Disappeared

by Colin Falconer

  Mercedes got to her feet. “It's all right, Maria, I'll take her.” She took Diana from her arms. She cooed to her and immediately the child began to settle.

  Stephen watched Domingo's face but it was impossible to read the other man's expression. Was it possible he did not suspect? But then he thought: to men, all babies look alike. Unless they are your own.

  “What is her name?” Domingo asked.

  “Diana,” Mercedes said. “Isn't she beautiful? Say hello to the nice man, Diana.” She picked up her hand and made her wave. Diana gave him a toothy smile. Adorable.

  Chapter 28

  “DIANA,” DOMINGO SAID. “It is a pretty name. How old is she?”

  “She is eight months old now.”

  “My little nieces would be about the same age. If they are still alive.”

  This is your niece, Stephen thought, but he could not make himself say the words. He looked up at his wife. He knew that warning look in her eyes. Christ, I can't believe we're doing this.

  “You have other daughters?”

  “We have a son, six years old, little Luca. He was the tornado who swept into the room when I came home. And we have little Diana here. That's all.”

  “Just one daughter then.” He looked back at Stephen. “For myself I have six children. It is too many. I cannot feed them all. Life can be very hard.”

  “They are very expensive.”

  “You are British, Señor Barrington?”

  “Yes. Yes, I am. I represent a British publishing house. Textbooks, manuals, that sort of thing.”

  “You speak very good Spanish.”

  “Thank you. I have lived here a long time. My wife's family has been here for four generations.” He looked up at Mercedes, aware of the shifting nuances of this conversation. In his own mind their dissembling had afforded Domingo the moral high ground. Now he felt almost as if he were being interviewed for a job. As what? A foster parent? Mercedes rocked Diana in her arms. She held her husband's gaze, willing him to maintain the deception.

  “You have a fine apartment. This is more than I can ever dream of.”

  What does he want? Money? Is he trying to blackmail me? Domingo smiled at the baby girl cooing and rocking on Mercedes' shoulder. “There is something about a woman with a child. It is almost holy, is it not? A bond that should never be broken.” He got to his feet. “I should go now. You must excuse me for taking so much of your time. You have been very kind.”

  Stephen felt bewildered. The blow had not fallen, Domingo had not claimed her as his own. “You haven't drunk your tea,” he said.

  “We must not keep Señor Goncalvez,” Mercedes said. “Not if he has somewhere else to go.”

  Domingo reached out and stroked Gabriella's head with one brown and calloused finger. “Your daughter is very lucky. She will have a good life. We all wish more for our children, but I am afraid my own daughters can never hope for as much.”

  Stephen could only shrug his shoulders helplessly.

  Domingo turned towards the door.

  “Wait! My wife and I ... we are very sorry for what has happened. It is ... tragic. Isn't there something we can do?”

  “You did not take my sister. You cannot bring her back.”

  “I am not a poor man, as you say. Perhaps ... some financial compensation?”

  “Compensation, señor? For what? You are not to blame.” Domingo' eyes glittered angrily. Stephen cursed himself. Why on earth had he said that to him?

  “Thank you again for seeing me. I am sorry to have troubled you.”

  ***

  Stephen watched him from the window until he disappeared around the corner. Stephen felt both overjoyed and deeply ashamed. He looked at his wife.

  She bit her lip. “I thought we were going to lose our baby,” she said and a bright, shining tear made its way down her cheek.

  ***

  The cool blue skies of Spring gave way to the broiling white clouds of summer. The streets of the capital boiled, the pampero winds bringing with them the fetid, hot breath of the Equator. By January the porteños were preparing to escape to the coast, leaving behind for a short while the baking concrete, the terror and the graffiti:

  Dondé estan los Desaparecidos?

  Where are the Disappeared?

  Stephen had been in Argentine for almost a decade but he had not grown accustomed to the heat, or the inversion of the seasons. His body still told him that the Christmas season should be cold. But every January he, along with most of Buenos Aires, fled to the coast, where his wife's family owned a small villa at Nicochea.

  Mercedes' family was part of the British enclave, old money. The family name was Devereux. Her grandfather had come to Argentine just before the First World War as an engineer and he had stayed after he married a criollo. Mercedes' father had been a founding member of the British Community Council in 1939 and retained a lifelong passion for gin and tonics and the British royalty, although he had not been to England more than half a dozen times. Spanish was not spoken in her home and she had had to learn the national language at school.

  The Devereux family were proud of their adopted country yet remained aloof from its politics, their sense of superiority undiluted by two generations of expatriate life. When the junta imposed a law, making Catholic education obligatory in secondary schools, it caused no more than a raised eyebrow. Mercedes just could not see how her profession might be considered a threat to the military, how Freud so offended their holy crusade.

  But just after New Year, when they finished throwing dust covers over the furniture and with their luggage packed and ready in the hallway, Mercedes was abducted by two armed men outside her consulting rooms on Paraguay.

  Chapter 29

  AS SHE WALKED through the doors onto the sidewalk two men came towards her from opposite sides. They each took an arm and marched her towards a green Ford Falcon parked by the kerb, its motor running.

  She could not have run even if she had tried. The shock of her abduction turned her knees to water and she would have collapsed if they had not held her upright. It was too unexpected, just too bizarre. People stared on the crowded street, but no one made any move to help her. She did not blame them; she remembered her own helplessness the night the Altman's apartment had been raided. She shouted out her name and address, in the hope that someone in that crowd would report her disappearance.

  They bundled her into the back of the car and one of them threw a blanket over her head and pushed her down onto the floor. She lay, there, too terrified to move or make a sound.

  This had to be a mistake. Her husband was a British national and her own family were not without influence. They would not dare harm her, surely?

  She heard car horns, felt the car stop and start through heavy traffic. Then they turned onto a long stretch of open road and she guessed it was the new motorway the government was building out towards the airport.

  She still did not think she was going to die. All that concerned her was the pain in her back where one of the man had his boot pressed into her; that, and a dire need to relieve herself.

  The car slowed down and she heard gates creaking open. A few moments later the car stopped and the driver turned off the engine. The blanket was pulled off and they dragged her out of the car. She caught a glimpse of some kind of army barracks. But then someone forced a hood over her face. She stumbled blindly forwards. She had lost her shoes and she felt hard gravel under her bare feet, then concrete. They pushed her into a room. A door slammed behind her.

  A man demanded her name and she stammered out an answer. Then she was ordered to take off her clothes.

  Chapter 30

  “SHE WAS TAKEN in the street, in the middle of the city and in broad daylight by armed men. You don't expect me to believe that someone in this government doesn't know where she is?”

  The young man sitting across the desk from him gave him a chill smile. He exuded an air of vague embarrassment. “We don't actually know if the men who abducted y
our wife have any association with the government of Argentine. They might be leftists. They could be anyone.”

  Stephen leaned forward. “She was driven away in a green Ford Falcon. Everyone in this city knows what that means.”

  “Because she was placed in a certain kind of vehicle means nothing, I'm afraid. It would hardly stand as evidence in a court of law.”

  “Perhaps you haven't noticed, but the rule of law no longer applies in Argentine.”

  The young man picked up a white china cup and took a sip of tea. “Her Majesty's Government will of course do all it can to help you, but ...”

  “It's been three days and you haven't done anything!'

  “With respect, Mister Barrington, there is very little we can do. We have contacted representatives of the government of Argentine and they have made exhaustive enquiries on our behalf. The Interior Minister has informed them that he has absolutely no information about your wife's whereabouts. There is no record of any arrest being made by either the police or the military.”

  “Of course there isn't. That doesn't mean to say it didn't happen.”

  “I'm afraid we have a situation of no locus standi - there is no conceivable grounds for our embassy to take any action.”

  Stephen wanted to grab him by the throat. Little prick. Junior officials were the same the world over. Put just a little power into the hands of a young man who has recently been a school prefect and they take on the demeanour and attitudes of dictators.

  “I understand how you must be feeling, of course ...”

  “No, you don't understand! You couldn't possibly understand! You're barely out of school, you unctuous little squirt! You don't have a wife, I doubt if you've ever had a girlfriend! How could you possibly know what I'm going through? So, don't say you understand, because you don't, you don't even want to!'

  There was a long silence. The young man took another sip of his tea. The colour had risen in his cheeks. After a few moments he opened the manila file that lay on the table in front of him.

  “I see you failed to notify our embassy of your recent change of address. Neither have you registered the details of your marriage. Let's see, that was - eight years ago? Perhaps we should catch up on our paperwork. If you would like to ...”

  “Go to hell,” Barrington said. He got to his feet and walked out.

  ***

  The lights fell on the velvet plush of the Teatro Colón amidst the soaring and grandiose anthems of Puccini. Angeli settled in his seat. The curtain rose on the brooding gloom of the Attavanti chapel in the church of San' Andrea della Valle in Rome. It was the setting for the first act of “Tosca', an opera that romanticised the plight of Republican rebels in eighteenth century Rome. He was surprised that Videla had allowed the performance to go on. He watched, irritable and restless, Puccini's score failing to move him as it usually did.

  Francesca leaned closer. He shifted his weight slightly, away from her. He closed his eyes and was instantly back in the barracks at Ezeiza. Two days ago they had arrested a Jewish psychiatrist, a woman. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

  His eyes blinked open. No, he must not think about it here. Francesca gripped his hand more tightly and smiled at him in the darkness. He smiled back and returned his attention to the opera.

  ***

  For the second act the action moved away from the chapel to the Farnese palace. The chief of the secret police, Scarpia, suspected that an artist named Cavaradossi knew the whereabouts of a Republican rebel who had escaped his custody.

  Cavaradossi's screams as he underwent torture were heard from offstage. Angeli shifted uncomfortably in his seat, his eyes rivetted on Tosca, Cavaradossi's lover, as she listened in anguish to his cries. Angeli felt sweat beading on his forehead and an oily warmth in his groin. He had an erection.

  Finally Tosca broke, whispering the escaped prisoner's whereabouts in order to release her lover from the torturers. Angeli smiled to himself. Yes, they all broke in the end. He wiped the palms of his hands on the velvet arms of his seat.

  Finally Scarpia and Tosca were left together on the stage. He knew what would happen next, of course. He had seen the opera countless times, but he always found himself wishing for a different ending.

  Scarpia raised his wine glass to his lips. Could he not see the paring knife concealed in Tosca's hand? How could so ruthless a man be so stupid?

  Angeli lifted his eyes to the great domed ceiling, bored and frustrated by Scarpia's sentimentality. When he looked back Scarpia was dead, and Tosca was standing over him with the knife.

  She washed the blood from her hands in a basin, arranged her hair in a mirror, extinguished the lights at the supper table. Two candles still burned on Scarpia's desk. She placed one on each side of Scarpia's body, then took a crucifix down from the wall and placed it on his breast.

  The lights came up for the end of the second act.

  Francesca's face was serene. “It's beautiful, isn't it?”

  Angeli got a coffee in the gallery during the interval and was late returning to his seat. As the curtian rose on the final act he decided he would have to speak to Videla and ask him to have the performances stopped. The opera was nothing short of sedition.

  ***

  By the time they got home Simone was asleep. Angeli crept into her room and watched her by the glow of the bedside lamp. Her lips were slightly parted, forming the shape of a heart. Angeli tucked the quilt under her chin.

  “My princess.” He kissed her softly on the forehead, turned off the night light and went out.

  Francesca was waiting for him at the top of the stairs, in her opera gown. “Are you coming to bed, caro?”

  He shook his head. “I'm not tired.”

  What was that look on her face? Disappointment? Concern? It was gone almost as soon as it had appeared. She went into the bedroom and closed the door gently behind her.

  He went downstairs and stared out of the French windows at the floodlit lawn. He picked up his packet of cigarettes and lit one.

  Antonia appeared in the doorway. “Would you like supper, señor?”

  “No thank you, Antonia. Goodnight.”

  “Good night, señor Angeli.” She went out, closing the door behind her.

  He exhaled a thin stream of smoke through his nostrils. He looked around at the polished parquet floors, the marble-topped tables. He sighed. It was like a mausoleum.

  He went to the cocktail cabinet and took out a bottle of Chivas Regal. He splashed some into a crystal glass. He should be tired; in the last few weeks he had been getting just two or three hours sleep a night. He had left for the barracks at five o'clock this morning and now - he looked at his watch - it was almost midnight and he was still wide awake.

  Tonight was the first evening he had spent with his wife for months. Most nights he got home long after she had gone to bed, ate his supper at the long dining table alone. Not that it mattered, Francesca was always tired these days. She spent too much with Simone. She would not let Antonia do anything for her, she was like a child with a new doll.

  He swallowed the whisky, felt it burn the back of his throat.

  He called for Jorge. “Get my coat. You can tell the señora that I have had to go back to work. And get my coat.”

  “Si, señor.”

  He telephoned for his car. The black Mercedes arrived promptly, ten minutes later.

  Chapter 31

  THERE WERE FEW cars at this time of night. His driver turned off the speedway just before the airport and drove along a narrow unlit road. The barracks appeared ahead, a lonely jumble of lights in the darkness. The guard was slow in opening the gates and he tapped his foot on the floor, tried to curb his impatience. He thought about Tosca; but this was not opera, this was real life.

  I am the one with the knife.

  ***

  She had been given a thin cotton dress and thrown into a cell so narrow she could not stretch out her arms. There was a mattress on the floor and a rough woollen blanket and a hol
e in the cement floor for her to urinate and defecate. On the third day it had overflowed and now the floor and the mattress were permanently wet.

  She had rolled up the mattress and now sat on the one part of it that was not soiled but this meant she had to sleep sitting up, which was impossible for more than a few minutes at a time. She kept the blanket around her shoulders day and night to keep it dry.

  She could not see her fellow prisoners but she could hear them. Loudspeakers had been mounted in the corridor and when a torture session was taking place they played Rachmaninov records to cover the sounds of the screams. While it was going on she huddled shivering in her blanket and put her fingers in her ears.

  Once, in the middle of the night, she was woken by a cracked and strident voice screaming at her in a foreign language. She gasped and sat upright, terrified. Then she realised what it was. Instead of Rachmaninov, someone had placed a recording of one of Hitler's speeches on the turntable and were playing it at full volume. A good joke.

  There were no windows in her cell, the only light came from a small crack in the door which also acted as an air vent. A single low wattage bulb was left on day and night in the corridor outside, so all idea of time was eliminated. The light was only extinguished once when they used too much electricity on a particularly stubborn prisoner and overloaded the system.

  She guessed she was somewhere near the airport. She thought she heard the roar of airliners taking off and landing. Once she even imagined she heard the rumble of an undercarriage being lowered as a jet came in to land at Ezeiza. She started playing games with herself, imagined she was on board one of the passenger jets, flying off to another country, holidaying in London, lying on the beach in Copacabana.

  Her interrogation had not been too bad. They threw a hood, a capucha, over her head so that she had no idea what her interrogators looked like or how many of them there were. They asked her bizarre questions: Did she have any contacts in Israel? Was she aware of a Zionist conspiracy in Argentine?