I wasn’t very much concerned about what would happen to me in the long run. “Nothing to fear if you have done no wrong,” as they say in my country. And I had never gotten involved in anything. With my papers in order, I didn’t see what they could accuse me of. I was convinced that they couldn’t even take me from my house. I demanded to see a search warrant, an arrest warrant, some document that authorized them to do what they were doing, and I was sure they had no such warrants. So during that whole time I struggled to convince myself to just hold on patiently. Stay calm, I told myself, stay calm and this nightmare will be over and everything will return to normal. Maybe that’s why I didn’t scream or cry during the interrogations, I didn’t want anybody in the building to hear. And look how the mind works sometimes; during that whole ordeal I was most concerned about the living-room carpet. Unbelievable. The worst part is that I still think about it, my white carpet; I must be nuttier than that woman I interviewed once who told me she couldn’t stand for the shags in her carpet to go the wrong way, and that every time someone walked on the carpet she followed behind setting the shags the right way with her hand. Without telling her, I classified her in my journal as anal, a fundamentalist about hygiene, which was precisely what we were looking for, to gather the names of these anal-retentive folks as a target list for things such as the multiservice vacuum that would suck up particles from the air, cat hair from corners, and even the cat if it gets in the way, the Miele S5 Callisto Canister, just the machine for such a task. And that was me, all anal, obsessing about my rug, when what I should have been worried about was Greg’s whereabouts, why he had not returned, what had happened. I did ask them, “What have you done with my husband? Where is he?” Because my only hope at that moment was for Greg to show up, my poor Greg, who was so in love with me, while I was so in love with his brother, but it was Greg I needed to see now, and inside I prayed for Greg to walk through the door, so he could show his police badge and everything would be fixed, everything new again, end of nightmare.
Or not? Was there another terrifying possibility? What if all this had been orchestrated by Greg himself, who had found out about my betrayal and had sent these thugs to give me what I deserved? Could they be friends of his? Accomplices in what was happening to me? Was this Greg’s vengeance falling on me like divine retribution? The very idea chilled my blood. I thought I could withstand anything, except for Greg to find out I was cheating on him.
And what about Sleepy Joe? Had these guys grabbed him? Was he handcuffed in the apartment somewhere? Was he being questioned also? I couldn’t even dare ask. Maybe Joe had managed to escape, or was hiding on the roof, and it was best not to alert them. If Joe had escaped, he’d return soon with help. He’d call Greg, tell him what had happened. And Greg would certainly come rescue me, because he’d not know anything about the adultery. Of course, it could also be that Sleepy Joe had fallen asleep on the roof, and had not even heard the break-in.
“Don’t eat the cake, it’s for my husband’s birthday,” I begged the FBI guys, but they couldn’t give a crap.
“No more birthdays that will count,” they told me, and ate the cake directly from the platter, with their hands, not even cutting it into pieces. Fucking pigs. They didn’t seem to be going anywhere, they had settled their haunches, and they seemed like they lived there and I was the intruder.
Then Birdie took me in handcuffs from my apartment to another place, and the interrogations, blows, insults, and rough-ups continued, now even more brutal. When they were finished with me, a few days later I think, they took me out of what must have been a police station and put me on a bus, chained like a rabid dog. On the way I was able to see trees, enormous swaths of woods. For a moment, I thought that they were just going to throw me out in the woods and I remembered the story of Hansel and Gretel, who tried to save themselves by leaving pieces of bread crumbs on the path that the birds ate later. But soon I saw the sign for Manninpox State Prison and I knew what awaited me. After I arrived, I don’t know how long I went without washing myself because they wouldn’t take me to the showers. My hair was disgusting, all stuck together. They had forced me to strip and had taken my clothes along with my wedding ring and my necklace with the coin piece. They made me put on a uniform made of threadbare cloth, a rag against the cold in that place, and at night they gave me a single blanket, so short my feet stuck out. They didn’t give me any underwear. I’d have paid a million dollars for a pair of panties, just that, just some panties so I didn’t feel so exposed, so helpless in the hands of these people, they some gods and me but some piece of garbage. I felt the wind sneaking up my legs and it froze me inside. Of all the people who knew me, my coworkers, Greg, Sleepy Joe himself, none of them knew I had been arrested, or where I was, because they had not let me get in touch with them.
At some point, they took a picture of me, the infamous prisoner mug shots facing front and in profile, and they assigned me a number, 77601-012. I swear, Mr. Rose, at that point I felt as if there was some hope, at least I had a number, was registered in some file, and if one day Violeta asked about me, they could tell her that it wasn’t my fault that I had not visited her again. If they disappear me, I thought, they’re going to have to account for me to someone. They’d open an investigation about 77601-012 that figures somewhere.
That mug shot was my ticket to survival.
6. From María Paz’s Manuscript
The darkness. What was it like? I shut my eyes tight and imagine it deep and velvety. I can’t remember what silence was like either. I cover my ears to remember, but it is concealed behind a buzzing swarm. These are things I forget, because here in jail there is noise and light all the time. I yearn for the calm of a long, dark moment during which there is no sound in my head. You told us you lived on the mountain, Mr. Rose, so you must know real darkness and silence. You also told us that you could see Manninpox from your house, and I wonder if now and then you look over toward us. If you can see Manninpox from your house, it means that from Manninpox someone can see your house. Or could see it if there were a place to look out.
The problem with my moments of solitude is that they’re too filled with Violeta. I can forget about crucial things that have to do with me, such as the charges against me, but I become twisted in anxiety about her. Has she eaten or left her meal untouched? Is she depressed because of the rainy weather? Has she been cured of the habit of pulling out her hair? Since the day she was born, I have had to watch over her. During the time that the two of us stayed back in Colombia, each of us in different cities, I tried several times to call her but we never spoke. For weeks I’d forget about her, but then I’d remember, and the thought that I was forsaking my duty to watch over her would crash over me like a wave. In spite of everything, life hadn’t been so bad for me then, better than I had expected. Of course, I cried a lot for Bolivia, that’s normal, even cubs and calves mourn the absence of a mother, everyone knows that there is only one mother. Everybody except me, who had two, you could say, because Leonor de Nava played that role well for me, better than Bolivia had. But in Las Lomitas I was a girl among girls, one more alongside Cami and Pati, let’s say I was more a sister than a daughter, and there I found happiness. But what about Violeta? How did it go for the abandoned baby? I don’t know, and I don’t think Violeta herself ever knew, or if she did she wasn’t telling.