“Do you have contact with them?”

“With my aunt, or my parents?”

“Any of them.”

“I’m not going to talk about my aunt. I can’t. With my parents, I do what I can, and so do they.”

Starting here I’ll transcribe the conversation. It would be very hard for me to paraphrase it. Our exchange that day was short. So was the one later that night, but both of them felt very long to me, and I remember checking the recorder several times to be sure the cassette didn’t get stuck.

“Do you remember the operation?”

“We were woken up by gunshots and we knew it was them, so we ran. Or rather I ran, with my daughter. I knew what path to take through the jungle to reach safety. We had planned it, I had to get to the house of a woman who helped us, the wife of a tarefero. The only one who helped us in that shitty village. I never would have said they were shitty people back then, but these days I can’t talk about class consciousness or about contradictions, I don’t have the patience. I don’t care about them. I couldn’t find the house, I was disoriented. So, I made my way to my aunt’s house. I needed to save my daughter, and I thought I would leave her there and go back to find Eduardo. I was tired and terrified. My family has private guards. I decided to stay with Adela in the house. We should have died that night. Sometimes, cheating death is the worst thing that can happen.”

Beatriz’s thick smoker’s voice never once broke. She spoke with the hardness of one who isn’t afraid of dying, or who wants to die but has a few things to resolve first.

“I stayed in the house with them. With my cousin Rosario and the others. I’m not going to tell you about my life. I want to tell you that what you’ve guessed is true: my daughter is Adela Álvarez, the disappeared girl. I never hid my first name: I told the cameras my name was Beatriz Álvarez. I never married Eduardo, but I took his last name. Adela was registered with her real name and she didn’t die in the jungle. They didn’t kill her in the operation. I tried to save her. I tell Eduardo. I tried, but there were other plans for our daughter.

“You’re the mother of the girl who disappeared in Buenos Aires?”

“That’s what I just said. The girl who went into the house on Calle Villarreal with her friends, near Castelli Park.”

“I recognized you from TV. Your family is very rich. As I recall, your house in Caballito was fairly modest. I mean, the house where you lived with your daughter.”

“The house was fine. It was what I wanted. I didn’t live with them or live like them, if that’s what you mean.”

“Did your daughter lose her arm in the repression?”