by Lewis Shiner
We got to the restaurant exactly at 9:00. All the tables by the window were taken. We told the waiter that we really wanted to sit by the window and that we would wait. We spent fifteen minutes at the bar, long enough for Elena to drink a glass of wine. We both talked about work. She asked if I had “Poema” by Canaro on CD and said she wanted to dance it with me. There were awkward silences.
One of the couples near the front door left and the waiter motioned us over. He brought us menus and a basket of bread. The window was open to the street behind ornamental wrought iron bars spaced a foot apart. I smelled dust and cigarette smoke. Every sort of improbable disaster seemed imminent. What if Mateo were sitting on the second floor of the building across the street, in the advanced stages of lunacy, with a rifle aimed at Elena? What if he’d contrived to drop us into a frame-up of some kind to ensure our loyalty? My stomach felt like it was full of wet cement. I couldn’t imagine putting food on top of it.
I ordered ravioli for show. Elena asked for a salad and chicken parmigiana, then helped herself to a second roll. She was flushed around the neck and I realized with sadness that the possibility of danger had excited her.
It was 9:45. There were not many customers and the waiters stood talking at the bar. Elena reached for my hand and held it in the middle of the table. «I know this is hard for you, querida,» she said. Her voice was so quiet I could barely make out the words. «I know you’re feeling powerless right now. It’s the very opposite for me. I’ve been in that man’s power all my life, and to know that he is now in danger, that everything is being turned around on him, is so…liberating, I can’t tell you.»
I nodded glumly and squeezed her hand.
«You don’t even know,» she said, «the damage it does to you until you start to get free of it. It’s this shadow over everything.»
Distant car doors slammed. I glanced out the window. The half-dozen people on the street had turned to stare down Calle Estados Unidos, in the direction of our apartment. They were looking at a man running toward us, still half a block away. He wore dark, creased slacks, a white shirt, and a green and yellow knitted sweater vest. He had thinning white hair, combed straight back. He looked ferocious and obsessed, and he was staring straight at me.
No, not at me. At Elena.
She saw my reaction and followed my gaze. The life drained out of her face.
«It’s him, isn’t it?» I said.
She nodded.
«Something’s gone wrong,» I said. I felt like I was skidding across black ice.
Two men chased Osvaldo. They were young, in dark T-shirts and jeans, black hair, one with stubble on his face, the other clean shaven. They were almost to the intersection of Calle Defensa when they caught him. They each grabbed one of his arms. He strained toward us, falling forward, yelling, «¡Elena! ¡Elena!»
A black taxi, all its lights out, squealed to a stop in front of them. The man driving had a red bandana over the bottom of his face, like the Zapatistas in Mexico. It was Mateo. He reached back and threw open the rear door of the cab. The two men dragged and pushed Osvaldo inside, banging his head against the top of the open door.
A woman across the street screamed. The people at the table next to us stood up and pointed. The waiter came over to look as the taxi pulled away, the door flapping.
A young, long-haired man yelled something and chased the cab on foot. The street was dissolving into chaos, more and more people running outside, pointing and shouting to each other.
I threw a wad of pesos on the table and grabbed our things. «Come on,» I said to Elena. Her eyes were filmed over, her lips halfway open. «The cops will be here any minute.»
I led her outside and into the thick of the crowd, which was growing larger by the second. Everyone was talking at once.
«What happened? Who was he?»
«He was shouting a name. ‘Elena,’ he said.»
«Did anyone see their faces?»
«Call the police. We need to call the police.»
Somebody pointed. «He looked like he was headed for that restaurant, over there.»
A cop ran toward us from the north end of Defensa, talking into his radio.
«Follow me,» I said into Elena’s ear.
I let the new arrivals move past us, keeping us on the southern edge of the expanding mob. I waited until the cop had his back turned, looking at the open window where we’d been sitting, and then I led Elena away, keeping my head down and turning away from the Plaza onto a side street, then crossing over to the lights and crowds of Avenida San Juan. When I was sure that we weren’t being followed, I took her back to the apartment.
Once we were inside, I double-locked the door and leaned against it. My heart was doing somersaults. Elena hadn’t said anything since she’d seen Osvaldo. She stood in the middle of the living room, her back to me, the purse dangling from her hand.
When I had my breath, I went quietly up to her and put a hand on her shoulder. «Elena? Are you—?»
She turned on me. Her eyes were still out of focus, her hands trembling as she reached for me. She grabbed handfuls of my hair and kissed me hard, took my lower lip between her teeth and began to tug at my clothes. I had never seen her so crazed.
The feeling was contagious. I picked her up and carried her into the bedroom as she scratched my back and bit my ear.
*
Afterward we were both starved. We ate leftovers standing in front of the refrigerator and then we picked up the clothes that we’d scattered over the apartment. Only then did I notice the message light on my cell phone.
The message was from Mateo and it consisted of two words: Lo tenemos.
We have him.
*
Elena called Mateo back. He cautioned her not to use any names. The person in question was in isolation. They would begin testimony the next day. If she wanted to be part of it, he would meet her and take her to the place. She should call him at noon to let him know.
Elena and I talked for an hour in bed, holding each other. My head hurt and I couldn’t find a position for my neck that felt remotely natural. I had taken Ibuprofen and was concentrating on my breathing.
The talk was a formality leading to a foregone conclusion. I did what I could to talk her out of it and failed. I warned her that there were limits that I would not be able to go past. I meant participating in the actual killing, but as I finally drifted into sleep I wondered if there truly were any limits left to what I would do.
*
We met Mateo outside the San Juan Subte entrance. He was on the south side of the street, wearing a battered black leather jacket and a flat cap. He gave no indication that he’d seen us, starting down the stairs as we crossed the street. We stood a few yards from each other on the platform and got onto the same car of the northbound C line. At the next stop he got off and we followed him down the long, gray concrete passage that ran under the expanse of Avenida 9 de Julio. We got onto the parallel E line and rode two more stops.
We came up onto the street at the northern edge of San Telmo, another part of the neighborhood that was in transition from slum to tourist attraction. We were two blocks from La Trastienda, a big, US-style rock venue where the Fernandez Fierro tango orquesta had a weekly gig. All around us were neon signs and plate glass windows retrofitted onto nineteenth century architecture, while crumbling buildings stood empty on either side.
Mateo led us into a tiny grocery store with a single aisle of wooden shelves holding canned goods, bread, and aging produce. From behind the register, a heavyset man in a white apron gave Mateo a barely perceptible nod. We walked straight through the shop and out the back door into a small courtyard, open to the blue sky and surrounded by three stories of apartments. The floor was orange tile, and red and yellow flowers stood in pots along the walls. An open stairway led up to the apartments, and under the stairs was a door. Mateo opened it and started down a flight of concrete steps inside.
I closed the door after us and had to stop to let my
eyes adjust. What light there was came from two bare, low-wattage bulbs hanging from the ceiling by their electrical wires.
At the bottom of the stairs I saw that we were in a large, bare concrete basement, white paint peeling off the walls. In one corner was another door, this one fitted with an incongruously bright lock mechanism. Mateo opened it with the typical big brass lever lock key that was still in use everywhere in the city and then took an oversized flashlight from where he’d had it hanging inside the waistband of his trousers.
«Watch your step,» he said, herding us inside, and shone the light on a flight of makeshift plank stairs that led still farther underground. We waited on the landing while he locked the door and then followed him down.
We were in some kind of disused tunnel. The roof was a red brick arch fifteen feet high and the uneven dirt floor was thirty feet wide. As my eyes continued to adjust, I saw columns of sunlight filtering down in the distance. It was not a single tunnel as much as a complex of sub-cellars, passages, and galleries.
«What is this place?» Elena whispered.
«It’s from the nineteenth century,» Mateo said. «Some archeologists from the university started to restore it during the sixties. When Ongania took over, the government money went away and everybody forgot about it. There are tunnels everywhere in San Telmo. Not all connected, unfortunately. This way.»
I tried to pay attention to the route we took, in case I had to bring Elena out on my own. After a few twists and turns I gave up. I was completely lost and anyway, I had no key to get us past the locked doors. We walked for what must have been two or three blocks, mostly on uneven dirt, sometimes on brick or paving stones, sometimes on concrete walkways next to pools of oily, fetid water.
Eventually we climbed another rickety flight of stairs, passed through another locked door, and emerged into another basement. This one was long and narrow, with a steep ramp that led through massive double doors into a windowless, green-walled room full of giant, rusting machinery. The machines ran along both sides of a beautiful old wooden floor the sandy red color of unfinished mahogany. From the occasional missing chunks, I saw that the floorboards were two inches thick.
«You could tango here, no?» Mateo said. «Maybe later.» I couldn’t tell if he was trying to be funny.
I looked up into a twenty-foot-square hole in the ceiling, surrounded by railings. Mateo took us up a set of stairs made of the same rich hardwood. We came out into the room that looked down on the machinery and I stopped to get my bearings.
The roof was another thirty feet above me. The lower windows had been covered in plywood and the upper windows were reinforced with chicken wire and years of dirt, letting in light but no recognizable view.
I counted eight people besides Mateo, Elena, and me, distributed among furniture that had been salvaged from the street—chairs, two couches, a folding card table, and another low table that held a pile of gravel and a stack of papers weighed down by a pistol.
The sight of the gun chilled me, took me out of my numb acceptance and reminded me of what was about to happen.
I recognized the two men who’d been chasing Osvaldo. There were two women, one small, with short curly dark hair, the other with spiky blonde hair and a muscular body. A man with a dark beard and an orange skull cap dozed on one of the couches. A large, older man with a reddish beard played cards with a boy who was clearly the 16-year-old that Mateo had mentioned.
Equally clearly, the last man was one of the surviving montoneros from the old days. He was one of the most dangerous-looking human beings I had ever seen. I guessed him to be in his sixties. His graying hair was shaved nearly to the skull. He had severe acne scars and a scar on his lower lip and chin that was not from acne. His sunken eyes had given up human emotion as a waste of energy. He had a ring in one ear and an ageing tattoo of a crucified Jesus on his right bicep, clearly visible where the sleeves of his T-shirt had been ripped away. He carried a service automatic, butt forward, clipped to the left side of his belt. Because of the tattoo I named him Jesús in my head.
«No introductions,» Mateo said. «Everybody knows more or less who everyone is.»
«Where’s Osvaldo?» Elena asked. Her voice had a harshness I’d never heard before.
«We are still letting him figure out what he’s made of,» Jesús said.
«What went wrong last night?» I asked. «You promised us nothing would happen anywhere close to us, and Osvaldo nearly came through the window of the restaurant.»
«There were…complications,» Mateo said.
I showed him my open palms in the universal gesture for “what the hell?” He sighed and reluctantly told the story.
*
One of their newest recruits was the clean-shaven kid that we’d seen chasing Osvaldo. Mateo called him Raul.
Raul had phoned Osvaldo two weeks before. He said he was dating Elena and they were becoming very serious about one another. He said that Elena talked about Osvaldo all the time, and he felt she wanted to reconcile with him, only she wasn’t sure how to go about it. Osvaldo had swallowed it and they had talked several more times. Finally Raul had proposed that Osvaldo “accidentally” find them at dinner. He was sure she would be thrilled and take the opportunity to make up with him.
Mateo was convinced this would get Osvaldo out of the house without a bodyguard, at night, when they could ambush him. Elena’s job was to be visible from outside the restaurant in case Osvaldo sent someone to check.
But Osvaldo had fooled them. He had forwarded his home phone to the office and taken the call there. By the time Mateo realized it, Osvaldo had a head start. Mateo called Raul and got him and another man outside the restaurant, and even then Osvaldo had nearly gotten away.
I kept my mouth shut, though the sheer amateurishness of the operation made me want to panic. What confidence I had in Mateo was shaken. I wondered when the police would break the doors down.
«So,» Elena said, «what happens now?»
«I’ll go get him,» Mateo said. «We might as well get started.»
*
We sat in awkward silence while Mateo was gone. Jesús had slumped deeply into the remains of a stuffed chair and he stared alternately at me and Elena. There might have been the edge of a smile on the deformed mouth.
I told myself that I was not in immediate danger. The hideout was probably secure enough and I was no threat to anyone. But the guns reminded me that the possibility of mayhem was no more than an instant away. I forced my shoulders down and pushed air into my lungs, told the pain in my right eye that eventually this would be over.
Mateo came back. He too had a gun now, a big-framed revolver that he held to the back of Osvaldo’s head. I couldn’t see Osvaldo’s face because he wore a hood that had been improvised from an old navy-blue sweatshirt. He had been left to piss in his clothes, and he smelled of that and sour sweat. His hands were cuffed behind him and his feet were tied together with a short rope that forced him to take baby steps.
I looked at Elena. Part of her had needed to see this humiliation and part of her, I was relieved to see, was shamed by it. Her mouth was a hard line and her hands clutched each other in her lap.
Across the room, the red-bearded man looked uncomfortable too, as if he hadn’t been prepared for the reality of what he’d signed up for.
Mateo put Osvaldo against the railing, facing away from the hole in the floor. He unlocked one cuff and relocked it so that the chain passed through the railing, then he picked up the papers from the low table. Through all of this, Osvaldo was silent and docile.
I saw then that the furniture was arranged in a rough semicircle to face the point where Osvaldo stood.
«Osvaldo del Salvador,» Mateo said.
«My name is Lacunza,» he said, with quiet dignity.
«No,» Mateo said, «it’s not.» He began to read from the page. «You are accused—»
Osvaldo interrupted him, his voice again soft and clear. «Can you take this thing off my head? Can I at least
see you?»
«No,» Mateo said.
Jesús said, «Justice is blind, old man.»
«Then you should be wearing the hood, not me.»
Mateo, annoyed, looked as if he might slap Osvaldo, except that between the papers and the gun, his hands were full. Instead he read, «You are accused of human rights violations including, but not limited to, conspiracy to kidnap, torture, and murder the following citizens of the Republic of Argentina.» He read a list of ten names, ending with Elena Bianchi. Even through the hood I saw Osvaldo react to that one.
«Is this supposed to be a trial, then?» Osvaldo said. «When do I get to consult with my defense counsel?»
Jesús said, «Your viewpoint will be heard. That’s more than you gave your victims.»
Mateo read out the details of the accusations. They were like the summaries in Nunca Mas: This name kidnapped on this date, taken to Club Atlético. Tortured for this many days, months, years. Beaten. Raped. Starved. Died from shock. Died from injuries. Died when dropped from a helicopter into the ocean. Shot and buried in a mass grave.
Somewhere in the middle of it Elena reached for my hand. When Mateo got to the last name, she began to squeeze.
«Elena Bianchi. Kidnapped 19 January, 1975. Taken to…taken…»
He struggled to control his emotions and failed. Tears streamed down his face. Jesús went to him, hugged him, and took the papers from his hand.
Osvaldo had stood with his head high during the other nine accounts. When Mateo spoke Elena’s name, Osvaldo’s head fell forward. Then, when Mateo broke down, Osvaldo’s head came up again.
«Mateo,» Osvaldo whispered. «You must be Mateo.»
*
Jesús picked up where Mateo had left off. «Taken to Club Atlético. Beaten, raped, and tortured for eight months. Gave birth in the detention center to a female child. Child stolen and illegally adopted. Subject killed and body disposed of by unknown means on or about 1 October, 1975.
