It fell to Father Benito to call Gregorio’s mother, inform her of her son’s tragedy, and try to console her on the telephone. Miriam sobbed without being able to understand what had happened, since the priest had followed Concepcion’s precise instructions and did not supply her with any details. All he said was that it had been an accident related to organized crime, like so many random killings that took place in Guatemala on a daily basis. Gregorio was simply another victim of the raging violence. There was no point in her coming for the funeral, he said, as she would not arrive in time, but money was needed for the coffin, a plot in the cemetery, and other expenses. He would make sure he gave her son a Christian burial and would say masses for the salvation of his soul. He did not tell Miriam that Gregorio’s body was in a morgue some thirty miles away, and would only be handed over to the family after the official report had been completed. This could take months, unless they paid something under the table, in which case the autopsy would be quietly forgotten. This was what part of the money was for; once again, he would take this unpleasant task on himself.
On the back of the sign around Gregorio’s neck was written that this was how traitors and their families died. No one knew what Gregorio’s treachery could have been. His death served as a warning to other gang members in case their loyalty was weakening, a challenge to the national police with their boasts of having crime under control, and a threat to the population at large. Father Benito learned of the message from one of the police and considered it his duty to warn Concepcion of the danger her family was in. “So what do you want us to do, Father?” was her response. She decided that Andres should accompany Evelyn to school and back, and that instead of taking the shortcut along the green path through the banana plantation they should walk along the side of the road, even though this added twenty minutes to their journey. However, Andres did not have to follow her instructions, because his sister refused to go back to school.
By then it was obvious that the sight of her brother hanging from the bridge had left a lasting mark on Evelyn’s brain and her tongue. That year she would be turning fifteen. Her body was starting to acquire a grown-up woman’s curves and she was at last beginning to overcome her shyness. Before Gregorio’s murder she had been speaking up in class, knew the latest pop songs by heart, and was just like the other girls in the village square who would glance at the boys with feigned indifference. But after the terror of that Friday, she lost her appetite and the ability to string words together. She stammered so badly that not even her grandmother’s love enabled her to be understood.
Lucia and Richard listened in horrified silence to the story of Evelyn’s ordeal. She was crying quietly, overwhelmed by those memories. Unable to comfort her, Lucia tried to distract her with her own story.
Lucia
Chile, 1954–1973
The two pillars of Lucia Maraz’s childhood and youth were her mother, Lena, and her brother, Enrique, before the latter was taken from her by the military coup in 1973. Her father had died in a traffic accident when Lucia was tiny, and it was as if he had never existed, although the idea of a father continued to float like a mist around his two children. Among the few memories Lucia had, so vague that perhaps they were not real ones but scenes her brother invented, was a trip to the zoo. She was on her father’s shoulders, clinging on with both hands to his thick black hair as they strolled between the monkey cages. In another equally hazy memory she was on a carousel astride a unicorn while he stood beside her, an arm around her waist to steady her. Her brother and mother were nowhere to be seen in either of these images.
Lena Maraz had loved her husband from the age of seventeen with unswerving devotion. When she received the news of his death she was only able to weep for him a few hours until she discovered that the person she had just identified covered with a sheet on a metal table in a public hospital was in fact a total stranger and her marriage a monumental fraud. The same highway police officer who had informed her of what had happened later returned with a detective inspector to ask questions that seemed cruel under the circumstances and bore no relation to the accident. They had to repeat their information twice before Lena understood what they were trying to tell her. Her husband was a bigamist. In a provincial city almost a hundred miles from the capital where she lived, there was another woman as much in the dark as she was, who believed she was his legitimate spouse and the mother of his only child. For years, Lena’s husband had lived a double life, shielded by his job as a traveling salesman, which offered a good pretext for his prolonged absences. Since he had married Lena first, his second relationship had no legal standing, but the son had been recognized and bore his father’s surname.
Lena’s mourning was transformed into a storm of resentment and retrospective jealousy. She spent months scouring the past for lies and omissions, piecing things together to explain every suspect act, every false word, every broken promise, doubting even the way they had made love. In her desire to find out about the other wife she went to the province to spy on her, only to discover she was an ordinary-looking young woman who dressed badly and wore glasses: someone very different from the courtesan of her imagination. Lena observed her from a safe distance and followed her in the street but never approached her. Some weeks later, the woman phoned to suggest they meet to talk about the situation as they had both suffered in a similar way and both had children by the same father. Lena told her they had nothing in common, that the man’s sins were his own business and he must surely be paying for them in purgatory. Then she hung up on her. Lena’s life was consumed by rancor until she finally realized that her husband was still harming her from the grave, and it was her anger rather than his betrayal that was destroying her. She adopted a draconian remedy and cut the faithless wretch out of her life at a stroke. She tore up every photo of him she could lay her hands on, got rid of his things, stopped seeing the friends they had in common, and avoided all contact with the Maraz family, although she herself kept his name as it was also her children’s.