The Blue Line (15 page)

THE FATHER

Boreal Autumn

1981

U
lysses had waited for her before going to sleep, sucking on his comforter. Julia sat down on the edge of the bed. This was his favorite moment of the entire day. Nothing else mattered to the child except the pleasure of having his mother all to himself. Julia gave him a little nudge to make room for her. He moved over with a mischievous smile, a corner of his bedsheet in his mouth. He'd had the habit since he was a baby and Julia had let him continue, unable to judge if it was good or bad, normal or the result of trauma.

She thought Ulysses had seemed overexcited after school that day. She had tried to get him to calm down before bedtime, because he had put on his red rubber boots, a sign that he was in the mood for a fight. He hadn't stopped racing around the little apartment and jumping all over the place.
Julia had forgotten all her good intentions and chased him, rolling around on the floor with him and tickling him. Then she'd seized the opportunity to grab hold of him, had rolled him up in a towel and given him a bath, and finally had gotten him into bed. But Ulysses wanted the full bedtime ritual, so Julia had returned with a picture book.

“Mom?”

Tired, Julia tried not to become impatient. She stroked his hair. “What is it, angel?”

“Dad . . . is he dead?”

Ulysses' question caught his mother off guard. She became distraught as all her own doubts suddenly resurfaced. And yet she should have expected it. During her last visit, Mama Fina had expressed concern about the child. Ulysses had asked Mama Fina several times where his father was, and she'd sensed her answer hadn't satisfied him. Then Ulysses had taken to dressing up as a firefighter. He wanted to wear boots, even inside the house. In the end he had thrown such a tantrum that Mama Fina had agreed to buy him the red boots he'd set his heart on, even though it was the height of summer.

Ulysses insisted on wearing his red boots to the park, complete with shorts. Julia often took him to the park, hoping he would make friends. But Ulysses would give his spade and bucket to the other children and sit in a corner with his back turned, surrounded by twigs and carefully chosen pebbles. Then he would become absorbed in his solitary war games. The twigs came to life in his hands, flying off into an imaginary
cosmos and colliding with the pebbles to his own soundtrack of explosions, crashes, and violent deaths.

“I'll protect you, Mom,” he had told her the first time he'd dressed up as a firefighter. This consisted of pulling on his red boots and running off, small fists clenched. He would then fight an invisible enemy, launching into a series of flying kicks that usually ended in an equally spectacular fall. Julia had decided it might be a good idea to sign him up for karate lessons. Even when he was asleep, Julia could sense that the child was anxious. Every night he would come into Julia's bedroom, half-asleep, and climb into bed with her. Sometimes he would be wide awake and sweat soaked after a nightmare.

“I'm scared of the dadashes,” he'd once told Julia while she changed his pajamas.

“What are the ‘dadashes,' angel?” she'd asked, without expecting a proper answer.

“The dadashes that fly in the sky and go
boom
!” Ulysses had replied, gesticulating widely.

It had taken a big thunderstorm for Julia to realize that he'd been talking about flashes of lightning.

—

Shortly after their arrival in France in the spring of 1977, while listening to the radio in order to improve her French, Julia had stumbled upon a series of programs presented by a pediatric psychoanalyst that had convinced her of the importance of telling children the truth.

So she had set out to make Theo a familiar figure in Ulysses' life. Strangely enough, Julia had never sensed in the child any real interest in his father. Even at the age of five, when he started elementary school, he had remained indifferent to the subject. As soon as Julia started talking about Theo, he would run off to play somewhere else, shouting: “I know, Mom!”

Ulysses settled into school without any problems. He was happy to go there each morning, and his teacher, Mademoiselle Leblanc, was full of praise for him. She said Ulysses was an intelligent child, bursting with energy and eager to learn. It was probably in his character that he most resembled Theo, Julia thought. Everything else he had inherited from Mama Fina. People often stopped them in the street to admire his eyes, and passersby would irritate Julia with their sidelong glances, confirming he hadn't inherited his looks from his mother.

Julia hadn't anticipated that tonight her little boy would make her relive her own nightmares.

She took a deep breath as she tried to decide how to answer.

“No, your father isn't dead. He's alive.”

The child turned toward her and squeezed her cheeks with his little hands. “What does ‘dead' mean, Mom?”

Now Ulysses was really making her think.

“Dead is when your body stops working.”

“Does it hurt to die?” Ulysses asked, stuffing a huge piece of his sheet into his mouth.

“Not necessarily,” Julia replied cautiously.

“What about me? Am I going to die?”

“We're all going to die someday,” Julia answered.

“But if I die, who'll look after you, Mom?”

Julia looked at her son. He was so beautiful. She hugged him close and stroked his curly little head. Ulysses' wide-eyed gaze was fixed on her.

“I'll always be here, right next to you, and you'll always be right next to me,” she told him.

Ulysses kept staring at her. “Why doesn't Dad live with us?”

Julia hesitated.

“Is it because of me?” Ulysses asked.

“Of course not! Where did you get that idea?”

“That's what Malo said.”

“That Malo again! He's a naughty little boy, that friend of yours.”

“He's not my friend and he's not little. He's big!”

“All right, don't get upset, Ulysses,” she said more gently. “What's this Malo been saying to you?”

“He makes fun of me at recess.”

“And why does this Malo make fun of you?”

“He asked me what my dad does.”

“And what did you say to him, angel?”

“I told him you were looking for him.”

“So what's funny about that?”

“Malo said Dad ran away when I was born because he was scared I was so ugly.”

Julia suppressed a laugh. “He's just jealous.”

“No, he's not jealous. His dad is a firefighter and he saves people.”

“Okay, well, great. But he shouldn't make fun of you.”

“He makes fun of me and he takes my snacks.”

“But why didn't you tell me?”

Ulysses looked as if he was about to cry.

“I'm not scolding you, my angel.”

“He hits me too.”

“Have you told the teacher?” Julia asked, indignant.

Ulysses began to sob.

“Are you scared of him, angel?”

Ulysses shook his head, wiping away his tears.

“How old is Malo?” Julia asked.

“He's seven!”

“But you know how to defend yourself, Ulysses! You're as strong as a lion and you do karate! Show me your Choku-zuki.”

Ulysses brought one small fist out from under the covers, extended his arm, and rotated his wrist, sucking his comforter all the while.

“Well, there you are! Tomorrow you can give him a taste of his own medicine.”

“No way! I'm never going to do that,” Ulysses answered, taking the sheet out of his mouth.

“And why not?”

Ulysses replied after a pause: “Because I'm not like that.”

Julia stared at him, stunned. After a while she said, “Well, actually, you're right.”

Ulysses wasn't looking at her. Lost in thought, he kept rolling a corner of the sheet between his fingers, until it looked like an arrow tip.

“I'm very proud of my son,” Julia said, as if she was talking to someone else.

Ulysses went on happily sucking the corner of his sheet. He snuggled a little closer to her. Now he was thinking about something much more important.

“Mom . . .”

“Yes, angel.”

“Tell me a story about Dad.”

HAEDO

Austral Spring

1976

T
he prison gate opened. Paola held her breath and signaled to Julia not to move. She climbed onto the toilet seat and looked out through the skylight.

“A lot of cars have arrived,” she whispered into Julia's ear. “It must be a general again. The day Adriana and you escaped, it was Angelini who'd come to carry out an inspection.”

“Angelini?” Julia asked. “Commissioner-Major Angelini?”

“Do you know him?”

“No, not really. But I've heard of him.”

“He's the one who's ordered El Loco's transfer.”

Her thoughts racing, Julia asked: “Has he been promoted?”

Paola shrugged. “I don't know. In any case, he's going. Sosa seemed to say that Angelini had reviewed all of our files. There was total chaos when they found out you'd run away.
Actually, I've been meaning to ask you: who was the other prisoner?”

“I don't know. We split up soon after. It was the only cell that hadn't been padlocked. The man was half-dead; he'd come back from Mansión Seré. They must have thought that even if they left the door wide open, he wouldn't be able to take as much as a step outside.”

Paola was looking at Julia with a strange intensity.

“You've just come back from Mansión Seré too. You know that, right? Sosa told me when they brought you back. So you met El Diablo. . . .”

Julia was stunned. “I don't know. I don't remember anything.”

The sound of keys opening the door at the end of the corridor put them on the alert. They adjusted their hoods and waited, holding their breath, leaning against the wall.

El Cabo Pavor's voice made them jump. He opened the door of their cell and barked: “You, the brunette. Over here. We're going to finish you off once and for all.”

—

Julia was trembling all over. She found Paola's hand and dug her nails into it as if to anchor herself there. El Cabo Pavor separated the girls and herded Julia out, spewing a torrent of abuse. He shoved her into the corridor and slammed the cell door shut. Back in the trunk of a car. The journey seemed short. She was sweating profusely despite the cold. Morón Air
Base, where the death flights took off from, and Mansión Seré were both near Castelar, although located in different directions. Julia couldn't hear the sound of jet engines. It could only be an escalation of the nightmare: she was returning to Mansión Seré.

The trunk was opened. The sound of boots, kicks, insults. She was dragged unrelentingly down a set of stairs, then flung into a dark hole. A metal door closed heavily behind her. Then nothing. She waited. The footsteps moved away. Then there was silence.

She couldn't see a thing, not even her own hand. She began to feel her way around. It was an airless cell that seemed to be particularly narrow. From where she was sitting, Julia could touch the walls on either side by stretching out her arms. The room felt damp, like a cellar. She couldn't stand up without her head touching the ceiling. She estimated that the distance between the metal door and the far wall was barely ten feet. There was no water, no toilet. She sat down again on the cold concrete, trying to control the wave of claustrophobia welling up inside her. The absence of light was particularly hard to bear, as was the viscous silence that gnawed away at her brain like ultrasound, preventing her from thinking. She hugged her knees and rested her head on top of them. She had learned to sleep in this position to minimize contact with the cold floor, but now it irritated her wounds, and she heard herself moaning.

Hours passed, and she no longer knew whether she'd been
asleep or not, having lost all sense of time. She missed the cell in Castelar. She was thirsty and she needed to pee, but she didn't dare call out. They were going to torture her again. She had escaped and they were going to finish her off, as El Cabo Pavor had said.

There came another moan. Sure it wasn't her this time, Julia pinched herself, then dug her nails into her palms. No, she wasn't asleep. She couldn't see anything, but she was definitely awake. The sound came again. It was coming from the other side of the wall. Julia pressed her ear up against the damp concrete, trying to locate the source of the groaning.

Somewhere very close by, someone was crying. She felt her way around her cell again, pressing her entire body up against the walls as she listened. The sobbing was coming from her right when she faced the cell door. She took heart and began knocking a rhythm on the wall: three short knocks, a pause, then three long ones. She repeated the sequence several times.

The moaning stopped. Then a man's voice said from the other side of the wall: “Who are you?”

“My name's Julia. Who are you?”

“They call me the Ant.”

“Oh.”

“Did you get here today?”

“I think so,” Julia said. “Do you know where we are?”

“Yes. The police station in Haedo.”

“Do they interrogate us here?”

“No, don't worry. There's no more torture here.”

“Are you sure?”

“Obviously, because I'm telling you!”

“So why were you crying?”

“I'm alive because I'm a degenerate, a traitor.”

“They're the degenerates!” Julia practically shouted, choking back sobs.

After a lengthy silence, the voice said: “Did they torture you?”

“. . . It's better now.”

“It's going to get even better. We're allowed visits here. We're being held under PEN.”
*

“How do you know?!” Julia exclaimed.

For Julia, being detained under PEN was nothing short of a miracle. Prisoners who were handed over to the National Executive Power were “legalized.” They were no longer “at the disposition of” the military authorities, and their files were converted into criminal records. They would, of course, have to stand trial, but they escaped the torturers.

“That's the procedure,” the Ant replied. “It takes a while, but once they bring you under PEN, things start to change. First they authorize you to receive letters. Then, if all goes well, they agree to let your family bring you food.”

“My family doesn't know where I am.”

“Give me a name and a telephone number to memorize. I'll give them to my family. They'll tell yours.”

Julia spent two weeks in Haedo. She suffered from terrible cramps and had no choice but to urinate in her cell. She believed she was still pregnant and would stay very still listening to her body, incubating her hopes.

—

A guard came to let her out for a few minutes once a day. She never saw him, because she was always blindfolded. She was forced to relieve herself in front of him while he hurled obscenities at her. She didn't wash for the entire two weeks she was detained in Haedo. Her body stank of excrement and of the fear she couldn't shake off. Being alone in that black hole, feeling the rats scurrying across the floor, the cockroaches crawling over her skin and becoming tangled in her hair, terrified her.

Julia's only moments of respite came when her neighbor broke his silence. He was riddled with remorse. He had been selling out his friends, one of which, he told Julia one day, was seized while trying to flee Argentina disguised as a priest. He knew his friend had been brought to Haedo immediately after his capture. “It was one of the d'Uccello brothers,” he said. He explained he had gotten the information from the torturer with whom he'd made his deal, and who made a point of updating him on the results of his collaboration to feed his guilt.

Julia wished she could hate him.

She consoled herself with the thought that if Gabriel had passed through Haedo he must have been automatically transferred to PEN custody, which could only be a lesser evil.

—

One cold morning Julia was finally taken out of her cell. She saw natural light for the first time in weeks. It was particularly cold, and even though she didn't know where she was being taken, the idea of never coming back was a relief. She was coughing, each spasm a frightening reminder of her swollen belly.

Julia didn't see the entrance because, as usual, she was transported in the trunk of a car. The khaki pants and boots that she glimpsed by peeking under her blindfold disappeared once she was inside the building. The footsteps grew fainter, not a word, then silence. She stayed standing at attention, paralyzed by panic, not knowing whether she was alone or facing an execution squad. After what seemed like an eternity, a woman's voice asked her for her name, birth date, and place of birth. Julia answered hesitatingly. The voice ordered her to take off her blindfold and step forward. Julia found herself in a huge room with a ceiling so high that the echo of her voice came back to her. A chair and table sat redundantly in a corner; she got the impression they had been placed there temporarily. Behind the table sat a stout, stern-looking woman with a fixed expression, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a spotless
gray uniform, her shiny hair pulled back into a bun. She was busy tapping rapidly with two fingers on a prewar typewriter.

“Profession, address, telephone number,” the woman continued in a monotone.

For the first time since her arrest, Julia felt like a human being. She had a name, she had a life. She fought back tears. This uniformed woman was “legalizing” her.

Julia tried to maintain her composure, but her voice kept cracking, and she had to blow her nose on her sleeve.

“Why are you here?” the woman went on coldly.

Julia couldn't answer.

“What are you accused of? What did you do? Why are you under arrest?”

Nothing. Julia knew nothing. She didn't know what she was accused of, and she was crying with joy because at last she was under arrest.

The woman raised her head, took off her glasses, and looked at Julia.

“You're in Villa Devoto prison, my girl,” she said in a tired voice. “It's Tuesday, June 22, 1976, and the time is 1:35
P
.
M
.”