The Rhythm of Memory

  Doña Olivia was reading in the parlor, her book splayed out over her lap when Octavio passed by in his suit.

  “Thank you for watching over her, Olivia,” he said reverently to his mother-in-law.

  “You know you don’t have to thank me, Octavio. She’s my child. It’s already breaking my heart that I won’t be able to always watch over her.”

  Octavio knelt down. “Olivia, you know, I wish that you and Don Fernando could come with us. I know it would be that much easier for the whole family if you two could join us, but they would never allow you to come. Your lives are not threatened if you remain here.”

  Doña Olivia’s eyes welled with tears. “I know, Octavio, I know…”

  “I don’t even know if Sweden will take us. That’s why it’s so important that I make a good impression on this interview.” He stood up and smoothed out the creases in his trousers.

  “I wish you luck,” she whispered, and it was obvious to Octavio that she was finding it difficult to speak. “She’s my only child. All I want is for her to be safe.”

  Forty-six

  SANTIAGO, CHILE

  FEBRUARY 1974

  When he arrived at the Swedish embassy, he was told—much to his surprise—that the ambassador himself would interview him.

  The blond receptionist gave him no other details. She just motioned him to wait in the hallway until he was called.

  Octavio’s heart was racing, and he tried desperately to remember all the tricks he used to do to get over his stage fright. Breathe, breathe, he reminded himself. Think of yourself in a warm bath with the water soothing you…

  “Señor Octavio Ribeiro?” another blond woman called from the doorway.

  “Yes.” He stood up.

  She gave him a small, clipped smile and motioned for him to follow her.

  As they walked down the corridor, she turned to him and said without any inflection in her voice, “The ambassador will be with you in a few moments. Please sit in this office until he arrives.”

  He entered a small, white office and sat down. She closed the door.

  Octavio was visibly uncomfortable. There was nothing for him to look at while he waited except for a small painting of a child in front of a garden shed. It was one of those unremarkable pictures that one often sees in a hotel room or at a doctor’s office. Something that is chosen because it can’t possibly offend anyone. Tasteful in the sense that it was positively generic: a child, a flower, and a garden shed. But somehow it disturbed Octavio.

  The painting seemed to foreshadow what life in Sweden was supposed to be like. But how would his family—who didn’t have blond hair or know anything about Scandinavian culture, let alone speak the language—fit into that lifestyle? Octavio placed his head on the white Formica desk.

  Remember how much is at stake here, he reminded himself. This is reality for you now. You and your family have no other choice. You cannot stay in Chile. The sooner the better, but regardless, you have to go somewhere.

  Octavio was surprised at how buoyant the ambassador was when he entered the room. He was a tall, thin man with a large, broad smile.

  “Señor Ribeiro,” he said, sounding out the name in a series of perfect, fluid notes.

  “It’s such a pleasure to meet you.”

  “The pleasure is completely mine,” Octavio responded politely.

  “No, no,” the ambassador said as he took a seat at the temporary desk that was obviously used as an interviewing station. He placed the manila folder he was carrying down and opened it. “You see, one of my colleagues brought your application to my attention because he knew what a big fan I am of your films.”

  “My films?” Octavio nearly choked. It had been a few years now since his last performance, and he couldn’t believe that anyone but a Chilean would have been familiar with his work.

  “Yes, your films. My wife and I have seen every one of them…from Buenos Dias Soledad to Siempre Carmen. My all-time favorite movie moment is when you find that the villainous Cristobal has slain Angelina and…”

  After Octavio had just spent two months living a reality far more horrific and agonizing than anything he had ever seen scripted in a film, hearing the ambassador relaying something that was obviously just fantasy made Octavio cringe. But to be polite, he indulged the ambassador.

  “You mean when I clasp my heart like this”—Octavio pulled a fist to his chest and made a pained expression—“and I fall to the ground crying, ‘Angelina, Angelina, the angels have you now and thus I have no reason to cry’ ”—his voice became audibly louder—“ ‘but I have only salt and water in my heart since you left’?”

  “Yes, yes!” the ambassador cried. “I used to mimic that at parties, and everyone said I did the best Ribeiro imitation.”

  Octavio winced. The thought of a bunch of Scandinavians living in Chile eating gravlax on toast and doing imitations of him only strengthened his feelings of self-loathing.

  “Really?” he managed to reply. “That must have been quite amusing.”

  The ambassador stiffened and suddenly became more serious. “Well, getting back to your application, Señor Ribeiro…I see you’ve applied to us for political asylum.”

  “Yes.”

  The ambassador looked down at the papers he had just removed from the manila folder. “I’ve read about all the terrible things that happened to your wife.”

  “Yes…sir,” Octavio added quickly.

  “I hate to make you feel uncomfortable in any way, Señor Ribeiro, but I have to for the sake of protocol. Did your wife do anything that would have warranted her arrest?”

  “Absolutely not,” Octavio replied firmly. “She was taken because I refused to retract my criticisms of Pinochet.”

  The ambassador scribbled some notes on a pad of paper.

  “Again this question is for the sake of our protocol, so please do not be offended by my questions.”

  Octavio nodded.

  “Could you please tell me why you believe it necessary to seek political asylum in Sweden?”

  Octavio could feel the perspiration dripping down his forehead, and he reached inside his jacket for a handkerchief. He excused himself temporarily while he blotted his brow.

  “Ambassador, I have always loved my country. Had Pinochet never come to power under such brutal methods, I would not be sitting across from you today. But because of my beliefs, because of my outspoken criticisms of the new regime, the lives of my wife and family are currently at stake. The DINA already kidnapped my wife twice. The second time they took her, they held her captive for nearly two months and terrorized her in ways that only the worst parts of my imagination can conceive.”

  Octavio’s voice started to waver as he spoke about Salomé. Even now, as he heard himself articulate what was done to her, he had to fight back with every ounce of his strength the urge to cry. “Right now, my wife is sleeping in a bed with bruises all over her body, lacerations on her skin, and huge red scars where once there was only smooth brown skin. What she has suffered internally can only be a million times worse…if you can possibly imagine that.”

  The ambassador shook his head. “This is terrible. Terrible.”

  “We cannot stay here. We’ll take the first country that grants us asylum. We are desperate to go where we can be safe, and if Sweden would take us today, we would go.”

  “Sweden will take you, Señor Ribeiro,” the ambassador said with great seriousness. “I will personally make sure of that.”

  He extended his hand to Octavio, assuring him that in a week’s time the papers would be processed and he and his family would be on a plane to Stockholm.

  Forty-seven

  SANTIAGO, CHILE

  MARCH 1974

  As the few boxes from the Ribeiro-Herrera household were loaded into Octavio’s small car, Rafael watched his mother from the corner of his eye. He had studied her diligently over that week, noticing everything from the fading bruises on her cheeks to the whisper of her voice. It was as
though she had barely enough strength in her diaphragm to utter more than a string of words. She preferred to just point with her finger and nod her tiny head.

  Had she been well, he would have asked her what political asylum meant, for he did not understand it at his young age. His father had tried to explain it to him and his sisters as much as he could in the few days that preceded the family’s departure, but it still was confusing to him. He didn’t understand if it meant that he could never return to Chile, or whether it meant that he would live the rest of his life like a nomad wandering the world with only the clothes on his back and his belongings scattered around and abandoned. What Rafael did know, however, was that he was leaving the Casa Rosa, the house of his childhood, the summers at the hacienda, and the temperate life he had always known, all for Sweden, a country famous for its snowfall and arctic waters.

  His grandmother and he had looked at picture books of Sweden before he left, ones that showed photographs of tiny red houses with pitched roofs whose shutters were lined with icicles that hung like white icing on a Christmas cake. He saw pictures of women dressed in the national costume, with sterling buttons and cobalt blue skirts, nearly all of them fair and blond.

  Until then, the only woman he had known with blond hair was his grandmother, who insisted the color was her natural shade. And now it was nearly white, the yellow fading from each wisp, like wheat bleached over the long months of summer.

  He hated to think how different he would appear to the other children. His dark black hair, his large brown eyes. In Chile, he resembled almost all the other boys and girls. Certainly, each of their features differed, but none were so drastic that one appeared strange to the others.

  His grandmother had tried to assuage his doubts. Stoically, she had tried to hide her own sadness and convince Rafael and his sisters that they would soon be surrounded by such exotic animals as reindeer and polar bears. She opened up all the secret drawers of her furniture with the keys that hung within her blouse and let all the children eat all of her beloved marzipan, her cans of Chantilly cream and squares of fine chocolate. She had hoped that it would make them feel better—make her feel better—to see them rejoice in her coveted confectioneries. She had even tried to capture their attention by telling them that, once in Sweden, they would be able to ride their sleighs six months out of the year and store their ice cream out on the terrace! But they were each a conspirator in a charade, each child and each adult trying to pretend to the others that everything would be all right. Each trying to mask his or her feelings of fear and uncertainty of what lay ahead.

  Rafael had not wanted to cry when his father informed him that they would have to leave Chile in only a few days. He accepted it without protest, for only weeks before he had promised God that if he returned his mother, he would never complain again.

  The first day his mother rose from her bed, he had watched her wander through the house wrapped in a silk robe printed with pale blue irises, and from behind, her spine resembled one of the flower’s bending stems.

  “Won’t you help your mother pack?” she had said to him in a voice that was far fainter than even a whisper. “Won’t you bring me your clothes and your most treasured things?” she whispered as she knelt down on the floor and fanned out the unfolded boxes and paper.

  He nodded to her, bringing to her after moments of careful pondering his clothes and a few of his sisters’ most cherished toys. But he brought no such keepsakes of his own. She did not ask him why he had brought her nothing but his own clothes to pack. She was lost to him in these moments between them. Her mind was elsewhere. She did not utter a word as she laid each of her daughters’ toys into the deep, brown boxes. So, in silence, Rafael watched what seemed like a ghost of his mother. Watched as she wrapped each item. Her still pale, delicate fingers wrapping each object in chiffon paper. Her bruised wrists packing a child’s treasures with care.

  The only thing that Rafael wanted to bring with him to Sweden was a bear that now, tragically, remained on a shelf untouched.

  Rafael had spent every night in Chile with a small, beloved bear. He had called him Umberto and loved him dearly; a wondrous bear with soft, chocolate-brown fur, velvet paws, a black stitched nose, and brown, painted-glass eyes.

  Umberto had comforted him on all of those nights when he’d lain in bed while his father was out roaming the streets questioning anyone who might have information about Salomé. Rafael had held the bear in his arms, his tears soaking the brown fur until it was dark and salty. He whispered into its gray felt ears all the things he was instructed never to say in public. And only to Umberto, not to his sisters or grandmother, did Rafael ever reveal his fears. Rafael felt that they were already too overwrought from their own pain and anguish to bear his as well.

  So, his bear was his only confidant. Silent and stoic, the two of them braving this journey alone until his mother was returned.

  And when his mother did arrive home, her delicate olive skin bruised with a garden of plum patches and lilac stains, Rafael silently rejoiced with his velvet-pawed friend. He held the stuffed animal to him, his tiny arm encasing the bear’s soft, downy limbs.

  Yet when it came time to pack his dearest friend, he left his beloved bear behind. Eventually, Octavio asked Rafael why he had not put Umberto into one of the boxes to be shipped abroad.

  “I know I said we’ll have limited room in Sweden, Rafael, but I assure you, we’ll have enough room for Umberto.”

  “I don’t want to bring him, Papa,” Rafael said quietly. “I’ll have no need for him over there.”

  But that was a lie. Rafael had left his bear behind not because he had no need for him. Indeed, Umberto was the object he loved most in the world. But because God had answered his prayers and returned his mother, he would try to convince himself that he needed nothing else now. And thus he had decided days before, when his father had informed him that they could bring only the barest essentials, that he would only bring his toothbrush and his clothes.

  When he held his bear on that last night before they were to leave, he justified his reasoning in a child’s whisper: “You will watch over the house until we return.” He kissed the bear’s felt ear. “And I will watch over Mama.” With that, he held the bear tightly, as if his hug could convince his friend that his action was not one of betrayal but rather a noble sacrifice.

  Now the car was packed and his grandparents stood stoically on the porch trying to manage a heart-wrenching good-bye.

  Rafael watched as his mother moved slowly from the front porch of the Casa Rosa, her tiny feet treading carefully over the tile they had found her collapsed upon only a few weeks before. She seemed to hesitate for a second before accepting Octavio’s hand as he ushered her to the front seat of the car.

  Doña Olivia and Don Fernando looked like two white statues, their features tight and drawn, shrunken in a desperate attempt to conceal their grief. And their daughter’s face mirrored that of her parents’ as she turned her head to the clouded glass of the automobile, her fingers bending in a gesture of farewell.

  Rafael slid next to his mother in the car and could not help but notice the tears pooling in her eyes. She seemed perhaps more childlike at that moment than either he or his sisters did. He watched her intently—wanting to hold her and protect her—as the car navigated its way through Santiago’s winding streets. His father drove carefully through the city, his knuckles white around the steering wheel and his forehead beaded in sweat.

  The seven miles to the Swedish embassy felt like an eternity. But once Octavio had successfully driven within the walls of the Swedish compound, where his request for political asylum had been processed only days before, the family’s safety was ensured.

  They arrived in Stockholm to a gray day, with wet snow falling from the sky. A relocation volunteer met the family at the airport and escorted them to the temporary housing unit that had been reserved for them.

  Rafael held each of his sisters’ hands when they passed through imm
igration, his father handing over their passports and responding quietly, “Yes, this is all their belongings: these three valises, five cardboard boxes, and a sack of toys.”

  His mother looked as if she were in a trance. Her limbs dangled at her side like two limp dandelion stems. Her flowered dress hung on her like a wrinkled cotton bag.

  She had hardly spoken to any of them during the entire journey. From the moment they had driven to the Swedish embassy in Santiago to the landing of the plane in Stockholm three days later, Salomé had spoken only a few words.

  “Wave bye-bye to Grandmama,” she had whispered to the children as the car drove away from the faded pink house. “Help your sisters with their food,” she had urged Rafael on the flight over. Otherwise, she remained silent, her hands folded quietly in her lap. The entire time, she did not speak to Octavio.

  And it occurred to the young but precocious Rafael, as he followed his family through their first hours in this new and foreign country, that this was the first time in his childhood memory that he’d noticed that his parents didn’t hold hands.

  Forty-eight

  VESTERÅS, SWEDEN

  FEBRUARY 1975

  Salomé’s session with Samuel finished later than usual that evening. She walked through the narrow streets of Vesterås until she arrived home to her family’s government-appointed apartment on the other side of town. On this night, she was particularly nostalgic for her Casa Rosa. For, unlike most of the quaint houses and thatched cottages that dotted the narrow streets of Vesterås, her own building was erected in the late sixties—created with poured concrete and filled with perfectly rectangular windows and thin plywood doors.

  The architect, who had built similar structures throughout Sweden to accommodate its burgeoning immigrant community, had declared the building a “Platonic ideal”—an egalitarian house built for those less fortunate, yet equipped with all the necessities of modern life. There was the standard linoleum tile, pale yellow with faux brown grout. The lighting fixtures were small fluorescent domes that looked like little flying saucers suspended on the ceiling. There was a bathtub with an optional shower nozzle and, down the hallway, a communal washer and dryer.