Widows

by Ariel Dorfman

  The priest will watch his words carefully. It will be apparent that he has them under control, each one vaccinated as it appears. “It seems to me unjust to put things quite that way.”

  “Then how would you put them?”

  “I consider it unfortunate that a woman of that age and responsibility should see herself forced to carry out such an action.”

  “Forced? Are you justifying her attitude?”

  “It’s not my place to judge humankind, sir. That’s not our privilege. I simply observe that she, like many other women in this area, is suffering an inhuman situation, and that’s where one must seek out the source of such desperate acts, acts that have no chance of succeeding.”

  At this point the captain will show himself to be truly perplexed. “You really believe they’re senseless, purely desperate acts?” he asks. “How interesting. You really believe that?”

  “I didn’t say senseless, Captain. That’s your word. The real situation couldn’t be more extreme, and that’s what I’m referring to. Sofia Angelos wants a funeral for someone she considers her next of kin. The army won’t allow it.”

  “Considers her next of kin? And you, what do you think? Could it really be her husband?”

  The priest’s lips will tremble. For a magnificent instant the captain will feel he has him cornered. He’ll note the uneasiness, the doubt. He’ll see it in the way the priest wants to get up but finally stays seated facing him.

  The priest sighs. “To tell the truth, Captain, no, I consider it very unlikely.” And since the captain won’t let a triumphant smile slip onto his face, since he remains calm and unruffled even if he is hearing from the women’s defender the same arguments that he himself or the sergeant or the lieutenant have exchanged all afternoon, since the captain keeps quiet, the priest will feel encouraged to continue. “It’s more than a matter of the basic data not seeming to correspond: age, build, as far as I can recall, and the rest. It’s that it would certainly be strange for a body that’s been in the water two or three days or perhaps a week to wash up in precisely the same town where it was born, where it had lived, and beyond that be recovered by kinfolk. As this has happened twice now, no, in reality it’s very hard to believe. God has accustomed us to miracles, and He could be working in mysterious ways. But I’ve given you my opinion, Captain, confidentially of course.”

  “And I’m grateful for it, Father Gabriel.” The captain will pull his chair up until his uniform bumps the table. He’ll see how the candles cast flickering shadows against the wall, and in the silence he’ll also feel the breath of the orderly at his back, the silky, panting, anxious attention of the orderly taking everything in, more like a hunchback, more like an idiot, a piece of furniture, a filthy-minded sentry, the shadows raking strange figures across the wall. “So you wouldn’t perform funeral services under that name? Answer me that, man to man.”

  The priest will focus on his fine soft hands playing with the candelabrum before answering.

  “It’s a puzzling situation, yes, puzzling, because in my heart of hearts I still have doubts about the true identity of the deceased. But since you ask, since you put it that way, man to man, all right, I’ll answer yes, that if she came to ask my help, I’d perform the funeral rites.”

  For just an instant, without knowing why or where the sensation comes from, the captain will feel his head swimming with the idea that it’s not the orderly behind him but the lieutenant. He’ll hold back the absurd impulse to turn around and see who’s actually there, watching him, registering every word he says, and furiously, so both men can hear him, he’ll spit out, “Even though you feel you’re dealing with a fraud, a trick, a mockery of God!”

  “Strong words, Captain,” the priest will say smoothly. “Words you haven’t carefully considered. For reasons of your own which I have no right to examine. I’m not going to ask you to retract them, Captain. Instead, I’ll ask you a question. Let’s ask ourselves who killed that man, how he died, how he ended up in the river.”

  “Dead from accidental causes,” the captain will say, an uneasy note in his voice, as he studies the feminine, rosy, almost pleasant cheeks of the priest, and that benign hand again carefully straightening the candelabrum. “That’s what the doctor determined, that’s what the judge in the district capital will confirm tomorrow or the next day.”

  “I’ve just shown a certain trust in you as a person, Captain, admitting doubts as to the identity of the dead man which I would never confess in public. Let’s see if you’ll show the same trust in me.”

  “All right, let’s see.”

  “Do you have the slightest, the faintest shadow of a doubt that that man was brutally mistreated before he died, the same as the first corpse that came floating down the river about two weeks ago? Might there not be a systematic campaign to intimidate the population, to make them understand that many of their men are hostages and that the best thing they can do is to cooperate with the authorities? Or do you have some other explanation for these events?”

  The captain will respond with excessive speed, rising from his seat, biting off each hot word. “And do you believe”—the captain will hear his voice saying with a passion hardly called for by the question—“it’s to our advantage that nameless, faceless corpses should wash up from the river every two weeks? Do you think that the government, which is doing everything it can to limit the presence of foreign troops now occupying part of our territory, would be acting in such a way? Do you think we don’t have other methods of disposing of bodies than dumping them stupidly in rivers so that later they’ll explode in our face like a ton of dynamite? Do you think I approve of this kind of situation just when I have instructions to proceed benevolently, to open a new and peaceful phase in our relations with the rebels? You want to know something? I’m tired of this war too. We want it to end. For everyone’s sake.”

  “I believe you, Captain, but it’s really very simple to end all this. And you know it. Release the political prisoners. The known ones and also the secret ones, the ones you have hidden out there. The day that Mrs. Angelos’s father comes back, and her husband, and her sons, and those of all these other poor women, that day you can bury whatever body turns up in the river however you please. And I wager you, that day no more corpses will appear.”

  This time the captain won’t reply right away. Because he’s been thinking the same sort of thing himself, that very afternoon when the lieutenant denounced the conspiracy, that very moment when a second body lay on the beach, that first time he’d seen the old woman outside his door, motionless, waiting for him, and something like that also when he’d received his new instructions, the plan of national reconciliation, the amnesty, the ferocious reports of Captain Gheorghakis. But on this he won’t take the priest into his confidence, just as he didn’t let the lieutenant in on his thoughts. On the contrary, he’d simply nodded affirmatively.…

  “I believe it’s a conspiracy too, Lieutenant. But what they want us to do, precisely, is to act too hastily. What could be better for them than if we attacked a family of women and children in order to take possession of a corpse? What better present for our enemies? Yesterday I would have given a peremptory order to clear the site and bury the body without thinking twice.”

  “I don’t doubt it, Captain.”

  “Tomorrow perhaps I’ll have the pleasure of giving that order again.”

  “It’s very likely, Captain.”

  “But today? Today we have to proceed calmly and shrewdly, disarming our adversaries, foiling their plans. And above all, avoiding an intervention by German troops, don’t you think so? Because the day we set about repressing women and children, that’s a sign we no longer control the territory under our command, correct?”

  The lieutenant set his glass down on the desk. “I couldn’t agree with you more, Captain. I confess my only fear is that the situation may really become unstable again, and then we’ll have to act with greater force for not having intervened when we could have nipp
ed the trouble in the bud.”

  “We’ll nip it in the bud, Lieutenant, we’ll give it a good nip.”

  “As long as another body doesn’t appear, Captain.”

  “Another body?” The captain took out his cigarette case, offered the lieutenant a cigarette, remembered he didn’t smoke, and lit one for himself. “Tell me, Lieutenant. Who do you think—exactly who—is throwing these little bodies in the river?”

  “As we’ve been given no official interpretation, Captain, I prefer to offer no opinion. The only thing I’m sure of, sir, is that there’s a conspiracy going on. They lost the shooting war. Now they’re trying to win some other way, taking advantage of our outstretched hand.”

  “In war, Lieutenant, sometimes one crushes the enemy and sometimes one gives him the chance to surrender. That’s the way war is.”

  Just then the captain had noticed the orderly observing from the doorway, absorbing every word into some slippery cranny of his memory, and he’ll remember him again that night, standing invisible behind his back, listening in on the conversation with the priest like some goddamned sponge, because the captain will also speak of war then, he’ll have to respond by speaking of war.…

  “Father Gabriel,” the captain will say, “this is a war. There are dead on both sides. I also lost a brother, a cousin. There are winners and losers. That’s how wars are. Now we’re putting an end to this one. Because we have the strength to impose peace. It would be better if you, instead of preaching retribution, would ask the faithful to forgive and forget.”

  “War, Captain …”

  And again the captain will feel a surge of hatred for the priest’s deep, cowlike eyes, the tenderness gathered in that sensual mouth, the motions of a hand accustomed to turning pages and to solitary nights, the almost feminine, almost exquisite eyelashes.

  “The laws of war. Then return the dead to their families. If her husband Michael died out there, doesn’t it seem more Christian to inform her of that, so that she might accept it and face it like a real widow and not a … half widow? More Christian and more political as well.”

  “Better leave politics to us military men, and you tend to matters of the soul.”

  “That’s what I’m tending to, Captain, precisely that.”

  Then the captain will rise from his seat, and this time the contained violence of his impulse will knock the chair backwards, the orderly catching it before it hits the floor.

  “All right,” the captain will say, “it’s clear I have no alternative but to act without your cooperation,” without yet having told the priest what he’s come for, what sort of help he was going to request.

  “I never declined to cooperate. You asked my opinion, I’m giving it to you. If I can intervene to bring spirits into agreement, to arrange a dialogue between the parties so as to avoid any incidents we would all regret later …”

  “But you wouldn’t be willing to go to the river and convince this Angelos woman to give up her rebellious attitude? To explain to her that there’s no chance whatever of our yielding on this point, and that what I can offer, on my word of honor, is to have for her within a reasonable time—say four to six months—more precise information concerning the disappearance of her husband?”

  “You’re offering her information about a man she believes is right there beside her, dead. I doubt if she’ll accept. I can try, of course.”

  “And in addition,” the captain will say, sensing that now is the time to show his cards, that everything’s falling into place according to plan, “we would release the boy, Alexis.”

  “Alexis? You’re holding Alexis prisoner?”

  … Yes, they were holding him prisoner. Because that’s the way war is, the captain had explained to the lieutenant. You strike and you negotiate. The captain’s orders had been peremptory.

  “Sergeant, you’re going to double the guard down there. I don’t want too large a force, it shouldn’t be a case where they say we’ve surrounded a seemingly innocent group, but the presence of the army—discreet yet definite—should be felt. Stop every woman who comes or goes from the scene, take their names, question them on every kind of thing: reasons for having visited those people, identity and occupations of the men in the family, suggestions that their washing can be done upriver, etc. Understood?”

  “Yes, Captain. Anything else, Captain?”

  The captain had felt the colorless piercing eyes of the lieutenant boring into him but neither returned the look nor allowed the slightest wavering in his voice.

  “And bring me that kid. I want to talk to him alone. Let’s see if we understand each other man to man.…”

  His reply to the priest will be equally certain, polished, conclusive. “It’s my opinion, Father Gabriel, that we’re faced with a conspiracy of as yet unknown dimensions. We didn’t throw those bodies into this or any other river. Someone is trying to create a situation where we see ourselves forced to crack down. Someone wants to obstruct, sabotage, or twist the efforts the Supreme Government has begun to make toward reconciliation. They want to take advantage of the painful situation of a few families in order to provoke another escalation of violence. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you it was due to that violence that foreign troops massively entered the country in the first place. A renewal of it could increase their number instead of leading to their eventual withdrawal. I want you to know, Father, that this case can’t be isolated from other incidents that are shaking the country.”

  “And what does the boy have to do with all this?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to determine, Father, what the boy has to do with all this, the national and international ramifications of this movement. He’s the only man in that family. You know it’s useless trying to talk to the females. These or any others. But especially these. You know them better than I do.”

  “It doesn’t make sense to do anything to Alexis. That boy wouldn’t hurt a lizard.”

  “So far I’ve been patient in my actions, very patient. If I wait another day, people are going to think, and word’s going to get around, that we’ve lost our grip on things, that it’s time to put on pants and act like men. And believe me, Father Gabriel, I’m the one who’s wearing the pants around here.”

  The captain will note the priest’s round shoulders, his weariness, his cheeks drained of their innocence, his beautiful old defeated eyes, his mouth a little weaker all the time.

  “So what is it exactly that you want me to do, Captain?”

  Because the moment will have come for the captain to explain what he expects of him, what he has in mind.…

  The priest doesn’t know, has no way of knowing, that the captain has spoken with the orderly. On the way to the church, in the dusk that scarcely relieved the heat, in the same dense dust that was always swirling slowly in the air, they had scarcely left headquarters, scarcely found themselves alone, there, then, at that moment.

  The orderly’s voice was hoarse.

  “If you’ll permit me, Captain.”

  “I’m listening.” The captain took off, walking up the street.

  “With your permission, Captain, something you said gave me an idea. Maybe it could help clear up … the situation.”

  The captain stopped. “Fine,” he said, trying to regain a little good humor after the conversation with the lieutenant. “We’re about to speak with a man of God, so I’m going to answer you as he would. Any idea that may contribute to the cause of peace should be carefully considered. So go ahead.”

  “I was thinking about that old woman’s father, Karoulos Mylonas, Captain.”

  “Her father?”

  “Excuse me, Captain, I mean the man she said was her father, the first dead man.”

  “Ah, that one.”

  “Yes, sir. I was thinking that if you consented, it’s a sort of strange idea, sir, if you consented to that woman’s first request, as far as returning the body and allowing a funeral, private, of course, and not too big, if you let her go ahead with t
hat, on condition that she immediately leave the scene in question, well, I thought that perhaps that might be a way out of the … the tangle, Captain.”

  “Trading her the so-called father for the so-called husband,” the captain muttered. “It’s crazy. They never prepared us for this sort of thing at the academy. A small funeral, strictly private, this very night, without informing anyone beyond the immediate family.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Could be. Could be. Let’s ask our friend Father Gabriel how this possibility looks to him. Let’s pop it at the end of the conversation after we’ve softened him up a bit, see if he’ll cooperate with us then.”

  “Whatever you say, sir.”

  They went on in silence to the priest’s house. The captain knocked. But before anyone answered, he turned toward the orderly and threw out one last doubt.

  “Just a minute. And this new body. What do we do with it? Because as soon as they get the first one buried they’ll want to get their hands on the second.”

  “Not necessarily, sir,” the orderly had answered hurriedly. “That can also be taken care of.”

  Just then the door swung open. It was the priest himself.

  “Good evening, Captain,” he said. His voice was somber and serious, unsurprised. “Come in, please.”

  They went in.

  chapter two

  iv

  Something was going to happen. All the women knew that much, since the day of the funeral we had known it, since the day Fidelia had seen her brother’s face between the two soldiers and Mama had squeezed her hand. Mama squeezed my hand even harder when they brought Alexis back, but she didn’t ask my brother a thing, didn’t want to ask him. Since that moment, since then all of us had known. Just leave a pot boiling till it boils over and then pour more water in and try to force the lid down and anybody knows what can, what has to happen.

  There were Mama’s shoulders, a heap of stones piling up on Mama’s back; we women watched Alexandra’s shoulders like people coming out of a house to check a cloudy sky with the wind building and trying to figure out when the storm will break. We saw her surround herself like a castle with such huge walls that it ends up being nothing but walls. We saw her deliberately, proudly letting the seconds go by before answering one of Grandma’s simplest questions. I knew Mama: when she shut her lips together like that, when they went white with the pressure, you had to be careful, because deep inside her the heart was on the point of lashing out like a trapped cat. Mama had always been that way, even when Papa was here, her rage would build for days until it was ready to … But Papa knew how to disarm her; Dimitriou would take her by the waist and start spinning her around, dancing with her, singing out loud, pretending he was doing a radio interview trying to get at why she was so upset, and he’d call her his hot pepper, his magic powder keg, my dynamite, beguiling witch and guiding star, sweet hurricane and other dumb stuff, and Alexis and I would laugh and finally Mama too. Nobody could stay sad or mad with Dimitriou there; Papa was so crazy he was beautiful. But who could prevent what was happening now? Me? Alexis? Any of us women? And the worst thing was that we all knew it, every one of us, except Grandma. She just went right on, preferring to take no part in the fear and rage brewing between Mama’s legs, and Mama not knowing what to do with her feelings, dead birds I thought in spite of myself I thought of dead birds trying to fly that couldn’t get out of Mama’s eyes, the hot rain of her body building up between her legs, getting ready, getting ready. Grandma was the only one who didn’t want to acknowledge those words that Alexandra was biting back, and I remembered when I was little making up a story to scare Alexis about how Mama had a hungry wolf inside her that fed on her blood, a wolf that would have to come out one day because his feasts wouldn’t be enough for him and this wolf obeyed only me so Alexis had better be careful, but then I began to believe it myself, Fidelia herself got scared. Only now we knew what was filling Alexandra so steadily, silently; we knew it was Dimitriou. It was Papa’s absence howling around inside her when they brought back Alexis and I couldn’t look in his eyes and Mama squeezed my hand until it hurt, both my hands hurt, I knew it wouldn’t be long, that something was going to explode.