No Place for Heroes (28 page)

She’d wait for him at Gabriela’s house. She’d catch up with her old comrades, continuing to recover fragments of the old days. All right: she would stay and Mateo would go. And if the decision had been made, there was no time to lose, they had to find a winter camping site, or a ski school, so that he would be with a group and a good instructor.

“Then you’re not going to call Ramón?” She hadn’t wanted to say it, but she did, and was startled to realize she’d pulled one last trick out of her sleeve in order to keep him there.

Mateo ducked the question and did not respond. It was better that he didn’t. It was only fair that they surrender in this first effort to find his father. They had done enough and could one day return to continue the search. For now his thoughts were aimed at other things. First of all, he wanted a new backpack; he felt that the suitcase he’d brought was no good, the others on the trip would have backpacks, and he did not want to be the only one with an old-man suitcase.

“Think about it, Lolé. It doesn’t go with my personality.”

They bought a red backpack with many straps and compartments, which Mateo felt was more in tune with his personality, and Lorenza was pleased to see him so happy, delighted to see him excited about his own plans. Then they fought about a new pair of boots. She insisted on getting
some boots suited for the snow but he refused to go along. He claimed that there was no need and that he didn’t even feel like trying them on, but she piled on her convincing arguments, so he gave up and they bought them. They went to several travel agencies to shop around and compare prices, made a second round, studied catalogs, looked at photos, and finally opted for a complete package, including airfare, accommodation, food, equipment rental, lessons, and a lift pass. They bought a pair of thermal gloves and again argued, this time about whether it would be necessary to get a warmer scarf. He won, and they didn’t buy a scarf. The next day, at eleven o’clock in the morning, they were at Aeroparque Jorge Newbery, looking for the place where Mateo was to meet his fellow travelers.

Life biting its own tail. There she was, saying goodbye to Mateo at exactly the place where years earlier she had taken the plane to Bariloche to go looking for him. She thought about telling him, to make him aware of the coincidences, the tricks of time as it pursues itself and reconnects, closing cycles and opening new ones. But she said nothing, obviously this was not the time.

Mateo had on a new face. He was illuminated, as if he had opened some door to the world and a stream of light had poured over him. He was going back to Bariloche, a teenager, wearing the
Bridges to Babylon
shirt he had bought at the Rolling Stones concert, a little skittish but radiant by the time he approached the other boys and girls going on the trip, sixteen in total, with a couple of ski instructors, two polite, athletic
women, at home in their roles as those responsible for the group, who gave Mateo an effusive welcome and introduced him to the others in the group, some new, like him, but most veterans of several winters, making the same trip with the same people. They called for their plane to board over the PA and Mateo ran after the crowd, lugging his red backpack and without saying goodbye. He was so excited that he didn’t even realize he hadn’t said goodbye to his mother, and she had to simply wave with her hand, in case he turned to look at her.

“I stood there like an idiot, and I swear I had to make an effort not to cry,” she told her friend Gabriela a few hours later.

“The orphan of your son,” replied Gabriela. “I know that sad figure well.”

Lorenza headed for the window to look at the runway, to make sure that Mateo boarded the right plane, when someone shoved her from behind and almost made her fall.

“Goodbye, Lolé, I love you very much.” It was Mateo, who rushed to hug her and ran back to catch up with the others.

She had accepted the invitation to spend the week in Gabriela’s apartment, at 6000 Zelada Street, in the Mataderos neighborhood on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

“It’s full of fuzz,” said Gabriela, passing her hand over a table, which was covered in gray dust. “My lungs must be full of lint. It’s because of my job, I embroider here at home, and the fabric and threads shed lint.”

“You embroider?”

“Yes. Sheets, towels, linens, baby clothes, trousseaus—”

“By hand?”

“My old lady embroidered by hand, what beautiful things she made; not me, I work with machines.”

“So that’s why you gave me those dozen little embroidered shirts when Mateo was born.”

“You haven’t forgotten,” said Gabriela while making the bed on the living-room sofa, after picking up and piling on the floor against the walls the dozens of bundles the sofa had been buried under.

“What are they?” asked Lorenza, who had once again become Aurelia, because that’s how Gabriela knew her and what she still called her.

“Sheets. One hundred twenty-seven sets of sheets, which I need to have embroidered, ironed, and ready to go by Monday. Monograms in blue, look: like this, RCH, Rochester Classic Hotel, the place the order is for.”

Her workshop was right there in the apartment, so they had all the time they wanted to talk, as long as Aurelia let her work and helped if she wanted, steam ironing, pressing the sheets and pillowcases after they’d been embroidered, so that the delivery could be made on time.

They used to meet in the Basilica of San José de Flores, when they were both active in the front lines of the resistance. According to the minute they had agreed upon, they met in the alcove behind the altar, overseen from the vault by a young Christ Pantocrator who inspired them with confidence. There, they knelt with rosary in hand and pretended
to pray as a duo. Hail Mary full of grace, and interspersed their Hail Marys with party information, blessed art thou among women, planning the activities of the week; and since both were pregnant, before leaving they sprinkled their bellies with holy water, to protect the children.

“Holy water, what nonsense,” said Gabriela.

“If it didn’t do any good, at least it caused no harm.”

“Modesto Zupichín.”

“Lucil Lucifora.”

“Lomolino Lomo.”

“Abramo Lomazo.”

They recalled the list of names for their babies which they had found in the pages of the Buenos Aires telephone book, betting to see who could find the most absurd one, Dora Lota, Lubli Lea, Tufik Salame, Delfor Malanga.

“Delfor Malanga, flower name,” said Gabriela. “And to think that you ended up naming the kid Mateo.”

“And you, Mary, maybe because of the many rosaries that we prayed in San José de Flores.”

“Can you handle the iron?”

“I am a tigress with the iron,
mi papito lindo
had a seamstress’s shop.”

“In the days of your
papito lindo
there were no steam irons.”

“I am a tigress with the steam iron.”

“You know who I still see occasionally, Tina, do you remember Tina?”

“Tina, the one from the elevator, how could I not remember. How is Tina?”

“She has two grown sons, both college graduates. She is now retired from teaching. She was a teacher.”

“She must have been older than us. Five or six years older. Have you ever asked her about it?”

“About that? She told me without my asking. She said she had felt a sense of relief.”

“Relief?”

“Yes, relief.”

“Madre mía.”

“She said that when she saw that the
cana
was behind her and got into the elevator, she thought he’d been following her and that it would be her fault that her comrades in the floor above, waiting for her to begin the meeting, got nabbed. She says that at the time she wanted to die, and therefore when the guy raped her, then got out of the elevator and ran away from the building, among everything else that she felt was that: relief. She had been raped but she was alive, and the ones who were waiting for her were still alive, had not disappeared, had not been murdered. And she felt relief.”

“You think so?”

“It’s what she told me.”

“Could it be—”

“Do you remember Tebas, the one who always came to the meetings with a younger brother, Nandito, who was severely retarded?”

“Tebas was disappeared, that I heard.”

“He was the last disappeared one of the party, at the time the military junta was about to fall. I don’t know if you know about Nandito. They grabbed him with Tebas and disappeared him as well.”

“Bastards. He must have been the most innocent of all the victims. He had such a sweet expression, Nandito.”

“Sweet, yes, but he masturbated in front of people.”

“Hush, what?”

“I swear, you don’t know what a fuss it caused during the meetings when he started up with that. Tebas suffered tremendously, but what could he do, he couldn’t very well bind his hands.”

“As if that would warrant it.”

“Crazy, right?”

“And Felicitas, do you remember her? The lawyer I introduced to you once.”

“Yes, quite the number that one, from Barrio Norte, she was wearing a red fox coat that one time we saw her, imposing with her Gucci handbag and suede boots.”

“Yes, that one. We became good friends. But just friends, no politics, friends to go to the movies with, talk about books and such. And last week I was with her and guess what, she told me that during that time she defended money launderers. I would never have suspected it, would swear she had nothing to do with anything, until recently, when she told me.”

“Just look at her—”

“That’s exactly what I told her. I told her that she looked
so elegant in her aristocratic office, I wouldn’t dare open my mouth around her. She told me that she’d never been left wing and wasn’t part of the resistance, but that on becoming a lawyer she had sworn to uphold elementary principles, as old as the French Revolution, and could not stand idly by before farcical trials and arbitrary sentences.”

“Who’d believe it, with that red fox coat?”

“Well, look, that famous red fox coat was her lifeline, her bulletproof vest. She told me that thanks to the red fox she went in and out of the superior court of the armed forces without arousing suspicion of being a lefty.”

“She, since she’s tall, white, thin as a sigh; if I put that thing on I would be stopped right there for being a fox and a red.”

“She said she did suspect that I was involved in something, that it was strange that I had no phone, never specified exactly where I lived, that if she wanted to invite me to something, she could never find me. That had seemed weird, but she didn’t dare ask or bring up the topic.”

“Nobody dared, that’s the truth. We all knew everything but pretended not to know, even to those we considered close. Those who say they were unaware in fact did not want to know, because no one went without an acquaintance or relative who disappeared. For me, the first rattling was the disappearance of Mariana, my best friend from childhood, just because her name was in the address book of a militant. We were all witnesses. We knew that others knew, but never said anything. I had to do militant things hidden from my
husband, and that should tell you everything.” Gabriela confessed that she was now separated from the bank employee.

“He sympathized with the junta, your husband?”

“Not at all, but he was fucking scared.”

Fear: another thing that no one dared mention. No militant ever said he or she was afraid, ever. As if simply by not naming it, you could escape it.

Lorenza told Gabriela about the days with her mother, who had come to Buenos Aires to be with her for childbirth, and her life with Mateo as a newborn and beyond, Mateo taking his first steps, and then confessed that, at that stage in her life, she had felt afraid. To be able to continue their work in the resistance, she and Ramón had decided to enroll Mateo in day care from the time he was three months old, the Jardín Pelusa on Avenida Santa Fe, and every afternoon, took turns picking him up at four o’clock.

“That was the face of fear for me,” she confessed. “I became obsessed with the idea that if something happened to us one day, to Ramón or me, that four in the afternoon would come around and there’d be no one to pick up Mateo.”

She had taken to thinking about it all the time and, as much as she tried, could not get the idea out of her head. She began to panic and picked up Mateo from the crib, to hug him, and then he’d wake up and she had to put him to sleep again. “Until then I hadn’t known what anxiety was.” Not the time that she had to escape from her house through the roof, nor when she’d granted San Jacinto to the party, signing the notarized papers and saying goodbye to her only inheritance.

She didn’t remember having been afraid during the twenty-four hours she had been detained at a police station in Icho Cruz, convinced that she would not walk out alive. Shock, yes, and adrenaline by the bucketful, also heart palpitations and vertigo at the adventure, all that. But not fear. Fear, what is really called fear, that shadow of the enemy that invades you and defeats you little by little from within. That she had never experienced. Until Mateo was born.

Thereafter, the image of the abandoned child at the Jardín Pelusa, of the hundreds of children who were taken from prisoners and given up for adoption to military families, the possibility that something similar could happen to Mateo, gradually became a terror that sapped her strength. She bore it as well as she could, without a word, until Mateo was two years old and on the day when the boy blew out his pair of candles, she announced to Ramón her decision to take him away for a while. Much to her surprise, Ramón agreed. Not only did he not argue, nor reprimand her, or call her weak, or insult her, but he told her that he would go with them. For Mateo. For Mateo to grow up far away from the circle of death and breathe air that was free of threats. A month later, the three set off for Colombia, having made the decision to leave the party and to stay away at least a few months.

Amid clouds of steam and fuzz, the sputtering steam iron, and the hum of the sewing machine, they continued their chat laden with secrets that had never been revealed and indeed would never be mentioned again. The sheets, embroidered and ironed, piled up, and they had to be sorted
into sets—fitted sheets, flat sheets, and pillowcases—then wrapped in tissue paper and placed carefully in a box. And it was there in Gabriela’s apartment where Lorenza thought she finally had found the tone that would allow her to write, now, yes, that chapter in their history. She needed to put into words this story that had been so far marked by silence. She had always known that sooner or later the task would have to be taken up, there was no way around it, because the past that has not been tamed with words is not memory, only a sort of spying.