She ran toward them to see what was happening. Tomás? Could he have returned? Why was the horse suddenly so agitated?
A feeling on her skin stopped her. Then she saw why. A jaguar, his spots nearly invisible in the dappled sunlight, crouched, still as a stone, facing the little fence around the chicken yard. She had forgotten to put the flock inside the coop when she left after finding Tomás gone.
She stood stock-still. “Do not run if you see a yaguareté,” her father had always told them. At the sight of this one, she froze, not because she was consciously following his advice, but from terror: she could not have moved if she wanted to. A shimmering insect landed on the sleeve of her blouse and bit her right through the cotton, but she did not so much as twitch. Only her heart moved—it thudded against her ribs.
The rooster continued to screech and flapped madly.
“Get away from them!” Xandra shouted.
The cat did not even look at her.
She looked around for a stick, a rock, anything she could throw at the cat. There was nothing.
Inside his enclosure, César neighed and reared again. The cat pounced on the chickens, and though the rooster pecked and scratched, the jaguar killed and tore apart a hen in one swift movement. The flock was in tumult. Now, Xandra thought, I should strike while its mouth is full. She backed slowly, silently, toward the horse’s bridle, which hung from the corral fence, her heart pounding out of control. She never took her eyes off the jaguar.
He pounced again. This time the rooster, who fought desperately but lasted only seconds.
She grasped the bridle and wound it around her hand like a whip.
The cat killed another hen and gobbled it up.
Xandra breathed in. She could picture what she should do: run at the cat, slash the air in front of her with the leather bridle, with the metal parts hitting the ground. She should do it, try to save what was left of her precious chickens. If she had a machete, she would kill the cat and take his beautiful skin for the brick floor in front of their hearth. But the machete was in the lean-to where she could not get it and her father’s words repeated themselves in her head, “Do not move. Do not move.” He had always warned that the most dangerous thing was to get between the beast and its young, or its food. If she went for the cat now, it would think she was trying to steal its lunch. You are taking mine, you bastard, she thought, but she stood like a statue, hardly breathing while the jaguar took two more hens in its mouth and slinked off into the forest.
After a few minutes, she went and mourned over the devastation the cat had left behind. The sight of bones and bloody feathers broke her down. She wept harder than when she had found Tomás gone. Nothing. She was not allowed to have anything. In the months past, she had looked at the chickens over and over again, wanting to eat them, but had left them to lay eggs. Now the cat had eaten the chicken leg she had only dreamed of. It was her own fault. If earlier she had closed them in the coop properly, they would have been safe. She could not stop crying, even as she took the quivering remaining two hens and put them inside. There were a few eggs in the nests.
Over her sobs, she heard someone approaching through the forest, someone creeping up slowly. Someone who would find César and take him away! Fear stopped her tears. Silently she took the saddle off the makeshift fence and strapped it on the horse, put the bridle over his head. She put her foot in the stirrup and stood on one leg, ready to mount and speed him away from whoever would want to take him. But then a happy thought arrested her. Tomás could be retuning. She listened with every pore of her skin, watching the trees at the edge of the clearing. The air was so still the leaves and the red-flowering vines hung limp from the branches.
The noise came closer. It would not be the jaguar. He had gone in the other direction. Besides, they never made a sound, only appeared as if materializing on the spot. Whoever this was made entirely too much noise, almost as if he wanted to be heard. Her heart pounded. Tomás! Anyone else would have been quieter.
Then she heard a familiar, near-perfect imitation of the knocking of a carpeintero—a woodpecker! It was her father, making the old signal they had used when he played with her and her brothers in the forest long ago in their old life before the war, that time of hope and plenty, when fear was something one played with and giggled over. Now they had nothing but fear and broken hearts and loss and empty stomachs.
Her beautiful, gentle father, whom she loved with all her heart, whom she had feared would never return from the war, entered the clearing from the west, gaunt with the pain of walking on his missing foot. His kind eyes were full of love for her, and she screamed at him, “Stay away from me! I hate you!” She mounted the horse and made to jump the stockade fence.
Her father whistled and called out, “Halt, César.” The horse planted his feet and though she kicked him, he did not move.
She put her head on the beast’s warm neck and wept.
“Querida, please.” Her father came near and crooned to her, reaching through the fence and putting his hand on her ankle. “Come down. Speak to me.” He tugged at her foot.
Guilt and anger warred in her heart. “I will not. Why are you here?”
“I want to hear what you have to say.” He held her ankle and waited with that irresistible patience of his. He never had to yell or insist the way her mother did. He never pushed. He just waited. No one—not the most recalcitrant of the villagers, who used to follow him as their leader, not even her stubborn brother Juan, not even her mother who was stronger than anyone—could resist doing the right thing while Salvador León patiently waited.
She slid off the horse into his arms and wept into his shoulder. “A yaguareté took almost all the chickens. I left the door of the coop open. I was—I—” She could not tell him why.
He patted her shoulder. “Oh, mi querida, are they all gone?”
“Five. Only two hens are left and five eggs.”
They went and looked at the remains of the jaguar’s lunch.
“He got the rooster, eh?”
She nodded.
“Well. I guess that must have cost the cat a few hairs on his nose, as mean as that old buzzard was.”
She could not help but smile. The rooster had pecked her hands and drawn blood so many times when she came to take away the eggs. “He fought valiantly.”
Her father looked at her as if he had never seen her before. “You were here when the cat was here?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do?”
“As you taught me. I stood still.”
He shook his head. “God, you are brave.”
Her heart swelled with pride.
He picked up an iridescent brown tail feather from among the rooster’s bones. “I just hope the old boy did his job with the eggs we have left. Then at least, we can let them hatch, and maybe we will get another rooster from five chicks. And hopefully he will not take after his father.”
It reminded her of having babies. “I will not get pregnant by any man who happens to be around.” She pulled away and dried her eyes with the sleeve of her blouse.
“You do not have to.”
“Padre Gregorio said—”
Her father made a dismissive gesture. “I am sure the padre did not mean for a young girl like you to do something that disgusts her.”
“It would.”
“That is because you are such a fine girl.”
“I am a woman.”
“Yes, I can see that, querida. I can see that.”
“At the beginning everyone said the war would soon be over. No one says that anymore.” A deep sigh shook the last sobs from her chest.
“People are afraid to speak their fears and disappointments. You know the government takes any complaints as treason?”
“That is wrong, Papa. People cannot help how they feel.” She rubbed her eyes. The sky above was clear and blue; the air aromatic and heavy. “What is the war really about anyway?”
“It is very hard to understa
nd. I have never talked to anyone who understood it completely. The mariscal said that the Argentineans and the Brazilians and the Uruguayans signed a pact and invaded our country, which is true, but before that ever happened, we struck the first blow, by invading the Mato Grosso in Brazil. There was a big celebration in Asunción when we won that battle.”
“Why did we attack Brazil? I have never really understood”
“I have heard many explanations. They wrote in El Seminario that we had to stop the Brazilians from interfering with Uruguay. I guess if they can interfere with Uruguay they might interfere with us. We had to show our strength.”
“And this happened all of a sudden?”
He shook his head. “Wars never start all of a sudden. The mariscal must have seen it coming. Otherwise why would he have built that huge fort of Humaitá down south, near where the big rivers come together?”
“Has Brazil always been our enemy?” She tried to sound only curious. Though Tomás was gone, she was desperate that his country and hers not be enemies forever. How was she supposed to feel about him? He went away. Would he ever come back? Her heart did not know where to go.
“Oh, no,” her father said, “Brazil was the first country to recognize Paraguay after we declared independence from Spain. In fact, not very long ago, the mariscal offered to marry the infanta, the emperor of Brazil’s youngest daughter.”
Xandra made a face. “Why would a princess want to marry a fat man with beady little pig eyes?”
Her father put his forefinger to his lips. “Quietly, querida.” But then he smiled broadly. “As a matter of fact, her father turned him down. I think he was very insulted.”
“The mariscal or the emperor?”
“Both, I suspect.”
“And now we hate one another.”
“Countries are not people,” he said. “Their relationships are based on many things. Brazil and Argentina, because of their great rivalry, need Paraguay and Uruguay as buffers between them.”
“But now they are united against us?”
He shook his head. “None of it makes sense by itself. Paraguay had things they did not: the railroad, the telegraph, those English engineers who spoke bad Spanish but built good forts. And López”—he looked around again—“he sees himself as a great general, like Napoleon, which he is not.”
“But even Napoleon lost in the end.” She hung her head. She hated this whole story.
Her father lifted her chin. “I am impressed you know that.” He brushed back a lock of hair that had fallen over her eye.
“I have heard that Paraguay invaded Brazil because we wanted their land, to have a port on the ocean.”
His look challenged her. “What kind of an idea is that?” He sounded shocked.
She needed it to be true. She needed Paraguay to be wrong. “I also heard that the mariscal was such a bad leader our powerful neighbors had to come in to change the government.”
He stiffened. She bit her lip, but too late. It was what Tomás had told her.
“Where did you hear such a thing?” her father demanded.
She stared into the distance until she could not stand his silence anymore. She told him the truth. “I talked to a soldier who was passing through here.”
He did not take his suspicious eyes from hers. “Through the village?”
She hardened her heart. “Is it true then?”
“Tell me about this person who told you all this.”
“He is gone,” she said, and she wished she could weep again. “I will not tell you more.”
He took her hand with that irresistible patience of his, and waited.
* * *
Late that evening, a rider, having traveled at top speed for nearly three hours, brought an envelope to the white tent in Peribebuy where Mariscal Francisco Solano López had settled his consort, Eliza Lynch, after they abandoned Asunción to the Brazilians. When her maid Carmencita brought the message saying it was from Santa Caterina, the señora snatched it up in her alabaster hands. Her sky blue eyes scanned the few lines scrawled on the paper. “Get von Wisner. Immediately,” the Irish courtesan said to Carmencita in perfect Guarani.
Once the maid had gone, La Lynch walked to the ornate mirror that hung from a rope over a French ormolu sideboard. Her darling son Juan Francisco had overseen the moving of her things and made sure her quarters were as elegant as possible, despite the rustic simplicity. Her boys—even little Leopoldo, who was only six—understood how important it was to keep up appearances. She looked carefully at her reflection and tucked a strawberry-blond wisp behind her ear. “More awful news,” she said aloud to her own beautiful reflection. Ricardo Yotté was dead.
She went to her escritoire and withdrew the keys to her trunks from the drawer and fingered them. What now of the possessions she had hoped to rescue from this debacle? The treasure of Paraguay was in those trunks. She and López had dragged the wealth of the nation with them from the great fort at Humaitá to Yvaté and back to Asunción. In the rout and rush of abandoning the capital, without López’s knowledge, she had entrusted the trunks to Yotté. López’s capture or capitulation had seemed imminent. If the dictator perished while in possession of the treasure, the invaders would have taken it. She needed it for herself and her children. If by chance López survived the next month, she would have gotten the treasure back from Ricardo and López would not have been the wiser. Whatever the outcome, she was sure Ricardo Yotté would carry out her wishes because he was sly and brave and she had owned his soul for years now. She had kept him close against the time when it would become unavoidably clear that the war was lost.
Against all reason, López not only survived, but insisted on fighting on. He, who was to have been emperor to her empress, could not tolerate the notion of failure. She was forced to pretend to him that she too saw victory ahead. But as far back as Riachuelo, she had seen triumph as ever more elusive. In that first battle on the Paraná River, far superior Brazilian men of war had gained control of the waters and then poured men and materiel into Paraguay. There was no stopping them. She had clung to hope because they still had Humaitá at a perfect strategic point on a bluff on the east bank, high above a curve in the Paraguay River. Its enormous, heavily fortified walls rose up over ammunition stores, cottages, even a pretty little church. Down in the river, mines and three rows of great chains prevented the passage of enemy ships. The mariscal then had twenty-four thousand men to fight for them.
For a while, life there seemed more like a festival with fireworks than a battle station. She had walked out on the ramparts to watch as the Brazilian fleet tried to bombard the river. López raised the mast from a defeated Brazilian warship in the center of the camp. At her instigation, the troops erected a marquee around it, and they held a dance. How the soldiers applauded when the musicians played “La Palomita,” and she danced for them.
But then, the Allies broke through on the river and overwhelmed them. When the shreds of her hope fell with Humaitá, she decided Yotté would be her savior. Now he was dead. If she could not get back her trunks of treasure, she would have to tell López she had entrusted them to Yotté. He might accuse her of the treason he so often saw in others. Losing his trust could lose her her life. Finding her way though this would be like the army fighting its way through the swamps.
“Halloo,” François von Wisner called through the flap in the tent.
She dropped the keys back into the drawer and closed it. “Come,” she called.
The Hungarian, who was now her only confidante, entered and bowed with perfect grace.
“I need you,” she said to this man she knew would never have the balls to do anything really useful.
* * *
Two days after the discovery of Ricardo Yotté’s body, Comandante Luis Menenez left the graveyard where the dead man’s sisters had held each other in an awkward embrace: the taller, younger one weeping copiously into the shoulder of her older, shorter sister, as the white-haired and appropriately somber Sa
turnino Fermín filled in the grave. Xandra León stood with them, her hand on Estella’s shoulder. Those two were the same age, but Estella, who used to look like a juicy young thing, was now wan and pathetic. The comandante’s niece by marriage, on the other hand, was spirited and athletic. She could be delicious under the right circumstances. His sex stirred at the thought of subduing that virago. But not now. He had a problem to solve that could not wait. It had been too long since he had done anything to impress López. Yotté had become such a favorite with La Lynch that it had been hard for Menenez to get the dictator’s attention. For some time now, on every path the comandante took to gain López’s admiration, he found Yotté ahead of him. Well, now Yotté was out of the way. But the next step would be tricky. He intended to look clever, brave, and useful by delivering Yotté’s murderer into the mariscal’s hands. And the first clever and brave thing he needed to do was to accuse the right person.
Heaven knew how long it would take to receive a reply to his letter reporting the bad news. The mariscal had only recently fallen back to Peribebuy with what remained of his weary and broken army. The comandante lifted his military cap and ran his hand through his hair, damp from the heat. La Lynch would be in a fury over the murder of her puppy boy. To prove himself a faithful ally, Menenez would have to bring forward someone for swift punishment. He would start by interrogating the only man besides himself who had any power over the villagers: the priest.
* * *
The women of Santa Caterina, looking for seeds for their future children, might or might not have been interested in the two men who descended from a mule-drawn wagon at the door of the Yotté mansion late on the morning of Ricardo’s funeral. It would have depended on the sort of man a particular woman found attractive. Both of these were well-fed, strong, energetic specimens. Their scowling faces, though, might have put some women off. The older one barely moved his thin lips when he spoke. The younger had sickly looking pale skin that might have been brightened by his green eyes but for their lack of fire.
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