The Case of Lisandra P. by Hélène Grémillon Page A

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    â€œAnd if what I have imagined is correct, it doesn’t stop there.”
    Eva Maria looks at Vittorio. Vittorio looks at Eva Maria. He no longer sees her. He is using her. As a visual support for his thoughts. His reasoning is not in place. He needs to speak in order to reason. To voice his thoughts. Vittorio is not speaking to Eva Maria. He is thinking out loud.
    â€œFelipe had always despised his brother, a latent jealousy that went back to childhood. It happens a lot, the older child toward the younger, finding it hard to accept the new birth. According to Felipe, his parents preferred his brother—whether it was an imagined or a real preference, I have no idea. Felipe and his wife had already been trying to have a child for some time, without success. I remember it very well; he spoke about it a lot. One day, he came to my office very perturbed: he had just found out that his brother’s wife was pregnant, yet again—his brother succeeding where all he did was fail. He probably couldn’t stand it. A few months later, I can’t remember exactly how much time had gone by, he told me they had died, his brother and sister-in-law. It was brutal. A car crash. ‘Natural selection,’ was how he put it, coldly, for sure, but given the lack of love he showed for his brother, it didn’t surprise me. I could never have imagined he was involved. When shortly after the accident he informed me that his wife was pregnant, I didn’t think there was anything amiss. How could I know? It was his brother’s imminent fatherhood that must have blinded him and driven him to act. For the sake of his competition with him he was prepared to do anything. It’s so sordid, and yet it makes sense. That’s why he made the slip. ‘But of course I look after my brother.’ The child, the child he says he adopted. It’s his brother’s child. He took him. After killingthe parents, or arranging for them to die, I have no idea. And his sister-in-law, like most of those so-called subversive elements, must have given birth in one of their special cells, the cells they set aside for pregnant women, and after that they got rid of her, too, like the other mothers of stolen babies. After he had helped himself to the child. It was too easy, too tempting to use the system that was already in place, the existing organization, to deal with his personal problems. Felipe was surely not the only one who had done something like that. Violence had become the answer to all his problems. He slapped his wife, and it wasn’t a matter of ideological conviction, either, simply anger. He didn’t want his brother to have a baby if he couldn’t himself. Childhood jealousy with an adult’s weapons.”
    Eva Maria is speechless. Her analytical mind is paralyzed. Vittorio’s is going full steam.
    â€œSo this is what might have happened that night. When Felipe left my office, he was already sorry he had revealed his secret and, above all, he believed I had figured out what really lay behind this so-called adoption: the fact that his son is a stolen child—he may even have thought that I figured out it was his brother’s child. When a person is afraid of being found out, they are afraid of being completely exposed; they don’t realize that the whole truth rarely comes to light all at once. Maybe he also heard me calling him a ‘filthy bastard’ through the door—a torturer’s ears are used to listening out for the slightest murmur—and the insult touched a sensitive nerve. And then there were all my insinuations—I couldn’t help it, some thoughts just slipped out. He knew very well what I thought of him deep down.”
    Vittorio closes his eyes.
    â€œSo. Let’s just suppose. Felipe now thinks I have become dangerous. His enemy; in any case the enemy of his secret. So he decides to get rid of me. But that evening, I’m not at