“You’re kidding—”
“I swear. You know what he says? That he let us go. That time, when we escaped from the cabin. He says he let us go. That he could have stopped it, but he didn’t.”
“…”
“Lolé?”
“Huh?”
“Are you there?”
“Yes.”
“Are you surprised?”
“No, not entirely.”
“He’s lying, right?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s true. It was too easy, wasn’t it?”
“Aren’t you angry? I am.”
“I’m not. I took you with me. I’d gone to get you and I took you with me. The rest is not my business.”
“But why would he let us go?”
“What did he tell you?”
“He didn’t tell me anything. He cried. He said nothing.”
“It could be for two reasons. At least that’s what I’ve always thought.”
“The first?”
“He realized that it was no use. Things were not going to fix themselves by force.”
“That wouldn’t have been too difficult to figure out. The second?”
“The second? He ran out of money.”
“The Mafia money?”
“I imagine that he used it to pay for that.”
“For what?”
“The whole operation in Bariloche. End of money, end of happiness. But you have him right there, you can ask him yourself.”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t talk much. He just cries.”
“Tell me what’s going on, son. How are you holding up? Jesus Christ, what a reunion that must have been … So you called him, kiddo, who would have thought. You waited to get rid of me to call him, damn you. Did he just arrive?”
“Nah, he got here last night.”
“How could you not have called me!”
“I called, I swear. I called your friend’s house and no one answered.”
“Oh damn, we were at the movies. But tell me, has he been nice to you? Does he look old?”
“He’s got a belly. But it was true about the wide shoulders.”
“How is it for you? Do you like your father?”
“For the moment, I like my sister. Yesterday, we went sledding.”
“So you have a sister. How old is she? What’s her name?”
“She’s eleven. Her name is Eleonora. And there’s a baby called Diego.”
“There’s also a baby?”
“Eighteen months old.”
“Did you give your father the Basque beret?”
“No. I left it in Buenos Aires, in the black suitcase.”
“What the hell, kiddo, how long have you had that gift … Don’t worry, we’ll find a way to get it to him later.”
“No, he doesn’t seem the kind of guy who wears a beret.”
“Have you been able to talk to him, tell him things, like you imagined all this time?”
“Not much. There’s no privacy.”
“Oh.”
“There’s his wife and children. We haven’t been able to talk one-on-one. I like his wife too. She says that in the kids’ room there is a picture of me hanging on the wall. From when I was a baby. Lies, right? Last night, he and I did talk alone for a while, but about neoliberalism. He does not like it at all, neoliberalism.”
“And you, what did you say?”
“Nothing, he didn’t ask for my opinion. Just as well, I don’t have an opinion about that. But I must tell you something, and then that’s it, because I promised Eleonora that I would help her put the baby to sleep. It’s her responsibility to put the baby to sleep every night.”
“Wait, Mateo, wait. We have to coordinate everything, because tomorrow you and I have to move with the precision of a Swiss clock. You’re coming to Buenos Aires, I’ll wait for you at this airport, we take a taxi to the international airport, and from there we’ll board the flight to Bogotá together. There is plenty of time, so don’t worry, but we have to have our headlights on so there’s not a hitch.”
“That’s why I called you, Lolé. You better go alone to Bogotá. Is it all right?”
“Is it all right? What are you talking about?”
“I’m staying with Ramón. Everything’s taken care of.”
“What!”
“The beret is for you. You can have it.”
“Wait, Mateo, this is serious. What do you mean you’re staying with Ramón, you can’t just make that decision on your own, you know I—”
“It’s only for two or three weeks, just until the end of my school vacation.”
“But, Mateo—”
“Don’t worry, I’m not two and a half years old anymore. If I smell a Ramónism, I’ll take off running, and this Ramón will never catch me. I’m half his weight and a head taller. Trust me, Lorenza. I’ll find out who this man is, and when I’ve figured it out, I’ll come back.”
~ ~ ~
A grant from the Guggenheim Foundation helped to finance part of the writing of this novel.
a note about the author
Laura Restrepo is the bestselling author of several prizewinning novels published in more than twenty languages, including Leopard in the Sun, which won the Arzobispo Juan San Clemente Prize; The Angel of Galilea, which won the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize in Mexico and the Prix France Culture in France; and Delirium, for which she was awarded the 2004 Alfaguara Prize, with a jury headed by Nobel laureate José Saramago, and the 2006 Grinzane Cavour Prize in Italy. Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2007, Restrepo currently divides her time between Bogotá and Mexico City.