The Blue Line (25 page)

UNCLE MAYOL

Austral Summer/Boreal Winter

2001–2002

H
e opened the door before she'd even put her key in the lock. Olivier had waited up for her until dawn. They didn't exchange a single word. In the days that followed, it was as if they were living on borrowed time. They skirted around each other, unsure what to do or say. He finally left for France because of unexpected work, while Julia stayed on for Christmas with Ulysses as planned.

After Olivier's departure, Julia became more methodical, almost cold.

“I think we need to start over from scratch,” she told Anna one evening, when the young people had gone dancing at one of the
boliches
in Buenos Aires.

“I don't agree. We know now that he didn't die. And he didn't search for the two of you either.”

“What if he came back after the World Cup?”

“I followed up on that too. A hundred-odd Montoneros came back between 1979 and 1980 to launch a counteroffensive. Many of them were discovered by the intelligence agencies. Theo's name doesn't appear anywhere. He's not on the official lists or the lists of the disappeared.”

“But the fact is he completely disappeared.”

“Maybe we should check out his old place again. I often go past it. The house is completely abandoned; it's sad to see. But you never know.”

Julia had already decided to extend her stay in Buenos Aires when Celeste had called and asked her to come to her office with Ulysses. Julia had thought it had to do with new DNA results and promised to stop by the next morning before Ulysses' flight.

They had found Celeste perched on a stepladder, taking down one of the numbered boxes in the archive room. She had caught sight of the expression on Julia's face and apologized profusely. “I called you about something totally different,” she had added as she led them down the hall.

The piles of documents on Celeste's desk seemed to have multiplied since Julia's last visit.

“Is this about the DNA results?” Ulysses had asked. “Did you manage to match up the data?”

“I haven't finished yet. It'll take time. We still have more than five hundred bodies left to identify, and unfortunately most of them will never resurface.”

“Well?” Julia had asked.

“Well,” Celeste had continued, hunting through her stacks of files, “one of our researchers went to San Francisco to attend a conference of leading scientists, and . . .”

She had pulled out a file triumphantly.

“And he was introduced to a professor who's been working at NASA for the past few years. It turns out he's Argentine. He works with microorganisms or something like that.”

“And what . . . ?” Ulysses had asked, glancing discreetly at his watch.

“The fact is he wanted to know absolutely everything about our work, because he too has family members who disappeared.”

Celeste had held out a photocopy of the conference program with a photo of the professor in question.

“The reason I wanted to talk to you is that his name is Mayol. Ernesto Mayol.”

“Wait,” Julia had said. “Ernesto Mayol? Isn't that one of Theo's uncles? Anna spoke to him once, if my memory serves me right.”

“I think this is him.”

—

After Ulysses had left, Julia had spent the entire afternoon dialing the phone numbers Celeste had given her. Each time she had reached an automated menu with a selection of
options, none of which had connected her to the person she was trying to contact. Finally she had decided to send an e-mail. Professor Mayol's reply had arrived soon after. He would be willing to meet with her, but only if she could travel to San Francisco. Julia hadn't thought twice. She had replied that she could make the trip at the end of the month.

As she fastened her seat belt, Julia realized she was wearing a red dress, just like the first time she had flown out of Buenos Aires in 1977. She peered out the window. Olivier still wasn't answering her calls.

—

She arrived in San Francisco the day before her meeting. She left the hotel, choosing to lose herself in the grid of streets in order to stay out of the wind. The cold chilled her to the bone. She turned left onto Leavenworth Street. This trip was absolute madness. If Theo was alive, he would have a family, a job, a home of his own. Looking up, she found herself at the bottom of an impossibly steep street, which zigzagged its way uphill. She began to scale it.
I'll go to
the meeting anyway
. She climbed on, past the houses and the fallow flowerbeds with their frozen hydrangea stalks. When she reached the top, she opened her arms wide as if she could fill herself with space.

The next day Julia got to the meeting early. In the hotel lounge, a man of indeterminate age, wearing casually elegant
clothing, got up from the maroon velvet armchair next to the fireplace. He slipped his horn-rimmed glasses into the inside pocket of his tweed jacket and looked expressionlessly at Julia.

“
Buenos días
,” he said coolly. “I'm Ernesto Mayol. I suppose you are Julia.”

Julia looked him over and took her time going forward to shake his hand. He suggested they go for a walk, despite the fog and cold. They turned into a street heading toward the pier. They walked in silence, their hands in their pockets, collars turned up, and shoulders hunched. In the end they pushed open the door of a diner with misted-up windows and sat down facing each other, stirring the coffee a waitress in a miniskirt had been in no hurry to serve them.

“I have waited for years to have this conversation.” Julia's hands gripped her coffee cup tightly. “Why didn't you try to get in touch with me before?”

“It wasn't up to me to contact you.”

The conversation couldn't have started on worse grounds and sharply came to a halt. Julia didn't want to ask any questions and the man didn't want to give any answers. They made small talk, sidestepping the subject that had caused them to meet.

The waitress came up to them, a pencil behind her ear.

“Will that be all? I have customers waiting for the table.”

“Two more coffees, and some water,” Mayol said without taking his eyes off Julia.

The waitress pursed her lips and stalked off. Julia plucked up courage.

“Are you in touch with him?”

“I can't answer that.”

Julia stood up slowly, placed a bill on the table, and murmured, “You just did.”

She left without looking back.

—

She was already in the corridor with her suitcase in her hand when the telephone in her hotel room started ringing.
Ulysses again
.
He'll want me to get him something else
. She hesitated for a moment, then retraced her steps. Ulysses could reach her on her cell phone. She opened the door, threw her coat onto a chair, and sat down unsteadily on the edge of the bed.

Before picking up the receiver, she already knew.

“Theo?”

EL DIABLO

Boreal Summer

2006

T
heo?”

Mia walked toward him, eyes half-closed, not quite awake. Still standing in the hallway, Theo was looking at the photo he had just taken with his cell phone. He quickly slipped the phone into his pocket and stood motionless, sweating despite the coolness of the morning. Mia drew up to him and tried to get him to put his arms around her. Theo wriggled free. She took hold of his hand and, surprised to find it damp, let go of it almost immediately.

“Come on, let's not keep standing here.”

Theo took a step back, uncomfortable.

“I'm going to leave, Mia.”

He was breathing heavily. There were dark circles under
his eyes, and in this first light of day he seemed worn out. Mia tried to pull him close and kiss him, but the hard look in his eyes took her aback.

“We've still got time,” she murmured.

He avoided her gaze and fiddled with his cell phone for a moment.

“I have to leave.”

Through the large bay window Mia noticed that the streetlights had gone out. The garden was still sleeping under a silvery glow.

“But we'd talked about it,” she ventured to say.

Mia stood there, draped in morning glow, totally nude, her long hair snaking down her body. Theo stepped back.

“No, we've never talked about it.”

—

Light filtered through the drizzle as he rode back. The motorbike skidded at every turn, forcing him to focus on the road. In vain. His temples were pounding. Adrenaline ran through his veins like poison. It was still the same face, despite the effects of time. He couldn't get the image of his torturer out of his head. Even dressed up for his daughter's wedding, he remained the same cold-blooded murderer.
There
he is, so close to me after all these years
.
Within arm's reach, to take from him what he took from me
.

The engine roared beneath him. He put his foot down on the straight stretch. El Diablo loomed in front of him, his
expression locked in fixed surprise, his right eyebrow puckered.
I would have recognized him with or without that scar
. Theo's nostrils flared as he passed the cars on the Merritt Parkway.
Why Mia? Why her of all people?

The mouth of the tunnel yawned up ahead, closer to swallowing him up with each passing second. He accelerated and leaned forward, bursting with rage.

—

He screams as he enters the darkness. The man is standing there, legs apart, in his spotless navy-blue uniform. Theo is watching him from the depths of his agony. He can feel urine trickling down his leg like acid. The man is inventing new forms of torture to drive him insane. Theo has lost all sense of time; his only sun is the beam from the projector. The voice of the Führer thunders, drowning out his screams. His nose is a pulp; oxygen enters through his wounds, gill-like. His body is reduced to orifices: the existing ones and the ones El Diablo has created.

“Do you understand, you filthy pig?”

He can barely hear the voice. His brain is throbbing with pain, glutted with fluids. A bucket of sewage is thrown into his face. Everything stings. But still he licks his lips, out of dehydration.

“Nothing more to tell me, you filthy pig?”

The projector is going to start up. The nightmare too. Theo's teeth are chattering. Is there some detail he's
forgotten? A crumb to appease the monster? His hanging body convulses. Theo knows he is going to die. He wants to die quickly.

The man laughs. Theo sees his mouth: the fleshy red lips, the perfect teeth. Others join in the laughter.

“So where's your sister? You haven't told me anything about your sister.”

A sound emerges from Theo's throat, deformed, incomprehensible.

“No, you do have a sister. A sweet little homo face she has.”

The projector comes on.

“Yes, they look so much alike it's striking; watch.”

Theo receives a blow in the stomach.

“Even like this, transformed into a piece of shit,” says a new voice.

“We gave it to her good, your sister. Want to see? We have the photos. We archive everything, just in case memories need refreshing.”

El Diablo dangles a Polaroid in front of Theo's eyes.

“Look, you filthy pig. See how much fun I had with your sister.”

At first, Theo sees nothing. Then he makes out some red and black shapes. He understands. He is shown around twenty photos in quick succession. They are images of his brother Gabriel being tortured. Close-up shots, taken at the height of his suffering. Theo sees all the details. He pisses himself again. He doesn't want to see, but he can't shut his eyes and he howls and cries and chokes. The scenes remain seared in his brain,
with the smell, the voices, the torment. Indelible images, unbearable ones. They secrete their never-ending venom.

“Identical, these two Trots. The same chromosomes. I knew from the start that you were going to squeal. Just like your brother. I rewarded him, though. I made him my mascot. Look, rat.”

Suspended like a piece of meat, Theo looks. He shouldn't have. Writhing at the end of the rope, he screams with a fury that makes him vomit.

Laughter, always their laughter around him, everywhere.

“But him, I let him go. I freed him. Yes, I did. I'm not saying it just to please you.”

The sound of footsteps, and the projector begins to whir.

“I'll let you go, too. But not yet. After all my efforts I'm entitled to a little party.”

The reel starts spinning, but this time it is neither the voice of the Führer nor the black-and-white images of the concentration camps. Unmistakable, the eyes of his brother Gabriel fill the screen. His face in close-up, disfigured. He is on his knees, begging, crying. Then a wide-open mouth, a silent scream as Gabriel is pushed out from the plane into the void. The fall, and their laughter, and the fall over and over again, and the reel running idle. And their laughter.

—

Theo exits the tunnel screaming, blinded by a steely sun. He slips between two cars and vanishes onto the exit ramp.

—

He had stopped trying to see her. Theo came back every evening to an empty house and paced from the kitchen to the living room like a caged animal.
She doesn't exist
.
She is his
.
She is nothing to me
. He didn't want to take Julia's long-distance calls either. He couldn't stand her carefree attitude. He needed silence.
I only think about her because I think about him, and I think about him all the time
.
I'll have him on his knees
.
I want to be the only thing he sees before he dies
.

—

Theo began to work out twice as hard. Luckily Mia had stopped coming to the gym. He never wanted to see her again. Her car had disappeared from the parking lot. She was avoiding him too, probably.

One day, feeling self-destructive, he walked by Mia's office, just to check.

“She's on vacation,” a coworker of hers informed him, with a look Theo found irritating.

“I'd loaned her a file. Too bad . . .”

“All the files she's working on are on her desk. Would you like me to take a look?”

“Yes, please. I'll give you a hand.”

He'd found some photos, addresses. But Theo wasn't satisfied.

“So she's gone to visit some friends?”

“Yes, lucky her! I'd love to go to Argentina. But it's expensive. Having a husband helps, that's for sure.”

Argentina! There was no way she could have figured it out. Theo rubbed the back of his neck and went to the water fountain, his throat dry.
Nobody has ever known, not even Julia
.

—

The sheets were damp and acrid with sweat. Theo woke from a restless sleep, his mind racing. He went downstairs to the kitchen. A ray of moonlight fell across the living room. He wished Julia were there so he could forget Mia. Mia: the monster's daughter. Mia: between him and me. Theo was shivering. He sat down on the stairs, a bottle of water in his hands, unable to slake his thirst. He finished the rest of the bottle in one long gulp.
I want him to know that he has lost
.

The first light of dawn drove back the shadows. He got up, got dressed, and set off for the beach. The vast orange sky awaited him like a promise of oblivion.
But I can't turn back anymore. I will be forever haunted.
Even my own death won
'
t grant me any peace
. Theo picked up a few pebbles and sent them skimming over the water.

—

Mia was back, paler than before, he'd been told. He was extra-careful. He moved his car to a different spot in the parking lot several times a day. He steered clear of the gym, preferring instead to run on the beach in the early morning. But one
evening when he got back from work, she was waiting for him in her car outside his house. Intrigued and wary, he parked and walked over to her.

“I hope you don't mind me coming to see you at home.”

She had become very thin, which made her eyes look even more striking. He went around her car and got into the passenger seat.

“Theo . . . you never explained.”

“There was nothing to explain.”

She bit her lip.

“. . . I went to Argentina.”

“I know.”

“Aren't you going to ask me why?”

“I don't want to know.”

“I'll tell you anyway. I went because of you.”

He muttered something incomprehensible and opened the car door to get out.

“Theo. Listen to me. You owe me that much. Let's go for a drive.”

She added by way of explanation: “I'll feel more comfortable telling you about it with the noise of the engine.”

Theo reluctantly shut the car door. She started the car and searched for his hand.

“I wouldn't have gone to Argentina if you weren't important to me.”

“That doesn't change anything.”

“For you, maybe. But for me, everything's changed.”

“Mia, you don't understand.”

“Yes, that's true. There are far too many things I don't understand. You left with no explanation. . . .”

“I don't owe you an explanation. I don't owe you anything.”

On the outskirts of town, Mia turned into a narrow road skirting a small forest of evergreens. It was growing dark. Here and there a few houses had lights on, their windows like eyes.

“Yes, you do, precisely. You owe me an explanation. But there's something else. I need your help. What I'm carrying inside is too heavy for me. And you're the only one who . . .”

“Mia, we shouldn't see each other again.”

“I'm not talking about that. Even if I wanted to! No. I've come to you because I think you know things about me that I don't know about myself.”

The car came to a stop at the edge of the forest. Mia switched off the lights.

“What do you think I know, Mia? I don't know anything.”

“Yes. You do. You have a lot of information. It's your job. I think you know something about my mother's death. I think you can help me find the person who killed her.”

“What are you talking about? Your mother committed suicide. Isn't that what you told me?”

“Yes. That's what I was led to believe. But that's not how it happened. I checked the archives, I talked to people. My mother was murdered. The police found her mutilated body. They also found photos the killer left behind.”

Mia's voice began to shake.

“She was at home when she was killed.”

“How do you know you really are her daughter? There were so many crimes during that war. . . .”

Mia pushed her car seat back and hugged her knees.

“I got in touch with the Mapuche.”

“The Mapuche?”

“Yes. With my mother's family.”

“But how?”

“There are lots of Mapuche Web sites. That's how I contacted them, before even thinking to make the trip. Things went quickly after that. My mother's brother sent me a reply. He asked me to go and see the family in Argentina. They wanted to make sure it was really me. In fact, they thought I was dead.”

“Make sure how? They couldn't recognize you.”

“No, of course not. But we went to a center that researches the disappeared. They do DNA testing.”

“That's crazy! How could you do all that in such a short time?”

Theo was thinking hard, his head in his hands.

“Did they ask you where your father was?”

“My mother's husband? No. He was an Argentine army captain named Ignacio Castro.”

“And?”

“And so it turns out that my biological father . . . isn't my father. Not the one I call my father, in any case.”

“Did you get your DNA tested against his too? Did you see photos of your biological father?”

“Yes, a few. Of their wedding day. My mother's husband looked very different: tall, slim, blond. Quite a handsome man, actually. It's obviously not the same person. I would recognize my father anywhere. I have to admit he's not very good-looking. In fact, he's rather ugly.”