Operation Massacre(36)
26 The night watchman’s exact words to Mario’s father many months later.
28. “They’re Taking You Away”
The police officer drove Livraga to the San Martín polyclinic, where he received his first treatments. Juan Carlos did not lose consciousness: for hours, doctors and nurses heard him repeat his story. Afterward they took him to the recovery room on the third floor.
The nurses, risking their jobs—and maybe even more: martial law was still in effect—protect the wounded man in every way imaginable. One secretly calls Juan Carlos’ father and tells him to come see his son immediately because he is “unwell.” Another hides his clothes; she knows Livraga is telling the truth and assumes that his sweater with the bullet hole in its sleeve can be used as evidence. Yet another hides the receipt from the San Martín District Police Department, which would later serve as the introductory document for the criminal proceedings.
Juan Carlos’ mother has just been operated on and is in a different hospital; they don’t tell her the news. Mr. Pedro Livraga, on the other hand, goes to see his son immediately, accompanied by two cousins and Juan Carlos’s brother-in-law. These four individuals sign a statement in the polyclinic’s numbered registry book declaring that they have seen Juan Carlos alive and that his state, although certainly serious, does not in any way imply a fatal outcome.
This was a good precautionary measure to take because that afternoon or that night—for Livraga time has turned into the mere progression of pain—a corporal from the local police department comes in to keep watch and, finding himself faced with Livraga, looks once at him and then keeps staring, as if he doesn’t want to believe that he is alive.
The policeman’s face looks somewhat familiar to Livraga. He can’t be sure, but he thinks he has seen him before. Could it be Corporal Albornoz who was in charge of the firing squad? It’s not such an important question.
But the corporal—a dark-skinned man—has a big mouth. He talks to the nurses:
—They’re going to take this one in again. Don’t tell him, poor guy.
The nurses tell him. And the torture begins again.
The policeman, in the meantime, is looking for something. The receipt. He asks for Livraga’s clothes. They don’t give them to him. He gets angry and pointedly asks for the little piece of paper, which provides proof of the crime. No one knows anything.
No one except for Pedro Livraga who, upon returning to his house that night, mysteriously finds it in the pocket of his overcoat.
And he holds onto it until six months later when it reaches the hands of the judge.
Meanwhile, Juan Carlos’ life is hanging by a very thin thread. There is no doubt that the local police want to get rid of him, the witness. But first they need to solve the “small” problem of the other survivors, who are being savagely pursued. If they can catch all of them, they will execute them again, taking the greatest precautions . . . But if even one escapes their clutches, it will be useless to get rid of the rest of them.
Livraga is no longer resisting, no longer protesting. When they put him on a stretcher that night and a nurse says to him in tears: “They’re taking you away, kid,” he’s already given up. So much suffering just to die.
They roll him out covered in a sheet, like they would a dead man. They load him onto a jeep and take him away.
***
In San Andrés, Giunta took a bus that brought him to his brother’s house in Villa Martelli, where he found refuge and released some anxiety by telling his incredible story.
That night he slept at his parents’ house and on Monday, June 11, he went to work. He thought his odyssey had ended. But when he went back to Florida that afternoon, his wife told him that the police had been by looking for him. She told them he was at his parents’ house.