Hades, Argentina

by Daniel Loedel

  I didn’t pack it after that. Instead I took it to the Hudson that evening before going to her apartment, and threw it in. I told Claire afterward, and tried to tell myself the same, more or less: I was done with regret, with doubt. With death. As Claire frequently put it: I’d survived; what did the rest matter?

  Grasping the cold metal handle again reminded me how reassuring it felt. Like a safety net—or better, an escape hatch. Knowing it was in my closet had meant I could always escape again.

  “You’ve held on to it in a way,” the Colonel said to me. “All this time, you’ve been deciding. And now you get to. End of the road, my Dantecito.”

  “Dantecito?”

  “Well, we are more Virgil and Dante than Orpheus or Odysseus or any of the others, don’t you think?”

  I smiled. How could I help it?

  “She’s more Persephone than Eurydice,” I said. “Isabel.”

  The Colonel nodded approvingly. “Queen of the underworld. Half the time she’s spring, no?”

  “Still married to the place, though. Even when she leaves.”

  “Well,” he said, “let’s hope Argentine hell isn’t as Catholic as Argentina.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Divorce, Tomás. We better hope she can get a divorce.”

  I wanted to laugh. But the Colonel had already closed the cart door, wistfully as a parent sending a child off to school. I glanced into the murky ravine below. In the starlight I could make out more rides—a water slide and a Chair-O-Planes, its seats hanging limply in the air—as well as a motley assortment of jarringly out-of-place structures: a glassy office building; an airport tower; three rows of long, industrial barns, from which the faint but frenetic hum of clucking rose to my ears. I remembered Isabel’s story about Gustavo working at a chicken farm, and what the Colonel had said about a delta, all those rivers in the underworld mixing and dissolving into the ocean.

  “What will you do?” I asked him.

  “You mean while you’re down there?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t mean that.”

  He shrugged. “Little, Tomás. Over time, I expect I will do less and less. And hopefully, eventually, I will do nothing except look at the stars.” He looked briefly up at the sky, then back at me. “Are you ready, Tomasito?”

  I wasn’t. But I sat down and closed my eyes, knowing I’d feel nauseous if I didn’t. When the wheel started turning, it felt as if it had been all along.

  SEVENTEEN

  This time I did wake in the pensión. More knocking, another disgruntled shout from Beatriz or somebody telling me about a call. I rose lethargically to get it.

  Slowly, perhaps delusionally, my paranoia had decreased over the previous days. Nothing had happened to me, and I told myself that every additional day nothing did suggested nothing would. Every meal I survived, every platter of shitty sandwiches or plain pasta, increased the likelihood I’d survive in general. (Though somewhere in the back of my mind was an adage the Colonel had once told me about chickens: they know the farmer comes every morning with corn until the morning he comes with a butcher knife.)

  It also helped that a week after cooking was added to my duties, the suspicion whirling about Automotores was redirected at the Uruguayans. Their country had done such a good job eliminating its communist threat that it could no longer pretend to need American funding and was cut off. The result was the Uruguayans took the twelve prisoners they had in custody at Automotores back to Uruguay and used them to stage a terrorist attack, claiming that guerrillas were still afoot and they needed money for the ongoing defense of capitalism. It was quite a publicity stunt. But the last thing Aníbal and the rest of the crew at Automotores wanted was publicity; tensions flared, but not at me, and when the remaining foreign operatives were kicked out, I, as a fellow Argentine, was treated more as part of the team.

  Then that morning, Pichuca called to let me know how to reach Isabel and Gustavo.

  We were to telephone a man at a locutorio—a new kind of communications shop. I was to give my alias and that of the party I wanted to contact, and the man would deliver the message I left with him when the other party called. Isabel’s alias was Señora Amarga, “Mrs. Bitter,” which I found endearing. Gustavo’s was El Profe, short for “the professor,” which I found less so. My own, Pichuca informed me, was Pingüino.

  “Why am I a penguin?”

  “I don’t know,” Pichuca said. “It’s Gustavo’s system. Maybe he chose it.”

  Still, it felt like a life preserver, getting news of this system. More so when I tested it out: I called the enigmatic message man at the locutorio and told him to tell Señora Amarga that Pingüino wanted her to come with him tomorrow at 15:00 to see his brothers and sisters at the zoo.

  The next day, she was there, waiting for me at the entrance, and on time to boot.

  “Your message was terrible,” she said. “Lucky I found you—you think there are penguins in this zoo?”

  I managed a smile, and we went in. There were no penguins, but where we sat we could hear the chirps of exotic birds, which gave our meeting an uneven, alien cadence. After asking for updates on Automotores—I related the Uruguayan “scandal,” as the Gringo called it, and the names of the most recent pickups—she gave me her own about the Priest, the search for his murderers.

  The milicos had no idea who it was, she asserted confidently; I was safe. The devil used to stop in at other centers too, she reminded me, and he had his share of enemies at his church in Boedo—so many people had wanted him dead, they’d have no reason to point the finger at me.

  I could have answered that they didn’t typically need a reason to point a finger at someone, but I didn’t. Isabel was trying to comfort me, and I wanted to let her.

  She also told me we couldn’t meet in public like this anymore, it was too dangerous; from now on, if I needed to see her, I’d have to leave a message saying what time to pick me up for the asado, and one of them would come get me by car.

  “One of you?” I asked, realizing this meant I’d mostly see her in Gustavo’s presence going forward.

  “Our house is pretty,” she answered. “I think you’d like it.”

  I didn’t. But I didn’t say that either.

  * * *

  Two weeks later, I received another call at the pensión when I happened to be there.

  “Thank God,” the voice on the line said when I picked up. Pichuca again.

  “What is it, Pichu?”

  “This is the third Tuesday in a row I haven’t heard from Nerea. Our arrangement was for her to leave me a message every Tuesday morning, and I can’t reach her. I can’t reach Tito or Isabel either, I can’t reach anyone, I thought you were all, all—”

  “We’re fine, Pichu.”

  “Nerea’s not fine. It’s not like her, you know it’s not like her.”

  “She’s in hiding, Pichu. You know that—you’re the one who told me.”

  “Hiding! It’s not like they went to Australia, Tomás. I know Isa and Gustavo are in Villa Ballester. I just want to speak to her, Tomás. Will you help me speak to Isa?”

  I was quiet a moment. Not because of her request but the phrase preceding it. Villa Ballester. I didn’t know Isabel and Gustavo were in Villa Ballester.

  “Isa doesn’t leave you a message every Tuesday?” I asked.

  “Of course she doesn’t. You know her.”

  “I do. Which is why, Pichu, I don’t think I can—”

  “You’re afraid of Isa? You think she got that personality on her own? I’m her mother, Tomás! And I’m looking for one of my daughters!”

  “I know, Pichu,” I said. “I understand. But Pichu, I can’t—”

  “Stop saying my fucking name, Tomás, and say you’ll help me speak to Isabel. Say you’ll help me find her,” she said, and started to cry. “Say you’ll help m
e find my Nerea . . .”

  I listened to her sobs. Waited for them to stop so I could tell her I would, but they never did.

  * * *

  I called the man at the locutorio afterward, leaving a message for Señora Amarga that Pingüino would be waiting for her to pick him up for the asado at 15:00 on Thursday, my next day off. I added—thinking fast, trying to figure out how to do this in code—that I knew the, uh, the ninfa might not be joining us, and I wanted to talk to her about that. The ninfa’s, uh, her—fuck it—her mother was upset, and I wanted to talk to her about that too. What should I tell her?

  It was too long and cumbersome a message, and I hung up feeling defeated.

  But when I called some hours later asking for my own messages, the man told me, from Señora Amarga, that the Profe would pick me up when I’d asked. Nothing was added about the ninfa or her mother.

  Still, I relayed the arrangement to Pichuca, taking pains to explain it should be safe—the military had names and addresses for targets only, maybe an old school photo or vague physical description, little that would give away Gustavo on the drive, assuming he had fake documents. Pichuca answered curtly that she was aware of the thinking; she’d been to see Nerea twice. And Nerea had contended it was safe too.

  * * *

  By October, Automotores had grown quieter. Without the foreigners, Triste, or the Priest, our numbers were considerably reduced. We had a few new recruits—the SIDE agent designated Red and those two thugs of Aníbal’s, Goat and Nose, who looked like mobster twins in their nearly matching Puma tracksuits—but they had other posts and inconsistent shifts. Depressingly I reflected that, if only the thirty-odd prisoners we had knew they outnumbered us about six to one, they’d have a decent chance at escaping.

  Instead, as I learned that Wednesday, the result was a higher turnover of transfers.

  I kept worrying Elizabeth would be on the list. She wasn’t, not yet. And though I wouldn’t say she seemed worried exactly, it was clear when I visited her that she was aware of her predicament. Not long after I entered, with a can of bean soup that I presented as if it were a delicacy, she said, “You have no reason to keep me alive, do you?”

  It was worse than that, I believed. There might be reason to make sure she didn’t stay alive. The United States was in the midst of a presidential election and might vote in Jimmy Carter, who was certain to have a less favorable view of the regime. If word of Elizabeth’s abduction were to reach the US government, international concern could be aroused. Uruguayans and Brazilians carrying tales of torture posed comparatively minute risk. But a pretty, young American?

  If Rubio didn’t like to toy with her, and if the rest of the men didn’t think I did, they probably would have punched her ticket already.

  Still I told her, “I do. Have reasons.”

  “Do they?”

  I didn’t know how to keep it going. I felt like such a liar just by speaking to her that the idea of actually lying—I couldn’t stomach it.

  “Not good ones,” I admitted.

  There was nothing like the silence of an isolation cell in Automotores when the torture room was quiet and the train outside wasn’t passing. In Elizabeth’s cell, not even the tittering of mice or the sound of a leak in the walls came through.

  “Maybe it’s for the best,” she said.

  “What is?”

  “I don’t want to stay alive for those reasons.”

  I looked at the soup on the floor; she hadn’t touched it. Was she trying to kill herself before they could? It felt like a crueler injustice than any, somehow, that she couldn’t even get her way in this.

  Yet I picked up the soup can and held it out to her.

  “There are other reasons to stay alive,” I said. I felt like I was pleading with her.

  “Are there,” she said. She didn’t take the can from me. “I don’t remember them anymore.”

  * * *

  On the day of our make-believe asado, Pichuca met me downstairs at my pensión. We didn’t speak of Nerea or much at all. I got the sense quickly—after a dumb icebreaker referring to the sign outside the building for the hardly grand “Gran Atlántico” fell flat—that opening her mouth risked uncorking everything else inside her, and she was already struggling to keep it tamped down.

  I didn’t know what car Gustavo drove and was surprised when a little turquoise Fiat pulled up at the curb—not exactly the guerrilla-mobile I’d envisaged for him. He rolled down the window, and I could see his expression change—an uncomfortable swallow, his protrusive Adam’s apple rising and dipping—when he realized two of us were there.

  “Well, this . . . this is a surprise,” he stammered. “Tomás, we weren’t expecting—”

  “Nerea’s missing,” I told him.

  “Nerea’s pregnant,” Pichuca said.

  Gustavo sucked down more saliva. Then he leaned over and opened the car’s front door for Pichuca, calling her señora like he was trying to impress. I got in the back.

  He instructed us, with apologies—at least to the señora, who he must not have realized had experience already—that we’d have to look down the whole way, that it was safer for everybody if we had no idea where we were headed. “Or close your eyes, pretend to sleep. But head down, if you don’t mind. I know it’s hard on the neck”—he offered a consolatory chuckle—“but you’d be surprised how they can blink open right at the wrong time, catch a street sign.”

  “Shouldn’t you just give us blindfolds?” I asked.

  “Right, because that’s not conspicuous. Two passengers in my car with blindfolds on you can see through the windows.”

  I didn’t like his tone—especially compared to the tone he employed with Pichuca. “The milicos do it,” I insisted.

  “The milicos don’t need to be inconspicuous. They put blindfolds on you and then they throw you in the trunk. Do you want to be thrown in the trunk, Tomás?”

  I didn’t like that either. But I was out of rejoinders, and I stared at my feet as we drove off.

  * * *

  Some suburbs of Buenos Aires were suburbs in the American sense: big green lawns and lovely fences, glimmering pools, and housecleaning help. Villa Ballester was not a suburb in the American sense. I’d never been, but my understanding was that in economic terms it rivaled the suburbs between Buenos Aires and La Plata, and those I had enough familiarity with to avoid. It made sense that Isabel and Gustavo had ended up there—what kinds of jobs could they hold down with fake documents and without bachelor’s degrees?—but it was unsettling. This was not the upper-middle-class Palermo where Isabel had grown up.

  I’m not sure if it would have unsettled me more or less had I been able to look out the window and take in the neighborhood. It was enough that when we pulled into the long driveway—it was the type of house common in such neighborhoods, tucked behind another, usually the landlord’s—I accidentally looked up and took in the series of bolts on the door and the thick bars on the windows.

  Isabel greeted us with fierce hugs, her mother especially. Under the pretense of giving her a tour and wanting to start with the garden, she took her out back. Leaving me alone with Gustavo.

  His limp was still significant, and he’d sat down right after entering. Declining his offers of mate and a seat at the table—it gave me a tenuous sense of superiority to stand over him—I surveyed their home. It was small: a front room that served as kitchen, living room, and dining room, and a bedroom just off it. Furniture was scant, as were decorations. Few of the books Isabel had discussed with me in the past were on the shelves. No T. E. Lawrence or Che, Rodolfo Walsh or Eduardo Galeano—all too dangerous in the event of a raid. I told myself it was nothing to be jealous of, this tiny barren house of theirs. But the barrenness actually had the opposite effect, solidified the sense that all they needed here was each other.

  Gustavo and I were silent, watching Isabel
and her mother through the garden door. Isabel had lit a cigarette but barely taken a drag. Pichuca was crying again, intermittently yelling, while Isabel rubbed her back. Scattered exchanges snapped in and out of earshot: “Don’t you see? Your sister’s dead because of your stupid cause.” “We don’t know she’s dead, only taken.” “What difference does it make, what difference . . . ?” Soon they were out of range, at the far end of the yard, but I could see Pichuca gradually calming down. Whatever Isabel’s words of comfort were, I imagined they must be both as good and as ineffectual as they’d been with me.

  “Women make the best guerrillas, did you know?” Gustavo said to me then.

  “I didn’t,” I answered.

  “Men are good for one thing: shooting bullets. Women can sew clothes, fix shoes, nurse wounds, trick guards. And they can shoot bullets too.”

  “Sewing clothes and fixing shoes doesn’t seem very useful.”

  Gustavo laughed. “You’re right. That was more useful in Cuba. Where I got my training—there and the mountains of Tucumán. Always in rural guerrilla warfare anyway. Urban is different.”

  “Did they acknowledge that in your training?” I asked, braiding the word with condescension.

  “In Cuba? They did what they could. Couldn’t exactly send us to Havana to set off bombs and disrupt their own rule, could they? With urban warfare, you pretty much have to learn on the job. Most of us do, anyway. Isa, though—I swear sometimes I think she learned it in the womb.”

  I grimaced. “That’s unpleasant.”

  “Is it? I think it’s beautiful. Shows purpose, no? Destiny? If only the rest of us were so lucky.”

  “You don’t think it’s your destiny?”

  “I got into it during the Cordobazo in ’69. Going on strike, protesting. Demanding change. I was nineteen, I didn’t know what I was getting into till the police started beating us and killed someone I knew. Then I wanted to kill too. But that part never came naturally for me, not like the change part. Not like it was for her.” We looked at her in the garden, admiring her in our different ways. “You’d know better than me, though,” he said.