Invisible Country

by Annamaria Alfieri

  But the affair had ended before Ricardo lost his life. And now maybe Maria Claudia would spread the word of her adultery.

  Gilda dismissed the thought as silly. Maria Claudia was so holier than thou. No one could imagine her gossiping for the fun of it.

  No matter how she tried to console herself, Gilda could not still her fear or banish the conviction that she had made a fatal mistake. She did have a headache, and it had nothing to do with the wind from the north.

  * * *

  Maria Claudia had prayed for the padre all the way to Martita and Estella’s house. Something about Ricardo’s death frightened him. The comandante had questioned him about the murder. The padre knew something he could not tell her because Ricardo had confessed it. What would it be like to hear the confession of a man who seemed without a conscience? She wondered how the priest, such a good man himself, could bear to hear and hold other people’s sins in his heart and find the mercy to give them God’s forgiveness. Her own loneliness seemed trivial compared to his solitary troubles.

  She would help him stave off the comandante’s threats. Martita and Estella might reveal a secret about their brother. If she could tell the comandante about it, he might leave the padre in peace. She vowed to protect Padre Gregorio any way she could.

  Maria Claudia was surprised when, on opening the front door, Josefina said, “Someone is here,” in a conspiratorial tone. The old lady said everything as dramatically as possible, as if every thought she imparted was a message from the gods, but this sounded like a real warning. Maria Claudia followed her and her grandson to the patio. The boy moved like a ghost. Alivia said he would die eventually. Oh God, Maria Claudia prayed. Why must the poor child suffer so?

  Then she heard Gilda’s voice say, “Those documents must be somewhere.” And then something about a hiding place under Ricardo’s bed. An alarm went off in Maria Claudia’s head. She paused in the doorway to the patio. Gilda’s back was to them. When Martita saw her on the threshold, her expression remained perfectly calm. It was hard to tell if she already knew what Gilda was referring to. But even from behind, Maria Claudia saw how upset Gilda was with herself.

  Without having to ask a single question, Maria Claudia knew she had found out what she came here to learn.

  * * *

  Late the next morning, Eliza Lynch returned from a brisk walk in the relatively cool air of the cordillera and found an envelope addressed to her in a girlish hand, lying on the silver tray just inside her tent. Trembling with hope, she snatched it up and for the first time since the fall of Humaitá, found good news.

  Dated the day before, the note said, “Gentle Señora E. Lynch, We send out greeting in the hopes that this letter finds you well. We have discovered the items you seek in a hiding place we did not know existed until today. The trunks are still sealed as you described they would be. We will follow your instructions and not open them or tamper with them in any way. We will tell no one about our discovery. We will prepare ourselves to leave Paraguay and go to our uncle in Buenos Aires. We hope very much that we will leave soon. Please, kind lady, help us to leave very soon.” It was signed, “Your servants, Martita and Estella Yotté y Saramiento.”

  Eliza kissed the paper that carried the happy message. She had three critical tasks left, all easier than having had to tell López what she had done with the trunks. She must arrange the Yotté sisters’ departure. She would inveigle the new French ambassador—an easy matter for a beautiful woman who had honed her seductive skills in Paris. The most dangerous step was to prepare dummy trunks filled with rocks and have them delivered to the casa Yotté. She would need help with this, but there was no one she could fully trust. She also had to ensure the real treasure was not found in the meantime. In his last orders, López had set Luis Menenez to sniffing around. Now she would have to get the comandante out of the way. He pretended to respect her, but he thought her a whore. She had seen it in her eyes. She did not trust any man who did not want to sleep with her.

  She quickly penned an answer to the Yotté sisters, warning them again not to open the trunks or to speak of them to anyone. She hurried to dispatch her orders before lunch.

  10

  At siesta time that afternoon, Comandante Luis Menenez emerged from his postprandial nap and went looking for his wife. He found her in the drawing room, sitting at her tea table as she did every afternoon at five o’clock in pathetic imitation of the mariscal’s mistress. She gave him a simpering smile, as if she were playing hostess in an English palace. Except she was alone. She poured herself a cup of the Ceylon tea she only pretended to drink.

  “Well,” he began, “tell me what you have learned from the Yotté girls.”

  Gilda busied herself with a maddeningly slow and ceremonious preparation of a gourd of maté for him. “They were very pleased with the food, quite amazed by our generosity really.” She put the silver-encased gourd down on the tray table and indicated it with an outstretched palm, an exact imitation of La Lynch demonstrating her largesse.

  The comandante snatched up the maté, rattling a dish of the tasteless little cakes Gilda insisted on serving. “Stop all this nonsense. Did you find out what Ricardo did with those documents?”

  She stirred sugar into her tea as if she intended to drink it. “Oh, Luis, you can be so impatient sometimes. I try to use finesse in such things. We spoke of it, of course. They have not found anything. I told them the mariscal had charged you with finding the documents. I am sure, hearing that, they will take the matter very seriously.”

  He sucked on the bombilla. The maté was bitter. “Your methods may be subtler, but mine are quicker. The mariscal said he wanted results immediately. I have to show progress before he becomes impatient or I will wind up in chains.”

  “Ridiculous!”

  “No, Gilda. I assure you it is not. I have seen him do enormous, impetuous harm for matters of less importance.” He put down the gourd with a thump.

  “Luis, I am sorry to have to say this, but Ricardo’s sisters cannot help you.” She nibbled at a sweet. “If Eliza gave Ricardo something that important, the murderer probably killed him for it. Find the murderer, and you will find the goods.”

  He considered his wife. What a dolt she was to announce the obvious as if it were a great discovery. “Yes. Of course,” he said to pacify her.

  “If I were you, I would stay away from the Yotté sisters and catch the killer.” She said it as if he could pick out the murderer as easily as picking an orange from a tree.

  He grabbed two of Gilda’s little cakes and shoved them in his mouth. As usual, conversation with his wife only frustrated and annoyed him. A cleverer woman would have been able to get something out of Ricardo’s pathetic sisters. He would see to it that they gave up their brother’s secrets.

  * * *

  An hour later, the padre waited in the oppressive heat of the confessional for penitents. He gripped his hands together, desperate to pray but having no idea what to ask of God. He wanted peace in his heart, but there was no peace to be had in Paraguay. The war dragged on. The dictator fought and fell back to fight again, taking position after position and retreating at the last possible moment—to the slow but steady slaughter of what was left of his devastated army. Each time their allied enemies won a battle, they inexplicably held off their pursuit of López long enough to give the Paraguayans time to regroup and make another stand. It was almost as if the invaders did not want to triumph and end the war, but preferred to torture everyone with its death throes.

  The confessions the padre had already heard that day disturbed him more than those of peacetime. His flock used to come to him with their sexual peccadilloes, their greed, their petty jealousies. For those sins, he had counseled them, given them absolution, and felt satisfied he had helped them become better people. These days, they berated themselves for their loss of trust in the Lord’s benevolence. They saw sin in their feelings of despair, while Paraguay’s powerful did not scruple at unleashing evil left and right
on the weak and the impotent. The most sinful of all was the man in charge who ruled with absolute confidence in his right to perpetrate horror on anyone he chose. And the priest sinned by doubting God.

  A creek of the kneeler outside the box announced another penitent he was not ready to advise. He slid open the grille, and his heart sank further into despair. He could never reveal his weaknesses to her.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” Maria Claudia said and made the sign of the cross. “I have—I have—” she said and then fell silent.

  He could not speak without showing his impatience, so he held his peace.

  “I have impure thoughts,” she said, astonishing him. She had never confessed such a thing before.

  “Have you been with a man, trying to become pregnant?” he asked, though he could not think that of her.

  “No, Father.” Indignation sharpened her usually sweet voice, and despite the dim light of the confessional, he could see it on her face.

  “Is there anything else you need to tell me?”

  “No. Yes, but not a sin. I need to speak to you about Ricardo’s death.”

  “Wait for me on the patio of my house. We will talk about it when confessions are over.” He raised a hand to give her absolution.

  “You have forgotten to give me a penance, Padre.” She smiled. “Oh, and I forgot to confess another sin: I told a small lie to get someone to accept a gift I offered him.”

  He smiled too. “Say a rosary for the repose of the souls in purgatory.” He raised his hand and blessed her, absolving her sins in the name of the Holy Trinity, but he—the man—could not forgive her the certainty of her faith, which only reminded him of how weak his own was. He wished he were the man she thought he was. He closed the grille.

  After waiting to be sure there were no more penitents, he left the confessional and found the comandante standing at attention in the half light near the front door of the church. Menenez held a riding crop in his right hand. He had taken to carrying it everywhere in the last couple of days, as if it were a badge of office, like his hat and his fancy red jacket with its brass buttons and navy blue epaulettes.

  The priest approached. “Are you waiting for confession, Señor Comandante?”

  “Not at all. I must speak to you.” He pointed out to the plaza with the riding crop.

  The priest led the way to a bench under a jacaranda tree, but since the comandante did not sit, neither did he. “What is that you want to say?”

  “I came to warn you,” the comandante said. “I expect you to reveal all you know about Ricardo Yotté’s death.” He put his hands behind his back and tapped the riding crop on his left palm.

  “Much as I would like to help you, Comandante, as I have told you repeatedly, I cannot give you any information. Ricardo’s sisters are the people most likely to remember something that would be helpful. I suggest that you bring your questions to them.”

  “Never mind that,” Menenez barked. “Within the next few days, I will make an arrest. You are particularly close to my brother-in-law. He has been acting very suspiciously lately. If anyone knows what he is up to, it would be you. You had better tell me.”

  The threat prickled the back of the padre’s neck. Menenez was right. Salvador had obviously been harboring a secret for some weeks, but he would never betray him. The terrified padre let what words came to mind spill out of him. “My instincts tell me the person most likely to have killed Ricardo Yotté is you, Comandante.” The rage in Menenez’s face made the priest instantly cower.

  But that heat dissipated quickly. Menenez smiled, if one could call that malevolent look of triumph a smile. “Insanity was not the response I had expected from you, Padre. I would have thought you knew better how to protect yourself. An educated man like yourself. But now it is too late for you to repeal what you just said; you will pay for having thought such a thing.” He strode away.

  Shaking with rage and fear, the padre slumped down onto the bench and watched him march across the plaza toward the comandancia, the small government building next to his house. When the priest looked away he saw Maria Claudia approaching. He moved over and made room for her on the bench.

  “Father, when you did not come to meet me, I came looking for you. Are you all right?”

  “Yes. Well, no, not really.” He could not admit to her what a foolish thing he had said to Menenez. “The comandante says he is going to arrest someone for killing Ricardo, and I am sure it will be an innocent person.”

  “Who?”

  The padre did not want to worry her with the truth. “He is grasping at straws. I doubt he knows himself.”

  “But he will choose someone anyway.”

  “He has been bragging that López personally ordered him to find the killer. If that is true, he will choose someone. He has taken away people before that I knew to be innocent.”

  “That is what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  This surprised the priest. “What?”

  “I have two worries. I went to see Estella and Martita the other day and overheard a conversation when I entered the house.” She gave him a sheepish look. “I hope you are not going to tell me eavesdropping is a sin.”

  “I doubt you committed a sin, Maria Claudia. You almost never do.”

  She gave him a strange look, as if it surprised her that he could see into her soul. He was her priest, after all.

  “Gilda was there with the sisters. I overheard her say something about Señora Lynch’s missing some things. It sounded very important. I think Ricardo was killed for those missing things.”

  “Mmm. The comandante asked me if we had found anything in Ricardo’s pockets.”

  “It was clear Gilda thought it was something valuable.”

  “I can try to find out,” the priest said. “And? You said two worries.”

  “This is a bit embarrassing, but Gilda said she knew of a secret hiding place under Ricardo’s bed where the señora’s valuables might have been hidden. Estella seemed surprised by that. She asked Gilda how she knew. Then Gilda became all flustered, as if she could not admit that she had been in Ricardo’s bedroom.”

  His thoughts flashed on the memory of Gilda in the confessional, vowing once again to break off her affair with Yotté. She had attempted to cut it off many times, but, charming as he was, he managed to make himself irresistible to her. The affair had gone on for a year. She and Yotté had contrived to meet here in Santa Caterina and in the capital since Yotté and the comandante often traveled back and forth. But then, the week before Yotté was killed, he and the comandante had both been away. In confession that day, Gilda had sworn to her priest that she was breaking it off once and for all.

  “Should I confess my sin to the comandante?” Gilda had asked through the grille.

  “You require God’s forgiveness, not your husband’s,” he had said quickly, fearing the comandante would ravenge his honor if he found out. But suppose she had told him? He might have murdered Yotté despite their being close political allies.

  Now the secret of their liaison was out. His lips no longer needed to be sealed, but he still needed to treat the matter carefully. If Gilda and Ricardo’s affair became general gossip, others besides himself might conclude that the comandante had killed Yotté. This might be a good thing if it put Menenez in jeopardy with the authorities. But who would come to bring him to justice? There was no rule of law, no order in Paraguay. Only tyranny and chaos. Too many twists and turns confused the matter of Yotté’s murder, and danger awaited the innocent around every corner.

  Mary Claudia looked into his face. “What occupies your thoughts? Why does what I said trouble you so?”

  He stood. “I fear what we have believed: there is no government to try the criminal. What good is finding the truth about who killed Ricardo?”

  “I care,” she said. “You care.”

  He looked down at her. She was so thin, but not frail. Where did she get her fortitude?

  “And Martita and Es
tella. They care,” she added. She stood and looked up into his eyes. “I think we have to talk to Salvador and Alivia León. It is time for us to start acting like people worthy to raise those children you are hoping for. Otherwise, we will just be bringing more souls into a lawless land of torture and perdition.”

  He could not deny what she said. So he agreed.

  * * *

  The burden of Salvador’s grief lay heavier on him. He had thought nothing could hurt more than seeing his dear son so devastated, but Alivia’s knowing it somehow made it worse. He locked the cabin door and followed her into the woods toward home. Over the past few days, they had ignored the danger of being discovered and walked together. No one would believe they were merely foraging in the same place every day. But they could not seem to part when they left their mad son.

  They walked side by side, silent in their sorrow. The butterflies still drew their nectar from the flowers beside the stream and beat their wings in the rhythm of lovemaking. The flowering vines still filled the space overhead with their melee of magenta, purple, red, and gold. The spicy scent of the undergrowth still perfumed the air. But none of it lifted Salvador’s heart.

  “Do you think he seemed a bit better today?” he asked. “Sometimes I think he is getting better.”

  “Not today,” she said. “Not today.” She rested her hand lightly on his shoulder as she walked beside him. He could feel her pacing herself—not to go faster than he could. “When he curled up in my lap and wept that first day, I thought it would be the beginning of his healing, that he might be able to give up his madness. But he continues to be so ill that I fear he might never…” Her voice trailed off.