A Scarcity of Condors

by Suanne Laqueur

  Penny didn’t become emotional until they went into the back yard, which spread out like a park, incorporating all the land that was once the nursery. Drifts of perennial foliage, fruit trees in bud, meandering paths.

  “Look,” Jude said, pointing to a stone bench. “It’s your happy place.”

  She laughed and sat down. Posed for Jude’s camera. Cleon sat beside her and Jude took more pictures, texting them to Serena and Aiden.

  At the garden’s far end were the two free-standing, one-bedroom bungalows, a paved patio area between. A pergola was built over the flagstones, thick with bougainvillea blossoms.

  “That’s new,” Cleon said. “Looks like they have new roofs, too.”

  “Uncle Louis lived here,” Penny said, peeking in one unit’s window. “Ysidro and Tatán were in that one.”

  She walked off into the garden beds again but Cleon stayed, his expression blank.

  “You all right, Papi?” Jude asked.

  Cleon scratched his head under his hat. “I had no idea that October morning. I drove away from this house with no idea I’d never see it again.”

  “I wonder what happened to your stuff,” Tej said. “Not just yours but all the stuff left behind by the ones who fled or were disappeared. Apartments full of lives. Food in the fridge, books on shelves, art on the walls, sheets folded in the closet. Toys. Soap. Pots and pans. What became of it all?”

  Cleon slowly shook his head, eyes wide in his weathered face. “Stolen. Scavenged. Who knows.”

  “You can disappear a person but not their things.”

  “Not one thing of ours is here except the flowers.”

  “And the memories?”

  Cleon turned slightly, surveying the beautiful property. “Those too.”

  Tej glanced at Jude then back at Cleon. “Can I ask you a question? You don’t have to answer.”

  “Sure.”

  “What does ‘Louis made ten, I made but one’ mean?”

  A strange mix of awe and annoyance prickled the back of Jude’s neck. It was a ballsy question and pure Tej fearlessness. But even Jude didn’t know what was behind the note pinned to the wall in the Lucy room. Why should Cleon give Tej an answer?

  Louis made ten. I made but one.

  “My uncle survived Sachsenhausen by joining with nine other men,” Cleon said. “They made a minyan. A quorum. They survived by building a memory palace filled with stories. Ten floors. Ten wings on a floor, ten rooms to a wing. Each room filled with ten stories. They survived together, as long as they could. Louis was the only one to get out alive, and he became the steward of the palace. He made ten.

  “When I was in the Villa Grimaldi, I tried it Louis’s way. But I couldn’t. I made one room. The room Jude showed you. I joined with no one else. My palace only had space for one. Me. Me alone.” He took off his hat and fidgeted with the brim, smoothing and shaping it. “It always bothered me. And it was why I never wanted to come back to Chile. Not because of the ghosts in the Villa, or the ghosts at this house. Because I couldn’t come back without going to the cemetery. And I couldn’t go to the cemetery without explaining to Louis why I made one when he made ten.”

  “I didn’t know,” Jude said softly.

  Cleon smiled at him. “It’s time you did, then.”

  “You wrote all those books,” Tej said. “You collected all testimonials and accounts and survivor stories. The books are palaces. They’re your ten rooms.”

  Cleon smiled wider, then reached and put his hat on Tej’s head. “Gracias, hueón.”

  “This was so generous,” Penny said, walking over with the owners, a young married couple. “I can’t thank you enough for making the time.”

  “It was our pleasure,” Marisol Esposito said.

  Her husband, Pedro, asked, “Do you need us to call you a cab?”

  “No, we drove over,” Jude said. “We had to park a few blocks away. Looks like the café across the street is having a massive barbecue.”

  “Oh yes. Independence Week is one big barbecue.”

  “I’ll bring the car around,” Tej said, walking off. Still wearing Cleon’s hat.

  “I’m so glad we did this,” Penny said. “Inside was anti-climactic. No ghosts. And outside was spectacular. I couldn’t ask for more.”

  “Come see us again,” Marisol said.

  “Any time you come to Santiago,” Pedro said. “Nuestra casa es su casa.”

  “Hey, Jude,” Tej called from the end of driveway. He was patting his pockets. “Jude, do you have the keys?”

  “Jude?” Marisol said, just as Pedro said, “Did he just call you Jude?”

  Jude nodded. “Most people do.”

  “Like the Beatles song?”

  “Right.”

  The Espositos exchanged a long, worried glance.

  “¿Qué onda?” Cleon said.

  Tej came back over. “You have the keys?”

  “It’s just funny it’s your name,” Marisol said.

  “Funny why?” Jude said, his heart kicking up a notch.

  “Come look at something,” Pedro said. He herded them to a far corner of the yard and a large weeping cherry tree, sagging with buds.

  “It was here when we bought the house,” Marisol was saying.

  “And the previous owners said it was here when they bought the place,” Pedro said.

  “Nobody knew what it was, exactly.”

  Pedro pointed beneath the tree.

  Jude’s face went numb as Penny screamed.

  An oblong of pink granite was embedded in the dirt at the base of the cherry tree, faintly sparkling where the sun’s rays touched it. Block serif letters chiseled into its surface.

  HEY, JUDE

  25.11.73

  Buried Along With His Name

  “Oh my God,” Tej said.

  The blood pounded behind Penny’s eyeballs and squeezed her temples. Her vision tunneled around letters and numbers as remembered voices darted from one ear to the other.

  “I left a little room,” Ysidro said. “I’ll add the date when he’s born.”

  “That’s my birthday,” Jude said.

  “It’s a lament for lonely people,” Tatán said. “They missed each other, missed a chance to have a connection. All the priest can do is make sure she’s buried along with her name.”

  Penny heard Cleon behind her, hoarse and choked. “Jesus Christ, what did they do?”

  “Careful,” Tej said. “Lean on me if you need to. You all right?”

  “Mami,” Jude said, fingers tight in her sleeve. “How did this get here?”

  “Pedro, can we get a chair?” Tej said.

  Unable to take her eyes from the stone, Penny put a hand on Jude’s shoulder. She put down one stiff, trembling knee. Then the other. Her palms tingled, recalling the warm slick curve of a newborn skull. The little face against her neck.

  Es un niño, señora.

  Is he alive?

  Is he crying?

  “Lucy…”

  She blinked and looked back. Cleon was seated in a lawn chair, head in his hands.

  “You know what this is?” Pedro asked, looking around the stunned faces.

  “We thought it was for a pet,” Marisol said. “The previous owners buried their dog here.”

  “No,” Tej said, leaning over the back of Cleon’s chair, holding him. “We think it’s a baby.”

  “What?” Marisol cried. “No. Stop it, you can’t be serious.”

  “¿Qué mierdas pasó?” Pedro said.

  Penny looked back at the stone. Her fingers reached to touch the smooth surface and sharp, beveled edges.

  All the priest can do is make sure she’s buried with her name.

  “It’s safe to remember,” Dr. Mezeritz said. “The danger is over. Remembering will not
hurt you.”

  Penny remembered. She’d missed it before, but now the story fell open before her, etched in stone. The answer wasn’t in the irretrievable memories from the day of Jude’s birth. It was in the kitchen table talk from the night before.

  Tatán. God, he’s so upset tonight. The government has been sending him to odd locations around the city.

  Jude sat in the grass beside her. “I don’t understand”

  He’s picking up the dead. Bodies in horrible shape. Things he can’t un-see. And tonight…

  “He was out here all alone,” Cleon said.

  “You didn’t know,” Tej said.

  “All these years. Left alone in the ground. Out in the rain and cold.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  Tonight Tatán picked up two dead children from one of the stadiums. And a newborn baby.

  It’s not the first time.

  Twice before he’s been given a newborn. Each time he took them to the orphanage. La Casa de Huérfanos.

  Tatán Álvarez, that beautiful, tender soul. The romantic idealist who championed the lonely people. Standing graveside as a witness, because he believed nobody should die alone.

  He’s hunched at the table, crying into his hands, saying it’s only going to happen more. How many pregnant women are being detained? If they survive, how will they know what happened to their babies?

  “What the fuck is going on,” Jude said.

  My baby is going to be born so afraid.

  The revelation boiled up into her throat, bubbled over in a raging grief that slashed like a hundred blades. “Oh my God,” she cried through the barricade of her fingers. Then she was weeping from her guts. Pitching forward as if rifle-butted in the head, palms hitting the soft grass. Jude drew her off her knees and into the hard curve of his side.

  “It’s all right,” he said, holding her tight.

  Her heart burst open, running wet from her eyes to her mouth.

  Is the baby alive?

  Is he crying?

  How many pregnant women?

  How will they know what happened?

  Jude curled his fingers in her rough hair and kissed her crown, rocking her. “You didn’t know,” he said. “It isn’t your fault. You didn’t know.”

  Fool, how could you not have known?

  You forgot you remembered what Tatán saw.

  He lamented the lonely people.

  He thought no one should die alone.

  He was given the dead bodies of children. He was given newborn babies.

  “I’m sorry,” Jude whispered. “Whatever it is, I’m so sorry.”

  They weren’t switched in the hospital, my baby and Jude.

  Tatán did it.

  But how?

  When?

  “Come here,” Cleon said hoarsely. “Lucy, please. Come here now.”

  They call your name.

  You’re cuffed, blindfolded and put into a van again.

  The palace comes with you. Behind your taped eyes, you fuss with details and make small repairs. Lay more tile in the mosaic river. Tilt cellophane flowers into better position. Fold new taxis. Pick ripe tangerines and hold them to your face. All the while your fingers poise over your palm, ready to tap three times and be gone.

  You emerge blinking and bewildered into the bright lights of another stadium. Not the Estadio Chile but the Estadio Nacional, east of downtown Santiago.

  Compared to Villa Grimaldi, this place is a hotel. You’re allowed to shower with cold water and a scrap of industrial soap. You’re allowed to sit on a proper toilet. You get new clothes and shoes and don’t care much that they belong to a dead person.

  You catch sight of yourself in a locker room mirror.

  The man staring back is a thousand years old.

  If you ever get out of here, will Lucy even know you?

  The guards hand out chocolate flan. You and your compañeros wolf down the treat. Then as one, you vomit on your new shoes. The guards bray laughing, doubled over and slapping each other. You heave over and over, a puddle of human excrement at your feet, the smell in your throat and nose, the taste slimy and foul.

  It’s the final humiliation. You are nothing to these people. Your country has chewed you up and shit you out.

  You try not to think about it. You can’t help thinking about it. Every time you think about it, you vomit again. It’s a long time before anything can get past your throat and stay in your stomach.

  Never again, ever in your life, do you eat chocolate.

  Next the guards hand out papers they demand detainees to sign—pre-printed testimonies of being treated well. It’s not difficult to pretend your hands can’t hold a pen. No trouble at all to feign misunderstanding or illness to avoid signing.

  Your last blind ride is in a jeep.

  After a winding, hour-long journey, the soldiers throw you out into the street.

  You get one more beating for the road. You lose three teeth. Your spleen is ruptured. Laughing, the guards climb back into the jeep and rev the engine.

  Then they run over you.

  Three bumps of the thick, dirty tires over your body.

  And you’re gone.

  Jude felt sick as he watched Penny crawl through the grass toward Cleon. His heart broke as she dragged herself up between his knees and fell against his chest.

  He turned his head away, back to the pink granite stone. He couldn’t pry his mind’s fingers off the idea he was looking at his own grave.

  No, not me, him. It was supposed to be me.

  No, wait, it was never me. I was never here.

  Was this baby born dead? Who buried him here?

  Penny moaned in Cleon’s embrace. “I didn’t see it. I remembered what he said but I never put it together. I didn’t know.”

  Tej knelt by Jude, took his hand. “What does this mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Jude said.

  “How did they do it?” Penny cried. “When did they do it?”

  They who? Jude thought. She knows something. She understands it now. What does it mean?

  Cleon’s fingers clutched at the back of Penny’s shirt. His brow rolled side to side on her shoulder, as if saying No, no, no…

  Penny sat back on her heels, dragging the backs of her hands across her face.

  Marisol brought out mason jars of limeade for everyone, and a cold cloth for Penny’s swollen face. Pedro brought more chairs. They sat and listened, pale and incredulous, as the Tholets told their story.

  “You weren’t switched at the hospital,” Penny said, looking at Jude with red-rimmed eyes. “It must have happened before. Along the way.”

  “What must have happened?” Jude said, confused.

  “Tatán knew,” Penny said. “Tatán saw it. I remembered during the hypnosis. How Tatán was transporting both the dead and the living.”

  As Jude thought back to the sessions with Dr. Mezeritz, a map took shape in his mind. A taped-together, aerial view of Santiago. Landmarks circled in black. Superimposed with the image of Ysidro and Tatán, leaning against a hearse and laughing.

  The memorial mason and the undertaker. The Kings of Death. The amateur midwives when Penny gave birth to Jude.

  Not me, Jude thought. The other Jude. This Jude. I was born somewhere else. Near or on the same day.

  The map pulsed. Pointing. Demanding he notice. Insisting he remember.

  During the hypnosis session, Mami still didn’t remember giving birth.

  But she remembered talk at the kitchen table.

  She remembered Tatán crying. He was distraught because he picked up newborn babies when he picked up the dead at strange places around Santiago.

  “And Villa Grimaldi is less than ten minutes from here,” he said aloud.

  Villa Grimaldi, where
the last eyewitness account put María Clementina Vilaró.

  I really was born there, he thought, his mind in a whirlwind tour of the compound. The tower. The swimming pool. The excavated steps of the old villa. The permanently locked gates. The concrete leaf. The fountain. The rose garden.

  It’s true. I know it is.

  I was born in the same place my father was imprisoned.

  We were there together.

  He was El Cóndor, king of the skies. Finding the hidden secrets and symbols in the landscape. Interpreting the message within. The scene unfolded before his myopic eyes, reflecting off the inside of his glasses.

  Penny’s baby was stillborn. The Kings of Death drove her and the dead infant to the hospital in Tatán’s hearse. Along the way, Tatán must have made a scheduled stop.

  “A lot can happen in fifteen minutes,” Tej said, looking at the map of Santiago.

  Now the hearse carried a couple corpses and a live baby. An unconscious mother whom the Kings loved dearly. She became their family when their people turned against them. She had taken them in, opened her heart and her home, had them sit at her kitchen table. Now her husband was imprisoned. Her uncle-in-law shot in the street. Her child dead. The Kings had the means to keep her from becoming one of the lonely people.

  Tatán acted like Eleanor Rigby and Father McKenzie were real people. It moved him that they missed each other. Missed their chance to have a connection.

  He wouldn’t have missed this chance.

  The hearse pulled up to Hospital del Salvador. Ysidro carried in Penny and the baby from the Villa Grimaldi. The baby who became Jude Tholet. Tatán made his delivery to the morgue.

  They brought Other Jude back here.

  And buried him along with his name.

  “But it can’t be,” Jude said, looking back at his parents. “Ysidro and Tatán couldn’t have pulled off something like this.”

  Cleon turned his palm up to the sky and raised it back toward the tree. “Then what the hell is that stone doing there? Engraved with those words and that date?”

  “Ysidro finished it,” Penny said. “He told me he would. He left room for the date. He came to the hospital and promised he would bury Uncle Louis and give him a proper stone. He was telling me more. He added that lyric for a reason, don’t you see?”