That very evening, during my first private conversation with Ricardo Morales, I made my decision to help him any way I could. We were in a bar at 1400 Tuc.u.man Street, sitting next to the guillotine window that separated us from the sidewalk. Outside, a torrential rain was very gradually letting up.
After chewing out Romano, I"d gone to my office, sat at my desk, and taken deep breaths, trying to calm down. It had occurred to me that the poor widower was probably hurrying over to the court at that very moment, convinced that he was about to learn the truth. And in fact, twenty minutes later, he arrived; I heard two timid knocks on the door of the court and an impersonal "Come in" from one of the young office workers.
Soon the kid who"d waited on Morales came to me and said, "Excuse me, sir, there"s someone to see you." I raised my head and spent a few moments thinking that if the new intern was speaking to me so formally, it surely meant I"d crossed the threshold into maturity.
When he saw me approaching the reception area, Morales said, "I got a telephone call at the bank." Maybe he recognized me as one of the two who"d brought him the news of Liliana"s death.
"Yes, I know," I replied, incapable of saying anything more precise. I supposed he was going to ask me if there had really been "a major breakthrough" in the case, or if it was true that "the murderers had been remanded into custody," depending on which journalistic style (Cronica? La Nacion?) that fool Romano had chosen to imitate while communicating his supposed scoop. But to my surprise, Morales contented himself with remaining very stiff, with his hands lightly resting on the counter and his eyes fixed on mine.
That was worse than if he"d asked questions, because his silence struck me as the silence of a defenseless man convinced that nothing is going to turn out the way he"d dared to dream it would. Maybe that"s why I invited him to have coffee with me. I was aware that I was violating the most elemental rules of judicial asepsis. I soothed my conscience by telling myself I was doing it out of sympathy for his loss, or I wanted to make some kind of amends for Romano"s stupid haste.
We went out the Tuc.u.man Street door and into a fierce downpour that gusts of wind blew sideways. Water was rising in the street when we bounded across it. Morales followed me docilely as I went on, clinging to storefronts and dashing under awnings, trying to avoid getting too drenched. With the same meekness, or apathy, he let me lead him across Uruguay Street, into a bar, and to a table next to the front window. Making a brusque sign to the waiter, I ordered two coffees; Morales accepted his wordlessly. After that, we had nothing to do.
"What lousy weather, huh?" I said, making an effort to climb out of the uncomfortable silence we"d sunk into.
For a long time, Morales stared absently at the flooded sidewalk.
"We sent for you," I said-even though the word "we" tied me to that son of a b.i.t.c.h Romano-"but there"s something I have to tell you."
At this point, I got stuck again. How to begin? Maybe I should say, We got your hopes up for nothing, please excuse us.
"Don"t worry," Morales said, finally turning to look at me with the slightest of smiles on his face. "You just told me."
I stared at him in confusion.
"It was the "but,"" he continued by way of explanation. I opened my mouth to reply, even though I didn"t understand what the widower was trying to convey. Seeing me flail about like a drowning man, he went on: "The "but." You just said, "We sent for you, but." That"s enough. I get it. If you had said, "We sent for you, and," or "We sent for you, because," that would have been different. You didn"t say that. You said "but.""
Morales turned his gaze back to the rain outside, and I supposed, incorrectly, that he"d finished.
"It"s the s.h.i.ttiest word I know," he said, and then he was off again, but I never for a minute thought we were having a conversation; it was an interior monologue he was speaking aloud out of pure distraction. ""I love you, but ..."; "That could be, but ..."; "It"s not serious, but ..."; "I tried, but ..." See what I mean? It"s a s.h.i.tty word people use to annihilate what was, or could have been, but isn"t."
I looked at his profile as he watched the rain come down. I"d figured he was a simple young guy with narrow horizons whose world had just collapsed. But his words and the tone he spoke them in were those of a man acquainted with grief. He seemed like someone who"d always been prepared to suffer the hardest blows and endure the worst defeats.
"That makes things a little simpler for me," I said. Although I felt somewhat ashamed, I found in his knowing melancholy a way to escape from the odd sensation of guilt I was starting to feel.
"Go on, I"m listening." Morales shifted his chair in my direction, as if to facilitate focusing his entire attention on me, or as if he wanted to avoid being hypnotized by the rain again.
I told him everything. I no longer felt obliged to disguise Romano"s and Sicora"s responsibilities in the matter-as far as I was concerned, they could go straight to h.e.l.l. I ended my account by explaining that I"d just filed a complaint against the two of them in the Appellate Court, and that I was waiting for the medical examiners" report on the injuries suffered by the two workers.
"Poor guys," Morales said. "What a mess they got dragged into."
He spoke in a tone so neutral, so lacking in emotion, that he seemed to be talking about something totally unconnected with himself. I"d been afraid that Morales would disapprove of my actions and insist on clinging fanatically to the case Romano and that other moron had built up out of the smoke of their own stupidity. But now I was starting to realize that the young man was too intelligent to find solace in any story that wasn"t the truth.
"If you catch him, what will he get?" Morales spoke without turning his eyes from the rain, which had finally turned into a thin drizzle.
I couldn"t help remembering the relevant articles of the Penal Code, one of which decreed that the punishment in such a case was life imprisonment, while the other provided for a concurrent sentence of imprisonment for an indefinite period of time, as stipulated for anyone who "kills in order to prepare, facilitate, commit, or conceal another crime." I didn"t think Morales could be hurt by any hard truth at that point, simply because his soul was so thoroughly wounded that another wound wouldn"t matter. I said, "It"s first-degree murder. Article 80, paragraph 7 of the Penal Code. The sentence is life imprisonment."
"Life imprisonment," Morales repeated, as if making an effort to grasp the idea entirely.
I took a chance: "Does that disappoint you?" I was afraid I"d sounded insolent, asking him such a personal question. After all, we were two strangers.
Morales looked at me again, and his sudden perplexity appeared sincere. "No," he replied at last. "It seems fair." The young man continued to surprise me.
I kept quiet. Maybe it was my duty to explain to him that unless the culprit had a prior murder conviction, he"d be able to leave prison on parole in twenty or twenty-five years, even if he"d been sentenced concurrently to confinement "for an indefinite period of time," in accordance with article 52. But I had the feeling that such an explanation would increase his grief.
So I said nothing and kept my eyes fixed on Morales, who for his part was staring at the sidewalk. I saw his brow suddenly darken, and he made a sign of vexation. I too looked outside. It had stopped raining, and the bright sun was lighting up the wet streets and reflecting in the puddles as if shining for the first time.
"I hate when this happens," Morales said, all of a sudden. I was apparently supposed to know what "this" was. "I"ve never liked to see the sun come out after a storm. My idea of a rainy day is that it ought to rain all day and into the night. If the sun comes out the next morning, fine, but this? This is unforgivable. The sun"s b.u.t.ting in where it"s not wanted. It"s an intruder." Morales stopped for a second and gave me a quick, absent smile. "Don"t worry. You"re probably thinking the tragedy has scrambled my brains. It"s not that bad."
I had no idea what to say, but once again Morales didn"t seem to expect a reply.
"I love rainy days. Ever since I was a little boy. I always thought it was ridiculous when it rained and people called it "bad weather." Bad weather for what? You yourself complained about the rain when we first sat down, didn"t you? But I suspect you were just making small talk because you felt uncomfortable and didn"t know how to fill up the silence. Doesn"t matter, really."
I kept on saying nothing.
"Seriously. It"s only natural. I suppose I"m a rare case, but I believe that rain has a bad reputation it doesn"t deserve. As for the sun ... I don"t know. With the sun, everything seems too easy. Like in what"s-his-name"s movies ... you know, the singer ... Palito Ortega. It"s that fake innocence-I always find it exasperating. I think the sun gets too much good press. And that"s why it irritates me when it barges in on rainy days. It"s as though the d.a.m.ned thing just can"t stand to let those of us who don"t worship it like idolaters enjoy an entire day without sunshine."
By this point, I was staring at him, completely absorbed.
"I"ll tell you what I think is a perfect day," Morales went on. He made a few small gestures with his hands, as if he were directing a film. "An early morning sky covered with storm clouds, a certain number of thunderclaps, and a good, steady rain all day long. I"m not talking about a heavy downpour, because the idiots who love the sun complain twice as much if the city fills up with water. No, I"m satisfied with a continuous, even rain that lasts into the night. Well into the night, in fact, so I can go to sleep to the sound of the drops coming down. And if we can get a few additional thunderclaps, so much the better."
He fell silent for a minute, as if he were remembering such a night.
"But this," he said, twisting his mouth into a grimace of disgust. "This is a rip-off."
Morales remained turned away from me, looking out at the street with an expression of great disappointment on his face, and I was able to study his features for a long time. I tended to think that my work had made me immune to emotions, but this young guy, collapsed on his chair like a dismounted scarecrow and gazing glumly outside, had just expressed in words something I"d felt since childhood. That was the moment, I believe, when I realized that Morales reminded me very much, maybe too much, of myself, or of the "self" I would have been if feigning strength and confidence had exhausted me, if I were weary of putting them on every morning when I woke up, like a suit, or-worse yet-like a disguise. I suppose that"s why I decided to help him in any way I could.
11.
It was a day in late August, and I was sitting in my corner of the court offices, finishing the paperwork for a prison release.
Although I was well aware that the moment for removing the Morales file from the active docket was close at hand, I tried to postpone that step by employing the oldest and most futile method I knew: I put the case out of my mind. And therefore, because of my ineffective resistance and the ineluctable circ.u.mstances, my little games of denial and procrastination were brought to a halt, suddenly and punctually, when the moment arrived.
I noticed that Clerk Perez was approaching with a case file in his hand. He dropped the dossier on the gla.s.s top of my desk, where it landed with a weak splat. Before he turned around and went back to his office, he said, "I"m leaving the Palermo murder with you so you can dismiss it."
In the jargon of our profession, "leaving the murder with me" meant that he wanted me to write up a decision; Palermo was the barrio where the crime had been committed. Since we had no suspects, we couldn"t identify the case, as we usually did, by the defendants" names; and when Perez told me to "dismiss it," he was referring to the precise nature of the decision he expected me to produce. With no positive leads after three months of investigation and with no evidence that would allow us to proceed in any direction, he was requesting that I write a recommendation to seal the file. End of the line. Goodbye to the case. A thousand times I"d written up such decisions or, for simpler cases, ordered my subordinates to do so. But I balked at this one, because as far as I was concerned, this case wasn"t about the Palermo murder, it was about the death of Ricardo Agustin Morales"s wife, and I"d resolved to help him as much as possible. And up to that moment, the truth was I hadn"t been able to do very much.
I put aside the papers I"d been working on and pulled the blue dossier closer. "Liliana Emma Colotto," I read. "Homicide." I leafed through the pages; their contents were pretty predictable. The initial police report, with the statement of the first officer to arrive at the crime scene after the neighbor called the police. The description of the discovery of the body. The medical examiners" application to perform an autopsy. The note attesting to the notification of the examining magistrate"s court, namely me. Me receiving the news, half asleep on the wide desk in the judge"s office, with that p.r.i.c.k Romano jumping around me and celebrating. The statements Baez collected from the witnesses. The photographs of the crime scene. I quickly flipped past those; nevertheless, in one of the shots, taken from a point to the right of the victim"s body, I thought I recognized, very close to her hand, the tip of my shoe. I paged through the autopsy very fast-those descriptions turned my stomach-but I lingered over the examiners" conclusions.
Rape ... death by strangulation ... and that third conclusion? I hadn"t paid attention to it when we"d first received the autopsy report, some weeks before. Although it didn"t seem possible, the case was apparently capable of intensifying grief even further from beyond the grave. Suddenly anxious, I continued looking through the file, but it appeared to contain no more new information. I came to the brutal charade Romano and Sicora had conducted with the innocent workers: two scanty pages of "spontaneous confessions" beaten out of those poor guys by that pig Sicora. After that, there was my formal complaint to the Appellate Court, accusing Romano and Sicora of illegal coercion and abuse and requesting that a medical examiner a.s.sess the injuries suffered by the two arrestees.
I thought of Romano, as I did every time I pa.s.sed his empty desk. Right after I filed my complaint, disciplinary proceedings had begun, and he"d been provisionally suspended from his duties. At first, I"d been afraid that his staff might bear me a grudge for turning him in; at the end of the day, we all worked for the same court. But my relations with them remained so cordial that I was moved to wonder whether they might not be secretly grateful to me for having gotten their loutish boss off their backs. I returned to the few pages left in the file. The remand of the case from the police to the examining magistrate"s court. The statements taken in our offices from the same witnesses, who limited themselves to verifying what they"d already said. And finally, a supplementary autopsy report (on the results of some visceral examination that added nothing and which, in any case, I was too apprehensive to do more than skim).
On the back of the last page, there was a note in Perez"s handwriting, dated that same day. Following Judge Fortuna Lacalle"s express instructions, Clerk Perez had written, "Any case submitted by the police but containing no named suspects or perpetrators must be removed from the active docket within two months, or three at the most." Had the judge upheld that principle because he was methodical, that would have been one thing; but no, he upheld it because he was mediocre. His real motto was "The fewer cases, the better." That was the reason behind his mania for shelving cases as soon as possible when no suspects had been found, no matter whether the crime was theft or murder.
I imagined the next step. I would put a sheet of letterhead paper in the typewriter, select the approved heading for such a doc.u.ment, and type up a decision of some ten lines, prescribing a stay of proceedings in the case, citing the lack of suspects, and recommending that the police continue their investigations in order to identify the guilty parties. That last part served to keep up appearances; in practice, the doc.u.ment was the dossier"s death certificate, and the case would be archived forever.
I looked though the whole file again. Although Fortuna was a fraud and Romano a suck-up, they were, G.o.dd.a.m.n it, right. I turned to the autopsy and reviewed its conclusions one more time. I wondered if Morales knew what they were; I figured he didn"t. I thought about his young, beautiful wife. Young, beautiful, raped, dead, and left on their bedroom floor.
I had to tell him what was in the autopsy report. I was certain that the young man"s heart held an immense capacity for grief, but not much room for deception. Nevertheless, to inform him of what I"d learned and at the same time to reveal that the case was closed, consigned to the archives, seemed excessively cruel; I thought the knowledge might be too great for him to bear.
I took out an eraser from the top drawer of my desk and neatly erased the date written in the margin of the last page. Then, with the slightly faltering delicacy of one who imitates another"s handwriting, I changed the date so that the case would remain active for three more months. I stood up and put the file on a shelf where, as I knew from experience, no one would lay a finger on it for decades unless I gave an explicit order to the contrary. Neither the judge nor the clerk would ask any questions about that case. I returned to my desk and spent a long time gnawing the cap of a ballpoint pen and wondering what would be the best way to explain to Morales that his wife, at the time of her rape and murder, was almost two months pregnant.
Telephone.
Chaparro knows he"ll regret ringing her up, but the possibility of hearing her voice, like everything that has to do with her, attracts him with an irresistible force. And so he gets closer and closer to making the call and regrets it every step of the way, from the moment the notion occurs to him until the moment he hears her pick up the phone.
He starts his approach by telling himself that he needs certain pieces of information contained in the legal proceedings. Does he really need them? At first his answer is yes, because after thirty years, many minor details (places, dates, the precise sequence of events) remain in his memory as little more than a faint blur. But, he immediately objects, such precision is obsessive and disproportionate. Does it really matter whether the case was inactive for five months or six? He"s not submitting evidence for a preventive detention; he"s narrating a tragedy in which he had the dubious honor of serving as both witness and protagonist. So much strict attention to detail is, therefore, unnecessary. But this admirably balanced line of reasoning does nothing to diminish his obstinate desire to review the case. Two days pa.s.s, days during which he barely manages to draft a couple of useless pages, before he"s able to admit to himself that the idea of looking over the case file captivates him only because it offers an un.o.bjectionable, crystal-clear excuse for visiting Irene.
She knows-he"s told her himself-that he"s "writing a book." Fine. After the pa.s.sage of so much time, it"s only natural that a writer would want to check a few details. Terrific. The case is stored in the General Archive, in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Palace of Justice. What better means of facilitating Chaparro"s access to the old dossier could there be than an informal call from the examining magistrate of the court that handled the case in the first place? An unbeatable ploy. It would give him an opportunity to have coffee with Irene and play the part of a writer engaged in his research. Irene likes the project he"s embarked on, and she becomes still more beautiful whenever she"s discussing something she feels enthusiastic about. On the whole, therefore, the perfect excuse. So why does it make him so nervous, and why does he hold back whenever he"s on the point of calling her? Precisely because of that, because it"s all a pretext. It"s basically that simple. However he looks at it, the whole thing"s an alibi for spending time with her. And Chaparro quails before the smallest possibility of exposing his feelings to the woman he loves.
He knows the people who run the archive. Most of them entered the Judiciary after he did. If he presents himself at the reception counter and asks to see a case file, they"re highly unlikely to refuse him. And even if they do, he can always ask young Garcia, the current clerk, to make a call from the court and smooth the way for him. So what sense does it make to ask Irene for help?
Well, none at all, except that he"d get to spend five minutes alone with her, protected by an unimpeachable excuse. Without such a screen, he can"t. Even though he wants to, it"s impossible. He"s terrified by the thought that the fire in his guts might be visible from the outside, that he might garble his words or get the shakes or break out in a cold sweat.
His embarra.s.sment is ridiculous. They are, after all, both adults. Why not simply tell her the truth? Why not visit her in her office, without a pretext, and let her know how he feels? They"re grown-ups. A few hints should be enough, some courtly gesture that would serve to demonstrate his interest, and Irene could imagine the rest.
Why can"t he do that? Because it"s simply out of the question. Because Chaparro has spent so many years keeping his feelings to himself he"d rather carry them to the grave than blurt out some awkward declaration, some sweetened, easily digestible version of what"s in his heart. He can"t just show up and remark, as naturally as can be, "Look, Irene, I wanted you to know that I"ve been crazy about you for three decades, including some less intense periods during the many years when we didn"t work together."
Chaparro roams like an automaton from the kitchen to the dining room and back. He opens and closes the refrigerator fifty times. Even though sooner or later, in the course of almost every pa.s.s, he stops in front of his desk, he"s so wrapped up in his dilemma that he can"t see those scattered pages for what, despite his fatalistic predictions, they are: the embryo of his d.a.m.ned book.
For the hundredth time, he looks at the telephone, as though the thing could help him decide to act. Suddenly, he takes two steps toward it, and his heartbeat accelerates. He regrets what he"s going to do before he"s dialed the third digit, but he forges ahead, because he"s resolved to fulfill his desire, and at the same time, he rues the decision. He feels, in short, the mixture of cynicism and hope that"s the hallmark of his life.
He dials the direct line to her office. He"s not the least interested in letting any of his former coworkers learn about this call. After the third ring, someone picks up the phone.
"h.e.l.lo?" It"s Irene"s voice. Not for the first time, Chaparro"s surprised by this almost imperceptible sign of independence from convention in the woman he adores. At the beginning of their tenure in the vast Palace of Justice, all new employees copy their colleagues and use the bureaucratic formula for answering the telephone: the words "Court" or "Clerk"s office," spoken in a monotone, and followed, when one is in a friendly mood, by "Good day." Not Irene.
Ever since her first day of work in the Judiciary, Irene has chosen to initiate her telephone conversations with that warm, familiar "h.e.l.lo?" as if she were waiting for a call from her grandma. Chaparro knows this, because he was her first boss. He"d just been promoted to deputy when Irene started working in the clerk"s office as an intern. He would later come to feel some regret for having decided, when they were first being introduced, not to speak to her in the familiar vos form. He"d been brought up to have the greatest respect for women, even very young ones, even those who might walk up to him, extend a hand, and greet him with a laconic "It"s a pleasure." His reply had sounded quite formal: "How do you do, Miss? Good to have you with us." At the time, Chaparro was twenty-eight, ten years older than his new employee, and he was convinced that a boss always had to keep the hierarchical rankings clear in dealing with his subordinates. He"d hesitated a little when he looked into her eyes, because the girl looked back at him so intently, so penetratingly, that it was as if his own eyes had been struck by two well-aimed, jet-black beams. He broke the impa.s.se by immediately releasing the hand she"d given him and instructing a secretary to describe the young intern"s basic duties to her. As their court was on call and overwhelmed with work, they"d a.s.signed the girl to answer the telephone. After her fourth or fifth "h.e.l.lo?" Chaparro had deemed it proper to explain to her, from the heights of his juridical experience, that it would be infinitely more practical to answer incoming calls by saying, "Clerk"s Office 19," thus sparing the caller the time required to overcome his surprise at such eccentricity and to verify whether he"d actually reached the court. Well before the conclusion of his discourse, Chaparro had started feeling like an idiot, although he wasn"t sure whether that was because of the intrinsic stupidity of his counsel or because of Irene"s demurely amused expression as she listened to him go on. Nonetheless, she nodded a few times, as if accepting his suggestion. Three minutes later, however, when the telephone rang again, she answered with a "h.e.l.lo?" as informal and unjuridical as all the previous ones. There was no temerity in her voice, nor did it convey the slightest defiance. Maybe that was why Chaparro couldn"t get angry at her and considered the matter closed.
All her life, Irene has answered the phone like that, and so she does on this August day, thirty years after their first meeting, when Chaparro stops pacing around his house and circling the telephone and picking up the receiver and putting it down again who knows how many times and finally decides-since he can no longer avoid acting, which is the point he generally reaches before any important decision-to call her at her office and hears the "h.e.l.lo?" that makes his heart leap in his chest.
Alibis and Departures.
Benjamin Chaparro goes directly to the judge"s chambers. He doesn"t pa.s.s through his own clerk"s office or through the offices of Section No. 18. So agitated is he by the imminence of seeing Irene that he"s afraid everyone will notice how love-smitten he is. He knocks two times. Irene"s voice bids him enter. He thrusts his head inside with a gesture of involuntary timidity, the kind he hates himself for. A smile lights up her face when she sees him. "Come in, Benjamin," she says. "Come on in."
Chaparro steps in, feeling his temperature rise. Has his face turned red? The sight of her stuns him as much as it did the first time they met, but he tries to keep her from seeing that when he looks at her. She"s tall, with a narrow, fine-featured face. When she was younger, she was a little bony, but the years-and childbearing?-have added a slight, becoming roundness to her figure. They greet each other with a kiss on the cheek. Only when they sit down, one on either side of her big oak desk, does Chaparro release the breath he"s been holding since the instant before the kiss. Now he can breathe easy; since he hasn"t smelled it, it"s possible that her scent won"t keep him awake for the next two or three nights. A little embarra.s.sed, as if they"ve caught each other doing something entertaining but reprehensible, they smile without talking. Chaparro draws out the moment before he speaks, because he sees her blush, and that makes him feel extremely happy. But when she looks into his eyes with an unspoken question that seems to penetrate all his alibis, he feels he"s lost the advantage. Better stick to the script, he thinks. So he states his request, and to justify it, he expands a bit on the subject of "his book." He presents (becoming excited as he does so) a summary of the story, which she knows only superficially and by hearsay, that is, from remarks made by Chaparro himself and by other dinosaurs in the court. When he finishes, Irene gives him an amused look and asks, "Do you want me to make a call to the archive?"
"If you could ... I"d like that," Chaparro declares, swallowing saliva.
"It"s not a problem, Benjamin." She frowns slightly. "But look, the people down there know you better than they know me."
s.h.i.t, Chaparro thinks. Is his alibi so transparent? He says, "The problem is, the case is ancient history." He"s running out of excuses.
"Yes, I know. You told me about it once. It came in after you had me promoted to the eleventh Court, right?"
Is there some second meaning behind that "you had me promoted"? If there is, Irene"s more perceptive than Chaparro would like to believe. In 1967, and more precisely in October of that year, when she"d been working as an intern for two weeks, and not long after he"d definitively abandoned his demand that she answer the telephone as G.o.d intended, Chaparro had dreamed about her. He woke up trembling. He was a married man, and at the time he was still doing his best to convince himself that his marriage with Marcela was a good one. He tried to forget the dream, but it recurred on each of the five following nights. The last time, the image of Irene was so vivid and the glow of her naked body so convincingly bright that Chaparro felt like weeping when he woke up and realized that none of it had really happened. That morning, he arrived at the court determined to purge the amorous feelings that were beginning to consume him. He telephoned all the colleagues he was on more or less friendly terms with and lauded the merits of an intern who was embarking on a career in the Judiciary, a law student who deserved a paid position. At the time, Chaparro was already a young man respected and well liked in the profession, and some months later, one of the colleagues he"d contacted called him back with the offer of an entry-level job "for the girl." Chaparro broke the radio silence he"d been maintaining with the young woman and told her the good news. Irene appeared quite happy to hear it, and her joy hurt him a little. If it was so easy for her to go, that meant there was nothing in their clerk"s office she minded leaving. Nothing she"d miss. It made sense, he told himself. She was engaged to a young engineering student, a friend of one of her older brothers. Chaparro"s pa.s.sion made him feel uncomfortable in front of Marcela, and knowing that his love was unrequited made him feel lonely as well as unfaithful. He told himself it was best to uproot a plant that put out no shoots and had no future.
Irene moved to her new office in March 1968, shortly before the Morales case came into his hands, and Chaparro lost sight of her. Things were like that in the courts. Someone who worked two floors down from you might as well be living in another dimension. Chaparro had no news of Irene until February 1976, when she reentered his life as the new clerk of his section: she"d obtained her law degree and been appointed to the post. Although Chaparro was a free man, having separated from Marcela several years previously, Irene"s return gave him no sort of opportunity to declare himself, even had he dared. When he saw her come through the door of the clerk"s office for the first time since 1968, she was preceded by a considerable, six-months-pregnant belly. Because he"d thought the way to spare himself the sting of knowing she had her own life-while his was being ruined-was to close his ears to any news of her, it was only then that Chaparro discovered she"d married her engineering student two years before. The young man was now an engineer, and she was expecting their firstborn.
When Irene returned from maternity leave, it was Chaparro who was gone. It surprised her to learn that her deputy clerk had accepted an open position in the Federal Court of San Salvador de Jujuy, up in the extreme northwest, fifteen hundred kilometers away, but she was given to understand, sotto voce, that Judge Aguirregaray in person had suggested the move to Benjamin. This information was conveyed in a baleful, conspiratorial tone that Irene, even though she wasn"t very knowledgeable about political matters, had no trouble interpreting: at some point during the cold winter of 1976, it had evidently become dangerous for Benjamin Chaparro to remain in Buenos Aires.
Over the course of the following years, each of them received news of the other in fragments. Chaparro knew about Irene"s continuing climb up the professional ladder: public prosecutor in 1981, clerk of the Appellate Court a couple of years later. In her turn, she heard of his return to Buenos Aires in 1983, when the military dictatorship was in its death throes. He arrived accompanied by his wife, a woman from Jujuy whom he would later divorce. Throughout the decade of the 1980s, contact between Chaparro and Irene was scant, nothing more than a couple of fleeting conversations after chance meetings in the street. Irene found out that Chaparro"s wife, the woman from Jujuy, was named Silvia, and that they had no children. He learned that Irene was still married to her engineer and that they had three happy, growing little girls.
They met again a few years later, in 1992. Chaparro had gone through his second divorce some time previously, and he"d persuaded himself that it would be best for him to live out his days in prudent solitude. Apparently he wasn"t made for marriage. He was over fifty years old. Perhaps the time was right for him to give up women. He was prepared to do without them. What he was unprepared for was Judge Alberti"s retirement at the beginning of the year and the appointment of the new judge, who was none other than Irene.
When they met face to face, in the same office in which they were now sitting, the two had grinned at each other like battle-tested veterans surrounded by raw recruits. "We already know each other," Irene said, smiling, and the twenty-five years standing like a protective barrier between Chaparro and the series of dreams that had shaken the foundations of his soul crumbled into dust, with nary a trace left behind. The woman had no right to activate that smile. But she still used "de Arcuri," the engineer"s name, she was still married, and that was the kind of obstacle Chaparro was disinclined to try to overcome. Not at that point in his life, at least. So he greeted her with a firm handshake and an atrocious "How are you doing, Your Honor?" thus establishing a sensible distance between them. She accepted the boundary, and for the next two years, even though they saw each other eight or nine hours a day, five days a week, they treated each other with reserved courtesy.
Then, on an ordinary morning, without any preliminaries, Irene started addressing him with the informal vos. It was a Monday, and with the naturalness that marked all she did, she merely said to him, "Say, Benjamin, I need you to help me with the release request for the Zapatas. Could you?" Chaparro could. And they went on like that throughout the following years, until he announced his upcoming retirement. Had she been surprised to hear it? The inveterate optimist that lived inside Chaparro tried to suggest to him that a look of muted sorrow and poorly concealed astonishment had transformed Irene"s face. But there was no reason for surprise; he figured everybody in the court knew about his plans. So was she simply sad that he was leaving?
Whatever the answer might have been, Chaparro cut his meditations short. He asked himself-he couldn"t help it-whether it would be worth his while to confess the truth to the woman he loved, and his reply was no, no way, not possible. Wouldn"t declaring his love for her amount to acknowledging that he"d loved her for almost thirty years? Wouldn"t it be the same as confessing that he"d spent his life longing for her from afar? Never, he thought vehemently. They hadn"t really spent much time together over the course of all those years anyway, Chaparro told himself, but deep in his heart, he knew he"d never stopped loving her, and a combination of chance, common sense, and cowardice had always kept them apart. His silence was his; he owned it. If he spoke, he"d end up sunk in the swamp of her pity. He was determined to avoid such a plight, to avoid hearing anything that sounded like "Poor Benjamin, I didn"t know ..." The mere thought clouded Chaparro"s vision with anger and shame. Let my love die with me, he inwardly declared, but don"t let it be spoiled.
"Benjamin? That"s the case you"re talking about, isn"t it?"
Chaparro jumps. Irene looks at him, smiling, questioning, and he wonders how long he"s been sitting there like an idiot. Actually, it can"t have been long. He"s so used to thinking on that topic, a source of both pleasure and pain, that at least he thinks about it rapidly. "Yes, yes," he says. "That case."
"All right, then, I"ll give them a call."
Irene pauses a moment, holding his gaze, before looking up the archive"s number in her address book. When at last she lowers her eyes to the little book and the telephone, the knot in Chaparro"s gut relaxes. With her usual informality, she greets whoever answers the phone and asks to speak to the director. She has a smile on her lips, wide-open eyes, and the slightly absorbed expression of someone who"s talking to another person without seeing him. Since she"s turned toward the window with her face in profile, Chaparro can observe her as he pleases. Nevertheless, he restrains himself. He knows from experience that if he looks at her too long, the anguish of being unable to throw his arms around her and kiss her, meticulously and indefatigably, will overcome him. So, all things considered, he prefers to look in some other direction.
"There you go, Benjamin," she says as she hangs up. "No problem. In the archive even the floor tiles know who you are."
"Is that a compliment or a joke about my age, Your Honor?"
She turns serious. Only her eyes keep smiling, very slightly. "Can I a.s.sume you"re not going to show your face around here again until you need us for something else?"