Beyond the Ties of Blood (33 page)

“I think I'll go upstairs to my room and read for a while,” Laura said after they'd rung the bell and Rosa had opened the door. She hugged Ignacio, a promising change from the stiff pecks she'd been allowing him until that point, and disappeared into the house. Eugenia turned to say good-bye.

“Thanks so much for that wonderful lunch. It was exactly what we needed. It's been a long time since I've seen Laura in such a good mood.”

Ignacio took her two hands in his. “You, on the other hand, have been rather quiet.”

“Not really,” Eugenia said, avoiding his eyes. “I've just been enjoying listening to Laura.”

Ignacio put a finger under her chin and brought her face up. After meeting his gaze for a few seconds Eugenia moved away from his touch, both uncomfortable and attracted by it.

“I'm not convinced,” he said. “Ever since we came back from the park, you've seemed a bit distant. Did something happen with my mother?”

“Look, Ignacio, it's completely understandable. She's wondering what you're doing bringing this woman and her nearly grown daughter for lunch. I didn't realize you were the only unmarried one of her three children.”

“What did she say?”

“No, nothing. Don't worry. She was telling me about her grandchildren. And you know how Chilean women are, they want to keep their families close. She just wants the best for you; she wants you to settle down.”

Ignacio brought Eugenia into his arms and kissed her gently on the lips. “And that's exactly why I went abroad to study and live apart from her,” he said softly. They stood together for a few more minutes, Ignacio's right hand cradling her head against his chest. Well, Eugenia thought, this time there was no connection to her testimony. But Manuel had been her only lover, and she had never really been good at reading the signs. He pulled away slowly.

“I'm sorry to bring up something that might be unpleasant,” he said. “But it would be good for you to begin reclaiming your citizenship, and to start Laura's petition. I know it's early and you haven't decided how long you want to stay, but it won't hurt to get the process going, since it will take quite a while. I have the envelope in the car here with all the documentation you'll need, and I'll send Custodio tomorrow morning to take you down to the offices of the Investigative Police.”

“Don't worry about it,” Eugenia answered. “I think I need to start reorienting myself in the city. It's near a metro stop, isn't it?” At Ignacio's nod, she continued. “Then just give me the papers and I'll go on my own. I'll need to start going out by myself at some point, no?”

Eugenia made her way through the crowd filling the metro station and found the exit, climbing the long escalator that rose slowly toward the street, passing right by the blind beggar who had managed to place himself strategically at the very top. Surely she was not the only person to ignore him, for the sound from his cup when he shook it was flat with the selfishness of that morning's rush-hour crowd. She emerged from the subway facing north, toward the Mapocho River. The Andes, still sporting a cover of winter snow, could be seen clearly to her right now that the most recent batch of spring drizzle had passed through.

She walked toward the west. In front of her stood the old Mapocho railroad station, its antique wrought-iron decorations standing out against the transparent blue sky. Then she turned right and crossed the bridge over the river, which was beginning to swell with the spring thaw. Almost immediately to her left she saw the old mansion, huge and past its prime, that now served as headquarters for the Investigative Police. She crossed the street, suddenly aware of a trembling in her knees. She passed through the small and ragged Plaza Neruda, named after Pablo Neruda, one of Chile's two Nobel Prize–winning poets. Given that Neruda had been a member of the Communist Party, she was not surprised that it had been left to decay under the dictatorship. She reached the corner where the entrance to the International Police section was located. A guard blocked her path, cradling a machine gun on his right forearm.

“Good morning,
señora
,” he said. “Can I help you find what you need?”

She felt frozen in place, like a rabbit caught between the headlights of a truck, conscious of the sweating in her palms. “Good morning,” she managed to answer. “Where would I recertify my Chilean citizenship?”

She thought she noticed a hardening along the guard's jaw. “You're already the fifth one this morning,
señora
,” he replied, as if somehow this imposition was her fault. “It's the first window on your left as you enter the door right behind me.”

She thanked the guard and walked in. Once her eyes grew accustomed to the dark inside the old mansion, she was able to see the window he had mentioned, where only two of the threatened five individuals were still waiting. She had all the needed documentation in the right order, so once she made it to the window the uniformed woman looked through the folder, then up at her, and nodded. “We will contact you in about four weeks,” she said, already looking behind Eugenia.

“Excuse me, one more question,” Eugenia ventured. The woman looked back at her. “Where would I go to apply for Chilean citizenship for my daughter? She's a Mexican citizen.”

The woman's eyes rested briefly on her. “Down the hall to your left and follow the signs to the Naturalization Office,” she said. “Be sure to take a number. Next!”

Eugenia turned to the left, and almost immediately saw the promised sign ahead of her at the other end of the large indoor courtyard. After taking a number from the small red dispenser, she sat back in her chair and began to relax, examining her surrroundings. it was clearly an aristocratic mansion, the kind that had been very stylish about a century before. Two floors of rooms opened out onto the central patio, each with its own hallways. There were staircases along the edges of the common space where she was sitting. It had probably been the Santiago home of an important landowning family, and when they had lived in it, the interior courtyard must have been full of geraniums, carnations, gardenias, and potted palms, with perhaps one or two honeysuckle bushes and even a rabbit hutch. All the rooms had high ceilings, and the doors that opened up into the center of the house were all double, with glass panels on the top half that could be opened separately in order to improve the ventilation.

The nineteenth-century ambiance quickly dissipated once she glanced at the windows of the various offices lining the courtyard, with their posters that proclaimed such slogans as: “The Investigative Police: Working to Preserve Your Security”; or “The Investigative Police: We Work So You Can Have Peace and Security in the New Chile.” Men and women in grey suits moved quickly, their chins held up at purposeful, businesslike angles, from one office to the next. While there was clearly an effort to make it all look civilian and democratic, she thought, it was hard to get beyond the presence of the soldiers, stationed one to each door, along the circumference of the courtyard. Wearing helmets and holding automatic weapons, they stared directly in front with looks that were familiar. So much so, in fact, that suddenly she could not breathe.

She leaned back, trying to rest against the wooden chair. In an attempt to get her mind off the soldiers, she looked up toward the skylight that enclosed the courtyard from above. An attack of vertigo grabbed hold of her, and cold sweat gathered on her forehead and upper lip. The leaded glass in the skylight, she'd seen it somewhere before. And the shadows, shadows of bodies, their arms and legs spread out in all directions, woven together into human branches reflected through the glass, and from the rooms on the upper floor the screams of pain …

“
Señorita
? You all right?” An anxious brown face with high cheekbones, very close to hers, cut off her view of the skylight.

“Yes. Thank you. I'm fine.”

“They just called your number, yes? Sixty-eight.”

She walked into the office and found a man with kindhearted wrinkles around his eyes. When she realized she still couldn't talk in a normal voice, she simply handed him Laura's Mexican passport with its temporary residence visa. He looked it over silently for a few minutes.

“Laura Bronstein Aldunate.” A smile played with the edges of his thick lips. “Excuse me,
señora
. Is she your daughter?” When Eugenia nodded, the smile spread across his face. “Please excuse my amusement. The name seems to be quite an unusual combination. In the fifteen years I've worked in this office I've never seen anything like it.”

Inexplicably, his banter calmed Eugenia, and she answered with a smile of her own. “I understand,” she said. “She's the product of a very different historical moment.” But as she remembered, her eyes filled with tears. She was startled to see the beginnings of a humid empathy in the eyes of the man behind the desk. He was suddenly very busy, taking the forms out of his desk drawer, separating each page with a carbon, tapping it all against the desktop before putting it into his old typewriter. When he looked back up at her, he had regained the manner of a typical bureaucrat, even as a warm, sweet glimmer seemed to linger in his gaze.

“So you wish to apply for Chilean citizenship for your daughter.”

“That's right,
señor
. We've always thought she was Chilean. After all, she was born in Santiago, even if it was the Mexican embassy.”

“Yes,
señora
. That information is reproduced clearly in the passport.”

He had cut in rapidly, interrupting her, almost as if he were afraid she would say too much. For a few moments the slow, methodical tapping of his fingers on the keys of the manual typewriter was interrupted only by his occasional routine question. Work? Family in Chile? Long-term plans? When he reached the end of the form, he pulled the three copies off the typewriter carriage with an exaggerated flourish and handed her one of the carbons.

“With this copy,
señora
, you must take Laura with you to the Foreign Relations Ministry and present a formal petition for citizenship, with two passport-size photos, plus Laura's own signature and fingerprints. Then you wait.”

“How long do you think …”

“Impossible to say, it's totally unpredictable.” He cut her off quickly, dismissing her with a single gesture of his right hand. Afterward he stood up, offering her the same hand in a more formal good-bye.

Eugenia stood also, and after shaking his hand she left quickly, picking up speed, passing through the main door, past the guard, then to her right along the edge of the squalid Plaza Neruda, and out to the main avenue. She did not slow down until she reached the metro.

His official telephone voice changed quickly once he heard her. “Eugenia? What is it? What happened?”

“I-i-i-t's … I j-j-ust …” She choked, and could not continue.

“Are you all right? Is Laura?”

“F-f-fine … I …”

“I'll be there in twenty minutes.”

She was waiting outside the gate when he pulled up, bag over her shoulder. Her eyes filled with tears the minute she sat down next to him and, despite her best efforts, they began trickling down her cheeks. Motioning to Custodio to pull away, Ignacio put an arm around her. “Just drive along the Costanera,” he said to the driver, “and take the road up the San Cristóbal hill.”

Rather than ask her questions, Ignacio sat quietly, rubbing a hand gently along the nape of her neck. By the time the car had climbed the hill and was near the top of the paved road, she had managed to stop crying. After signaling to Custodio to wait for them in the parking lot, Ignacio got out of the car, came around the back, and opened the door on Eugenia's side. She took his offered hand and allowed him to help her out. He kept her hand in his, and they walked toward the patio of the new hotel that dominated the best view of the city.

“Would you like to sit and have some coffee?” he asked.