A Far Country (23 page)

Isabel waited for the clerk to give her an answer to the question. She will make me go somewhere else, she thought, but the clerk pointed back to the hallway. ‘Wait there,’ she said.

She sat across from the women in the pastel dresses. The older one had a Bible on her lap, and every so often she lifted it to scrutinize a word. Then her hand shook and she set it down again. The other held a handkerchief. The rest of the hallway was empty. On the chairs, tongues of foam protruded through tears in the vinyl. Hugo began to writhe. Isabel set him on her knees. He reached for a strip of foam and stretched his mouth toward it. Roughly, she extracted it from his hand and tried to stuff it back into the seat. He began to cry. ‘Shhhh,’ she whispered, pulling him close to her.

‘Boyfriend, right?’ said the woman with the handkerchief. ‘Can’t tell you how many stories I know like yours, of girls coming to the city looking for their boyfriends. My advice is to forget it, go home, find a new man—but forget him. You don’t want to see where he is.’ ‘It is my brother,’ said Isabel. ‘Sure, sweetheart.’ ‘It is.’ The woman stared at her for a while. ‘A brother is something else,’ she said, and the other woman looked up from the Bible and nodded.

The clerk came out of the office and called the two women inside, leaving Isabel alone. She listened to an argument in another room. ‘She is going mad,’ said a man. ‘She can do nothing but look for Carolina. It’s all she thinks about.’

A wooden cross and a poster hung on the wall. The poster
read
HELP FIND US
and showed a map made of little faces. Isabel looked at them until the clerk appeared and led her past a broad file cabinet to a room behind frosted glass. Everywhere smelled of dust and old paper. A man sat at a desk. He wore a shirt with a tie loosened at the collar, cuffs rolled up over heavy forearms. He lowered a pair of reading glasses as she entered. ‘Yes?’ ‘This girl wants to file a report,’ said the clerk, motioning her to sit. ‘She hasn’t filed a B.O. yet.’ She turned to Isabel. ‘This is the inspector. Don’t take too much of his time.’ She left.

The inspector had heavy bags under his eyes. To Isabel, he said, ‘You are here to report someone who disappeared.’ She nodded. ‘Usually,’ said the inspector, ‘we advise people to wait twenty-four hours. Most missing people return home in twenty-four hours.’

‘He disappeared three months ago,’ said Isabel.

The inspector closed his eyes and rubbed them with his fingers. After replacing his glasses, he took a pen out of his shirt pocket and pulled a leaf of paper from a short stack. ‘Your name?’ She answered. ‘Family name? Age, Name of the disappeared, Identification number of the disappeared?’ At that moment Hugo began to babble. She shifted him to the edge of her knees to bounce him. She looked up. ‘Sorry?’ ‘What’s your brother’s identification number?’ the inspector repeated.

She paused. ‘I don’t think he has one.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘I mean I don’t think he has one. Where I’m from, we don’t have them … I don’t have one.’

The inspector stared over his glasses before continuing. ‘Very well … Name of parents, Age of the disappeared, Hair color, Eye color, Tattoos, Typical clothing, Height approximately, Weight approximately, Date of disappearance?’ There she stopped. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You said three months, right?’ ‘Maybe. He lived with my cousin. Three months was the last time she saw him. But she works. It could be less.’ ‘When did
you
last see him?’ ‘Me? Many months ago. In the north. I just arrived here.’ ‘Because of the droughts?’ asked the inspector. ‘What?’ ‘You came because of the droughts?’ She considered the question. It had rained last year. They had gone hungry for other reasons: the landowners, the price of sugar. There is a trap, she thought, but said, ‘Yes, because of the droughts.’

He turned back to the paper without acknowledging her answer. ‘And when you spoke to him, did anything seem different?’ ‘No.’ ‘No mention of anything unusual.’ ‘No, just good things.’ ‘
Good things
. Like what?’ ‘Things that were going well. With his work. He’s a musician. He plays fiddle.’ Then she added, ‘He’s one of the best in the state.’ The man didn’t look up when she said this. ‘He played in bars,’ she pursued. ‘And by the sea. He even sent us money.’ Now he looked at her. ‘Was he in a band here?’ ‘He was going to be in a band.’ ‘
Going
to be in a band?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘You mean he played alone?’ ‘Yes … I think so.’

‘And that was his principal employment.’

A statement, not a question. She shifted awkwardly.

‘Did he have another job? A factory job, a construction job?’ ‘No,’ she said sharply. ‘I told you. He didn’t need to.’ She knew immediately that this was a lie.

Hugo had stopped his babbling. Now he reached for her breast and began to cry. She struggled to find his bottle with her free hand. ‘He yours?’ asked the inspector. She stared at him. ‘No. He’s my cousin’s. I watch him because it’s my job. I don’t have a baby.’

‘Very well,’ said the man, picking up his pen.

‘It’s true about his music,’ she said.

The inspector ignored her. ‘Has he disappeared before?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘But this is different, of course.’

‘Yes, it’s different,’ she snapped.

‘I understand,’ he said, holding up his hand. ‘I’m just asking.’

She looked away. She realized she had shouted.

‘Can you tell me about the other times?’

‘The other times he left? Once, back home, he went to the state capital. It was for two months, and he performed there. He came back with money he made. And then here, a couple of times, he went away to the coast, to play at bars. Good bars. My cousin’s boyfriend lives there, but this time he hasn’t seen my brother.’ ‘Do you have his phone number?’ ‘Who? Manuela’s boyfriend? He works on a ship. He doesn’t have a phone number.’

The man rubbed his eyes again. ‘Okay,’ he sighed. ‘I can see where this is going. Just a couple more questions. Where are you living?’ ‘At my cousin’s.’ ‘And the address there?’ ‘It’s in the Settlements.’ ‘Do you have an address?’ She shook her head; she had forgotten the street. ‘No one uses addresses.’ ‘Any number? Number of a house, apartment?’ ‘I said there isn’t an address. There isn’t a number or an address.’ ‘What’s the name of the neighborhood?’ She paused. ‘New Eden,’ she said.

He looked up. ‘Oh … that New Eden? Your brother … was he …’ ‘He wasn’t one of those boys.’ ‘Easy. I didn’t say he was.’ ‘It’s good they got those boys,’ she said, repeating her cousin’s words.

‘It is good,’ he replied, without conviction. He paused. ‘You don’t have a photo of him, do you?’ She shifted Hugo to the side and reached into her bag, where she had brought the
portrait of Isaias. She handed it to the inspector. ‘He doesn’t look exactly like that. The artist, he touched it up a little.’ An amused smile played over the inspector’s lips. ‘Now I see,’ he said. ‘Was this made in the north?’ ‘No, here. The portraitist came to the hill.’ ‘It’s well done,’ said the inspector. His voice softened. ‘He really was going to be a musician, wasn’t he?’ She heard compassion in his voice, which frightened her more.

He set the photo down. When he spoke again, he weighed his words. ‘Listen … Isabel. There are a lot of things I can tell you. The first is that we are going to file a report, and I’ll take this case myself. But I have to be honest with you. There isn’t much I can do.

‘We have,’ he said, picking up a pen and tapping it on the table, ‘thousands of people reported missing every year. Granted, we handle the whole state, but most cases are from here. Thousands of people in a city with ten million or twelve or fifteen, depending on where you draw your lines. And those are just the ones we hear about. I don’t want to venture how many boys in our system have your brother’s name. I’ve seen enough Isaiases to make a whole army of Isaiases. I’ve worked here twenty years, and if I’ve learned anything, it’s that there are more ways for people to disappear than you can dream of. Most of them come home, thank God. A boy runs off with a sweetheart. A girl gets in a fight with her parents, heads into the street, decides it’s too cold and goes home. But others decide not to come back. Not saying that isn’t a problem. But disappearing isn’t a crime. Many people who disappear chose to disappear—’

‘Not Isaias,’ said Isabel.

He pressed on. ‘Fair enough. But there are a lot of people
who come here thinking they can be someone else. Who think of their lives back in the country and want to escape.’

‘He isn’t like that.’

‘I didn’t say he was,’ said the inspector. ‘I’m just telling you what I tell everyone. I would—’

The door opened a crack, and the clerk put her head in. ‘Inspector? Do you have a moment? Miss S, from this morning? She’s back and acting crazy. Can you come outside and have a word with her?’

Without finishing what he was saying, he rose and followed her out.

Isabel waited. She watched the minute hand of a clock move slowly. Hugo had finished with the bottle, and she set it on the floor. She looked about the room, at the bare walls and the dented metal cabinets. She had to move, she thought. She had the sudden impulse to run. She could be out of the building in seconds, over the hills. She imagined herself capable of incredible speeds. She didn’t know where she would go, but it didn’t matter.

She stood, and began to pace. ‘He is not ashamed of me,’ she said aloud, to the baby, and the thought was so painful that she forced her mind away from it and back into the room. She wondered where the inspector had gone, who Miss S was and who she was missing. On the far side of the room, above a shelf, she saw a single piece of paper tacked to the wall. She went to it. Her lips moved as she read,

It was an unfamiliar poem; she didn’t know if it was by the inspector or if he had copied it down from somewhere else. Below it was a box full of photos. She looked back to the door, but there was no sign of the inspector. She hiked Hugo higher on her hip. He started chewing her hair. She touched the top photo on the stack. It showed a little boy in sailor clothes. He smiled a big toothless smile and reached for someone behind the photographer.

The next photo was a girl her age in a graduation gown, with dark black skin and long curly hair with glints of gold.

In the next photo, a greenish Polaroid, a young woman held a baby up to the camera. He wore a hat typical of country singers. On the bottom was written, in hesitant script,
Music Star
.

Isabel wanted to stop, but she couldn’t. She looked at the next photo, a boy in a soccer uniform, and then the next, a boy and girl at the beach. An inked arrow pointed to the girl, who had her fist on her hip and a sassy cant to her head.

She looked up, her chest tight, and read the poem again. She returned to her chair, but her eyes kept dashing back to the box on the shelf. She forced her gaze away, and it settled on a folder. A girl’s name was written in black ink. She looked over her shoulder, then swiveled the folder toward her. She opened it awkwardly, pushing Hugo’s hand away as he grabbed for its corner. In the front was a photocopy of a Bulletin of Occurrence with the same questions the inspector had asked.

Isabel turned the page. More testimony, phone numbers, police reports. She thumbed through the pages until a paper-clipped photo caught her eye: a smiling girl in a brightly colored swimsuit, laughing, holding her arms high.

The door opened, and Isabel slammed the file shut. A second, gray-green photo slipped out and slid across the floor. In two steps, the inspector picked it up and placed it upside
down on the desk. He took the file from her. ‘This isn’t yours,’ he said.

She blurted, ‘What did that photo show?’

The inspector began to say something and stopped.
‘Isabel.’
He took a deep breath, put his fists on the desk and leaned toward her. ‘Why are you looking for sadness? Why do you want more sadness? Worry about your brother, but don’t go looking for more, understand?’ He placed his hand on the file. ‘This didn’t happen to your brother. It happens, yes, but not to him. There are so many people here, and most of them never see anything like this.’

He sat. ‘Listen, it’s late. About … Isaias … I will file the report. We’ll give his name to the hospitals, the city morgue, the rest of the police department. You can get in touch with us anytime, but I advise you to be patient. If you want to look, usually we tell people to go to the big hospitals, the police precincts near your district, any place he used to go.’

‘By myself?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it. I want to help. I’m just telling you. For the last hour I had a woman yelling at me as if I made her son disappear. No one here wants someone to be missing.’

He sat back. She thought he would send her away, but instead he closed Isaias’s folder, removed his glasses and set them on the desk. He stared as if he were staring into the distance.