Read Online Purgatory by Tomás Eloy Martínez - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Tomás Eloy Martínez
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tainted. She read the list of items that had been returned to Simón: a Citizen wristwatch; a wedding ring; a pack of Jockey Club cigarettes; a brown leather bag; 27,000 pesos in thousand-peso bills; an Automobile Club ID card; a 1:5,000 scale map of the southern section of the province.
Dr Dupuy had tickets for the four o’clock flight to Buenos Aires, but Emilia did not want to leave immediately. Simón, she insisted, was bound to turn up at any moment. Her father headed off to the airport where he would wait in the restaurant while she and her mother went to check whether the rented jeep had been returned. Yes, they were told, it had been returned the previous day by a soldier. Another soldier had picked up Simón’s suitcase from the hotel where they had spent their one, brief, night together. The bill had been paid, though no one at the hotel could remember by whom. The concierge and the girls working on the reception desk were not the same. It felt as though the past was retreating, leaving no trace, as though life was suspended in a continuous present where things happened without cause and effect.
They got to the airport just in time for the four o’clock flight. Simón was probably waiting for her in Buenos Aires, Emilia’s mother told her, where else could he be? ‘But then why doesn’t he answer the phone?’ asked Emilia, who had been calling the San Telmo apartment every fifteen minutes. ‘He probably took the bus back,’ her mother replied, ‘it’s a twenty-hour journey, he won’t get there until tomorrow morning.’ ‘But without leaving a message, without asking after me? That’s not like him,’ said Emilia. ‘Fear changes people, hija ,’ her father observed. ‘If he’s afraid, then by now he’s running away from everything, even himself.’ It was only as they boarded the plane that Emilia realised her father had not bought a fourth ticket. She thought it best to say nothing and spent the next two hours staring at the clouds through the window.
Years later, when Simón still had not reappeared, she read an article in Gente that said Argentinian husbands often disappeared suddenly, without giving any explanation. They suffer from Wakefield’s syndrome, a psychoanalyst explained, an allusion to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story in which an upstanding London gentleman leaves his wife one day for no reason, moving to a house one street away from where he watches her go about her day-to-day routine until he grows old. Emilia knew in her heart that Simón was not like that; he would come back to her as soon as he could.
At the time, thousands of people disappeared for no apparent reason. Ambassadors disappeared, the lovers of captains and admirals, the owners of businesses coveted by the comandantes . Workers disappeared from their factory gates; farmers from their fields, leaving tractors running; dead men from the graves in which they had been buried only the day before. Children disappeared from their mothers’ wombs and mothers from the children’s memories. The sick who arrived in hospital at midnight had disappeared by morning. Frantic mothers rushed out of supermarkets searching for children who had slipped through black holes between the shelves. Some turned up years later, but they were not the same. They had other names, other parents, a history that was no longer theirs. And it was not only people who disappeared; rivers, lakes, train stations, half-built cities vanished into the air as though they had never existed. The list of things that were no more and those that might have been was infinite.
In an interview with a Japanese journalist, the Eel was forced to address the question of this rash of disappearances. ‘Firstly we would have to verify that what you say existed was where you say it was. Reality can be very treacherous. Lots of people are desperate for attention and they disappear just so people won’t forget them.’ Emilia watched the interview on television,
Dr Dupuy had tickets for the four o’clock flight to Buenos Aires, but Emilia did not want to leave immediately. Simón, she insisted, was bound to turn up at any moment. Her father headed off to the airport where he would wait in the restaurant while she and her mother went to check whether the rented jeep had been returned. Yes, they were told, it had been returned the previous day by a soldier. Another soldier had picked up Simón’s suitcase from the hotel where they had spent their one, brief, night together. The bill had been paid, though no one at the hotel could remember by whom. The concierge and the girls working on the reception desk were not the same. It felt as though the past was retreating, leaving no trace, as though life was suspended in a continuous present where things happened without cause and effect.
They got to the airport just in time for the four o’clock flight. Simón was probably waiting for her in Buenos Aires, Emilia’s mother told her, where else could he be? ‘But then why doesn’t he answer the phone?’ asked Emilia, who had been calling the San Telmo apartment every fifteen minutes. ‘He probably took the bus back,’ her mother replied, ‘it’s a twenty-hour journey, he won’t get there until tomorrow morning.’ ‘But without leaving a message, without asking after me? That’s not like him,’ said Emilia. ‘Fear changes people, hija ,’ her father observed. ‘If he’s afraid, then by now he’s running away from everything, even himself.’ It was only as they boarded the plane that Emilia realised her father had not bought a fourth ticket. She thought it best to say nothing and spent the next two hours staring at the clouds through the window.
Years later, when Simón still had not reappeared, she read an article in Gente that said Argentinian husbands often disappeared suddenly, without giving any explanation. They suffer from Wakefield’s syndrome, a psychoanalyst explained, an allusion to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story in which an upstanding London gentleman leaves his wife one day for no reason, moving to a house one street away from where he watches her go about her day-to-day routine until he grows old. Emilia knew in her heart that Simón was not like that; he would come back to her as soon as he could.
At the time, thousands of people disappeared for no apparent reason. Ambassadors disappeared, the lovers of captains and admirals, the owners of businesses coveted by the comandantes . Workers disappeared from their factory gates; farmers from their fields, leaving tractors running; dead men from the graves in which they had been buried only the day before. Children disappeared from their mothers’ wombs and mothers from the children’s memories. The sick who arrived in hospital at midnight had disappeared by morning. Frantic mothers rushed out of supermarkets searching for children who had slipped through black holes between the shelves. Some turned up years later, but they were not the same. They had other names, other parents, a history that was no longer theirs. And it was not only people who disappeared; rivers, lakes, train stations, half-built cities vanished into the air as though they had never existed. The list of things that were no more and those that might have been was infinite.
In an interview with a Japanese journalist, the Eel was forced to address the question of this rash of disappearances. ‘Firstly we would have to verify that what you say existed was where you say it was. Reality can be very treacherous. Lots of people are desperate for attention and they disappear just so people won’t forget them.’ Emilia watched the interview on television,
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