Of Love and Shadows (28 page)

He went into his bedchamber, closed the thick wooden door, removed his clothing, and pulled on his nightshirt. Only then did he feel his weariness and the weight of his new responsibility, but he did not allow himself to doubt. He knelt at his prie-dieu, buried his head in his hands, and spoke with God, as he had done all his life with the deep certainty of being heard and of finding a response to his questions. At times the voice of his Creator was slow in making itself heard, or was manifest in tortuous ways, but always there was an answer. The Cardinal knelt immersed in prayer until he became aware of his icy feet and the crushing burden of his years. He remembered that he could no longer make such demands of his old bones, and he climbed into bed with a sigh of satisfaction, because the Lord had blessed his decisions.

*  *  *

Wednesday dawned as sunny as a midsummer day. The commission arrived in Los Riscos in three automobiles, headed by the Auxiliary Bishop and directed by José Leal, who, instructed by his brother, had marked the route on a map. Journalists, representatives of international organizations, and a number of attorneys were observed from a distance by the General's agents, who had kept them under surveillance since the evening before.

Irene wanted to be a part of the team from her magazine, but Francisco would not allow it. Journalists had no guarantee of safety, unlike the other members of the commission, whose positions afforded them a measure of security. If Irene and Francisco were ever connected with the discovery of the bodies, they could not hope to escape with their lives; and there was a good possibility they would be, since both had been present when Evangelina tossed Lieutenant Ramírez around, were known to have made inquiries about the missing girl, and had maintained contact with the Ranquileo family.

The cars halted a short distance from the mine. José Leal was the first to attack the rubble at the entrance, using to advantage his bearlike strength and his familiarity with hard labor. The others followed his lead, and within a few minutes they had made an opening. From their position, the Security Corps communicated by radio to inform the General that the suspects were trespassing, and opening a sealed mine in spite of posted warnings: We await instructions, General, sir; over and out. Limit yourself to observation, as I ordered you, and make no move to intervene. No matter what happens, do not get into a confrontation with those people; over and out.

The Auxiliary Bishop had decided to take the initiative, and he was the first to enter the mine. He was not an agile man, but he managed to get his legs through the opening and then, twisting like a mongoose, slipped the rest of his body inside. The stench struck him like a club, but it was not until his eyes became adjusted to the darkness and he saw the cadaver of Evangelina Ranquileo that he uttered a cry that brought the others running. He was assisted back through the entrance, helped to his feet, and led to the shade of the trees to recover his breath. Meanwhile, José Leal improvised torches from rolled newspapers, suggested that everyone cover his face with a handkerchief and led the members of the commission, one by one, inside the sepulcher, where, half kneeling, each saw the decomposing body of the girl and the Vesuvius of piled-up bones, hair, and tattered cloth. Every stone they removed revealed new human remains. Once outside, no one was capable of speech; trembling and pale, the observers stared at one another, struggling to comprehend the enormity of what they had seen. José Leal was the only one who had the heart to close the entrance again; he was thinking of dogs that might nose among the bones, or of the possibility that the authors of those crimes, warned by the gaping hole, might spirit away the evidence—a futile precaution, since some two hundred yards away sat a parked police van equipped with European telescopes and North American infrared-ray machines that informed the Colonel of the contents of the mine almost at the same moment the Auxiliary Bishop saw them for himself. But the General's instructions were very clear: Don't interfere with the priests, wait until they take the next step to see what the shit they have in mind. After all, there's nothing there but a few unidentified bodies.

It was still early when the commission returned to the city; after swearing not to comment, they went their separate ways, planning to meet that evening to give an account of their activities to the Cardinal.

That night the lights in the Archiepiscopal Residence remained on until dawn, to the discomfiture of the spies stationed in the treetops with apparatus acquired in the Far East that enabled them to see through walls in the dark. But we still don't know what they're planning, General, sir. It's past curfew now and they're still talking and drinking coffee. If you give us the word, we'll break in, search the place, and arrest everyone there. What did you say? Idiots! Try not to be such assholes!

At dawn the visitors left and the prelate bade them goodbye at the door. Only he seemed serene, for his soul was at peace and he was a stranger to fear. He went to bed for a while, and after breakfast he called the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to ask him to receive as expeditiously as possible three of his envoys, the bearers of a letter of great importance. One hour later the envelope was in the hands of the Justice, who wished he were on the other side of the world, anywhere far away from this ticking time bomb that must inevitably explode.

To the Honorable Chief Justice,

The Supreme Court

Sr. Chief Justice:

Some days ago a person communicated to a priest, in the secrecy of the confessional, that he had knowledge and proof of the existence of a number of cadavers which were to be found in a place whose location he supplied to the priest. The priest, authorized by the informant, called the aforementioned information to the attention of ecclesiastical authorities.

With the purpose of establishing the veracity of the information, yesterday, in the early hours of the morning, a commission composed of the signers of this letter, the directors of the newsmagazines
Acontecer
and
Semana
, respectively, along with officials from the Office for Human Rights, went to the location described by the informant. The site is a mine, at present abandoned, located among the foothills in the vicinity of Los Riscos.

Once at the site, and after removing the loose matter that blocked the mouth of the mine, the aforementioned individuals corroborated the existence of remains corresponding to an undetermined number of human beings. Following this verification, we cut short our inspection of the site, as our only objective was to confirm the gravity of the report received; we were not authorized to proceed further in a matter more appropriate for judicial investigation.

Nevertheless, it is our opinion that the appearance of the locale and the disposition of the remains whose existence we have established substantiate the eventual discovery of a large number of victims.

The public outcry that the aforementioned information may evoke has caused us to bring the matter directly to the attention of the highest judicial power in the land, so that the Supreme Tribunal may adopt the necessary measures for a rapid and exhaustive investigation.

With regards to Your Honor,

we, the undersigned, remain,

Very sincerely yours,

Alvaro Urbaneja (Auxiliary Bishop)

Jesús Valdovinos (Vicar General)

Eulogio García de la Rosa (Attorney)

The Chief Justice knew the Cardinal. He recognized that this was not a skirmish and that the Cardinal was prepared to wage all-out war. He must have all the aces up his sleeve, because he was too astute to lay that pile of bones in
his
hands and challenge him to bring the forces of law to bear unless he was very sure. It required no great experience to conclude that the perpetrators of those crimes had acted with the approval of the government, and so, having no confidence in the authorities, the Church had intervened. He dried the sweat from his forehead and neck and reached for a pill for his high blood pressure and another for his heart, fearing that his moment of truth had arrived after years of juggling justice in accord with the General's instructions; after years of “losing” files and tying up the Vicariate's lawyers in bureaucratic red tape; after years of fabricating laws to fit, retroactively, recently invented crimes. Oh, why didn't I retire in time, why didn't I take my pension while it was still possible to do so with dignity, go cultivate my roses in peace and pass into history free of this burden of guilt and shame that won't let me sleep by night and that haunts me by day if I relax for so much as an instant; it's not as if I did it from personal ambition; I only meant to serve the nation, as the General himself asked me to do a few days after he assumed command; ah, but it's too late now, that damned mine is yawning at my feet like my own grave, and since the Cardinal decided to intervene, these dead cannot be silenced as so many have been; I should have retired on the day of the military coup, the day they bombed the Presidential Palace, jailed the Ministers, dissolved the Congress, when the eyes of the world were focused on us, waiting for someone to stand up and defend the constitution; that is the day I should have gone home, claiming that I was old, that I was ill; that is what I should have done instead of placing myself at the service of the Junta, instead of undertaking the purge of my own courts of law.

The first impulse of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was to call the Cardinal and make him a proposition, but even as the thought occurred to him, he realized that this matter was beyond his capacity as a negotiator. He picked up the telephone, dialed the secret number, and spoke directly with the General.

*  *  *

A circle of iron, helmets, and boots was drawn around Los Riscos mine, but nothing had been able to prevent the rumor from spreading like a firestorm, from mouth to mouth, house to house, valley to valley, until it was known everywhere and a deep shudder had run along the spine of the nation. The soldiers held the curious at bay but did not dare block the passage of the Cardinal and his commission as they had blocked journalists and the observers from foreign countries drawn there by the atrocity of the massacre. At eight o'clock on Friday morning, personnel from the Department of Criminal Investigation, wearing masks and rubber gloves, began removal of the terrible evidence under instructions from the Supreme Court, which had in turn received its instructions from the General: Open the damned mine, get those bones out of there, and assure the people that the guilty will not go unpunished. Then we'll see—the public has a short memory. The investigators arrived in a small truck loaded with yellow plastic bags and a crew of masons to dislodge the rubble. They made orderly and accurate notations of every item: one human body, female, in an advanced state of decomposition, covered with a dark blanket; one shoe; strands of hair; bones of an inferior extremity; one scapula; one humerus; various vertebrae; a trunk with both superior extremities attached; one pair of pants; two skulls, one complete, the other lacking the mandible; a section of jawbone with metal-filled teeth; more vertebrae; pieces of ribs; a trunk with shreds of clothing; shirts and socks of various colors; a pelvic bone; and various additional bones . . . all of which filled thirty-eight bags duly sealed, numbered, and carried to the truck. It took several trips to transport the bags to the Medical Institute. The Deputy Minister counted fourteen cadavers, based on the number of heads found, but he was not unmindful of the gruesome possibility that, had they done their job more carefully, other bodies would have appeared beneath successive layers of time and earth. Someone made the macabre joke that if they dug a little deeper they would find skeletons of conquistadors, Incan mummies, and fossils of Cro-Magnon man, but no one laughed; the horror had depressed them all.

Since early that morning, people had begun to gather, coming as near as possible before being stopped by the line of rifles, then standing directly behind the soldiers. First to arrive were the widows and orphans of the area, each wearing a black strip of cloth on the left arm as a sign of mourning. Later came others, almost all the country people from around Los Riscos. About noon, busloads from the outlying barrios of the capital arrived. Affliction hung in the air like the forewarning of a storm, immobilizing the very birds in their flight. For many hours, the people stood beneath a pale sun that washed out the outlines and colors of the world, while bag after bag was filled. From afar they strained to recognize a shoe, a shirt, a lock of hair. Those who had the best view passed information to the others: There's another skull, this one has gray hair. It might be our friend Flores, do you remember him? Now they're closing another bag, but they're not through—they're bringing out more. They say they're going to take the remains to the Morgue and that we can go there to get a closer look. And how much will that cost? I don't know, we'll have to pay something. Pay to identify your own dead? No, sir, that's something ought to be free.

All afternoon people kept coming, until they covered the hillside, listening to the sound of the shovels and picks moving the dirt, the coming and going of the truck, the traffic of police, officials, and legal advisers, the near riot of newspapermen who had been denied permission to go any closer. As the sun set, a chorus of voices was raised in a burial prayer. One person set up a tent improvised from blankets, prepared to stay for an indefinite time, but the guardsmen beat him with their rifle butts and ran him off before others prepared to stay, too. That was shortly before the appearance of the Cardinal in the archdiocesan automobile; he drove through the line of soldiers, ignoring their signals to stop, descended from the vehicle, and strode purposefully to the truck, where he stood and implacably counted the bags while the Deputy Minister hastily invented explanations. When the last load of yellow plastic bags had been driven away and the police had ordered the area cleared, night had fallen and people began to walk home in the darkness, exchanging stories of their own dramas, proving that all misery has a common thread.