The Rhythm of Memory (22 page)

“They have taken almost everything else as well.”

“Were your children and husband abducted?” Samuel asked.

“No,” she said flatly. “They only took me.”

“I have had patients who have lost their spouses, their children,” he said gently. He let his words fall softly and Salomé winced.

Salomé was silent for a moment. “I suppose you’ve heard a thousand stories and you probably grade them in your head on the varying degrees of horror.”

“No, Salomé, I don’t do that.”

“A woman who knows her children have been tortured is a thousand times worse off than I,” she said quietly.

“No, Salomé, what happened to you was horrible and you need to accept that it was terrible and it was wrong.”

“Well, that’s pretty undisputable.”

“But you also need to accept that you can’t change the past and that you have to learn to live with your memories.”

Salomé shook her head. “Doctor, I would rather I learned how to forget them.”

“You can’t forget them. You may be able to temporarily push them out of your consciousness, but eventually they will resurface.” Samuel paused. “Trauma and the repercussions of that trauma can lie dormant in a body for years. Eventually, however, it needs to come out. Eventually, every person who has been a victim of brutality will have to reconcile themselves to their past.”

Salomé fidgeted. “You’re going to be the only person who knows my story. I am not going to share it with my husband, my friends, or even write it down for my own sake. Only here will I tell it.”

Samuel nodded. “We’ll take this slowly, Salomé. One session at a time.” He looked gently at his patient, seeing through her determined expression of stoicism, noticing that she was actually fighting back her urge to cry.

V
ESTERÅS
, S
WEDEN

F
EBRUARY
1975

“Doctor Rudin, I had only been detained six hours, but it seemed I had been away a lifetime. By the time I arrived home, it was nightfall and Octavio and the children were frantic and near tears.

“My face was bruised and my clothes streaked with car grease and tar. But I still had my wits about me.”

Samuel smiled slightly, nodding his head and writing on his pad.

“I knew that I would alarm the children if I just announced that I had been abducted by the secret police, so I told them I had been in a small bicycle accident and that I just need to wash up and take a bath. I ordered Consuela to hurry them to bed so that I could be alone with Octavio.”

“He must have been worried, not knowing where you had gone.”

“Yes, he was, and he realized immediately that I had not been in an accident, that something far more terrible had taken place. ‘Salomé?’ he asked softly, so that neither the children nor the maid could hear him. ‘Was it the DINA?’

“ ‘Yes,’ I told him, and I began to cry. I had been terrified for so many hours that only then did I feel safe enough to weep. ‘What have they done to my precious Fayum?’ he whispered as he held
me. Through his shirt, I could hear his heart pounding, his skin reddening with anger at those who had abducted me.

“ ‘You cannot do anything. You cannot strike back at them,’ I told him. ‘This is not the old Chile. We are no longer free. Pinochet has made it a police state. We cannot trust anyone but ourselves and our family. Not even the neighbors. Who knows what they’ve already said about us.’

“ ‘But what did they want from you? Whoever could have said anything about you, my darling?’

“ ‘It was not me,’ I told him, and I began to cry because never in my life had I been so afraid. So completely terrified. ‘It’s you they want.’

“ ‘Me?’

“ ‘They know about your meetings with Allende. They know you coached him.’

“ ‘How could they know that, Salomé? We told no one. How could they know that information?’ I could see the fear in his eyes.

“ ‘I don’t know, Octavio. Maybe someone at the studio saw you with Neruda. Maybe someone remembered seeing you at the café with Allende and his campaign managers. After all, you have a very recognizable face. But that is why I am saying that we can trust no one. Maybe one of Allende’s assistants told them in an interrogation like mine. Someone has betrayed us and the police are using me to get to you.’

“ ‘Cowards!’ he said, and I had to tell him again to whisper. ‘They take a man’s wife to get to him,’ and he began to cry because he saw me standing there in front of him bruised and shaken, the victim of an injustice that he was powerless, at this point, to correct.

“ ‘What can I do, Salomé, to make them leave us alone? What did they want?’

“ ‘They want a man in your position to openly support Pinochet.
A man with your appeal would be a perfect face for a poster or television commercial. If you support him, they believe it will be a gesture of good faith,’ I said hesitantly.

“Octavio pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and sat down, cupping his face in his palms.

“ ‘How can I do that, my love?’ he said, now looking up at me. ‘How can I support someone who is capable of such brutality? Who can do what they did to you and to Allende. How can I do that?’

“I remember that I just looked at him blankly. My bruises were beginning to deepen and I needed to get some ice. I was so shocked by his response. I couldn’t believe that he was still saying the same things even after I had been kidnapped!”

“I can imagine,” Samuel said, nodding his head. “What did you say to him after that?”

“I think I said something to the effect of, ‘You can do what you want, Octavio,’ but really I was angry. I was truly furious. I couldn’t believe that he wouldn’t take the necessary steps to protect us and make sure this never happened again. I mean, wouldn’t you think that a man would want to protect his family at any cost…even if that meant sacrificing his pride?”

“Yes, I would. Unless he felt that he could control the situation.”

“There was no way anyone could control what was happening in Chile. Everyone was at risk!”

“You didn’t tell him that you felt that way, Salomé?” Samuel asked her.

“No. I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I suppose I was in a state of disbelief. I thought it was his conscience, that he’d have to live with himself. I couldn’t force him to make the decision I wanted him to.”

Samuel scribbled in his pad and then looked up. “Then what happened?”

“He called after me. I went into the kitchen. I did not answer him. I didn’t want to be near him. I slept in the spare bedroom that night and did not rise until the next morning. I didn’t even get up to say good-bye to him when he left the house early that next morning.”

V
ESTERÅS
, S
WEDEN

F
EBRUARY
1975

“Three weeks after my first abduction, my husband and I were invited to a formal ball at a large villa to celebrate Chile’s de facto leader, General Pinochet. The star-studded event was planned to be nationally televised, to show the people of Chile all the famous faces that supported the new regime. Naturally, my husband refused to go.

“I don’t blame my husband for his decision. Neither of us, looking back on it, thought that this would be the deciding factor in determining our family’s fate. Anyway, I was still weary from my abduction and I didn’t want to attend the event either. I truly thought they would come and ask him to make an appearance with the general once the palace was restored. I thought it would be a personal invitation with no more than two to three other guests, and at that point, I would have insisted that he go. A party? Who would have known?”

“Do you think your husband would have gone if he had known what the consequences to you would be by not going?” Samuel asked.

“I have to believe that, though I guess I’ll never know.”

“So you believe he would have gone?”

“I know my husband loved me. That he still does.” She paused
and seemed to spend several minutes reflecting on the doctor’s question.

“By the same token, supporting a dictator who had, in his mind, murdered his friend, a president elected by the people of Chile, would violate his conscience.”

“Yes…”

“I tell you, we decided as a couple not to go to this ball. I wanted to spend time with the children and work on restoring my relationship with Octavio. I remember that he wrote back on the response card in front of me that, ‘regretfully,’ we could not attend.

“I tried to pretend life was normal for us now. But every night, I dreamt of being abducted. Some nights, as I lay dreaming, I could swear I was inhaling the scent of those soldiers, and I would awaken covered in a cold sweat.

“Octavio stopped publicly denouncing Pinochet, and I believed we would be left alone.” Salomé paused. “Obviously, Dr. Rudin, I was very wrong.”

S
ANTIAGO
, C
HILE

J
ANUARY
1974

Salomé went to the market a week after her first abduction, hoping to calm her nerves by busying herself with errands. The perfume of the local
nisperos
and ripening melons filled the air, and Salomé felt her senses awaken. She had felt so numbed over the past few days, incapable of eating very much, and was despondent with Octavio. But now, with the colors and bustle surrounding her, she felt grateful and incredibly alive.

She inhaled the scent of crisp, green coriander and bushels of sharp garlic. She gazed at the pyramids of deep red tomatoes and small-clefted apricots. She filled her basket with bunches of grapes and peaches, bought two salamis, and bargained with the fishmonger for two kilos of
machas
. She decided that she would bake those for dinner that evening with a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese.

In the sunlight, her pale green sheath looked dazzling, as though she were dressed in a silk that had been dyed in the juice of limes. Her black hair was thick and full around her shoulders, her lean brown legs tapered and strong.

She had covered her bruised face with powder and a little bit of camouflage cream. At first glance, it was barely noticeable. But, upon closer inspection, one might glimpse a patch of blue beneath her cheekbone. As though a tiny plum had been trapped underneath a canvas of delicate skin. Occasionally, she lifted her hand
when she spoke to a merchant, hoping to distract him from looking at her face too closely. She would pretend to smooth her eyebrow or brush off a fly, or sometimes she would just dip her head ever so slightly so that her hair would fall over her cheek.

She had not expected to meet anyone, as it was nearly three o’clock and the market was busiest before noon. However, as she turned to inspect some
gamberas
, she heard a strangely familiar voice calling her from behind.

“Salomé? Is that you?”

She turned around and saw a vaguely familiar face staring back at her.

“It’s me, Manuel. Manuel Chon-Vargas!”

“Manuel?” Salomé grasped her free hand to her breast. “I can not believe it is you!” She put down her basket and embraced him.

“It has been too long,” he lamented.

“How are you? I haven’t seen you since those summers when we were children, and your parents visited mine at the hacienda. How are your sisters, your mother and father?”

“They are all well, thank you. And yours?”

“Fine, fine. You have a wife now, don’t you?”

“She is well, though we have fallen on some difficult times, but that is a long story.” He paused. “And what about you? I heard you’re married to the famous actor Octavio Ribeiro.”

Salomé blushed. “Well, I don’t know about
famous
, but we have three children, a son and two daughters.”

“God has been good to you.” He gently brushed his hand against her cheek.

She could sense that he’d noticed her bruise, though he said nothing to her about it. She quickly asked him something to distract him from it.

“You should give me your telephone number and we should get
together. It would be lovely for our spouses to have the opportunity to meet.”

His smile seemed to grow tense. “That would indeed be wonderful, though Adelaida has been rather poor company lately, I’m afraid. Ever since our villa was confiscated, she has not been herself.”

“Confiscated?” Salomé whispered with great disbelief. “What in heaven’s name happened?”

“I can’t really go into detail,” he said in hushed tones. “But a band of soldiers came one evening and told us at gunpoint that we would have to leave.”

“And you left?”

“At gunpoint, Salomé, one has little choice.” He bowed his head. “You can imagine how awful this has been for my wife. The Villa Grimaldi was her ancestral home.”

Salomé nodded her head. “Yes, I can only imagine how terrible this must be for you and your family.” She wondered if she should tell him of her own ordeal, but decided against it. Perhaps he already suspected. It was well-known that Octavio had been voicing anti-Pinochet remarks in the weeks before her abduction. The national papers had even slandered him.

“The worst part of it all,” Manuel continued, his fingers shaking over his mouth, “is that I believe the secret police are now using the villa as some sort of detention center to interrogate and torture people whom they consider enemies of the state.”

Salomé’s eyes widened. Immediately, she thought of the place she had been taken only a week before.

“But isn’t it near the city? Could they do that in a place where people are so close by?” she asked coyly, hoping to gather information that would confirm her suspicion that she had, indeed, been taken to the same place.

“Unfortunately, it would be the perfect place for such a thing. It’s located only a few kilometers away from the main city in a rural section of Santiago, not far from the mountains—no neighbors except for a few migrants in their temporary tents along the roads.” He sighed. “We had always believed it would be a perfect place to raise children. You know, it used to be an old vineyard back in the forties. But only the terra-cotta jugs lining the entranceway are left from those days.” He chuckled slightly, but the laughter was heavy with nostalgia and regret.