Breaking Lorca

SEVENTEEN

A week after they had disposed of Lorca Viera, Captain Pena had taken Victor into the kitchen for what he called a cup of tea, although Victor had never seen his uncle drink tea. The Captain opened a pint of chocolate milk, which he gulped down with audible pleasure. Victor drank a Coke.

“Victor,” Captain Pena had announced sonorously, as if from a pulpit. “Victor. They can say what they want of me when I am dead. They can say that Pena was an ugly bas tard, they can say that Pena was a fool, they can say that Pena was too hard, too soft, too mediocre. I don’t care.”

“I’m sure no one will say those things, sir.”

His uncle raised one hand to forestall contradiction and with the other wiped chocolate milk from his moustache. “The press, the army, the bureaucrats, they can say what they want-and they will, too, I know them. But one thing they cannot deny. What they cannot ever deny is that Captain Eduardo Vargas Pena-no matter what the situation-Captain Eduardo Vargas Pena stood by his family. Always he was loyal to his own.”

A scream like tearing metal came from the interrogation room, where Tito was at work.

The Captain continued. “And as a man who always comes to the assistance of his family, I have-yet again, my underachieving nephew-I have yet again come to your rescue.”

“How, Captain?”

“The United States of America is offering to train five hundred troops at Fort Benning, Georgia. Fort Benning, my boy! The School of the Americas! All of our best warriors have gone there, all of our toughest officers. Believe me, a course at the School of the Americas is a sure ladder to success in this army. And I-by pulling more strings than you can ever hope to count-I have managed to get your miserable carcass into it.”

“You have? But that’s wonderful, sir!”

“Ah, you are excited, I see.”

Excited? Victor could barely suppress tears of joy.

“You have no idea,” his uncle went on, “how difficult it was to secure this opportunity, given your sorry record. I had to call in every possible favour-some of them imaginary. I owe a lot of people now, on your account. You understand me? A lot of people. Well? You have nothing to say?”

“I’m overwhelmed, Captain. Truly. I don’t know what to say.”

“Let me down again, and I will man the firing squad myself.”

“Oh, yes, Captain. Don’t worry. I promise I will live up to the family name.”

Another shriek from the interrogation room. A cheer went up from the tormentors, as if they had scored a goal.

Captain Pena drank the last of his chocolate milk and belched luxuriously. “You leave in two weeks. Make sure your papers are in order.”

“I’ll be ready, Captain. I promise.”

The Captain stared at him in frank assessment. “Forget what I said about the firing squad. Tarnish the name of Pena, soldier, and I will personally hand you over to Sergeant Tito, you understand? I will tell the sergeant to be sure and take his time. I think Sergeant Tito would enjoy that.” Captain Pena stepped out into the hall and, as if on cue, Tito tore from his victim’s throat another scream.

Victor’s transfer came in due time. But before he travelled to the United States, he removed from his uncle’s files the identity papers of Ignacio Perez. The first night the visiting soldiers were allowed off the Fort Benning base, he caught a bus, and then a train, and then another bus, to New York City.

He had not planned to work in a restaurant, but he knew no one, and no other job was available. Le Parisien was located on East Fiftieth Street among a row of much better restaurants. Except for a trio of unpleasant waiters-all with identical moustaches-no one connected with the place was French. The owner was a shy, silent Greek who sat at his corner table sipping anxiously at a chain of espressos while his business sank inexorably into decline.

Victor worked a split shift, arriving at ten-thirty each morning and working through lunch, preparing salads and desserts until three. Then, after a two-hour break that he would spend sitting in a nearby branch of the New York Public Library, he would return to his station, little more than a stall really, and begin the dinner shift.

The French waiters said little to him, except to call him silly names when placing their orders. (Two profiteroles, Potassio. Three Caesar salads, Ignoracio.) They weren’t hostile, exactly, they just assumed he was an idiot because he was Hispanic, and because a chef’s helper compared to a professional waiter was a lowly thing.

The day after his trip to Queens, Victor took off his apron, raised the hinged countertop of his station, and walked out into the bright sunshine of Fiftieth Street. It was a cool spring afternoon.

Despite the chill, there were many people-clerks and secretaries, they looked like-seated on the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. They looked carefree, Victor thought as he ascended toward the great bronze doors. He had seen grand cathedrals in picture books and movies, of course, but St. Patrick’s perfect neo-Gothic arches and beautifully carved saints were in stark contrast to San Salvador’s national cathedral, with its facade of bullet holes. There the Guardia had fired into a crowd of protesters, killing thirty. No one took their ease on those steps.

The vast interior was dark and cool. Smells of candle wax and incense brought back childhood memories.

As a boy, Victor had revered priests as God’s representatives on earth. But then the war came, and the army had taught him that priests were the enemy. The army hated the Church for many reasons. The teaching of history, with its catalogue of revolutions, they saw as subversive. And what need was there to learn of political systems less repressive than El Salvador’s? But the priests ignored all warnings.

Archbishop Romero had written a letter to the President of the United States asking him not to send any more military aid. He told the President that military aid was used to slaughter civilians. Then he had preached a sermon telling soldiers they should disobey orders that were against the law-orders to abduct, orders to torture. The archbishop was shot the next day while saying Mass.

Such courage, Victor reflected, and I haven’t even the courage to go to confession. He looked at the row of confessionals against the wall, where several penitents were lined up. He wanted to ask for forgiveness, he wanted to ask for advice, but he did not know American priests. He feared they might tell him to turn himself in.

He knelt in the back row and prayed for courage. If courage came, he would tell the priest about Labredo, about the boy. He would confess what he had done to Lorca Viera, and how he had intended to kill her, and how she had slipped at the crucial moment. If the courage came, he would tell everything, and maybe the priest would forgive him.

The courage didn’t come. Victor went back to work with a leaden heart.

All through the dinner shift, the waiters called him ridiculous names. Then suddenly there was a panic when a party of eight all ordered Caesar salads at once. Nick, the lugubrious owner, had cheered up considerably and came into the kitchen to help. Later, there was shouting across the stoves as Fidel the chef threatened to kill a waiter who cancelled an order for filet mignon he had already prepared.

Fidel’s Spanish curses echoing among the pots and pans were like an audio replay of the little school, and loathing swelled in Victor’s chest at the sound. English was the language of sanctuary, of rebirth, of anonymity. In English, no one knew who and what he really was.

By ten o’clock, the orders stopped coming. By eleven, the place was empty. Victor put plastic wrap over the mousse and threw out the whipped cream. He washed his chopping block and the half-dozen knives he had used. Nick told him morosely that he could go home.

Fiftieth Street was quiet at this hour. The air smelt fresh after the kitchen smells of frying meat and hot oil. Maybe tonight there would be no nightmares. Victor stood at the top of the restaurant stairs, struggling with the zipper of his jacket. It was a cheaply made thing of fake leather he had found in a Salvation Army store, and the zipper always stuck.

“Just leaving, I see!” Mike Viera was grinning up at him from the sidewalk. “I was just passing through the neighbourhood, Ignacio. I’m so glad I caught you!”