by Caryl Ferey
In the adored dawn,
Which goes away,
Yet . . .
Trees, surrender your branches,
Raise up the ditches!
To you I sell freedom
To the most thunderous
The use
Of chance
And of time,
What do the crests matter,
Of the path
I won’t yield a pebble,
Not a stone
I obey the rivers
The lakes
The vein that takes them to the sea
For you I will pour out my powder
Seller of nothing
On a desert of stones
Or of cutting
Sand,
Become flint again,
Life has its heads,
And in the mirror of the flames
Dancing on the surfaces,
Smooth,
I wait.
If it’s not you, Jana . . . The wind.
A poem. The first. For her. Jana held the treasure of the paper between her trembling fingers: no, Daniel Calderón was no longer the only one, his son also had the duende. Rubén, who had so often been thrown out of the saddle and, miraculously, gotten back on the horse, Rubén, a loving ghost whom she loved for real. For her as well, everything was changing. Even the ugliness of her ridiculous breasts no longer made her ashamed. Jana had never felt beautiful—she had never felt so beautiful.
“Why are you crying?”
He had come up to her, but Jana couldn’t speak. Rubén wiped away the tears that were running down her cheeks, then took her face between his hands.
“I love you,” he said. “I love you, little lynx.”
Rubén squinted at her a little, to make himself more convincing. Jana finally gave him a smile, a big one, her eyes like diamonds. And the world changed its skin. She, too, had a blue soul.
*
The stony path, the expanse of sand, the bones bleached in the desert, their long shadows stretching back toward the road, the landscape was moving past them in reverse. They were hungry and thirsty, but that no longer seemed important. They reached Uspallata at the hour when the first vehicles were rolling down the main street, passed the closed casino, and ate breakfast on the terrace of the bistro, which had just opened. Scrambled eggs, tea, toast, grilled fat.
“You got your appetite back,” she said.
“Thanks to you, big girl.”
Their eyes met, amused.
“I’m going to make myself beautiful,” Jana said with a defiant air, “you’ll see.”
Rubén watched her lovely ass in the tight jumpsuit as she walked to the bar, and lit a first cigarette. Sweetness and pleasure—with her ass as a lens, you could see the whole world—which contrasted with the situation. Still no news from Anita, the Grandmothers, or Carlos; on the other hand, the Hyundai would soon be ready. They washed up in the cafe-restaurant’s lavatories, bought a newspaper, a little food and water for the road. Eight hundred miles as the eagle flies before arriving in Buenos Aires. They were still gradually returning to reality. It was when they picked up the car at the garage in Uspallata, around noon, that they got the news: Eduardo Campallo had just committed suicide.
He had been found shot in the head that morning, at his home.
9
Three pacts bound the different branches of the military to the Argentine police: the pact of “blood,” when subversives had to be eliminated or tortured, the pact of “obedience,” which connected the hierarchy from the top to the bottom of the pyramid, and the pact of “corruption,” which involved the divvying up of the property stolen from detainees. Alfredo “El Toro” Grunga and León “El Picador” Angoni had gotten rich during the Process, reselling the confiscated merchandise to antique and secondhand stores that didn’t ask where it came from. The good old days, those of easy money and the girls that went with it.
His gray hair pulled back, El Picador had prominent cheekbones and wore a thin mustache, fitted three-piece suits that were slightly old-fashioned, and two-tone shoes that looked like those worn by pimps at the beginning of the twentieth century. Taciturn, tormented, a specialist in using the picana, El Picador had refined his art to the point that his buddy could have seen it as reverse osmosis, if he’d had the vocabulary. The buddy they’d nicknamed “El Toro.” Atavism or congenital mediocrity: his father had already died in the stupidest possible way—he was taking a piss under a tree when it fell on him. Short, stocky, and energetic, El Toro followed his instincts and considered El Picador his best friend. The two men had never done very well in school: the army had offered them something better than a future: a present.
Together with Hector “El Pelado” Parise, they formed a patota, a trio of rowdy friends. They had kidnapped Reds in the streets or in their homes, blown the heads off countless Jews, eggheads, unionized workers, and darkies, sometimes in full public view, they had extorted confessions using the picana, they had quaffed champagne in the glasses of people who were writhing in the ruins of their homes, proposed toasts at their colleagues’ birthday parties, supported nonsense and many other half-forgotten things as well that they saw as the memory of a riotous youth.
The end of the dictatorship had marked a turning point in their careers: El Toro and El Picador had been involved in trafficking luxury automobiles with the Soviet embassy, but they had almost been caught red-handed, and had to give up any desire to engage in free enterprise. Not clever enough. Too much the hotheads. They preferred to rely on Hector Parise, their former interrogating officer and the brains of the group, who always knew where the action was.
This operation was to pay off big.
The house that served as their base was comfortable, though a little too isolated for their taste; they’d been there for four days, rotting in that damp jungle where the mosquitoes whined. Finally, Parise and the other men being absent, the two pals could take it easy on the bank of the river. A third man had joined them in the house in the delta, Del Piro, called “the Pilot.” The latter, not very talkative, kept his distance from them and affected an aristocratic air.
“Why don’t you want to play Truco?” El Toro asked the pilot, who was sulking in a wicker chair. “Tilingo!14 We’ve got nothing else to do!”
“I just don’t feel like it, that’s all,” the man replied.
Gianni Del Piro didn’t feel like playing cards, or dominos, especially with these two guys. He hated dominos, and he didn’t know how to play Truco. What made it all the crazier were the fucking mosquitoes, voracious monsters capable of biting you through your clothes. A good way to catch dengue—it was endemic in the delta. Gianni Del Piro was ruminating on the bank of the river, in a bad mood. He had planned to meet Linda for an escape to Punta del Este, a resort town in Uruguay, as soon as the operation was over, not to play dominos in a house in the middle of the jungle with two louts who weren’t bothered by mosquito bites—a fat one who was outright repugnant with the grease stains on his shirt and his alter ego, thin as a knife blade, the token taciturn one.
Del Piro had had to prolong his mission, and this was unforeseen. Contrary to his dopey wife, Linda was not one of those women that you screw in a motel after eating takeout pizza. The money he was being paid by his former employers was worth a minor misdemeanor, long enough to do a little job that would pay for several adulterous adventures: Gianni Del Piro had lied to everyone, his employer, his wife Anabel, and a few friends who were too curious, but a hitch had forced him to remain in Argentina, and the others had left him hardly any choice. Anabel wouldn’t cause any problems, unlike the beautiful Linda. His young mistress had been waiting for him since noon at the hotel in Punta del Este, she was harassing him with messages he couldn’t answer, which were getting more and more scathing the longer he remained silent. It would be a euphemism to say that
Linda was jealous: possessive, exclusive, anticipating the other person’s perversities as if dirty tricks and treachery were ineluctable by nature, putting up with his talk about getting a divorce so long as he swore never to touch his wife again, Linda called several times a day and at the first doubt that formed in her twisted mind, refused to believe in anyone’s sincerity, and especially that of Gianni, her Italian male. It is true that the pilot had had some success with women who were impressed with the prestige of his profession. His forced silence was going to drive her crazy.
“Well, are you going to play?” El Toro shouted from the terrace.
“No!”
The pilot was grumbling under the line of pine trees that bordered the watercourse. The mosquitoes were attacking in the twilight, and he was upset by the idea that he might lose Linda—what an ass she had!! A taxi-boat had passed by earlier, too far from the dock to see them, raising a few little sluggish waves along the riverbank. It was the first boat that had gone by for two days. A really remote place.
“Puta madre,” El Toro yelled, his cards in his hand, “it’s no fun playing two-handed Truco!”
“Yeah!”
It was hot on the shady terrace. The fat man turned to his partner and jeered:
“I’ve got an idea!” He threw the pack of cards on the table. “Come with me!”
El Picador got up without asking what the idea was and followed his friend toward the wooden house. Gianni Del Piro was spraying his clothes with the only mosquito repellent sold in the country when the two men reappeared on the terrace. They had brought the prisoner out of the bedroom, a tranny who couldn’t stand up; they were carrying him at arm’s length.
Miguel Michellini’s eyeliner had run over his eyelids, which blinked when he saw the evening sun through the branches. Del Piro stiffened on his armchair: they had untied him.
“Fuck, what are you doing?” he snapped at them, twisting around.
“Ha, ha, ha!”
El Toro was laughing in the transvestite’s face. The poor fellow had cried a lot when he’d beaten him. El Picador had not deigned to get involved, leaving the ladyboy to his colleague, who had in fact enjoyed himself—Miguel’s wedding gown was still covered with blood.
“Let’s go, sweetie,” El Toro spluttered, “come play with us.”
They lifted up the marionette and dropped him heavily on the chair. Miguel groaned in pain and clutched the edge of the table. His torturers reminded him of those Komodo dragons that devour their prey alive, in a pack, those disgusting beasts whose bites poison the blood of their victims, who are then doomed. The monsters. They had kept his face intact in order to make it up—a transvestite was sort of like a Barbie doll!—and to have fun they’d smeared him with shit. It had dried on the livid little runt’s cracked cheeks.
El Toro blew his beer breath on him.
“How about a little game of cards, Madonna?”
Miguel felt tears welling up in his crusted eyes.
“Get fucked, you filthy pig.”
“Ho, ho, ho! Did you hear that? Did you hear him, the rebel?”
El Picador, playing his role, limited himself to a faint smile. His buddy stood up, excited.
“Deal the cards, I’ll be right back.”
Del Piro shook his head and waved his arms wildly to drive away the mosquitoes that were assailing him; he hadn’t been present during these “work sessions,” but he had heard the little homo’s piercing screams. The pilot was expecting the worst, and he was not disappointed. El Toro soon returned to the terrace, a basin in his big hands. It was obviously full of shit.
El Picador, who had dealt the cards as Miguel watched with his haggard eyes, sat back in his chair.
“It’s fresh!” El Toro laughed.
He put the disgusting basin on the table, delighted with his trick. Miguel looked away to avoid the stench, while the big guy put on his dishwashing gloves.
“Hold him on the chair!”
El Picador grabbed the poor fellow.
“What the fuck are you doing, for God’s sake,” Del Piro growled, spraying himself with mosquito repellent. “You’re going to destroy him.”
“Don’t worry about it! We’re going to cook him! Ha, ha, ha!”
Miguel no longer had the strength to resist, hardly enough to spit in their faces. He had told them what he knew, and didn’t understand why they were keeping him alive, why they were tormenting him. He closed his eyes while they smeared shit on his face.
The odor of excrement reached as far as the dock.
“Jesus, you guys are really swine!” Del Piro said, not budging from his chair.
El Toro was creating a sculpture in vivo, encouraged by the ironic laughter of his acolyte.
The pilot sighed—these guys were making him sick—and headed for the house. They could go fuck themselves with their scatological madness: he would telephone Linda while they were busy, just two minutes, long enough to sweet-talk her—with a little luck and talent, he might be able to calm her erotic fury . . . As night fell, mosquitoes and moths were banging against the kitchen windows. The last thing Gianni Del Piro saw was three men sitting around a card table, a scrawny transvestite, with cards stuck to his face covered with shit, and two men in their forties laughing at him.
“Your turn, Madonna!”
Parise called that same night. The Campallo girl hadn’t said that she was pregnant when they tortured the transvestite kidnapped with her as they came out of the tango club. Calderón knew that. Who could have told him except the kid’s father? Three months pregnant, according to the information Eduardo Campallo had revealed on the morning he committed suicide. Parise finally had a trail to follow. And the timing helped.
10
The Grandmothers had set up a crisis committee at the association’s office. They remained absolutely discreet regarding the goal of their research, reduced their communications to a minimum, and postponed meetings indefinitely for reasons of health, but the headquarters was a beehive of activity. The bits of paper Rubén had brought them were like the Greek fragments of the pre-Socratics, but the Grandmothers had begun by entering the legible names into their database. Drawing on the files of civilian and military hospitals, archives, court records, and reports, they worked in teams to find dozens of connections, often dubious, to verify the leads. Samuel and Gabriella Verón, the parents who had disappeared, did not appear in either the Durán hospital’s DNA bank or their files, which suggested that no member of their families had claimed their bodies. Had their loved ones also been swept away by the state machinery? If the DNA of the bones Rubén had dug up corresponded to that of María and Miguel, then they could bring the case before a judge, demand protection for the witnesses, unmask Eduardo Campallo and his wife as apropriadores, and expose the people who were trying so hard to hush up this affair.
Campallo’s suicide, which they had just learned about, pulled the rug out from under them.
The servants in the house in Belgrano being on vacation, it was Campallo’s wife Isabel who had found the body in the early morning. Eduardo was lying on his desk chair, a bullet in his head, the gun still hanging from his hand. Isabel had immediately called 911, but he had put the barrel against his temple and the bullet had blown away his frontal lobes. Her husband had died instantly. He had left no suicide note, but traces of gunpowder, fingerprints, and burns showed that he had pulled the trigger. Since the pistol, a Browning, belonged to him—he had a permit—there was little doubt that he had committed suicide. The elections were approaching, and his death was a hard blow for Francisco Torres, the mayor, who lost both a friend and one of his main financial supports.
For Rubén and the Grandmothers, it was their number one witness who had disappeared. One more.
The detective had a long discussion with the Grandmothers and Carlos as they drove toward the Andes. Since there had still been no resp
onse from the pilot’s cell phone, the hope of finding Miguel Michellini alive was decreasing. Campallo’s death forced them to revise their battle plan, but another character in the drama had just reappeared: Franco Díaz.
The Grandmothers had done research based on the name and the photo of the passport Anita Barragan had sent them. They had a file on the man from Colonia, which Elena had sent to her son’s BlackBerry.
Franco Díaz, born August 11, 1941, in Córdoba. Military training in Panama (1961-1964), served at Santa Cruz, Mendoza, then Buenos Aires. Joined the SIDE, the Argentine intelligence service, in 1979. A black hole until 1982 and the Falklands War: a liaison officer in a helicopter unit, Díaz was decorated—his squad had taken possession of the island by capturing the handful of sleeping English troops who were holding the place. At the trial of the generals in 1986, he testified in support of General Bignone, one of those most to blame for the Falklands fiasco, and also suspected of having destroyed the archives concerning the desaparecidos before leaving power. Emigrated to Uruguay in the late 1980s. Retired, Franco Díaz received an army pension and had never again been heard from.
A hero of the Falklands War, a man who was in theory unassailable. An agent close to Bignone, Díaz had been able to keep the ESMA file incriminating Campallo. For what purpose? To sell it to his paperazzo neighbor in order to create an unprecedented scandal? Why would Díaz have decided to torpedo a man associated with his former employers? To take revenge? On whom? On Eduardo Campallo or someone else mentioned in this document? The photo sent to Rubén’s BlackBerry dated from the time of the trial, in 1986, but Anita had duplicated the photo in his passport: Díaz hadn’t changed much—the same man with an indifferent face, dull eyes under his bald head. Ferreted out in Colonia, the former SIDE agent had gone back to Argentina. Rubén still didn’t know whether he was trying to sell or deliver the original document to a third person, but if Díaz took the risk of returning to the scene of the crime, he might lead them straight to the person running the show.