The Rhythm of Memory (28 page)

Octavio had not been in a church since his youngest daughter’s baptism. Even then, he hadn’t wanted to go, but his in-laws had insisted on the ceremony. He believed in the Church, the holy trinity, and the teachings of the sacrament. But he never felt comfortable sitting in the carved wooden pews, facing the gilded altarpiece and staring up at the dramatic re-creation of Christ nailed to the cross. It felt unnatural to him. Octavio believed God was far more likely to be found in his garden, among the wild roses and in the shade of the cinnamon and avocado trees, than in a temple made of stained glass and stone. God was in his wife and children.

Since his wife’s abduction, though, he had begun praying silently to himself. Occasionally, when he lay alone in bed at night, he discovered himself muttering aloud. Now, as he drove along the streets of Santiago, he found himself trying to remember the words he used to mouth as a child:

Hail, Mary, full of grace
…

Blessed art thou amongst all women
…

The words now escaped him.

Hail, Mary, full of grace
…

The Lord…The Lord is with you.

Blessed art thou amongst all women
…

He started again, this time not thinking, only trying to remember the words as though they were lines he had memorized from a movie long ago.

“
Blessed art thou
,” he repeated, “
amongst all women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. Amen
.”

Was there more? He couldn’t remember now. “
Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen
. Was that
it?” Perhaps he should have sent the children to Sunday school, he muttered to himself. How could he have forgotten these incantations, he railed as he ran his fingers through his hair and tugged at his curls.

“What’s another one?” his mind raced. After all, he rationalized, he needed as much help as he could get. “None of this could possibly hurt, right?”

“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth and in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”

Was God listening to him?

He realized that all these prayers were rambling acts of desperation, rather than the utterances of a true believer. Yet, he also knew that he would do anything now. Try anything. All he wanted was to get his wife back.

He had been driving for what seemed like hours. Finally, he saw the tall spire of the cathedral and parked in the lot nearby.

He entered with trepidation. The church had a strange, yet familiar scent that he hadn’t smelled in years. Was it incense or just the cold staleness of stone? He didn’t know, but somehow, it instantly soothed him. As he stepped lightly down the aisle, he could hear the sound of prayer-book pages being shuffled and the unifying voice of the priest leading the congregation in their closing psalms.

He stood for quite a while before sitting down in a pew. Each row seemed nearly filled to capacity; mostly men and women older than Octavio, pensioners who had come for the midday mass.

“O holy men and women, we come together on this day and all others to help serve and propagate the name and honor of our Lord,” the priest boomed into the microphone as the congregation readjusted themselves into their seats.

“My sermon today is inspired by the story of Jesus Christ, our Holy Father. It is in his example that we should strive to pattern our lives. For it was with his own blood that he showed us what selflessness means, what the true notion of sacrifice is.” The priest was shaking his finger now at the carved crucifix above him, its image of the bloodied Christ gazing down at the congregation through painted-glass eyes. “We must extend ourselves to our families, to our neighbors, so that this country and our world are filled with love, not hate. We must look into the eyes of every man and woman and help those who are less fortunate than we are. We must force ourselves every day to be better people.”

The priest paused and raised his arms. His red sleeves hung like the flags of a matador.

“Every day on earth there is darkness. Every day there is evil and sadness. Now, it seems, more than ever. There is despondency and there is despair. Let us all try to bring a little more light into the world. Let us all try to open our hearts and let truth and beneficence reign supreme.”

As the congregation chanted “Amen” in unison, the priest prepared for communion.

Octavio sat there in the cold church, stunned. The vaulted ceiling and stained glass intensified his epiphany. Having given this sermon, wasn’t this priest the perfect person to ask for help? This man would have no excuse, no reason to deny Octavio’s plea for assistance. He had just preached that one must help others in need. That each individual should seize the opportunity to ensure that good always triumphs over evil. Surely, the priest would help him.
So, as Octavio sat in the pew recalling the sermon, he began to rehearse his approach.

He waited until the sacrament was given and the congregation had filed out of the tall oak doors of the church. Then, as the priest began to retreat to his private quarters, Octavio stood up and rushed toward him.

“Father Cisneros!” he called out, having gleaned the priest’s name from the program. In the hallowed walls of the cathedral, his voice echoed and caught the priest off guard.

“Yes?” he said quietly as he turned to face Octavio.

“I must speak with you. It’s urgent.”

“I am sorry, my son, but could you please come back in about two hours? I will be occupied until four o’clock with the confessional.”

“No, I can’t come back then.”

“And why is that?”

“I have an important matter to discuss with you!”

The priest looked at Octavio quizzically as he had never seen his face in his congregation before.

“Father, you must see me now.” Octavio was panting. “It is a matter of life and death!”

The priest raised his eyebrows and looked directly into Octavio’s eyes. He was startled by the man’s intensity. Incapable of turning the young man away, he nodded his head. “All right then…I suppose I can be a few minutes late. Please, join me in my office.” He raised his hand and beckoned Octavio to follow him.

Octavio followed the priest into a narrow entranceway that led to a passageway of intricately carved walls. They passed an inner sanctuary, a private chapel with a tiny mosaic dome, and through a hallway that was lined with portraits of various cardinals, bishops in crimson robes, and gilded crosses.

“Please come inside, my son.”

Octavio turned and walked into a small, wood-paneled office.

The priest began to take off his vestments. His outer white robe with the red sleeves and crimson middle. Underneath, he wore the black uniform with clerical white collar.

“Sit down.”

Octavio did so, folding his perspiring palms in his lap.

“Now,” the priest said, glancing quickly at his watch, “how can I assist you in this matter of ‘life and death?’ ”

“Well,” Octavio stammered. “My wife…the mother of my three children…has been abducted.”

“Abducted?”

“Yes, she has been kidnapped by the military police.”

The priest shook his head. He had been approached like this twice before, but he had encouraged the family members to go to the police. He had told them he was powerless to help.

Although each time it pained him to send the grieving relative away, the simple truth was that he did so because he was too cowardly to help. In the past month, he had heard of at least three priests who were reported missing, presumably at the hands of the government’s henchmen.

The alleged brutality of the new regime disgusted him, but he had never been one to place himself in a potentially dangerous situation. As a visiting U.N. cleric from Colombia he had looked forward to coming to Chile because it meant a promotion to his career. One day he hoped to be a bishop, and he certainly didn’t want to draw unnecessary attention to himself in the meantime by interfering with affairs of another state.

The priest said as delicately as he could, folding his pink hands on his desk blotter, “This all sounds just awful…but I am afraid there is not much I can do. I am only a priest, a foreigner at that.”
He sighed and reclined into the backboard of his armchair. “I really am sorry,” he said as he raised his palms to the ceiling.

“What do you mean there is nothing personally that you can do? I just listened to your sermon, and there, in the church, you just beseeched at least a hundred men and women to help their neighbors. You told your congregation that, as the children of God, we should all join efforts to resist evil in this world!”

“Yes, of course I said that. But, there is nothing
I
can do to help you.”

Octavio shook his head. “There used to be a time when if a man came to his church and asked for help, it would be given.”

“Of course, that still happens, my son. But these are difficult times.”

“I think Jesus would have said times were difficult when Pilate was ordering him nailed to the cross.”

“You are not being fair, my son. You know as well as I how precarious the situation is in this city.”

Octavio was at his wit’s end. He was so weary, so exhausted from looking high and low for his wife, from asking friends, strangers, friends of friends, and anyone else he could find for help. But all had told him there was nothing they could do. Now, sitting here in front of him was a priest, a man who had taken an oath to help mankind—a congregation that was his flock to shepherd. How could this
man
now deny him?

Octavio took a deep breath and sat back down in the chair. He placed his fingers over his eyes and massaged his brows to compose himself.
I need to think of this as a challenge, a new acting role
, he thought.
I need to use my powers of persuasion. For God’s sake, those are what got me involved with Neruda and Allende in the first place! This must be my greatest performance
.

So Octavio looked into the priest’s eyes, in the same way he had
coached Allende to stare into the camera three years earlier. He widened his eyes, cocked his chin high, and held his gaze steadfast.

“Father,” he said solemnly. “I can tell from your accent that you’re not from Chile, so you never would have heard of me. I am—or I should say, I used to be—an actor. A pretty famous one too. You’ll notice I didn’t say I was a pretty good one, just famous. I see that now…I played the same types of roles over and over. The soulful hero who always managed to save the day—and save the girl—with a few bold gestures in a story line that always ensured a happy ending.”

Octavio paused and stared again into the eyes of the priest, who now gazed back upon him mesmerized. A captive audience of one.

“I know now that my life—the lives of my wife and my children are not at the mercy of scriptwriters. I know there is the possibility that this story might not end happily—though I’m trying desperately not to think of that at this moment. If I believed this love story between my wife and me was meant to end in tragedy, I don’t think I’d be able to make it through the night.

“I don’t sleep anymore. I exist in a nightmare that doesn’t seem to end. I have a son and two young daughters who ask me every night when their mother is coming home. I have a father-in-law who looks at me with disgust and a mother-in-law who looks at me with fear. But I am feeling completely powerless. No one has been able to help me. No one—not even people I considered close friends—wants to return my phone calls. I have become a pariah in a world that once christened me their golden child.

“So what am I to do, Father? I played a hero on-screen, but I failed to be one in real life. I’ve failed to rescue the one person I love most in the world, my wife and the mother of my three children.

“I can sit here and tell you honestly, with God as my witness,
that she has done nothing wrong. That she has never committed any crime except perhaps loving and trusting a fool like me.”

The priest shook his head.

“She has been wrongly imprisoned. She has never uttered a single word against the regime. I admit that I can’t say that about myself—I will be forthright in telling you that now—but my wife, Salomé, has been taken without cause.” Octavio’s voice remained unwavering, his eyes still gazing into the eyes of the priest. “Please, please help me find her. You are my and my children’s last and only hope. Having heard your sermon just now, I know that you’re the only man I can come to in times such as these, when my faith is tested. Please do not deny me or my children when I come begging to you for help.”

Octavio took a breath. “Please look at me and see a man who is humbled. A man who realizes he was never a hero and doesn’t look to be one now.” Then, quietly he finished, “All I ask is for your help to save the one thing I love so desperately.”

The priest sat there completely transfixed by what the impassioned Octavio had just told him. He paused and took a deep breath, readjusting himself in the high, leather chair. “You’ve made a strong argument and I can tell that you have spoken honestly with your heart open and your faith in God. You are right to quote my sermon and to show me my hypocrisy.”

The priest took a moment more to reflect. He could not disguise that he felt personally challenged. How could he blindly sit back and do nothing if what this man said was true—that a Christian woman, a mother of three and a devoted wife and daughter, was being wrongly imprisoned?

He thought about the others who had passed through his door in search of their missing loved ones. On the other occasions, it had been a woman beseeching him to help find her lost husband, son, or
brother. But never before had he heard of a woman being abducted. Those other times—he could at least rationalize that they were strong men who could survive if placed in a difficult situation, or that those men had been aware of the risks they took in challenging the military. But, if what this man was telling him was true, that a young mother had wrongfully been taken, how could he live with himself and refuse to at least investigate the circumstances of her abduction?