“We’ve had visitors. They just left. You’d best take a walk.”

Francisco Amaro Villafuerte—Pancho to his friends—a journalist and union rep for a large publishing group in Buenos Aires, is also the author of a soon-to-be-published novel. A left-wing liberal, he’s aware of the surrounding dangers, but assumes he won’t be a target. But when he receives an ominous voice message from his boss, and then witnesses the entire printing of his book literally go up in flames, he realizes he’s wrong.

As he begins to receive death threats, he must confront the fact that his only option is to leave the country, his wife and family; but how can he do that when he lacks the means, the money, a passport, everything necessary?

Only one person can help him: someone to whose values and ideas he is diametrically opposed, someone the dictatorship naturally respects. Over the next few days, Pancho is at his mercy, trapped in terror and uncertainty in a city where everything is a threat.

Based on real events that occurred shortly after the military coup of March 24, 1976 that furthered the Dirty Wars in Argentina—lasting over seven years and causing the disappearances and deaths of over 30,000 victims—This Never Happened is the chilling narrative of a man caught in an extreme situation: one that separates life and freedom from torture and death. With incisive and restrained prose, Mempo Giardinelli has written an unforgettable novel about the hope and anguish of those persecuted in violent times.

***

1. YARARÁ

(DAY 2. WEDNESDAY, 6:15 P.M.)

I looked at the guy, hypnotized, and felt a sudden chill run through me like when a yarará stares at you from the corner of the yard, and you know right off the bat the only way that snake can go is between your legs.

That’s how I looked at that man, with senses on high alert, but not actually seeing him, just staring like a fool who knows he’s being hypnotized. You can’t help staring at a serpent, whether it flicks its wicked tongue or not. And in that instant all you know, what you damn well know, is that whatever else is going on in the world no longer matters. All you want to do is bolt, but you stay put because you know, or believe, that at the slightest movement, the viper will bite you in the blink of an eye.

My life was at stake, and I knew exactly what was going on. There in the Florida Garden, or any other snake pit, when panic sets in, your first impulse is to run like hell. And though everything about that man, elegantly dressed like a big spender, seemed perfectly normal, I could only see him as a yarará staring me down while I looked back at him, perplexed, as if watching cyanide raining on the town square.

The guy was a hulk. Tall and stocky, he must’ve been about six foot four, two hundred sixty pounds. He was built like a Mack truck with big broad shoulders and flat feet that made him look a little off kilter when he walked. Even so, he projected the arrogant superiority of those rich and powerful bosses who believe they’re above everyone else. An attitude he knew how to exploit like the ringmaster he was. Although slightly paunchy (rumor had it he wore a girdle), he always looked classy and sharp. His impeccably cut chestnut hair was starting to turn gray around the edges. And his amber-colored tortoise shell glasses, which looked plastic to me, lent him a suave and easy-going air, like the condescending demeanor of those appalling Irish priests who are ordained Cardinals because the latest Pope decides to protect them from the never-ending rumors of pedophilia and rape at exclusive boarding schools in Aberdeen or Glasgow. Not to mention San Isidro or Las Lomas.

But this towering, imposing giant wasn’t a priest or Irish. His two surnames were Galician, but no one would dare make jokes at his expense. Let’s just say they were Pérez and García, and everyone in Argentina’s corporate world and news media spread obscene gossip about him but kowtowed because of his power and influence over the military junta that had taken over the country three months earlier.

Don Raúl Pérez García was aware of his power, but had a talent for concealing it, although not totally, which is typical for people in such a position, or those close to it. And this titan had tremendous clout, all he could want. For this reason, and because he knew and loved it, he swaggered around town like a cocky, loud-mouthed bully, lumbering on his flat feet like an elephant. He must’ve had bunions of steel because his shoes were a wreck. Every brand he was known to wear, Grimoldis, Guidos, and other super expensive ones—were mangled right at the balls of his feet, as if his gait forced him to list sideways like those carousel horses that lean slightly outward.

You’d think all that power would’ve excited him, but he was cold, calculating, and aloof. Sensitive as a maggot. A guy you wouldn’t want to be with if the two of you were the sole survivors of a shipwreck.

Besides, I bet his glasses were plastic. Like his heart, if he had one.

Nervous and tense, I had no choice but to hold the gaze of that yarará. He seemed calm and collected, but kept his eyes riveted on me, observing me with remorseless pity. One of those smug looks the cops give you when they stop you on the highway and watch you squirm.

Observing him swallow the way toads do, gulping with a blank stare, I tried to remain as calm as his attentive waiter, who was most likely the captain of the Florida Garden’s second floor, dressed like an admiral in his pristine white uniform.

I tried but failed to act as if I felt nothing, not even alarm, while I assured myself that despite everything, my rash and difficult decision to call him that morning and request a meeting had been the right thing to do.

2. VISITORS

(DAY 1. TUESDAY, 5:40 P.M.)

The previous day—Tuesday evening, approaching the 6:30 press deadline for weekly columns printed in Séptimo día, the illustrated magazine published by Editorial Civilia, where I worked—I was gazing at the Río de la Plata, thinking how beautiful and melancholic Buenos Aires is on evenings when the sun casts its last rays on the river like twilight falling over the mountains. That’s when I got the call from Juan Felipe Laffrange. He worked at what was then the very prestigious Editorial Impresada, where he directed two of the most important literary collections in the country, perhaps in Latin America. Every afternoon from five o’clock on, he’d hole up in his office to read manuscripts and lose himself in another world.

Laffrange was the editor-in-chief of that publishing house but came to Civilia once a week to turn in his literature column to the editorial department of Séptimo día, one of the two most popular and widely read magazines in the country. But even with a distribution of three hundred thousand copies a week, it didn’t beat Nosotros, the trashy rag par excellence that covered the lives of beautiful white people with lots of money. It seemed everyone read that magazine, maybe because it was dismally superficial, which is precisely why it was so popular in a snooty city like Buenos Aires.

We weren’t friends, but he’d agreed to publish my first novel in one of Impresada’s iconic collections. Over the past year, we’d met a couple times to eat and drink and talk about contemporary literature. When we finally worked out the contract, I felt proud to be signed by the most prestigious publishing house in the country. Juan Felipe had created a collection for Impresada called “Contemporary Authors,” which for years published the best of Argentine and Latin American literature, with innovative covers by Luca Montessari. I still have a few books from that collection, saved from the flames and my paranoia. Novels and short stories by Miguel Ángel Asturias, Alberto Moravia, and Syria Poletti, Icaza’s Huasipungo, Kordon’s complete works, and those of Gálvez too, Jorge Amado’s Captains of the Sands, as well as works by Martha Lynch, Sara Gallardo, and Silvina Bullrich. I felt honored just knowing that Soriano, Gelman, and Orozco worked above me on one floor or another, in the same Editorial Civilia where I was a union delegate. Maybe they’d even voted for me. But it was a much greater thrill when Laffrange agreed to read the original manuscript of my first novel and consider it for that collection.

Months later, almost a year, after I’d lost all hope and was submerged in the obligatory silence of any young author who’s not an imbecile, one day as we were standing in a hallway, Laffrange mentioned casually to me, that he “liked” my “little novel” (using that adjective so I wouldn’t think I was hot shit) and planned to include it in the line-up for next year. “I’ll give you a call, Pancho. Then you’ll come to Impresada, and we’ll talk,” he said pleasantly before going on his way.

I didn’t know if I deserved it or not, but with those words, that man who was old enough to be my father had unintentionally transported me to another world. A world that, amid the turmoil in that desperate country, was being created just for me, fleetingly and with an elevated risk of perishing before the book would see the light of day.

By the way, I’ve yet to mention that my name is Francisco Amaro Villafuerte and I’m from the Chaco province. Those who know me call me Pancho, and some smart alecks, Pancho Villa, and this all happened many years ago, when only three months had passed since the last military takeover. The winter of 1976 was brutal, and forecasts called for rare snowstorms in Buenos Aires.

For me, those words uttered by that revered editor, in his concise and somewhat sarcastic way, had opened the floodgates to a torrent of beautiful but fragile dreams, fragile like all good things happening in that country in flames.

Perhaps that’s why on that Tuesday, a year later, his voice sounded strange on the phone, hollow, unusually hushed and more frightened than discreet, with a slight tremor or quiver that wasn’t natural for him.

Speaking uneasily, like he was sharing a secret, and without saying my name, he delivered three succinct and urgent sentences:

“We’ve had visitors. They just left. You best take a walk.”

He hung up abruptly and I sat there staring at the black receiver like someone who finds a cockroach in his soup.

Translated by Rhonda Dahl Buchanan

This Never Happened is available now from Schaffner Press.
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