The Blue Line: A Novel - Softcover

Also by Ingrid Betancourt

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

1. THE YOUNG WOMAN IN BLACK

2. THE FIRST JOURNEY

3. MAMA FINA

4. DECRYPTION

5. THE MASK

6. THE EZEIZA MASSACRE

7. FATHER MUGICA

8. THE SOURCE

9. THE NIGHTMARE

10. THE COUP D’ÉTAT

11. THE VISE

12. THE FAIRFIELD INN

13. THE RETURN

14. THE NEIGHBORS

15. DIANE

16. THE BERKSHIRE MANOR

17. CASTELAR POLICE STATION

18. THE CELL

19. LA MÁQUINA

20. THE ESCAPE

21. THE TRAP

22. THE FATHER

23. HAEDO

24. VILLA DEVOTO

25. RUBENS

26. THE YOUNG KOREAN

27. ULYSSES

28. THE MOVE

29. THE RULE

30. THE LIE

31. ANNA

32. BUENOS AIRES

33. THE FORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGY TEAM

34. THE CHOICES

35. MARIA

36. UNCLE MAYOL

37. EL DIABLO

38. OF LOVE AND HATE

39. THE PLANE

EPILOGUE

1.

THE YOUNG WOMAN IN BLACK

End of Boreal Summer

2006

She looks into the distance.

She sees the mauve line between the sea and the flawless blue sky.

She sees the wind moving across the water. She can see it coming. Then she’s not quite sure.

—

But the wind sweeps over the path of trembling grass. It slithers, climbs up the bank, and chafes the hedge that ends at the beach in a cross shape. Then it falls silent, crouching like a wild animal, watching the street. Gathering momentum, it swoops down onto the asphalt, skips over the manicured hydrangeas, and picks up strength.

She watches, intrigued, as it advances. It’s coming closer now, brushing against the painted wooden houses, very close. It glides up the old maple tree that fills her window and coils itself snakelike around the trunk, transforming the branches into long, twitching fingers.

It taps at her window. It presses up against the glass. It whistles and calls to her as the rattling branches beat against the panes.

Julia is happy. She tugs impatiently at the lock on the frame and forces the window open. Leaning out, she allows the vagabond wind to sweep in and fill her entire being, breathes in deep lungfuls of its sharp air. She closes her eyes. She recognizes that salty, tarry smell. This Connecticut wind is strangely similar to the wind of her Buenos Aires childhood. It’s not as intense, perhaps; lighter, more delicate. Or perhaps not. She knows from experience that memory can’t be relied on to capture the true essence of things. The present often seems less vibrant than our recollections of the past.

Even so, Julia couldn’t be happier.

She smiles. She likes the restraint of her surroundings: the neatly clipped shrubs in the gardens across the way, the carefully aligned elms along the avenue that runs perpendicular to the beach, the hedge and the grass that frame the fine sand like a rampart stretching parallel to the waves, and the horizon like a straight line drawn from one end to the other.

It suits her, this symmetry. She has finished putting her life in order. She is in her rightful place, living the destiny she has chosen for herself, with the man she has always loved. Julia feels fulfilled.

She looks up at the azure sky above her maple tree. Happiness is blue. Blue horizon, blue water.

A Mark Rothko painting, she thinks, forming a picture frame in the air with her fingers.

She’d like to hang that painting just in front of her face to remind herself that happiness is right there, within arm’s reach.

Funny. This idea that happiness is blue: it’s as if she’s had this thought before.

All of a sudden the wind sets up a high-pitched whistling and rushes in through the window. Maple twigs catch at Julia’s dress and scratch her skin. The sky has gone dark. Julia shivers. The air smells humid. The next moment a flash of lightning rips her painting from top to bottom. The light is blinding. It hurts, as if a razor had slit her retina.

A sharp cracking sound shatters the silence. The tree across the road has been split in two. Its heart is blown open, scorched, but the tree has not caught fire. One of the severed branches dangles dangerously close to the power lines along the avenue.

Julia ducks her head back in, pulls the window shut, and turns around, trembling. She scans the room, ready to face whatever might be coming. But everything is in order, each item sitting silently in its assigned place. Still, her eyes continue flicking back and forth, lingering on dark corners, decoding shadows.

Seized by an irrational feeling of panic, she gathers up the dirty clothes piled in the hamper and hurries downstairs to the basement laundry room. She arrives panting. Such a fright, for no reason! She shrugs her shoulders.

And then she feels the tremors begin. They always start the same way: a tingling in her heels, getting sharper as it travels up her calves, intensifying as it reaches her knees.

Julia knows she has only a few minutes before she passes out. She climbs the laundry room steps on all fours and crawls across the kitchen and into the living room. She needs to get into a corner of the room and prop herself up before it’s too late. She wedges herself into the corner, sits up straight, legs stretched out in front of her for balance. One brief moment to congratulate herself for reacting in time, and then her world turns upside down. Her inner eye has taken over.

She feels herself slipping away. Her gaze clouds over; her eyes are choked with a thick white mist, and her mind shifts to another place. Julia floats into nothingness, beyond time and space. She has lost control of her body. She has abandoned it, like a lost glove, between two walls of her living room.

She is familiar with this journey, though she can never predict how long it will last or where it will take her.

Julia’s not scared anymore. She knows she won’t die; she knows she won’t suffocate in the white substance enveloping her. She has the gift; she has received instruction; she is part of a lineage. All of her energy is being channeled into the connection that is about to take place. Her inner eye will graft itself onto someone else’s vision—someone completely unknown to her.

Suddenly Julia finds herself in a dimly lit room, looking through a half-open door. She can see a young woman with her back turned illuminated in the glare of a neon light. The woman is wearing a skin-tight black dress down to her ankles. Her black hair is pulled back into a perfect chignon, as round and shiny as a pebble. She is carefully applying her makeup, her graceful neck bent forward to bring her face closer to the mirror covering the wall.

The eyes through which Julia is looking trace the young woman’s slim figure from the nape of her neck to her heels, lingering on the hollow of her back. Aware she is being watched, the woman turns around. She has Oriental eyes and full red lips. They part in a distant smile, revealing perfect teeth.

Julia’s source is sitting on the edge of a bed. A man. She glimpses his strong knees, realizes he is naked. Her peripheral vision takes in the drawn curtains, the mussed sheets, a chest of drawers behind the half-open door, articles of clothing thrown carelessly over a chair.

The man gets up and walks toward the young woman. Julia sees a small, impersonal bathroom. She recognizes the logo of a large American hotel chain on the damp towels lying on the floor.

The young woman holds out a hand in a gesture of affection and finds herself being swept up into a passionate embrace from which she hastily disengages herself, laughing. She spins around, throwing one last look at herself in the mirror, picks up her handbag from beside the washbasin, and walks quickly out of the room, perched confidently on her high heels. The door clicks shut behind her.

Julia searches in the shadows for a long moment, then her field of vision shifts to the left. It travels up the bed and comes to rest on a mobile phone that is buzzing insistently, like a fly on its back. The man ignores it. He lies down and closes his eyes. Julia remains trapped in the dark for some time, helpless, unable to enter the thoughts or dreams of the person she’s been twinned with.

And then the connection breaks. Julia feels herself being propelled to the surface. She breaks free from the darkness and travels through the milky white haze. Light restores the shapes of objects, signaling the gradual return of her sight. Slowly things come into focus. Her hands are still on her knees; her body is still wedged into the corner. Only her head has moved. It hangs heavily in front of her. The nape of her neck is sore, the way it always is after one of her journeys.

She rubs the back of her neck hard. Then she begins the set of stretches she learned from her grandmother. She circles her head slowly, from left to right and back again, until the stiffness eases. The inside of her neck crunches like crumpled paper. This journey was particularly long. She folds her legs into a lotus position and stretches her back, sticking her neck out like a turtle. Julia breathes slowly, centers herself. She regains control of her body by repeating the movements that have been part of her return ritual since childhood.

Little by little she becomes aware of the noises coming from the street. Looking out the window, she sees a team of uniformed men busy clearing away the remains of the dead tree. All signs of the storm have vanished and the sky has cleared. Only then does it occur to her to glance at her watch. It’s noon. She hasn’t had breakfast yet. She hasn’t even started work. Luckily Theo’s gotten into the habit of coming home late from the office. This gives her a few extra hours to finish her translations and get them to the client on time.

Ever self-disciplined, she prepares a large bowl of yogurt, almonds, and dried fruit so she can eat while reading through the pages. The text is beautiful. She has no problem finding the right words to transpose thoughts from one language to another. But she finds it harder to capture the harmony of sounds, their rhythm, their cadence. The task of re-creating the music of one language in another is more like art than anything else. It is what she finds most challenging. She plunges into her work with enthusiasm.

—

Julia jumps when she hears the front door open and realizes it’s already 7:30 P.M. She hastily closes her laptop and smooths out the creases in her red dress. She glances in the mirror on the landing before going downstairs, relieved to find she looks nice. No traces of her journey, no need for explanations.

Theo is in the kitchen sorting through the mail. He has emptied his pockets and placed his keys on the countertop. He pauses when he sees Julia. Smiling, he takes her in his arms and spins her around. Then he kisses her on the forehead, as if to indicate that playtime is over.

“I’m starving, my love,” he says. “I’m exhausted.”

Julia’s face clouds over. She pulls away, disappointed. She stares at Theo’s shirt, at his hands. Lost in thought, she slowly opens the refrigerator.

“Tomorrow’s Friday,” she says in a level tone. “Maybe you could take the day off.”

“Didn’t I tell you? They’ve changed the rules. No more working longer during the week and taking Fridays off.”

“But you’re still getting up really early. Earlier and earlier, in fact. Wait, let me do the math. . . .”

“It doesn’t work that way anymore, sweetheart. Anyway, I’m putting in overtime because it looks like I might be getting a promotion.”

Julia gives him a blank look.

Theo slips in front of her and pushes the refrigerator door shut. “You still haven’t learned to close doors, Julia my love,” he says with a hint of irritation.

He walks out of the kitchen and goes upstairs. Julia follows mechanically. She wants to tell him about the lightning and the tree. But before she can catch up with him, he’s gone into the bathroom and double-locked the door.

2.

THE FIRST JOURNEY

Austral Summer

1962

She must have been five years old the first time it happened. She was living in Colonia del Sacramento, in Uruguay, in an old house behind the port, overlooking the estuary. She was playing in a dusty courtyard, away from the older children, who had devised a game of jumping off a low wall into the garden next door and terrorizing the neighbor’s old dog.

Julia knew she was poor. Not because she lacked anything but because her mother complained about it. The word “poor” meant nothing to Julia. Oddly enough, she associated it with her carefree existence, far removed from adult preoccupations. But she also understood that it was the reason why her father had gone away and left them. And she missed him. Her mother would point to the Río de la Plata* and explain that he had gone to look for work over there in Argentina, on the other side of the water.

“The river of silver, the river of silver . . .” Julia would say to herself over and over, like the words of a magic spell. She would stand at the railing for hours on end, staring down at the port of Colonia and the expanse of gray water flecked with silver that stretched as far as she could see. What more could there possibly be on the other side? She didn’t understand.

“Mom,” she would ask, “why has Dad gone away?”

“To get money for us, of course!”

Julia would stare with fascination at the platinum glint of the water below her. Turning to her mother, she would insist: “But, Mom, what about all the silver in the river? We don’t need any more!”

Her exasperated mother would roll her eyes and reply: “¡Nena! ¡El Río de la Plata no es ni un río, ni es de plata!”*

Her twin brothers were only too delighted to hear their mother scolding Julia. They were nearly two years older and liked to treat her as a punching bag. They taunted her mercilessly, shoved her around, and tripped her up. Anna, her older sister, would rush to her rescue, gathering her up and chasing the twins away with a slap. “Daddy will be home soon, Julia. Don’t worry,” she would whisper in her ear.

Anna was the only one who could console Julia, because she too was desperately impatient for their father to return. For that reason, and because her mother was so distant and so strict with her, Julia showered all the love she was storing up for her father on her older sister. She would have liked to be included in the twins’ games but she was too scared of them; they were such daredevils. Besides, they had taught themselves to swim and spent most of their time in the river, where Julia couldn’t follow them.

On the afternoon of her first mysterious journey, Julia was in the backyard, sitting on the kitchen steps. She was playing by herself, drawing shapes in the dirt with her finger and filling an old oil canister with pebbles. At that time of day, the children had usually finished their lunch. It was Anna’s job to reheat the meal their mother had made at dawn before leaving for work. But on that particular day she had told Anna to wait: she would bring some groceries back from town.

The sun was beating down. Wearing a cotton dres...