By Liz Soares
A psychoanalyst, Vittorio Puig, comes home to find his apartment in disarray, and a living room window open. Hearing shouts from the street, he runs to the window and sees his wife, Lisandra, dead on the pavement six stories below.
So begins this intriguing literary thriller, written by a Frenchwoman and set in 1987 Buenos Aires. Vittorio is soon arrested and charged with the murder of his wife. One of his patients, Eva Maria, wants to help him. Vittorio asks her to listen to the tapes of his most recent sessions with his patients, to see if she hears anything that might lead to the truth of what happened.
It soon becomes clear why Hélène Grémillon chose this time and place for her story. From 1974 to 1983, “military and security forces and right wing death squads” (according to Wikipedia) tortured and killed thousands of Argentinians they believed to be left-wing guerrillas, political dissidents, or socialists. As many as 30,000 desaparicidos, or those who disappeared, may have been murdered.
In 1987, the terrible memories of this “Dirty War,” are still fresh in Argentinians’ minds. The “Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo” are marching, demanding answers to their questions about their missing children. And Eva Maria mourns the loss of her daughter, Stella, who simply did not return home one day.
Eva Maria is a vulcanologist, a volcano scientist. She often thinks in terms of volcano metaphors. Stella’s disappearance has destroyed her life. Eva Maria drinks to excess and avoids her grown son, Estéban. Her husband has left the family.
She throws herself into the task of listening to the tapes. They are only identified by the patients’ first names. One is a jealous woman. Another likely was a perpetrator in the Dirty War; yet another, a victim.
Eva Maria is friendly with a barista in a cafe near the Puigs’ apartment, and she often stops there going to or from her appointments with Vittorio. He provides useful information about Lisandra. Eva Maria meets Lisandra’s tango teacher, who has the ability to read body language. This skill gives him deep insight into human behavior, including that of Lisandra. A visit to a toy store helps pull all of the pieces together.
But then, in rapid-fire fashion, there is a triple twist in the plot. An innocent person goes to jail. Finally, we hear the truth from Lisandra’s perspective, from the roots of her tortured soul to the events that led to her death.
The novel is written with numerous stream-of-consciousness passages that express the intensity of Eva Maria’s quest and Lisandra’s pain. The transcripts of the patients’ sessions are verbatim, and difficult to read. As the story develops, and as the reader delves ever deeper into the characters’ lives, sexual references become cruder.
The knife edge of the terror these people experienced lies just below the surface of their everyday lives. A former torturer may live next door. A policeman may have had military experience in the Dirty War. Nothing is exactly as it appears to be in 1987 Buenos Aires. No one is innocent anymore.
