The police officer drove Livraga to the San Martín polyclinic, where he received his first treatments. Juan Carlos did not lose consciousness: for hours, doctors and nurses heard him repeat his story. Afterward they took him to the recovery room on the third floor.
The nurses, risking their jobs—and maybe even more: martial law was still in effect—protect the wounded man in every way imaginable. One secretly calls Juan Carlos’ father and tells him to come see his son immediately because he is “unwell.” Another hides his clothes; she knows Livraga is telling the truth and assumes that his sweater with the bullet hole in its sleeve can be used as evidence. Yet another hides the receipt from the San Martín District Police Department, which would later serve as the introductory document for the criminal proceedings.
Juan Carlos’ mother has just been operated on and is in a different hospital; they don’t tell her the news. Mr. Pedro Livraga, on the other hand, goes to see his son immediately, accompanied by two cousins and Juan Carlos’s brother-in-law. These four individuals sign a statement in the polyclinic’s numbered registry book declaring that they have seen Juan Carlos alive and that his state, although certainly serious, does not in any way imply a fatal outcome.
This was a good precautionary measure to take because that afternoon or that night—for Livraga time has turned into the mere progression of pain—a corporal from the local police department comes in to keep watch and, finding himself faced with Livraga, looks once at him and then keeps staring, as if he doesn’t want to believe that he is alive.
The policeman’s face looks somewhat familiar to Livraga. He can’t be sure, but he thinks he has seen him before. Could it be Corporal Albornoz who was in charge of the firing squad? It’s not such an important question.
But the corporal—a dark-skinned man—has a big mouth. He talks to the nurses:
—They’re going to take this one in again. Don’t tell him, poor guy.
The nurses tell him. And the torture begins again.
The policeman, in the meantime, is looking for something. The receipt. He asks for Livraga’s clothes. They don’t give them to him. He gets angry and pointedly asks for the little piece of paper, which provides proof of the crime. No one knows anything.
No one except for Pedro Livraga who, upon returning to his house that night, mysteriously finds it in the pocket of his overcoat.
And he holds onto it until six months later when it reaches the hands of the judge.
Meanwhile, Juan Carlos’ life is hanging by a very thin thread. There is no doubt that the local police want to get rid of him, the witness. But first they need to solve the “small” problem of the other survivors, who are being savagely pursued. If they can catch all of them, they will execute them again, taking the greatest precautions . . . But if even one escapes their clutches, it will be useless to get rid of the rest of them.
Livraga is no longer resisting, no longer protesting. When they put him on a stretcher that night and a nurse says to him in tears: “They’re taking you away, kid,” he’s already given up. So much suffering just to die.
They roll him out covered in a sheet, like they would a dead man. They load him onto a jeep and take him away.
***
In San Andrés, Giunta took a bus that brought him to his brother’s house in Villa Martelli, where he found refuge and released some anxiety by telling his incredible story.
That night he slept at his parents’ house and on Monday, June 11, he went to work. He thought his odyssey had ended. But when he went back to Florida that afternoon, his wife told him that the police had been by looking for him. She told them he was at his parents’ house.
Giunta who, up until that moment had conducted himself with the utmost clarity, now does something stupid. He wants to come forward and explain his situation.
He went to his parents’ place to turn himself in. He knew they were waiting for him there and he actually didn’t even make it inside because they stopped him first.
What happened next constitutes an entire chapter in the history of our barbarity.
First they took him to the precinct in Munro, and from there to the District Police Department. They locked him in some sort of kitchen. An armed guard came in with him, sat Giunta down in a corner, and pointed a gun at him for the entire time.
—Take even one step and I’ll blow your brains out! —he would repeat every so often.— Talk and I’ll blow your brains out! Make even one move and I’ll blow your brains out!
His vocabulary was rather limited, but convincing. Still, now and then he would provoke him:
—Go ahead, make a move. That way I can shoot you.
The prisoner did not attempt even the slightest gesture. Now and again, the guard seemed to get tired and would place his gun back in its holster. But soon enough he would go back to his entertaining game.
They were deliberately pushing him toward madness. When changing shifts, the guards would speak softly in a way that made their conversations sound confidential, but loudly enough for the prisoner to hear them:
—He’s “getting out” tonight . . . —one of them would murmur.
—Wherever is he going? —the other would answer, chuckling.
—No one survives twice.
Aside from one sandwich, they gave him nothing to eat for hours at a time. When he wanted to sleep, he had to lie down on the freezing tile floor. The shouting outside interrupted his painful sleep.
—Caaareful, he’s getting awaaay! Shut all the windows!
They seemed to be provoking him to run. It actually wouldn’t have been so hard. He wasn’t in a real cell. Giunta would not let himself be tempted.
Maybe they were trying to get him to kill himself. At one point they moved him to a different room on the second floor with a window facing the courtyard.
—Don’t you think about trying to escape through there —an officer said to him, pointing at the window that was within reach.— Because even if you don’t die from the fall . . . Anyway, that’s just my opinion.
From the very start, they had been trying to recover the receipt they had issued him in the very same Department at dawn on the tenth. When their threats failed, they tried to seduce him. A young officer was trying to persuade him logically:
—Look, your situation has been cleared up, but we need that receipt. All you have to do is hand it in and you’ll be a free man.
Giunta kept saying he didn’t have it, and he was telling the truth. He had burned the receipt.
After two or three days of being locked up, he received a visit from Cuello, the second-in-command of the Department who had made a vague attempt to save him from execution. He couldn’t believe his eyes. He thought he was seeing a ghost.
—But how did you do it? —he kept repeating.— How did you do it?
Giunta was so out of sorts at this point that he tried to apologize for running away. He explained that it had been an instinctive reaction, to escape death; the truth was that he hadn’t meant to . . . Yes, he hadn’t meant to offend them.
When they transferred him to San Martín’s First Precinct on the seventeeth of June, he was a shell of a man, on the brink of insanity.