Invisible Country

by Annamaria Alfieri

  Before reaching the village, at the wall of the Yotté garden, he turned to the right, toward the forge, as she knew he would. She kept back, behind a tree, guilt assailing her heart. This was a mistake. How could she spy on him? She was betraying all they had meant to each other. Knowing the truth could only hurt her more, but she could not stop. She could not think how she would explain herself if someone saw her. She pressed her back against the trunk of the tree and waited, counting seconds, until she was sure he had reached the forge, and then she moved, carefully, silently.

  To her surprise, he did not go into Manuela’s workshop or house but kept along the road. His back bent as he leaned more and more heavily on the cane. If he turned now, he would see her. If he were following me, I would sense him, she thought. But he did not turn.

  He stopped at the cross where his father died. She gasped and drew back off the road into a clump of trees, as quietly as she could, hoping the chirping of the insects and the calls of parakeets and plovers would drown out the rustling of the grass under her feet. He cut a branch of oleander and without kneeling down, dropped it perfunctorily across the arms of the cross and moved on. She followed along, keeping her distance, past the stream, where he approached a tree and took from its hollow the honey jar he told her he had broken. A toucan flew down and squawked at him and set her heart thudding that he would turn and see her. But doggedly he went on into the forest to a spot where the great flowering trees formed what looked like canyon walls.

  She had to move closer or she would lose him in the dense thicket. She put down the bundle she had been carrying on her head and stealthily as a hunting cat followed until he disappeared behind a natural wall of vegetation. Fearing he would vanish into the jungle, she moved swiftly around the wall and surprised him opening a bolt on the door of a rough-built shed that had been invisible only a few feet away. He turned with shock and fear in his eyes. He gasped and called out her name.

  A loud clunk and a human moan came from inside the shed. “What are you doing here?” Salvador demanded.

  She did not answer but moved to the door and pushed it open. No amount of suspicion could have prepared her for the sight she saw. A person in chains attached to a beam. Scrawny legs drawn up under the chin of a thin, haggard face. A miserable torn shirt and cloth wrapped around it like a diaper. Dark, dirty hair, hanging lank to the shoulders. She could not tell if it was a man or a woman. It moaned and turned its face away when it saw her. It was a boy, she thought. And then he began to sob, and she knew him. A grip of pain squeezed every drop of blood from her heart. Her body turned to stone.

  Salvador came up behind her and touched her shoulder. Without turning, she swung her arm and slammed her fist into his chest. She dropped to her knees at the boy’s side. She stroked his arm with two fingers. “Alé? Alé. It is Mama.” They stayed like that: her fingers on Aleixo’s bony arm, her boy’s body convulsing with sobs, Salvador standing perfectly still. Anger seeped into her heart. “Take these chains off him,” she commanded. “Take them off now.”

  “He is violent.”

  “I do not believe you.” But she did. Otherwise Salvador would never have done this to their son.

  Aleixo raised his head and looked into her eyes. The hardness of his glance froze her blood. This was her Alé’s body, but the creature inside was not her child. He reached out and grabbed her fingers, squeezing them so tight that his grip sent a searing pulse of pain up her arm. Tears flowed from his eyes. He reached around her waist and embraced her. She stretched out her legs and took him into her arms. He rolled himself into a ball as tightly as the chains would allow, in the position of a sleeping newborn child, and held on to her as if she could save him. But she was drowning too. In anguish. In anger. But with a halo of hope. Her boy was alive. Mad. Horribly wounded in his soul. But alive.

  His father came and sat on a stool, handed her the pot of honey and some chipa. He unwrapped a small roasted bird, and together they fed their son.

  8

  Martita Yotté leaned back against the carved wooden headboard of the bed she had shared with her sister since they were small children. She stifled scolding words. They had sat here sharing secrets thousands of times: fantasizing about their futures, gossiping about the girls at school, weeping and sobbing when their parents died. Estella was the person Martita loved most in the world. And the person she most hated. Today she wanted to shout down Estella’s pathetic words.

  “Josefina said the snake god Moñái steals things from villages,” Estella said. “Suppose he stole Señora Lynch’s valuables and hid them in the forest. Suppose the god Teju Jagua is guarding them.”

  Martita raised Estella’s chin so she could look her in the eye. “The señora said documents. Do you really think some snake with horns stole some political papers and buried them in the jungle? And that some huge lizard with seven dog heads and fire spurting out of his eyes is protecting the hiding place? Are you crazy?”

  “Josefina believes in Moñái and in Teju Jagua. And I do too.” She stopped picking at the threadbare sheet and looked up at her sister. “Stop scowling at me. I believe in the Virgin Mary and her son, though I have never seen them. I believe in the old Guarani gods, too.”

  “Oh, Estella, be logical for half a minute. Señora Lynch would come all this way only for something extremely important. If it was that valuable, Ricardo must have hidden it somewhere no one else would ever find it. Now he is dead. Suppose Señora Lynch decides we have taken her valuables and mean to keep them. What then?”

  Estella clamped a hand over her mouth.

  “Right,” Martita said. “You finally see it. It could mean our lives unless Señora Lynch gets her papers back.”

  Predictably, Estella burst into tears.

  * * *

  López’s latest makeshift capital lay on a small plateau surrounded by conical hills on the outskirts of Villa Rica. There, in a white tent that flew the Paraguayan flag, Eliza Lynch took special pains over her toilette. She chose her emerald green peau de soie gown that would bring out the red-gold of her hair and the paleness of her skin, which always set López on fire. And the décolletage would produce the proper response if all else failed. For the mariscal knew what would be his when she took off the dress. The world at large thought they saw in her beauty what enthralled men. They did not understand her secret weapon. Her beauty was only the beginning of her attraction. It made men desire her at first glance, but what captivated and enraptured Francisco Solano López was what enchained all the men who had been hers: the illusion that what she bestowed when she yielded her body was a rare and incredible gift that he alone was privileged to receive, that he would get only if she found him worthy. Other women looked down on her because she was not married to the man who had fathered her children. But marriage, she knew, would spoil the magic she had worked so hard to create. If she were his wife, he would have an absolute right to enter her secret, precious place whenever he wanted. She would owe him the prerogative, having sold it once and for all for a single plain gold band. She much preferred to force him to earn every single entry.

  She dismissed the maid Carmencita and lay on her couch and pleasured herself. This would color her cheeks, set her eyes to sparkling, put the scent of sex on her. Tonight she needed every weapon in her arsenal if she was going to convince López that the arrangement she had made with Ricardo Yotté was for both their benefits—not the act of treason his disordered mind would most likely suspect.

  Phrases she had rehearsed with von Wisner during the jolting, jarring ride in the landau flowed through her lips: “No time to consult in the melee of abandoning Asunción,” “danger of the materials falling into enemy hands,” “the enemy would gloat and make a great noise of victory if they had captured such a prize.” She repeated them over and over.

  If only, when he had had the chance, López had accepted the terms the Allies had offered, all could have been different. More than a year ago, her heart had leapt when the mariscal had unchara
cteristically sought peace with the Argentinean President. Release could have been just around the corner. The Allies agreed to meet him the very next day among the tall palm trees at Yataity-Cora.

  But as soon as the enemy accepted his proposal for talks, López had turned suspicious, feared an ambush. She had encouraged him. “It was your idea, my mariscal. They and the rest of the world will now see what a statesman you are.”

  The look he gave her told her he would stop trusting her entirely if she overflattered him. He, with whom flattery had always been a foolproof tactic. Well, flattery and fellatio anyway.

  While he was gone, she had paced her little cottage, concentrating on the joys of escape: the Parisian balls, good wine, evenings at the gaming tables, mornings riding in the Bois with her boys.

  López returned from the talks in a rage: the Allies had demanded that he leave Paraguay forever. He had flatly refused. Six months afterwards, he refused peace again, even though the Brazilian commander Caxias offered him a “golden bridge.”

  Tonight’s seduction was critical: her only hope was to recover her own golden bridge from wherever Yotté had stashed it.

  She called in Carmencita to pull the laces of her corset as tight as possible and to put the finishing touches on her hair.

  She had ordered ham and fresh figs as a first course, then boeuf-en-daube, the last two bottles of good claret, and meringues with crème anglaise. A bit of Paris amid the squalor. China. Crystal. Shining silver. Then, when she had satisfied his craving for her, he would give her Luis Menenez to solve her problem.

  * * *

  At three o’clock the next morning, a rider exited Señora Lynch’s tent, left the encampment at Peribebuy on a fast horse, and sped southward toward the once-lovely village of Santa Caterina with urgent orders for the comandante.

  * * *

  Padre Gregorio had spent a sleepless night wondering who Menenez would accuse of Yotté’s murder. The priest despaired that it would be the guilty party. Clearly by carrying the body to the belfry, the murderer meant the padre to discover it. The killer meant to implicate him. Why would anyone want to do that? Except for his prickly relationship with the comandante, who resented any authority in the village but his own, the padre was on easy, cordial terms with all his people. Now someone wanted to put the priest at the center of a dangerous investigation.

  Rather than toss and turn, at dawn he went out and distracted himself by weeding the tiny vegetable patch he had planted with the precious seeds Alivia had given him. But he had no idea which of the tiny shoots coming up were vegetables and which were weeds. He stood and brushed the dirt from his fingers and donning his wide-brimmed hat walked out into the plaza. He took a place on one of the stone benches under the purple flowering trees. A parrot, which had been perched on a limb above the bench, squawked and flew off as the priest sat down. The jacarandas were fading already, but the orange trees still flowered and perfumed the air with a scent as sweet as his thoughts were bitter.

  Untouched by physical battles, Santa Caterina was a typical, small colonial village—invisible from a distance but for the bell tower, built in a fertile valley bordering a steep arroyo, nearly buried in the dense forest growth that surrounded it. The old adobe church with sculptured arches over its windows still showed traces of the gold leaf and vivid colors that had once richly ornamented its façade. Around the square, six short streets of red dirt led off it, each lined with one-story houses of long, narrow bricks, which were held together by coarse mud, and painted white or shades of salmon. They were simple dwellings of two or three rooms, scrupulously clean and furnished mainly with snow-white hammocks. Their high-peaked roofs of thatch or red tile jutted out in every direction to protect the walls and unglazed windows from sudden downpours and the fierce tropical sun. Before the invasion every house had a family. Now many were empty, starting to fall into ruin, heavy vines springing up everywhere. Within the ancient brick walls behind the houses and the church complex, the kitchen gardens so carefully cultivated in past years were choked with weeds. Still, despite the neglect, the sweet garden perfume of tropical flowers hung in the warm air.

  On Sundays, in the cemetery next to the church, quiet, sad-eyed women attended scarlet flamboyants, jasmine, and blue and yellow lapacho that shaded the little pink and blue stucco tombs of their loved ones. Most of their dead soldiers had never been brought back. Only the news came—from ragtag messengers passing through, or from the few broken shells of men who had returned to die—to tell the fates of fathers and brothers, husbands and sons they would never have a chance to bury. Those lacking new graves to care for seemed to have brought all their grief to bear, beautifying what graves they had.

  Life should have been easy in this rich, warm, and fertile land but was made difficult first by the rule of the Spanish, then of the dictators Francia and Carlos Antonio López, and now López’s son, Francisco, and his inexplicable war.

  Most Paraguayans had simple needs and tastes. They loved games, music and dancing, horse racing. They prized witty conversation and silly jokes.

  Ordinarily, if he came to sit in the plaza they would congregate around him, but even as the sky grew brighter and the sun strong enough to throw soft shadows, no one crossed the plaza. The pale light of a candle shone from the doorway of Alberta Gamara’s café, but he would not go there. Since his sermon a week ago, many people had reported—some with glee, some with horror—that Alberta and her cronies were keeping score of which of the old men was having sex with whom and who might get pregnant first. They claimed they needed to record which of the future babies were actually brother and sister, so they would not marry by mistake when they grew up. He had not considered this ramification of his advice. He was a fool. He should go back to his house, but he could not bring himself to be alone with his empty larder, his painful heart, and his prayers to a God who had made this world too difficult and complicated.

  To his dismay, the only person who approached him was the very one he least wanted to see.

  Luis Menenez carried an expensive-looking piece of paper with a red seal on it. With a flourish obviously intended to make sure the priest took notice, he folded the document and put it in his shirt pocket. “You are abroad very early, Padre,” he said with oily good humor. “Perhaps you have not yet gone home from wherever you spent the night. Not seemly for a celibate man.” He laughed and gave the padre a conspiratorial look, as if a serious priest should take such a remark as a joke.

  “Tell me what brings you out at the hour of the mosquitoes, Señor Comandante.”

  “Investigating Yotté’s murder.”

  The priest’s breath quickened. Another attempt to pry out secrets. He waited.

  “As you can imagine,” the comandante continued, “the mariscal has taken a great interest in the crime and orders me to investigate with dispatch.” He patted the pocket where he had secreted the paper.

  The padre hoped the gloom under the trees obscured the fear in his eyes. “That was to be expected.”

  “My orders include finding some items belonging to Mariscal López that Ricardo had in his possession when he died. When you were alone with the body, did you search his pockets?”

  The very idea rankled the padre. “Priests are not in the habit of rifling the pockets of the deceased. I was busy administering a sacrament.”

  The comandante moved closer. “I did not ask what priests in general do, Padre.” He pronounced the last word as if it were a threat. “I asked if you had found anything.”

  “No, nor did I search him.” He let his outrage show in his voice. “Josefina and Gaspár prepared the body. Have you asked them?”

  “I have interrogated the sisters and Josefina and Gaspár. They know nothing of any valuables on the body when you found it.”

  “You are sure they are telling the truth?”

  The comandante stood. “Gaspár is completely loyal to me, and those women could have no use for the missing items. The Yotté sisters gave Ricardo’s jacke
t to Hector Mompó, who washed it in the river and ruined it. He said there was nothing in the pockets but a handkerchief. He knows he will die in seconds if he lies to me about those documents.”

  ‘Oh, is it documents you are seeking? If so, Gaspár, Hector, and Josefina will not be able to help you. They are all illiterate.”

  “That is why I do not suspect them. But there are many in this village who can read. And regardless of who has the documents, I will do whatever it takes to find them.” Menenez patted his pocket again. “I have all the power of the mariscal behind me.” Without a good-bye, he walked away with the light of the rising sun on his back.

  9

  Gilda Ana-Luisa León de Menenez, as she liked to sign her name on missives to her idol Eliza Lynch, peered over her husband’s shoulder as he studied again his latest orders from Francisco Solano López.

  “I told you you worried unnecessarily,” she said. “The mariscal has put this important commission entirely in your hands.”

  He put his arm around her waist, pulled her toward him, and kissed her mouth with more passion than he had felt for her since the fall of the great fort at Humaitá. “Yes, mi amor, but it may not be so easy for me to carry out these orders. The mariscal is very vague about exactly what it is that he and La Lynch entrusted to Ricardo.”

  She pointed to the paper. “It says ‘valuable government secrets.’ It must be documents of some sort, as Josefina has been saying.”