It was a short letter, two sides of a piece of writing paper. The final paragraph was about us (Mariana and I). She asked my father, if he had an ounce of shame left in him, not to tell us lies about her. She couldn’t ask him to explain her decision to us because she knew he wouldn’t understand it himself, but she begged him not to set us against her. She promised to call from time to time and didn’t rule out visiting us at some point, when her underground existence allowed.
It was very strange to read the same letter I’d furtively held in my hands for a moment twenty-one years before. Would I have understood anything if I’d read it all the way through then? Would I—as did in fact happen—have set out on a bus to follow Teresa through the southeast of Mexico if I’d known its content?
Those lines revealed something about my father I found painful to consider at that moment, when his body had only recently been interred. I’d always been aware that the relationship between him and Teresa was tense, and only very rarely fantasized about the possibility of them being really in love, but the letter showed a much higher level of tension, a sense of asphyxiation in Teresa that I’d never, at the age of ten, been able to read in her neutral voice and undemonstrative manner.
In the same red folder, underneath that letter, were—in the washed-out hues of early eighties photography—four color photographs. In the first, Teresa was standing beside a child of no more than three, who must have been Mariana. She was holding up a placard with the words “Free Nicaragua” and underneath, in a smaller font, “S.I.N.C. Active Resistance.” In the photo, Teresa was smiling candidly at the camera; she was wearing jeans, an embroidered white blouse and had her hair tied in a ponytail. My sister was dressed in a tiny pair of red dungarees, her hair was in pigtails, and she wore an expression of extreme confusion. She was looking at Teresa rather than the camera. Behind them it was possible to make out the United States embassy on Paseo de la Reforma, and other demonstrators were advancing into frame on the right of the shot.
The second photograph was earlier than the first. It was smaller and the corners were rounded. In it, my father and Teresa stood with their arms around each other on a beach. My father’s trunks were like a cropped, tight-fitting pair of boxers; he looked incredibly thin and had a ridiculous mustache. My mother’s swimsuit hugged a six-months-pregnant belly. They were both smiling.
The third photograph was a family portrait, taken after my birth. Standing rather stiffly in front of the metal gate of the house in Educación, Teresa and my father were looking fixedly at the camera. At their feet was Mariana, wearing a flowered dress, and, almost wriggling from their arms, was a baby in floods of tears—me. I laughed a little on seeing that third image and decided to save it to give to Mariana, convinced that it would amuse her too.
The last photograph was a professional portrait of Teresa. The colors were more vivid than in the others, and it was a larger format. Standing alone, looking very serious, her face framed by those long bangs that were fashionable in the nineties, Teresa was looking at the camera with an aloof expression that communicated her disdain for the photographer, for the whole situation. The backdrop was of a blue fade that clashed with the red of her lipstick. Viewing that image, I thought that Teresa’s makeup seemed overdone, as if she were disguising herself, as if that excess were a critique or parody. Her rigid, almost depressing seriousness reinforced that hypothesis and was slightly reminiscent of the expression in Buster Keaton’s sad, wide-set eyes.
I put the photos to one side and continued to work through the folder. There were two electricity bills that seemed out of place there and, between them, an open envelope with postage stamps. I once again recognized Teresa’s handwriting. The letter was addressed to my father and the return address was San Cristóbal de las Casas. From the date stamp I knew that my father must have read that letter, the second, shortly before Teresa’s death.
Less passionate in tone than the first, the second letter was, by contrast, more informative. I guess that once she’d escaped, Teresa no longer felt the urgent need to justify herself ideologically, although her resolve was unshaken, perhaps even stronger than before. Without going into detail, she reproached my father for having made her abandon her interests, for having coaxed and wheedled her only then to reveal his true nature—a lack of moral principles, reactionary violence, rampant mediocrity. “Your money disgusts me,” she said, “and because of you, I disgust myself.”
After the paragraph of reproaches, Teresa went on to practical matters and the solid future she’d invented for herself. The future she’d perhaps spent years constructing or, on the other hand, had conceived in a moment of inspiration, crouched and vigilant in the Lacandon jungle.
She said that she’d moved to San Cristóbal de las Casas after attending the National Democratic Convention. Her plan was to get a job there and, at some point, bring Mariana to live with her. She promised to call us as soon as the telephone line was connected. She asked about my return to school, as if my father would reply to her letter—a letter that allowed for no possible answer, a letter that said everything there was to say between them. She sent me kisses.
I reread the letter a couple of times to make certain that I hadn’t missed anything. I imagined my father rereading it, seething with rage, crumpling it in a moment of supreme frustration and then, early the following morning, repenting that action
