The Blue Line

by Ingrid Betancourt

  She looked up and realized she had nearly reached the monument. A large banner concealed the faces of some young people who had climbed on top of it and were hoisting others up. She looked around for a familiar face. A young couple, hand in hand, forced their way through the gathering, heads down. Julia caught hold of the young girl’s arm and followed in her wake; others did the same behind Julia. They came to a stop right under the banners in front of the Casa Rosada.

  About a hundred feet away, in the thick of the crowd, a woman with curly red hair was giving orders. Julia recognized her instantly: it was Adriana. The woman began to shout out her instructions in a rousing voice. There could be no mistake. Julia let out a cry before she had even made up her mind to approach the woman. Maria turned and their eyes met. They rushed unthinkingly toward each other. They hugged for a long time as if in shock, not smiling or crying.

  There was no way they could stay among the crowd. Holding hands tightly, they searched for a way out. Once outside the square, they walked slowly, arm in arm, gradually starting to speak.

  “And Theo?” Julia murmured, her hand tightening in Adriana’s.

  “I don’t know, sweetheart,” Adriana answered after a long silence. “I mean, I don’t know if he’s dead or alive. It’s a long story and a sad one, because it’s taken us so long to meet again. Do you remember the evening we last saw each other?”

  “I could describe it by the second.”

  “After you left, I had a tough time of it with Theo. We walked for two days before reaching Father Miguel’s.”

  “How come I never heard about it?”

  “Father Miguel was arrested soon after we saw him, then killed at ESMA.”

  Julia was no longer sure she wanted to hear the rest.

  “He was very helpful. He gave us the envelope with the money. He hid us in the sacristy of a church near the port.”

  “Did you go to the Donizetti?”

  “Yes, I spoke with Captain Torricelli while Theo waited for me in the church. He was in terrible shape. A sailor had to practically carry him on board.”

  “And then? Did you leave?”

  “We got on secretly an hour before departure. We were hoping you would already be on board.”

  “But I never made it.”

  Adriana and Julia walked until they reached a public square, then went to sit on one of the benches. Julia hugged her knees to her chest. The air was still muggy, despite the breeze rustling the treetops. Children were playing soccer along the paths. The ball flew into the air after a kick and landed between the two women’s legs. They laughed as they tried to send it back. The tussle for the ball moved closer, at one point encircling their bench. Julia and Adriana swung their feet out of the way and waited for the tornado of children to pass.

  —

  “Theo stayed on the ship.”

  “Theo stayed on the ship,” Julia repeated in a hoarse voice. “What about you?”

  Adriana sighed, propping her chin up with her hands.

  “What about you?” Julia asked again.

  “I couldn’t.”

  “You couldn’t what?”

  “I couldn’t leave without you.”

  Julia shook her head slowly, tears filling her eyes.

  “No, don’t tell me. . . .”

  “Yes. I got off a few minutes before the ship sailed.” She ran her hands over her face. “I was scared to death. I didn’t know where to go, and every time I saw a uniform I panicked. . . .”

  Julia’s eyes were dull and unseeing. “And . . . ?”

  “I don’t know. That was the last time I saw him.”

  “You got off and he stayed on the ship.”

  “Yes, that’s it. He was very sick, Julia.”

  “Yes.”

  “Not just physically. He was devastated by the death of his brother.”

  “What? But he couldn’t have known that Gabriel was dead!”

  “He knew everything. Who had tortured Gabriel, where, how, every single detail. He had become obsessed with it.”

  Adriana’s knuckles were white where she gripped the edge of the bench.

  “He also thought your baby was dead.”

  “He had no way of knowing.”

  “I’d told him . . . how you . . . how they . . .”

  The boys went past again carrying the ball, taking turns spinning it on one finger.

  “But still!”

  “It was what I thought too. It was impossible for the baby to have survived, Julia.” Her face was twisted with sadness.

  They reached for each other’s hands, refraining from saying any more, and watched the children leaving.

  “When did you change your name?”

  “Very soon after Theo’s departure. I was terrified. You can imagine. And when I finally got up the courage to go outside, I came face-to-face with El Cabo Pavor on a bus!”

  “Oh, no! God, what a nightmare. That must have been horrible. During the dictatorship?”

  “No, thankfully. I ran away, moved house, changed my job, everything.”

  “I think I’d die if I saw any of them again,” Julia murmured.

  “Did you know we managed to get him sentenced? He’s in prison, and he won’t be coming out for a long time. Celeste helped me. They identified Paola’s body and I testified. We have an excellent set of lawyers. My friend Father Fabian introduced me to them. I want you to meet him. He could help you too. He saved me in more than one way. I’m looking for the rest of them now.”

  “That’s good,” said Julia, staring into space. “But sometimes I think prison’s too good for them.”

  Maria took Julia’s hands in hers and kissed them. “Yes. But we’re not like that, remember?”

  36.

  UNCLE MAYOL

  Austral Summer/Boreal Winter

  2001–2002

  He opened the door before she’d even put her key in the lock. Olivier had waited up for her until dawn. They didn’t exchange a single word. In the days that followed, it was as if they were living on borrowed time. They skirted around each other, unsure what to do or say. He finally left for France because of unexpected work, while Julia stayed on for Christmas with Ulysses as planned.

  After Olivier’s departure, Julia became more methodical, almost cold.

  “I think we need to start over from scratch,” she told Anna one evening, when the young people had gone dancing at one of the boliches in Buenos Aires.

  “I don’t agree. We know now that he didn’t die. And he didn’t search for the two of you either.”

  “What if he came back after the World Cup?”

  “I followed up on that too. A hundred-odd Montoneros came back between 1979 and 1980 to launch a counteroffensive. Many of them were discovered by the intelligence agencies. Theo’s name doesn’t appear anywhere. He’s not on the official lists or the lists of the disappeared.”

  “But the fact is he completely disappeared.”

  “Maybe we should check out his old place again. I often go past it. The house is completely abandoned; it’s sad to see. But you never know.”

  Julia had already decided to extend her stay in Buenos Aires when Celeste had called and asked her to come to her office with Ulysses. Julia had thought it had to do with new DNA results and promised to stop by the next morning before Ulysses’ flight.

  They had found Celeste perched on a stepladder, taking down one of the numbered boxes in the archive room. She had caught sight of the expression on Julia’s face and apologized profusely. “I called you about something totally different,” she had added as she led them down the hall.

  The piles of documents on Celeste’s desk seemed to have multiplied since Julia’s last visit.

  “Is this about the DNA results?” Ulysses had asked. “Did you manage to match up the data?”

/>   “I haven’t finished yet. It’ll take time. We still have more than five hundred bodies left to identify, and unfortunately most of them will never resurface.”

  “Well?” Julia had asked.

  “Well,” Celeste had continued, hunting through her stacks of files, “one of our researchers went to San Francisco to attend a conference of leading scientists, and . . .”

  She had pulled out a file triumphantly.

  “And he was introduced to a professor who’s been working at NASA for the past few years. It turns out he’s Argentine. He works with microorganisms or something like that.”

  “And what . . . ?” Ulysses had asked, glancing discreetly at his watch.

  “The fact is he wanted to know absolutely everything about our work, because he too has family members who disappeared.”

  Celeste had held out a photocopy of the conference program with a photo of the professor in question.

  “The reason I wanted to talk to you is that his name is Mayol. Ernesto Mayol.”

  “Wait,” Julia had said. “Ernesto Mayol? Isn’t that one of Theo’s uncles? Anna spoke to him once, if my memory serves me right.”

  “I think this is him.”

  —

  After Ulysses had left, Julia had spent the entire afternoon dialing the phone numbers Celeste had given her. Each time she had reached an automated menu with a selection of options, none of which had connected her to the person she was trying to contact. Finally she had decided to send an e-mail. Professor Mayol’s reply had arrived soon after. He would be willing to meet with her, but only if she could travel to San Francisco. Julia hadn’t thought twice. She had replied that she could make the trip at the end of the month.

  As she fastened her seat belt, Julia realized she was wearing a red dress, just like the first time she had flown out of Buenos Aires in 1977. She peered out the window. Olivier still wasn’t answering her calls.

  —

  She arrived in San Francisco the day before her meeting. She left the hotel, choosing to lose herself in the grid of streets in order to stay out of the wind. The cold chilled her to the bone. She turned left onto Leavenworth Street. This trip was absolute madness. If Theo was alive, he would have a family, a job, a home of his own. Looking up, she found herself at the bottom of an impossibly steep street, which zigzagged its way uphill. She began to scale it. I’ll go to the meeting anyway. She climbed on, past the houses and the fallow flowerbeds with their frozen hydrangea stalks. When she reached the top, she opened her arms wide as if she could fill herself with space.

  The next day Julia got to the meeting early. In the hotel lounge, a man of indeterminate age, wearing casually elegant clothing, got up from the maroon velvet armchair next to the fireplace. He slipped his horn-rimmed glasses into the inside pocket of his tweed jacket and looked expressionlessly at Julia.

  “Buenos días,” he said coolly. “I’m Ernesto Mayol. I suppose you are Julia.”

  Julia looked him over and took her time going forward to shake his hand. He suggested they go for a walk, despite the fog and cold. They turned into a street heading toward the pier. They walked in silence, their hands in their pockets, collars turned up, and shoulders hunched. In the end they pushed open the door of a diner with misted-up windows and sat down facing each other, stirring the coffee a waitress in a miniskirt had been in no hurry to serve them.

  “I have waited for years to have this conversation.” Julia’s hands gripped her coffee cup tightly. “Why didn’t you try to get in touch with me before?”

  “It wasn’t up to me to contact you.”

  The conversation couldn’t have started on worse grounds and sharply came to a halt. Julia didn’t want to ask any questions and the man didn’t want to give any answers. They made small talk, sidestepping the subject that had caused them to meet.

  The waitress came up to them, a pencil behind her ear.

  “Will that be all? I have customers waiting for the table.”

  “Two more coffees, and some water,” Mayol said without taking his eyes off Julia.

  The waitress pursed her lips and stalked off. Julia plucked up courage.

  “Are you in touch with him?”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  Julia stood up slowly, placed a bill on the table, and murmured, “You just did.”

  She left without looking back.

  —

  She was already in the corridor with her suitcase in her hand when the telephone in her hotel room started ringing. Ulysses again. He’ll want me to get him something else. She hesitated for a moment, then retraced her steps. Ulysses could reach her on her cell phone. She opened the door, threw her coat onto a chair, and sat down unsteadily on the edge of the bed.

  Before picking up the receiver, she already knew.

  “Theo?”

  37.

  EL DIABLO

  Boreal Summer

  2006

  Theo?”

  Mia walked toward him, eyes half-closed, not quite awake. Still standing in the hallway, Theo was looking at the photo he had just taken with his cell phone. He quickly slipped the phone into his pocket and stood motionless, sweating despite the coolness of the morning. Mia drew up to him and tried to get him to put his arms around her. Theo wriggled free. She took hold of his hand and, surprised to find it damp, let go of it almost immediately.

  “Come on, let’s not keep standing here.”

  Theo took a step back, uncomfortable.

  “I’m going to leave, Mia.”

  He was breathing heavily. There were dark circles under his eyes, and in this first light of day he seemed worn out. Mia tried to pull him close and kiss him, but the hard look in his eyes took her aback.

  “We’ve still got time,” she murmured.

  He avoided her gaze and fiddled with his cell phone for a moment.

  “I have to leave.”

  Through the large bay window Mia noticed that the streetlights had gone out. The garden was still sleeping under a silvery glow.

  “But we’d talked about it,” she ventured to say.

  Mia stood there, draped in morning glow, totally nude, her long hair snaking down her body. Theo stepped back.

  “No, we’ve never talked about it.”

  —

  Light filtered through the drizzle as he rode back. The motorbike skidded at every turn, forcing him to focus on the road. In vain. His temples were pounding. Adrenaline ran through his veins like poison. It was still the same face, despite the effects of time. He couldn’t get the image of his torturer out of his head. Even dressed up for his daughter’s wedding, he remained the same cold-blooded murderer. There he is, so close to me after all these years. Within arm’s reach, to take from him what he took from me.

  The engine roared beneath him. He put his foot down on the straight stretch. El Diablo loomed in front of him, his expression locked in fixed surprise, his right eyebrow puckered. I would have recognized him with or without that scar. Theo’s nostrils flared as he passed the cars on the Merritt Parkway. Why Mia? Why her of all people?

  The mouth of the tunnel yawned up ahead, closer to swallowing him up with each passing second. He accelerated and leaned forward, bursting with rage.

  —

  He screams as he enters the darkness. The man is standing there, legs apart, in his spotless navy-blue uniform. Theo is watching him from the depths of his agony. He can feel urine trickling down his leg like acid. The man is inventing new forms of torture to drive him insane. Theo has lost all sense of time; his only sun is the beam from the projector. The voice of the Führer thunders, drowning out his screams. His nose is a pulp; oxygen enters through his wounds, gill-like. His body is reduced to orifices: the existing ones and the ones El Diablo has created.

  “Do you understand, you filthy pig?”

  He can ba
rely hear the voice. His brain is throbbing with pain, glutted with fluids. A bucket of sewage is thrown into his face. Everything stings. But still he licks his lips, out of dehydration.

  “Nothing more to tell me, you filthy pig?”

  The projector is going to start up. The nightmare too. Theo’s teeth are chattering. Is there some detail he’s forgotten? A crumb to appease the monster? His hanging body convulses. Theo knows he is going to die. He wants to die quickly.

  The man laughs. Theo sees his mouth: the fleshy red lips, the perfect teeth. Others join in the laughter.

  “So where’s your sister? You haven’t told me anything about your sister.”

  A sound emerges from Theo’s throat, deformed, incomprehensible.

  “No, you do have a sister. A sweet little homo face she has.”

  The projector comes on.

  “Yes, they look so much alike it’s striking; watch.”

  Theo receives a blow in the stomach.

  “Even like this, transformed into a piece of shit,” says a new voice.

  “We gave it to her good, your sister. Want to see? We have the photos. We archive everything, just in case memories need refreshing.”

  El Diablo dangles a Polaroid in front of Theo’s eyes.

  “Look, you filthy pig. See how much fun I had with your sister.”

  At first, Theo sees nothing. Then he makes out some red and black shapes. He understands. He is shown around twenty photos in quick succession. They are images of his brother Gabriel being tortured. Close-up shots, taken at the height of his suffering. Theo sees all the details. He pisses himself again. He doesn’t want to see, but he can’t shut his eyes and he howls and cries and chokes. The scenes remain seared in his brain, with the smell, the voices, the torment. Indelible images, unbearable ones. They secrete their never-ending venom.

  “Identical, these two Trots. The same chromosomes. I knew from the start that you were going to squeal. Just like your brother. I rewarded him, though. I made him my mascot. Look, rat.”