The Rhythm of Memory (23 page)

“It must have been lovely,” Salomé said sympathetically.

“Oh, it was! There was even a tower to play in,” he said regretfully, “and ancient gates to climb.” He shook his head again.

Manuel now seemed completely lost in a dream as he stood there with his head bowed in front of her. As if he needed to recall that which had been taken from him.

“It was a beautiful place, Salomé. When my mother-in-law was alive, the garden was in bloom with round, powder-pink peonies, African violets, and cinnamon trees whose branches swept low and perfumed the air. And the kitchen…what a sight that was! Three stoves, a vaulted ceiling covered in cerulean blue tiles imported from the south of Spain. Copper pots reflecting the midday sun.” He paused. “There was this beautiful cherimoya tree that grew outside the terrace. When we ate breakfast, we could see it framed in the pane of the center window. Those soldiers are such beasts, who knows what they are doing there. Certainly not observing beauty.”

“Yes. Yes. It is such a shame.”

Salomé had been listening to his vivid descriptions with great intensity. She would never forget that name: Villa Grimaldi. That must have been where she had been taken. She remembered seeing a gate and a tower, and the distance from Santiago seemed to be
the same as well. She had seen the mountains from underneath her blindfold, as well as the
poblaciónes callampas
—the makeshift houses of the hobos along the way.

“I am sorry to have heaped all of this on you, Salomé. Adelaida and I are living off of Recoleta Street. You are right, it would be wonderful to have the chance to catch up with you and meet the famed Octavio Ribeiro.”

“Yes,” she told him again. “It would. Let’s do it soon.”

He kissed her good-bye, and they agreed to call each other in the next couple of weeks.

Salomé returned home and did not mention her encounter with Manuel in the market to Octavio. She thought it would only excite Octavio about another injustice of the new regime. However, she thought of it often when she was alone.

She never believed she would need the information for herself and, instead, tucked it away neatly in her mind in case a friend or relative was kidnapped as she had been.

But two weeks later there was another knock at her door. Octavio was sleeping in the garden, a newspaper spread over his face.

Salomé opened the door to find three men with machine guns staring at her.

“Salomé Herrera? We have come for you.” They reached out to pull her by the arm.

“What do you want with me?” she pleaded. “I have nothing you need. You have asked me all the questions before.”

“You are needed again,” the shorter man said sternly.

Stricken with fear, Salomé knew she had to get word to Octavio, to tell him where they were probably taking her. Thinking
quickly, Salomé looked back behind her and saw seven-year-old Rafael standing there with his eyes transfixed.

“At least, let me say good-bye to my son.”

The senior soldier nodded.

She knelt down and whispered in Rafael’s ear, speaking as slowly and clearly as she could: “Tell your father I have been taken. Tell him these words, if you can remember no others.” The little boy nodded. She whispered in his ear something he would never forget: “Villa Grimaldi.”

S
ANTIAGO
, C
HILE

J
ANUARY
1974

Seconds after the dark van sped from the driveway, Rafael rushed through the house to find his father. He discovered him on the patio, his chest rising and falling with sleep.

“Papa,” the little boy uttered to him, flicking the daily paper that covered Octavio’s eyes. “Mama’s gone.”

“Where has she gone, Rafaelito?” he asked as he drowsily readjusted himself in his chair.

“Three men…they…they took her.”

“What?” Octavio cried, nearly leaping from his chair. “What men?”

“The men who came to our door.”

“When, Rafael? When did they come?”

“Just now, Papa.”

Octavio ran through the garden and into the house. Rafael followed him, crying out, “Villa Grimaldi, Papa! Villa Grimaldi!”

But Octavio was not listening to the boy now. He was searching the house, hoping that his son was mistaken and that Salomé was busying herself in one of its many rooms.

“This can’t be!” Octavio cried, his fist clutched to his mouth. “Why would they take her again?” He was in shock. His face was red, his black hair wild and high. They had taken her while he lay napping.

“Papa,” Rafael softly said again. He stood next to his father. His trousers were rolled above his knees and his red T-shirt was soiled from his having spent the afternoon playing in the garden. “Mama told me to tell you something…” He paused and scrunched his face in concentration. “Villa Grimaldi.”

“What?”

“Yes, Papa. She whispered it to me right before she left.”

“But what does that mean? Are you sure, Rafael?”

“Yes, I’m sure. She told me not to forget.”

Rafael stood in front of him, his voice shaking, as he clearly saw that the words that his mother had last spoken to him caused his father great concern and worry.

“Papa, what is it?” he asked as his boyish eyebrows wiggled like two soft caterpillars. “Will Mommy be all right?”

Octavio tried to mask his fear for his young son, but the shock of awakening to find his wife abducted was too much for even an accomplished actor to hide.

“Go and get your father a glass of water,” he ordered his son.

As the boy ran back into the house, Octavio raised his fists to his face. “Bastards!” he cried, his eyes pink with anger. He was sitting on the edge of the lounge chair, his back curved with despair, when Rafael returned. Holding a glass of water in his trembling hand, he overheard his father mumbling to himself, his head bowed to his knees, “I was the one they should have taken. They should have taken me!”

Octavio prayed each of the first few nights after Salomé was abducted, hoping that she might be returned. He lay in their canopied bed and extended his arm to the side where his wife always slept. The empty space brought tears to his eyes.

“What have I done to my family?” he said aloud, knotting his knuckles into his temples. The reality of his wife’s kidnapping weighed so heavily on him that his once smooth skin disappeared, replaced by a furrowed forehead and twisted brows. He felt as though he had failed in his role as father and protector. He had let everyone down.

The children had been asking for their mother for days, but he had no answers for them. Salomé’s parents too had come in search of their daughter, and he could not lie to them either.

“They’ve taken her,” he told them, his voice nearly collapsing from his despair. “They came to the house and seized her while I was asleep in the garden.”

“You were asleep?” his father in-law asked with disbelief.

“Yes.”

“He was asleep in the garden! Did you hear that, Olivia? Our son-in-law was asleep in the garden while our daughter was abducted by the military police!”

Doña Olivia shook her head. She withdrew a linen kerchief and dabbed her eyes.

“Octavio,” she said gently. “What can we do?”

“Do! Do!” Don Fernando roared. “They have already taken her! Olivia, you have heard stories like this! The city is full of them. Parents whose children have disappeared. They vanish without a trace. They’re impossible to find.” The old man was yelling now, and the children began to approach from their activities in the garden. He lowered his voice. “The military are experts at making people disappear.”

“I will find her,” Octavio said quietly. “Salomé left me a clue.”

“A clue?” Fernando asked incredulously. He was looking at his son-in-law with the same disdain he had when he’d first laid eyes on him some ten years before.

“Yes. She whispered in Rafael’s ear, just before she was taken, the words Villa Grimaldi.”

“Why would she have said that?”

“I’m not sure. But it obviously meant something. She explicitly told Rafael to tell me.”

“I think that’s the ancestral home of the Grimaldi family. Fernando, didn’t the Chon-Vargas boy marry into that family?”

“Yes.” Dr. Herrera nodded. “I think the villa is located a few kilometers outside the main city.”

“But why have they taken Salomé there?” Doña Olivia’s silk sleeves rustled as she fidgeted in her seat. “What has she done to deserve this?”

“She has done nothing, Doña Olivia,” Octavio replied, his head bowed to his chest.

“They took the wrong person,” he said after a long pause. “Salomé has done absolutely nothing to deserve this.”

V
ESTERÅS
, S
WEDEN

F
EBRUARY
1975

“I was bound and gagged, slapped and beaten, before being thrown into a cell that was no larger than three meters by two meters. It was nothing more than a concrete bunker that smelled of human waste and had no windows. I lay there for hours, my wrists handcuffed behind me, doubting that I would ever be returned. You must believe me when I tell you I thought that I was going to die in that prison, among the sound of screams and the drone of the incessant music that attempted to mask the wails. I have never known such a hell as I did there.

“Two hours passed before I was taken to the interrogation room. The guards came and pulled me out by both arms, dragging me through a long, narrow corridor that was illuminated by gas lights. I must have passed two dozen filthy cells that mirrored my own. The people inside barely seemed human. White eyes peered out from dirt-smeared faces. Some were covered with dried blood.

“ ‘Keep moving!’ one of the guards yelled, as he shoved me forward. I remember that as I tried to regain my balance, I was kicked in the small of my back. This guard, I can still remember his face. He was a young boy. No more than sixteen years old. Kicking me as if I were nothing more than a sack of bones. ‘You Marxist cunt!’ he called me, time and time again.”

Samuel shuddered. Although he had heard stories similar to
Salomé’s before, listening to such a young, beautiful woman, a mother of three, recount such brutality was particularly disturbing to him.

“I don’t even think I can bring myself to remember the brutality I endured during the first few days I was there. They did such horrible things,” Salomé said, then paused. “Things no one should have to go through. And we women, what they did to us was so awful, so shameful…if Octavio had any idea, he would have never been able to look at me in the same way.”

In the low light of Dr. Samuel Rudin’s office, Salomé’s face looked as though it had been stolen from a Velázquez portrait. Her regal features tightened as she tried to fight back her tears, and her long, black hair fell over her shoulders.

“During my first interrogation, I was slapped, punched in the face, breasts, and abdomen.

“I was told over and over again by the interrogator that I was a socialist whore, a communist bitch. ‘Repeat after me,’ he screamed, ‘I am nothing more than a fucking communist bitch!’

“I said nothing.

“‘Repeat after me, you fucking
puta:
I am a fucking communist bitch!’

“I started to cry. He hit me with the butt of his rifle and kicked me in the stomach with his boots.”

Salomé stopped, lowered her eyes, and rubbed her temples.

“I don’t know if I can continue, Doctor.”

“Take your time, Salomé. We’re not in a hurry here.”

Salomé inhaled deeply. The words eventually came to her. Haltingly at first, but then they seemed to spew forth.

“The interrogator unbuckled his belt and forced me on my back with the heel of his boot. Then he spread his legs over my neck, held me up to him by my throat, and then forced himself into my mouth.

“They told me that they would kill my husband and my children if I did not cooperate. They told me that I had to repent for my husband’s sins or they would kill my children!”

She was now sobbing uncontrollably. Samuel reached for a box of tissues and handed them to her. In the light, her face was now red, her features swollen and lined with tears.

“Up until that moment, I had never known any other man besides my husband. Can you imagine such a thing? Can you imagine?”

“No…” Samuel folded his hands in his lap and looked at his patient with great compassion. “I am so sorry.”

Salomé blotted her eyes. She was surprised by the way the words were pouring out of her. It was the first time she had ever spoken of what had been done to her, and she felt as if a floodgate had been opened.

“When I refused to admit to conspiring against the government, my face was repeatedly forced into a bucket of urine and human feces. When I insisted that I had never committed a crime against the state, they called me a fucking liar over and over again. I was raped. I was given strong electric shocks. I don’t even think I remember half of what I went through. The mind works so strangely…I think I’d go insane if I remembered everything they did to me.”

Her nose was now running and she reached for a tissue.

“I suppose I came here hoping that, in a few sessions, I would be cured of my nightmares, that I would be able to embrace my husband as I had before. That I would be able to listen to music and feel joy, not terror, and not be paralyzed with fear and dread.”