Reuben watched her walk away. A part of him wanted to run after her, to explain. But he didn't. Whatever he was feeling right now would get worse, of course. Losing Isabella would hurt him more than any of the other women he had known and left. Except Gabriella, of course.
There was nothing to be done. He deserved to suffer. So suffer. Just try and leave other people out of it in future.
***
The barrio was scarred by factories and concrete apartments. The air stank of sulphur from a nearby chemical plant. The church was made of red brick; it was ugly, modern, utilitarian. At the rear was a high wall topped with broken glass. A small boy in a white surplus with a bronze, pockmarked face opened a wire mesh gate to let him in, then led him through a small rose garden.
The roar of traffic on the nearby highway was suddenly muted by the wall.
Salvatore sat on a stone bench. He looked up and smiled . “Ah, my confessor.” He turned to the small boy. “Thank you, Raimundo. That will be all for today. Tell the others they can go home. We are not yet a threat to the choir in the Sistine Chapel but if we practise, and with God's help, who knows?”
The boy nodded solemnly and walked away.
Reuben sat down on the bench beside the priest.
“So, what brings you out here to the playgrounds of the devil?”
“I'm going back.”
Salvatore nodded. “I thought you would. I have toyed with this idea, also. But I am not sure if my old bishop wants me. You, however, have the power of choice.” He reached inside his cassock, brought out packet of cheap cigarettes and lit one, holding it in two fingers and a thumb, sighting it like a pistol. He offered one to Reuben, who shook his head. “Why have you come to see me?”
“I wanted to know if you think it's a good idea.”
“You want my advice? But you hardly know me. Besides, I am the enemy, one of the Pope's satanic horde.”
“Agreed. But I'd like your opinion anyway.”
Salvatore looked up at the statue of the Virgin in her niche in the wall. “Hear that, blesséd Mother? If I convert this Jew here will you send me back to La Boca?”
“I want to look for my daughters.”
Salvatore took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “What do you want me to say to you?”
“What do you think?”
“I thought they were dead.”
“What if they're not?”
“You mean you don't know?”
“I wrote to her brother. He said they were gone, that they had heard nothing of them since.”
“Then there is no chance they are still alive, is there?”
“No.”
“There is no danger to you in going back now. So what is it that you are afraid of?”
“I'm afraid that I'm wrong.”
Salvatore thought about this and when he finally spoke again his voice was very soft. “Why does that remote prospect frighten you, Reuben?”
“There are things I have not told anyone about that night.”
“I can hear your confession, Reuben, if that is what you want. Unofficially, of course. I cannot give you absolution. But God will hear you and I am sure in my own heart that he does not distinguish between faiths, as we do down here.”
“I don't want to be forgiven for anything. I just want to ... I just wanted to talk to someone.”
“Someone whose discretion was assured. Someone who does not know you and will then talk about you with your friends.”
“Something like that.” Reuben rested his elbows on his knees. “To live your life successfully you have to be the hero of your own story. When you are the villain, or the coward, it is impossible.” He put his face in his hands. “Did they torture you, Father?”
“Yes.”
“What was it like?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I cannot stop thinking about Gabriella. What they did to her.”
“I see. You want me to add to your torment.”
“They would have wanted to know where I was.” He clenched his hands together. The knuckles cracked. “I keep telling myself that she told them. That it was over quickly.”
“Did she know where you were?
“I was with another woman. And yes, she knew.”
“Dear God.”
“Just tell me what's it like.”
“Reuben ...”
He looked into the priest's eyes. At some stage they had broken him, he realised. Peel away all the layers of a tortured man and you find only fear.
The priest drew on his cigarette. “One day I will find my courage again. One day my hands will stop shaking like this. I will stand up to them again. Like you will.”
“If you run once, do you run forever? There must be some way to win.”
“Yes, there must be a way to win, as you say. I shall let you know.”
Reuben got to his feet. “I know it's impossible. I wouldn't even know what they look like now, if they're still alive.”
“I shall light a candle for you.”
“Thank you for listening, father.”
“Thank you for coming. God be with you.”
“Yours or mine?”
Salvatore smiled. “Oh, I think in the end He'll turn out to be the same guy, don't you?”
Reuben made his way home. That evening he sat down in front of the television with a bottle of Bushmills balanced between his knees. The news bulletin carried pictures of Argentine's new president, Raul Alfonsín, accepting the plaudits of the crowd from the balcony of the Casa Rosada. He listened to him promise to bring the former military rulers to justice for spreading death, terror and pain through Argentine society.
Yes, he thought, there has to be an accounting. It is the only way to heal the victims. There must be justice.
He had to go back. It was time to go home.
Chapter 40
Buenos Aires
HE ARRIVED HOME, as he always did, in a black limousine. The driver wore an army uniform and the car was escorted by a motorcycle rider, travelling behind. It seemed to Simone that her father must be a very important man to merit such attention.
He got out of the car and ran up the front steps. She supposed that God must look something like this; blue-eyed and massive and important and beautiful. She waited for him under the portico, besides Antonia. When he shouted her name she ran to meet him and he scooped her up in his arms.
He carried her inside into his study so that she could tell him about her day; about the picture she had drawn at school, the games she had played with her friends, how Antonia had taught her make dulce con leche.
“What did you do today, papito?” she asked him.
“Nothing that was nearly as much fun.”
“Mama says you're in the Army. Do you fight wars, like on television?”
He laughed. “I spend all day in an office looking at files and reading reports.”
“You won't get hurt, will you papa? You won't get shot?”
“No, caro. There are no wars here in Argentina. Not any more.”
“I want to be in the Army when I grow up.”
“We'll see, chiquita. We'll see.”
Francesca appeared at the doorway. “Simone, Antonia is calling for you. It's time for your bath.”
“Yes, mama.” She leaned towards him and whispered: “Mama says we are going away.”
“Yes, chiquita. We have to leave Argentina.”
“Are you coming too?”
He laughed. “Of course. I would not go anywhere without you and mama.”
“And Antonia?”
“No. Antonia has to stay here. We will find someone else to look after you.”
“I don't want to go.”
“You'll like it in the new place. I promise.”
Francesca clapped her hands. “Simone. Come on. Your bath is getting cold.”
Simone ran from the room. Angeli watched her go, the smile freezing on his face. Those bastards. They had chased him out of his own co
untry. Like a criminal! If he had committed any crime at all it was that he had made this country safe for the little ones. But try telling that to the bleeding hearts. When the communists took over in a few months they would appreciate him then.
***
The Aerolineas flight from Mexico City touched down at Ezeiza on a hot January night. As he stepped onto the runway the humidity turned his shirt into a sodden rag in minutes. Summer in Buenos Aires, a bad time to arrive, most porteños would have already taken off to the beaches.
As he stepped inside the terminal the knot that had been in his stomach since they started their descent became unbearable. Hard to believe they were not waiting to arrest him. He looked around at the armed police in the terminal and fought down a wave of panic.
There was a queue at the immigration desk. A policeman stamped the disembarkation cards and passed them to an elegant young woman beside him who checked the documents. His new passport was perused with only fleeting interest.
He walked out of the arrivals lounge, still expecting to see a death squad waiting for him in the car park, lounging on a green Ford Falcon. The junta is finished, he reminded himself, we have democracy again now.
He jumped in a black and yellow taxi. The driver did not take the new motorway downtown. “Who can afford the toll?”
When he found out that Reuben was a fellow porteño he wanted to tell him his life story. He had been a teacher once, he said, but his school had been closed down by the military in 1976. Since then he had been unable to get a job. Still, he was one of the lucky ones, most of the teachers he had worked with had been disappeared.
But things would change now. Those dirty bastards were gone and Alfonsín would get the country back on its feet. He might even go back to teaching.
Reuben just stared out of the window and let him talk. Huge concrete ramps led nowhere, remnants of the still-unfinished motorway, throwing ink shadows against the evening sky. In the distance he could make out the silhouettes of the Interama Park, the giant Ferris wheel monument to the junta's folly. Two hundred million dollars in foreign credits had been invested in the project and most of it had finished up in numbered deposit accounts in Switzerland and Luxembourg.
It reminded Reuben of the old joke; when God created the earth he discovered he had given Argentina too much. He had blessed the country with oil, grasslands, the Andes, the River Plate. So to balance the ledger, he also gave it the Argentinians.
Broad avenues gave way to the cobbled streets and Parisian apartments of the old quarter. Reuben had booked into the old Alvear Palace Hotel, just a few blocks from where he had once lived. Returning to these familiar streets was not like coming home, more like revisiting the scene of a crime.
He checked into his room and sat down on the bed. Now he was here he felt curiously reluctant to begin. In his pocket were a list of names and telephone numbers that might well be useless now. Did he really think there was any hope of redemption after all this time.
The only thing that could save him now was to turn back the clock and do it all differently. If he had been there that night perhaps Gabriella and the girls would still be alive.
***
Those idiots, Angeli thought.
He stood in the garden, looking at his house. It was one of the finest residences in Palermo; ten rooms, green shuttered windows, air conditioning. He had done well for a man whose grandfather had been a Calabrian peasant, whose grandmother had started life in the slums of Genoa. His own father had risen no higher than corporal under Perón. Angeli had received his education not at St Andrew's or St George's, but at a secondary school run by the army. He had devoted his life to the service of Argentina.
But now it was time to return to Italy. One of Alfonsín's judges had ordered him to appear in court to answer charges of kidnapping, torture and homicide. It was outrageous.
He would not give the ungrateful bastards the satisfaction.
He was proud of what he had done, of everything he had achieved. World War Three had been fought and won in Buenos Aires, he and his brother officers had demonstrated that the communists could be defeated if one had the strength of will. History would vindicate them, he was sure of that.
They had beaten the communists but they had been unable to overcome incompetence; the stupidity of Videla's Economics Minister del Hoy or the grand folly of the military misadventure in the Islas Malvinas - what the British called the Falklands. They had been humiliated there in the eyes of the nation and of the world. That was what had broken them in the end, not the locos, the crazywomen in the Plaza de Mayo. It was the one thousand per cent inflation and having their flag trampled in the mud at Port Stanley.
Because of that fool Galtieri.
He threw his cigarette in the pool.
Well he could still serve his country, only he would have to do it from elsewhere. He had made powerful friends during his career. This was not the end for César Angeli. It was just the beginning.
Chapter 41
REUBEN STOOD OUTSIDE his old apartment in Recoleta and stared at the brass backplate. It was suddenly hard to breathe. A jogger, wearing Nike runners and loose silky blue shorts, came out of the front door and gave him a suspicious glance. She ran down the steps and set off down the tree-lined avenue.
He looked beyond the black iron grille to the foyer. The ancient lift was still there, the wrought iron stairs. There was a vase of flowers reflected in the mirrored hallway. Everything was as he remembered it. He thought of Gabriella the first night he had brought her here, heard her laughing as he shut the iron gates to the elevator. She kissed him while the old lift wheezed its way up to the fourth floor.
He blinked and the image was gone. He heard the sound of a baby crying from somewhere above him. He remembered Eva and Simone lying in their cot, dust suspended in a bolt of sunlight through the open shutters, the mobile he had hung from the nursery ceiling dancing in the breeze coming from the open window.
The crying stopped; or perhaps he had imagined it.
He turned and walked away.
The worst of it was, you would never know what had happened to them, and there was no grave to mourn over. His parents, his brother, his wife, his children, they were all gone. Desaparecidos. He did not even a cold certainty that they were dead. Even now, those bastards still tortured you with hope.
Eva and Simone would be eight years old now, if they had lived. What had happened to them? Stories had just begun to surface about how the children of death squad victims had been given or sold to officers in the regime without children of their own. If that had happened to his daughters, how would he ever find them? He doubted that Alfonsín's new commission would help. So what would he do?
He thought about Gabriella.. Had she been tortured before she died? Raped? He shut his eyes, tried to shut out the image of her screaming ...
He walked aimlessly, suddenly found himself standing outside the Recoleta cemetery. He walked through the gates. Even in death, Argentina's élite maintained their supremacy. They were all here, the long dead aristocracy entombed in their fantastic temples, competing with each other for novelty and lavish expense. Here were the mausoleums of Aramburu and Alvear, and, tucked away along one of the less celebrated avenues of the famous dead, Santa Evita herself. Even her husband, the great Perón, had not been allowed a tomb here; he had been buried across town in less fashionable Chacarita. There was a saying that it was cheaper to live extravagantly all one's life than to spend one's death in Recoleta.
They ruling class mouldered here in their palaces to mortality, guarded by great marble angels.
The entrances to these mausoleums were barred with iron gates, but a few were in disrepair, the glass doors smashed, and inside the casual visitor could glimpse the great coffins with their ornate silver trimmings piled on top of each other like cordwood. Reuben put his face against the bars and sniffed at the musty taint of corruption.
Gabriella did not even have a headstone.
There were m
ore revelations in the newspapers every day. The Navy had coated their victims' bodies in cement and dumped them into the River Plate; the Air Force pushed them out of helicopters high over the Atlantic or over the jungles of Tucumán, sometimes when they were still alive; the Army, without access to such sophistications, had simply bulldozed their desaparecidos into mass graves, marked “NN' - Non Nombres, No Names.
So. Not even a grave to weep over. Nothing at all.
***
He had relived that moment a thousand times, knew every action, every word, like an actor's well-thumbed script.
Carmen holding out the telephone towards him and then his wife's voice: “The police are here!'
It was all she had said. It was something he could not comprehend; she had known he was in another woman's bed but still she had thought to warn him.
“What's going on?” Carmen had shouted as he threw on his clothes.
“I don't know,” he told her, but that was a lie because he did know; he knew about the twenty one million dollars of Monteñero money that had been funnelled to Havana through the Altman Financial group. He knew that was why they were in his apartment.
“You can't go back there.”
“I have to.”
“What good is it going to do? Perhaps they made her make the phone call! It's you they want, isn't it?”
“Yes.”
“What have you done?”
He shook his head. It was better she did not know.
“It's a trap. You're no good to your family dead!'
“I have to help Gabriella!'
He had left Carmen's apartment meaning to go straight to Recoleta. But somewhere on the way he lost his nerve, convinced himself that what Carmen had told him was true. It was a set-up, a trap.
So instead of going home to his apartment he went to the Mexican embassy. He saved himself. They died.
Chapter 42
THE PLAZA DE MAYO was at the heart of the city. The great edifice of the Banco de Naçión, the metropolitan cathedral, and the ancient cabildo, all faced the square and its palms and flower gardens, the white obelisk at its centre. The park reflected the mood of the city; the grass was withered, and it was littered with newspaper and discarded gaseosa cans.
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