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Fiction

Lindbergh

By Ivan Thays
Translated from Spanish by Christina MacSweeney
In this short story, Ivan Thays juxtaposes the Lindbergh kidnapping with a harrowing contemporary version.

So it all boils down to this. A whole morning seeing my face and Paulo’s on the television screen. Ten reporters camped out at the entrance to the building. Three policemen on phone-tap duty, reading the soccer pages in the dining room. They might get in touch at any moment. Waiting is all that’s left for me. I’ve called Lucía to tell her that, obviously, I won’t be doing the program today. She started to cry. This can’t be happening to you, she said. Well, it is. I hung up. I can’t help but think of her as an enemy. Who isn’t your enemy when your son’s been kidnapped and you’re stuck in a room with an unmade bed, looking at photos on the news, listening to supposed friends, police officers and neighbors giving interviews? For example, how strange to see Felipe on the bulletin of the channel where I work, talking about me in the third person, saying that he hopes I don’t become a Peruvian Lindbergh.

I typed Lindbergh into the search engine and found out a few things. I learned, for example, that on January 29, 1928, he arrived in Maracay, Venezuela. In Caracas, he visited the National Pantheon, the house where the Liberator, Simón Bolívar, was born, the Elliptical Salon of the congress building, the Bolívar Museum. I learned that, along with Charles Darwin, Jules Verne, Mozart, Bécquer, Clark Gable, James Dean, and Giacomo Casanova, his star sign was Aquarius. His color is verdigris, his birthstones tourmaline and zirconium, and his lucky numbers 7, 14, and 20. I learned that while making his famous crossing of the North Atlantic, he had only chocolate bars to eat. I learned that in 1957, Billy Wilder made a movie based on his life, with James Stewart in the starring role. The music was by Franz Waxman, who also composed the score for Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard. In Spanish, the movie about Lindbergh is called El héroe solitario. I learned that if you want to reserve a room in the Holiday Inn Paris-Orly Airport, you should write to 4 Ave Charles-Lindbergh, Rungis 94656. I learned that a book by Bob Burleigh, illustrated by Mike Wimmer, based on Lindbergh’s diaries, was recommended for six-year-olds as being ideal for encouraging valor, self-respect, and sound judgment. I learned that Lindbergh had to enter the cockpit through a hatch in the top of the plane or through one of the side windows, and that the lack of forward visibility meant he had to put his head out of one of those windows every so often to correct his course. I learned that a certain Jimmie Angel, an American pilot born in Springfield, Missouri, in 1902, worked with him in his Flying Circus in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1921 in an act that consisted of parachuting from a plane and doing aerial stunts. And I also learned that when Charles Lindbergh made his single-handed crossing of the Atlantic, in a monoplane called “Spirit of St. Louis,” Calvin Coolidge—then president of the United States—celebrated the news given over the radio with: “I see nothing extraordinary about a man crossing the Atlantic. A man alone can do anything.” Not a very pleasant reaction.

I’ve had to go down to the living room to answer the questions of the police captain who, as he told me, is in charge of the case by express order of the Minister of the Interior. I had to go over, yet again, what I’d been saying since early morning. Graciela and I separated when Paulo was one; she went to live with her sister in Los Angeles. That week, Paulo had returned with his grandmother, for the first time in  five years, to spend a couple of weeks with me. I’d fitted out a child’s bedroom upstairs, bought toys, clothes, and hired a woman with experience in caring for children through an agency. I gave the number of the agency to the first policemen to arrive. I spent the whole day with Paulo, and later we fell asleep on my bed, watching a blockbuster movie. At three in the morning, I carried Paulo to his room and went back to my own. I fell asleep listening to his slow, gentle snores. It was me who closed the window in his bedroom. I woke at seven in the morning and went to look for Paulo and his child-minder. The window was open. There was a ladder I’d never seen before. I could smell ether. It seemed to me that there was blood on the window frame. Yes, the captain confirmed, when I’d already forgotten that he was there, it was blood, but not necessarily the child’s.

My mother called the house saying that Graciela was coming to Lima. She asked me to collect her from the airport. And no arguments, she added emphatically. Then, more kindly, she asked if I was sure I didn’t want her to come over to be with me. I’m sure, I said. I don’t know what else I can do now, she replied. I spent a long time looking at some fixed point in the void. Then I said that the police wanted me to keep the line free.

Back in my bedroom, looking for information about Lindbergh and the kidnapping of his son. He was called Charles Junior, and was kidnapped in March 1932, around nine at night. He was twenty months old. The kidnappers left a message stuck to the window that no one found until the next day. Despite Lindbergh paying the fifty thousand dollars ransom, the body of Junior was found ten weeks later, a few miles from his home. His face had been smashed, he had a cracked skull, and some of his extremities were never found. Two years later, a German carpenter called Bruno Richard Hauptmann was accused of the crime. Hauptmann’s handwriting and that of the ransom notes were chillingly identical. What’s more, at the height of the Depression, though unemployed, he was throwing money about, and even permitted himself the luxury of losing money on the stock market. He never confessed and was executed without his role in the affair being completely proven. It was media pressure that threw the switch of the electric chair. It’s said that Hauptmann was a scapegoat. Who was he taking the rap for? It’s also said that Junior’s death was a warning to Lindbergh, connected with his intention of running for the presidency of the United States. And they say too that, whatever the case, Hauptmann didn’t do it alone, that he was just a spare part, a gun, in a mechanism set in motion to make it clear to Lindbergh that crossing the Atlantic for the first time wasn’t something his enemies would forget easily.

Lucía called again. I told her everything I knew about Lindbergh. She listened to it all in what could be classified as stoical silence. Then she asked if there was any news about Paulo. I said no. She said that she loved me. We’d had sex a couple of times in her hotel and during a trip to promote the program, but it wasn’t love. I was sure of that. She asked if I’d heard what she said. It’s not the right moment, I replied. I think it’s the best moment, she insisted. Sorry, I’ve got to hang up. OK, she said, and then added: Can you explain what all that crazy stuff about Lindbergh has to do with anything?

I spent the rest of the afternoon printing out photographs of the Lindbergh baby. I put one of them next to a snapshot of Paulo. Lindbergh’s son was sitting on a child’s chair, holding a sand bucket. In his photo, Paulo was sitting on the shoulders of a Superman figure in a children’s toy store in the Bahamas. Graciela’s golden arm appeared at his side. I’d also printed out the front cover of Time, No. 18, Vol. XIX, with a charcoal drawing of Lindbergh’s son. I thought about enlarging it and having it framed for my study. A theatrical souvenir for my new life. Lately, my program had been going down the drain. I allowed the producer to convince me to make some demeaning alterations to the set design, and to sack my research team. I’d become a clown, a histrionic, uninhibited guy, something that didn’t surprise anyone in my family, who had always considered me to be an exhibitionist with a rather dark sense of humor. I was convinced that I could go back to being a serious, even dangerous journalist, like when I worked on a weekly magazine that only paid me every three months. And my life had gone down the drain, too. I traveled to Los Angeles at least once a month to spend the weekend with them. I’d even managed to get a clause put into the custody agreement allowing those regular visits. Graciela had come up with a kind of epic, slightly sentimental story to explain my appearances and disappearances to Paulo. Then, over the telephone, Paulo would recount the development of that fictitious story. I was surprised by Graciela’s imagination. There was something poetic but also cruel in it. Her stories changed in relation to what she was reading at any given moment. Last year, for example, she had clearly become a science fiction fan. Maybe for that reason, I always noted that Paulo seemed a bit disappointed when I turned up at his house.

In addition to Hauptmann, Isidor Fisch, Jacob Nosovitsky, Paul Wendel, Gaston Means, the Russian OGPU, the Deutsche Luft Hansa, his own mother, Anne Lindbergh Morrow, and Elizabeth Morrow, the grandmother, were also mentioned. Wahgoosh, a black fox terrier, the family pet, was there, too. And Charles Lindbergh himself. All those names, at some point, according to some theory, had been guilty of the death of the Lindbergh baby. Either the inept Hauptmann had let him fall from the ladder during the grab; or it was a government plot against a likely presidential candidate too close to European Fascism; or it was a conspiracy by a Jewish group seeking revenge because Lindbergh’s father—Junior’s grandfather—hadn’t allowed a consortium of Jewish investors to found a bank; or the child was hyperactive and had to be tied to the bed but, that night, had managed to get free and died falling from the ladder, and was then eaten by Wahgoosh; or Lindbergh himself, or any other member of the family, had killed him accidentally, or through some form of abuse, and had then covered up the fact with the story about the kidnapping so as not to damage the father’s public image and political ambitions. Each theory had its evidence and alibis. On the Internet, there were as many pages dedicated to Hauptmann as to Lindbergh, and dozens of forums asking who killed the baby and why. There were also some declassified FBI files related to Lindbergh. It occurred to me to print out a few of these pages to read in the airport while I was waiting for Graciela.

When she took off her dark glasses, I discovered that her eyelids were drooping, she was tired and scared stiff. In the car, on the way home, she berated me, naturally. She said that it was my fault for behaving like a clown on TV, for having hired some unknown woman from a crooked agency that was undoubtedly involved with the gang. I told her that the police agreed with her.  And that they also said the kidnapping had been organized from prison. And that there was an Identi-kit image of the kidnapper in every police car, and it appeared on television screens every ten minutes, next to Paulo’s face (I didn’t tell her that the Identi-kit image looked nothing like the woman I had hired). She eventually tired of berating me and asked what had happened. I told her everything, except for the blood. When we got back, my mother was standing at the door, lost among the reporters badgering me for a statement. Looking strangely joyful, she told me that the president himself had said in a TV interview that I had his support. My mother had organized a prayer group to hold a vigil at the entrance to the building, on which she had hung a yellow ribbon. Every time they kidnap someone, they put a yellow ribbon on the door, and some people wear them on their lapels. She was wearing one, as were the reporters who blocked our way.  My mother stayed outside, organizing the vigil.  When did you earn so much money? asked Graciela, looking at the décor of my apartment. I was pretty lucky, I said. She wanted to go to Paulo’s room. She turned on the television I’d placed on a chest of drawers and fell asleep on his bed, watching cartoons. The flickering light of the set fell on her face, making it somber, then cheerful, then somber once more.

I switched the computer on again. It felt very sad to read those FBI files on Lindbergh. Apparently, Edgar Hoover had been convinced that Lindbergh was a Nazi sympathizer. In a letter to President Roosevelt, he called him “The Nazi pet.” He was probably right. Lindbergh had received a medal from Hitler in 1938, just over a year before World War II. And when war broke out, he had opposed the United States attacking Germany on the grounds that the whole mess was a matter of domestic policy. But the most damning evidence was the language of the texts he published that year. He used words like “the Aryan race,” “virility,” “superiority” and “discipline” with the same conviction as Hitler. In 1939, he even published a Reader’s Digest article entitled “Aviation, Geography and Race.” I wrote down various formulas: Lindbergh + FBI, Lindbergh + Nazi, Lindbergh + war. I also wrote out the names of every one of the probable murderers. And suddenly, during one of my searches, the screen showed photographs of the body of the Lindbergh baby.

Then I understood it all. I understood that person who had crossed the Atlantic, had wanted to be president, was seduced by Nazism, and then traveled around the world on a philanthropic mission. And that other person: the hero who flew solo over the furious Atlantic, standing with half his body outside the hatch of an unstable airplane to keep on course. And most of all, I understood the other hero, Junior, trapped in some sort of journey that was longer and more definitive than his father’s, a twenty-month-old baby who had been left alone, without any means of checking his course through the clouds, a hero whose short journey ended in a landfill with a fractured skull and his extremities probably eaten by a spoiled fox terrier, or a wild dog, or a lunatic who thought that the arms of Lindbergh’s son could be worth a lot in a world of reporters and gossip magazines and madmen who search through the trash cans of their idols to extract their toilet paper. What went through Lindbergh’s mind as his airplane lost stability and threatened to descend at any moment, without the possibility of consulting anyone about what to do, having to make the decision completely alone? And what went through his son’s mind, what newly learned words, as they dragged him down the ladder, waking from a dream that shouldn’t have ended in that way, with a child completely alone in the middle of a strange sea like a rock or a landfill just a few miles from his house? And, for God’s sake, what, more importantly, could be going through Paulo’s mind, in that world of open windows, completely alone in his fragile monoplane, on a dark, solitary journey, without the possibility of either his mother or me accompanying him. Come on, baby Lindbergh, I prayed, you can do it, come home.

I went to Paulo’s room, switched off the television, and put my head out the open window. Outside, I could hear praying. In the room, Graciela’s gentle snores reminded me of my son’s. Those snores like a sleeping sea. Like a low tide. Like a wave breaking on the sand of a beach. A hidden beach onto which a monoplane descends, the ground carpeted with chocolate bars. A safe, firm beach. A beach that fits in the palm of my hand.

“Lindbergh” © Ivan Thays. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2015 by Christina MacSweeney. All rights reserved.

English Spanish (Original)

So it all boils down to this. A whole morning seeing my face and Paulo’s on the television screen. Ten reporters camped out at the entrance to the building. Three policemen on phone-tap duty, reading the soccer pages in the dining room. They might get in touch at any moment. Waiting is all that’s left for me. I’ve called Lucía to tell her that, obviously, I won’t be doing the program today. She started to cry. This can’t be happening to you, she said. Well, it is. I hung up. I can’t help but think of her as an enemy. Who isn’t your enemy when your son’s been kidnapped and you’re stuck in a room with an unmade bed, looking at photos on the news, listening to supposed friends, police officers and neighbors giving interviews? For example, how strange to see Felipe on the bulletin of the channel where I work, talking about me in the third person, saying that he hopes I don’t become a Peruvian Lindbergh.

I typed Lindbergh into the search engine and found out a few things. I learned, for example, that on January 29, 1928, he arrived in Maracay, Venezuela. In Caracas, he visited the National Pantheon, the house where the Liberator, Simón Bolívar, was born, the Elliptical Salon of the congress building, the Bolívar Museum. I learned that, along with Charles Darwin, Jules Verne, Mozart, Bécquer, Clark Gable, James Dean, and Giacomo Casanova, his star sign was Aquarius. His color is verdigris, his birthstones tourmaline and zirconium, and his lucky numbers 7, 14, and 20. I learned that while making his famous crossing of the North Atlantic, he had only chocolate bars to eat. I learned that in 1957, Billy Wilder made a movie based on his life, with James Stewart in the starring role. The music was by Franz Waxman, who also composed the score for Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard. In Spanish, the movie about Lindbergh is called El héroe solitario. I learned that if you want to reserve a room in the Holiday Inn Paris-Orly Airport, you should write to 4 Ave Charles-Lindbergh, Rungis 94656. I learned that a book by Bob Burleigh, illustrated by Mike Wimmer, based on Lindbergh’s diaries, was recommended for six-year-olds as being ideal for encouraging valor, self-respect, and sound judgment. I learned that Lindbergh had to enter the cockpit through a hatch in the top of the plane or through one of the side windows, and that the lack of forward visibility meant he had to put his head out of one of those windows every so often to correct his course. I learned that a certain Jimmie Angel, an American pilot born in Springfield, Missouri, in 1902, worked with him in his Flying Circus in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1921 in an act that consisted of parachuting from a plane and doing aerial stunts. And I also learned that when Charles Lindbergh made his single-handed crossing of the Atlantic, in a monoplane called “Spirit of St. Louis,” Calvin Coolidge—then president of the United States—celebrated the news given over the radio with: “I see nothing extraordinary about a man crossing the Atlantic. A man alone can do anything.” Not a very pleasant reaction.

I’ve had to go down to the living room to answer the questions of the police captain who, as he told me, is in charge of the case by express order of the Minister of the Interior. I had to go over, yet again, what I’d been saying since early morning. Graciela and I separated when Paulo was one; she went to live with her sister in Los Angeles. That week, Paulo had returned with his grandmother, for the first time in  five years, to spend a couple of weeks with me. I’d fitted out a child’s bedroom upstairs, bought toys, clothes, and hired a woman with experience in caring for children through an agency. I gave the number of the agency to the first policemen to arrive. I spent the whole day with Paulo, and later we fell asleep on my bed, watching a blockbuster movie. At three in the morning, I carried Paulo to his room and went back to my own. I fell asleep listening to his slow, gentle snores. It was me who closed the window in his bedroom. I woke at seven in the morning and went to look for Paulo and his child-minder. The window was open. There was a ladder I’d never seen before. I could smell ether. It seemed to me that there was blood on the window frame. Yes, the captain confirmed, when I’d already forgotten that he was there, it was blood, but not necessarily the child’s.

My mother called the house saying that Graciela was coming to Lima. She asked me to collect her from the airport. And no arguments, she added emphatically. Then, more kindly, she asked if I was sure I didn’t want her to come over to be with me. I’m sure, I said. I don’t know what else I can do now, she replied. I spent a long time looking at some fixed point in the void. Then I said that the police wanted me to keep the line free.

Back in my bedroom, looking for information about Lindbergh and the kidnapping of his son. He was called Charles Junior, and was kidnapped in March 1932, around nine at night. He was twenty months old. The kidnappers left a message stuck to the window that no one found until the next day. Despite Lindbergh paying the fifty thousand dollars ransom, the body of Junior was found ten weeks later, a few miles from his home. His face had been smashed, he had a cracked skull, and some of his extremities were never found. Two years later, a German carpenter called Bruno Richard Hauptmann was accused of the crime. Hauptmann’s handwriting and that of the ransom notes were chillingly identical. What’s more, at the height of the Depression, though unemployed, he was throwing money about, and even permitted himself the luxury of losing money on the stock market. He never confessed and was executed without his role in the affair being completely proven. It was media pressure that threw the switch of the electric chair. It’s said that Hauptmann was a scapegoat. Who was he taking the rap for? It’s also said that Junior’s death was a warning to Lindbergh, connected with his intention of running for the presidency of the United States. And they say too that, whatever the case, Hauptmann didn’t do it alone, that he was just a spare part, a gun, in a mechanism set in motion to make it clear to Lindbergh that crossing the Atlantic for the first time wasn’t something his enemies would forget easily.

Lucía called again. I told her everything I knew about Lindbergh. She listened to it all in what could be classified as stoical silence. Then she asked if there was any news about Paulo. I said no. She said that she loved me. We’d had sex a couple of times in her hotel and during a trip to promote the program, but it wasn’t love. I was sure of that. She asked if I’d heard what she said. It’s not the right moment, I replied. I think it’s the best moment, she insisted. Sorry, I’ve got to hang up. OK, she said, and then added: Can you explain what all that crazy stuff about Lindbergh has to do with anything?

I spent the rest of the afternoon printing out photographs of the Lindbergh baby. I put one of them next to a snapshot of Paulo. Lindbergh’s son was sitting on a child’s chair, holding a sand bucket. In his photo, Paulo was sitting on the shoulders of a Superman figure in a children’s toy store in the Bahamas. Graciela’s golden arm appeared at his side. I’d also printed out the front cover of Time, No. 18, Vol. XIX, with a charcoal drawing of Lindbergh’s son. I thought about enlarging it and having it framed for my study. A theatrical souvenir for my new life. Lately, my program had been going down the drain. I allowed the producer to convince me to make some demeaning alterations to the set design, and to sack my research team. I’d become a clown, a histrionic, uninhibited guy, something that didn’t surprise anyone in my family, who had always considered me to be an exhibitionist with a rather dark sense of humor. I was convinced that I could go back to being a serious, even dangerous journalist, like when I worked on a weekly magazine that only paid me every three months. And my life had gone down the drain, too. I traveled to Los Angeles at least once a month to spend the weekend with them. I’d even managed to get a clause put into the custody agreement allowing those regular visits. Graciela had come up with a kind of epic, slightly sentimental story to explain my appearances and disappearances to Paulo. Then, over the telephone, Paulo would recount the development of that fictitious story. I was surprised by Graciela’s imagination. There was something poetic but also cruel in it. Her stories changed in relation to what she was reading at any given moment. Last year, for example, she had clearly become a science fiction fan. Maybe for that reason, I always noted that Paulo seemed a bit disappointed when I turned up at his house.

In addition to Hauptmann, Isidor Fisch, Jacob Nosovitsky, Paul Wendel, Gaston Means, the Russian OGPU, the Deutsche Luft Hansa, his own mother, Anne Lindbergh Morrow, and Elizabeth Morrow, the grandmother, were also mentioned. Wahgoosh, a black fox terrier, the family pet, was there, too. And Charles Lindbergh himself. All those names, at some point, according to some theory, had been guilty of the death of the Lindbergh baby. Either the inept Hauptmann had let him fall from the ladder during the grab; or it was a government plot against a likely presidential candidate too close to European Fascism; or it was a conspiracy by a Jewish group seeking revenge because Lindbergh’s father—Junior’s grandfather—hadn’t allowed a consortium of Jewish investors to found a bank; or the child was hyperactive and had to be tied to the bed but, that night, had managed to get free and died falling from the ladder, and was then eaten by Wahgoosh; or Lindbergh himself, or any other member of the family, had killed him accidentally, or through some form of abuse, and had then covered up the fact with the story about the kidnapping so as not to damage the father’s public image and political ambitions. Each theory had its evidence and alibis. On the Internet, there were as many pages dedicated to Hauptmann as to Lindbergh, and dozens of forums asking who killed the baby and why. There were also some declassified FBI files related to Lindbergh. It occurred to me to print out a few of these pages to read in the airport while I was waiting for Graciela.

When she took off her dark glasses, I discovered that her eyelids were drooping, she was tired and scared stiff. In the car, on the way home, she berated me, naturally. She said that it was my fault for behaving like a clown on TV, for having hired some unknown woman from a crooked agency that was undoubtedly involved with the gang. I told her that the police agreed with her.  And that they also said the kidnapping had been organized from prison. And that there was an Identi-kit image of the kidnapper in every police car, and it appeared on television screens every ten minutes, next to Paulo’s face (I didn’t tell her that the Identi-kit image looked nothing like the woman I had hired). She eventually tired of berating me and asked what had happened. I told her everything, except for the blood. When we got back, my mother was standing at the door, lost among the reporters badgering me for a statement. Looking strangely joyful, she told me that the president himself had said in a TV interview that I had his support. My mother had organized a prayer group to hold a vigil at the entrance to the building, on which she had hung a yellow ribbon. Every time they kidnap someone, they put a yellow ribbon on the door, and some people wear them on their lapels. She was wearing one, as were the reporters who blocked our way.  My mother stayed outside, organizing the vigil.  When did you earn so much money? asked Graciela, looking at the décor of my apartment. I was pretty lucky, I said. She wanted to go to Paulo’s room. She turned on the television I’d placed on a chest of drawers and fell asleep on his bed, watching cartoons. The flickering light of the set fell on her face, making it somber, then cheerful, then somber once more.

I switched the computer on again. It felt very sad to read those FBI files on Lindbergh. Apparently, Edgar Hoover had been convinced that Lindbergh was a Nazi sympathizer. In a letter to President Roosevelt, he called him “The Nazi pet.” He was probably right. Lindbergh had received a medal from Hitler in 1938, just over a year before World War II. And when war broke out, he had opposed the United States attacking Germany on the grounds that the whole mess was a matter of domestic policy. But the most damning evidence was the language of the texts he published that year. He used words like “the Aryan race,” “virility,” “superiority” and “discipline” with the same conviction as Hitler. In 1939, he even published a Reader’s Digest article entitled “Aviation, Geography and Race.” I wrote down various formulas: Lindbergh + FBI, Lindbergh + Nazi, Lindbergh + war. I also wrote out the names of every one of the probable murderers. And suddenly, during one of my searches, the screen showed photographs of the body of the Lindbergh baby.

Then I understood it all. I understood that person who had crossed the Atlantic, had wanted to be president, was seduced by Nazism, and then traveled around the world on a philanthropic mission. And that other person: the hero who flew solo over the furious Atlantic, standing with half his body outside the hatch of an unstable airplane to keep on course. And most of all, I understood the other hero, Junior, trapped in some sort of journey that was longer and more definitive than his father’s, a twenty-month-old baby who had been left alone, without any means of checking his course through the clouds, a hero whose short journey ended in a landfill with a fractured skull and his extremities probably eaten by a spoiled fox terrier, or a wild dog, or a lunatic who thought that the arms of Lindbergh’s son could be worth a lot in a world of reporters and gossip magazines and madmen who search through the trash cans of their idols to extract their toilet paper. What went through Lindbergh’s mind as his airplane lost stability and threatened to descend at any moment, without the possibility of consulting anyone about what to do, having to make the decision completely alone? And what went through his son’s mind, what newly learned words, as they dragged him down the ladder, waking from a dream that shouldn’t have ended in that way, with a child completely alone in the middle of a strange sea like a rock or a landfill just a few miles from his house? And, for God’s sake, what, more importantly, could be going through Paulo’s mind, in that world of open windows, completely alone in his fragile monoplane, on a dark, solitary journey, without the possibility of either his mother or me accompanying him. Come on, baby Lindbergh, I prayed, you can do it, come home.

I went to Paulo’s room, switched off the television, and put my head out the open window. Outside, I could hear praying. In the room, Graciela’s gentle snores reminded me of my son’s. Those snores like a sleeping sea. Like a low tide. Like a wave breaking on the sand of a beach. A hidden beach onto which a monoplane descends, the ground carpeted with chocolate bars. A safe, firm beach. A beach that fits in the palm of my hand.

“Lindbergh” © Ivan Thays. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2015 by Christina MacSweeney. All rights reserved.

Lindbergh

Así que todo se resume a esto. Una mañana entera viendo el rostro de Paulo y el mío en la televisión. Diez periodistas haciendo guardia en la entrada de mi edificio. Tres policías interviniendo el teléfono mientras leen un periódico de fútbol en el comedor. En cualquier momento se comunicarán. Esperar es todo lo que me queda. He llamado a Lucía para decirle que, por supuesto, hoy no haré el programa. Ella se ha puesto a llorar en el teléfono. Es imposible que esto te esté pasando a ti, dijo. Pues me está pasando. Colgué. No puedo evitar pensar en ella como una enemiga. ¿Quién no se convierte en tu enemigo cuando han secuestrado a tu hijo y tienes que estar encerrado en un cuarto con la cama sin tender, viendo fotos en los noticieros, oyendo declaraciones de supuestos amigos, de policías, de vecinos? Por ejemplo, qué extraño ver a Felipe en el noticiero del canal donde trabajo hablando de mí en tercera persona, diciendo que espera que no me convierta en el Lindbergh peruano.

Escribí Lindbergh en el buscador. Me enteré de algunas cosas. Supe, por ejemplo, que el 29 de enero de 1928 llegó a Maracay, Venezuela. Visitó el Panteón Nacional, la Casa Natal del Libertador, el Salón Elíptico del Congreso, el Museo Bolivariano. Supe que pertenecía al signo de Acuario, como Charles Darwin, Julio Verne, Mozart, Bécquer, Clark Gable, James Dean y Giacomo Casanova. Su color es el verde gris, su piedra la turmalina y el circonio y sus números de suerte 7, 14, y 20. Supe que realizó su famoso cruce del Atlántico Norte alimentándose solamente con barras de chocolate. Supe que Billy Wilder hizo en 1957 una película basada en su autobiografía, con James Stewart como Lindbergh. La música fue de Franz Waxman, que también compuso para Wilder en Sunset Boulevard. La película sobre Lindbergh se tituló “El héroe solitario”. Supe que si uno quiere reservar habitación en el  Holiday Inn Paris-Orly Airport debe dirigirse al 4 ave Charles-Lindbergh Rungis 94656. Supe que un libro de Bob Burleigh lustrado por Mike Wimmer sobre el diario de Lindbergh estaba recomendado para niños de seis años como ideal para fomentar el valor, el amor propio y el buen juicio. Supe que Lindbergh debía entrar a la cabina de su avión por una trampa en la parte superior del avión o alguna de las ventanillas laterales, ya que no tenía visibilidad hacia delante y requería asomarse cada cierto tiempo hacia fuera para corregir su rumbo. Supe que un tal Jimmy Angel, piloto norteamericano nacido en Springfield, Missouri, en 1988, trabajó con él en un circo aéreo de Lincoln, Nebraska, en 1921 en un acto que consistía en arrojarse del paracaídas y hacer piruetas. Y supe también que cuando Charles Lindbergh cruzó el Atlántico sin copiloto, en un avión monoplaza llamado Spirit of St. Louis Calvin Coolidge -entonces presidente de los Estados Unidos- celebró antipáticamente la noticia que daban las radios declarando: “No veo nada extraordinario en que un hombre cruce el Atlántico. Un hombre solo puede hacer cualquier cosa”.

He tenido que bajar a la sala para contestar las preguntas de un coronel de policía que, me dijo, está a cargo del caso por orden directa del ministro del interior. Tuve que volver a contar lo que he estado contando toda la madrugada. Graciela y yo nos separamos cuando Paulo tenía un año; ella se fue a vivir a Los Angeles con su hermana. Esa semana Paulo regresó con su abuela, por primera vez en cinco años, para pasar quince días conmigo. Acondicioné un cuarto de niño en el segundo piso, compré juguetes, ropa, y contraté a través de una agencia a una empleada que tenía experiencia como nana. El número de la agencia se lo entregué a los policías que llegaron primero. Pasé todo el día con Paulo y luego nos quedamos dormidos en mi cama viendo un blockbuster. A las tres de la madrugada pasé a Paulo a su habitación y yo me quedé en la mía. Me dormí oyendo sus ronquidos tan ligeros, tan pausados. Yo mismo cerré la ventana de su cuarto. A las siete de la mañana desperté. Busqué a Paulo y a la nana. La ventana estaba abierta. Había una escalera que nunca había visto antes. Olía a éter. Me pareció que en el marco de la ventana había sangre. Sí, confirmó el coronel cuando ya me había olvidado de su voz, era sangre, pero no tiene por qué ser la del niño.

Mi madre llamó a casa diciendo que esa noche Graciela llegaba a Lima. Me pidió que fuese a recogerla al aeropuerto. Sin pelear, enfatizó. Luego, menos dura, me preguntó si estaba seguro de que no quería que fuese a casa para acompañarme. Estoy seguro, dije. Ya no sé qué más hacer, contestó ella. Me quedé un largo rato mirando un punto en medio de nada. Luego dije que la policía quería que deje la línea del teléfono libre.

Otra vez en mi cuarto, buscando datos sobre Lindbergh y el secuestro de su hijo. Se llamaba Charles Junior, fue secuestrado en marzo de 1932, alrededor de las 9 de la noche. Tenía veinte meses de edad. Los secuestradores dejaron un mensaje pegado en la ventana que nadie descubrió hasta el día siguiente. Pese a que Lindbergh  pagó cincuenta mil dólares de rescate, el cadáver de Junior fue encontrado diez semanas después a pocos kilómetros de su casa. Su cabeza estaba destrozada, tenía un agujero en el cráneo y algunos de sus extremidades no fueron encontradas. Dos años después acusaron del crimen a un carpintero alemán llamado Bruno Richard Hauptmann. La letra de Hauptmann y la de las cartas de los secuestradores eran escalofriantemente idénticas. Además, gastaba mucho dinero en plena depresión y estando desempleado. Incluso se dio el lujo de perder dinero en la bolsa. Jamás confesó. Lo ejecutaron sin que llegara a comprobarse por completo su responsabilidad. La presión de la prensa habría sido la que bajó el switch de la silla eléctrica. Dicen que Hauptmann fue un chivo expiatorio. ¿Qué culpa expió? También dicen que la muerte de Junior fue una advertencia contra las intenciones de Lindbergh de postular a la presidencia de EEUU. También dicen que, en cualquier caso, Hauptmann no lo hizo solo, que era solo una pieza de recambio, un fusible, en una maquinaria echada a andar para advertir a Lindbergh que cruzar el Atlántico por primera vez era algo que difícilmente podía ser olvidado por sus enemigos.

Lucía volvió a llamar. Le conté todo lo que sabía de Lindbergh. Ella escuchó todo en un silencio que podría calificarse de estoico. Luego me preguntó si había alguna novedad sobre Paulo. Le dije que no. Me dijo que me amaba. Habíamos hecho el amor un par de veces en su hotel y en un viaje de promoción del programa, pero eso no era amor. De eso estaba seguro. Me preguntó si la había oído. No es el momento, le contesté. Yo creo que es el mejor momento, insistió. Tengo que colgarte, lo lamento. Está bien, me dijo y luego agregó: ¿puedes explicarme qué chifladura es todo eso de Lindbergh?

Me pasé el resto de la tarde imprimiendo fotografías del bebé Lindbergh.  Coloqué una de esas fotos al lado de una de Paulo. El hijo de Lindbergh aparecía sentado en una silla de niño, cogiendo un cubo de playa. Paulo aparecía en la suya sentado sobre la espalda de un superman de plástico en un lugar de juegos infantiles en las Bahamas. A su lado aparecía el brazo dorado de Graciela. También había impreso una carátula de Time, Número 18, Volumen XIX, en la que aparecía un dibujo a carboncillo del hijo de Lindbergh. Pensaba reproducirlo en mayor escala y mandarlo a enmarcar para mi estudio. Un souvenir dramático para mi nueva vida. Últimamente mi programa se había ido a la mierda. Había dejado que el productor me convenza de hacer algunas modificaciones insultantes en el decorado del set y que despida a todo el equipo de investigación. Me había convertido en un payaso, un sujeto histriónico y desinhibido, lo que no sorprendía a nadie de mi familia que siempre me consideró un exhibicionista con un sentido del humor más bien oscuro. Estaba convencido de que podía volver a ser un periodista serio, incluso peligroso, como cuando trabajaba en un semanario donde me pagaban cada tres meses. También mi vida se había ido a la mierda. Solía viajar hasta Los Angeles por lo menos una vez al mes para pasar un fin de semana con ellos. Logré incluso colocar una cláusula en el contrato que me permitía esa rutina. Graciela le había contado una historia algo épica, un poco sentimental, para explicarle a Paulo porque yo aparecía y desaparecía. Luego, por teléfono, Paulo me iba contando cómo iba creciendo esa historia ficticia. Me sorprendía la imaginación de Graciela. Tenía algo poético, pero también algo cruel. Sus cuentos cambiaba según lo que leyese en aquel momento. El último año, por ejemplo, era obvio que se había aficionado a la ciencia ficción. Quizá por eso siempre notaba a Paulo un poco decepcionado cuando me veía llegar a su casa.

Además de Hauptmann estaban los nombres de Isidor Fisch, Jacob Nosovitsky, Paul Wendel, Gaston Means, the Russian OGPU, the German Luft Hansa, su propia madre Anne Lindbergh Morrow o Elisabeth Morrow, la abuela. También Wahgoosh, un fox terrier negro, mascota de la familia. Y el mismo Charles Lindbergh. Todos esos nombres, en algún momento, para alguna teoría, habían aparecido como culpables de la muerte del bebé Lindbergh. O el torpe de Hauptmann lo dejó caer de la escalera mientras se lo llevaba; o fue un complot del gobierno contra un probable candidato presidencial demasiado cercano a las nacientes políticas fascistas de Europa; o fue una conspiración de un grupo de judíos vengándose porque el padre de Lindbergh -el abuelo de Junior- no permitió que un grupo de inversionistas judíos fundaran un banco; o el niño era hiperactivo y tenía que ser atado a la cama, pero esa noche logró desatarse y murió al caer por las escaleras y fue devorado por Wahgoosh; o el mismo Lindbergh o cualquier otro miembro de la familia lo habría matado por un descuido, o un maltrato, y luego ocultó el hecho con la estafa del secuestro para que no dañara su imagen pública y sus posibilidades políticas. Cada teoría tenía sus pruebas y sus coartadas. En internet habían tantas páginas dedicadas a Hauptmann como a Lindbergh, y decenas de foros preguntándose quién mató al bebé y por qué. También habían unos files desclasificados del FBI dedicados a Lindbergh. Se me ocurrió imprimir algunas de esas páginas para ir a buscar a Graciela y leerla mientras esperaba en el aeropuerto.

Cuando se quitó los lentes oscuros descubrí que tenía los párpados pesados, que estaba cansada y se moría de miedo. En el auto hacia la casa me insultó, desde luego. Dijo que era mi culpa por hacerme el payaso en la TV, por haber contratado a una mujer extraña en una agencia de estafadores que seguro eran también parte de la banda. Le dije que la policía pensaba lo mismo que ella. Y también que decían que el secuestro lo habían dirigido desde la cárcel. Y que había un identikit de la secuestradora en cada carro policía y además lo pasaban cada diez minutos en la televisión, junto a la cara de Paulo (no le dije que aquel identikit no se parecía en nada a la chica). Al fin se cansó de insultarme y me pidió que le cuente cómo fue. Le conté todo, menos lo de la sangre. Cuando llegamos a la casa mi madre estaba en la puerta, confundida entre los periodistas que no dejaban de pedirme declaraciones. Con extraña felicidad mi madre me advirtió que el mismo presidente había dicho en una entrevista en TV que me daba su apoyo. Mi madre había organizado a un grupo de oración para una vigilia en la puerta del edificio, en la que habían colocado un lazo amarillo. Cada vez que secuestraban a alguien ponían un lazo amarillo en las puertas y algunos lo llevaban en la solapa. Ella llevaba uno y los periodistas que nos impedían avanzar también los llevaban. Mi madre se quedó organizando la vigilia. ¿En qué momento ganaste tanto dinero?, preguntó Graciela mirando la decoración de mi departamento. Tuve bastante suerte, le dije. Quiso ir al cuarto de Paulo. Encendió el televisor que había colocado en una cómoda y se quedó dormida en su cama viendo unos dibujos animados. La luz parpadeante del televisor caía sobre su rostro y lo volvía sombrío y luego alegre, y viceversa.

Volví a encender la computadora. Me resultó tristísimo leer esos files del FBI sobre Lindbergh. Por lo visto, Edgar Hoover estaba convencido de que Lindbergh era un conspirador nazi. En una carta al presidente Roosvelt lo llamó The nazi pet. No parecía un error. Lindbergh había recibido una medalla de manos de Hitler en 1938, apenas unos años antes de la guerra mundial. Y cuando la guerra estalló, Lindbergh se opuso a que Estados Unidos ataque a Alemania con la excusa de que esos líos eran de política interna. Pero lo más contundente era el lenguaje de los escritos que publicó ese año. Usaba palabras como raza aria, virilidad, superioridad, disciplina, con la misma convicción con que Hitler las utilizaba. Incluso publicó en un Reader Digest de 1939 un artículo titulado “Aviación, geografía y raza”. Escribí varias fórmulas: lindbergh+FBI, lindbergh+nazi, lindbergh+war. También escribí el nombre de cada uno de los probables asesinos. Y de pronto, en algunas de las búsquedas, la pantalla me reveló las fotografías del cadáver del bebé Lindbergh.

Entonces entendí todo. Entendí quién era el sujeto que cruzó el Atlántico, quiso ser presidente, se dejó seducir por el nazismo, y luego viajó por todo el mundo en misión filantrópica. Y quién era aquel otro: el héroe que voló solo sobre un Atlántico enfurecido, sacando la mitad de su cuerpo por la parte superior de un avión inestable para no corregir su ruta. Y sobre quién era el otro héroe, Junior, atrapado en medio de quién sabe qué viaje más largo y definitivo que el de su padre, un bebé de veinte meses al que habían dejado solo y sin posibilidad de verificar el rumbo en medio de las nubes, un héroe cuyo corto viaje terminó en un basural con el cráneo roto y las extremidades probablemente devoradas por un fox terrier engreído o un perro salvaje o un demente que pensó que los brazos del hijo de Lindbergh podían costar mucho en un mundo de periodistas y revistas de chismes y lunáticos que revisan la basura de sus ídolos para guardarse el papel higiénico. ¿Qué pensaba Lindbergh mientras su aeroplano perdía equilibrio y amenazaba con caer en cualquier momento sin posibilidad de consultar a nadie qué había que hacer, teniendo que decidir todo completamente solo? ¿Y qué pensaba su hijo, qué palabras recién aprendidas dijo, mientras lo arrastraban por una escalera, despierto de un sueño que no debió terminar así, con un niño absolutamente solo en medio de un mar extraño como una roca o un basural tan solo a unos cuantos kilómetros de su casa? Y, dios mío, sobre todo qué podía pensar Paulo, en aquel mundo de ventanas abiertas, completamente solo en su frágil monoplano, en mitad de un viaje oscuro y solitario al que ni su madre ni yo lo hemos podido acompañar. Vamos, bebé Lindbergh, recé, tú puedes hacerlo, vuelve a casa.

Fui hasta el cuarto de Paulo, apagué el televisor y saqué la cabeza por la ventana abierta. Afuera se oían los rezos. En el cuarto, los leves ronquidos de Graciela que me recordaban a los de su hijo. Aquellos ronquidos como un mar adormecido. Como una marea baja. Como una ola golpeando la arena de una playa. Una playa oculta donde desciende un monoplano con el piso alfombrado de envolturas de barras de chocolate. Una playa segura, firme. Una playa que cabe en la palma de mi mano.

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