The Case of Lisandra P. (9 page)

Eva Maria comes to her senses. She doesn't remember leaving the visiting room. She doesn't remember how she got here. She looks at all the passengers around her. Felipe might be here among them. Torturers take the bus nowadays. Felipe. Maybe she has already seen him at Vittorio's office. She has sat right where he sat. On the sofa. Her clothes have touched his clothes. Unsurprisingly, Eva Maria feels nauseous. Unsurprisingly, the nausea does not go any further. All these years, Eva Maria's body has denied her even the relief of vomiting. A last sign of pride? She has no more pride, and it's not such a bad thing that it is confined to her body. Felipe. The guy goes on living, whereas her life has stopped, perhaps because of him. Felipe what, anyway? Vittorio refused to give her his last name. He was already sorry he had told her as much as he had; he didn't want to run the risk that she might go looking for Felipe; she was mistaken if she thought he hadn't understood what she had in mind. It was too dangerous. She wanted to take the law into her own hands? Did he have to remind her that the law had absolved Felipe, along with all the others? There was nothing she could do against him. Vittorio was right. Eva Maria looks at the passersby on the sidewalk. Nowadays torturers are free to roam the streets. Felipe might be there among them. All these torturers had to do
to go on living was get lost in the crowd. It was impossible now to separate the wheat from the chaff. Eva Maria winces. No one will ever bother them again. Last Christmas, the worst one in her life. The fifth Christmas without Stella. And above all, that law. A national disgrace. Law 23,492, passed just like that, on the night of December 24, like all the worst laws, the ones they don't want anyone to oppose, the ones they want to push through quickly without anyone noticing. Criminal pursuit forbidden. Against all the crimes committed under the military dictatorship. Pardoned! The arbitrary arrests. The torture. The assassinations.
Punto final.
A new class of citizens in Argentina was born that Christmas night. Those who are granted impunity because they are military. And now
Due Obedience
, which absolves also the lower-ranking officers in the name of the hierarchical principle. Alfonsín!
*
What a bastard! To give the torturers the task of being their own judges. The decontamination of self by self. Hypocrisy. Sophism. The torturers decided on the amnesty: they colluded in the worst forms of inhumanity. In Argentina, we drink maté and we swallow impunity; in Argentina, we dance the tango, and so do torturers. But you won't find that in the tourist guides. Eva Maria looks at the woman sitting across from her. Whose side was she on? Impunity resolves nothing. Impunity imposes impossible cohabitation on murderers and their victims; it exacerbates suspicion and hatred. In the deepest recesses of the soul. In that secret place where bile gathers and accumulates. The heart of a volcano. In that hiding place where the most violent anger lurks, the anger that ravages everything when it erupts. Because it will not fail to erupt. In the light, perhaps, of another historical context, but it will erupt. And
if this generation doesn't demand justice, the next one will. Stella, my beloved child, the torturers really are roaming the streets today, and you are not, you are not having a happy life in Paris or London or New York, and no, you are not a “so-called”
desaparecida
, you truly are one.
*
Eva Maria feels like screaming. She remains silent. She is not the only one. Impunity, the straitjacket of the Argentine people. Eva Maria could make her accusation, but there is no one to arrest them. She lifts her fingers to her mouth. A warm liquid flows through her fingers; all her pride has just given way. The woman sitting across from her holds out a handkerchief. Eva Maria doesn't see it. She is looking at the stained floor at her feet. She is thinking about volcanic eruptions and she reminds herself that they make the soil more fertile. She wonders if tomorrow, on the floor of this bus, a vine stock will have grown.

Eva Maria slams the door. She thinks she is walking. She is running. She bangs into the furniture in the corridor. Without even thinking, she finds herself naked in the shower. She turns the faucet. The water is scorching. Eva Maria fills her mouth. She spits. To get rid of that vile taste. She spits. How could Vittorio have been treating that piece of shit? She will never forgive him. He could have told her anything—she would have understood anything—that he had been a coward, that he had been afraid of reprisals, that he had feared for his life—anything—if he had agreed not to continue sessions with Felipe. Everyone knew about it; the military could intervene wherever they liked, whenever they liked. But Vittorio had never thought about it. Eva Maria had read as much in his eyes: they accepted everything without flinching. She would have understood anything. Anything except to hear him tell her that it was his duty to help Felipe the way he helped her, that he must not make any distinction, it was his job. What a fine cover-up! He called it his job, but it was voyeurism, an unhealthy curiosity, an attraction to the dark side of humanity. In the end psychoanalysts have no interest in just looking after good people, it has to be said; the deeper they explore the nature of evil, the dregs of humanity, the more alive they feel. Didn't she “study only dormant volcanoes, leaving aside the extinct
ones”? She knew what it meant, after all, to “study what was harmful and ignore anything tranquil”—she could understand him, right? Yes, she could understand. But she could not forgive him. It is not always enough to understand in order to forgive. Eva Maria scrubs her body with all her strength. How could she have let Vittorio sit there and tell her all that? The sound of the water on the tiles cannot stop her from hearing him, still. Clearly. “You set yourself up as the supreme judge, Eva Maria; you have told me what you think deep down, and I'm going to tell you what I think deep down. Because you think that with your nose stuck in your little diagrams, in your little notebooks, and your little curves you are useful? Don't make me laugh! If a volcano is going to become active, it will become active and you can't stop it, any more than I can stop my patients from being first and foremost autonomous, active human beings. Our two professions are very similar, in the end. Preventive, that's what we both are, preventive. And prevention has never stopped tragedies from happening. Even if you are there, you and all the analysts on the planet, when the planet wants to lose its temper, it loses its temper. So please, Eva Maria, don't talk to me about usefulness. I have failed, too, as surely as you have; we all fail in that little territory where the purpose of our work is set. Sometimes I go about it badly, to be sure, but I think I have helped more individuals on this planet than you have, so don't come here singing your refrain about humanity. Go back to your diagrams, study your photographs, without even being capable of looking after your son, who is far more alive than any of your volcanoes, just in case you hadn't noticed, and who has a far greater need of you.” Eva Maria is sitting on the floor, under the shower. Her head between her knees. “Whether you like it or not, I will go on thinking that I did what was best where Felipe was concerned. Don't get me wrong, I find that whole period as repulsive as you do, but I've chosen my side, that of neutrality, that of wanting
to help, without preconceived ideas, or by trying at least to have as few of them as possible, the only side that seems tenable to me with regard to my profession. I can appreciate the fact that you don't find it convincing, but that is my job and that is the way I intend to perform it, or at least intended to perform it, because now that I'm in this fucking prison, I can't really help anyone. But that must make you happy, no? You must be really pleased now?” Eva Maria turns off the water. She stands there with her heels firmly on the streaming floor. Yes, indeed, she is very happy, for if Felipe was the one who killed Lisandra, well then, for Vittorio it's like Frankenstein—the creature has turned against him. He's learned his lesson. You cannot play the sorcerer's apprentice. Not with bodies or with souls. Eva Maria wraps a towel around her damp hair. Anger cannot be cleansed. She takes the photographs out of her bag. She had completely forgotten to show them to Vittorio. Eva Maria is beside herself. Not for one second did Vittorio look at the stolen child as a drama in itself; not for one second was he moved. All that mattered to him was that the child represented a possible motive for Felipe in Lisandra's murder. Eva Maria no longer recognizes Vittorio. She had always felt so close to him, but now she hates him, despises him. She lets out a laugh. Vicious. Sarcastic. Maybe Vittorio didn't want to give her Felipe's last name, but the man will pay all the same. The case of “stolen babies” was not covered by the laws of impunity. Under the military dictatorship, they could torture and kill, but not steal babies. There were limits, after all. A fragment of justice in a swamp of injustice. All the forced, contrived adoptions—that's where they'll get Felipe. The moment Vittorio shares his doubts with the police, they will open a new investigation. Felipe may not pay for all his crimes, but he will lose the child. The boy will be taken away from him and restored to his biological parents, and if Vittorio's version is correct, if his biological parents are dead, then he
will be given to his grandparents, who will know how to protect him against their Cain of a son. Eva Maria spreads the photographs of the funeral out on her desk. She starts looking. A couple with a child. A man with a child. A little boy. Education, for a torturer, surely begins by teaching children to confront death. Very young. As early as possible. To make death seem normal so that one day you can spread it around without having any qualms.
FELIPE: You see, my boy, there is a lady lying in that wooden box over there: her eyes are closed; she's dead; they're going to put her in the ground. THE CHILD: But Mommy told me you go to heaven when you die . . . FELIPE: That's just rubbish for girls that your mother has been making up; don't listen to her. When you die, you go in the ground, my boy, and you don't come out again, and that lady, it's even a good thing she died, believe me, good riddance
—
sometimes people have to die, that's the way it is.
But there is no little boy in the photographs. Eva Maria knows this. She remembers now. She had noticed. How there are never any children at funerals. And besides, she knows these photographs by heart. She has looked at them so many times. Without ever seeing a child. She even had them enlarged, hoping that the change in format might cause the murderer to emerge. Now as she looks at them, Eva Maria is still hoping. A red light. Her magical thinking does not abandon her. It's stubborn. Eva Maria is waiting for these photographs, like a horror film, to suddenly reveal the presence of an individual she had not seen at the time. A couple with a child. A man with a child. A little boy. Then she would take the incriminating photograph to the mothers on the Plaza de Mayo and it would be the first exhibit for the investigation. But life is not a horror film. Unfortunately. Eva Maria shoves the photographs away in a rage. There is a knock at the door. She jumps.

“Just a minute!”

Eva Maria hastily tidies the photographs into her desk drawer.

Eva Maria turns to look at the door to her room. Estéban is standing on the threshold. In high spirits.

“So, can I see them? The clothes?”

“What clothes?”

“You went shopping . . .”

Estéban steps closer to his mother. Eva Maria stiffens.

“I didn't find anything.”

Estéban stands still. He runs his fingers through his hair.

“It doesn't matter; there's always next time.”

“That's right. Next time.”

“We won't be eating too late, will we?”

“I need another hour or so.”

“Okay. I'll wait for you. I thought I'd make some empanadas, is that okay?”

“That's fine.”

Estéban leaves the room. Eva Maria looks at the door. Closed. Silent. She stands up and walks across the room. Very quickly. She opens the door.

“Estéban?”

Estéban turns around. At the far end of the corridor.

“What?”

“Do you think she might have been pregnant?”

Estéban's face stands out against the darkness of the corridor. Just as everything ends up standing out against the darkness. His face looks like a mask.

“If who might have been pregnant? Who are you talking about?”

“Stella.”

Estéban doesn't answer. He doesn't move. It's not the question that bothers him. He thinks he must have misheard. For five years Eva Maria has forbidden him from saying Stella's name in her presence. Her tone becomes more urgent. Insistent.

“Do you think she could have been pregnant?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I don't know . . . all these stories about ‘stolen babies,' I thought that maybe . . .”

Estéban rushes to answer. In this faint suspension of her hesitant words. His tone is categorical. His voice is firm. He goes up to Eva Maria.

“No. Of course not. Stella wasn't pregnant. What are you thinking?”

Eva Maria gets annoyed.

“How can you be so sure?”

Estéban thinks.

“She . . . she didn't have a boyfriend.”

“How do you know?”

“She would have told me.”

“Do you really believe a sister tells her brother everything?”

Estéban doesn't answer. Eva Maria takes advantage of his silence.

“You know very well that there's an age where secrets ripen, when before, there was only a sort of sibling complicity, and the word ‘secret' only existed when it was shared. Stella was two years older than you—that changes everything. She could have had secrets, secrets you never even suspected.”

Estéban interrupts her, his voice suddenly sounding older.

“If she had secrets, it wasn't from me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that Stella wasn't pregnant, that's all.”

“Well, I think she could perfectly well have been pregnant.”

“No. Stop imagining things.”

“I'm not imagining things.”

“Yes, you are, and there is a very precise reason why Stella could not have been pregnant.”

“And what's that?”

“A very simple reason.”

“Which is?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes.”

“Stella liked women. That's it. You wanted to know.”

Eva Maria greets this revelation as a revelation that changes
nothing. There is a gentle smile on her face. Slight surprise. Stella liked women. It's funny, she would never have thought so. She wished she had known. Or guessed. But it doesn't matter, it really doesn't matter, it just proves how free her daughter was, and that she already knew. Eva Maria runs her thumb over her dimple. The dimple in her chin. The bed of a cherry stone. A bed for girls, she thinks. Suddenly learning something about Stella gives her the faint impression that Stella is still alive. Eva Maria closes the door behind her.

Estéban leans against the wall. Relieved. Eva Maria greeted this revelation as a revelation that changed nothing. But he knew, on the contrary, how much this revelation changed everything. It would prevent Eva Maria from doing what she otherwise would have surely done. She would have looked at every four-year-old child as if it was Stella's child. She would have sunk into conjectures. And she would have been lost. His mother could not spend the rest of her life running after a void. Or after the dead. Or the fruit of her imagination. Estéban runs his fingers through his hair. His body relaxes into a smile. Of relief. Of the sudden awareness of what he has just said. Of mischief, too. If Stella had heard him, she would have had a good laugh. He grabbed at the first thing that came to mind. When you're surrounded by madness, it's important to know how to lie. Estéban has just learned.