He nodded.
“Does this happen every night?”
“Not every night.”
“So you only have nightmares when I sleep with you?”
He downed the whiskey and poured another.
“I've slept here three times and every time you've woken up screaming.” When he didn't answer, she said: “Tell me it's not me.”
“It's not you.”
“Did something happen to you in Argentine?”
“Happen to me?”
“I'm not stupid, Reuben.”
He took another slug of whiskey.
“Do you think you need to talk to someone?”
“A shrink, you mean?”
“This is not normal.”
“I don't want to talk about it right now.” He went into the other room and turned on the television. His jacket hung over the back of one of the chairs. He took out his wallet. Inside there was a picture of Gabriella and the girls, worn and faded like an ancient religious icon. He stared at it for a long time. They might as well have been strangers in a magazine.
Chapter 37
ISABEL WAS RIGHT, this wasn't normal. He knew, because he had been that once: normal. It wasn't a state of mind, it was a place, and once you left it, you could never go back. He knew, because he had tried
For a political exile, he did not struggle as badly as some others. He had a job in the foreign exchange division of a large national bank and owned a comfortable two bedroom townhouse in San Angel. For an exile, it was luxury.
Isabella had been his first girlfriend in almost four years. There had been plenty of offers, he deflected most of them, but Isabella had been a little more persistent. She probably regrets it now, he thought. Perhaps she thinks of me as a project, a wounded rebel to be healed. If that's what she thinks, then she's made a big mistake.
Mogadon by night, Valium by day. Morning and evening he checked all the cars parked in the street to satisfy himself there was no one sitting inside, watching his apartment. If he saw a cop in the street he crossed to the other side. There were two deadbolts on the door, and a state of the art security system. He was thinking of getting a Doberman.
Every day he told himself: there is nothing you can do to change the past. You have to get on with the rest of your life. But why, really? He did not understand why he was still alive, and they were dead. He thought about them every day, every hour of the day. He knew that night in 1975 would go on forever.
He had never worked out who it was that had betrayed them. No one in Argentine knew they were laundering funds for the Montos, just his father, his brother, and himself. The weak link had been Havana, with Mario Fermenich and the rebel leadership.
Isabella went back to bed. He hesitated, then took the whisky bottle over to the sofa. You drink too much, he muttered to himself. True, but when you chased a valium with three tumblers of whisky, at least he could sleep for a while. He enjoyed oblivion. If he ws braver, he would stay there.
***
Every day when he finished work he walked home through Alameda Park. One Friday afternoon he sat down on a bench to listen to a man strumming his guitar. The man had his back resting against the trunk of a poplar tree; his wife lay beside him, and she had folded his suit jacket as a pillow for her head. The song was a milonga from the pampa and he was sang in lunfardo, the unmistakeable patois of Buenos Aires. They were exiles, he realised, exiles like himself.
“Altman. Reuben Altman.”
Reuben turned around, startled. He dreaded someone from his old life recognizing him, but he had always supposed it was inevitable. They said almost a quarter of a million of his countrymen had fled here during the seventies. He head meant an old financier friend just a few months ago. He had had to endure his complains and commiserations, made an appointment to catch up over lunch, and stood him up.
“It is you, isn't it?”
Reuben had rehearsed his strategy for such occasions; pretend not to remember them, remain vague if they were persistent, get away as soon as possible. On this occasion he did not have to feign puzzlement; the stranger was a priest.
“I'm sorry. I don't think I know you.”
“Father Paolo Salvatore. We met once at your home. You married Gabriella Goncalvez.”
The invocation of her name made him feel physically sick. “I'm sorry,” he said and shrugged.
But Salvatore was not easily deterred. “What are you doing in Mexico? Is your wife with you?”
Reuben shook his head.
“But wait ... surely not ... not you, as well?”
Reuben gave him a chill smile.
“Oh, my God,” the man said, but not in the normal way that such oaths were made by laymen. He seemed to be genuinely invoking the compassion of the deity. “I'm sorry. Poor Gabriella. Why?”
“Does there have to be a reason?”
“But I knew Gabriella since she was a child. I gave her her first communion. And your little girls?”
Reuben looked away.
“Dear God have mercy.”
“I don't think He does.”
Salvatore ignored the blasphemy. “This is terrible, terrible.”
Why did people do this to him? Just let me get through the days. I don't need to glimpse my pain through a new pair of eyes every few months.
“I am an exile here too,” Salvatore told him though Reuben did not remember asking. “You must bear a terrible amount of guilt'
Reuben stared at him. “Why should I feel guilty?”
“The survivor always feels guilt. It is the same with me. I sometimes wish I would have died too. It would have been easier. I feel they are laughing at me now, that this is just another aspect of the torture.”
Reuben did not know what to say to him.
“I always think: people are wondering why I was spared,” Salvatore went on. “That I made a deal with them, that I did not have the strength to resist. I think that is why my new bishop sent me one of the barrios. But I like it here. I am comfortable with the poor.” Salvatore shook his head, lost to some private reverie. Then the light returned to his eyes. “Poor Gabriella. I shall say a prayer for her eternal soul. I shall say a prayer for all of you.”
He held out his hand. Reuben was expecting an offer of help, some lantern of friendship he did not require. But instead Salvatore said: “I should go now, I can see you want to be with your thoughts. God be with you, Reuben. Your God and mine.”
He started to walk away.
He heard himself say: “Perhaps we can talk again, Father.” Now why did he do that? That was unexpected.
The priest turned, as surprised at receiving this request as Reuben was at having made it. His face creased into a slow smile. “Of course. If you think it would help. I will give you the name of my church.”
***
The party was in Cuernavaca, on the patio of a friend's villa, the coloured lights looking gaudy and cheap against the backdrop of a bloody Aztec moon, newly risen over the distant volcanoes. Many of the guests were emigrés, like himself.
During his eight years in El DF - as the locals called Mexico City - Reuben had avoided anyone from his old life. But there was always someone, like Father Salvatore who recognised him - or thought they did. Some of them even thought him a hero; if only they knew!
It was only Isabella who had persuaded him to come. The party was held to celebrate the first free elections in Argentina for almost a decade. The military junta had finally foundered on spiralling inflation and the national humiliation in the Malvinas. Their final act had been to pass a law excusing themselves for the crimes they had committed during their eight year tenure before scuttling into the black limousines waiting for them behind the Casa Rosada. The Peronists were already proclaiming victory and counting had not even started.
There was a forced air of gaiety. He saw a woman he knew, an artist who had lost her husband and son to the death squads in 1976. She had arrived hand in hand with a Miami property developer, wearing large red s
unglasses and a black hooped skirt. She was laughing too hard, like everyone else here. Over there was a lawyer who had had electrodes taped to his balls in a military prison; he had a blue and white Argentine flag draped over his shoulders, and was already drunk. That woman there had lost both her brothers in the Dirty War, as they were now calling it, disappeared because of their membership in a trade union. She was dancing with a New York commodities broker.
“Reuben Altman!'
For the second time that day he was confronted by a total stranger. It took him a few moments to put the man's face into context. And then it came to him: the University of Buenos Aires. The man had been a friend of Julio Castro's, had studied journalism with him.
“Daniel Facchetti!' Reuben said. He had changed. He had lost some hair, and he had a few extra pounds around his middle putting pressure on the buttons of his shirt.
Facchetti grinned. He was holding a bottle of Corona beer and appeared to be a little drunk. “You have a good memory.”
“So do you.” Reuben hoped he would not have to listen to any more harrowing tales of misfortune, or more dreams of Argentine's roseate future.
“Not likely to forget going to university with one of the Altmans. Last time I saw you must have been - seventy three. Ten years. My God. The things we've seen, right?”
Reuben gave him a tight smile. “How are things?”
Facchetti shrugged. How could you sum up a decade in a few words? “I'm doing my best. Like everyone here. I heard you were in el DF.”
“Got here in 1975. What about you?”
“Two years ago. I spent six years before that in Lima. I have a job working on El Día. You?”
“Banamex. Foreign exchange department.”
Facchetti hesitated, as exiles always did after the small talk, like a swimmer taking a breath before plunging into icy water. “They really screwed you, didn't they?”
“They screwed a lot of people.”
“You were the only one to get out, huh?”
It was said innocently enough, but Reuben bristled. “I was lucky.”
“Bastards. Why did they go after you?”
“Because we were Jews.”
“That's the story I heard. Crazy.” He finished his Corona. “Are you going back? After the elections?”
“I don't think so.”
“I'm going back. In fact, I was there last month.”
“Buenos Aires?”
“Sure. I still have some of my family there.”
“What's it like?”
Facchetti smiled. “The military spent a hundred million dollars building a fun park. And they say Galtieri doesn't have a sense of humour.”
Reuben searched the room for Isabella. He wanted this conversation to end. He was about to excuse himself when Facchetti said: “Guess who I saw?”
Here it comes; “Who?”
“An old friend of yours. Julio. Julio Castro. Do you remember him?”
Chapter 38
FACCHETTI FINISHED his beer, belched, looked around for another.
“Julio's back in Buenos Aires?”
“Don't think he ever left. He's still working for La Prensa. That guy breaks me up. Remember what a radical he used to be? I thought he was the first one the military would have disappeared. But there he was in there, tapping away on an old Remington in his little cubby hole. The guy's a survivor, no doubt about it.”
Reuben remembered their last conversation, after Jorge Albrecht had been arrested. He had always assumed that Julio was dead or an exile like himself, living in Caracas or Lima. He could not imagine him spending the last eight years hunched over his typewriter, spinning the party line. Incredible.
Isabella waved to him from the other side of the room. He turned to Facchetti. “My girlfriend wants me to dance. Catch up with you later, okay?”
He moved off into the crowd. He didn't feel like dancing and he didn't want to wait around for the election results. He didn't give a shit about Argentine any more. He left the party early and drove back to Mexico City.
***
Reuben had just crossed the road from the metro, right at the gates of Alameda Park, when he lost his last link with Gabriella.
He saw them when they were still a hundred yards away, half a dozen beggar boys with broad grins and bad teeth, dressed in filthy T-shirts and shorts. They were kicking a can along the gravel. As they came closer he assumed they would run around him but the first two boys had their backs to him and he saw that a collision was inevitable. He felt the bump and suddenly they were all around him, charging into him at once, one of them even kicking the can at his legs.
And then, just as suddenly, they were gone, and the tin can lay at his feet. They all ran off in different directions.
He knew at once what had happened. He felt in his jacket for his wallet: it was gone. He didn't care about the credit cards, the money, only the photograph of Gabriella and the girls. It was beyond value to him. He ran blindly after one of the kids, bumping through the crowds of strollers, deaf to shouts and curses. Finally, out of breath and lathered in sweat, he slumped down onto a bench.
He had lost his last link with Gabriella and his girls. Now, not even their ghosts remained.
Chapter 39
REUBEN WATCHED the hawkers working the traffic jam on Reforma, pressing flowers against the windows of the stalled cars, washing windscreens for a few coins. In front of him a matron with Ralph Lauren and Ruben Torres shopping bags examined her reflection in the coffee shop window as she ate strawberries and vanilla ice cream from a glass bowl.
Reuben nursed his espresso and tried to concentrate on the newspaper. Lech Walensa's wife, Danuka, had accepted the Nobel peace prize on his behalf in Oslo and Raul Alfonsín was set to become Argentine's first civilian president in eight years. His Radical Party - who were actually moderates, Reuben thought with a smile, but try explaining that to someone who had not been born in Argentine - had confounded all the pundits and defeated the Peronists.
The article went on to list the problems Alfonsin would face when the euphoria of his election had disappeared; the military junta had left the country with spiralling international debt and an annual inflation rate of just under one thousand per cent. It was said that some people renegotiated their annual salary on a daily basis; prices were not marked in supermarkets and increased not only by the day but by the hour.
“Reuben.”
He looked up: Isabella. He saw several men look at up and follow her with their eyes. She was wearing a navy blue suit over a cream blouse, a gold chain nestled in the tan hollow of her throat. Her long dark hair was braided down her back in a pony tail. A beautiful woman; he had always been lucky in love, or so they told him.
She sat down. She smiled at him and he tried to smile back. These situations were always difficult. He wished now that he had not arranged to meet her here, that he had done this over the telephone. There was a time he had not thought of himself as a coward. Now it seemed to be second nature.
He ordered two espressos. “How was your day?” He could not meet her eyes, tried to keep some emotional distance between them.
“Little Hector died.”
Hector, he remembered, was a little boy who had come under her care in the paediatric ward of the hospital where she worked as a doctor. He had been brought in a few weeks before with respiratory disease. Bad timing for Isabella. Bad timing for little Hector too, he supposed. Wasn't God supposed to care for little children? He didn't care for mine.
But then, neither did I, he thought. Perhaps I should put this off.
“You okay?”
“Sure. What about you?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I knew he was going to die sometime. It's better sooner than later. The resident says I can't afford to get so attached to my patients. People die every day. It's a fact. Even children.”
“Yes. Even children.”
The espressos arrived. He stirred in two spoonfuls of sugar, his mind elsewhere.
<
br /> “So. Alfonsín won.”
He nodded.
“Are you going back?”
“No, I don't think so.”
She looked relieved. “So why such a long face? Are you a closet Peronist?”
“I don't give a damn about politics any more. I never did, really.”
“So what's wrong?”
“I've been thinking.” He took a deep breath. “I don't think it's a good idea that we see each other anymore.”
A long, angry silence. “I see.”
“I know what you're thinking. But it's better we do this now. I don't know any other way to tell you.”
“What are you talking about, you bastard?”
The woman at the next table had finished her ice cream and now she was staring at them. If she wanted entertainment she could pay the pavement buskers. He glared at her and she turned away again.
“I'm sorry, Isabel.”
Her eyes had filled with tears, her anger evaporating as quickly as it had come. “But I thought we .... what is it? What have I done?
“You haven't done anything. It's not you, it's me.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“I owe you an explanation but I don't have one. I thought this would work and it won't. Don't ask me to give you reasons because none of them will make any sense. I didn't mean to hurt you.”
“You just wanted to sleep with me? If this had been a one night stanbd, it wouldn't have hurt so much.”
He considered telling her the truth, but that would only make things worse. She would want to heal him and help him and then he would never get rid of her. He knew because it had happened to him before. Better to lie. After all, what did it matter what she thought of him? She could not despise him more than he despised himself.
“Yes, I just wanted to sleep with you.”
To her credit, she didn't slap him or throw her coffee in his lap. Instead she reached into her purse and put some coins on the table. Then she stood up, hitching her bag over her shoulder. “Thanks for the coffee. Keep the change.”
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