‘Your news almost made me forget mine.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘I’m joking. How could I forget it?’
‘Graciela, is that all there is to it? Not sleeping with Santiago any more, once he eventually gets out of prison? Is that all, or is there something more?’
‘There wasn’t at first. It was just the growing apart; in reality, my growing apart. Coming to rule out any future married life with Santiago.’
‘And now?’
‘Now it’s different. I think I’m starting to fall in love.’
‘Ah.’
‘I said, I think I’m starting to.’
‘Look, if you admit you’re starting to, that means you’ve already fallen in love.’
‘That’s possible. But I’m not sure. You know him. It’s Rolando.’
‘How does he feel?’
‘It’s hard for him as well. He and Santiago were always good friends. Don’t think I don’t realize this makes things even more complicated.’
‘You do make things difficult for yourself, don’t you?’
‘Tell me about it. Much too difficult.’
‘So what are you going to do? Or what have you done already? Have you written to Santiago?’
‘That’s the main reason I came to see you. I don’t know what to do. On the one hand, Santiago keeps writing me tender, loving letters. I know he’s sincere. And I feel really phony when I try to reply in the same vein. But then I think it would be awful for him, locked up in Libertad, to get a letter from me one day (I’m sure the military are such sadists that they’d see that he got it straightaway), telling him not only that I don’t want to be his wife any more, but, to make it even worse, that I’m in love with one of his best friends. Some days I understand that in spite of everything it’s best for me to tell him and get it over with; on others I feel that it would be unnecessarily cruel.’
‘Painful, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m inclined to think that the mere fact of telling him would be what you’ve just said: unnecessarily cruel. You and Beatriz are Santiago’s reasons for staying alive.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’m his father. That’s different. Our parents are given to us; no one chooses them. But it takes an act of will, you take a conscious decision to choose a wife and to have children. Obviously, Santiago loves me and I love him, but there’s always been a certain distance between us. It was different with his mother. She managed to talk to him, really get through to him, and for Santiago her death was a catastrophe; it was hard for him to come to terms with. Of course it was, he was only fifteen at the time. But as I was saying, now, and with him being where he is, you and Beatriz are his future; whether in the medium or long term doesn’t matter. He thinks that someday he’ll rejoin you two and everything will begin again.’
‘Yes, that’s what he thinks.’
‘Well, as you say, if he weren’t in prison all this would be sad, but more normal. For a couple to break up is never a good thing, but sometimes to carry on under false pretences can be much worse.’
‘So, what do you advise, Rafael?’
Don Rafael raises his glass and downs the whisky he had poured himself. Now he’s the one to puff out his cheeks.
‘It’s always risky, getting mixed up in other people’s lives.’
‘But Santiago is your son.’
‘And you’re like a daughter to me.’
‘That’s how I feel, too.’
‘I know. Which is why it’s even more complicated.’
The phone rings again, but this time her father-in-law doesn’t pick up.
‘Don’t worry, it’s not Lydia. Did I tell you her name? The person who always calls at this hour is a real pain. A student who asks me interminable questions about bibliography.’
Apparently, the student is insistent or stubborn or both, because the phone carries on ringing. Finally, silence returns.
‘Since you’re asking, I’d be in favour of you not writing anything about it. You should go on pretending. I know that makes you feel bad. But remember, you are free. You have other objects of interest and affection, whereas all he has are four walls and a barred window. Telling him the truth would destroy him. And I don’t want my son to be destroyed now, not when he has survived so many calamities. Someday, when he’s out (and I know he is going to get out), you’ll be able to tell him everything, and come face to face with his bitterness. And when that occasion arises, I authorize you to tell him that I was the one who advised you to stay silent. At first, he’ll be really angry, he’ll explode like he used to in the good old days, he may even weep, and think the world is collapsing. But by then he’ll no longer be enclosed within four walls, he’ll be far from the bars, like you, he’ll have other objects of interest and affection. Well, that’s my opinion. You asked for it.’
‘Yes, I asked you for it.’
‘So what do you think?’
Now her father-in-law seemed more anxious and nervous than she was. When he tilted the bottle again, he noticed that his hand holding the glass was trembling slightly. Graciela saw it, too.
‘Calm down,’ she said, parodying him. He relaxed and laughed reluctantly. ‘Perhaps it’s for the best. Or at least, it’s the only sensible course.’
‘I understand that no solution is entirely acceptable. And do you know why not? Because the only truly unacceptable thing is what Santiago is going through.’
‘I think I’ll follow your advice. I’ll go on pretending.’
‘Besides, the future may hold surprises. For everyone. Although you don’t need him today, you might need him again.’
‘You think I’m fickle, don’t you, Rafael?’
‘No. I think that all of us, those here and those elsewhere, are all out of kilter. We do as best we can to organize ourselves, to start over, to sort out our feelings, our relationships, our nostalgias. But as soon as we let things slip, chaos resurfaces. And each new lapse into chaos (sorry for repeating myself) is increasingly chaotic.’
Graciela closed her eyes for a moment. Intrigued, her father-in-law peered at her, possibly afraid she might burst into tears. But when she opened her eyes once more, they were only slightly moist, or perhaps a little shiny. She stared down at the empty glass still in her hand, and held it out to Don Rafael.
‘Can I have another?’
Don Rafael
(News of Emilio)
I feel as though I’ve been crushed, as if I’m lost. As if I’m gasping for breath, but without panting. As if after a wretched, tough lesson of what being a father means. As if I were seeing myself from a distance in a shop window, and my image was that of a mannequin made all the more ridiculous because all it was wearing was a tie. Fortunately, it seems I convinced Graciela, but am I myself convinced? Hypocrisy may be a vice, but I’m not so sure that frankness is always a virtue. I want to be realistic, I want to be broad-minded, I want to be flexible, I want to be up to date. The trouble is that I’m also a father. In other words, when, finally, Santiago gets out of prison (the lawyer has just sent me a fairly hopeful letter) a different woman will be waiting for him. He will have to see Graciela through the bars of another man’s love. To collect Beatriz at weekends and take her to the zoo and parks and occasionally to the movies. To ask her as few awkward questions as possible, because her every reply, however innocent she may be, is bound to upset him, or lead him to speculate. And how is he going to deal with Rolando? As his former comrade, one he even shared a cell with, or as the man who is sleeping with his wife? What’s going on with my son, gentlemen? I know what his qualities are, and even what he had too much of, but the question today is about what he lacks. What’s missing in this story? I’ve no problem imagining the ins and outs that lead people to love him, but confess I’m at a loss to identify the things that bring about this loss of love. What shortcomings has he inherited from me, from his mother? I have to find out. I have to unearth the real son, whom I perhaps don’t even
know as yet. Precisely today I dusted off the clandestine letter, the only one that so far (I still have no idea by what strange channel) he was able to send me with complete certainty that it wouldn’t pass through the prison censors. And strangely, the letter was sent to me, and not Graciela:
Just think, Dad, how sure I must be that this mail is secure for me to decide to tell you of the indiscretions you’re just about to read. I have to send signals to someone from this wilderness, and who else could it be but you? I have to send signals so as not to go to pieces, not to fall apart. Don’t worry, it’s only a figure of speech. But, in some way, it translates a feeling, doesn’t it? Let’s be clear: don’t be afraid that I’ve talked, or given someone away. Not that. You taught me a few things, and that’s one lesson I did learn. Oh, but I’m not a hero either. Would you be astonished if I told you I’m still not sure if I stayed silent out of conviction or self-interest? Yes, self-interest. I always noticed that if you deny everything, if you persist in saying No and No again with your head, hands, lips, eyes and throat, those people still use you as a punchbag of course, but just occasionally you notice that deep down they suspect you’re telling the truth; in other words, that you know absolutely nothing. If on the other hand you weaken and say the slightest thing, a trifle that maybe is of no use to them at all and which doesn’t hurt anyone, then their attitude changes, because from that moment on they do think you know a whole lot more, and really go for you, they tear you apart. If you consistently deny everything, of course they’re going to smash you up, but it’s also possible that one day they may leave you in peace, because they’re convinced it’s true that you don’t know a thing. But if you say something, even the tiniest detail, then they’ll never leave you alone. Perhaps they might lay off you for a while, but soon they’ll return to the charge. They’re obsessed with getting the rest of it out of you. That’s why, I repeat, I’m not sure if I stayed silent out of conviction or self-interest. Maybe the latter. But in the end, those are defences you put up. At any rate, I’m fine with it, as no one was caught just because I caved in at some point or other. But that’s not what I want to talk to you about. You know what the lawyer’s argument has always been: that I didn’t kill anyone. Remember that? But I did. Don’t have a heart attack, will you? Neither the lawyer, nor my comrades, Graciela nor anybody else knows about this. You’re the only one who’s hearing it, and that’s because I just have to get it off my chest. You can see what a huge risk I’m running by putting it down here in black and white, and yet I’m doing so because I cannot bear the weight of it alone any longer. I’ll tell you what happened. For about ten days I’d been in the hideout – one of many. I’d spent the last two of them all on my own, without ever going outside, eating only from tins, reading thrillers, listening to the transistor radio with earpieces in to avoid attracting attention. The shutters were closed all day. At night, too, of course, but I never turned a light on. We had to give the impression the house was empty. The big advantage of that particular hideout was that it had exits to two different streets, which, despite everything, gave me some security, because the second exit was well concealed: at the end of a corridor with flats on either side. Most of them were bachelor pads, so there weren’t many people around, which also helped. I always slept with one eye open, and one night some slight noises and almost imperceptible footsteps made me open the other one as well. It seemed as if the sounds were coming from the small front garden. I looked through the shutters and saw a slightly swaying shadow, though I couldn’t tell if it was of a man or a dwarf pine planted in the flowerbed. I didn’t move, but, all of a sudden, I sensed someone was prowling around inside the house. Thinking it over now, I reckon they were so sure no one was there they’d relaxed their normal security measures. Besides, I guess there were only a few of them, three or four, and that they had approached the house not because they knew anything definite, but because by that point they were suspicious of everything. Suddenly I was caught in the beam of a torch. A minute went by that seemed like an eternity to me, then a voice whispered: ‘Santiago, what are you doing here?’ At first, I thought it must be a comrade, but it couldn’t have been, because they all knew me by another name. When the figure shifted the beam of his torch away slightly, I saw his uniform first of all, then the weapon he was brandishing, and finally, his face. Do you know who it was? Hold on tight, Dad. It was Emilio. Yes, the very same, the one you’re thinking of, Aunt Ana’s son, your nephew. You can’t imagine the images that flash through your mind at a time like that. I had little scope to make decisions; he was the one in charge of the situation, because I had no chance of reaching my revolver. There were footsteps, more noises in the little garden. He spoke again: ‘Give yourself up, Santiago. It’s for the best – I didn’t know you were mixed up in this, give yourself up.’ And he stared at the gun, not his, but mine, the one I couldn’t reach. ‘I didn’t know you were mixed up in this either, Emilio.’ We were both whispering. ‘So many years since we last saw each other,’ he murmured. ‘Not a good moment to meet again, is it?’ I whispered. And I made a snap decision. I joined my fists together and went up to him, as if to let him handcuff me – ‘All right, I surrender.’ And he trusted me. He wouldn’t have trusted anyone else. He let me approach; I think he even lowered his gun a little. I don’t know now what speedy movements I made, but the fact is that three seconds later, instead of being forced into cuffs, these hands of mine were squeezing his neck, and went on squeezing until he stopped moving. I don’t know how it could all have happened so silently. The shadows of other figures were still moving out in the garden, but they weren’t speaking: obviously, they didn’t want to give their presence away. I was barefoot, but dressed; I always slept with my clothes on. I walked as quickly as I could towards the second exit, picking up a pair of rope sandals from a chair on my way. I reached the door to the other street, the one that gave on to the line of studios. There were no shutters or spyholes on that side, so I simply had to take a risk, and I did. I went out and no one was there. It was three in the morning. I advanced all of ten metres, trying not to run, and then, suddenly, I saw it. I couldn’t believe my eyes: a bus was coming slowly along, with only two passengers on board – one of those old Cutcsa buses with an open platform. I leapt on it. Half an hour later, I got off in Plaza Independencia. The newspapers never mentioned that failed mini-operation, and Emilio’s name never appeared as one of the noble victims of murderous subversion. There was only the funeral notice. And we (you, me, Graciela) were among the relatives expressing their profound grief at his death. Maybe you even went to the vigil. I didn’t, obviously, although for a moment I was tempted to. But by then I was really on the run. A year later, when they captured us in the raid on Villa Muñoz, they interrogated me hundreds of times, they took me to pieces, but they never asked me about that particular event. Why didn’t they ever mention it? I’ll never know. The fact is, nobody in the family knew Emilio was a cop. But if his profession was such a mystery, why was he wearing a uniform? You must be asking why I’m loading all this on to you. I’m telling you because I’ve never managed to free myself of that act, which I was cornered into. Petty-bourgeois prejudice on my part? Possibly. Ironically, it’s the only time I have killed. I’ve been in more than one shootout and several times was on the brink of being snuffed out, I’ve been on the point of finishing someone else off, but it seems my aim leaves a lot to be desired. I have no other deaths to my credit (or should that be debit?). So, what’s the problem? The thing is, I can’t forget my cousin’s face. Or forget my hands strangling him. Two or three times a month I dream of Emilio, but never in the act of killing him. They’re not nightmares. I dream of a very distant past, when we were both young boys (he was a year older than me, wasn’t he?), and we used to play football in the little field behind the church, or when, during the summer months, we went to the Prado at siesta-time, while you adults had to take a nap and we felt especially free. We stretched out on the grass or the mattresses of leaves, and fa
ntasized, made plans in which we were going to be together and travel, always by boat – because we were scared of planes and besides, as Emilio used to say, on the ship’s deck we could play leapfrog and jacks, whereas the air hostesses banned that on planes. We went on fantasizing: he was going to be an engineer, because I like mathematics, he used to say, and I was going to be a musician, because I liked to play La Cumparsita by blowing on a comb with a cigarette paper folded round it. We also talked about you grown-ups, and he was always adamant: They don’t understand us, but they do love us, and we set an age limit of fourteen for us to escape, once and for all, from his house and mine, and so begin the tale of adventures we had so often spoken of. That’s the Emilio I dream about, and that’s why they’re not nightmares. The nightmare comes when I wake up and see my hands squeezing his throat, which wasn’t soft and narrow, like when we were eight, nine or ten, but short and thick; or maybe that’s how it seemed to me because of the collar of his uniform. His name has been mentioned several times here in prison, or before that in the barracks. Nobody knew he was my cousin, but they all agreed he was a butcher, one of the most savage torturers, a rat who enjoyed sticking the electric prod up the prisoners’ arses or on their balls. Some of them are aware he died a while ago, but don’t know the circumstances. I don’t say a word when somebody remarks, I hope he didn’t die a natural death, I hope they smashed that bastard’s skull, the shitty sadist, and other equally appreciative terms. So, it’s not exactly a sense of guilt that disturbs me, but rather the thought that in those early hours I somehow strangled my childhood. And maybe the memory of the look of trust he had when I brought my hands together as if I wanted him to handcuff me. And today, when I think about what, back then, his reason for whispering might have been. Perhaps because he thought I wasn’t alone in the house and so wasn’t sure of his position, even though he realized I couldn’t reach my gun. Or maybe it was so that the others didn’t kill me out of sheer nervousness, or pure cruelty, because, after all, I was his cousin Santiago and it was better to have me surrender alive and not to take me down as a corpse, running the risk that someday the family might discover what a huge mess it had been. Or perhaps because he also suddenly remembered all our shared past, with our fantasies on the grass and the mattresses of leaves, and that disconcerted him and left him defenceless. Or perhaps he was not struck as quickly as I was by the profound ideological differences pitting us against one another, in a desperate struggle where being cousins counted for nothing. But I had never killed anyone, Dad, and I think that this, my one experience of it, has marked me for ever. That might mean that I’m a coward, even though I’ve been very strong in other ways. And I have to add that I don’t think I would feel the same if I had killed him in a shootout. I feel like this because I killed him in that way – an ignoble way, perhaps underhand, using and abusing his surprise, that was (if I’m honest, I’m sure it was) an affectionate surprise. And even though I now know he had turned into a really sinister character, a bloodthirsty sort with no scruples, and everybody says, me included, that he’s better off dead, the fact is that when I grabbed his neck with my clawing hands I didn’t know any of that: I killed him purely and simply to survive. I killed the person who had dreamed longside me and with whom I had made plans to escape from his house and mine, dreams of trips on boats, playing jacks and leapfrog. They are – how can I put it? – two different sets of values, two distinct identities, two juxtaposed Emilios. Can you understand that, Dad? I’m not telling Graciela and I never will, because she wouldn’t understand, because she always sees things in black or white. She could say, You did well, that’s one butcher less. Or she could say: How could you do that to your cousin? But it’s neither one thing nor the other. It’s more complicated, Dad, more complicated. Now here’s a thing. Bear in mind that this letter is a unique opportunity (I hope one day I’ll be able to tell you how this incredible chance came about), which I’m sure will never be repeated. It’s impossible for you to reply to me through the same channel or any other that is as trustworthy. And yet you must send me a reply. Isn’t that right: You will reply, won’t you? You’ll have to do it in the normal way, the one that is bound to go through prison censorship. You’ll have to limit yourself to one of two alternative replies, even though we both know how many gradations might lie between them. Take note, then. If you can identify with the situation – I’m not saying if you approve of it or can justify it, but if, at least, you comprehend it – find a way so that, two lines before you sign off, the word ‘understand’ appears. If, on the other hand, it seems to you something that is abject or inadmissible, then put ‘I don’t understand’. Agreed? Ciao, Dad.