The Blue Line (12 page)

CASTELAR POLICE STATION

Beginning of the Austral Winter

1976

S
houldering his bag and his dreams, Gabriel had left. Theo and Julia had shut the door behind him and clung to each other. They were going to have to leave Argentina. The thought had terrified her. She hadn't been able to even begin to imagine their life elsewhere, especially when she'd just told Theo she was pregnant. She had been scared. She had held him tighter, struck by a painful feeling of solitude. What if their escape attempt failed and they were captured by the military and disappeared into one of its torture centers? What if the two of them were tortured or separated?

Theo had placed his hand over her mouth to shush her. “No, my love. Stop it.”

But Julia had pulled free, overwrought. “If they torture me,
Theo, I won't be able to hold out. I'll give everyone away and then I'll hate myself as long as I live!”

Theo had sat down on the bed and gripped her firmly, holding her still. “
No
.
We're not like that
.”

Theo's words had seeped into her and calmed her immediately. The “we” had been an epiphany, revealing to her a new identity founded on the strength of love. It existed both inside her and outside, through Theo. Never again would there be emptiness. Mama Fina had been right: there was magic in words. The “we” had eclipsed her fear.

She had slipped her fingers through his and repeated: “
No, we're not like that
.”

—

She repeated the same words to herself as she lay jammed against Rosa in the trunk of the Ford Falcon, rigid with fear. Julia wished she could hug her, to give herself courage and to make Rosa be quiet.

“I didn't say anything, I swear,” Rosa was saying over and over again, on the verge of suffocation.

“Be quiet. We're not like that,” Julia replied, seeking the echo of Theo's voice in her own.

The car braked sharply. A door opened.
No, sounds more like a heavy gate with rusty hinges
. Orders, insults, men. The car slid slowly through this corridor of shouting and the sound of boots, then came to a stop with a wrench of the emergency brake.

The trunk suddenly opened. Julia blinked, blinded by the glare. A big courtyard, a big building with a metal spiral staircase outside. Julia's brain registered pillars, windows, two stories, a dozen uniformed men.

“Blindfold them, you idiots!” a voice yelled; then she received a blow that brought her to her knees. When she'd gotten her breath back, she caught a glimpse of Rosa, with a hood over her head, being dragged toward a door underneath the metal staircase. Then Julia saw him. Theo was standing motionless and blindfolded at the foot of the stairs.

“I'm here!” she shouted with all she had.

Her audacity met with a shower of blows before a sack was pulled over her head, nearly suffocating her.

She was thrown into a cell and kicked repeatedly by a man who forbade her to take off the hood. A door creaked and she heard the sound of a key being turned in a lock. Then there was silence.

“They've gone,” murmured a soft voice from somewhere close by. “You can take off the sack; you'll have plenty of time to put it back on. We can hear them coming from a distance.”

Julia lifted a corner of the sack and saw Rosa, still wearing her hood, and a blond teenager sitting next to her.

“My name's Adriana. What's yours?”

They were in a long, narrow prison cell. A few feet away a woman lay motionless, her clothes covered in blood. Adriana followed Julia's gaze.

“That's Paola. She's been like that since yesterday. She's breathing, though.”

Not daring to ask any questions, Julia looked around. At the far end of the cell was a dirty ceramic toilet with a cracked rim. Cold light filtered in from the ceiling through a skylight with a mesh grille.

“We're spoiled. We have a toilet. The others have to go on the floor. That's why it smells so bad.”

Julia became aware of the foul stench in the air.

“And it comes in handy for a drink of water and a quick wash.”

Julia felt like gagging.

“What's your friend's name?” Adriana asked.

“Sorry, my name's Julia. And she's Rosa.”

Hearing Julia's voice, Rosa cautiously lifted a corner of her hood. “Where are we?” she asked.

“In Castelar.”

Rosa looked horrified.

The three of them crouched close together. Adriana lowered her voice to a whisper. “Upstairs there's a table, two chairs, and a bed. The lights are very bright. First we're interrogated by the
colimbas
.
*
Then the commanders take over. There's one in particular, El Loco
*
—he's really bad. It was Paola's second time. She told me everything. She wants me to be prepared.”

“You haven't been up there?”

“No, not yet.”

“And Paola, can we talk to her?”

“She's not answering. She's not even moaning. They brought her back half-dead.”

“Have you already seen people die?” Julia asked. “I mean, have any prisoners died?”

“Yes, one. They went too far with
la
máquina
. I heard the policemen talking about it when they were cleaning up his cell.”

“What's
la
máquina
?” whispered Rosa in a thick voice.

“They tie you to the bed and hook you up to it. Then they pass an electric current . . .”

“Oh, my God!” Rosa exclaimed, covering her ears.

Julia took Rosa in her arms and rocked her like a child. “Don't worry, everything's going to be okay,” she told her. Then she asked quietly: “Have you had news of Gabriel?”

Rosa hadn't had any contact with him since the previous day. She knew nothing about what had happened at Posadas Hospital or his plan for leaving Argentina. She was convinced there was no reason for them to suspect him. Except his relationship with her, since she'd been captured. Julia decided not to tell her anything.

“I'll crack, I know it,” Rosa told her. “I'd rather take a bullet through my head and get it over with.”

“That's what we'd all prefer. But we'll hold out, you and me. We'll get out of here.”

They heard the sound of boots, a key being turned in a lock, and the creaking of rusty hinges. The three women moved away from each other and covered their heads. They heard one of the guards bark: “Your turn today, you Trotsko piece of shit. Say good-bye to your youth, asshole. When you come back you'll feel a hundred years old.”

They heard blows and more abuse, then a long groan. Then there was silence.

My God
,
don
't let it be Theo
.

For three days the women were forced to listen to Wagner's “Ride of the Valkyries” played at full volume through huge speakers placed in the corners of the courtyard to drown out the screams of the prisoners. Even the silence of the night after the torturers had gone could not dispel the horror and madness of it.

Like the words of a prayer, Julia kept repeating to herself:
We're not like that
.
We're not like that
.

THE CELL

Austral Winter

1976

T
he washing method that Adriana taught them gave the girls some semblance of normality. Julia would remove the panel from the wall that held the flush in place, giving her access to the cistern, the only source of water for drinking and washing. A luxury as far as they were concerned.

Adriana had witnessed the ordeal of a man who'd been brought back from the upstairs room. He'd cried out for water all night long. No one came. Unable to control his bowels, he had lain in his own excrement for two days until one of the duty policemen, a young
colimba
whom Adriana called Sosa, had finally taken him to wash and given him water to drink. The man had died soon after.

Sosa had won the inmates' respect. When he was on duty, they could talk to each other and pass on information. As soon
as new prisoners arrived, the veterans made contact with them, from one cell to the next. The stories that made the rounds about El Loco's interrogations, as described by the survivors, were intended to help them bear up under torture. The veterans also said that some inmates were in Castelar only temporarily. They spoke of another even more horrific place: Mansión Seré. People who were sent there did not come back. They all realized it was better to be interrogated by El Loco if they wanted to stay alive.

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.