Free Purgatory by Tomás Eloy Martínez

listened as he articulated every syllable, slowly nodding his bald head.
    ‘A desaparecido is a mystery, he has no substance, he is neither alive nor dead, he does not exist. He is a “disappeared”.’
    And as he said he does not exist , he rolled his eyes to heaven.
    ‘Don’t use that word again,’ he went on, ‘you have no basis for it. It is forbidden to publish it. Let it disappear and be forgotten.’
     
    Emilia left Simón standing in the doorway of Trudy Tuesday and – not letting him out of her sight – crossed the road to pick up her silver Altima from the parking lot at Hammond Atlas. She was not afraid that he would leave again – after all these years it made no sense. ‘I’ll go pick up the car.’ Emilia whispered to him. ‘We’ll go home.’ She did not even need to wait for an answer. On the far side of Route 22 she turned to make sure he was still standing where her senses had left him. He wasn’t there. She saw him walking north, a smudge of light, a haze raised by the afternoon sunshine.
    ‘Simón!’ she called, but he did not hear her. Perhaps he could not hear her over the constant stream of trucks from Newark. A taxi stopped on the corner and, without hesitating, Emilia jumped in and told the cab driver to follow her husband. Simón was crossing a bridge less than two hundred metres away and she quickly caught up with him. When she opened the taxi door he climbed in, smiling, as though nothing had happened. Still panicked, her heart in her mouth, Emilia stammered her Highland Park address and explained to the driver the quickest way to get there. The enthusiasm her husband had shown some minutes before as he chatted to the Scandinavians seemed to have completely drained away. Now he huddled in the back seat like a timid boy, stealing glances at Emilia. He was carrying the case she had given him thirty-one years before: a wide, soft brown leather bag, perfect for overnight trips: the same case that, according to the prison register, had been returned to him at the police station in Tucumán. Back then, Simón had three original maps on fine card in the case, the names already printed, and plastic Stabilene overlays on which to apply the geographical symbols. Emilia would have liked to ask him whether he kept the past, too, in the case, frozen, the prisoner of a time that would not go away. It had been years now since cartographers had used Stabilene overlays. Nowadays, maps were the creations of computer programs, metaphors that had no place in reality.
    ‘I’m not going to leave your side,’ she told him. ‘I don’t need to be back at work until Monday.’ It was Friday.
    Simón stared out at the soulless monotony of suburbia, the Taco Bells and the Dunkin’ Donuts spilling fat, satisfied families onto the street, the Kinkos, the Pathmarks, the Toys R Us and the other endless, sprawling temples to consumerism. Emilia talked incessantly. ‘Ever since I moved to this country, I’ve been amazed by the food, the huge perfect-looking tomatoes, the lettuces that never wilt, the shelves of fruit that call to you like sirens as soon as you step into a grocery store. Now I understand why Disney’s Snow White was bewitched by her stepmother’s apple. A tasteless apple that brings eternal sleep. Don’t you feel that, Simón? None of the food here has any flavour to it. The stuff they sell here is a genetic fantasy, a breeding ground for every future disease.’ Every now and then, the cab driver would turn and ask, ‘Everything OK, lady? Did you say something?’ ‘No, everything’s fine.’
    For a long time her husband sat, saying nothing, staring out at the bleak expressway. I have to be careful, Emilia thought. I’m desperate to make up for lost time, but maybe he’s not. I don’t want to crowd him, to pressure him. Sooner or later we’ll go back to being the people we used to be. And even if we don’t, it doesn’t matter. At least we’ll be together. A day, two days, the