What she can’t understand is, why Paris, of all the cities in the world.
It’s what the girl wants.
How could that woman know?
She’d told her.
Girls will say anything, want anything.
True.
Why had she pushed her to choose that place?
She hadn’t.
What had she done, then?
She’d listened to her.
She’s always listened to her, too.
She doesn’t doubt it. It’s just that this other woman listens differently. She can get a person to listen to themselves, to access their own answers.
Is she one of those psychologists they brought to see them at the rehabilitation camps?
No. She actually understands, and helps. Maybe because she’s walked the same trails they have. Maybe because she isn’t a psychologist.
Now, that’s better. She doesn’t like psychologists. They’re good people, sure, with excellent intentions, but that awkward way they have of trying to get into people’s heads annoys her, and the mess they make shifting things about seems pointless. She hasn’t heard of anyone who’s found their sessions helpful. Given the choice, she wouldn’t have gone. She hated their tone when they talked to her, and how they looked at her. She didn’t know what upset her more, the way they seemed to pity her or the fact that they could barely understand a word she said.
The subjects she raised probably weren’t in the manual they’d studied at school. They probably couldn’t even help the people who felt the things in their books: they were always saying they had no solutions to offer, that each person had to come up with their own way of working through things.
What were they there for, then?
To listen.
She didn’t need anybody to listen. There wasn’t even much she wanted to talk about. Which wasn’t a problem, like they said it was, but part of her role as a radio operator: to listen, take instructions, and then convey them to her immediate superior. And no one else. Not even her life partner or her friends-in-combat. Not even her brothers. No one. It didn’t matter whether it was as simple as a greeting or as complex as an execution order for one of them, the result of some misstep they thought significant or dangerous to the cause. It wasn’t her job to let the troop know. No matter the circumstances. Her order was to keep it secret and, until that moment, no one with any authority had said otherwise. That the nice psychologists said she needed to talk, that she was in a safe, trusted space with them, meant nothing. If the war didn’t end, despite what had been announced, or if it started again after a few months of attempted and fruitless reintegration into civilian life, she’d be held accountable. She could end up being executed. What she said could put one of her compañeros, or their entire group, in danger.
The psychologists didn’t understand. They insisted she had to discuss what she’d seen and heard so her mind could heal.
She’d never felt sick, not until then, and hated being treated that way. She hated the fact that they couldn’t understand that what they referred to as her own experience didn’t belong to her. The woman who’d listened to her daughter, on the other hand, understood perfectly that some things didn’t just end because the war had. Even though she’d left the movement and even though many years had passed, she still kept the secrets she’d been entrusted with back when she’d had to carry small pieces of paper from one place to another in the city or from one town to the next without anyone being any the wiser. She knew what it was like always to be alert to everything around her: who got on the bus when she did, who sat next to her, who got off and where, who walked beside her, who was in the reflections she glimpsed in the windows of local shops she passed, what they did, what was playing on the radio right then, how many utility poles there were along the way, how many cars drove past and how fast, the number of people inside them, their gender, did they notice her, were their lips moving, or were they gesturing with their hands. The tiniest detail might mean the difference between being captured and not, between being able to continue fighting and not. If she couldn’t tell the sounds of an animal from those of a person, or the sounds of a person from those of her imagination, she could end up disappeared, or dead, as happened to one of her sisters.
She also understood there were things that couldn’t be returned once you left the struggle. Like her, she’d had to hand over her equipment. Instead of the radio that the mother had placed on the international observers’ table, this woman had returned the typewriter she’d been given and had used to prepare weekly bulletins. Instead of a rifle, she’d handed over the small gun she’d rescued during the episode at school, and what ammunition she had left. The woman had never killed anyone. She hadn’t had to. She, however, had been forced to in combat. She couldn’t say for certain whether she’d ever shot anyone dead, but she couldn’t rule it out either: she’d never stopped to check. It was never the right time.
The woman says she hasn’t asked about that, not because it doesn’t matter, but because it was something she couldn’t have chosen, something circumstances drove her to. She’d rather skip that part and instead discuss what had brought her there, to her house: her daughter and Paris. Yes, she knows, but she feels there are certain things she should share with her, which she hadn’t with the psychologists. The woman reminds her she’s not a specialist when it comes to the mind. She knows. She isn’t taking her for one. The woman reminds her, rather, of those priests people share things with from the get-go, without even having to be asked. The woman says she isn’t one of those either. She’s never believed in confession. She believes in duty, which is something she admires in her, from what her friend and daughter have told her. She believes that, had they met in wartime, she’d have backed her decision to join the ranks.
Which is high praise: it wasn’t easy to join back then. They didn’t call on just anyone and didn’t take volunteers. Someone had to see you, size you up, assign you a function, and examine you in order to evaluate your constitution.
The woman would’ve been delighted to recommend her. The mother says she’s grateful for the thought, but that she would never have joined if she’d had the choice. The woman isn’t so sure. She thinks that, faced with that situation, she would’ve come forward and made herself available of her own volition. And maybe the woman was right: the year she went down to the city to carry her second pregnancy to term, her plan had been not to return to the ranks, not because she’d stopped believing in what they did there, but because she couldn’t bring herself to leave a second daughter. She couldn’t stand the thought of it. Which is why she’d concealed her condition until it had become impossible to, and then delayed her return. She’d ignored their instructions to report and disregarded their summons. She used every excuse she could to extend her time with her daughter, who looked a lot like her firstborn. Yet she woke up a little on seeing her brother in the army, and then a little more when the guerrillas came into the city and she found herself trapped in an army-controlled zone. She’d felt the urge to leave the makeshift hideout her mom and sisters had taken shelter in, to go out and fight. She’d wished she had her boots and equipment on her. Wished she’d grasped the urgency of her life partner’s summons some weeks earlier. She wanted to not feel useless, to be able to tell her compañeros-in-arms how to break through the army’s weak blockade instead of being forced to leave under the protection of the Comandos de Salvamento, behind a white flag. She didn’t believe in surrender. She was only doing it for her daughter and in the hope of seeing her other girl.
There was nothing more important to her than her daughters.
That much was clear.
She’d done what she could to give them the best possible life.
She knew it: her daughter had told her.
She wanted to be able to give her daughter the opportunity she was after.
She already had. Twice.
She didn’t think it was enough.
Why not?
She wasn’t able to answer.
There was no answer.
Only tears: she didn’t want her to leave. She didn’t want her to go to Paris.
Could she convince her to go to her uncle’s?
She hadn’t asked if he could help, but she assumed that at the very least he’d take her in and give her advice on how to make a life for herself in that place.
She wasn’t going off to make a life for herself. She had a plan. Didn’t she know?
No.
She was leaving to get money so she could study.
She’s heard of teenagers who have done that. She knew of one very sporty kid who’d played so well he was put on reserve by a foreign team. Their plan had been to train him and have him join them. But the boy had a different plan: to save up the exact amount he needed to pay for the full four years of tuition at a private university in his country and return there as soon as he had it. She’d do the same and in less time, too, because public universities cost far less. She’d be gone for no more than a season.
Why not the country where her uncle lived?
Was Paris the issue?
Yes.
She didn’t want to lose a second daughter to that city. She hadn’t wanted to lose the first one either.
She wasn’t going to lose her.
How could she be sure? She didn’t even know her.
How could she not know? It was her daughter she was talking about. And what’s more, if she did get lost, she could find her. Hadn’t she found the other one?
She didn’t want to go through it all a second time.
She wouldn’t have to.
How could she be sure?
What was it she actually wanted to know?
What to do now.
Ever since the war had ended and her daughters’ dad had died, she hadn’t known what direction to move in. Maybe she’d spent so long following orders that she no longer knew how to give them. Had this happened to her, too?
No. She’d always made her own decisions. She left when she did because the organization had signed accords that didn’t fit with her convictions. She’d put her reasons in writing and then defended them when asked to address the committee. They immediately let her go.
She wasn’t the sort of woman who believed it was part of her duty during the struggle to provide sexual comfort for the combatants. She wasn’t like her, or like her ex-compañera either. Maybe the daughter was right when she said she was different in a way she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Maybe the woman was right when she said she should let her daughter go to Paris now she had the chance.