Of Love and Shadows (29 page)

The next day, people from all parts of the country crowded into the offices of the Medical Institute hoping to identify their loved ones, but they were forbidden to view them by a new order: the General had said that it was one thing to disinter cadavers but quite a different matter to put them on exhibit so anyone who wanted could come take a look. What do those damn fools think this is, a sideshow? I want this matter squelched, Colonel, before I lose patience.

“And what shall we do about public opinion, the diplomats, and the press, General, sir?”

“What we always do, Colonel. You don't change your strategy in mid-battle. Take a lesson from the Roman emperors.”

Hundreds of people held a sit-in in the street in front of the Vicariate, displaying photographs of their missing loved ones, whispering, Where are they? Where are they? Meanwhile, a group of working priests and nuns in slacks fasted in the Cathedral, adding to the total uproar. Sunday the Cardinal's pastoral letter was read from every pulpit, and for the first time in so long and dark a time people dared to turn to their neighbors and weep together. People called one another to talk about cases that multiplied until it was impossible to keep count. A procession was organized to pray for the victims, and before the authorities realized what was happening, an unmanageable crowd was marching through the streets carrying banners and placards demanding liberty, bread, and justice. The march began as little trickles of people from the outlying poor barrios. Gradually the trickles flowed together, the ranks swelled and finally grew into a compact mass that surged forward chanting in unison the religious hymns and political slogans stilled for so many years that people believed they had been forgotten forever. The crowds overflowed the churches and cemeteries, the only places that until then the police had not entered with their instruments of war.

“What shall we do with this mob, General, sir?”

“What we always do, Colonel” was the reply from the depths of the bunker.

Meanwhile, television continued its usual programming of popular music, contests, lottery drawings, and light comedy and romantic films. Newspapers gave the results of the football games, and front pages showed the Commander-in-Chief cutting the ribbon at a bank opening. But within a few days word of the discovery in the mine and photographs of the cadavers had traveled around the world by teletype. The news services sent the story out over their wires, back to the country where it had originated and where it was impossible to contain the news of the atrocity any longer, in spite of censorship and in spite of imaginative explanations by the authorities. People saw on their screens a fatuous announcer reading the official version: the bodies were those of terrorists executed by their own henchmen; but everyone knew they were murdered political prisoners. The atrocity was discussed amid fruits and vegetables in the market, among students and teachers in the schools, among workers in the factories, and even in the closed living rooms of the bourgeoisie, where for some it was a surprise to discover that everything was not going well in the country. The timid murmur that for so many years had been hidden behind doors and closed shutters now, for the first time, came out in the street to be shouted aloud, and that lament, augmented by the countless new cases that had come to light, touched everyone. Only the most apathetic could ignore the signs and remain impervious to the truth. Beatriz Alcántara was one of those.

*  *  *

Monday at breakfast, Beatriz found her daughter in the kitchen reading the newspaper, and noticed that her arms were covered with welts.

“What
is
that on your arms!”

“It's just some allergy, Mama.”

“How do you know?”

“Francisco told me.”

“So now photographers are doctors! What will be next?”

Irene did not respond, and her mother examined the welts closely, satisfying herself that in fact they did not seem contagious and possibly the young man was right, it was just an allergy of some kind. Placated, she picked up a section of the newspaper to glance at the news, and the first thing that met her eyes was the banner headline on the front page: “
DESAPARECIDOS! HA! HA! HA!
” She sipped her orange juice, slightly taken aback, because even for someone like her this seemed a little extreme. Still, she was sick of hearing nothing but talk about Los Riscos, and she seized the moment to give her daughter and Rosa her thoughts on the subject. Episodes like this were bound to happen in the kind of war the heroic military had been forced to wage in eradicating the cancer of Marxism; there were casualties in every battle; the best thing was to forget the past and look to the future, erase the slate and make a clean start; why keep talking about people who had disappeared? Why not give them up for dead, settle the legal problems, and get on with it?

“Why don't you do that with Papa?” Irene asked, scratching madly.

Beatriz ignored the sarcasm. She was reading aloud: “ ‘What is important is to continue our march on the road of progress, striving to heal our wounds and overcome animosities; dwelling upon cadavers merely hinders that endeavor. We owe to the Armed Forces the fact that we have reached the present stage in our programs. The period of emergency so happily surmounted was characterized by the exercise of the broad powers of established authority, which acted with all necessary strength to impose order and restore civic pride.' ”

Beatriz added, “I completely agree. What is the point of identifying the bodies in the mine and looking for the guilty parties? It happened years ago. Those bodies belong to the past.”

Finally things were going well; they could buy whatever suited their fancy; it was not the way it used to be when they had to stand in line to buy a miserable chicken. Now it was easy to get domestic servants, and the Socialist agitation that had caused so much trouble had all fizzled out. People should work a little more and talk a little less about politics. It was as Colonel Espinoza had so brilliantly stated, and she had memorized: “Let us meet the challenge together for the sake of this magnificent nation, blessed with its magnificent sun, its magnificent commodities, and its magnificent freedom.”

At the sink, Rosa shrugged her shoulders, and Irene's itching became unbearable.

“Stop scratching, you'll get those things infected and look like a leper by the time Gustavo gets home.”

“Gustavo got back last night, Mama.”

“Oh! Why didn't you tell me? When's the wedding?”

“Never,” Irene replied.

Beatriz's cup froze midway between the saucer and her lips. She knew her daughter well enough to know when her decisions were irrevocable. The look in her eyes and the tone of her voice told her that Irene's allergy had not been caused by romantic problems, but something else. She thought back over the last few days and deduced that something truly abnormal was happening in Irene's life. She had not been keeping her regular hours; she disappeared all day and came home totally exhausted and with the car covered in dust; she had abandoned her gypsy skirts and fortune-teller's necklaces to dress like a boy; she was eating hardly anything and woke up crying at night. Beatriz had no inkling, however, that those signs were connected with the Los Riscos mine. She wanted to ask her daughter more questions, but Irene was on her feet finishing her coffee and saying she had to rush, that she was working on a story out of town and wouldn't be back until after dark.

“That photographer's to blame, I know that much!” Beatriz exclaimed after her daughter left.

“When the heart leads the way, the foot will obey” was Rosa's reply.

“I bought that girl an expensive trousseau, and now she tells me this. She's been Gustavo's sweetheart too long to ruin things at the last minute.”

“All's well that ends well,
señora.
”

“I won't take any more from you, Rosa!” and the door slammed behind Beatriz.

Rosa said nothing about what she had seen the night before when the Captain had returned after so many months' absence and her little girl Irene had greeted him like a stranger. I only had to take one look at her face to know that I might as well forget the bridal gown and my dreams of a brood of blue-eyed children to look after in my old age. Man proposes and God disposes. When a woman offers her cheek to her sweetheart so he can't kiss her on the mouth, even a blind man can see that she doesn't love him; if she takes him into the living room, sits as far away as possible, staring at him without a word, it's because she's planning to tell him right there, straight out, just like the Captain had to hear it: I'm sorry, but I can't marry you because I love someone else. That's how she said it, and him not a word, poor thing, it breaks my heart, he turned as red as a beet and his chin trembled like a child about to cry, and me watching it all through the crack in the door, not from curiosity, God save me, but because I have a right to know what's troubling my little girl—how can I help her if I don't know? I didn't look after her all these years and love her more than her own mother for nothing. I felt heartsick when I saw that boy perched on the edge of the sofa with all his packages wrapped in pretty paper and his fresh haircut, not knowing what to do with the love he's been storing up all these years for Irene; he's a good man, I've always thought, tall and handsome as a prince, always so well dressed and holding himself as straight as a broomstick, a real gentleman, but little good his looks do him, because my baby doesn't take any notice of such things, and even less now that she's fallen in love with the photographer; while the cat's away, the mice will play! Gustavo shouldn't have gone off and left her alone for so many months. I don't understand these modern couples; in my time there wasn't all this running around, and everything worked out the way it was supposed to, a woman's place is in the home. Girls who were engaged stayed home and embroidered sheets and didn't go gallivanting around straddling some other man's motorcycle. The Captain should have seen what was coming, instead of going off calm as you please. I saw it from the beginning, and I said to myself: Out of sight, out of mind, but no one pays any attention to Rosa, they look down on me as if I was an old fool, but I'm dumb like a fox—the Devil wouldn't be so smart if he hadn't been around so long. I think Gustavo knew his goose was cooked and that there was nothing he could do, their love was dead and buried. His hands were sweating when he put the packages on the coffee table, asked if that was her final word, listened to her answer, and marched out without looking back, without even asking his rival's name, as if in his heart he knew it couldn't be anyone but Francisco Leal. I love someone else, was all Irene said, but it was enough to smash to smithereens a love that had lasted I can't remember how many years. I love someone else, my little girl said, and her eyes shone with a light I'd never seen before.

*  *  *

By the end of a week, the news about Los Riscos had been replaced by other stories, eclipsed by the public's insatiable hunger for new tragedies. Just as the General had predicted it would, memory of the atrocity was beginning to fade. It was no longer front-page news, and was being carried only in a few opposition magazines of limited circulation. Faced with this reality, Irene decided to go after more information about the case to keep interest alive, hoping that the public's outrage would be stronger than their fear. Finding the murderers and identifying the bodies became her obsession. She knew that one false step or a change in her luck could cost her her life, but she was determined that the crimes should not sink into oblivion because of censorship and the judges' complicity. In spite of her promise to Francisco to stay in the background, she was helplessly caught up in her own compulsion.

When Irene called Sergeant Faustino Rivera to invite him to lunch, using the pretext that she was doing an article on highway accidents, she knew the risk she was running, and for that reason left without telling anyone. The sergeant's long pause before replying made it clear that he suspected the article was only an excuse to discuss other matters, but for him, too, the bodies in the mine had become a nightmare, one he wanted to share.

They agreed to meet two blocks from the town plaza, at the inn where they had met before. The smell of charcoal and grilled meat spilled into the adjoining streets. The sergeant, in civilian clothes, was waiting in the doorway beneath the protecting red tile eaves. Irene had some difficulty recognizing him, but he remembered her perfectly and made the first gesture of greeting. Rivera took pride in being an observant man; he was accustomed to remembering the smallest details, an indispensable virtue in his profession as an officer of the law. He noticed the change in the girl's appearance, and wondered what had become of the clanking bracelets, the flying skirts, and the dramatic eye makeup that had impressed him so favorably at their first meeting. The woman who stood before him with her hair tied back, with her gabardine slacks and a voluminous shoulder bag, bore almost no resemblance to the woman he remembered. They chose a discreet table in the thick shade of a magnolia at the back of the courtyard.

While he was eating the soup, which Irene Beltrán did not even taste, the sergeant reeled off various statistics about traffic victims in his district, keeping a close watch on his hostess out of the corner of his eye. He recognized her impatience, but he was not going to give her an opportunity to turn the conversation in the direction she desired until he was satisfied about her intentions. The appearance of a golden, crisp suckling pig resting on a bed of fried potatoes, with a carrot in its mouth and sprigs of parsley in its ears, reminded Irene of the hog-slaughtering at the Ranquileos', and she felt the bile rise in her throat. Her stomach had been queasy ever since she and Francisco had entered the mine. Almost as soon as a bite of food touched her lips, she thought of the decomposing body, smelled the unforgettable stench, and shivered with fear as real as the fear she had felt then. She was grateful for the moment of silence that accompanied the pig, and tried to tear her eyes from her guest's large teeth and greasy mustache.