Mapuche (42 page)

“The cops are coming,” she whispered to get him to leave.

“They aren't going to save you, old lady,” he said, cocking his gun.

Anita had a defensive reflex, but it was in vain: the Glock was pointed at her head.

“Dirty rat,” she cursed between her teeth.

Anita had no last thought about Rubén, who was being held prisoner in the next room, or about her cat who was waiting for her, or about the men whom she had loved: Parise shot her in the face.

Anita died in the middle of the hall, her eyes wide open.

 

*

 

Cartridge cases lay all over the worm-eaten floor of the torture chamber. The French door was half off its hinges; the curtains were billowing in the wind, letting sunlight filter in.

El Picador had tied Calderón to the table, in the same position as the tranny, the bloody doll lying a few steps away.

“You waking up, Cinderella?” the ignoramus asked.

Rubén was coming to, his stomach next to the iron plate. He was immediately gripped by fear, a child's fear returning to him after its stint in hell. From the ESMA, El Turco, and the others. He didn't know if Jana had managed to escape, if they had killed her, or where Anita was: his muscles ached after the electrical shock, he was tied down and a guy with an emaciated face was digging around in an attaché case on the next table. He saws the
picana
and his throat closed up.

Then El Toro came into the room, his brow beaded with sweat after his run around the house.

“We've got ten minutes!” he announced.

El Picador sorted his utensils, keeping one eye on his victim-to-be—a tough guy, huh? He chose a
banderilla
while his acolyte was tearing off the prisoner's shirt to get him ready. He positioned himself over the naked back, concentrating on the muscles that protruded below the little bones, and chose the point of impact. Rubén pulled on his bonds, a desperate, useless effort: the killer bent over and thrust the
banderilla
into his spinal column. The excruciating pain took his breath away. The sharp point had lodged itself between two vertebrae, literally nailing him to the iron plate. Rubén gasped for air, his brain in a panic, but life seemed to be running away.

“So, you fucking dandy, now you're looking less clever,” El Toro gloated.

Rubén smelled his fetid breath like the fumes from a slaughterhouse.

“You're going to tell us everything you know,” El Toro said, “and fast. Where did you get the document about Campallo? Huh?”

“Go . . . fuck yourself.”

“Ha, ha, ha!”

El Picador put the
picana
's clamps to the detective's ears. The machine was rudimentary, a portable, manually operated electric generator, but the damage done to the parts attached to it was irremediable. El Toro was jubilant: Calderón was there, pinned down like a butterfly on the plate.

“Let's see what you've got in your belly, my darling . . . ”

 

*

 

Jana had lit out without thinking of anything but running. She'd seen what they did to Miguel, what El Toro would have done to her if Rubén hadn't gotten her out of there. She ran straight ahead but the world was howling around her. The Mapuche didn't feel the guts under her feet or the blood that was running from her wounded nose, nor the branches that were scratching her: her calluses were thick and fear made her run fast.

She rushed headlong into the jungle, carrying her clothes in her arms. Shots rang out behind her, a brief volley, she didn't know what had happened, if Rubén had escaped as well—Rubén, Rubén, her heart was beating like a bird against the windowpanes. He had remained behind, in the nightmare house. She was doing battle with the bushes and roots that stuck to her skin, her blood was running down her neck onto her torso, and then there was the fear, the wild thoughts that were coursing through her mind, asphyxiating her. Jana ran straight ahead but her lungs were short of air. She stopped, out of breath, and put on her T-shirt and jumpsuit. The birds had fallen silent, her pulse was beating against her temples. Her whole body was dripping with sweat. She looked all around her, lost. It was dark under the roof of greenery, she didn't know where the canal was, whether she was going in the right direction. Quick, get a hold on herself. A boat along the shore, Rubén had said; that implied that they were on an island. The Mapuche hardly had time to dry the warm blood running over her mouth: she heard the sound of a machete over the buzzing of the insects. Someone was following her. Someone who couldn't be Rubén . . . Jana gritted her teeth and ran to her left.

The vines and branches scratched her skin, the roots made her stumble, but she bounded over the rough terrain and escaped the traps set for her. She stifled a scream as she crossed a wall of brambles, flattened nests of ferns, the calluses of her feet like bloodied soles, tripped again, caught herself on the branches, and then suddenly the landscape changed.

A few giant pines lined the shore, which was flooded with sunlight. Jana filled her aching lungs. The pine needles were softer under her bruised feet, and black birds were zooming along the horizon, but the world was still hostile. She was still bleeding heavily from her nose, and the machete blows were coming closer to the edge of the forest. Reeds and water lilies were growing in inlets along the shore. Jana ran toward the aquatic flowers and reeds swaying gently. The water, earth-colored, was washing up in little waves at the end of the beach. The Mapuche climbed a small rock, let herself slip into the cool water, and noiselessly hid among the reeds.

Del Piro extricated himself from the jungle, his machete in his hand. Drops of blood marked the trail of the fugitive up to this open area dotted with big pines. No one in sight: but the trail was fresh. Del Piro walked toward the shore, his cheeks covered with scratches. He pushed aside the walkie-talkie to stick the machete in his belt and pulled out his Glock: the Indian woman was there, somewhere.

“Where are you hiding, you little whore?” he murmured into the void.

Del Piro gripped the handle of the pistol in his damp hand, his senses on alert, but heard nothing but the lapping of the wavelets. A few bird cries in the distance disturbed the silence. He scrutinized the surface of the water, looking for a head sticking up, but the canal was smooth, without foam. The pilot went toward the reeds, his finger on the trigger—yes, the fugitive was there, somewhere.

Jana had let herself sink straight down; the muddy water and the lilies would protect her, but she couldn't hold her breath for more than two minutes. The killer's footsteps stopped in front of the mudbed. Duckweed was bobbing on the surface. Del Piro observed the little clump of reeds and the brown water that came up as far as his shoes. The reeds were bending gently in the breeze, the sun was shining in a limpid sky. He bent down, intrigued by the thin colored trickle that, being carried away by the current, was dissolving in the murky water. He smiled. The Indian was there, leaking blood.

The pilot pointed the Glock at the water lilies, bang, bang, when the walkie-talkie on his belt started to crackle.

“Del Piro, damn it, get back here!” Parise yelled. “Fast!”

Jana couldn't see anything; mud and fear were blurring her circuits, and sounds reached her distorted. How long had she been underwater? One minute, two? She no longer had any breath, any autonomy, only a crushing pain in her thorax. They were going to cut her in two. Her lungs in agony, Jana rose to the surface, ready to die.

The sunlight blinded her for a second; she saw the deserted shore, the rocks, but not the man sent to track her down. He had disappeared. The Mapuche remained immobile for a moment, not daring to come out of the reeds. She soon heard a piercing sound: it was the police patrol boat's siren.

 

*

 

Jana trembled all along the way. Her feet were lacerated, her arms, her hands, and blood was dripping out of her fractured nose. She made her way along the shore that led back to the house, dripping with mud and stress: where was Rubén? She hadn't seen the seaplane take off earlier, just heard the roaring of the motors when it took off into the sky. The sun was filtering through the branches. She found the boat Rubén had mentioned, hidden under the trunk of a large willow; the leather bag that had belonged to his father had slipped under the seat. She turned toward the woods.

“Rubén?”

No answer. The house was no longer very far away. Her way blocked by thornbushes, she cut toward the jungle, which grew less dense as she approached the house. The voices soon became more distinct: the Mapuche crouched behind the thickets, some forty yards from the house, and observed the scene, the taste of earth in her mouth. The cops had taken over the place, some of them wearing bulletproof vests. Two civilians were fussing with bodies. There were about half a dozen of them, lined up on the ground. Jana shivered under the branches: a kind of odor of terror was floating there. Feverishly, she scanned the row of bodies, a black shadow among the fronds, but none of the men lying there looked like Rubén. Police officers were exchanging a few words in front of the gray-hulled patrol boat tied up at the dock. One of them, who had been crouching up to that point, stood up and went toward the man who seemed to be his superior. Then Jana saw the two bodies lying on the ground some distance away: a blonde in uniform whose face had been blown away and Rubén, also inert, covered in blood. He was naked to the waist and lying on his stomach, his arms alongside his legs, with two
banderillas
still planted in his back.

Jana retreated under the branches, deaf to the world.

For a time she could never determine, she walked like a robot, haggard, and waited to lose herself in the jungle before she began to scream.

Time had passed, distorted—Mapuche time, which counts seconds as hours and begins the day at dawn. The spirits were floating, but Jana did not recognize them—not yet.

She had waited for the cops to leave before returning to the boat on the shore, hidden beneath the branches of the big willow. Once the police and their adjuncts had left, the island in the delta was left to the chaos of nature. Jana had disappeared. Her nose had doubled in size, but she didn't think about it—she no longer thought. Her brain printed images, actions without goals, moved by an external force, a kind of stubborn will to live that she may have owed to her ancestors. The trip through the meandering canals back to civilization, the boat-taxis she met as she approached El Tigre, the motorboat abandoned near the port, the detour to the rail station, her frightening look, her naked, scratched feet, the streak of bloody snot on her T-shirt, her swollen face ringed with horror that made passersby shy away from her, the suburban train that took her back to Buenos Aires, the
colectivo
: all that remained vague, seen by the eyes of another moribund person.

Jana had arrived at the Retiro wasteland before nightfall, exhausted. The tragedy had reduced her to the condition of a savage. She remained prostrated under the vaults of her workshop. Die or go mad. Now night was falling, and fear gave way to helplessness. The sculpture of iron and concrete in the middle of the workshop, her constructions, her sketches, her rejects—now it all seemed meaningless. Nothing had any value anymore, as if her whole life had never taken place. But she was there, a Mapuche since the beginning of time, and the monsters that she thought she could drive out by her will alone had come back through the door of the Dead. They had never left the Earth: they were rampant, precisely, they were sinking into the freshest wounds, taking delight in evil or coming to terms with it, marked with the human soul trampled by headless gods.

The hours passed, subtracted time that would be taken away later on, when accounts were settled. The torture of the person who witnesses, powerless, the torture of another, the wild thoughts, like those in the notebook that he had had her read in the Andes . . . What meaning to give to that? How could she survive that—should she survive that? Rubén had sacrificed himself for her, in the Christian way she hated.

This evening, it was she who was being tortured, all out.

The wind was blowing on the metal structure of the shed, a vague echo of reality. An evil force was at work in the shadows, a saboteur of dreams as if they had to pay for something, a cruel and obscene monster who had killed her love with the hands of the same executioners who had killed his father and sister thirty-five years earlier . . . No, that made no sense. Jana had not left her community, made it through everything during the crisis and the following years just to wash up there . . . A black anger slowly invaded her. There would be no more kisses at dawn out in the yard, no more little forget-me-not stars in his eyes, his warm hand on her ass, all the caresses to console the world. A premonition, a omen of an imminent end? Jana didn't know why she had run away rather than hand herself over to the police. She had acted under the shock, by instinct, driven back into the jungle by the vision of horror that had swallowed her up better than the vegetation did. Part of her soul had remained with Rubén, in the delta. She'd taken a shower when she got home, but she still felt dirty. The fear she'd felt in the room on the island was unlike anything she'd ever experienced. Jana still smelled the odor of the swine when he'd tried to rape her, the aftershave worn by the bald giant who'd interrogated her, his eyes like those of an eagle in free-fall over her, imprisoned on the table. She recalled the scene. Miguel's death, almost surreal. The old man who witnessed the torture session, the one they called “General.” That must be the famous boss, one of the oppressors whose name appeared on the original form. What did that matter now?

Then a name came back to her, a name that the events had pushed into the background: Brother Josef . . . At the end of her interrogation, the general had asked his henchmen what they should do about Brother Josef. The priest Miguel's mother was always talking about, it had to be the same man. They had also talked about a monastery, a plan B, until “the wind turns.”