Invisible Country

by Annamaria Alfieri

  “Never be himself again?” Salvador did not know if he had uttered a statement or a question.

  “Somewhere inside his tormented body the beautiful soul of our Aleixo still lives,” she said. “We must keep trying to help him find it again. I have given him all my herbs. What else can we do but keep hoping.”

  “Perhaps the padre has some special blessing.”

  “To tell you the truth, God does not seem to be paying much attention to Paraguay these days.” She did not say more.

  They came upon a vine of wild melons they had not discovered before, though they had walked this way for many days now. Two of the small fruits were ripe or nearly so. As he cut their stems, Salvador tried to see it as a great good omen.

  They left the woods and started across the meadow toward their house. The grass was waist-high, something they never saw when they had had cattle to graze here.

  “Look.” Alivia pointed across the field toward the house.

  In the distance, the padre and Maria Claudia Benítez approached their front door. There was a day when he would have broken into a run at a moment like this. He reminded himself of what the padre had said when he first saw Salvador’s injury, after he returned from the war: he should thank God he was alive. He tried to see his life as something to be grateful for.

  He reached up and slipped Alivia’s hand off his shoulder. “Go ahead. Meet them.”

  “Xandra is there. I saw her in the doorway,” she said, but then she sped away.

  By the time he arrived home, he found them sitting on the patio, sipping maté. Alivia was standing at the table, cutting up the riper of the little melons.

  Seeing the sadness and pain in her father’s eyes, Xandra jumped up and kissed him as if he had come home from a long way. “Thank you for these melons,” she said to him, though the fruits were so small that each of them would have but a couple of bites. Her kiss did not cheer him. She gave him the first piece of melon.

  It shamed him that he could do so little to relieve the suffering of his family.

  Xandra watched them gulp down the not-quite ripe fruit, even Maria Claudia who was usually so dainty. Then her parents and the priest made small talk about whether or not they would have a harvest they could keep, about the spring rains, about anything but what must be on all their minds until Xandra could not stand it anymore. People did not come visiting these days without a purpose. Mostly they came here only if they were looking for a cure for some ailment, or begging food. “I am sorry, Padre, Maria Claudia, but you two must have something to say other than what a dry spring it has been.”

  Maria Claudia smiled her approval. “I am glad you asked. It is something very hard to bring up.” She deferred to the priest as usual.

  And he gave her his usual sour look. “Yes, but we must since an innocent person may be in danger.”

  A laugh escaped Xandra. “Come on, Padre. Hundreds of innocent people have died almost every day for years.”

  Her father made a disapproving noise, but the priest smiled and held up his hand. “No, Salvador, Xandra is right. This is about the death of Ricardo Yotté.” He looked at each one of them as if to make sure he had their attention. “The mariscal has specifically ordered the comandante to find Ricardo’s murderer. Menenez says he is going to make an arrest soon. I am afraid he will drag off an innocent person.”

  Alivia, still standing at the table, took up the empty platter she had used to pass around the melon and held it in front of her chest like a shield. “Who?” She stared at the priest as if she would break the platter over his head if he said the wrong thing.

  The heat in Alivia’s voice surprised the padre. It was almost as if she were guilty and feared the comandante might know it. “I doubt he knows,” the padre said. “He is trying to extort information from me. He thinks I must know something from the confessional. He said it would be on my conscience if the wrong person were executed.” He could not bring himself to increase their fear by reporting what Menenez had asked about Salvador.

  “Did someone confess it?” Xandra asked.

  “Stop it, Xandra,” Alivia said as if she were talking to a four-year-old. She pulled up a chair so that they were all sitting in a circle. “Whatever other priests might do, our padre would never betray a sacred trust.”

  Maria Claudia’s hands went to her hips. “Never.” She looked to see if the priest would disagree with her on this point as he did on almost everything.

  He waved the back of his hand at her. “Listen,” he said, looking intently at Alivia and Salvador, “it is time we recovered our society. The people of Santa Caterina must go back to being the civilized people we were before this war. We have to find the real guilty party.”

  Xandra was flabbergasted. “How can we possibly figure that out? And what would be the point of trying?”

  He smiled at the girl’s courage to speak her mind. “You are right. It is one death among so many. But this is different. Protecting the innocent is absolutely basic to what it means to be a human being. We have been too docile. Out of fear for our own lives, we have stood by and watched our friends and neighbors perish. I have been the worst coward of all, when I should have bravely stood up against this terror.”

  They all protested, but he held up his hand. “We have to proceed carefully. I do not want to put any of you in danger, but if we have a chance to save an innocent life, we must try, if we are to call ourselves children of God. Menenez is going to accuse someone. It could be one of us.” That was as close as he could come to telling them the whole truth.

  “He can mean only me,” Salvador said. He wanted to say he would confess to the crime himself rather than see a wrongly accused person go to torture and execution. He wanted to believe this. But he did not trust himself.

  “We must find the truth,” Maria Claudia said. “Only by discovering who committed the crime and proving it, can we protect whichever innocent person Menenez might accuse.”

  “Of course,” the priest said. “If we work together, pool our knowledge, we may be able to figure it out.”

  “Where do we start?” Xandra asked.

  “With what we know,” the priest said. “Alivia, you examined the body. You said he was not killed in the church.”

  “I am certain of it,” she said. “And the body was dragged, not carried, into the belfry.”

  “The streaks in the dust and grass stains on the jacket proved that,” the padre said.

  “And Alivia said that Ricardo had not been dead for long.” Maria Claudia offered. They all nodded. Even the priest.

  “Do any of you know anything else bearing on the question?” the padre asked.

  Alivia spoke up. “We know he was stabbed after he was dead.”

  The skin on Xandra’s back tingled. Tomás. He had said Yotté died from a blow to the head and was stabbed, but she did not remember telling him those facts. Suppose Tomás knew it because the Brazilians had sent him to kill Yotté. Not that she minded Ricardo was dead; he was hateful, even to his own sisters. He deserved to die. And the Brazilians had reason to kill him. Ricardo was very close to the dictator and his consort. But she would never tell anyone about Tomás. He would be killed if they found him, even if he did not murder Yotté.

  “Salvador? Can you think of anything else?” the priest asked

  Salvador stared at a spot of sunlight on the stone floor of the patio. He could feel Alivia’s eyes on him. If he looked up, the others would see that he held a secret. “No, Father,” he said and was sure the little tremble in his voice revealed his lie.

  Alivia looked away.

  Maria Claudia gave the priest an enquiring glance. “We should tell them what I overheard at the casa Yotté.” The priest opened his mouth to object, but she stilled him by saying, “If we are ever going to figure out who killed Ricardo, we must be completely open with one another.”

  This was the Pandora’s box Padre Gregorio did not want to open. But Maria Claudia was right, as she always seemed to be. Shari
ng all they knew was the only way. “Then tell them,” he said.

  “I am sorry to have to say this about your sister, Salvador,” she began, “but she and Ricardo were … were … together.” She explained how Gilda reacted after her accidental disclosure.

  “It does not surprise me,” Alivia said immediately.

  “Nor me,” Salvador said, relieved to suspect someone besides Aleixo, though he could not imagine his fastidious sister getting worked up enough to inflict the wound Yotté’s head had evidently received.

  Xandra was puzzled. “If she was in love with Ricardo, why would she kill him?” She looked into her mother’s eyes; they challenged her to think again. She did. “He betrayed her.” The thought blurted right out of her mouth. She warmed to it. “He tried to cut it off. That would have made her angry enough to kill him.”

  The notion startled Salvador. Xandra was right. Gilda was accustomed to getting her own way, practically from birth. Being thwarted always enraged her. He remembered her breaking a precious glass lamp when she was only four years old because she thought her mother had been too kind to a visiting little girl of the same age.

  “Or it could have been her husband, if he knew,” Alivia said. “To defend his precious honor.”

  “That could be,” the padre said.

  “Do you mean the comandante could have killed Ricardo and yet is threatening to arrest someone else for the murder?” Maria Claudia started the sentence in disbelief, but by the time she finished it, she saw it could very well be true. “Yes, I can see he could and most likely will.”

  “It would be a good way to keep from being suspected,” Alivia added.

  “He is the law,” Salvador said with resignation.

  Maria Claudia waited and when no one spoke further, she said, “Does this mean we are going to give up?”

  “We might as well,” Salvador said.

  “No!” The priest’s voice was vehement. “Right now, though we have little chance of succeeding, we have to try to get at the truth.”

  “Tell us what we need to find out,” Xandra said

  The priest beamed at her. “Many, many things. For instance, Yotté went back and forth to the capital so often, I would not have known if he was in Santa Caterina in the days leading up to the murder. It would be good to trace his steps just before he died.”

  “Yes, and remember,” Maria Claudia said, “Señora Lynch entrusted something to Ricardo that is missing.”

  “What is it?” Xandra asked. She was frightened again. Suppose it was something a Brazilian would kill Yotté for.

  Maria Claudia held out her empty hands. “I came in in the middle of the conversation and pretended not to have heard. I could not very well have asked a question.”

  “It must have been something important,” Alivia said, “if Señora Lynch came all this way to find it.”

  “Suppose whoever killed Ricardo really wanted to take the señora’s things.” Alivia was relieved at this possibility and could see Salvador was also. It was what she had told him from the beginning. Aleixo was not the only one who could have killed Yotté.

  “What could it have been?” Xandra asked.

  “Something very valuable,” the padre said. “Menenez practically accused me of stealing it from Ricardo’s pockets when I was anointing his body.”

  “What?” Maria Claudia practically shouted. “You never said—”

  “No.” The padre ignored her. “I heard a rumor about missing documents.”

  “Documents?” Salvador asked.

  “La Lynch is very involved in running the government,” the padre offered. “It could be papers that might influence the outcome of the war.”

  “So where does this leave us?” Alivia asked.

  Salvador took her hand. “We have more questions than answers. But if Ricardo was killed for what La Lynch came here seeking, we have to find out what it was.”

  A list of missing information began forming in the priest’s mind. He held up a thumb and ticked off the first question. “Where was Yotté just before he died? The events leading up to his death must have been dramatic, considering how violent his death was.” His index finger joined his thumb. “And of course, what was it Señora Lynch gave him to keep for her?”

  “We will have to interrogate the villagers,” Salvador said.

  “But we will have to be subtle about it,” Alivia said. She knew from experience, when she was trying to find out about a sickness spreading through the town: people closed up whenever anyone asked too many questions.

  “We also need to find out who Menenez suspects,” Salvador said. He feared if it was him, his whole family would be taken, as was normal in Paraguay under López. Not only the boy, but Alivia and Xandra would be in harm’s way.

  “I will talk to Estella,” Maria Claudia said. “She will be more likely than Martita to open up.” Maria Claudia wondered how she would ever find a chance to be alone with Estella. Martita was so protective of her sister that she hardly left her side.

  “I will speak to Manuela,” Salvador offered. “She is very observant. And anyone who goes to the Yotté house has to pass her forge.”

  Alivia cut in. “You should talk to Josefina, Salvador. She trusts you. And she understands things better than Manuela. I will go to the café and see what I can glean from the women there. I will pretend to gossip with Alberta about all the—” She hesitated to complete the sentence in front of the priest.

  He smiled. “Baby making?” he offered.

  They all laughed.

  “Yes,” Alivia said. “It is a subject they are used to discussing with me. In the process I will ask other questions.”

  “What about you, Padre?” Xandra asked.

  “The padre should not be seen to be snooping around the town,” Maria Claudia said with a frown. “Especially since the comandante has already threatened him.”

  The priest’s face and voice carried the full force of his indignation. “I will do my part.”

  “Maria Claudia is right, Padre,” Salvador said. “They must not suspect you of spying. You learn a lot anyway. As long as they are not things you learn in the confessional, you can tell us what you find out.”

  The priest still looked dubious, but he did not object. He would talk to Gilda. She had told him one secret about Yotté. She might know more.

  Xandra knew she was dropping a bomb into the conversation. “I will talk to my uncle,” she said. She barely had the words out of her mouth when her parents started shouting their objections. She heard their noise but refused to take in their words. “Listen to me. Listen to me. You never want to listen to me,” she said. “I know what he thinks of me, but I can—”

  Her mother interrupted. “I doubt you do.”

  “Yes, Mother, I do. I am sorry to say this in front of you, Padre, but I see the way he looks at my backside.”

  Her parents tried to interrupt again. She crossed her arms. “Listen for once. I have always been able to see through him; when I was only four years old I knew when he was lying. If he lies, I will know immediately. And I think his—whatever you want to call it—attraction to me will convince him to talk.”

  The priest came to her support. “I think you can do this, Xandra, as long as you promise to meet him in the square, and during the day, never where you are completely alone.”

  Though it insulted her that the padre thought she did not know how to protect herself, she said, “Yes, Father,” as politely as she could. Her parents sat there looking sour.

  “One more thing,” the priest said. “We all need to search our minds and souls for any information that may bear on this.”

  They all gave him wide-eyed stares.

  “Like what, Padre?” Salvador ventured. Was the priest asking them to confess their own secrets? He and Alivia could never confess theirs.

  “Just things that may not have seemed important at the time but that may have greater significance in the light of Ricardo’s murder.”

  Sile
nce descended for a moment. Alivia broke the spell. “How much time do you think we have before the comandante makes his move?”

  The padre shrugged. “He implied he is going to do it soon, but he did not seem like a man who had made up his mind.”

  Maria Claudia looked alarmed. “Perhaps he is watching you to see whom you talk to.”

  The very idea chilled the priest’s spine.

  There was fear in all the faces around the circle.

  “Could he know where you are now, Padre?” Alivia asked.

  “We should have thought of this. I am sorry that I did not.”

  “When I talk to him, I will find out if he saw you come here,” Xandra said.

  Fear prickled the priest’s blood. “From now on, he must not see us talking together. We have to meet secretly.”

  “Where? When?” Maria Claudia asked.

  He indicated Salvador, Alivia, and Xandra. “You three can come to the rectory through the woods and the campo without being seen. Maria Claudia, you come to church often enough that he cannot suspect you.”

  She looked at him with her intense dark eyes as if she needed to defend herself for frequenting the church. “When will we next meet?”

  “When do you think?” he asked them all.

  “Tomorrow morning?” Maria Claudia suggested.

  “Not enough time,” Alivia said. “It is already late today. We need more than a couple of hours to get the information. If we seem to want it too quickly, people will think we are spies. How about the next day, over the noon hour. If I know my brother-in-law, he will not be out and about when he can be enjoying one of those sumptuous meals he eats without guilt while the rest of us starve.” She patted her empty stomach.

  “All right then,” the padre said. “We can stay out of Menenez’s way until then.”

  “Day after tomorrow,” Salvador said, “just after noon. Be careful.”

  The priest raised his hand and traced the sign of the cross in the air over their bowed heads. “God protect us all,” he said.

  “Amen,” they said in unison.