It Would Be Night in Caracas by Karina Sainz Borgo

Author:Karina Sainz Borgo [Borgo, Karina Sainz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-08-21T00:00:00+00:00

AURORA PERALTA TEIJEIRO. Date of birth: May 15, 1972. Time: 3:30 p.m. Place: La Princesa Hospital, Salamanca District, Madrid Province. Father: Fabián Peralta Veiga, native of Lugo, Galicia. Mother: Julia Peralta Teijeiro, native of Lugo, Galicia. Nationality: Spanish. Reason for requesting certificate: passport application and national ID for the Kingdom of Spain. Alongside the long-form copy of the record was a letter signed by the city’s consular office, a list of required material, a leaflet with the date the issuance was scheduled for, and a phone number for queries or consultations. There were two weeks to go until the appointment. The date coincided with the one-month anniversary of my mother’s death, May 5.

I grabbed a clean towel and a blanket. I left them on the dining table. I went back to the master bedroom and bolted the door. I found a red binder in the top drawer of the dresser. Inside it was another birth certificate, for Julia, Aurora’s mother. She was born in Viveiro, a town on the Lugo coast, in July 1954. Both the original and a copy were together with her death certificate, issued in Caracas.

Julia Peralta died just before my first trip to the border with Francisco. I didn’t go on many trips, but the first was on assignment, sent by the newspaper I was working for at the time. I was employed there as a proofreader. In time I did a lot of things besides. I would go down to print layouts to correct a caption or I would redo a news ticker, just as I would make calls to corroborate facts that the news writers had no time to check. No one else could perform such a variety of tasks for so little money. I had copy edited almost all the articles filed by Francisco, the political journalist with the greatest number of scoops about Colombian guerrilla activities. The bosses thought I was the best person to go with him on that trip, and really, who else could do it? I had to stay at the border for as long as the operation he’d been sent to cover lasted. Though I asked, my bosses weren’t forthcoming with details; they only urged me to tell them my answer as soon as possible. I accepted.

When I arrived home to pack my bags, I found my mother getting ready to go to Julia Peralta’s funeral.

“What do you mean, you’re going to the border? Have you gone crazy? The whole area is set to go up like a match. You’re not coming to Julia’s wake?”

“Mamá, I can’t. Please give my condolences.”

My mother was in mourning. She never usually dressed in black. It made her look like she was from a village. She was, of course, but grief reminded her of that. It stuck to her skin, as if it had been dormant in her genes all the while and had suddenly come to the fore.

“Take that off as soon as you get home, Mamá,” I said before I left.

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