was thrown from a plane into emptiness, and the idea of finally escaping him consumed her as much as her suffering. But death did not come. Merciless, the man subjected her to life.
Then, once again, there was nothingness.
She was sure she was dead, because she could no longer feel her body. Except for the pain, which was now part of her being, and not confined to any particular part of her anatomy. The only thing that lived in her was pain. And, perhaps, that imperceptible quiver in the pit of her belly, like a butterfly fluttering its wings, still clinging to her somehow. Through her nightmare Julia recognized Paola’s distant voice. Then there was renewed absence.
—
She came to several days later, in the very same cell she had escaped from. The same toilet at the end, the same skylight above it. Unable to move, she cried with rage, trying to drink the tears to quench her thirst. For weeks she cried at the realization that she was still there, alive, that she still had a body they could torture.
—
“There’s some good news,” she heard Paola say one day.
Julia didn’t understand.
“El Loco has been transferred. We don’t know where to exactly, but the guards think he’s now in charge of Mansión Seré.”
For the first time since her return, and in spite of herself, words made sense to Julia.
Mansión Seré was a few minutes away from Castelar Police Station. All the members of the organization knew that the air force had turned it into a secret interrogation center. Julia remembered passing it once. It was a curious late-nineteenth-century European-style building planted at the end of a park. The carved stone facade framed large arched windows on the first floor. Wrought-iron balconies decorated the second floor, and the external walls were clad with geometric redbrick shapes, which produced an odd overall effect.
The building had been uninhabited for a long time, and with its front entrance on the corner situated between two wings, it looked like the prow of a ghost ship. Julia recalled once hearing that it had been used for witchcraft ceremonies and that the house was cursed. Whatever the truth, people gave it a wide berth.
Julia shuddered. A madman in a haunted house. Only Paola could think it was good news.
“Have you heard anything about the others?” Julia asked with difficulty.
Paola paused for a moment, taken by surprise. When she answered, she chose her words carefully: “No, there’s no news of Adriana. But I have to tell you about someone else.”
Instinctively Julia slowed her breathing. She was afraid she would learn Theo was dead.
“It’s about your friend Rosa. . . . After you escaped, El Loco moved on to her. She was already delirious when they took her out of here, but when she came back . . . Even that madman’s music couldn’t drown out her screams. She screamed so hard she lost the use of her vocal cords. And then she was transferred. I don’t think she’ll survive.”
Julia was crying. She was ashamed of her unmentionable sense of relief.
22.
THE FATHER
Boreal Autumn
1981
Ulysses had waited for her before going to sleep, sucking on his comforter. Julia sat down on the edge of the bed. This was his favorite moment of the entire day. Nothing else mattered to the child except the pleasure of having his mother all to himself. Julia gave him a little nudge to make room for her. He moved over with a mischievous smile, a corner of his bedsheet in his mouth. He’d had the habit since he was a baby and Julia had let him continue, unable to judge if it was good or bad, normal or the result of trauma.
She thought Ulysses had seemed overexcited after school that day. She had tried to get him to calm down before bedtime, because he had put on his red rubber boots, a sign that he was in the mood for a fight. He hadn’t stopped racing around the little apartment and jumping all over the place. Julia had forgotten all her good intentions and chased him, rolling around on the floor with him and tickling him. Then she’d seized the opportunity to grab hold of him, had rolled him up in a towel and given him a bath, and finally had gotten him into bed. But Ulysses wanted the full bedtime ritual, so Julia had returned with a picture book.
“Mom?”
Tired, Julia tried not to become impatient. She stroked his hair. “What is it, angel?”
“Dad . . . is he dead?”
Ulysses’ question caught his mother off guard. She became distraught as all her own doubts suddenly resurfaced. And yet she should have expected it. During her last visit, Mama Fina had expressed concern about the child. Ulysses had asked Mama Fina several times where his father was, and she’d sensed her answer hadn’t satisfied him. Then Ulysses had taken to dressing up as a firefighter. He wanted to wear boots, even inside the house. In the end he had thrown such a tantrum that Mama Fina had agreed to buy him the red boots he’d set his heart on, even though it was the height of summer.
Ulysses insisted on wearing his red boots to the park, complete with shorts. Julia often took him to the park, hoping he would make friends. But Ulysses would give his spade and bucket to the other children and sit in a corner with his back turned, surrounded by twigs and carefully chosen pebbles. Then he would become absorbed in his solitary war games. The twigs came to life in his hands, flying off into an imaginary cosmos and colliding with the pebbles to his own soundtrack of explosions, crashes, and violent deaths.
“I’ll protect you, Mom,” he had told her the first time he’d dressed up as a firefighter. This consisted of pulling on his red boots and running off, small fists clenched. He would then fight an invisible enemy, launching into a series of flying kicks that usually ended in an equally spectacular fall. Julia had decided it might be a good idea to sign him up for karate lessons. Even when he was asleep, Julia could sense that the child was anxious. Every night he would come into Julia’s bedroom, half-asleep, and climb into bed with her. Sometimes he would be wide awake and sweat soaked after a nightmare.
“I’m scared of the dadashes,” he’d once told Julia while she changed his pajamas.
“What are the ‘dadashes,’ angel?” she’d asked, without expecting a proper answer.
“The dadashes that fly in the sky and go boom!” Ulysses had replied, gesticulating widely.
It had taken a big thunderstorm for Julia to realize that he’d been talking ab
out flashes of lightning.
—
Shortly after their arrival in France in the spring of 1977, while listening to the radio in order to improve her French, Julia had stumbled upon a series of programs presented by a pediatric psychoanalyst that had convinced her of the importance of telling children the truth.
So she had set out to make Theo a familiar figure in Ulysses’ life. Strangely enough, Julia had never sensed in the child any real interest in his father. Even at the age of five, when he started elementary school, he had remained indifferent to the subject. As soon as Julia started talking about Theo, he would run off to play somewhere else, shouting: “I know, Mom!”
Ulysses settled into school without any problems. He was happy to go there each morning, and his teacher, Mademoiselle Leblanc, was full of praise for him. She said Ulysses was an intelligent child, bursting with energy and eager to learn. It was probably in his character that he most resembled Theo, Julia thought. Everything else he had inherited from Mama Fina. People often stopped them in the street to admire his eyes, and passersby would irritate Julia with their sidelong glances, confirming he hadn’t inherited his looks from his mother.
Julia hadn’t anticipated that tonight her little boy would make her relive her own nightmares.
She took a deep breath as she tried to decide how to answer.
“No, your father isn’t dead. He’s alive.”
The child turned toward her and squeezed her cheeks with his little hands. “What does ‘dead’ mean, Mom?”
Now Ulysses was really making her think.
“Dead is when your body stops working.”
“Does it hurt to die?” Ulysses asked, stuffing a huge piece of his sheet into his mouth.
“Not necessarily,” Julia replied cautiously.
“What about me? Am I going to die?”
“We’re all going to die someday,” Julia answered.
“But if I die, who’ll look after you, Mom?”
Julia looked at her son. He was so beautiful. She hugged him close and stroked his curly little head. Ulysses’ wide-eyed gaze was fixed on her.
“I’ll always be here, right next to you, and you’ll always be right next to me,” she told him.
Ulysses kept staring at her. “Why doesn’t Dad live with us?”
Julia hesitated.
“Is it because of me?” Ulysses asked.
“Of course not! Where did you get that idea?”
“That’s what Malo said.”
“That Malo again! He’s a naughty little boy, that friend of yours.”
“He’s not my friend and he’s not little. He’s big!”
“All right, don’t get upset, Ulysses,” she said more gently. “What’s this Malo been saying to you?”
“He makes fun of me at recess.”
“And why does this Malo make fun of you?”
“He asked me what my dad does.”
“And what did you say to him, angel?”
“I told him you were looking for him.”
“So what’s funny about that?”
“Malo said Dad ran away when I was born because he was scared I was so ugly.”
Julia suppressed a laugh. “He’s just jealous.”
“No, he’s not jealous. His dad is a firefighter and he saves people.”
“Okay, well, great. But he shouldn’t make fun of you.”
“He makes fun of me and he takes my snacks.”
“But why didn’t you tell me?”
Ulysses looked as if he was about to cry.
“I’m not scolding you, my angel.”
“He hits me too.”
“Have you told the teacher?” Julia asked, indignant.
Ulysses began to sob.
“Are you scared of him, angel?”
Ulysses shook his head, wiping away his tears.
“How old is Malo?” Julia asked.
“He’s seven!”
“But you know how to defend yourself, Ulysses! You’re as strong as a lion and you do karate! Show me your Choku-zuki.”
Ulysses brought one small fist out from under the covers, extended his arm, and rotated his wrist, sucking his comforter all the while.
“Well, there you are! Tomorrow you can give him a taste of his own medicine.”
“No way! I’m never going to do that,” Ulysses answered, taking the sheet out of his mouth.
“And why not?”
Ulysses replied after a pause: “Because I’m not like that.”
Julia stared at him, stunned. After a while she said, “Well, actually, you’re right.”
Ulysses wasn’t looking at her. Lost in thought, he kept rolling a corner of the sheet between his fingers, until it looked like an arrow tip.
“I’m very proud of my son,” Julia said, as if she was talking to someone else.
Ulysses went on happily sucking the corner of his sheet. He snuggled a little closer to her. Now he was thinking about something much more important.
“Mom . . .”
“Yes, angel.”
“Tell me a story about Dad.”
23.
HAEDO
Austral Spring
1976
The prison gate opened. Paola held her breath and signaled to Julia not to move. She climbed onto the toilet seat and looked out through the skylight.
“A lot of cars have arrived,” she whispered into Julia’s ear. “It must be a general again. The day Adriana and you escaped, it was Angelini who’d come to carry out an inspection.”
“Angelini?” Julia asked. “Commissioner-Major Angelini?”
“Do you know him?”
“No, not really. But I’ve heard of him.”
“He’s the one who’s ordered El Loco’s transfer.”
Her thoughts racing, Julia asked: “Has he been promoted?”
Paola shrugged. “I don’t know. In any case, he’s going. Sosa seemed to say that Angelini had reviewed all of our files. There was total chaos when they found out you’d run away. Actually, I’ve been meaning to ask you: who was the other prisoner?”
“I don’t know. We split up soon after. It was the only cell that hadn’t been padlocked. The man was half-dead; he’d come back from Mansión Seré. They must have thought that even if they left the door wide open, he wouldn’t be able to take as much as a step outside.”
Paola was looking at Julia with a strange intensity.
“You’ve just come back from Mansión Seré too. You know that, right? Sosa told me when they brought you back. So you met El Diablo. . . .”
Julia was stunned. “I don’t know. I don’t remember anything.”
The sound of keys opening the door at the end of the corridor put them on the alert. They adjusted their hoods and waited, holding their breath, leaning against the wall.
El Cabo Pavor’s voice made them jump. He opened the door of their cell and barked: “You, the brunette. Over here. We’re going to finish you off once and for all.”
—
Julia was trembling all over. She found Paola’s hand and dug her nails into it as if to anchor herself there. El Cabo Pavor separated the girls and herded Julia out, spewing a torrent of abuse. He shoved her into the corridor and slammed the cell door shut. Back in the trunk of a car. The journey seemed short. She was sweating profusely despite the cold. Morón Air Base, where the death flights took off from, and Mansión Seré were both near Castelar, although located in different directions. Julia couldn’t hear the sound of jet engines. It could only be an escalation of the nightmare: she was returning to Mansión Seré.
The trunk was opened. The sound of boots, kicks, insults. She was dragged unrelentingly down a set of stairs, then flung into a dark hole. A metal door closed heavily behind her. Then nothing. She waited. The footst
eps moved away. Then there was silence.
She couldn’t see a thing, not even her own hand. She began to feel her way around. It was an airless cell that seemed to be particularly narrow. From where she was sitting, Julia could touch the walls on either side by stretching out her arms. The room felt damp, like a cellar. She couldn’t stand up without her head touching the ceiling. She estimated that the distance between the metal door and the far wall was barely ten feet. There was no water, no toilet. She sat down again on the cold concrete, trying to control the wave of claustrophobia welling up inside her. The absence of light was particularly hard to bear, as was the viscous silence that gnawed away at her brain like ultrasound, preventing her from thinking. She hugged her knees and rested her head on top of them. She had learned to sleep in this position to minimize contact with the cold floor, but now it irritated her wounds, and she heard herself moaning.
Hours passed, and she no longer knew whether she’d been asleep or not, having lost all sense of time. She missed the cell in Castelar. She was thirsty and she needed to pee, but she didn’t dare call out. They were going to torture her again. She had escaped and they were going to finish her off, as El Cabo Pavor had said.
There came another moan. Sure it wasn’t her this time, Julia pinched herself, then dug her nails into her palms. No, she wasn’t asleep. She couldn’t see anything, but she was definitely awake. The sound came again. It was coming from the other side of the wall. Julia pressed her ear up against the damp concrete, trying to locate the source of the groaning.
Somewhere very close by, someone was crying. She felt her way around her cell again, pressing her entire body up against the walls as she listened. The sobbing was coming from her right when she faced the cell door. She took heart and began knocking a rhythm on the wall: three short knocks, a pause, then three long ones. She repeated the sequence several times.
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