“Is that so? Could you please elaborate, as your letter is a bit vague.” Then, strangely, Martinez added in a quiet voice, “I apologize. Perhaps I have just been ill-informed. It is no reflection on you, of course, Father.”
The priest smiled as even he saw that he appeared to have the upper hand with the general.
Martinez’s politeness surprised Octavio. He had expected a more brutish man, with a sterner voice and a more intimidating presence. Martinez, perhaps because he only had been a general for less than four weeks, seemed almost apologetic.
“Well,” Father Cisneros elaborated, “it has come to my attention that a woman—a wife and mother of three small children—has been abducted by the military police and has remained wrongfully imprisoned for over a month without a trial, without contact with her family, and with no other recourse than to remain incarcerated indefinitely.” The priest cleared his throat. “This is clearly an outrage, a human rights violation.”
“And why was this woman arrested, Father?”
“For no reason at all.”
“And whose opinion is that?”
“Do you need any other opinion than mine—a man of God, one who is affiliated with the United Nations, in case you have forgotten?”
The general once again seemed embarrassed and apologized for his tone. “I am sorry. I just find this very hard to believe that this woman would be taken without evidence of her wrongdoing.”
“It is the truth,” Octavio said firmly, but without raising his voice. “She has done nothing except be my wife and the mother of my children.”
“And your name?”
“Octavio Ribeiro.”
“Ah, the actor.” The general nodded his head and penciled some notes on his pad. “Of course! I thought I recognized you, though now you’re sporting a beard.” He smiled. “I used to be a big fan of your movies.”
“Is that so?” Octavio replied nervously. Small beads of perspiration were forming just above his temples, but he fought the urge to wipe them away, fearing that the general might see his trembling hands. He slowly turned toward the priest, beseeching him with wide eyes to recover control over the conversation.
“You know, General, next week I am attending a conference in Lima for all of the priests who are assigned as temporary clergy in Latin America. There will be many government officials there from all over the world—from the United States to Great Britain. There is even a rumor that the pope is planning to attend as well.”
“Yes”—Martinez nodded—“and…?”
“And at this meeting, I will be asked—as I have been in the past when I attended such meetings—‘How are things in Santiago, Father Cisneros? Tell us, how is the situation there?’
“And, General Martinez, I beg of you, what am I to tell them? I will have to tell them that things are not well in Santiago. That women are being abducted from their very homes, right before the eyes of their children. To be imprisoned for no wrongdoing and held without a trial, without evidence of their crime!”
“I can’t believe that such a thing could happen.” The general shook his head.
“But that is what has happened,” the priest said firmly. “I have seen this with my own eyes. And what are we to do about my suspicion, General Martinez?”
“I suppose I should investigate your complaint.” The general motioned for one of his aides to come closer and whispered something in his ear. Moments later, the young soldier left the room, leaving the general alone with Octavio and the priest.
“I can give you my word,” Martinez assured the two men, “if Señor Ribeiro’s wife is being held with no evidence, without clearcut proof that she committed a crime against the state, I will have her released immediately.”
“That is what I hoped you would say.” The priest smiled.
The general extended his hand in a gesture of goodwill to the priest.
“But remember,” Father Cisneros added over their handshake, “next week is the conference, and I expect either Salomé de Ribeiro to be returned by then or for you to have news of her trial.”
“Absolutely, I intend to look into it immediately.”
“We believe she is being held at the Villa Grimaldi in Peñalolen.”
“Ah, the recreation center?”
“Is that what you call it, General?”
“I believe that is how it is described in our reports.”
“Well, perhaps you should pay a visit when you need some ‘recreation’ and see for yourself,” the priest said, his voice betraying his disgust.
The general stood there in his unflattering brown uniform with its burnished badges. His eyes were beginning to show the first stages of fatigue. His skin was a pale shade of bronze.
“Please write down the exact spelling of your wife’s name and the date she was taken into custody,” the general requested before the two men departed, and Octavio quickly complied.
And as Octavio and Father Cisneros exited, each man’s eyes met those of the other. Silently, they were each thinking the same thing: their only hope now was that the priest’s threats were enough to make the general a man of his word.
“Do you really have a conference next week, Father?” Octavio asked the priest when they’d returned to the car. The accomplished actor was astounded when the priest admitted that he had been bluffing the entire time.
“So you blackmailed him into believing that he had no other choice than to protect the integrity of the state?” Octavio laughed out loud. “That was brilliant! I only hope he believed you.”
They did not have to wait long to see that the priest’s bluff had indeed worked. Four days later, Salomé was released in a park. A blindfolded, bruised shadow, tumbling from a van.
PART III
Forty-four
SANTIAGO, CHILE
FEBRUARY 1974
That first morning after Salomé returned to her home and awakened in a freshly made bed, the smells of verbena permeating her room, she thought perhaps the past two months had been just a terrible nightmare. But her reflection in the standing mirror betrayed her. She had not laid eyes upon herself in weeks. The image of her bruised face, swollen upper lip, and sunken eyes shocked her. Never in her life had she seen such a horrific sight.
She did not recognize herself at all. It was as though a stranger were gazing back at her in the glass. A frail, frightened woman who seemed incongruous and ill-fitting, as if she had never belonged in her marital carved-rosewood bed.
Octavio arrived, interrupting Salomé’s thoughts. “I’ve brought some chamomile tea and warm biscuits for my precious Fayum,” he said delicately. His voice was soft and low, as one would use with the sick or the infirm.
He sat down on the bed and looked at her. His eyes were wet and his expression pained with compassion. “I’m so sorry, Salomé. I never wanted any of this to happen.”
“Of course you didn’t, Octavio,” she whispered. Over the past two months, she had become an expert in masking her emotions. Each of her words now resonated with a hollow stoicism.
“But you’re home now, darling. I…” he stuttered. “The children and I, your parents,” he corrected himself, “we’re so thankful that you’ve been returned to us.”
Salomé nodded, her head turning slightly to see the tip of the avocado tree bending in the wind.
“I love you,” he said as he extended his arm and reached for her hand under the covers. His fingers searched to grasp those of his wife.
However, Salomé did not respond as he had anticipated. For as soon as his flesh grazed hers, she shuddered. It was as if any human contact was enough to make her recoil.
Salomé was also surprised by the intensity of her response. It seemed that even her own husband’s touch triggered memories of how she had been violated at the prison. She didn’t want him even to brush against her. Instead, she wanted to be left completely alone. To sleep in her own space, with nothing against her skin except her nightgown and the cotton sheets.
In
an ideal world, Salomé wished she could wrap her arms around her husband, embrace him, and let out one giant sob into his strong shoulders. But instead, she felt paralyzed. She couldn’t even cry. She had returned, but not as the woman she had once been. Not as the wife Octavio had once known. She felt like a living corpse: devoid of emotion, incapable of human contact. It was as though her blood had frozen in her veins.
“Darling…” he said in the voice he had always used with her, but now she found it weak and cloying. “We must leave this place. You, me, and the children. I am already making arrangements so that we can go where it’s safe.”
“But where will we go, Octavio?” she sighed. “Chile is our home.”
“Not anymore. Not after what they did to you. More importantly, they could take you again. We will have to leave as soon as possible. I’ve already sent applications for political asylum in the U.S., Canada, Sweden, and New Zealand. Whoever makes us an offer first, we’ll go there.”
“And my parents too?”
There was silence. Octavio lowered his eyes. “They cannot come with us, my darling. Their lives have not been directly threatened, so their request would be denied.”
“I see.” Octavio could tell by his wife’s voice that she was concentrating hard to appear strong.
“We will start over, Salomé. We will make a new life, and things will be good again.”
Salomé feigned a smile.
“Things will work out for us,” he said as he brought her hand close to his chest. “I promise they will.”
Salomé would have preferred that Octavio had said nothing that first day. If only he had let her have some time to readjust. She wanted to be able to do simple things around the house. Little things, like savoring the air that wafted in from the garden. She had taken it for granted before. Now its fragrance of wildflowers and herbs seemed so exotic to her. She wanted to cup her hands and inhale it like perfume.
But, no, right from the beginning, he told her that she should not get too comfortable. That they would soon have to leave their beloved Casa Rosa and start again, go somewhere foreign and strange.
Her body would barely have time to heal before she would have to start packing up the house and selecting the few things they would be able to take.
There were things that she had not anticipated bringing with her from the prison—memories she hoped she had left behind. But her terror could not be forgotten so easily; it could not be packed away in a box with folded tissue and rolls of bubble wrap. It amazed her that Octavio was so certain that all would return to normal. She too wanted to believe that it could be that simple.
To that end, she had promised herself never to speak of her torture. There was no reason to burden either Octavio or the children with her pain. She would never wish upon anyone—let alone her family—the terrible nightmares that had plagued her since her release. No, she would keep them to herself and hope that, eventually, after things had settled down—after the move was over and their new life had begun—maybe then she would feel better.
Her love for her family would triumph over all she had endured, she told herself. After all, during those nights when she’d slept in a dank cell with no light, the sound of wailing mingling with the sounds of opera, the barking of the guards, and the dragging of the bodies through the channels, she had thought of her family with her eyes shut and her fists packed to her side. She had called for them in hysterical moans, and she had imagined her children as they had been when she had held each of them to her breast, their tiny faces looking up at her in their first gazes of life.
But if she were honest with herself, she would have to admit that while incarcerated, she had thought of her husband with far less frequency than she had her children. Octavio, the man whom she had loved since she was seventeen; the only man she had ever loved.
She had thought of him occasionally while she was in prison, remembering how he had first kissed her or how they had danced in the moonlight with the tall pampas grasses grazing their knees. But she had been afraid to think of him as he was now. Perhaps, she had thought, if she let her mind wander to the months before she was taken, she might start to blame him and she would have hated to do that. Because, in her heart, she wanted to still love him. To forgive him. Because she knew, had their situation been reversed, she would have prayed every night that he be returned to her. And that she too would probably have pleaded to God that the government should have taken her instead of him. Because that’s what lovers do, isn’t it? But if Salomé allowed herself to think like that, she feared she might go mad.
In his heart, Octavio believed that love could never die. He thought it grew stronger when tested. So while he never doubted for a second that Salomé and his marriage might face difficulties when she was returned, he also felt certain that they would mend things once their lives were resettled. Once they had moved far away from the country that had betrayed them.
Of course, he realized how awful the past months had been for her. He did not want to imagine how she had become so spotted with bruises and how her once voluptuous body had seemed to vanish. He knew that, with the proper nursing, her physical self would return to what it had once been. Her emotional scars…well, time could only tell with those. He only hoped that, one day, she would feel comfortable enough to open up and speak to him about what had happened to her. He thought, perhaps naively, that it would actually bring them closer.
He had tried to broach the subject with her on more than one occasion. He had sat on the bed and held her hand, bringing it close to his face and pressing his lips into her delicate, olive skin. But she rejected his advances of tenderness. And when he tried to suggest that they should probably discuss certain things—to get them out into the open—she insisted that she wanted to keep the past behind her in order to move forward. She had closed that door, insisting that it be forever shut.
He too kept secrets from her. He never divulged the lengths he had gone to secure her freedom, thinking it best to concentrate solely on that she had been returned. He never told her how he had convinced Father Cisneros to assist him, or how they had persuaded the general through veiled blackmail to release her. Octavio didn’t want to play the role of hero. After all, he knew that his actions had put her in harm’s way in the first place.
As a result, Salomé never learned the truth and wrongly believed that her rapport with the young prison guard Miguel had led to her freedom. Octavio never took credit for the one thing that might have proven to his wife how he had changed.
Sometimes at night he heard his wife whimpering in her sleep. From underneath the delicate cotton sheets, he could hear her soft moans, somewhat stifled by her hand that rested underneath her cheek. He would move over to her side of the bed and wrap his arms around her, whispering into her fragrant neck that everything was all right, she shouldn’t worry; they were now safe. But Salomé would awaken, stare up at him with her dark, marble eyes and appear startled. As if she did not remember where she was or why her husband was whispering to her in the darkest hours of the night.
Forty-five
SANTIAGO, CHILE
FEBRUARY 1974
The Swedish embassy was the first to respond to Octavio’s application for political asylum, and he received a letter in the mail instructing him to come to the office at half past four, that Thursday, for an extensive interview.
He knew he had to be grateful that one of the four countries had responded so swiftly to his request, but he had secretly hoped that he would have received a similar letter from the U.S or Canadian embassy. At least there, there were extensive immigrant communities and ample opportunities for people in the arts. He knew nothing about Sweden except that it was going to be cold.
He changed into his best linen suit and tried to fix his hair. Standing in front of the mirror, however, he could do nothing to mask his fatigue. The past three months had taken such a toll on him that most of his black curls had turned a soft gray, and his eyes no longer looked like those of
a prized actor, but rather of a man who was completely and utterly exhausted.
The funny thing was, Octavio couldn’t care less. A year ago, had he wanted to emigrate to the United States, he would have been incensed that they had not yet responded to his letter. A year ago, he would have been mortified to see deep lines around his mouth and eyes, his hair the color of pewter. Now all of that seemed superfluous. All he wanted now was to make sure his family was safe, and that was the only thing he had energy for. If Sweden would take them—and take them quickly—he would go. He had learned his lesson—life did not imitate the movies, life was not always beautiful and poetic—one often had to make great sacrifices for those one loved.
As he walked down the hallway, Octavio could see through the open door that Salomé was asleep in the guest bedroom. Her head was to the side and he could see, even through the half-opened door, how swollen her face still was.
Every time he gazed upon his wife now he was overwhelmed not only with regret but also anger. How many times had he replayed in his mind that conversation where she had warned him that they might harm him or the family? She had never dared say, “They might take me, Octavio,” and even after they did abduct her that first time, she had never said to him, “They might take me again, Octavio!”
He knew why she had never said those things. She wanted him to come to that decision himself. She wanted him to take the initiative to say, “Enough, I will retract my criticisms of Pinochet. I will place my family above everything else.” And not only had he failed her by refusing to take that position, he had also failed to protect her. How many times—how many goddamn times—had he replayed in his mind that afternoon he was asleep in the garden when they had come and taken her. He had been sleeping with a newspaper over his head when his wife was kidnapped! He felt pathetic and ashamed. He felt as though all of his former confidence and loyalty toward his so-called principles had been decimated. All that he felt now was regret and self-loathing. And although Octavio prayed that Salomé would someday forgive him, he was confident he would never forgive himself.
The Rhythm of Memory Page 23