smile; he remembers a phrase he heard he doesn’t know where about love being a stolen fruit.
When he gets to the second block he sees it. The shop is shut and looks abandoned, but the sign is still there: in a pretentious gold-plated old-English font it proclaims: “ Zapateria Napolitano — Calzado fino para damas, caballeros y ninos. ” Then, the name of the street pops into his head: Napoles. That was the peculiarity: the Napolitano family lives on Napoles Street.
He’s in luck: the street is only two blocks long, but has about fifty buildings. He rules out the two apartment buildings, one three storeys high, the other four. Eva always spoke about a house. Didn’t she also mention a front garden with roses or is that getting mixed up in his head with Marisa’s family home in San Miguel? He walks up one block along one side of the street, then down it along the other. Only three houses have front yards. One has been changed into a car park for an impeccable red Renault 12. He stops in the middle of the second block to look at a one-storey house set about twelve feet back from the sidewalk. That area, which could have once been a garden, is now covered with a slab of smooth ochre-coloured cement. The facade is made of a material that looks like brick at first glance. Lascano notices a woman looking at him through the kitchen window. He crosses the street. The woman disappears. As he approaches the gate, he sees it: a quartzite stone etched with two names — Eva and Estefania — their initials interwoven. He has found her. He rings the bell on the gate. From inside the house he hears sharp and hysterical barking and the sound of a television with the volume turned up too high. Nobody comes to the door, but Lascano suspects that the woman who was in the kitchen is now standing right behind it. It’s as if he can see her twisting a rag in her hands, scared to death, unable to decide whether or not to answer. He rings again, this time holding the bell longer. The door slowly opens a crack. The woman peeks out, the chain splitting her face in two.
Yes? Good afternoon, is this home of the Napolitano family? Yes. Are you Mrs Napolitano? Yes, what can I do for you? I’m an old friend of Eva’s.
The door slams shut. The dog starts barking frantically behind it. Lascano walks through the front gate and up to the door.
Ma’am, I need to talk to you… You have nothing to be afraid of… I am a friend… Please… What do you want? To talk. Who are you? My last name is Lascano…
Silence. The door opens slowly but, this time, all the way. A tall woman with grey hair appears from the shadowy interior of the house; Lascano knows that he’s seen those eyes before. They are Eva’s eyes.
Oh, it’s you, I thought you were dead. No, I’m still alive. Come in. Thank you, Ma’am. You can call me Beba.
The little dog is a mutt, something like a cross between a poodle and a motor scooter. He nervously sniffs Lascano’s shoes and in one quick movement wraps his front legs around Lascano’s ankles and frenetically begins to hump him. Beba threatens to hit him with the dishcloth she has in her hand. The animal backs off a few steps, then stands watching them with nervous eyes. He remains quiet, but his entire being is aching to bark, lying in wait for his mistress to get even momentarily distracted so he can attack that leg again. With another stern command from Beba, he reluctantly creeps off to a wicker basket, where he remains, fully alert. The living room is in semi- darkness. The house is clean and neat, but a cloud of foreboding hangs in the air and casts a dark shadow. Sitting in front of the television set in a flowered armchair and wearing pyjamas, the cathode rays casting his face in a ghostly light, Eva’s father is staring blankly at the screen. His moist, partially open lips make him look perplexed. He has given no sign of noticing Lascano’s presence, nor has he moved a muscle; it appears he does not even blink.
Have a seat, Lascano. Would you like some mate? Yes, thank you.
Perro looks at her. Her face looks weary, every one of her movements ending in an odd flourish of resigned indignation. She is a tall woman, graceful and shapely. She turns and catches Lascano looking at her the way a man looks at a woman’s body. Her eyes glow with a sudden and evanescent flame that brings Eva to him in one fell swoop. She has those same bright green eyes whose irises seem to be spinning when they turn on you. She gives him a half smile as she hands him the mate and sits down in front of him, still holding the dishcloth.
Thank you. You’re welcome. How can I help you, Lascano? I want to find Eva.
Beba jumps to her feet and slams the dishcloth against the table as if she were swatting an imaginary fly. She turns her back on him, walks over to the kitchen sink, turns back around and leans against the counter. Lascano keeps his eyes down. He knows that a broadside is coming and he expects a heavy verbal assault to follow up the daggers in her eyes. The heat suddenly feels suffocating.
Look here, Lascano. You entered through that door where a terrible misfortune also entered. Actually it was Eva, my eldest, who led misfortune in here by the hand. She’s the one who brought those ideas home from the university. Eva had a sister, did you know that? I did. Estefania. She was younger. Anyway, when they came to get Eva, they took Estefania. Do you understand? I do. That night, my husband tried to stop those animals from taking our daughter. They beat him to a pulp. Look what they did to him, the poor man. He was a good-looking man and we had the best shoe store in all of Haedo. What am I saying? In the whole west end of the city. People came from Barrio Norte to buy here. We had everything we needed. We worked hard and earned an honourable living. Eva is now far away. Estefania… disappeared… I can’t leave this house because I have to take care of this wreck of the man I love. Do you understand me? Yes, I do. No, no you don’t! You come here asking for help. You say you want to find Eva. Everybody wants something. Everybody has somebody to ask for help. I don’t have anybody. My life has been reduced to taking care of Roberto until the day he dies. And then what, Lascano, then what?!.. Don’t say anything. Then I’ll put a bullet through my head, though I don’t even have a gun. That’s my world, the world I live in. And you come here to ask me for help to find Eva. And me, Lascano, who do I ask for help?…
Heavy tears fall from Beba’s eyes; she shows more anger than sorrow, the pain having crystallized over the years, become deeper, more and more compressed and bitter. Lascano knows that feeling all too well, that sensation of having nothing to live for, that screen falling in front of your eyes that makes the world, even the breath you’re about to take, appear meaningless, and he can’t help wondering: what sustains this woman, how does she maintain her sanity, what can she hope for from life? Lascano realizes that only by asking the right question will he hear the answer that’s struggling to find its way out of her soul and into the light.
You’re absolutely right, Beba. Please forgive me. Don’t ask me to forgive you. I’ve got nothing to forgive you for. How can I help you, Beba? You want to help me? Yes, I do. You really want to help me? Yes, I really want to help you. Estefania was six months pregnant when they took her. I know her child was born and that it’s a boy. How do you know? Someone called me. They told me they saw her at a detention centre in Martinez, that she was taken to a hospital to give birth. Then they brought her back and a month later they took the boy and transferred her. Don’t look at me like that, I know what it means to transfer someone.
Lascano looks at her and remains silent. The cries Beba holds back cast a shadow where the screams from the torture chambers echo.
You can’t imagine what it’s like to live day in and day out, night after night knowing that the monsters who tortured and killed my daughter are the same ones who live with my grandson, feed him, raise him… There’s nothing any human being could have done to deserve that. Just thinking about it makes my blood boil, Lascano, it makes me want to make them suffer as I have, but then I think, I don’t deserve to end up being like them. I try not to think, try not to drive myself mad. The only thing keeping me alive is the hope of finding my grandson. Do you understand me? I understand. Okay. Well… Nothing. There’s nothing to say. Now I want you to go. I want to cry and I want to be alone to cry.
20
The Duchess got in touch with Gelser and told him she needed to see Miranda. Miranda was so eager to see her he arrived an hour early for the appointment Gelser set up.
Perro walks the six blocks from the Napolitanos’ house to the main street. At the corner, Topolino Pizzeria is bathed in an aquamarine light. He stops for a minute to contemplate the scene on this suburban street corner, a scene that looks like it was lifted right out of Buenos Aires en Camiseta, Cale’s satirical comic book about the city’s frazzled denizens. The restaurant is packed with families, a swarm of children who think the world exists for their amusement, and who are constantly on the verge of knocking over glasses and creating other kinds of havoc. All the tables are full, and the counter as well. The people ordering pizzas or slices to go hover around the cash register,
