The Blue Line

by Ingrid Betancourt

  Adriana introduced Julia and Rosa to the young people being held in the cells on the other side of the corridor. They were all between twenty and twenty-four years old. A few of them were students. Most of the others had worked in the same hospital as Gabriel. Julia realized that the prisoner in the cell right across from hers was Augusto, the friend Gabriel had mentioned the night he had managed to escape—the same friend who’d come to one of their meetings with Father Mugica. Augusto had been working at the hospital print room. He’d known the d’Uccello brothers since high school, but he wasn’t a regular member of Gabriel’s circle. He didn’t remember Julia or Rosa and had only a vague recollection of the conversation with Mugica about Evita and Perón. “An aftereffect of the machine,” he joked.

  Augusto said that all the other people who’d been arrested with him that night had been sent to Mansión Seré. He was terrified he would meet the same fate. Julia was talking to him, trying to figure out how she could get more information about Gabriel and Theo, when they heard the sound of keys and fell silent.

  Sosa came in with the leftovers of the garrison’s meal. He went from one cell to the next distributing the food. He was also kind enough to give them water. It was the weekend, and the inmates knew they would get nothing else to eat for the next two days. They were fed once a day, and only on weekdays. Their obsession with the mess tin that the guard would slip between the rusted bars of their cell door kept them alert, even though the paltry rations never satisfied their hunger. As a result, the scraps Sosa brought them were gratefully received. Sosa was the only guard who spared a thought for them, at the risk of being punished. The others gleefully gave the leftovers to the dogs.

  Her companions threw themselves at the food, eating with their fingers, choking as they devoured it like animals, while Julia stayed on the sidelines. She had scarcely been able to swallow a thing since coming to Castelar. On the other hand, she was extremely thirsty. She couldn’t imagine the suffering of the other prisoners, who sometimes had to wait days for a drink of water. Adriana had told her that they had access to water for only two minutes a day, when they were allowed to wash in a trickle from a rusty tap, and never on weekends. To make matters worse, they had to relieve themselves in a toilet overflowing with filth.

  After Sosa had left, Julia tried to resume her conversation with Augusto. But Augusto asked the prisoner in the cell next to his to talk to her. He wanted Julia to hear this man’s story.

  “We won’t all get out of here alive,” he explained, “and one day we’ll have to tell the families of the others what happened here.”

  Oswaldo introduced himself. He had been in Castelar for nearly two months. “You get used to it in the end,” he acknowledged, with no hint of irony in his voice.

  He had spent his first week in the hands of El Loco and had been convinced he was already sentenced to death.

  “He hooked me up to the machine after they had beaten me up and broken my arms. But the worst was yet to come: the submarino. I can’t tell you. At that moment I prayed El Loco would finish me off. I wanted to die. Then he tied my hands together with wire and left me hanging by the wrists for two days. By the time he took me down I had lost all control over my body. He tied me to a chair. I could tell he was enjoying himself as he set a plate of food between my knees. I was just a mass of torn flesh. I couldn’t even lift a finger. All I could move was my head and neck. I lowered my head and ate like a dog. He went on hitting me. He broke my toes one by one while I was eating. He was shouting: ‘Wild animals have to be tamed!’ He could have done anything he liked to me; I just kept on eating.”

  Julia couldn’t bear to hear any more. She knew the interrogations could last for days, even weeks, and that a prisoner wouldn’t be brought back to the cell until El Loco had finished with them. The inmate they had heard screaming above the strains of Wagner hadn’t returned. It was rumored he’d been sent to Mansión Seré. Nobody knew who it was because he had gone directly to the interrogation room with El Loco without being held in a cell. And Theo had never been in a cell.

  Paola’s condition made Julia fear the worst for herself. She was very weak. She had bruises and burn marks all over her body. Since her return, she hadn’t stopped whimpering as she lay, only half-conscious, in Adriana’s arms. She had finally dozed off in a corner of the cell, on the cold cement floor. Adriana rocked her gently to and fro, trying to soothe her. She stroked Paola’s feverish forehead. Her face was covered with strands of hair stuck together with dried blood and pus.

  Julia squatted down beside them. “I’m scared too,” Adriana said in a sad voice. “You see, I’m a virgin.”

  “What did Paola tell you?” Julia said, finding it difficult to speak.

  “She said El Loco and the other men rape the women up there. He’s a sadist. You’ve heard about the submarine? It’s even worse. Oswaldo didn’t tell you everything. El Loco shoved his head into a bowl of water and sodomized him with a metal rod connected to the machine. Look what he did to Paola. She’s got burns everywhere. He must have sent an electric current through every inch of her body.”

  Rosa had overheard their conversation and taken refuge at the other end of the cell. She didn’t move a muscle all night. The next morning Julia found her trembling and unable to speak, totally dissociated from reality. It was impossible to get her to drink or even to turn over. Julia hadn’t slept herself. Ever since arriving in Castelar, she had been wondering when it would be her turn.

  There was a screech of brakes in the yard and the brisk thud of boots. They all pricked up their ears. “A newcomer!” someone whispered. Julia stiffened. At the sound of keys, everyone quickly adjusted their hoods. Julia had situated herself against the wall near the door and peered out through a slit in her hood. She couldn’t see much, just a small section of the corridor, but it was enough for her to guess that a body had been dragged and thrown into the fourth cell from the end, the one next to Augusto’s. They all held their breath, trying to make themselves inconspicuous.

  Sosa wasn’t on duty that night. Another policeman had taken over from him. Adriana recognized his voice. He was a nasty little corporal who had just been transferred to Castelar Police Station. He’d been nicknamed El Cabo Pavor.*

  A long moan came from the fourth cell.

  “Shut up, you son of a bitch, or I’ll finish you off myself!” El Cabo Pavor roared from the guardroom.

  Julia felt almost grateful to him. Maybe it was Theo.

  19.

  LA MÁQUINA

  Austral Winter

  1976

  Paola had a very bad night, caught in the grip of hallucinations and delusions. Rosa too tossed and turned in her sleep, and Julia could see that she had fallen into a depressive spiral. Julia and Adriana kept an eye on them.

  The two girls washed before dawn and were leaning against the wall watching their cell mates struggle to sleep when they heard the sound of boots approaching, and El Cabo Pavor’s voice, addressing his superiors.

  “They’ve come from Morón,” Adriana murmured in a weak voice, referring to soldiers from the Argentine air force based at Morón. They were known for their brutal interrogation methods.

  The two sick girls already had their hoods over their faces. Julia and Adriana slipped theirs on just in time to hear El Cabo Pavor bellow, as he turned the key in the lock: “We’re going to have some fun today, girls!”

  He pushed the door open. “You, blondie. Get a move on,” he shouted.

  Adriana began to shake from head to toe. Julia squeezed her hand tightly.

  “Hope you’ve washed properly, kid,” he sniggered.

  Because Julia was trying to hold on to Adriana, El Cabo pulled off her hood and struck her across the face. He dragged her out of the cell by her hair, tied her hands behind her back, and blindfolded her, tying the cloth so tight it cut into her skin. Then he started to kick Adriana so she would come out too a
nd locked the door of the cell.

  There were more men waiting for them at the end of the corridor. There was a commotion, fresh abuse, more orders. El Cabo Pavor dragged Julia and Adriana up the spiral staircase, kicked the door open, threw them inside, removed their blindfolds, and closed the door behind him. It was pitch-black. Clinging to each other, they groped around them, trying to find a place to sit so they wouldn’t fall.

  A harsh glare flooded the room and an iron hand pushed them apart. Julia’s hands and feet were tied and she was forced into a chair with a bright light shining in her face. A hand yanked her head up by the hair. Half-blinded, she could just about make out the edge of a table pushed up against her knees and a metal bed to her right. She heard Adriana whimper behind her, then a thud, like a sack of rice being dropped. Now the groans were muffled. From the sound of their footsteps, she could tell that there were two men in the room. One of them seemed to be gagging and tying up Adriana. The other one kept circling Julia, breathing down her neck.

  “You’re going to talk,” said the voice of the man now gripping her chin and twisting her face.

  A blow dislocated her jaw. Julia screamed in pain. The voice said, “You’re going to be a good girl and tell us everything, in front of your little friend. She’s right here; she can see it all. If you don’t want her to get hurt, you’d better tell us everything you know right now.”

  A second blow, this time straight to the nose. She felt blood trickling down to the corners of her mouth. She couldn’t see the man’s face, but it wasn’t El Cabo Pavor speaking to her. This voice was nasal, almost childish.

  “Do you know who I am?” the man asked. “No, you don’t know yet, but you will soon, and you won’t ever forget me. They call me El Loco. I love my nickname. Because you see, lying drives me insane. I can smell a lie the way a dog smells fear. Finding out the truth excites me. I’m an expert at digging it out.”

  She felt a burst of adrenaline. The man speaking to her was mentally ill, there was no doubt about it. An animal with a human voice. She could sense his arousal. He had already tied her feet to the chair. He prowled around her, sniffing her, pressing his crotch against her arm. She felt him harden. He panted as he spoke.

  He moved away briefly and went over to a record player. He lifted the arm and carefully returned the stylus to the beginning of the LP.

  “You’re in luck—I’m going to make you sing along to the Nocturnes. Ever heard of Debussy? No, of course not. I might as well cast pearls before swine.”

  He gave a roar of laughter, and the opening bars filled the air. The music coming out of the loudspeakers was fragmented, slow, dissonant. Julia found it sinister. The man approached her again and stroked her hair gently. She had to stop herself from biting him. He hit her again, so hard that she fell to the ground, taking the chair with her.

  The man took his time before sitting her up in the chair. Then he began to tie her whole body to it. He went about it meticulously. With each movement he pawed her, as if she were a piece of meat. He tied her up neatly with electric wire, pulling it so tight that it cut into her.

  His voice had become almost delicate, his breathing short when he spoke again. “Now you’re going to tell me everything. I want your alias, Montonerita. What is your alias?”

  El Loco tugged the wire tighter. It felt like a razor was slicing into her skin. He secured the end of the electric wire to something heavy behind Julia, then moved away. Her gaze followed him instinctively. He walked toward a shadowy corner of the room. The music drowned out his voice, but Julia knew he was talking to someone else. Still blinded by the spotlight, she couldn’t make out what he was doing. Out of the corner of her eye she could see shadows moving rhythmically.

  “What was your role within the organization? Who is your contact person?”

  Julia trembled all over. She managed to turn herself around, the wire digging into her wrists. Then she understood.

  “No!” she screamed. “Not Adriana, not Adriana!”

  “Where did you meet? I want addresses, telephone numbers. I want all the names,” the clipped voice continued.

  “No! No!” Julia struggled to free herself, her wrists bleeding.

  “Talk, filthy Trotska. I want the whole truth about the d’Uccello brothers. I want to know their rank in the organization. Who is the head of your unit?”

  Each time El Loco asked Julia a question, El Cabo Pavor struck Adriana violently. El Loco jerked Julia’s head up with one hand to make sure she was following his every move. With his other he laid into Adriana in the shadows. Suddenly both men loosened their hold, and the teenager flopped over like a puppet.

  “Adriana! Adriana! Answer me!” Julia implored.

  Then she distinctly heard El Cabo Pavor’s voice. He was accusing Adriana of pretending. He began to slap her to make her get up.

  “Enough!” barked El Loco. “I want her to remain conscious, to tell the others.”

  El Cabo Pavor straightened his uniform. He kicked Adriana’s inert body several times, then backed into the shadows and vanished again. Julia had the feeling he was staring fixedly at her. El Loco wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve and came back to Julia.

  “You, on the other hand, you’re dead.”

  He hit her with increasing ferocity. The violence of each blow anticipated the pain of the next. She wouldn’t survive. Julia wanted to beg him to stop, but her body wasn’t responding anymore, and she was incapable of making a sound.

  To prolong his enjoyment, El Loco turned methodical. He was instinctively aware of the level of pain he needed to inflict on her to make her lose her mind, give in, and talk. He always got them to talk in the end; that was his specialty. And his passion.

  “I’ll make you want to open your mouth, you fucking Trotska!”

  He kicked her and she fell to her knees, still tied to the chair. El Loco dragged a large tub of water in front of her face. “You think you can make a fool of me. You don’t want to talk. We’ll see about that.”

  Julia struggled with all her might, but by exhausting herself she was only making her torturer’s job easier. He shoved her head into the water. She held her breath for as long as she could. She counted in her head to give herself strength. But eventually she gave up and allowed the water to fill her lungs.

  When he pulled her head up, she couldn’t inhale the air. She threw up a lot of water before she felt a thin stream of oxygen penetrate her lungs, bringing relief. As she gasped like a fish, her mouth wide open, he pushed her head back under the water. Five, ten, twenty times in a row.

  She thought she was already dead, but she came to when she felt a hot object being forced down her throat, suffocating her. Her instinctive reaction was to bite. The man let out a grotesque howl.

  There was a long silence. Then El Loco declared: “You’re going to die with your eyes wide open, and when you breathe your last breath, I’ll be the last thing you see.”

  He untied her from the chair and dragged her over to the bed. Julia’s mind had gone completely blank. She felt him bind her with the same metal wire that cut into her flesh. He threaded the wire between her toes, splaying them out and attaching them tightly to one end of the bed. Then he passed the wire between her fingers and tied them to the other end. Finally he strapped her to a wire mesh base that served as a mattress and gagged her with a rag that he stuffed into her mouth.

  Julia heard Adriana screaming over the music playing in the background. She raised her head and saw the young girl struggling in a nightmare. Then came the electric shock. A black hole, and then her whole being shattered under the pressure of millions of needles speeding through her veins in an endless circuit running from her head to her toes and back again. The electric particles split her skin, exploded inside her limbs, and pierced every cell in her body. Julia felt liquefied, crushed from the inside, burned alive as if by a stream of acid.

 
Suddenly the intensity of the voltage increased, as did the deafening volume of opera music that reverberated inside her head, accompanying the infernal pain that shook her. The current plowed a furrow deep into her bowels. Julia had no eyes, no lungs, no stomach. She was torn apart, impaled, jerked like a hooked fish above the wire mesh; she had no existence outside of her suffering.

  Julia heard the man’s laugh, his shrill voice between each increase in voltage. Names, streets, times, codes, ranks: all the information was going to spill out of her brain and she wouldn’t be able to stop it. She knew she was going to tell him everything.

  Then there was emptiness, a descent into oblivion.

  —

  Julia opened her eyes and couldn’t recognize anything, not even Adriana, who huddled against her, crying. It took her days to emerge from a state in which the only thing she was aware of was a raging thirst. Adriana refused to give her a drink. She told her that after la máquina, the water could kill her. In her delirium, Julia accused Adriana of being her new torturer.

  Sosa had returned to guard duty. He began to smuggle medicines in to them. Julia gradually came out of her coma. Then it was her turn to look after Adriana, whose wounds were deeper but less visible. The weekend came like a reprieve. Sosa would be supervising the prisoners on his own. He listened to the girls talking without intervening, especially since most of the old prisoners had left Castelar, and the new ones were not talkative.