Tomás Eloy Martínez - Purgatory

The journey was very different. The blazing sun now obliterated everything; they could barely make out the blots of Ñandubay trees and cacti. Clearly, there were mistakes on their map because they wound up not in Bañado de Ovanta, but back at Huacra. Later, Emilia would often wonder whether they had got lost by accident or whether someone had switched the signposts. They had been driving for twenty minutes when in a ravine on the right-hand side of the road they saw the two dogs they had noticed as they left Huacra. Everyone knows that images, when they reappear inverted, herald disaster.

Disaster occurred almost immediately. They found themselves surrounded by a hundred uniformed soldiers who forced them out of the jeep at gunpoint. The buttons on the soldiers’ jackets strained from the pressure of paunches bloated by beer and noodles. The checkpoint, which had earlier been clearly deserted, was now teeming with soldiers going in and out of a corrugated-iron shack at the rear of a large courtyard.

The pot-bellied soldiers hustled them into a shack that served as a guardhouse. None of them wore badges indicating their rank, though from their ages they could only be corporals or sergeants. There might have been a captain; checkpoints usually had a captain in charge. Emilia tried to catch Simón’s eye but he would not look at her. He seemed lost, his eyes blankly staring, bewildered, unable to believe what was happening to them. Many years later, she thought that this was the moment when her husband began to disappear from the world.

A clerk with a toad-like double chin and breath that stank of beer asked them for their papers and laboriously copied down the details, sucking his pen after every letter. Emilia, accustomed to the inertia of bureaucracies, watched his sluggish routine calmly. Simón hugged his knees like an abandoned child.

The interview turned nasty as soon as they brought up El Abra. At the mere mention of the name, the clerk swallowed his words and trailed off into silence. Their attempted explanations about maps and scales only served to make things worse. What were you doing at El Abra? What were you doing waiting for dawn in open country? Who were you meeting? What were they bringing? When? Emilia and Simón had nothing to tell but the truth and explained again that they were working on a map for the Automobile Club. They had told the same account, used the same words at every checkpoint and had nothing more to add. But still the officer was not satisfied. He demanded they repeat it over and over. Why? What for? How many of you are there? He was determined to find out why anyone would travel two hundred kilometres from Buenos Aires to map nothing. ‘Since when did the Automobile Club start wasting money on such bullshit?’ ‘It’s the truth,’ Simón insisted. ‘Besides, it wasn’t our idea.’

‘What are you, Cardoso, a Communist? A Montero ? A Bolshevik?’

‘I’m none of those things.’

‘You know what Communism is?’

‘I think so. It’s what they have in Russia, in Poland, in East Germany.’

‘Exactly. Godless countries where everything belongs to everyone. Even wives and children belong to the state. There’s no such thing as private property. Anyone can take anything belonging to someone else.’

‘Is it really that simple?’

‘I ask the questions here. Yes, it’s that simple. Where there’s no God, there’s no decency. You like the idea of some thug coming in off the street and fucking your wife up the arse just because he can?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘The Communist state gives everyone the right to do things like that. You could just as easily go to his house and return the favour, fuck his wife.’

‘I’ve never heard anything like that.’

‘Well, take my word for it. In Russia, even kids at school know this stuff, they’re used to it, they don’t know any better. Here, we teach people respect. God first of all. Then country, then family. It’s the Argentinian holy trinity.’

‘If you say so, I believe you.’

‘That’s better, Cardoso. Believe me. Where did you make contact with the subversives?’

‘I already told you, we didn’t see anyone. Only the homeless people.’

‘And you’re telling me they just suddenly appeared out of nowhere?’

‘We didn’t know there was anyone out there.’

‘That’s right, be a wise guy. Who are you trying to kid? Either you give me a straight answer right now or we’ll interrogate your wife while I fuck her right in front of you. Maybe I can make her come.’

‘I’ve told you everything. My wife and I don’t know any subversives.’

‘You can’t answer for her. Do you know any subversives, Dupuy?’

‘No, no one,’ said Emilia.

‘How would you recognise a subversive? This fucker you came with is a subversive, a dangerous subversive. We’ve got a file on him.’

‘He’s my husband. You can check, ask anyone. You’re making a terrible mistake.’

‘You’re the one who made the mistake when you married this Commie fucker. You had a meeting somewhere round here, didn’t you, Cardoso? The moishe you were supposed to be meeting gave you up. Just tell me where you stashed the maps and the weapons you brought. Tell me, and you can go. You can both go. Don’t waste my time.’

‘I’m not going to lie to you. We didn’t come here to meet anyone. We were sent to map the area. I explained all this to the officers at the last checkpoint. As soon as we finish, we’re leaving. Two hours, maybe three. Nobody told us we couldn’t.’

‘You think I’m some fuckwit? In the last week, we’ve caught five Trotskyites armed to the teeth. They were carrying a whole library of maps. They told us everything. Terrorists use maps to prepare their attacks, to get in and get the fuck out quickly, am I wrong?’

Emilia bowed her head, hopeless. What was happening was a farce, something that had no place in the real world. She tried to reframe things, to return to a sensible, safe place. She said: ‘I am the daughter of Dr Orestes Dupuy. You have no right to treat us like this.’

‘You think so, puta ? We don’t give a shit about some Dupín here. This is a war, you get that? I can kill you right here, right now, give any excuse I like. I can say you were trying to escape, that you tried to take my gun off me, I can say the first thing comes into my head. Out here, you have no name; you don’t exist.’

Simón didn’t know how to appease the toad. He was desperate for this nightmare to end, for them to leave him in peace. With the country in the state it was in, who cared about maps?

Another paunchy officer appeared in the doorway and asked the pencil-pusher if he needed any help.

‘Help? With this little whore?’ the toad said. ‘Are you shitting me? I could fuck her three times over and still have dick to spare. See the Commie fucker who came in with her? He’s already given up.’

Simón’s head had slumped onto his chest. Lashed to a chair with the toad’s belt, he could barely move. The clerk rolled up his sleeves and went back to sucking his pen. He was preparing himself for more questions. He took the pot of coffee heating on the stove and threw it in Simón’s face.

‘You going to tell who you brought those fucking maps for? What about the weapons we found in the jeep?’

Maddened by pain and fear, Simón hauled himself to his feet, still lashed to the chair, and struck out wildly. It was a senseless thing to do, he couldn’t hope to achieve anything, he didn’t even succeed in loosening the belt. He slumped onto the floor with the chair on top of him. The noise attracted the attention of the paunches outside. Two of them quickly hauled him to his feet and slammed him against the wall. Emilia watched her husband slide down in slow motion. It seemed unbelievable to her that life should play them such an ugly trick, just when they were beginning to be happy. A few insignificant lines on a map had brought them to this place by chance, and now chance was destroying them. The world refused to be mapped, and those who violated this principle paid their price in tears. She heard a crack like breaking bone. Simón’s nose was swollen, his lip split; a trickle of blood stained his shirt.