Breaking Lorca (10 page)

“The school? A little way west of San Salvador. Maybe fifteen miles.”

“Very good, Mr. Perez. But prisoners were blindfolded at all times. How could you possibly know all these details—unless, of course, you were a guard, not a prisoner?”

A tremor went through Victor. “On my last day there, they took the blindfold off. Cleaned me up. Gave me new clothes. They used me in a show they set up, pretending to give away land. The press was there, everybody. They even promised me a deed, as if I had been working on a plantation or something. I knew what that meant. Several of the men I had helped to press such claims had been murdered. When I realized my job was a fake—worse than a fake, a trap—that’s when I quit. And that’s when they threw me in jail.”

“If you were in that stinking place with my sister,” Viera said, “kindly explain for me why you are in such good condition.”

“Your sister suffered. Me, they just wanted to soften up for that show of reform.”

Viera lit yet another cigarette, squinting at him through the smoke. “My sister never mentioned any Perez.”

“We were not acquainted. Mostly I was in a cell across from her. She would not have known my name.”

“How do you know her name?”

“Later, I was thrown into a cell with others. We whispered to each other. We promised that any of us who lived would contact the others’ families. Do you know what it’s like to know that your parents, your wife, your children, have no idea what happened to you? We promised to help each other this way.”

“I see. Well, you had a bad time there, I’m sure.”

“Everybody did. Your sister, though—your sister was brave.”

“Is that some kind of joke? You think that’s funny?”

“I would not joke about such a thing. Your sister suffered for days and days and told them nothing. All the prisoners knew this. She was the bravest person in that place.”

“Really,” Viera said. “Interesting.” He lapsed into a silence.

Fine, Victor thought. Her brother doesn’t want us to meet. That’s fine. Victor had made his attempt to meet her, get to know her, somehow make amends. Few men would have done as much. Perhaps now the nightmares would stop. Perhaps now he could live his new life with a—if not a clear conscience, then a viable one. He rose to leave. “Thank you for your help on the immigration, Mr. Viera. Perhaps you will tell your sister that one who admires her courage was asking after her.”

“What? Yes. Yes, of course. Goodbye. I’m sorry if I seemed hostile.”

“It’s nothing. One has to be careful.”

The elevator—a tiny metal chamber much scarred with graffiti—was still open at the third floor. On the way down, Victor thought, That’s the end of it. I wanted to try and set things right, but it’s too much, pretending like that. I tried, and it’s over.

A chill, damp wind was blowing when he got outside, but the rain had stopped. He turned uptown rather than face the Macy’s crowds again.

He had to wait for a red light, and then a fire truck came screaming through, scattering cars and pedestrians before it. Then, as he was crossing Thirty-fifth Street, a voice called after him.

“Mr. Perez! Wait! Mr. Perez!”

He turned and saw Mike Viera hurrying after him. A cyclist swerved around the lawyer, cursing loudly.

“Mr. Perez. I’m so glad I caught you. Listen.”

He had to wait for Viera to catch his breath. All those cigarettes.

“Mr. Perez,” he managed at last. “Mr. Perez, I’m sure you don’t want to relive those terrible days. But to be honest, I have long been hoping for something like this. An opportunity like this.”

“Like what? What do you mean?”

“Someone who could help my sister. I’ve been hoping that someone who could help my sister would show up.”

“Help her how?”

“Not help, exactly. Maybe not help. I don’t know what I mean. Just—Mr. Perez, my sister needs someone who can understand what she has been through. Someone who knows what happened to her. She never talks about it. She refuses to talk about it. You would be doing a great kindness if you would come and see her. Frankly, she is not doing very well. She is not doing well at all.”

“I don’t know …. Those days …. I agree with your sister, in a way—to speak of those days is painful. One wants so much to forget.”

“Yes, yes, it’s understandable. Completely understandable. But don’t you think it would help if she saw someone who knew exactly what she’d been through? What she’s suffered? Sympathy is good, is it not? Come with me, just to say hello. It cannot hurt. It might help. Yes, I really think it might. Lorca is not doing well, Mr. Perez. She is not doing well at all.”

That moment, as if a wheel somewhere deep beneath the concrete had once more been set in motion, Victor felt the sidewalk shift beneath his feet. Once more the implacable mechanism was set whirring, carrying him toward a future he could not avoid, even by changing his country, his language, his name.

“I’m not sure I understand,” he said weakly. He could barely hear himself over the blaring horns, the squeal of brakes. “How could I help? What happened at that place, the little school, I cannot talk about it. No one can talk about it. I have nightmares all the time.”

“So does my sister. She wakes up screaming. Sometimes she thinks she has been driven insane! But you seem so well, Mr. Perez. She needs to know this is possible. She needs to know things will get better.”

“Yes, they will get better for her, I’m sure.”

As suddenly as a child’s, Viera’s expression changed from eagerness to dismay. “You don’t want to do it. All right, that’s fine, I understand. I shouldn’t have asked. A thousand apologies.” Viera glanced at his watch. “And now I must be getting home. Good luck to you, sir.”

“No, wait. Please.” Victor grabbed at the lawyer’s sleeve just as he was stepping off the curb. They were jostled by a man with a furled umbrella, then a woman on roller skates. They had to step back onto the sidewalk in the lee of a mailbox. “Of course I will come with you,” Victor said. He could hardly keep his voice steady. “I would be honoured to meet your sister.”

SIXTEEN

“D
ARLING
! C
OME MEET OUR VISITOR!
I have someone here who knows Lorca from El Salvador!”

Viera had driven him across town and through a tunnel to Queens and his home. Assessing the neighbourhood as they drove in, Victor had thought it displayed neither the power of a big city nor the quiet of a small town. The rows of houses had no cheer to them, the strip of ugly storefronts no charm. It was not a place anyone would
choose
to live.

A small blonde woman came out of the kitchen wiping her hands on a dishtowel. Helen Viera’s face had once been pretty—perhaps not so long ago—but plumpness and unhappiness were rapidly claiming that territory. The eyes were cold as chips of Wedgwood, the corners of the mouth turned down in a near grimace. Victor had been expecting Mrs. Viera to be a Salvadoran, but she was American, though not from New York by her accent.

“Nice to meet you,” she said, neither friendly nor hostile. “You’re early,” she said to her husband.

“My last appointment cancelled.”

“Uh-huh. Was Alicia off sick again?”

“Yes. She sounded bad, though. I don’t think she is faking.”

“That girl’s stealing your money, Michael. She’s robbing you blind.” The pale, puffy features broadcast unhappiness. It occurred to Victor that Helen was not just Viera’s wife, she was Viera’s green card, and years of dismay had been entailed in their transaction of marriage.

The lawyer’s apparent cheerfulness increased in proportion to his wife’s misery. “Helen, you remember we were saying how nice it would be if Lorca could meet someone who understands her difficulties? Mr. Perez knew her in El Salvador.”

“Really? I’m not sure anyone can understand that sister of yours.”

“But Mr. Perez was in the same jail,” Viera said. “He was in the little school. I thought perhaps the connection—”

“You look a lot better than Lorca, that’s for sure.” Mrs. Viera was the second person to say so in as many hours. Would Lorca notice it too? “Dinner’s ready in fifteen minutes,” she added. “Will you be staying, Mr. Perez?”

“You are welcome to stay,” Viera said. “I should have asked you before.”

“Oh, no, no. I wouldn’t want to be any trouble. Thank you, though. A thousand thanks.” Victor’s voice quavered, and he wondered if they heard. She was blindfolded, he told himself. She saw nothing. She cannot recognize me or my voice. I didn’t utter more than half a dozen words in her presence.

“Darling, is Lorca upstairs?”

“Of course she’s upstairs. Where else does she go?” Mrs. Viera retreated to the kitchen.

The house was a small semi-detached in Queens. The rooms were badly proportioned, the windows small. It was three times the size of the house Victor had grown up in, but far uglier.

“Lorca!” Viera called up a short flight of stairs that led straight off the living room. Victor followed him up the steps. “Come down, Lorca! You have a visitor!”

Sweat broke out on Victor’s forehead; he had a sudden need for a bathroom. She was blindfolded, he re minded himself. She saw nothing. She cannot know my voice.

“Perhaps she didn’t hear. We’ll knock on her door.”

The upstairs was tiny: two bedrooms, a bathroom, a closet. The hallway was narrow, the doors hollow-core. The clatter of plates from downstairs was audible, the sound of an oven door slamming; obviously, Lorca Viera would have heard her brother’s call.

“Excuse me,” Victor said. “Would you mind if I use your bathroom?”

“Of course not. Please.”

In the bathroom, Victor’s bowels moved quickly and forcibly. His relief was tempered with embarrassment, and he prayed that Lorca Viera would be out somewhere, that there would be no answer to her brother’s continuous tapping on her door.

“Loud knocks frighten her,” he said confidentially when Victor rejoined him. He leaned against the wood. “Lorca, there’s a man to see you! A fellow prisoner from the jail ….”

No sound from within.

“Lorca? Mr. Perez was kind enough to come all the way out to Queens. The least you can do is say hello.”

“Maybe this was not a good idea,” Victor said. “I should go, I think.”

Viera shook his head, speaking insistently at the wooden door. “Lorca, dear. You have to see people sometime. You can’t stay cooped up like a pigeon.”

“Go away, Miguel. Leave me alone.”

The ugly voice made Victor’s heart shrivel. Memories crawled in his belly like worms.

“Lorca, please. Won’t you at least say hello to Mr. Perez?”

“No. Leave me alone.”

The wires, the dial, her screams. Suddenly Victor was terrified she would recognize his voice, even though he had said almost nothing to her. Even though it had been in Spanish. “I should not have come. No one wants to remem ber that place,” he said, and backed toward the stairs. “I will go. You don’t have to drive me, I will take the subway.”

“No, no. You must stay for dinner.”

“You’re very kind. But it’s better that I go.” He started down the stairs. As he did so, the door was thrown open and Lorca Viera stood in the opening with black accusatory eyes. It was the first time he had seen her eyes.

“Where is this Mr. Perez?” She glared at him as if she would spit. The black eyes looked him over, taking in his cheap jacket, his wrinkled pants. “You were at the little school?”
Escualito
. She had unnerved him further by speaking in Spanish, though English was the language of this household.

“Yes,” he answered in English. “I was at the little school. We never spoke. We were in different cells.”

“There was a Perez there,” she said in English. “They shot him.”

Victor looked at his feet. “I heard the same about you.”

“How could you even know my name?”

“Later I shared a cell with others. They told me your name. But they said you were shot.”

“Unfortunately, I did not die.”

“In my case, they shot the wrong man.”

“Bravo. So what do you want from me? You want to fuck me or something?”

“Lorca ….” her brother put in, but she went on bitterly.

“I got news for you, Mr. Perez. I was not raped in the little school, you know? So if you imagine maybe the guards fucked me so often I got a taste for it, you’re wrong, okay?” She had begun to shake from head to foot. The claw-like hand was white and trembling where it gripped the edge of the door.

“Lorca, please,” said her brother. “Mr. Perez only came to say hello. I asked him to come here. I thought you might talk to him. You don’t talk to anyone else.”

“But I did, Michael. I did talk, didn’t I? I talked too much, if you recall. And because I talked, our little sister is dead.” Once more she turned the black, excoriating eyes on Victor. “You some kind of vulture, is that it? You come to feed on what the guards left behind? Well, I’m not dead yet, Mr. Perez. Maybe when I am, my brother here will give you a call and you can come by and fuck the corpse.”

She slammed the door in her brother’s face. He looked down at the floor, shaking his head. “I have no words,” he said. “No words to tell you how ashamed I am.”

“It’s all right,” Victor said softly. “Your sister suffered a lot. She just wants to forget.”

“I am deeply ashamed.”

“Please, Mr. Viera. She just wants to forget.”

Viera said nothing more until they were downstairs. “But that’s the point,” he said. “Lorca does not forget. She cannot forget. She stays in that room all day long and all she can think about is that terrible place you were in. She has to talk to someone about it. It’s the only way she will ever truly forget.”

“Did she even come out to say hello?” Helen Viera stood in the kitchen doorway clutching a salad bowl in one hand, a wooden fork in the other.

“It’s okay,” Viera said. “Lorca is not having a good day, that’s all.”

“Lorca’s been having a bad day for going on two years, Michael. She was rude to you, wasn’t she.” The doughy, expectant face turned to Victor.

“It’s all right. She suffered a lot.”

“Yes. And doesn’t she let us know it. Are you sure you won’t stay for supper?”

“I am sure. Thank you very much, though.”

Viera opened the door. “You understand, my sister didn’t talk like this before the jail. This is anger, a reaction—well, it’s true she was always angry, but not like this, not in this pointless way. Most days she won’t even speak. She eats in her room. If you could have known her as a girl—she was so happy, so lively ….”

“She has a lot of spirit. I am sure she was delightful.”

“Mr. Perez, I don’t know what to do. This is so hard on everyone.” He tilted his head slightly toward the kitchen. “She has her good days, sometimes. Why don’t you give me a phone number, and I will call you when she is feeling a little more—”

“But she doesn’t want to know me. She said so very clearly.”

“Sick people are often not interested in their cures. Please, will you let me call you? In return, I will refund your consultation fee.” He pulled some bills from his pockets.

Victor tried to refuse the money, but the lawyer would not hear of it, pressing the bills into his hand. When Viera asked for his phone number, Victor gave him the number of the restaurant’s pay phone.