Invisible Country

by Annamaria Alfieri

  She did not know what possessed her: She took a mouthful of water and spit it in his direction. “You cannot scare me,” she said. Even if he did.

  “Come out. Gaspár said you wanted to talk to me. I guessed it was about getting yourself with child. I will be pleased to help you with that.”

  She laughed. And as soon as she did, she knew it was a mistake.

  He got off the horse and strode to the edge of the stream. He held up his riding crop as if he meant to flog her with it, though he could not reach her from where he was. He would never come in wearing those precious boots he was so proud of. “You cannot stay in there forever.” His tone was seductive, but his glance was cold and severe.

  She felt like telling him that he was too late to father her child, but she knew what she must do instead. “See that towel hanging from the tree beside you?” she said sweetly. “Put it down beside the water and turn your back, please.” She kept her tone polite as her father always begged her to do with this pig of an uncle.

  He smiled, easily beguiled, and did as she asked. Clearly, he considered himself irresistible. He stood with his back to her, tapping his riding crop in the palm of his left hand.

  She leapt for the towel, slipping on the muddy bottom and getting her clean legs all dirty again. She wrapped the towel around her. It covered her from her neck to knees. “Okay, Uncle,” she said sweetly.

  He turned and looked her up and down and took a step toward her. “Now, querida,” he said. “Where shall we begin?”

  “I came looking for you, Uncle, because I would like to know what you have found out about who killed Ricardo Yotté.”

  He looked at her with astonishment. “Well, I wanted to speak with you about that too. But given your current state of undress, perhaps we should begin with first things first.”

  She pulled the towel tighter and pretended to ignore his disgusting offer. “Ricardo’s sisters are friends of mine, Uncle. They have been so sad since he died. We all want to know what happened.”

  “Stop calling me uncle,” he said. “What do you mean all of you?”

  “Uh … just Martita and Estella and me. Everyone must be curious, Uncle.”

  “I told you to stop calling me that. What have your friends said about how their brother died?”

  Feigning nervous jitters, she was taking tiny steps, causing him to turn and putting herself between him and the horse. “He came home in the middle of the night. He does not seem to have come on his horse. Perhaps Señora Lynch sent him in her landau. What do you think?” She felt caught between wanting to inveigle him into revealing information and the pit of her stomach urging her to escape.

  “All very interesting,” he said, taking a step closer. “Did they say what Señora Lynch was looking for when she came to visit?”

  She hugged her towel closer. “No. Do you know? What is señora trying to get back?”

  “That is not your business.” He reached out and grabbed the towel.

  She slipped out of it and with one bound reached the horse, gripped the saddle, launched herself on to his back, and kicked his sides. The horse charged forward.

  The comandante shouted, “Halt, Marengo!” but unlike César when her father commanded him, Menenez’s horse kept going. Even a horse understood that Luis Menenez was not the man her father was.

  * * *

  When Salvador heard the horse coming, he looked out across the campo and seeing Xandra’s black hair streaming behind her thought she had lost her mind bringing César here. Then he realized she was naked and riding Menenez’s stallion.

  He snatched up his cane and did his hobbling best to rush to her. She rode straight for him. When she reined in, the horse reared and she slid off into his arms. “Querida, what—?” He was breathless. He had not moved that fast in months.

  She held him tight and then did the last thing he expected: she laughed.

  Her mother came running from the house, and soon they were all laughing, though Salvador did not know why.

  “What happened?” he demanded.

  “Why are you naked?” Alivia asked.

  “I was bathing when he came to find me.” She stood there like Venus in a painting. He thought he should avert his eyes, but she was so natural and unself-conscious, she seemed not a woman but part of the loveliness of nature—like the flowers or a beautiful tree.

  Her mother kissed her. “Go and dress yourself,” she said gently.

  Xandra ran, her hair dancing behind her. She could be Caagüy Pora, the fierce, protective goddess of the forest, he thought. When she had gone, Alivia looked him in the eye, saying more with silence than if she had harangued him.

  He put his good foot in the stirrup and pulled himself up onto the horse from the right side. “I will get her things and bring that bastard back his animal.” He trotted off, and though he started out full of gall against Menenez, he soon succumbed to the joy of motion astride the beautiful horse. He had not allowed himself this pleasure with César. He had gone to see him just once, when he followed the weeping Xandra down into the arroyo, a place too difficult for a man with a cane. Now he tasted hope. If they outlived this war, Salvador León would ride again, go everywhere, like a comet streaking through the forest, be a centaur. That was what the Indians had thought his Spanish ancestors were when they first saw the Conquistadores astride their steeds. They, who had never seen a man riding a horse, thought they saw one being. He would become that when they were free at last of this terrible war. Salvador the centaur. If they were ever free again.

  He rode faster and faster until he found his brother-in-law walking away from the place where he had accosted his own niece. Menenez turned and watched him approach. Salvador then realized he would have to get off the horse and did not have his cane. He would be a cripple again.

  He slid down and landed on his good foot, nearly losing his balance as Menenez grabbed the reins and pulled the horse away. He looked with disdain at Salvador’s wooden foot.

  Salvador wanted to take him by the neck and threaten to kill him if he came near Xandra again. But he knew without thinking it through he would be a dead man if he did. He had betrayed his own soul in the war and had wanted to die but could not. Now, inexplicably, he wanted to live, weakling that he knew himself to be. “I am sorry, Luis,” he said in an even voice. “My daughter took it into her head that you meant her harm. I myself cannot imagine that you would risk such a thing. I know my sister and would not want to deal with her if she found out you were sniffing around her niece.”

  In the hot light filtering through the trees, they looked into each other’s eyes. Salvador saw Menenez’s hatred, and knew his own glance communicated too much irony and insufficient fear. Fear was the only emotion Menenez really understood: his own fear and the fear he created in others. Salvador thought he should cower. But he could not.

  “I will deal with you another time,” the comandante said. He mounted his horse and rode away without looking back. Salvador looked around for a stick he could lean on and found nothing. He turned toward home, hobbling without support, pained more that he had not thrashed the comandante to within an inch of his life.

  He had hardly taken twenty steps when he saw Alivia bringing him his cane. He held her to him and kissed her with passion. “I am a coward,” he said.

  “That is absurd.”

  He could have told her how much of a coward, but he did not. He put his free arm around her shoulders as they walked.

  “I think Xandra is pregnant.”

  He stopped and looked at her. “By whom?” he demanded.

  She shrugged.

  “Not that bastard Menenez?’

  “No. What just occurred would not have if he was the one.”

  “Then who?” He could not imagine.

  They walked on, arm in arm.

  “I do not care,” Alivia said. ‘I hope she is.” And then after another minute, “I hope she is.”

  * * *

  The comandante returned to his of
fice and wished for a squadron such as he had had when Francisco Solano first succeeded his father. In those days, this one-room adobe station had been the command center for the zone. Guardsmen under Menenez’s direction brought in recalcitrants and slackers. Now the comandante alone had to carry out López’s orders.

  He beat his riding crop against the side of his trousers. The slaps became harder when he saw his wife approaching. She had something up her sleeve. Her smart-aleck brother had threatened to tell her about the stupid incident with her niece. As if that little bitch was not asking for it. His best possible course would be to take Salvador for Yotté’s murder. But he still had to find those missing items.

  His wife crossed the threshold. He turned up the corners of his mouth and greeted her. “What brings you to my humble office, my dear?”

  She put her tiny hand in his and smiled. “I had a thought about where you might find those missing papers.”

  “Really?”

  “I just recalled—once, at tea with Señora Lynch, Ricardo recounted how clever people were in creating hiding places for the valuables he was supposed to confiscate.”

  “Yes. Yes, I know about his war on the jewelry boxes. Get to the point.”

  She looked as if she might stop speaking, but then she said, “Ricardo mentioned that he had built a cache under the carpet beneath his bed. Perhaps—”

  Suddenly, a black-clad rider on a galloping stallion charged up to the door and held out a paper. Menenez hurried to take the message. The rider did not descend but handed the comandante a thick envelope, and sped away in the direction from which he had come.

  As with the previous letter, the comandante’s name was written in the mariscal’s own dangerous hand. Feigning complete calm, Luis Menenez tore open the message. His heart sank. His wife had finally offered useful information, but the mariscal’s new orders forced him to postpone taking action on what she said. Menenez was being called immediately to the capital.

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, Luis Menenez impatiently watched his wife carefully fold his best shirt and cravat and place them in the dark brown leather saddlebag she had bought him in a fashionable shop in Buenos Aires on their honeymoon. “Hurry, Gilda,” he said. “I have no time to waste. The mariscal said I must be there by dawn. Given what the roads are like, riding at night, I will hardly find my way. If there is a storm I will be dead.”

  Gilda’s hands continued their deliberate movements. “You have to take your razor and soap and a mirror, so you can shave before you meet them. You must present yourself well.”

  He turned his back. “Ridiculous. They have made camp in the hills up in Peribebuy. They will not expect me to look, at six in the morning, as if I am going to a ball. You are holding me up with this nonsense.”

  She went to his shaving stand and wrapped his shaving things in a linen towel. “Señora Lynch will notice if you are not well-groomed. She puts great store in such things.”

  “The note said to present myself to the mariscal.”

  Gilda stuffed the shaving things into a bag and buckled it closed. “She is always involved. You know that.”

  He agreed but refused to say he feared the Irish trollop. “The command said nothing about la Parisienne.” He warmed to a lovely idea. “La Lynch may be losing her hold on him. In the past, she could protect her countrymen from his wrath, but lately the British war experts have been thrown into prison along with everyone else López mistrusts. This may be a private meeting to enlist my help, if he suspects her. Suppose she gave Ricardo something she intends to use against the mariscal to save her own skin? López may want me to find out exactly how she is betraying him.”

  His wife looked at him wide-eyed. “Could this be?”

  “Yes. Now let me get out of here.”

  She thrust his saddlebag at him. “That must be why he wants you to arrive at such a strange hour.”

  “He wants to speak to me in secret.” He took the bag and strode to the front door. Convinced he was taking a giant step toward his destiny, he strapped the saddlebag to his horse, and made for the north in the waning light of the day.

  * * *

  At ten forty-five the next morning, Comandante Menenez was finally ushered into López’s presence. He had arrived, as ordered, before dawn and was left to wait in torment for nearly five hours—during which time he could do nothing but sweat and fail to keep up his hopes. He began his watch freshly shaven and wearing his best shirt and cravat, but by the time he was called, his trousers were rumpled and his armpits soaked. He approached a white tent pitched in a green glen on the edge of a beautiful wood, full of blooming trees and vines. The scene would have been festive—like the celebration of some charming outdoor ritual to welcome the spring—if it were not for the moaning of miserable, wounded men coming from just beyond the trees, where more than ten thousand of López’s ragtag army and his more numerous prisoners were packed into a small town defended only by a single trench incapable of keeping out a family of peccaries, much less the Brazilian army.

  Inside the tent, where the laments of the dying could no longer be heard, the outraged comandante found López and his party sitting at a long table covered with snow-white linen, strewn with the remains of a sumptuous breakfast. Their plates had been pushed aside still half ful of eggs and ham. Their high-backed chairs were arranged on the opposite side of the table facing the entrance, as if they were presiding over a gala banquet in their honor. The comandante, who had been offered nothing to eat or drink during his long, anxious morning, bowed to the dictator and his Irish whore who held the mariscal’s hand and smiled with her perfect teeth. Worse yet, beside her simpered that womanish Hungarian count, if he actually was the nobleman he claimed to be. He certainly dressed the part.

  Menenez hid the hatred and despair La Lynch’s presence engendered. “Good morning, Señor Mariscal, Señora.” He bowed to each of them. “And to you Señor von Wisner. I hope I find you all in best of health.” When the comandante raised his head, López was consulting his gold pocket watch and tapping the toe of his spotless patent leather boot, as if he had been the one kept waiting. Never an imposing figure, he had grown so fat, his skin so gray that it would be hard to take him seriously, but for the burning threat in his small, dark eyes and the certain knowledge that he could condemn anyone in the country to torment and death with a wave of his chubby fingers.

  “We are grateful to you for making the long journey,” the trollop said. “Your mariscal has something most important to impart to you. Something so confidential he could not entrust it to a messenger.” While she spoke she looked at López expectantly.

  Luis could not help but eye von Wisner. Why was he to hear this secret information?

  López followed Menenez’s gaze and raised an eyebrow but did not ask the foreigner to leave. “About the unfortunate death of our dear Ricardo,” he said and then picked something from between his front teeth with the nail of his little finger.

  The comandante straightened his spine. “I am giving the investigation my full attention,” he said. The smirk on von Wisner’s face made him want to kill the man.

  “That is just our concern,” López said with a knowing look to La Lynch. “We wish to alter the direction of your inquiries.”

  “Alter?” Menenez worked to keep any hint of annoyance out of his voice “I assure you, my mariscal, you can count on me completely. There is noth—”

  “Yes. Yes.” López’s tone hid none of his impatience. His thick sausage fingers stroked his heavy black beard. “We have decided to forego your search for the missing government items, and we wish you to leave Ricardo’s distressed sisters completely out of your investigation. Do not disturb them in any way. Señora Lynch wishes to protect them from further pain. You must find Ricardo’s murderer with dispatch but without bothering his sisters. Do you understand?”

  The comandante understood the words but puzzlement plagued his heart. Recovering La Lynch’s missing valuables had been their pr
imary objective. They were dropping the most important part of the investigation. “Yes, of course. Those lovely girls have suffered mightily. I, in fact, just the other day, sent my wife to bring them some of our very best food—to alleviate their pain as best we can.”

  La Lynch’s alabaster hand tightened over the back of López’s fat, hairy fist. “You are not understanding me, Menenez,” López said, his voice cold and harsh. “I forbid you any contact whatsoever with those girls. And that goes for Señora Menenez as well. On pain of our deepest displeasure. Is this clear?”

  The comandante bowed low again, holding his body stiff so they would not see him quake. “I understand completely,” he said as firmly as he could.

  “Continue your search for Yotté’s killer. Bring him to me as soon as is humanly possible.”

  As Luis Menenez backed away, López looked him in the eye. “We will be aware if you do not comply.” This was the best the comandante might expect by way of a farewell from the dictator.

  La Lynch waved at him with that small hand that had held the mariscal’s throughout the interview. “Thank you for coming,” she said, as if to a guest leaving a garden party.

  Luis Menenez backed through the tent flap held open by a man in a waiter’s uniform, and forced himself to stride confidently across to the tree where he had left his horse. He mounted the beast and turned him south at a gallop.

  This was a catastrophe. What was López playing at now? He no longer trusted his comandante, who had never wavered in his support. Under the blazing noon sun, he rode the long distance to Santa Caterina, unable to force aside the insult of having gone such a long way to hear such frustrating orders. That Irish woman was up to something, but he could not think what. Clearly, if López did not want him to look for the documents, they had already been found, probably in the hiding place Gilda remembered too late. With their valuables back in their possession, what did López and Lynch care about Yotté’s silly sisters?

  The clopping of the horse’s hooves on the road beat in his brain. He came to only one clear conclusion: following his orders was his only hope. There was only one person whose arrest could profit him. He could only hope in the process he might get the goods on La Lynch.