“Don’t go loopy on me, kiddo, he is not in Bariloche. Were you listening when I told you that he was in La Plata?”
“Are you going to spit or not?”
“Turn the TV down so we can talk.”
“I’ll turn the TV down if you spit the foam out.”
“All right! There! I spit it out. But from now on everybody brushes their teeth whenever and however they damn well feel like it.”
“Good. So no more nagging about yellow teeth and cavities or counting the days since I brushed them last. And so, did you always trust your comrades?”
“Pick up your clothes, kiddo. Room service is bringing breakfast and I don’t want the room to be a mess,” Lorenza ordered, but it was like speaking to the air. “Come on, Mateo, pick up a little bit. And yes, I did.”
“You did what?”
“Trust the comrades in the party. Isn’t that what you just asked?”
“Even if they were tortured to get them to name names?”
“Well, I was never denounced. In general, those in the party did not betray each other. There was a high moral standard among the comrades. A high moral stan-dard, that seems like such a dated phrase, but it was true, a very high standard.”
“Were you ever tortured?”
“No.”
“And if you had been tortured? Would you have denounced others?”
“Torture is a pretty fucked-up business. Who knows how much you can take?”
“And what did they ask? The torturers, what did they want to know?”
“Names, addresses … sometimes they were after something specific, and sometimes they just asked general questions. Other times they had no idea who they were torturing or why they were torturing him, and then they didn’t even know what to ask.”
Years later, after she had returned to Colombia and had been writing for La Crónica for some time, she interviewed an ex-sergeant who had been a torturer in Argentina during the dictatorship. He told her that they would jot down any information that they ripped from the prisoner on scraps of paper, which they would more often than not misplace.
“Maybe we should just go to La Plata to look for your father,” Lorenza said. “I can’t tomorrow or the next day, but Thursday I can. I’m free Thursday through Monday, so we can take a bus to La Plata, and if nothing turns up there we’ll look for him in Polvaredas, where his grandparents lived.”
“Why don’t we just look him up in the Buenos Aires phone book?” Mateo grabbed the tome and began to leaf through the pages. “Let’s see I … I … Irigoyen … shit I went down too far, here, Iribarren Armanado, Pablo; Iribarren Cirlot, Dolores: Iribarren Darretain, Ramón! Here it is, Lorenza, Iribarren Darretain, Ramón—”
“You’re kidding!”
“No, look, Iribarren Darretain, Ramón.”
“It can’t be, Mateo, let me see. There it is, a Ramón Iribarren. It has to be some other person. It can’t be him.”
“What other person, Lorenza, with those two surnames? It’s him.”
“Maybe it’s a joke, so prosaic, the enigmatic Forcás easily reachable and in alphabetical order. I don’t buy it, going from the underground resistance to the phone book. Shit, so these are the fruits of democracy?”
“Behold, my father, after so many years of mystery,” the young man said, and both broke into laughter because there was nothing else to do.
“Let me see again,” Lorenza said, grabbing the phone book.
“Iribarren Darretain, Ramón,” Mateo recited. “It’s there. Who else can it be?”
“Does it say where he lives?”
“What? Here, in Buenos Aires. It’s the Buenos Aires phone book, right? Shit, that’s so fucked up, Lolé. Maybe he lives right next door. What a disaster, what a shock. Let go of the phone book, leave it wherever it was. And shut it, I beg you, I don’t know what got into me to go looking in it.”
“Let me at least write down the number—”
“Come on. Lorenza, let’s get out of this room.”
“But I just ordered breakfast.”
“Cancel it. Let’s get out of here. Cancel the order, Lorenza. We can have breakfast downstairs.”
“You’re still in your pajamas.”
“Then hide that phone book. Put it under the bed, wherever, I just don’t want to see it. Come, come,” he said, going to her, and putting her hand over his tightly shut eyes, like when he was a child and afraid of something, “cover my eyes, Mommy, please, please, cover my eyes.”
5
WHEN LORENZA RETURNED to the hotel room late that afternoon, she found her son still in his pajamas, his hair tousled, sitting beside the phone.
“Did you call?” she asked.
“No.”
“Come on, kiddo, just get it over with,” she tried to encourage him. “What are we, heroes or buffoons?” The question was her papa’s. Anytime that he had to take a risk he’d said it aloud: Heroes or buffoons?
“I’d rather be a buffoon,” Mateo said. “The heroes can all go to hell.”
“Then I’ll call. Just to confirm that it’s his number,” she proposed. But he screamed no, not to do it.
“Don’t stick your nose in this, Mother. I have to take care of this on my own, by myself.” He grabbed the phone from her, but immediately settled down and handed it back. “Fine, call, Lolé. But I forbid you from saying anything. Just see if it’s his voice and hang up right away.”
She promised that she wouldn’t say anything, that he had nothing to worry about, she knew that the words had to come from him, from Mateo, and only him. Then she dialed the number and let it ring a few times, as he obsessively twisted the lock of hair that fell over his brow with his index finger, like he always did when he was nervous.
“No one picks up?”
“Not yet.”
“Maybe Ramón doesn’t live there anymore,” Mateo said, and she realized how badly he was tormented by doubt. “Maybe he leaves early for work and doesn’t come back till late at night.”
“We won’t know unless we call,” his mother said, and waited until a machine picked up, the recording asking for the caller to leave a message because there was no one home at the moment. She listened to the voice and hung up without leaving a message, just as they had agreed.
“It’s him,” she told him. “It’s your father’s voice.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“Did he say his name? Did the voice say that it was Ramón Iribarren?”
“No, not in so many words, all it said was, I am not here to take your call, or something like that. But I know it was him.”
“Well, at least we know that he is alive. That’s something, right? Unless, of course, he died after he recorded the message, but no, no, that would be too Gothic. And what exactly did he say: I am not here to take your call, or we are not here? You have to remember, Lorenza.” Mateo grew impatient when she claimed that she couldn’t really remember, and he shot her an angry glare.
“You’re right, wait a second, let me think,” she responded. “But don’t give me that murderous look.”
“So just tell me then. It’s very important. If Ramón said, I am not here, then he could live alone. But if he said, we are not here, then he probably has kids, another wife. Do you think that he would speak to his other children about me?”
“If you want, I’ll call him.”
“That’s not the point … with that expression.”
“What expression?”
“No expression at all, that’s the problem. How many years has it been since you heard Ramón’s voice? And now you hear it, and it’s like nothing, and you answer my questions like a robot. I don’t even know if you still love Ramón or despise him.”