María Luisa told Vilajuana that as soon as Vargas had left the registry that day, she had started to put two and two together. Rummaging through the documents, she kept finding more and more numbers that had been switched and cases in which it was obvious that the procedures had been manipulated.

“Hundreds of children. Stolen from their parents, who were probably murdered or imprisoned until they rotted alive. And that’s only as far as I was able to go in a few days. I took home what I could, because as soon as they started asking about Captain Vargas and his visit, I saw it coming. This is all I was able to save. A week after Vargas came to search the records of the registry, there was a fire in the archives. Everything prior to 1944 was lost. I was blamed for the disaster and dismissed two days later. If they’d known that I’d taken all these documents home, God knows what they would have done to me. But they thought the entire archive had been destroyed in the blaze. The past doesn’t disappear, however hard idiots try to forget it and con men try to fake it and resell it as new.”

“What have you done all these years?”

“Die. Decent people are killed slowly in this country. Quick deaths are reserved for scoundrels. They kill people like me by ignoring us, shutting all the doors in our faces and pretending we don’t exist. For a couple of years I sold lottery tickets on the sly in the metro tunnels, until they found out and took that away from me too. I wasn’t able to find anything else. Since then I’ve lived off the charity of my neighbors.”

“Have you no family?”

“I had a son, but he was told his mother was a stinking red, and I haven’t seen him in years.” María Luisa looked at Vilajuana with a smile that was hard to make out.

“Can I do anything for you, María Luisa?”

“You can tell the truth.”

Vilajuana sighed. “To be honest, I don’t know whether I’ll be able to do that.”

“Do you have children?”

“Four.”

Vilajuana was trapped in the eyes of that dying woman. He didn’t know where to hide.

“Do it for them. Tell the truth for them. When you’re able to, and in whatever way you’re able to. But don’t let us die. There are so many of us by now. Someone must lend us their voice.”

Vilajuana nodded. María Luisa held out her hand, and he shook it.

“I’ll do what I can,” he said.

* * *

That night, while he was tucking in Nicolás, his son fixed him with his gaze.

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“An elephant question.”

“Let’s have it.”

“Why did you become a journalist? Mommy says that Granddad wanted you to be something else.”

“Your grandfather wanted me to be a lawyer.”

“And you paid no attention to him?”

“On certain occasions—none of which should apply to you or to the immediate future—a father must be disobeyed.”