On July 28, 1976, Sandoval went on a monumental bender that saved my life.
He’d looked dreadful the entire day. When he arrived at the office, he greeted no one and set immediately to work checking a ballistics report, a triviality he could ordinarily have dispatched in twenty minutes; it took him five hours. At the end of the day, after everyone else in the office had gone home or over to the law school, I tried to engage him in conversation, but it was like talking to a wall. As usual, he spoke only when he felt like it.
Eventually he said, “My aunt Encarnación, my mother’s sister, called me this morning.” Then he paused; his voice was shaking. “She said some men came and took away my cousin Nacho yesterday. They were soldiers, she believes, but she isn’t sure. They kicked down the door in the middle of the night and busted up everything in the place. They were dressed in civilian clothes, she said.”
He fell silent again, but I didn’t say a word. I knew he hadn’t finished.
“The poor old woman asked what could be done. I told her she should come and stay with us, and meanwhile I went with her to the police station to file a complaint.” He lit a cigarette before going on. “What else could I do? What could I tell her?”
“You did right, Pablo,” I ventured to assure him.
“I don’t know.” He hesitated again. “I felt like I was deceiving her. Maybe I should have told her the truth.”
“You did right, Pablo,” I repeated. “If you tell her the truth, you’ll kill her.”
The truth. It can be so fucked up sometimes, the truth. Sandoval and I had a long conversation about the whole problem of political violence and repression, which had grown especially acute since Perón’s death. Currently, fewer bodies were being dumped in empty lots; the murderers had evidently perfected their methods. As workers in the criminal justice system, we were too far removed from the things that were happening to know details, but sufficiently close to guess them. You didn’t have to be a fortune-teller. Every day, we saw people being arrested or heard news of other arrests. However, the people taken into custody were never put in jail, never brought before a judge, never remanded to Devoto or Caseros.
“I don’t know. She has to find out sooner or later.”
I tried to recall Nacho’s appearance. I’d seen him a few times when he visited the court, but his features escaped my efforts to bring them into focus.
“I’m leaving,” Sandoval said, suddenly getting to his feet. He put on his jacket and headed for the door. “See you later.”
Oh, fuck, I thought. Here we go again. I opened the window and waited. Although several minutes passed, I didn’t see him cross Tucumán in the direction of Viamonte Street. I felt a little guilty. I remembered something I’d read: “Flooding in India leaves forty thousand dead, but as I don’t know them, I’m more concerned for the health of my uncle, who suffered a heart attack.” Somewhere in a military barracks or police station, Nacho was being tortured with cattle prods and beaten to a pulp, but I wasn’t as distressed on his account as I was for his cousin Pablo, my friend, who had gone off to drink himself into a coma.
Was I selfish and unfeeling, or were we all? I consoled myself by thinking that I could do something for Sandoval, even though there was nothing I could do for his cousin Nacho. I wonder if I was right. Anyway, I decided to give my colleague the usual head start: I’d go looking for him in three hours. I sat down to correct an order of preventive detention. On second thought, two hours seemed better. Three might be too many.