Invisible Country
Page 19
* * *
In the drowsy heat of late afternoon, Salvador left Manuela curled up in her black wool hammock. Before she fell asleep, he had whispered to her the question about the trunks and gotten her reply. He dressed and kissed her good-bye. He divided what little food he carried for the boy and left half of it for her. He would have to feed her now. Somehow, he would find enough for everyone. He went and kissed her again on her bare shoulder and left without waking her.
He followed the road, beautiful with flowers, toward the boy’s cabin. Manuela was young, her skin smooth, her limbs strong and supple. Yet there had been no lust in their coupling. Desire. Intense pleasure. Gorgeous relief. But they had also reached for something greater than the hunger of their bodies. Their longing was for new life. For him, for her too, he was sure, it felt sacramental.
The golden glow of the setting sun filtered through the leaves overhead. He summoned a ray from the bright sky to bathe her in light as he had seen one shine in a painting in the church in Caacupé. Give her a baby, he prayed more to the sun than to God. With his mind he tried to pull its bright energy down on her smooth belly. He turned to see if he could conjure such a life-giving ray from one of the puffy white clouds that sailed in the deep blue sky.
It was then that he saw Luis Menenez slip behind a tree.
14
Maria Claudia shouted, “No!” so loudly that Xandra clamped her hand over her mouth. Then Maria Claudia did what Xandra never expected her to do. She bit her finger, hard enough that she screamed. And then immediately grabbed it and kissed it and apologized. “Oh, Xandra, forgive me.” And then she said what Xandra never expected her to say, “Okay. I will do it.”
Now Xandra was the one who was afraid, but she could not show her fear. “Good,” she said with more conviction than she felt.
Since the clock in the bell tower of the church was just a face whose internal workings had long since been taken to make ammunition, there was no way for them to fix the hour when they would meet. Already the setting sun bathed the trees of the plaza in a rosy light. They agreed that after bedtime that night, Xandra would go to Maria Claudia’s house.
“We will have to wear dark clothing,” Xandra said as they parted. It was not something country girls in Paraguay ever had had much of. They wore white, made of homespun with edging they embroidered in red and black. “I will bring you something.”
Once home, Xandra had a hard time hiding her jitters while she waited for her parents to go to sleep. They had returned home separately through the forest and looked exhausted. “Where have you been?” Xandra asked them.
“Nowhere,” her father answered, but Xandra saw it was a lie. Her mother held up a bundle of grasses that looked like weeds. After they ate a thin porridge of maize and whatever herbs Alivia had gleaned from the bundle, she kissed them good night and went to wait in her hammock until she was sure they were asleep. Then she crept into her brothers’ bedroom and in the nearly total darkness felt inside the wardrobe for a pair of her brother Aleixo’s trousers and a shirt. She took an extra set of boy’s clothes for Maria Claudia, and then crept back to her room and changed. She left by her window and, tortured by the mosquitoes, made her way as swiftly as the dim moonlight would allow to Maria Claudia’s door.
Maria Claudia again surprised her by donning the trousers without argument.
“What changed your mind about doing this?” Xandra could not resist asking.
Maria Claudia paused for a moment. “It was what you said yesterday. ‘Be a person who does something.’ It woke me up, made me see that my life is sterile, that I am turning timid and dry—like an old lady.” She threaded the sash from her skirt through the loops on Aleixo’s old pants that were way too big in the waist.
Xandra’s hands went to her mouth. “Did I say that? I am sorry. Sometimes I say the meanest things.”
Maria Claudia looked at her in the candlelight. She was tying her sash around her waist with a tight knot. “I have spent my whole life praying for things, and I never had the sense to pray for something big and important—only tiny things, and even those God never sent me. If we are all going to starve to death anyway.…” Her voice trailed off, as she pulled Aleixo’s shirt over her head and posed as if she were showing off. Then she took Xandra’s hands. “I am scared to death of this, but I will force myself to do it. The only thing I am going to pray for from now on is courage.”
Xandra, who had never thought about courage at all, now prayed for it too.
They looked out of Maria Claudia’s front door to be sure that no one was about in the plaza and then, in silence, made their way to the wall of the Yotté garden. Xandra showed Maria Claudia how to entwine her fingers to boost her up to the top of the wall.
“Wait,” Maria Claudia whispered. “How will you get me up?”
“Help me get to the top of the wall. I will go in on my own.”
“No, you will not,” Maria Claudia said, as if she were in charge. “I know the inside of this house. Besides, once you have looked in Ricardo’s room for the trunks and are ready to leave, how will you get up the other side of the wall? It is as smooth and high as this side.”
Xandra let the notion sink in. “You are right. Get me to the top and then I will reach down and pull you up.”
As thin and tiny as Maria Claudia was, hoisting her was easy.
Once they were both at the top, Xandra lowered herself down the other side, scraping the skin on her arms as she let herself drop the last two feet to the ground. She stood close to the wall and tapped her right shoulder. “Reach down with your foot and put it here,” she whispered.
Maria Claudia tried, but her leg did not reach. She slipped along the wall in the process and let out a small cry. They both clamped their hands over their mouths and stood very still for a long time, praying with all their might that they had not roused anyone inside. The garden was silent except for the ceaseless trill of the cicadas. The air was damp and cold at this hour. The pale rays of the moon gave them just enough light to see the bushes and the patio table and chairs near the house. A lizard ran into the underbrush and made them almost jump out of their skins. Eventually, they got up the nerve to cross the patio and slip into the house.
Though their hearts pounded, they easily found their way through the parlor and across the hall to Ricardo’s room. The latch of his door did not click as Maria Claudia had feared it would, and the hinge did not squeak. Not until many, many days later did Maria Claudia realize the now-dead Ricardo must himself have kept his hinges oiled—since he was in the habit of letting another man’s wife silently into this room in the middle of the night.
His bedroom was large, with windows lining the wall opposite the door. The open drapes admitted enough bluish light for them to see four trunks lining the left-hand wall. Xandra went to them and felt around the lids. “I cannot see clearly, but they seem to be nailed shut,” she whispered in Maria Claudia’s ear. She ran her fingertips over them again. “They are belted with heavy leather straps. It is impossible to look inside them. We came for nothing.”
“It is not gold, as we suspected,” Maria Claudia said. “The trunks would be hidden away if they contained treasure.”
Xandra took the leather handle on the side of one trunk and hefted it. She could barely lift it an inch. It would take two strong men to move it. “Whatever it is, it weighs a lot.” She turned toward the other side of the room. “I want to find the secret hiding place,” she said.
She went to Ricardo’s big matrimonial bed that stood against the opposite wall. A thick European carpet lay under it.
“Xandra!” Maria Claudia’s whisper was soft but urgent. “We have seen the trunks. We have to go before someone hears us.”
“One minute. Just one minute.” Xandra knelt and put her hand under the carpet. Her fingertips found a depression in the wood floor with a metal ring nestled in it. “There is a hiding place,” she whispered over her shoulder.
“Come away, now!”
“Are you crazy?” Maria Claudia’s voice shook. “What do you hope to find? The trunks are over there. They are locked, and we cannot open them. Terminado.”
“I am just curious. Come on. We are here. We might as well find out.”
“You are crazy,” Maria Claudia said, but she got down on her hands and knees.
Xandra grasped the underside of the footboard and gave every ounce of her strength to lift the heavy bed and hold it, while Maria Claudia rolled back the rug.
Once the rug was out of the way, Xandra let the heavy bed down easy, got down on her stomach, and reached under to lift the trapdoor as high as the small space under the bed would allow. These hinges did squeal. Xandra held her breath a second and then reached and felt around the hole she had revealed. The space was almost as wide as the bed. Her fingertips discovered another trunk and another. She wriggled further until her head and shoulders were under the trapdoor. She reached in as far as she could. Four. There were four more trunks secreted under the bed. She tried to lift the one nearest her by its handle. It did not budge.
“We have to get out of here. Now!” Maria Claudia’s voice carried a note of hysteria. She went to the window that looked onto the interior patio of the house. Silently she returned. “Now, Xandra.”
“Yes. Yes.” The door squealed again when she let it close.
They rolled the rug back into place, left everything as they had found it, and slipped quickly across the patio to the wall where they had dropped into the garden. Xandra turned to Maria Claudia. “Boost me up,” she whispered into her ear.
“Wait,” Maria Claudia’s voice was as quiet as the rustle of a breeze through the leaves of the orange tree overhead. She pulled Xandra back into the dark corner behind the tree and held her hand in a crushing grip.
Across the garden, on the opposite side from Ricardo’s bedroom, they saw the glow of a candle and two ghostly figures in white.
Their hearts thudding, they flattened themselves against the dark wall and hardly dared breathe.
“I heard something. I know I did.” It was Estella’s voice, petulant and insisting.
The shorter of the two—Martita—raised the candle over her head. “Look. Do you see anything?” She turned with the candle this way and that, making a small circle of light at the edge of the garden near the entrance to the parlor. “Nothing,” she said with disdain. “No Plata Yvyguy. No headless dog digging up the garden looking for buried treasure.” She lowered the candle.
Estella wrapped her shawl around herself. “I know I heard something.”
Martita turned and moved toward the doorway. “You were dreaming.”
“I was not asleep.”
“We have to rest,” Martita said in a loud insistent voice. “We have a lot to do tomorrow.” She turned and carried the candle back into the house. Estella followed her.
Xandra held Maria Claudia’s hand tight until the candlelight disappeared. They waited another hundred beats of her heart. Only then did they dare to move.
When they were safely over the wall, Maria Claudia laughed softly and hugged Xandra. “That was wonderful,” Maria Claudia said.
“I was scared to death,” Xandra said.
Maria Claudia was still laughing under her breath. “For the first time in my life, I enjoyed being invisible.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Xandra asked.
“Nothing.” Maria Claudia hugged her again.
“There are eight trunks,” Xandra said quizzically.
“Maybe the others are just some old trunks the Yotté family has had all along.”
“Hidden like that? I doubt it. And they were full of something really heavy. Whatever it is, it is important.”
* * *
The next morning, Alivia sipped maté and wondered why her husband and her daughter slept so late. She rose and went to the cool springhouse where they used to store quantities of food, when they had quantities of food. Now she had only a few eggs saved over the last several days. She took two. Salvador needed something to restore him and Xandra, if Alivia was right, would need extra food to grow a healthy child. As she walked back to the hearth, a light rain started to fall. It was what they had been waiting for—the water that would start the crop of corn. Their last harvest had been meager because she and Xandra were able to till only about an acre on their own with no ox to pull the plow. The army had taken all the oxen. For nothing, Salvador had told her, since they all died trying to pull cannons and heavy pallets of shot through brush and mud for miles on end, while the women, starving as they were, had to be the oxen on the farms.
Alivia made the usual porridge with some of their small supply of cornmeal. When Salvador finally emerged from bed, looking more rested than he had in years, she cracked one of the eggs into the center of a bowl of hot cornmeal mush, and served it to him with a few grains of precious salt. He gave her a quizzical look. “To what do I owe the honor of this feast?”
She touched his tousled hair. “It is going to be a rainy day—a day to stay indoors and recoup your strength.”
He searched her eyes for more meaning than she had intended, but then he savored his breakfast slowly and wiped the bowl clean with his forefinger, licking up every bit. Lightning flashed. The first thick drops of the storm hammered the broad leaves of the rubber plants outside the window. Alivia closed the shutters, but the drumming of rain still filled the air.
While he ate, Xandra came in, full of energy. She wolfed down her special breakfast, thanked her mother with a kiss, and insisted, despite the weather, that she had to go out and care for the horse. Their discouraging words, meant to hold her, just chased her toward the door and trailed after her as she drew a poncho over her head and sped off into what was now a full downpour. That horse, Alivia thought, had something to do with Xandra’s lover. But she did not care what. She cared only that her daughter had found someone.
She stood next to the table where Salvador sat and held herself still, hoping with her whole body for his love. In the past, on days like this, if the children were at school and the farmhands all snuggled in their cottages, they would go back to bed and make love slowly to the sound of rain on the roof tiles. Though she could not bring herself to ask for it, she wanted that today, just him as he had always been.
He stood up slowly and walked without his cane the few steps to the tall, dark wood cupboard where they kept the crockery. He reached up to the top and took down his guitar that he had not touched for years. He brought the instrument back to his chair and sat with it across his lap. He took the tail of his white homespun shirt and dusted the guitar. Watching behind him, seeing his broad back as he hunched over the guitar, hearing his voice as he hummed the notes to tune it brought a lump of joy to her throat and anticipation to her loins. This house used to be filled with music, as every house was. And dancing. Paraguay was a country of music makers. Yet it had been years since any of them had heard a song except in church—where they sang with all their hearts to God, who did not hear their pleas to end their punishment. She wanted Salvador’s music and then she wanted him.
He cleared his throat, struck a chord, and tapped his foot to a gentle beat. He began to sing. His once-clear, almost angelic tenor voice rasped as if it was rusty, but his notes were true. He sang “Navidad,” a Christmas hymn. Its melody had always sounded like a love song, and it thrilled her to think he sang because they had broken the dam of his love, and it would flow now like the notes of the song. Her heart sang too, swelling with love for him.
“José! Maria! La luna clara,” he sang. “Venga pastores del campo,” calling for the shepherds to come witness the birth. The longing in his voice went right up her spine.
Then suddenly her tears of joy turned hot. She saw it. This was not about his love for her. He sang about the birth of a baby. This was the Salvador who loved no
thing better than making babies with her. And now? Now? What if this song was about a child of his? It must be that.
A dark pain seared into her throat that had been filled with love a moment before. She put her hands over her ears to block out the passion and beauty of his singing and ran silently from the room to the bedroom where her sons had slept and threw herself on Mariano’s narrow cot. She clamped her hand over her mouth to keep in the wailing that made her chest feel as if it would explode. Her body convulsed with the anguish of her lost babies, her damaged, perhaps irreparable Aleixo, her own lost fertility. Salvador sang for his baby, but no baby of his could ever again be hers.
Her heart blackened. Pictures of him making love to Manuela seared into her mind. She did not want to deny him the right to have another son, strong and whole. But she could not banish the poisonous jealousy that had entered her heart. He is mine, she thought, I want him to be only mine. Outside, the storm, straining toward its full force, whipped the vines that grew on the walls of the house and beat them against the shutters.
After a while the music stopped, and the thump of his cane went to the front door. Out to brave the muddy roads. Toward that woman. She always knew it would be Manuela. He liked his women strong. Alivia bit hard on her knuckles, but she could not make them hurt enough to blot out the searing agony in her heart.
* * *
By the time Salvador arrived at the priest’s house, he was soaked through his poncho and his shirt. He rapped his cane on the door rather than pulling the cord for the bell. He had come to prepare himself to die, to confess the truth about himself before he did.
The padre looked haggard when he opened the door. Salvador had heard of religious people whipping themselves with chains to punish themselves for their sins. Salvador could not imagine this lively priest doing such a thing, but the padre’s eyes betrayed suffering from within.
He brought Salvador to his sitting room. Its few pieces of simple furniture were of beautiful orangewood, rosewood, or cedar. A harp and a guitar stood in one corner. The padre had the only house in the village, except for the comandante and Gilda’s, that had pictures on the walls. They had Francisco Solano López, who looked like the pig he was, and that beautiful La Lynch, who was not the dictator’s wife. The priest had San Ignacio and Santiago.