The Secret in Their Eyes (23 page)
September 26, 1996, was a Thursday like any other, except for the tumult coming from the streets. The first general strike against the government of Carlos Menem was to start at noon, and some members of the Judiciary union who had gathered on the steps of the Palace of Justice above Talcahuano Street were enlivening the scene by tossing the occasional firecracker. At ten o’clock the postman came with the mail. Actually, I presume he did, because my desk was far from the reception counter. One of the interns brought me an elongated, hand-addressed envelope. It bore no official seals and had been sent as certified mail. I stared at the thing, my curiosity piqued by what looked like a personal message amid the mass of communications between government departments that we were used to.
Thus distracted, I looked for my reading glasses until I realized I was wearing them. I didn’t recognize the handwriting. Had I ever seen that elegant, neat, upright cursive? Not that I recalled. What I did recall (even though I’d thought I’d never encounter it again) was the
name of the sender: Ricardo Agustín Morales, resurrected after twenty years of distance and silence.
Before opening the envelope, I looked again at the address. I was the addressee, all right: “Benjamín Miguel Chaparro, National First Instance Courts, Criminal Division, Examining Magistrate’s Court No. 41, Clerk’s Office No. 19.” How did Morales know his letter would reach me here? The untimely missive upset me a little, even though … what exactly was bothering me about it? I certainly didn’t hold him responsible for my desperate flight in 1976. It had always been clear to me that the one and only cause of my exile was that bastard Romano. Was I disturbed because Morales was writing me so many years later? No, not that either. I retained a friendly, almost affectionate memory of him. What was it, then? It took me a while before the scales fell from my eyes and I saw the real cause of my agitation. It was that I was so predictable, so monotonous, so like myself that a person could locate me in the same court and the same clerk’s office, doing the same job at the same desk, two decades after our last contact.
It was a relatively long letter, postmarked in Villegas on September 21. So he’d left the capital. Had he been able to rebuild his life? Sincerely wishing that he had, I began to read.
First of all, I beg your pardon for importuning you after such a long time.
Chaparro paused and made a very simple calculation. It had been, in fact, a total of twenty years and a few months.
If I have not written to you in all these years, the overriding reason was my fear of creating even more problems for you than I had already caused. I learned of your move to San Salvador de Jujuy a few months after it took place, when I communicated with your court by telephone. Although I did not inquire into the reasons for your departure, I was not long in deducing that my actions must have been responsible for it.
A young office worker came and asked me a stupid question. In a loud voice, I announced to him and everyone else that I didn’t want to be interrupted for a while.
If I am bothering you at this point in time, so many years later, it is because I find myself obliged to accept the offer you made to me at our last meeting, when you gave me an account of the circumstances that had led to the release of Isidoro Gómez.
That name again,
I thought. Had Morales neither heard nor spoken it for many years, like me? Or had he never really managed to get it out of his head?
On that occasion, you told me if there was ever any moment when I thought you could help me, I should not hesitate to call on you. Will you consider it audacious of me to take you up on that offer now? I ask that question mindful of the enormous sacrifice I imposed upon you, involuntarily, when you had to go away in 1976. I doubt whether this is any consolation, but I swear to you that I spent many long days seeking a way to liberate you from such a misfortune.
I wondered about Ricardo Morales’s present appearance and tried to imagine the face behind those words of his. Although I made a mighty effort, I couldn’t age him; in my imagination, he continued to be the tall, fair-haired boy with the little mustache, the slow gestures, and the frozen expression whom I’d met almost thirty years before. Did he still dress the same way? His style in clothes had had nothing in common with the fashions young people his age were wearing at the beginning of the 1970s. I figured his look hadn’t changed, and I noted that his way of expressing himself in writing sounded old-fashioned, too.
Obviously, I never found a means of extricating you from your difficulties, even though I was glad to hear, some years ago, that you had returned to your position in the same court as before.
He didn’t say how he knew that, but I could figure it out: Morales must have telephoned the court every now and again, asking about me, until they told him I’d come back. But why hadn’t he wanted to talk to me? Why had he been satisfied with knowing I’d returned? Why had he waited until now to call on me? And what was he calling on me to do? I read further.
Needless to say, if you bear me a grudge for the way I altered your life—again, without any intention of doing so—I believe you have every right to tear up these lines and forget them, whether now or when you have finished reading them. In the next few days, you will receive two more letters identical to this one. I beg you not to take this iteration as obnoxious insistence on my part: I am proceeding in this manner out of fear that my letter may go astray. The first copy I send you will be dated Monday the twenty-third, and the second Tuesday the twenty-fourth; they will both be certified as well. If you receive and read this one, the original, I respectfully ask that you destroy the two copies.
I don’t know why—well, actually, I do—the image of Morales sitting in the little cafe at the entrance to the Once railroad station came into my mind. The same meticulousness, the identical obstinacy. I felt a little sad.
Sometimes life takes strange paths to resolve our enigmas. Forgive me if I indulge in some clumsy philosophizing here. Perhaps I may have told you already that as a young man, I was a confirmed smoker, until Liliana convinced me that I was doing myself harm and I immediately stopped smoking.
Liliana Emma Colotto de Morales. That name was recorded in my memory, but very dimly. Of course, she’d been a part of my life only fleetingly, during the year following her death. After that, she was fused in my memory with Morales, her husband, and Gómez, her murderer. And now she was back, brought by the man who loved her most.
After her death, as if performing an act of spite, or worse, as if that act of spite could do any possible good, I started smoking again, and as time passed, I smoked more and more. Well, two packs a day have put an end to my good health and my resistance, but paradoxically, they may have solved my final dilemma in advance.
Poor guy,
I thought.
On top of everything else, he’s going to die of cancer.
Whenever I learn that someone has died or is about to die, I rapidly calculate his age, as if youth and
the injustice of death were directly proportional, and as if my indignation at early deaths were worth anything. This time was no exception: by my reckoning, Morales must have been around fifty-five.
It would be trivial to tell you that the prospect of death worries me. Neither a lot nor a little, as it turns out. Perhaps, if you carefully consider my situation, you may concur with my view that death will come as a relief. I trust you will not be offended if I offer you my condolences on the passing of your friend, Mr. Sandoval. I read about it on the obituary page of
La Nación.
You cannot imagine how his death grieved me. In his case, too, I could find no way of repaying what he did for me, or for Liliana and me, which amounts to the same thing. For reasons that I shall explain farther on (unless you first decide that this extremely long letter is an abuse of your patience and stop reading), it is impossible for me to absent myself from my place of residence for lengthy periods of time. Therefore I missed Mr. Sandoval’s funeral, but I was able to get to Chacarita Cemetery some months after his death and pay him a very modest tribute. At that time, I should have liked to provide his widow with some kind of financial assistance, something more tangible and useful than my respects, but I had
contracted certain large debts that greatly compromised my financial situation. Now, however, things are different. If you are willing to do me this favor (I should say, if you are willing to add this favor to the great quantity of favors I intend to ask for, all disguised as one), I shall ask you to see that Mrs. Sandoval receives a sum of money that I have laid aside and which I am honored to offer her as a demonstration of my gratitude to the memory of her husband.
He was marvelous, this Morales. I saw Alejandra about once every leap year, but he expected me to show up at her house with a wad of dough consigned to her by an anonymous avenger who felt indebted to her husband, dead these fourteen years. Did time not pass for the man? Did he live in an eternal present, where each thin, transparent day blended into the one before? I gave up, knowing I’d agree to deliver to Sandoval’s widow whatever money Morales proposed to send her.
When I mentioned above my reaction to Mr. Sandoval’s death, I did so in order to erase any suspicion you may have that I am so insolent as to consider every death so lightly. That is not at all the case; I hardly dare to consider my own that way. And to tell the truth, I cannot say that I
am facing death as if it were something light but rather as something that heals, something that brings serenity at last. Upon rereading those last sentences, I fear I am going off on tangents and wearying you with my pointless ramblings. I have given you enough to tolerate, suddenly appearing out of oblivion and requesting a favor to boot, and now you must put up with digressions. Please forgive me, and let us return to the matter at hand. Earlier, I asked you to be so kind, should you not look upon my request favorably, as to destroy this letter and the other two letters that will follow it. Nevertheless, I would appeal to you to contact Dr. Padilla, a notary public here in Villegas, at some point during the next few weeks, because I have been so bold as to bequeath you my worldly goods, such as they are, in my will. I trust you will not take this as impertinence. I am not leaving you very much, except for the property on which I reside, which I should think would be worth a decent sum these days, as it includes almost seventy-five acres of good land, mostly fields.
He surprised me. I’d figured he was living in the capital or its suburbs, for he’d never struck me as the rural type. His generosity flattered me, although it also made me slightly uncomfortable; by that point, without
even thinking of recompense, I’d already decided to help him.
There is, in addition, an automobile, well maintained but very old.
The white Fiat 1500. Memories never return alone—they always come in groups. The automobile’s image came to my mind accompanied by a recollection of Báez and me sitting in the Rafael Castillo train station twenty years before, and my policeman friend telling me about the old folks in Villa Lugano who’d seen Morales load Gómez, unconscious but still alive, into the trunk of that car.
Apart from some old furniture I leave to your disposal, there is nothing more. Now, should I be able to count on your collaboration in putting my final affairs in order here in Villegas, I would implore you to make every possible effort to arrive at my house sometime on Saturday the twenty-eighth. I hope this request does not seem like yet more presumption on my part. I might almost say that I make it for your sake, to forestall even greater inconvenience than the inconvenience I cannot help causing you already.
I thought I understood. It was dreadful, but very simple. Morales was going to kill himself, and he was asking me
to come on Saturday so that I wouldn’t have to confront an even worse spectacle on Sunday or Monday. He didn’t say so in the letter, but he’d obviously laid careful plans, including the detail that I would find it more convenient to get up there on a weekend than to request a few days off from the court. Could he possibly know that we were between sessions, and that my workload was therefore relatively light? I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d taken the trouble to find out about such things.
By this point, you will have guessed—at least in part—what you will find at my house. I beg you to forgive me. And I repeat, I will perfectly understand a negative response. Whatever your decision may be, I send you my warmest wishes, and I reiterate my deep gratitude to you for all you did for us.
Ricardo Agustín Morales
I finished reading the letter and put it back in its envelope. Several minutes passed before I reacted. The secretary asked me what was wrong; I looked funny, she said. I gave her a few evasive replies. At that point, the clerk came out of his office. I availed myself of the opportunity to tell him I’d have to leave early to take my car to the shop for a checkup, because I was going to have to take a highway trip on Saturday to attend to a personal matter. He said that wouldn’t be a problem.
Because I wanted to arrive before noon, I started driving at dawn. Morning seemed to me like the least creepy time of day to enter an empty house or, worse, a house where the remains of a man I’d known and liked awaited me.
The directions Morales had put in a postscript to his letter were simple and specific. I was to go past the exit to the town and continue on past the big YPF service station that would shortly appear on the right-hand side of the road. Four kilometers farther on, I would see three very tall silos on the left, and after going another kilometer, I was to turn off onto a paved local road, also on my left. After two more kilometers, the last, I would see a gate on my right between two tall-grass pastures.
I think it was eleven o’clock when I got out of my car to open the gate. I drove through, stopped, and went back to close it. Then I followed what was essentially a gravel path for two or three kilometers, although perhaps I’m exaggerating the distance. The state of the road compelled me to drive slowly, and the high pastureland on both sides offered no points of reference. If Morales had
wanted to preserve his privacy, he’d succeeded. Finally, the path ended in a fairly spacious open area in front of a house. This was a simple, one-story building with tall grilled windows. A raised, bare gallery, with no flowerpots or chairs or anything else, ran around the house’s entire perimeter. The Fiat was parked on one side, under the gallery. I didn’t stop to examine it in detail, but it looked as impeccable as I remembered it.
I knew from Morales’s letter that the property covered some seventy-five acres. To purchase it, I figured, the widower had needed to go into debt up to his ears. I vaguely remembered some allusion in his letter to his indebtedness. Then I remembered the money for Sandoval’s widow, and I got the picture. Morales hadn’t been able to help her in the period immediately following her husband’s death, but now, fifteen years on, he’d evidently been able to settle his obligations. It seemed likely he’d accomplished his financial recovery by making great sacrifices. As an employee at a branch bank, he surely hadn’t earned very much money, and that parcel of good land, I suspected, hadn’t come cheap. The financial difficulties he’d ventured into in order to purchase the property explained the controlled but obvious deterioration of the building and the road leading to it.
I parked near the house and walked up to the front door, which Morales had left unlocked. As I opened it, a
surge of childish hope suddenly welled up in me. “Morales!” I called loudly.
There was no response. I cursed under my breath, because I knew I was about to find him dead. I went farther into the room. Not much furniture, some well-stocked bookshelves, no decorations. Two shotguns hanging on the wall. I didn’t get close enough to examine them—I’ve always felt nervous around firearms—but they looked cleaned, oiled, and ready for use. A carefully placed, thick envelope bearing the name of “Mrs. Sandoval” lay on a ceramic ashtray in the middle of the table. I stepped to the table and picked up the envelope. Since counting the money seemed indecent, I stuffed the envelope into the interior pocket of my jacket. In a hallway off the front room, there were two doors, one leading to the bathroom and the other to the kitchen. So where was the bedroom? I retraced my steps. I’d overlooked a closed door to one side of the bookcase. This one had to be the bedroom door. I opened it with my heart in my throat.
What I saw turned out to be less terrible than I’d imagined. The window shutters were open, and the sunlight came streaming in. Evidently, Morales had figured the bright daylight wouldn’t disturb his sleep on that particular morning. There was no blood and no brains splattered against the headboard, which was the scene my fevered imagination had pictured from the moment I read the letter. The widower’s body was barely visible,
lying supine on the bed with the covers pulled up to his throat.
I’m not going to commit the stupidity of writing that he looked like a man asleep, because I’ve never understood people who could look at a corpse and make such an observation. As far as I’m concerned, dead people look dead, and Morales was no exception. Besides, his skin had taken on a decidedly bluish tinge. Did that have to do with the method of suicide he’d chosen? I didn’t yet know the answer to that question, but I was sure he hadn’t been dead long. I appreciated the delicate consideration evident in his attempt to spare me the most shocking signs of his corpse’s decay, though I would certainly have been obliged to confront them had more time elapsed between his death and my arrival.
The bedroom was minimally furnished: a double wardrobe, a chest with a closed lid, a bare table, one straight-backed chair, and the single bed, and beside it a simple nightstand covered with various kinds of medications, disposable syringes, and bottles of some medicinal solution. I realized only then how difficult it must have been for that man to deal with his illness alone, with no one to help assuage his suffering.
Because I’d begun by trying to take in the whole scene, or because thus far I’d been too cowardly to look at the body very closely, or because my eyes were more readily caught by the wedding photograph barely visible above
the forest of medicine bottles, it took me some time to notice the long white envelope bound with a ribbon and hanging from the night table. On closer inspection, I saw that it was addressed to me. And in big letters, under my name: “PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU CALL THE POLICE.”