“So tell me about it, then. That was the last conversation.”
“I can’t remember, Mateo. After I realized that you weren’t with them, I wasn’t even listening.”
“Did you speak with both of them, or just my grandfather?”
“With both of them, first with him and then with her.”
“Did you tell them what had happened?”
“No.”
“But they must have asked for me and for Ramón.”
“I suppose I told them that you were fine and that Ramón wasn’t around, so I couldn’t put him on. Something like that.”
“And that was your farewell to them?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“So then Ramón took me from you, and you took my grandparents from me.”
“I didn’t know any better.”
“Me neither. Don’t worry, Lolé, you and I are a team.”
She could have prevented it and yet did not. She could have noticed, could have realized, and yet did not. She could have stopped it and yet did not. The mocking refrain haunted Lorenza back then. She could have her son in her arms, and she didn’t. Her thoughts got all tripped up on that fact and couldn’t move on, a cat with raggedy paws and its head on backward, a cat without a head, without paws. It drove her mad to realize, at such a late point, the devious rituals in which she had been inducted, the trap that Forcás had set for her to make her both responsible and complicit, a trap that only someone like her, who refused to see the obvious, would have fallen into.
At seven, she contacted the publisher of her magazine, an influential man who might be able to help her. She made a great effort detailing to him exactly what had happened in a most coherent manner; and through him they gained access to confidential information from several airlines, which gave them access to the passenger lists of flights that had left Bogotá during the last twenty-four hours. It was a futile task, however, since she knew that Ramón would have used false names.
Flights where? they asked Lorenza. Flights to anywhere. Domestic or international? Domestic and international, it could be any of them, or none of them. It was also possible that he had not left Colombia, or even left Bogotá, although the likeliest scenario was that Ramón had taken Mateo to Argentina, where he knew the land like the back of his hand. It was rather obvious. He wasn’t going to take off to France, or Australia, with a small child in tow, almost no money in his pocket, and ignorant of the language. He had probably returned to Argentina, but he also could have gone anywhere else.
The head of security at the airport did not think they had boarded a plane and escaped by air. And he tried to reassure Lorenza that no one, not even the father of a child, could take such child out of the country without the express written permission of the mother, a notarized letter from her authorizing the minor’s trip. But nothing was easier for Forcás than falsifying a letter of permission. That would not have been an impediment. The only thing that was evident to Lorenza was that there was so little she could do. There’s no going back, she had told Ramón in the park. She herself had uttered her sentence, there’s no going back, without understanding the weight of its full meaning. Never again, Ramón’s letter said. Never again would Lorenza have her son. Never again. In what corner of the world could she start looking for him, if he and his father could be anywhere at this point? Existing as if in another time, their fingerprints rubbed off, their lives recast.
Her small child was lost in the immense world, out of her reach. Her son, Mateo, had become a droplet in the ocean. Her son had been snatched from her. What the dictatorship’s henchmen had not been able to do to her, Forcás had just accomplished.
Since it was Saturday, most of the offices were closed, but hour after hour of that entire day, with her mother perennially at her side, Lorenza was in contact with a lawyer and a government official, the former having the grace to meet her in his own apartment and the latter at his country house. Not that she believed anything would come of her efforts, on the contrary. She knew with certainty that those superficial gestures would yield no results. Ramón must have already gone under and was now moving below the surface.
Her sister and brother-in-law did whatever they could, and the magazine assigned an investigative team to the case. But by that evening, they still were empty-handed. There was no trace of the boy or of Forcás. Hours had passed and they were still right where they had begun. Everyone they had consulted had advised that she should immediately report the kidnapping of her son to the Argentinean authorities, so that they could garner public support for the case. Her family had the contacts to do it, starting with one of her father’s old friends who had been ambassador to Argentina and who offered himself to make the gesture before the military junta.
“No,” Lorenza said, “no, no, no, no. I will not cross that line. Those criminals don’t find children, they make them disappear. No.”
Although the decision might appear incomprehensible and abhorrent: No. Betray Forcás to the dictatorship? No. She couldn’t go there. She wasn’t going to ally herself with her enemies to chase the man who had once been her closest ally. She would not let the position they had put her in drag her through that degree of depravity. Should she look for her son relying on criminals who had abducted hundreds of kids, children of female prisoners they had executed? Not even the loss of her son would force her to cross that line.
“Very nice, Mother,” Mateo said disdainfully, and the resentment trembled in his voice. “Congratulations, very much like you, your political convictions always before anything else.”
“Wait a second, Mateo, just wait a second, and listen to what I’m saying.”
“I don’t want to know any more,” he said, leaving the room, walking quickly down the hallway and just reaching the elevator as his mother caught up to him.
“You’re not going anywhere,” she said, blocking his way. “You’re staying right here and listening to me. You wanted to hear the story, right? Now you’re going to let me finish. Come on, let’s go back to the room. Would you like an ice-cold Coke, to cool off a bit?
Mateo did not reply but followed her, and once inside the room, filled a glass to the rim with ice and poured himself a ginger ale from the minibar.
“Good, now look me in the eyes,” his mother told him. “There was also something else to consider, Mateo, something of a very practical nature. Think, Mateo. What could it be?”
Mateo drank his ginger ale sip by sip and then took his time chewing on the ice.
“They would have never found him,” he said finally.
“Exactly, that was the practical consideration, it would not have helped us. If the dictator’s henchmen had not been able to round up Forcás for all those years, they weren’t going to do it then. Asking them for help was not only a repulsive and grotesque thing to do, but in the end it would have been a colossal mistake. I risked everything if I played that hand. I was desperate, but not so blind that I didn’t see these things.”
8
LORENZA WANTED TO take advantage of what was left of the beautiful sunny afternoon. Mateo had not even showered, so content in those pajamas, which almost had a life of their own by now, the same pair of socks that he had nearly worn out on the hotel carpet. He finally went to shower, taking forever, and when he reappeared in the bedroom, amid clouds of steam and cologne, he looked very handsome and dazzling, like new.
He came out crooning the Who’s “Pinball Wizard,” with razor nicks on his face, minty breath, his hair washed with jojoba shampoo, conditioned and rinsed and slicked with a double dose of gel, a clean shirt, black fitted Levi’s, a pair of custom-made Clarks shoes instead of his usual ratty Converses, a confident smile, and a sudden interest to go out and get to know Buenos Aires.