The Memory Stones

by Caroline Brothers

  The limp, he says, is from a car crash on the road to Cuernavaca, when his car was on the wrong side of a truck that lost its brakes on the descent.

  ‘Broken in two places,’ he says, patting his leg. ‘But you know me: indestructible.’

  He fills in his story gradually: how after the magazine was vandalised, he was abducted en route to his parents’ place, and held at Campo de Mayo for roughly five months.

  Campo de Mayo, I think. That vast military complex, big enough to have its own airstrip, a dark hole in the fabric of the city when the rest of it is illuminated at night.

  Inside, he was given what he describes as the full treatment. Then, inexplicably, he was released. The only reason he can identify is the least probable, the most fortuitous: that as a teenager he’d played football with one of the guards.

  ‘It was either that or a mistake,’ he says. ‘I wasn’t going to wait around to find out which.’

  Emaciated, injured, he went straight to the docks and talked his way onto a cargo ship that turned out to be sailing for Hamburg. From Germany he flew to Mexico, where at least he spoke the language, and landed at Benito Juárez with nothing but the fillings in his teeth.

  ‘Almost no one got out, from what I hear,’ I tell him, ‘not from Campo de Mayo or any of the others.’

  ‘I know, Osvaldo, believe me.’ He is quiet for a moment. ‘You’ve heard about Scilingo, I suppose?’

  I’d heard; how could I not have done? It was about this time last year. Daniela and I, along with all of Argentina, had listened in horror as the retired captain broadcast his confessions about the death flights. They screamed the following morning from the headlines of the Argentine press.

  ‘At night, you know, even in solitary, I could hear the planes take off,’ says Hugo. ‘Never once did I imagine what they were for.’

  We sit together in silence, back in the darkness of those years. Around us, the lunchtime restaurant fills; outside, a succession of buskers alternates the same three Beatles tunes.

  I tell him my story, too. It is the first time in years I’ve spoken about my flight to Iguazú, about the two days I spent on the Argentine side of the waterfalls, trying to muster the courage to get across.

  I’ve never recounted how surreal it felt, masquerading as a sightseer among the lianas and the slow-flying toucans, the rainbows arching like bridges across those thunderous cascades. The helicopters I could hear before I could see them filled me with terror, but everyone was drenched with mist from the falls and the steaming jungle; only the salt-hungry butterflies that lit on my hands knew I was sweating with fear.

  Finally, I’d had to take the risk. There was a bus that ferried tourists over the bridge to the Brazilian side of the waterfalls. It was a Saturday; there was a match on the radio; the border guards were listening to the game. One of them, preoccupied by the fortunes of Independiente, glanced at me once, stamped my passport and sent me on my way. On Brazilian soil, it was all I could do to fight the urge to run.

  But Brazil had its own military dictatorship and even there I wasn’t safe. So I took the slow bus a thousand kilometres east to Rio de Janeiro, bought a ticket at a travel agent’s and made my way to the airport that was bristling with police.

  ‘And Yolanda joined you later on in Paris?’

  He doesn’t know; of course, he couldn’t have heard.

  ‘Hugo,’ I say, ‘Yolanda died. It was fourteen years ago.’

  Behind his glasses his eyes grow wide, and for a while he doesn’t speak. He traces circles around the rim of his glass as I tell him about Yolanda, about Graciela and her fiancé, then about their missing child.

  Hugo was my best man at our wedding; he’d held both our newborn daughters in his arms.

  ‘Osvaldo, I’m so sorry,’ he says. He puts his hand on my shoulder. ‘I had no idea.’

  After a while I tell him about my search for Liliana, how I believe she is out there somewhere, an adult now, living her life as if in some parallel world.

  ‘Which means Graciela isn’t,’ he says.

  He states it matter-of-factly, a reporter, merely thinking out loud.

  It takes me a moment to absorb what he has said, and then the blood drains from my face. It’s as if it is needed elsewhere, to protect the inner workings of my heart.

  ‘Why does that follow?’ I say.

  Hugo sees immediately what he has said. Mortified, he apologises, and backtracks, and tries to soften his words.

  But I won’t let go. I need to know what he knows.

  Nothing, he has no information. What he’s heard are only generalities, nothing specific, no facts. Nonetheless, I press him until he relents.

  ‘She’s not the only pregnant woman they took, Osvaldo. You know that, don’t you? And once they’d parcelled out the infants, what reason would they have had to keep the mothers alive?’

  As he speaks the logic becomes apparent. His words sink through me like a stone.

  ‘I hate to say this, Osvaldo. But if they’d freed them, if they’d released the mothers, they knew they’d be storing up trouble. They knew the mothers would search for their children one day.’

  Yet – they’d believed they’d be in power forever. Everything they’d done, they’d done as if there’d never be any reckoning. Surely it had no bearing, what the future, hypothetically, might hold.

  Then, Scilingo’s name returns. He’d worked at ESMA, at the torture centre where Inés and Graciela had been held.

  ‘Hugo,’ I say, and can’t continue. In my deepest self I understand what he is saying. If Liliana is alive – as the Vatican said, as Inés confirmed – then Graciela must surely be dead.

  I stare out at the jagged garden, the cactus plants, the rocks.

  Deep down, had I believed till now that Graciela was still living? As long as there was doubt I could hold on to her; I could breathe life into the flame of her and keep that flickering alive. Implicitly I made my choice, and I chose disappearance. I chose the pain of it and the comfort of it, because the possibility of its reversal was right there in the word itself. Because the alternative was impossible to bear.

  Then, some reflex in me rebels. No, I think. If she is dead, then take me to where she is lying; bring me her name on a list. Grant me a place where I can bury her and grieve for her, the way Eduardo mourns for his son.

  What Hugo is saying is a theory: it’s not proof and it’s not an answer. I will not let conjecture extinguish my last remnants of hope.

  Suddenly, Hugo himself looks stricken.

  ‘Christ, Osvaldo,’ he says, and his voice wavers. ‘Was it my fault? Was it because of Focus, because we published those cartoons?’

  I look at him, through the owlish glasses, at the panic in his faded eyes.

  ‘Julieta blamed me for a long time,’ I tell him. ‘For a long time, I blamed myself. But there were other things . . .’

  I tell him how Graciela and José were teaching in the villas, how the literacy programme was backed by the student union, how the union itself may have been backed by a Perónist group.

  ‘I don’t know how far it goes,’ I tell him. ‘God knows, it’s hardly illegal to teach, though teaching the poor in the shantytowns, it appears, was considered subversion . . . It might have been my drawings – it might well have been. Or their names might have been pulled from someone’s address book, or spilled under unspeakable duress. Or perhaps it was none of these things. Perhaps someone infiltrated their student circle, looking for people to denounce.’

  ‘If that were the case, wouldn’t you want to know who it was?’

  ‘What for, Hugo? As a salve to my own conscience? To have somebody else to blame? I shoulder my responsibility either for endangering her, or for failing to protect her. If finding out could bring her back, perhaps it would be different . . . But I’m sixty-nine years old, Hugo, and what haunts me now is time. All I know, the few facts I have, relate to her daughter. They’re all I have to go on. It’s Liliana I have to find.’

/>   Hugo nods.

  ‘I don’t know how to explain it, Hugo. I just keep thinking that finding her will bring me to Graciela, too.’

  ‘To finding her, then, your Liliana,’ Hugo says, and pauses, turning his glass between his fingers. ‘To finding her, wherever she may be.’

  Light-headed from the tequilas, we pay at the bar and emerge into the lunchtime square.

  The day is heating up; through the haze I can feel the sun’s bite on my face. Tourists are posing in pairs by the coyote fountain; the Aztec dancers with their rattling anklets are gathering under the arches; a crowd is forming for ice-cream in front of Las Nieves de Coyoacán.

  ‘Hugo,’ I say. ‘There is still so much to catch up on. And I want you to meet Daniela – she’s from Chile. She came with me from London.’

  ‘And you both have to meet Cristina, and Nicolás – don’t look at me like that! I know you never thought it’d happen, but I did finally get married and become a father. Young Nico is already fifteen.’

  ‘Any more surprises, Enrique?’ I say with a smile. There is such pleasure in finding him, in this random act of restoration, after so many missing years. ‘Come home with me now and have lunch with us. I need a witness. I won’t believe I’ve found you otherwise.’

  We turn into my street, into a world that is snowing jacarandas. The trumpets sigh and flop onto the cobblestones, and gather in lavender drifts among the roots of the trees. Above us, the purple branches mesh into willow-pattern arbours, covering over the cracks in the porcelain sky.

  4

  Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay

  May 1997

  ‘I’ll call you at six and get the coffee going,’ Ana’s mother had promised the night before. But Ana, who has always been slow in the mornings, still set her bedside alarm clock, knowing better than to run the risk.

  She makes the coffee herself and heats the medialunas in the kitchen, moving carefully around the orchids her mother is coaxing into bloom. In the three years since they’ve moved downtown, orchids have replaced the roses her mother used to take such pride in; but sometimes Ana wonders whether she herself is the only one who waters the pots.

  The aroma of coffee lures her mother to the kitchen where she leans against the doorjamb in her robe of shimmery mauve.

  ‘Mamá, you slept in,’ Ana says, kissing her on the cheek.

  ‘I know, darling, I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I think it’s these new tablets they’ve got me on.’

  Ana feels some tenderness towards her mother this morning. She is trying to cope, Ana understands that now; she knows her intentions are good.

  ‘Have a lovely weekend, corazón,’ her mother says, trailing Ana to the front door.

  Ana turns to embrace her. In the doorframe that surrounds her mother, Ana glimpses something of the elegance that must once have drawn her father, the slender fall of her shoulder and neck.

  ‘Good luck with the orchid people,’ Ana says, hugging her goodbye. She reckons there’s a fifty per cent chance her mother will make it to the Botanical Gardens this morning, to the glasshouse where her orchid class is held.

  Ana leaves her waving from the doorway as she steps into the elevator. Her father had gone out before either of them had woken; he’d been expecting an early delivery at the warehouse that was taking up more of his time.

  She presses PB and waits for the lift to descend. She guesses that Lucas, unlike Ana an early riser, will already be waiting in the hall.

  They find an Italian restaurant just beyond the cannons that ornament one side of the square. There is a special with pumpkin gnocchi and tiramisù and Lucas, who loves both of them, is suddenly in a good mood.

  ‘Are we on a romantic tryst too?’ he says, scanning the couples around them who are holding hands and murmuring in the candlelight.

  ‘Why not?’ Ana says, and laughs. She has put behind her the despondency she felt in the museum that afternoon – a disagreement, not a dispute, about some Indian artefacts. They are on holiday, after all, this weekend.

  He fills their glasses with the last of the red and gestures to the waiter for more.

  It was a public holiday in Argentina, and they had taken the high-speed catamaran across the Rio de la Plata that morning. Here in Uruguay, in Colonia del Sacramento, they’d found cobbled streets full of flowers and lovers from Buenos Aires who’d escaped for romantic weekends.

  It’s not just the thought of romance, however, that prompted Ana to extricate Lucas from his regime of weekend sports. She’s been putting it off for days now, but she has something she wants to discuss with him if only she can find the right time.

  She waits till he is halfway through his main course before broaching what has been on her mind.

  ‘Greece?’ he says, and impales a piece of gnocchi on his fork.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘It’s amazing, isn’t it? They’ve actually invited me to come.’ She is struggling not to betray her own excitement, at least until she can take the measure of his.

  ‘It’s on the other side of the world.’

  ‘I know it is,’ says Ana, smiling. ‘Because there aren’t any Greek ruins over here.’ But her levity fades when she sees the expression on his face.

  ‘Why does it have to be Greece?’ he says.

  ‘Actually,’ she says, ‘it doesn’t have to be Greece, but they’re the only ones who’d have me. I wrote to dig teams working in a dozen countries – Belize, Mexico, Jordan, Syria, Italy . . . It was only the Greeks who replied.’

  Lucas doesn’t comment or congratulate her. He says only: ‘How long will you be gone?’

  Her heart sinks. He isn’t glad for her. Suddenly he is avoiding her gaze.

  ‘It’s only six weeks,’ she says. ‘I’ll be back before you notice I’ve even left.’

  ‘You wrote to twelve countries? You could have told me you were applying to go away.’

  She feels a pang of conscience, and wonders if perhaps he is right.

  ‘I wanted to,’ she says. ‘But what if none of them had worked out? It was all so hypothetical, until this one archaeologist wrote back.’

  ‘So what does that make me? Your consolation prize?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she says. ‘There was no point in telling you if there was a ninety per cent chance I wasn’t going anywhere at all.’

  But he ignores her. ‘If you loved me, you wouldn’t be doing this,’ he says.

  ‘You know that’s not fair, Lucas,’ she says. This is not the way she’d imagined the conversation. After the initial surprise, she had thought he would be encouraging, that he would want what was good for her.

  ‘And what’s fair about your leaving me like this?’ he says. ‘What am I supposed to say: tell my friends you’ve found something better to do? That I’m dating the Invisible Woman?’

  Sulking now, he is testing her. She can guess what is coming: he will push her to make a choice.

  ‘It’s only for a month and a half. Nacho and Geraldo will be overjoyed – you can watch football together all the time.’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ Lucas says.

  His mood has swung. She can feel his resentment brewing like the night.

  ‘Why can’t you be excited for me?’ she says. He knows that she is switching to archaeology, that she’s been through all this with her parents, that her heart is set on this change. ‘It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance.’

  ‘And obviously I’m not.’

  ‘Lucas . . .’

  ‘So you’re going – you’ve decided,’ he says. It’s more of a statement than a question but she can hear the question in it. And she can tell there is another behind that. She puts her hand on his but he pulls it away.

  ‘This doesn’t mean anything has to change between us,’ she says,

  ‘You don’t think so? Maybe not for you.’

  ‘Can’t you just wait six weeks?’

  ‘What, while you’re off with somebody else?’

  So there it is, that is the thing that i
s worrying him.

  ‘What are you taking about?’ she says. ‘I’m going there to work, Lucas. It’s you I’m going out with. It’s you I want to be with.’

  ‘Funny way to show it,’ he says.

  ‘Funny how little you trust me,’ she says.

  ‘Let’s just see when you get back.’

  Lucas spears the rest of his gnocchi in silence, and with exaggerated gestures knocks back the remainder of the wine.

  Ana suppresses her disappointment and tries not to show she is hurt. She is too tense to eat anything else and they pay without having dessert.

  The occasional street lamp only makes the black night blacker as they find their way back to their hotel. The leaves of the plane trees crunch underfoot as, an arm’s length apart rather than arm in arm, they walk through the empty streets.

  When they have undressed and gone to bed Ana tries to hug him, but Lucas turns to the wall. She can hardly believe this is still the same day that he kissed her amid a cascade of jasmine spilling over a gate.

  ‘So when are you leaving?’ he says after a moment. It’s the only thing he’s said to her since the restaurant, and he casts it over his shoulder without lifting his head.

  ‘Not for a few weeks yet,’ she tells him. The light from the street draws his profile in silver as it inches around the blind. ‘Probably the beginning of July.’

  He makes no reply.

  ‘Let’s not be like this, Lucas,’ she says to the hunch of his back.

  When still he doesn’t respond she hugs him anyway. He pretends to be asleep.

  5

  Mexico City

  June 1997

  There is a scarlet box on the bottom shelf in the corner of my study; it came as a gift from Daniela with three new shirts inside. I reach for it now, then inhale sharply as the movement sends a bolt of pain through my joints. I sit back on my chair and rub my knee, and wait for the burning to subside.