Hades, Argentina

by Daniel Loedel

  I continued looking at her. Searching for the young girl at the beach in Pinamar who stepped on a piece of glass. Then I remembered she’d stepped on it on purpose.

  “I’m not sure I would,” I said.

  When they returned, Isabel told Gustavo to open a bottle of wine, fix her mother something. Then she turned to me. “Want to see something beautiful?”

  “Isa—” Gustavo tried to intercede.

  “It’s Tomás, Gusti. He doesn’t even talk to his mother!”

  “His mother wouldn’t torture him,” Gustavo said.

  “You never know.” Isabel laughed, and proceeded despite his objections. I followed, glancing quickly at Pichuca. She sat at the table with her head down, wine untouched.

  As soon as we stepped outside, something luscious hit my nostrils. “You have a linden tree,” I said. It was petite and more the neighbors’ than theirs, but enough of it branched over the yard to suffuse me with its delicious fragrance. Isabel knew I loved them—as a platense, I practically had to; they adorned so many big squares in La Plata that it was known as la ciudad de los tilos—the city of lindens. A name that, as my mother had pointed out in a recent call complaining about her sleepless nights, sounded a lot like la ciudad de los tiros. The city of gunshots.

  Isabel nodded inattentively. “Gusti’s grown to love them too,” she told me, continuing across the garden toward their shed. “When we first checked out the neighborhood, and I caught a whiff of it, I screamed ‘Tilos!’ so loud, Gusti actually shoved me to the pavement in fear that somebody was shooting at us. We cried laughing. Who knows what the landlady thought?”

  I knew what I thought. “You seem happy,” I said.

  “You always say that, Tomás.”

  “You seem happy, and meanwhile Nerea—”

  “I haven’t given up on Nerea. We still say her name at every one of our roll calls.”

  “Your roll calls,” I repeated, in disbelief.

  “We do them at all our meetings. Say we’re present. We say Nerea’s present too. Since she’s still in the fight.”

  Isabel started working the combination lock on the door. She turned it in one direction, then the other, then shook her head and started over, the quick little clicks like a clock being wound.

  “You say Nerea is present at roll calls.”

  “She’d want me to,” Isabel said. And to what must have been my skeptical look, “She’d made it to sergeant, Tomás. Can you believe it? My little sister a sergeant.”

  “She probably isn’t one anymore,” I said.

  “Fuck, Tomás!” she yelled, giving the lock an anticlimactic shove into the shed door; it barely thudded as it hit the wood. “We all have our ways of coping. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Do you think it’s easy for me? We just have to keep looking forward—we have to. We can’t let it all have been for nothing. Nerea wouldn’t want us to.”

  “Okay,” I said again. Isabel bent back over the lock. This time it sighed loose and she breathed deeply, as if in imitation of it.

  Inside, the shed was crammed tight with stacked crates of Bond cigarettes, a whole shelf on the far wall stuffed with cartons of them.

  “We won’t be storing guns here forever,” Isabel said. “Nor smuggling bullets in cigarette packs either. No, we have bigger plans.”

  She explained that the owner of Papel Prensa, the country’s biggest supplier of newsprint, who had Montonero links and stakes in free presses like La Opinión, had been disappeared, his father and brother imprisoned, and his widow coerced to sell the company to Argentina’s two biggest newspapers, Clarín and La Nación, for all of $7,000. That meant there were no major independent newsprint producers left, and therefore no major independent newspapers either. The real battle—here was Isabel’s point—wasn’t with guns but with information. Well, granted it’d be comparatively modest, but just think—if enough Montoneros set up things like this, and word spread of what was going on throughout this country—well. She kept saying “well,” laughing it off like she recognized the child’s instinct in her to over-aspire.

  “It was Nerea’s idea originally—journalism student, you remember. She wanted me to call it Guti—for Gutenberg,” she said, giving the cigarette-packed shelf a heave.

  Behind it was a wall of guns and ammunition belts and, underneath, as if the weaponry were merely ornaments for the main attraction, a homemade printing press.

  It was small, obviously, to fit in the back of a shed. But it wasn’t a toy; the wheels, the weights, the wooden boards that formed the base, the intricate mechanism itself. With embarrassment, I recognized how little thought I’d given to Isabel’s expertise in engineering. Stroking one of the panels as a sculptor might, she gave the lever a pull and showed me how it worked—how it would work, soon.

  “And if we get caught,” she said, “we’ll blame it on that bitch of a fascist landlady and say we had no idea!”

  It was about as harebrained and dangerous as her plan to send me to the front lines of the ESMA. And in hindsight, as representative of the foibles of the young, disorganized movement that was the Montoneros as well. Ultimately they were just idealistic, ambitious kids scrambling overexcitedly toward the future until they fell over its precipice.

  Still, it moved me. Inspired me, even. The grandeur of the hope, the astonishing amount of work Isabel was willing to put toward its realization. I’m inclined to think I would have fallen in love with her then and there if I hadn’t already.

  “Good, no?” she said, pushing the rolling shelf back into position.

  “Absolutely perfect,” I said, and she gave me one of her quick, cousinlike kisses on the cheek.

  * * *

  No one drank the wine, and whatever cheeriness Isabel had tried to set in motion flagged quickly. Soon it was growing dark, and Pichuca and I were back in the Fiat, with Isabel—because their partnership was equal and they shared the risks—behind the wheel.

  Just after pulling out of the driveway she stopped again, and though I was gazing at my shoes as instructed, I realized their house must be on the corner. On instinct, I glanced up to confirm it—and not only saw that my assumption was right but in the dimness caught the street sign: Río Negro. Realizing my mistake, I rapidly looked away—away, not down, and it was too late: I’d glimpsed the half-faded number riding down the white door of the outer house: 2166.

  After that, I curled my neck like a heron and studied the bits of garbage on the car floor as intently as I could.

  * * *

  Isabel dropped Pichuca off first. She’d been crying softly on the ride, and they hugged good-bye inaudibly. I remained in the backseat, as if afraid to move.

  Driving again, Isabel said, “You can look up now, Tomás. Open your eyes.”

  They were already open, but I straightened my stiff neck. I could see Isabel’s face in the rearview mirror, but she was looking at the road, not at me.

  “Sounds almost metaphorical,” I said.

  “What does?”

  “Opening my eyes. Seeing you and Gusti. Maybe just seeing you.” Still not even a glance in the mirror. It broke my heart. “I love you, Isa,” I said. It was the first time I’d ever told her so. “I wouldn’t be doing any of this if not for you.”

  “I know, Tomás. I’m sorry.”

  “Are you?” I asked.

  “Yes. Doesn’t mean I’d do anything differently, but yes, I’m sorry about what it does to you.”

  “I’m not sure it means anything then,” I said.

  “I’m not either. It’s a little too simple a concept maybe, being sorry.”

  Remembering it—hearing it—I remembered and heard what the Colonel had said when I met him in the cemetery. Much too simple a notion, your regret. Do something, don’t do something—as if actions could be reduced to such measly forks in the road.
<
br />   “I’m not sure how long I can keep doing this,” I said.

  “I’m more sure of that,” Isabel said, finally peeking back at me in the mirror. “You’re braver and better than you realize. It’s not just about me, Tomás, not actually.”

  Through the window, the night seemed peaceful. No sense of violence or danger, no speeding cars or sirens or green Ford Falcons. Where was this war we all kept talking about, this revolution? Why did it seem, ridiculously, as if in this car there was so much more pain?

  “We’ll see,” I said.

  “We will, I guess.” She pulled the car to a stop. We were a few blocks from my pensión. “Take care of yourself, will you?”

  I got out and, uncertain what I meant, I told her I would.

  * * *

  It wasn’t the same night—I know because I went back to the pensión to get the Colonel’s revolver—but I’ve always recalled it as if it was. As if, instead of going home, I walked immediately to Estación Once and, staring down the shady youths who might have made me nervous before I saw far worse at Automotores, took the train to Floresta for an overnight shift.

  Similarly, it couldn’t have been the first thing I did when I arrived, but in reexperiencing it, nothing else filled the gap. I went to the torture room and found it empty. Then I headed for Elizabeth’s cell.

  I opened the door so hard it slammed against the wall. “Let’s go! Now!” I yelled, slurring my voice to seem drunk. I grabbed her by the arm and dragged her up, then pulled her, stumbling, to the end of the hall.

  She didn’t make a sound.

  “Time to sing,” I told her loudly, practically singing myself. I opened the torture room door and shoved her inside.

  Taking her by the wrists, I bound them to the rope hanging from the rafters and prepared to raise it.

  “I tied it loosely,” I said then. In a whisper, straight into her ear. “In five minutes, you untie it. Take off your blindfold and go to the last cell on your left. The last on your left, you hear me? All you have to do is open it, that’s all.”

  She gave a tremble of a nod. Whimpered, maybe. But said nothing in response.

  I left without saying anything more either.

  I went to the merchandise closet; we didn’t keep just prisoners’ booty in there, but weapons too. I took out a rifle, the first I laid my hands on. Then I closed the door and continued down the hall until I reached the last cell on the left.

  I opened it and closed the door behind me, more quietly this time. The bloody, half-broken man on the ground started, pressed himself into the corner instinctually. I knelt in front of him, took his blindfold off. Though it was almost pitch-black inside, I could make out the shock on his face when he saw mine.

  “Another prisoner will open the door for you in three minutes,” I told Juan Miguel Pereyra. “She goes first, you go behind her with this.” I held out the rifle; he stared at its outline. “Don’t take the wooden staircase down to the garage—continue through the kitchen and take the other one; you’ll know it’s right if it’s marble at the top. I’ll be on the balcony when you get outside, shooting to miss. You do the same with me, you understand? With the others, I don’t care.”

  He continued staring. I wondered if he was trying to figure out if it was a hallucination or a trick, or if he was actually deciding whether to follow my instructions and shoot to miss with me. Was that a flicker of temptation in his eyes, or were they merely trying to adjust to the light?

  “You ERP?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Montonero.” He still hadn’t taken the rifle. I dropped it at his feet. “Three minutes,” I reminded him. “No more.”

  Then I rose and closed the cell door behind me without locking it.

  * * *

  I went to the officer quarters, lay down on a mattress left unoccupied by the Uruguayans; a nap, I planned to say, I took a nap. She must have loosened the rope she was bound with—I’d tied it drunkenly, I’d admit, angry she resisted me—and found the weapons and Pereyra by chance. That she was the main device of the ploy would make it more plausible, I told myself, since he was the flight risk and she the bystander. Or better, the victim of circumstance.

  Rubio was working in Aníbal’s office, my defense would continue, and there was the guard downstairs in the booth. We couldn’t have known to be any more cautious; three or four men overnight was all we’d ever needed.

  I removed the revolver from my belt and gripped it in my lap tightly.

  Three minutes passed. Then five. Seven, ten, what felt like a hundred, a thousand. Nothing, no signs of any disturbance in the hallways beyond. It was as silent as a cell.

  And then—shots. Loud, popping, indubitably a rifle’s. A first, a second. A brief pause as an automatic flurried in response, and then a third. I rushed out of the room, revolver in hand. Rubio met me outside, machine gun in his hands, suspicious eyes wildly alert. “What the—”

  Another.

  “You go downstairs, I’ll go to the balcony,” I told him. To think he could have easily said that first or simply opted not to, deciding instead that I go downstairs and he take the balcony. But as luck would have it, he didn’t.

  By the time I got outside, they were already fleeing down Venancio Flores. I fired several meters off the mark—I’d never shot a gun before, and the tug in my wrist and hand was remarkable. Elizabeth continued sprinting toward the intersection, but Pereyra turned, raised his rifle in my direction; I was sure when he pulled the trigger it would leave a giant hole in my chest.

  It didn’t—didn’t even graze me. He fired another two shots at my feet, piercing the concrete, and then turned—Rubio had made it downstairs. Instead of engaging him, Pereyra took off running.

  I watched Rubio fire into the night. But it was empty; by then, both Pereyra and Elizabeth had vanished and, in what was surely the greatest moment of empathy in Rubio’s life, rather than give chase, he returned to the dying man in the guard booth. In what might have been a hopeful omen to someone else, but struck me as the opposite, a dreadful portent about the rest of our fates, it turned out to be too late for him, too.

  PART III

  The Delta

  EIGHTEEN

  When I came to—it was like I’d blacked out reliving that frenzy, gone blank sometime after pressing my fingertips to the guard’s neck in search of a pulse—I found myself standing in the main corridor at Automotores, the so-called Avenue of Happiness. Deep purplish light was filtering in from the terrace, confirming the time if not the year, and I stared at the open torture room door, deciding if I should enter.

  The actual night of the escape, I’d stayed clear. I thought it would look suspicious if I went in given what had happened, like I was trying to rid the scene of evidence. Rubio and I had carried the guard into the garage—Juan Ramírez was his name; he was far enough removed from the detainees not to need an alias. He was in his fifties, waiting for his pension. Whenever I used to pass him in the booth, he’d salute and mention the previous day’s soccer game or venture to other sports when that failed—Guillermo Vilas at the US Open; a polo match I knew nothing about. Still, he had been friendly to me, and I felt bad about his fate. Rubio and I looked at his dead body a minute, breathing loudly, as if we’d never seen one before. Then Rubio clasped my shoulder, as if to say, Well, there was nothing we could do, you shouldn’t blame yourself. He called Aníbal to let him know what had happened, while I went upstairs, purportedly to patrol the halls in case other prisoners got any ideas after hearing the gunshots.

  As I stood there now, Rubio was nowhere to be seen. One of several discrepancies from Automotores as I remembered it then: the upgraded fluorescents on the ceiling, the industrial locks built into the cell doors in place of padlocks. The hallway seemed some twenty or thirty feet longer too. I raised a hand to my beard, and though I touched only the patchy, unshaven fuzz that was all I could grow at twent
y-one, it reminded me of the ten years I’d safely survived since that night, and the journey that had brought me back to it.

  I felt a pull toward the far room. It was like the entrancing draw of the waves on the phantom shore of Pinamar, that insidious undertow. Only now, I acquiesced to it.

  The wire mesh table was in the middle, but no ropes hung from the rafters. An undented radio lay on the shelf at the far end. A small vase of wilting yellow tulips sat next to it on one side and, on the other, equidistant, a picana. It was neatly wrapped in the wire that connected it to the control box, which was plugged into the socket. On the wall above were two more innovations: a swastika and a sign that read:

  WELCOME TO THE OLYMPUS OF THE GODS

  ~THE CENTURIONS

  The Olimpo. The detention center founded sometime after Automotores’ closing, where the Gringo said they watched the World Cup with the prisoners. It must have been a product of the Colonel’s metaphorical delta—the muddling of different people’s memories and hells, the tangled maze of possibility. Which begged the question of whose hell I was in now.

  “Excuse me?” someone said behind me, as if in direct response to my musing. The voice was soft and polite, instantly recognizable. No one except the Priest would pretend to need permission to enter that room.

  I should have known from the flowers it was his domain. Also from the aesthetic, the newness of the appliances, the cleanliness. This wasn’t a clumsily appropriated workshop like Automotores, but a room constructed specifically with its vile function in mind. Even if the Priest hadn’t lived to see the Olimpo, it made nightmarishly perfect sense that he’d somehow find it in death.