Imagining Argentina

For a week, Carlos’s dream recurs, until it slowly subsides. Esme, Emilia, and Martín continue to visit him in the hospital. One day, after all his visitors have returned home, Carlos escapes the hospital. Still shaky from his concussion, Carlos eventually slides into a cab and asks the driver to take him back to Calle Cordova. During the drive, Carlos notices that all his familiar haunts appear dark and barren, as if it were suddenly winter.

When Carlos arrives home, he notices that someone—likely Esme or Emilia—has tidied the house. Though Carlos appreciates the gesture, he fumes to realize that evidence of the government’s brutality has been wiped away. Filled with a sudden purpose, Carlos grabs his father’s old rifle and hops into his car. 

As he drives, Carlos criticizes himself for imagining that the officials might have some humanity. He wonders if not witnessing Cecilia’s disappearance previously affected his judgment. However, after watching Teresa be dragged away, Carlos is ready to rage. 

Carlos drives to the Casa Rosada and watches from afar as General Guzman slides into a Mercedes. Carlos carefully tails the car until it pulls in front of Guzman’s home. Carlos watches as Guzman steps out and as his daughter, emerging from the house, rushes to greet him. Carlos trains the rifle’s sight on Guzman’s head, recognizing that Guzman is unwittingly trapped. However, as Guzman lifts his daughter into his arms, Carlos is unable to pull the trigger. 

Carlos sets the gun down and criticizes himself for his weakness. Lying back in his seat, Carlos thinks of Cecilia and Teresa, trying to explain his reasoning.

For weeks after, Carlos is haunted by the ice cave dream. One night, he decides to search for Teresa and Cecilia, tracing his steps from a prior search. He peers into abandoned buildings and threads through alleyways but can’t find any clues. A passing ambulance startles Carlos as he tries to conjure a vision.

Carlos stops for a drink at a nearby cafe. After the house band leaves, Carlos steps on stage and asks to play a set. Strumming his guitar, Carlos imagines that he can restore Argentina.

Eventually, Carlos is well enough to return to the Children’s Theater. He continues directing The Names but changes the music to resemble tango. 

One day, Carlos talks with Martín over coffee, explaining how he’d hesitated to kill Guzman. Carlos thinks back to a boar hunting trip 10 or 12 years prior. With a boar in his sights, Carlos had imagined the boar’s eye meeting his, and he suddenly understood the boar as a creature driven by instinct. Then, too, Carlos had decided not to fire. 

Carlos decides that in sparing Guzman, he has preserved his own potential: With Guzman alive, Carlos can still speak, write, or draw—anything to communicate his grief.

Carlos hosts another session in his garden, and the crowd nearly overflows. Amongst them is Esme, who reveals that the Children Theater’s has been closed and Silvio abducted. Carlos applies his gift to imagine Silvio’s experience.

As Carlos narrates, Silvio is in his apartment when the men arrive to arrest him. A true nonpartisan, Silvio assumes that the men have erred and considers directing the men to his left-leaning neighbors. When Silvio argues, one of the men strikes him and knees him in the groin. 

The men drag Silvio into a waiting Falcon. Before arriving at the Naval Mechanics School, they blindfold Silvio to maximize his terror. As he’s led through the school, Silvio hears women screaming and decides to offer the men information, if given the chance. Removing his blindfold, the men shove Silvio into a cell, alone. A natural extrovert, Silvio struggles to cope with such solitude. 

Switching into the future tense, Carlos envisions Silvio’s fate. Silvio will be repeatedly electrocuted, without any opportunity to speak. The men will allow Silvio to heal between torture sessions, heightening his dread. Silvio, once he better understands his captors, will realize that they do not pursue information and that his arrest stems from his association with Carlos. Briefly, Silvio will hate Carlos, until he’s overcome with love for Carlos, Cecilia, Teresa, Esme, and all the people who gather in Carlos’s garden.

Silvio will anticipate his own death and therefore refuse to offer the guards any information. The guards will take Silvio up in a helicopter and hover over the sea. Straining to speak, Silvio will whisper to one of the guards: “I am Silvio Ayala. An Argentine. We are legion” (143). The guards will then throw Silvio to his death.

Carlos ends his tale. After the session breaks up, Esme stays behind. Holding Esme’s hand, Carlos imagines following Silvio to the bottom of the sea and discovering the ice cave. In the cave, children recite names and Cecilia tries to yell, but her voice is overcome by the water.

Carlos helps Esme through their mutual grief. However, when Esme leaves town to visit family, Carlos is secretly relieved. Once alone, he can finally grieve Teresa, Cecilia, and Silvio. 

One day, Martín joins Carlos on a visit to the Children’s Theater, now abandoned. The marquee is blank, and all of the promotional posters have been torn away. Carlos grieves to realize that the theater’s intricately carved doors have been boarded up with plywood, ruining their designs. 

Martín and Carlos are able to enter the theater through a backdoor. Using a flashlight to navigate, Carlos searches his office and rescues a copy of his script for The Names. Coming out onto the stage, Carlos shines the flashlight on the sets, music stand, and scuff-marked floor. Quickly, Carlos runs backstage to retrieve his guitar. He arranges lamps so that three rows of seating are illuminated. After tuning his guitar, Carlos plays the music from The Names, first wistfully, then assertively. When he finishes, he hopes that the song might reach Guzman, so that he knows they’ll never forget a name.

After the events at the theater, Carlos briefly turns to solitude, but he still hosts his garden sessions and attends marches on the Plaza de Mayo every Thursday. Eventually, with the theater closed, Carlos considers a new career. He decides to play his guitar in one of Buenos Aires’ many cafes, as he did during his youth. Reflecting on this ambition, Martín explains that music is essential to the Argentinian spirit—a kind of storytelling on which they lay claim.

Though Carlos has talent enough to work in a fancy restaurant, he decides to apply in La Boca, a more modest neighborhood. As he walks through the streets, Carlos remembers a similar experience as a young man, when he’d earned a gig at a nearby cafe. Eventually, Carlos finds an opening with Manuel Carranza, proprietor of Cafe Bidu. Carlos plays six nights a week, eager for a chance to escape.

When Esme returns from her trip, she and Carlos spend an afternoon in La Boca, eventually dining in an Italian restaurant before heading to Carlos’s gig. On the way, they pass a silversmith shop. Once inside, they notice it belongs to Avrom Levy. Approaching Avrom, Carlos explains his connection to Solomon, and Avrom happily exclaims that he and Solomon have successfully reconnected. Avrom’s wife, Erica, joins in the celebration.

Carlos invites Avrom to attend his set later. In between sets, Carlos shares a beer with Esme, admitting to his surprise that Avrom truly exists. Around midnight, Avrom arrives at the cafe and joins Esme’s table. After Carlos finishes his performance, he begs Avrom to tell him stories about Warsaw and the Nazis. 

After the cafe closes, Carlos and Esme accompany Avrom back home. On the way, Carlos notices that a broken high-heeled shoe has been nailed to a house’s façade—just like in his earlier vision. Questioning Avrom, Carlos learns that the owner of the house, an older woman, had heard commotion late one night. After the noise had subsided, she had spied a broken shoe in the street and saved it in case its owner ever returned. 

Despite the late hour, Carlos insists on speaking to the woman. When she answers the door, Avrom introduces her as Señora Madrigal. Responding to Carlos’s questions, Señora Madrigal recounts the night of the incident. Much to Carlos’s shock, Señora Madrigal remembers overhearing two names: Cecilia and Carlos.

After his experience with Señora Madrigal, Carlos is convinced that somewhere, Cecilia is alive. As Carlos joins the mothers for another protest, sounds from a nearby construction site stir his gift. Carlos imagines Cecilia in a dingy room, perhaps near Teresa. The surrounding guards press her to either reveal names or be raped. When Cecilia refuses to cooperate, the sergeant abandons her to his subordinate. 

Suddenly, Carlos takes off running toward the Casa Rosada. As he surges up its steps, someone tosses him backward. Carlos splits his lip as he lands. Later that night, Carlos hopes to revisit the vision, before hosting another garden session. However, the vision slips away, and Carlos emerges to face the gathering crowd.

A woman speaks up, explaining that her husband, Theodor Hirsch, was abducted from his office at a nearby university. Carlos recognizes Hirsch’s name, having been introduced years ago, and weaves another vision. Theodor Hirsch has been a leading intellectual for years. Though Hirsch considers himself apolitical, he refuses to censor his writing in the interest of propaganda. Some students, distrusting Hirsch as left-leaning, report him to the authorities. Hirsch’s work has attracted international attention, and the authorities must weigh Hirsch’s danger against potential exposure. Ultimately, they decide to abduct Hirsch.

In Carlos’s telling, Hirsch is in his office when he’s apprehended. A group of men wrestle him out of his chair and shatter his eyeglasses. Then, they toss him into a Ford Falcon and escort him to a detention center. During interrogations, guards electrocute Hirsch’s testicles and drive needles under his nails. They ask Hirsch to offer names, but Hirsch recites only literary greats, like Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky and French philosopher Albert Camus. The guards berate Hirsch for his idealism and begin to doubt his usefulness. The names, however, buoy Hirsch’s spirits. 

Meanwhile, Hirsch’s wife, Dorothea, sends their children to safety in Uruguay, planning to join them the next day. One of Hirsch’s loyal students infiltrates the guard system and manages to smuggle Hirsch out of prison. Carlos imagines that by the time the guards discover Hirsch’s absence, he will already be reunited with his children. Carlos predicts that later, Dorothea will successfully join them. After hearing about Carlos’s garden from Dorothea, Hirsch will write Carlos a letter, wondering if he’s capable of magic.

Martín weaves a vision of his own, imagining the generals meeting to discuss Carlos. In Martín’s imagination, the generals discuss the issue half-jokingly, nervous to admit that a storyteller poses any threat.

One night, conducting a session in his garden, Carlos decides to reach Teresa. After Martín supplies a few expository details, Carlos begins to imagine Teresa’s fate. Teresa, Carlos decides, cannot believe what has happened and vaguely wonders if she’s dreaming. 

One day, Teresa is herded into a van with a few other girls her age. After climbing out of the van, one of the girls speculates that they’ve been led to the pampas. Following a guard, the girls walk through the tall, dewy grass. Thinking about Carlos’s stories, Teresa calms herself, certain that something will intervene.

Suddenly, Carlos loses sight of Teresa. He turns to Martín, eyes black, and whispers, “She’s gone” (165).

To escape the grief of Teresa’s death, Carlos takes a ride to the coast. His room at the Hotel La Piña overlooks the sea. After dinner, Carlos walks to the beach, following a path through a dark, thick pine grove. Carlos spies a lighthouse and walks toward its promontory, settling against the rocks. As the sun sets, Carlos is alone on the beach, and he watches the lighthouse beam spread across the ocean. Carlos returns to the hotel and orders a nightcap before bed. 

After a week, Carlos feels more relaxed. He makes a habit of swimming twice a day. One day, Carlos goes out further than usual and floats on his back, riding the current. Suddenly, Carlos feels as if he’s in the ice cave, harassed by screams. The generals urge him to give up and sink into the depths—and for a moment, Carlos relaxes. However, a splash of water rouses Carlos’s sense of purpose, and he makes for the shore in the wake of a motorboat.

Back on the sand, Carlos realizes that if he relents, and if his imagination ceases, then Cecilia is as good as dead. For the rest of his vacation, Carlos returns to the ocean, testing his will.

Back in Buenos Aires, Carlos joins the mothers for another protest. However, he senses that the mood has shifted. One of the mothers approaches Carlos and explains that everyone is mourning for Hermione Benveniste, whose sons have been captured in Patagonia. Carlos sidles next to Hermione and offers his support. 

That evening, before another session in his garden, Carlos meets with Martín at the Cafe Raphael. There, Carlos elaborates on his experience in the ocean. He admits to Martín that he almost submitted to the depths but remembered that he bears Cecilia’s story. 

On the train back to Buenos Aires, Carlos dreamt of the ice cave again, until Cecilia’s voice had reached him and encouraged him to break free of its terror. Waking, Carlos could recognize the ice cave as a “nightmare within a dream” (173)—or a seed of fear that the generals had planted to control him and all of Argentina. Understanding the ice cave as fantasy, Carlos destroyed the dream and all its fearsomeness. 

After his explanation, Carlos returns home to prepare for that night’s session. Martín, however, stays behind, trying to make sense of what Carlos has revealed.