Purgatory

by Tomás Eloy Martínez

  Ethel felt compelled to intervene.

  ‘Every night I prayed to God that you and your men would take power quickly. The Argentinian people were horrified to see the country in the clutches of that brainless burlesque dancer6. We were afraid that by the time you came to power, the country would be in ruins. I’ve been terribly impressed by how quickly you’ve restored order. Even Borges – a man of few words – said how proud he is of the army that saved the country from Communism. I heard him on the radio only a couple of hours ago.’

  ‘Ah, yes. I had lunch with Borges and a number of the intelligentsia. My advisers invited them so we could discuss cultural matters. Only one of them proved intractable – though it was the one person we least expected – a priest, a certain Father Leonardo Castellani.’

  ‘I thought he was dead,’ said Dupuy. ‘He must be at least eighty.’

  ‘Seventy-seven I was told. I see you know the man.’

  ‘Not really. I’ve read some of his writings. He translated a section of St Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica and wrote a number of rather good crime novels. He was told that the Jesuits would punish him and indeed he was expelled from the order and sent into reclusion in a monastery in Spain. It was only a few years ago that the Vatican permitted him to say Mass again.’

  The president had barely touched his food. He was so thin, the other comandantes called him the Eel. It was a nickname that did not displease him. Even as a young cadet, he had been slippery, cold, inscrutable. Though he had not sought it, he had accepted the highest office in the land for the sake of the military. Even now, at the height of his power, he was still an eel, noted for his secrecy, his cunning, his good luck.

  ‘I had no idea the priest would prove so turbulent. I shall have to rebuke my advisers for inviting him. From the moment I saw him, he did not strike me as a man of God. He has a glass eye. A frozen, cadaverous eye. Over dessert, he had the gall to suggest that I release a former student of his from prison, someone named Conti. He ranted and raved like a man possessed.’

  ‘He always was possessed,’ Dupuy offered.

  ‘He started shouting that this student of his was a great writer who had been tortured half to death after his arrest.’

  ‘My God. What did you tell him?’ This from the wife with the swollen legs.

  ‘I told him the truth. I told him my government is at war against Communist subversives, but it does not resort to torture or to murder. Professor Addolorato, who was sitting on my right, managed to save the day. “How could you even think of bringing such an outlandish accusation to this table, Father?” he said.’

  ‘Addolorato is a fine man,’ his wife agreed.

  ‘You don’t know how grateful I am to him. The priest was about to launch into another diatribe, but Addolorato told him to calm down. “We are all living through troubled times,” he said, “let’s not distract the president with such trifling matters.” ’

  Simón stopped eating and, for the first time, joined in the conversation. Dupuy and Ethel were afraid he would say something rash. And indeed he did.

  ‘Torture, comandante, is not a trifling matter, regardless of the ends for which it is employed.’

  The president twisted his mouth into an expression of disgust, but it was Dupuy who reprimanded him.

  ‘This is none of your business, Simón.’

  ‘This is everyone’s business. I can’t be expected to hold my tongue when a crime is being committed.’

  ‘Calm down, hijo.’

  The monsignor raised the index and middle fingers of his right hand as though exorcising Simón. ‘There are things which, though they may seem like crimes, are actually simple justice. You need to understand. The momentary pain of one man, one sinner, can save the lives of hundreds of innocent people. Try to think of it that way.’

  ‘The question is not one of quantity, Monsignor. As far as I am concerned to torture a single human being is the same as torturing all of them. As I’ve heard it said in the parish church in my town: when they crucified Christ, they crucified all humanity.’

  ‘You cannot compare the two. There was only one Christ. He was God made flesh.’

  ‘True, but two thousand years ago, nobody knew that.’

  Emilia’s breathing was ragged and she was beginning to sweat. She looked as though she might faint. Everyone turned and she felt embarrassed to be the centre of attention.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, getting to her feet, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m feeling a little dizzy.’

  ‘Simón, take her up to her room,’ the father commanded. ‘Give us a moment to compose ourselves.’

  ‘It’s probably the champagne,’ said Emilia. ‘I don’t drink. I’m not used to it.’

  The mother too got up from the table, looking nervous.

  ‘I’ll just go and see what’s happening.’

  The president’s wife smiled, dismissing the episode lightly.

  ‘Perhaps she’s expecting. Perhaps her little dizzy spell might be considered a godsend—’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Dupuy interrupted, embarrassed. ‘Neither she nor her husband are ready to start a family. I’ve said as much to both of them and they agree.’

  ‘Babies come without being called,’ the monsignor said. ‘We must respect the will of the Almighty.’

  From that point, the dinner began to go downhill and by the time the mother came back with the good news that Emilia was much better and had fallen asleep, there was nothing more to say. Dupuy was left with the unpleasant feeling that the president blamed him for the pall cast by his son-in-law over the evening.

  As he was leaving, the monsignor asked Dupuy in confidence whether he had had Simón’s background thoroughly vetted. ‘He’s a member of your family, Doctor, so he can’t be a Commie, though – God forgive me – he talks like one.’

  More than once, Dupuy had noticed that his son-in-law made no attempt to keep his irresponsible thoughts to himself. He would have to bring the boy to heel. With things as they were, there was no place for dissidence, for argument. How could Simón not understand that in saving the country from toppling into the abyss, any and all means were acceptable? If it was necessary to torture people to purge the country, then there was nothing to be done but torture them. The sacrificial sufferings of Joan of Arc and of Miguel Servet had served only to make the Church stronger. True, good men sometimes paid for sinners, but such things were inevitable in wartime. The junta could not publicly admit to the summary trials and executions since this would simply allow the enemy to launch into an endless, disruptive debate. The only thing to be done was exterminate the subversives quickly and quietly. If a military leader preferred to take them prisoner and use them as slave labour, so be it, provided he did so in secret. This priest with the glass eye had had the gall to raise the case of a disappeared Christian with the president. Let him bring up the subject as often as he liked. No one would listen to him. Right-thinking people were sick to death of violence. What they wanted was peace and order. The spirit of Argentina which Dupuy wrote about so often in La República had risen from the dead, it was sanctified. Dios, Patria, Hogar – God, Country, Family – were words which Dupuy believed should be inscribed on the white band of the national flag beneath the Sun of May. He would suggest as much in his next editorial for the magazine. Using the Socratic method which was by now his trademark, he would say: ‘If the Brazilians have forged their democracy with the motto Ordem e Progresso, which is emblazoned on their flag, and the United States have the words In God We Trust engraved on their banknotes beneath their own protective emblem, why should Argentina not publicly declare that it is founded on three hallowed words: God, Country, Family?’ It would be a timeless lesson which would forestall any onslaught by totalitarian subversives. They do not believe in God, nor in the family, and the country for which they are fighting is Soviet or Castroist rather than Argentinian: a strange country, a Communist country.

  Simón disappeared in Tucum�
�n at the beginning of July. The days were mild and the nights frosty. He and Emilia had been sent to Tucumán by the Automobile Club on an easy mission, virtually a holiday. They were to map a ten-kilometre stretch of an invisible route – nothing more than a dotted line on the map – to the south of the province. ‘It’s changed a lot, that province,’ Dupuy told them. ‘Until recently, it was a brutal, feudal place. The subversives had the gall to declare it a free American territory. Can you imagine? Now, it’s a wealthy, peaceful province: there are no more terrorist attacks, no more kidnappings. The kerbs are painted blue and white; everywhere you go, there is order. In less than four months, the military government has worked miracles.’

  At Tucumán airport, there was an Automobile Club rental jeep waiting for them. They spent the night at a hotel in the centre of town and at 5 a.m. they started driving south. The early hour, the brittle air, the emptiness of the streets: all these details which seemed so trivial were the first things Emilia would later remember. The shimmer of dew on the fields of sugar cane. The shadows of dogs moving under the street lamps. The tobacco leaves lying lazily in thick mats. Every few kilometres there was a military checkpoint and at every one they had to present their papers and explain why they were going where they were going. They were stopped in Famaillá, Santa Lucía, Monteros, Aguilares, Villa Alberdi. At the checkpoint at La Cocha, a sergeant emerged from the toilets, trousers halfway round his ankles, and barked at his men to check the jeep again. ‘Check under the seats,’ he told the guards. ‘These fucking subversives hide their weapons in a false bottom under the seats.’ ‘We’re cartographers, we’re with the Automobile Club,’ Simón explained. ‘We make maps.’ This made matters worse. They were hustled into a storeroom and subjected to a barrage of meaningless questions. ‘How do we know your papers aren’t forgeries? Why did you rent a jeep instead of a car like anyone else?’ In the corners of the storeroom were piles of corn cobs and rats. They were huge, grey, menacing. To allay the doubts of the guards, Simón sketched the route they were to map, from Los Altos to the banks of the Río El Abra. He explained that most maps omitted landmarks and that the course of Ruta 67 was not accurately mapped. He and his wife were here to rectify these mistakes. ‘There was a plane overflying the area yesterday,’ the sergeant said. ‘It came by twice, flying very low. I suspect they were taking photos. Right now I’m thinking maybe they had something to do with you. That’s how they plan terrorist attacks, spying missions, people who pretend they’re just passing through. Cardologists, natologists, everyone pretending to be something they’re not. Cartologists like you.’

  ‘Cartographers,’ Emilia said. ‘Why don’t you check our credentials?’

  ‘All right, I’ll let you go through,’ the sergeant conceded. ‘But just remember, we’ve got our eyes on you. You still need to get past the checkpoint at Huacra. If they turn you back, I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes.’

  The military checkpoint at Huacra seemed deserted. The stifling silence, the empty, almost surreal sentry boxes felt strangely jarring. The checkpoint marked the border between two provinces and was usually patrolled by at least twenty soldiers yet they could not see a living soul. The first red rays of dawn rose up on the left. A bitter cold leached through the canvas sides of the jeep. They drove on as far as the Río El Abra, or what they assumed was the river – a dry gorge with a crude concrete bridge they could just make out in the distance. Simón left the engine running and they waited for it to be light before beginning preliminary sketches for the map. ‘Have you checked the scale?’ Emilia asked. ‘See that embankment next to the bridge, we need to choose a symbol. Don’t fall asleep on me, Simón.’

  Her husband lit a cigarette to keep himself awake but stubbed it out almost immediately. ‘There’s a terrible smell,’ he said. It was true. The stench was everywhere, spread across the landscape like a sheet. ‘Maybe it’s the vegetation,’ Emilia said. ‘Sometimes the trees are covered with fungus and bird droppings.’ ‘But it’s winter,’ her husband said. ‘The trees are bare, the whole place is a wasteland.’ ‘Then it must be putrefaction from the river,’ she said.

  Rats, she remembered, abandoned their young under bridges when they went foraging for food. Who knew how many starving animals were under the bridge devouring each other? But the smell shifted and changed; sometimes it was like blood, at other times like breath flecked with spittle from a toothless mouth.

  Smells are supposed to thrive in the heat, but the stench that morning seemed to draw its power from the chill air: it was a miasma which, instead of dissipating, seemed to become more dense, more tangible. Ice crystals formed on the windows of the jeep and Emilia’s joints began to ache. The air was slowly freezing and she wished that the smell, too, would freeze into flakes of mica. The wasteland was so monstrous, so absolute, that in the grey light of dawn things seemed to disappear, to vanish leaving only desolation: infinite placentas of abandonment, wounds that gaped beneath the jeep. ‘We’re going to get nowhere,’ said Emilia. ‘That’s because we’re already nowhere,’ said Simón.

  When, finally, it was light enough to see, they could make out shadows moving towards the jeep, crawling along, scattering the loose gravel of the dirt road. Emilia had no time for horror movies or fantastical stories about supernatural creatures, but the creatures that morning reeked of sulphur and crackled like a cauldron of cicadas, a sound that came from the dawn of time, the sound of the wilderness spawning its poison.

  ‘Stay calm. There are people out there,’ Simón whispered, checking the doors to the jeep to make sure they were locked. As he did so, someone outside started jerking one of the door handles furiously.

  The dawn came slowly. For a long time, it was merely a distant violet glow. Wind whipped sand against the jeep. A new, more piercing sound split the air. This moan, this whimper – whatever it was – grew louder; there were three, four voices coming from all directions, raucous and piercing. Suddenly they stopped, but only so the voices could come together in a shrill chorus like a needle that drilled into their eardrums.

  ‘There are people circling,’ Simón said again.

  He took out the barbecue knife he always carried with him and climbed out of the jeep. The half-light of dawn was darker than the night had been and Emilia turned on the headlights. A woman dressed in rags and tatters was standing on the side of the road, rubbing her arms to keep warm. Next to her, two arthritic old women cradled a bundle wrapped in newspapers. Behind them, a woman with a mane of hair was trying to rouse a man sprawled on the ground with gutteral shrieks. A man stumbled along the dirt road towards the jeep wearing a threadbare raincoat that served little purpose since he was naked underneath. Behind him, another man pushing himself along on his hands and knees. Under the bridge were others, urinating, defecating. There were no fires, no shelter to keep them warm, nothing but the rage of that stench which was deeper than the night itself.

  When the creatures saw Simón walking towards them, they howled piteous, meaningless words. The skin of the man in the raincoat was black with filth and grime. From a distance, he did not seem human. Emilia, recognising that they were as sick with dread as she was, got out of the jeep, throwing a blanket around her shoulders. As she approached the two old women, she heard a feeble wail and realised that wrapped in the bundle of newspapers was a baby. She offered them the blanket without a moment’s hesitation. As she walked the scant hundred metres from the jeep to where they stood, day had finally broken. The sun now rose at a dizzying speed as if to compensate for the delay. An icy wind whistled, whipping up the sand.

  In the distance, the strange creatures went on howling the same words over and over, the tone, the volume shifting. The guy with the frizzy hair jus’ shitted hi’self. Or: ’ey, you, gi’s some money for a drink. Can’ you see ’m dyin’ of thirst? And in unison. We’re all Raya morada7 here, that’s why they rounded us with nets like stray dogs. Raya morada, Raya morada. Even more incomprehensible was the strange behaviour of the men, who threatened e
ach other, bared their toothless gums or sobbed as though some terrible memory had crawled up their noses. Pressing a finger to one nostril they blew their noses then stopped to see whether the snot had landed on the gravel or their clothes. When they had calmed down, the woman with the shock of hair, who was easily the most articulate, explained to Simón and Emilia that they had been picked up in military raids shortly before midnight from the doorways and the church porches where they slept.

  There were some eighteen or twenty of them and they had been living on charity. Some pretended to be mad, making people laugh playing guitars that were nothing more than broom handles or writing poems on pieces of newspaper. Others were genuinely mad. The man in the threadbare raincoat believed he had been transported back from the Last Judgement to a time when there was no God, since there was no need of God now. He believed he was surrounded by angels through whom he could communicate with the dead and he was never bored because he spent his time talking to them about family secrets and mysterious diseases.

  They had been shipped out to Tucumán in trucks used by dog-catchers and dumped in the bleak wasteland here in Catamarca, under the El Abra Bridge, between piles of hospital waste – bloody bandages, cotton pads smeared with pus, vesicles, appendixes, pieces of stomach, ulcerated intestines, kidneys with tumours and the other insults visited by disease on the human body. Even on the bitterest nights, clouds of blowflies laid their eggs in the waste and flocks of carrion hawks fought viciously for scraps of human detritus. The feverish stench drove out all oxygen and clung to the bodies of these beggars with a tenacity that would last forever.

  Simón offered to drive them in groups to the military checkpoint at Huacra. He was prepared to put off starting work on the map until the afternoon and spend the morning making as many trips as necessary, but they told him that two of the men had already made the trip during the night only to arrive, their feet bloody and raw, and be bundled into an army truck and brought straight back out into the desert. Simón suggested it might be better to go for help to a village called Bañado de Ovanta, twenty kilometres east. ‘I’ll go with you,’ said Emilia. ‘We need to bring back bread, coffee and blankets for these people before they die.’