She started to scratch her arms, to run her nails over her neck—that was how she got the scars. Her despair was awful to see. I took her hands from her body and offered her water, but she wanted a cigarette. I made her smoke it sitting up, so she didn’t burn the sheets.
“I went out even though she told me: no, Betty. And then that thing cut off my daughter’s arm. Don’t ask me to explain what it is, it doesn’t have a name. It used Juan to do it, but he wasn’t Juan anymore, and the black light touched my daughter. Why did I take my daughter when I left the room, Olga? Why didn’t I listen to Rosario? She was always sensible. Juan was dark, but she loved him, and without Rosario’s love I don’t know what would have happened to him. What am I saying! I do know. He gave up my daughter. He tricked me. He told me he was going to save her, he was going to save his son and my daughter, that was the pact and he didn’t fulfill it. I should have realized—he didn’t even talk to me! Now I can’t get near his son. Gaspar, his name is Gaspar. He’s like Juan, but he doesn’t know it, someone should tell him. You want to tell him, Olga? My aunt wants him to know. I haven’t seen my aunt in a long time. You can run away from them for a while, they’ll wait, they know you’ll come back. Oh, I don’t know if you’ll be able to get close to Gaspar. Juan marked him, and the mark keeps him away from us forever. They can’t find him, and neither can I. Because of the mark. The mark keeps us away. He’s protected. They hate him, you know, Olga, they hate Juan because he beat them, sort of. It’s the only thing I’m glad about. I’m alive because they hate him and because I want to bury Eduardo and tell his bones that I took care of our daughter but I couldn’t get her away from my family. You are not your last name, he told me. You are not doomed to be an exploiter. Maybe not to be that, but I was certainly doomed. He didn’t know. He had love, too.”
She took a long drag on the cigarette. It’s on the recording. It sounds like she smoked the whole thing. Then, she sat up straighter on the bed.
“Juan betrayed me and exchanged my daughter for his son. He handed her over. He saved his own child. In exchange for mine. Though sometimes I think he also saved her, in a way. When she disappeared into that house, he saved her. My family won’t have her anymore, they can’t use her. They hate him for that, too. There were plans for Adela. But where is she? And his son gets to live a peaceful life. It’s not fair, Olga. Can I call you Olga? It’s not fair.”
“Was your daughter kidnapped?”
“Olga, you don’t want to know. You don’t want to know! You’re already in danger because of me. I ruin everything I touch. I didn’t know how to take care of her. But Eduardo has to know that I wanted to save her and I couldn’t, I couldn’t, but it’s their fault and the fault of the black god who guides them. The black god, Olga. They called him the golden god, but it is dark. Juan was afraid of the god. He was decent, in the end. I would have handed over his kid in exchange for mine too. That’s why he kept his plans quiet, because he knew how I am. He played dumb. Pretty handy, huh, playing dumb. He knew he was no one. The god lives in the shadows. Be careful, it sleeps, but it lives.”
She went running out of my room and into hers, locking the door. I heard her scream and cry, beg forgiveness, and, I think, hit herself. There was a dry pounding like a head hitting the wall. Then, silence. The concierge decided to go in and check on her and she found Beatriz asleep. Passed out drunk.
“It’s not the first time,” she told me, and clucked her tongue. “Poor thing can’t hold her liquor. She’s not the only one, it happens to some of the others who come here. Plus, she eats like a bird.”
“Has she stayed here before?”
“Twice. I think she lives nearby, although I haven’t asked. Once, they brought her to me because she got too close to the pit. I don’t know how she got past the guards. The police brought her here. She left and I didn’t think she’d come back, but she did.”
I wanted to tell the concierge who that woman was, what had happened to her, but I kept my mouth shut. Beatriz had never asked me for discretion or secrecy, but I didn’t want to spread her story. I considered I had her permission to write it, though, as I’m doing now.
Although I didn’t think I’d be able to fall asleep, I slept soundly that night, with no nightmares that I remembered, though I woke up sweating. The electricity had gone out and the ceiling fan had turned off. I took a long shower. The hot water ran out soon, but the cold, after the first shock, lifted my mood.
I was late to breakfast. Beatriz Bradford was not in the dining room. The concierge told me she’d left in the early morning, in her car.
“I don’t think she’ll be back for a few months,” she told me. “Sometimes when she drinks a lot and makes a scene, she leaves early. She’s ashamed. She’s a refined woman.”
I stayed a bit longer with the concierge. I don’t know why I thought Beatriz might have left something for me. Her address, her phone number. But she hadn’t. I spent that day meeting the newly arrived family members, and at night I reserved a flight from Posadas to Buenos Aires. I didn’t go back to Za?artú or the pit.
The Forgotten Girl
Back in Buenos Aires, I wrote up my article about the Za?artú pit, the last in a series on Operation Itatí and the repression in the yerba plantations in the Littoral near the border. This essay, however, is different: it’s a personal text, less concerned with information and history. My encounter with Beatriz Bradford hit me hard, and after I finished my assignment, I turned to confirming her identity, and to finding out if she really was Adela ?lvarez’s mother.
She hadn’t lied to me. There aren’t all that many news articles about the case of Adela ?lvarez, but I can direct readers to the piece by Guillermo Triuso published in Panorama two months after she vanished （Panorama Magazine, “The Disappearance of Adela,” 27 November 1986, n.139）。 It’s a unique document, because it cites the investigation documents; these, stored in a basement of the courthouse, were lost soon after—odd, because it was an active case—in the flood of July 1987. Just two folders, nothing extravagant. Very little attention was paid to that girl and her circumstances, or to the statements given by the other minors, Pablo Fonzi, Victoria Peirano, and Gaspar Peterson, which were not contradictory but were very fanciful. While the judicial file containing Gaspar Peterson’s statement no longer exists, his testimony to the police remains in the fifth precinct of San José de Flores, and it attests to his complete name and parentage. Beatriz Bradford hadn’t lied: the boy’s parents were Juan Peterson and Rosario Reyes Bradford. Both deceased. Gaspar had been legally adopted by his uncle, Luis Peterson. The statement includes a description of what happened the night of the disappearance. As the kids told it, they were inside the house for about an hour and a half. Maybe forty minutes after they entered, Adela went into one of the bedrooms; the rest of the time was spent trying to open the door the girl had disappeared through, which had been hermetically sealed. They gave up after almost an hour. Then they left and told Victoria Peirano’s parents, who reported it to the police.