Purgatory

by Tomás Eloy Martínez

  ‘Last night I stopped them operating on Ethel,’ he told them. ‘It would have been butchery. I called Dr Erich Schroeder and he proposed an excellent solution. I’m going to take Ethel out of the clinic and have Schroeder take over her treatment.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t see how that will be better for Mamá. Who is this Schroeder?’ asked Emilia. ‘I’ve never heard of him.’

  ‘He’s a world-renowned specialist. You’ve never heard of him because he treats only a very few select patients and he has a 100 per cent success rate. He’s been living in Argentina for twenty years in absolute secrecy. He has built a machine that captures gamma rays from space and focuses them on the patient’s body. In one or two treatments, they’re cured.’

  ‘At the clinic, they recommended she have surgery, and I thought that was the best option. It’s more reliable. Mamá’s heart is strong, she’ll have no problem with the anaesthesia. If you have such confidence in Schroeder, why don’t you ask him to operate?’

  ‘If he’d offered to operate, I would have accepted without question. But he’s against the idea. Schroeder’s rays can only work if the patient has not had an operation. He explained to me in a cancer as aggressive as your mother’s, when the scalpel touches the tumour, there’s a danger that abnormal cells will quickly move through the circulatory system.’

  ‘I’d like to find out a bit more,’ said Emilia.

  ‘I don’t understand what the two of you are talking about,’ said Chela. ‘Whatever Papá decides will be for the best. Do I have to listen to any more? Can I go now? Marcelo is going to come by and pick me up soon.’ Marcelo Echarri, the fiancé. Dr Dupuy had not told them everything, and what was left unsaid was the heart of the secret that the sisters had sworn to keep. Chela would never know it because she left as soon as her father opened the door and Emilia would have preferred not to find out what it was. Years later, when she thought about the episode, she was not sure that it was not a wild dream in which they had all become entangled, or whether St Dymphna’s influence had also harmed their father. The name Erich Schroeder would one day be famous, but not for his gamma ray machine. In 1984, it was discovered that in Auschwitz and Dwory he had developed a system for using energy from space to kill prisoners and he was convicted as a war criminal. When Dr Dupuy knew him, he had been living under his real name on the outskirts of Buenos Aires and no one had bothered him for years. His gamma ray machine attracted the attention of the intelligence agencies and quickly became the focus of a cold war between the three governmental forces. Each of them wanted control of the machine, but Schroeder had no respect for any of them. He respected only Dupuy.

  ‘Schroeder,’ Emilia’s father told her, ‘is the only person in the world who knows how this machine works. He has not shared that knowledge with anyone, has not written down his formulae for posterity, and when he dies all that we will be left with will be a pile of useless metal which can say nothing, which will mean nothing. I’ve seen what this machine can do, but its inner workings, the way in which the treatments take place, is a mystery that may rely on creatures that are nothing like us, creatures that are pure energy, who move effortlessly between realities, between the future and the present.’

  Emilia listened, astonished and incredulous, and wondered if this lunatic who talked like a character out of Lovecraft or Poe was the same father who believed that even God (especially God) was governed by the laws of reason.

  The remainder of the tale was even more unexpected.

  ‘The machine draws its power from Ganymede,’ said her father, imperturbable.

  Emilia did not understand, or did not want to understand. She knew that Ganymede, one of Jupiter’s inner moons, was the largest satellite in the solar system; chains of craters had been seen on its surface and it had its own magnetosphere, but it gave off no gasses and was not protected by saints like Dymphna. Her father seemed to believe, moreover, that there were intelligent beings living beneath the crust of ice and silica, something for which there was not the least evidence. Words continued to pour out of him, there was no other way to describe it. ‘Gamma rays cure illnesses that cannot be detected; they are also capable of causing them. If we can absorb them, we must be able to emit them. I’ve watched Schroeder use them. He places the head of the patient in a device that looks like the hairdryers they use in salons and connects an antenna which picks up the body’s signals. The antenna draws a graph which the gamma rays read. This information makes it possible for them to surround the cancerous cells and send them to Ganymede where they are examined and archived. The rays are like a flock and an untrained shepherd would madden them. The only person who knows how to guide them is Dr Schroeder.’

  Her father’s story went on flowing, in tributaries, estuaries, streams, deltas. One story ran into another and this into a third, sometimes moving away, sometimes circling back to the beginning. When he finished a sentence he fell silent and reminded Emilia of her solemn promise to say nothing.

  ‘Are you sure about this, Papá?’ The daughter did not know what to think. Creatures from another world had always seemed to her to be the sort of madness designed to entertain the gullible. She took it for granted that if God had created Man in His image and likeness, there could be no beings in other worlds. Nor, obviously, other gods. Dupuy was prepared to counter this. A Polish theologian he had admired for some time, the Bishop of Krakow, had written that life as described in the Scriptures ‘is universal’. At the Second Vatican Council, his mentor, Pope John XXIII, had preached: ‘How small would God be if, having created this vast universe, He allowed only us to populate it.’

  It was almost noon. When her father opened his study door, Chela was talking excitedly on the phone.

  ‘Go to the clinic, Emilia, and pack up everything in your mother’s room. We’ll move her in about half an hour.’

  An ambulance sent by Schroeder transported her mother. Dupuy and Emilia drove behind. The caravan made slow progress. As it crossed the avenida General Paz and ventured into the pallid suburbs of greater Buenos Aires, the ambulance took cross streets and began to head out into the countryside. The mood of the heavens, forgetting the violent storm of the night before, was tranquil, indifferent. A few fat clouds glided roundly over the cattle and the wind lay becalmed over the vast greenness waiting for nothing. After an hour, the plain began to sink and the road to climb above it, twisting like a vein. A few petrol stations dotted the barren landscape. In the distance, a long, flat building appeared, stretching out across the ravine. On the flagpoles flanking the gates fluttered a pair of flags: one was the flag of Argentina, its horizontal stripes emphasised with pale blue stitching; the other bore two black crescent moons connected by a cord against a white field. Behind them, set on a concrete pedestal, was a hemispheric dish cast in steel. It was huge and concave with a tall, transparent pistil.

  ‘Schroeder’s laboratory,’ her father announced. ‘The national flag. The labarum of Ganymede.’

  The building was protected by a wire fence. She could clearly see the walnut trees, white cedars, the crouching dogs, the partridges, but what most caught Emilia’s attention was the pistil in the steel hemisphere which intermittently showered sparks over the grounds.

  ‘Those are the rays,’ her father told her. ‘On auspicious days, multitudes of rays stream down from Ganymede. Sometimes they hang, suspended in the sky, for weeks waiting for the moment to fall. Schroeder is forcing them to drop so we can see them. It’s a privilege.’

  ‘They’re falling now,’ Emilia observed.

  ‘They fall into the antenna which filters them. A lot of the rays are of no use in the healing process. Those that collide with the asteroid belt are contaminated by the time they arrive, can you see? They bring a film of dust with them. Schroeder tested them on rats and on goats. He bathed the animals in the contaminated rays and left them to bloat and swell until they exploded.’

  ‘My God, that’s cruel.’

  ‘That is how we save the human
race. Cruelty is what saves us.’

  The ambulance moved forward. From the gate, Emilia saw Schroeder (she was certain that it was Schroeder) walking towards them, arms spread wide. It was difficult to look him in the eye because his pupils constantly flicked like a pinball from side to side.

  ‘Welcome. We’ve been lucky,’ he said to them. ‘The limpid air is favourable to the arriving rays. We will be able to see them.’

  He had a harsh accent, pronouncing his Rs in such a way that they spilt his words, but his Spanish syntax was irreproachable. Every item in his laboratory occupied the one space it could occupy in the universe, the same methodical, ineluctable order that objects possessed in a painting by Vermeer. On which subject, if the painting hanging above Schroeder’s desk to the right in the room as one entered was not a genuine Vermeer, it looked very much like one: it depicted a young woman in Delft sitting before a window reading a piece of sheet music, her face bathed in the unmistakable light of the master.

  ‘Is that what I think it is?’ Emilia asked.

  ‘A Vermeer? Yes, but it’s not mine,’ Schroeder explained. ‘I risked my life for it when I left Germany. Some day its owner will come and collect it.’

  Next to the office was a vast room completely filled with devices with flickering needles and coiled serpentine condensers that looked like something out of a Hollywood movie. ‘Come and see the scanner,’ said Schroeder, ‘we’ve just started it up.’ They had seated the mother in a high chair. One of the doctor’s assistants took her temperature and her blood pressure. Another moved the hood and placed it ten centimetres from her head. The machine gave off blue flashes which lit up the whole room for seconds at a time. The mother’s face registered neither surprise nor pain. It was frozen in a beatific smile.

  ‘We will now begin the procedure, which is as much spiritual as it is physical,’ said Schroeder. ‘If you will allow me to focus.’

  He stepped behind a screen next to the bathroom mumbling something that might have been a prayer in an incomprehensible language which seemed to borrow from Sanskrit, High Gothic, Armenian and some dialects of Anatolia, sounds that had been lodged in the human throat since the dawn of Indo-European language. Schroeder emerged euphoric. His pupils fluttered like moths around a flickering flame. ‘It’s done,’ he said. ‘Place the hood on her head.’

  The assistant pressed the pedal and the hood was lowered to cover the mother’s head down to the bridge of her nose. The needles flickered and the valves glowed with all the colours of the rainbow.

  ‘Now, lean out the window and see the effect of the rays in the pool,’ said Schroeder.

  Outside, next to the house, was a rectangular pool of water with trampolines at either end. From the surface, liquid spikes rose fifteen to twenty metres into the air, never for a moment losing their narrow, needle-like shape. It was as though the water was rising and falling across a transparent surface. As it reached its upper limit, it became tinted with colour. Sometimes blue or purple, sometimes an intense green. Everything suddenly became calm and a silence descended on the room that seemed older than time itself. Schroeder triumphantly lifted up a tube containing a dark, viscous substance.

  ‘The cancerous cells have surrendered,’ he declared, standing on tiptoe. ‘Here they are, encapsulated, the demons of her disease.’

  ‘You mean the cancer’s gone? Just like that, with no pain?’ asked Emilia. ‘Is that possible?’

  Schoeder did not answer her. He took Dupuy’s arm and led him out to the gallery which ran around the house.

  ‘More than possible. It’s real. On Ganymede, all reality has its obverse. Your wife is there and she is also here.’

  ‘How will we know when Ethel is Ethel?’

  ‘You’ll never know,’ Schroeder responded, imperturbable. ‘Someone, on Ganymede, has divined in her a wisdom that warrants scientific study. I have no idea what Señora Dupuy will be like there. The Señora Dupuy who remains here will be just like the person who arrived with you: sweet, gentle, lost, with no memory. But healthy.’

  ‘What wisdom could they possible have seen?’ Dupuy asked sarcastically. ‘There must be some mistake. Poor Ethel always was terribly ignorant. She could just about read and pray.’

  ‘Make no mistake. Your wife is very precious, Dupuy, make no mistake. Look after her. She can go home with you now, all trace of her illness has been eliminated.’

  ‘You take care too, Schroeder. Your connection to Ganymede is also very precious, more perhaps than you imagine.’

  ‘I know. But I need take no precautions. I am protected by powers much greater than anything in this world.’

  The afternoon is placid, even the Delaware does not seem to flow. The round, grey cloud that looks like a sheep still hovers. Everything persists in its essence, except Emilia. The memory of her mother has passed over her like a shadow and changed her. She has barely sipped the Chianti, barely touched the plate of pasta. All she wants is for Simón to talk to her. But Simón is still staring at the unmoving river, he does not speak. He seemed excited that morning when he told her the story of the writer with his slate, but then this expression returned, the indifferent expression that so reminds her of her sick mother. It’s unfair, Emilia thinks again, she does not even know the storms he has weathered. Seven years in an old people’s home. It is the sort of place she has only ever briefly visited, and even then, every time she left she found it difficult to shake off the feeling of anxiety. ‘So where was the retirement home, Simón?’ she asks. When he does not answer, she decides to tell him about the terrible dream she had two nights before she encountered him in Trudy Tuesday. She says:

  ‘I saw myself turning the corner onto an empty street. You were striding along on the opposite pavement, head down. “Simón!” I shouted. You crossed the street, came up to me, I gave you my hand. “What a pleasure to see you again, Señor Cardoso,” I said with a formality that seemed natural in the dream. “I don’t know whether you remember, but I was married to you.” “Oh, really?” you said. “That’s nice.” “I was married to you.” “I don’t know what else to say on the subject, señora. The dead have no memory. Now, I’m afraid I have to go, I’m in rather a hurry.” “Please remember,” I begged you. “Remember me, Señor Cardoso.” I made a gesture you didn’t understand. The deserted street filled with voices, with people jostling for space. My parents, Chela, the cartographers at Hammond, Nancy, the people from the hills above Caracas, James Stewart’s character from Vertigo and behind them a numberless, infinite multitude. All clamouring for my attention while I tried to stop you from leaving, but you had already left without saying goodbye. I’ve never been as surrounded by people as I was in that dream, and I didn’t like it. When I woke up, it occurred to me that the most unbearable loneliness is not being able to be alone.’

  Before the night draws in, they head back to Highland Park in the Altima. Emilia drives in silence. She does not know what to say to her mute husband. She has already told him that first thing on Monday she will go with him to pick up his papers, his social security card, his driver’s licence if he has one. She should ask him where he left them, but not now. Now, as they cross the bridge over the Raritan, they see brightly lit stalls on the bank: tombolas, bingo, stalls selling crafts, a string of coloured Japanese lanterns swaying in the wind. ‘What do you say we go down and look at the stalls later?’ she asks. The only fair she is familiar with is the one they hold on Raritan Avenue on the Fourth of July. She never heard of one on the banks of the river, still less in November when the rains come unannounced. This has to be the first. If it fails, there won’t be another one. ‘Shall we go down and take a look?’ ‘Later,’ Simón says, ‘later.’

  When they arrive at the apartment on North 4th Avenue, however, he shows no sign of wanting to go out again. He takes off his shoes, reheats the coffee from breakfast and toasts himself a slice of rye bread. As he sits down at the table, he looks as though he is about to speak. He reaches a hand out towards Emilia and stroke
s her. He says:

  ‘The writer with the slate who used to pace the corridors of the old folks’ home also told me a dream. It wasn’t a dream exactly, it was the memory of a recurring dream. A huge black dog was jumping on him and licking him. Inside the dog were all the things that had never existed and even those that no one even imagined could exist. “What does not exist is constantly seeking a father,” said the dog, “someone to give it consciousness.” “A god?” asked the writer. “No, it is searching for any father,” answered the dog. “The things that do not exist are much more numerous than those that manage to exist. That which will never exist is infinite. The seeds that do not find soil and water and do not become plants, the lives that go unborn, the characters that remain unwritten.” “The rocks that have crumbled to dust?” “No, those rocks once were. I am speaking only of what might have been but never was,” said the dog. “The brother that never was because you existed in his place. If you had been conceived seconds before or seconds after, you would not be who you are, you would not know that your existence vanished into nowhere without you even realising. That which will never be knows that it might have been. This is why novels are written: to make amends in this world for the perpetual absence of what never existed.” The dog vanished into the air and the writer woke up.’

  Without Emilia asking him, he tells her where he has been all these years. She listens to the sentences fall as though she knows them, sentences that form stories that seem to be projected on a screen. It is the same deceptive impression she had as images rained upon her in her cell in Tucumán.

  ‘I don’t know how I ended up in the retirement home, and I don’t think it matters. The manager was expecting me. The building was surrounded by iron railings. Above the wooden door I saw an opaque glass canopy. All the rooms had high ceilings, beds without headboards and various crucifixes. All the rooms looked out onto courtyards with palms and ipe trees where the patients took the air and the sun. The courtyard I was to look after had large mosaics with ornate patterns and edging tiles. The men were separated from the women, and in the seven years I spent there, there was never any communication between the sexes. The men did not talk much, we played checkers, watched television. I saw you on the news once, you and your father.’