No Place for Heroes

by Laura Restrepo

  “You mean you ordered pork loin with pineapple for you,” Mateo said, emphasizing the “for you.”

  “For both of us, you’re going to love it. My papa loved it. What a pleasure it will be to eat the same dish he always ordered when we used to come here.”

  “But you know I hate pineapple and pork gives me a stomachache.” Mateo’s disappointment seemed unfathomable.

  “No, no, you’ll like this dish, I promise. As soon as you taste it you’ll agree, just see.”

  “Don’t do that, Mother. I wanted to order something else. When are you going to stop making decisions for me?” The radiant expression had completely disappeared and his confident air had evaporated. He sunk in his chair and began to anxiously twirl a loose lock, forgetting about the great care with which he had fixed his hair. Lorenza tried to apologize but immediately realized that it was too late, that no one could break through the absorbed silence that had overtaken her son. No one except the waiter, who approached the table to hand them the menus again because they had sold out of pork loin.

  “Everything else is available,” he offered. “But we’re out of that.”

  “Thank God,” Lorenza said, and asked for a ham and cheese sandwich, a salad, and tea. Mateo took the menu disinterestedly, but sat up in his chair. He grew more cheerful as he read through the list of pastas, and after considering all the choices, he decided on fettuccine alla panna, which he devoured as soon as they put it in front of him and which quickly restored his spirits.

  “So you came here with your papa?” he said, suggesting to his mother that he was ready to consider a truce. “Did you ever come with Forcás?”

  “We wouldn’t have been able to afford it. Besides, the resistance had once attacked this restaurant. They set off a bomb and it was closed for some time.”

  “Stop, stop, I didn’t ask you for stories about attacks or wars. What I wanted you to tell me is how you ended up in Buenos Aires the time you met Ramón.”

  “Life works in mysterious ways.”

  “Ah, no, I’m falling asleep already. Can you please not start with such a cliché?”

  “You know what, Mateo? I don’t want to talk to you anymore. I was wrong to order the pork, all right, but stop being so rude.”

  “Oh, come on, don’t get mad.”

  “Then stop being such a pain in the butt.”

  “Fine, I’ll stop.”

  “This is the thing, if you’ll listen, you can learn. You’ve come here searching for your father, and years ago I too came here trying to find mine.”

  “But your father lived in Bogotá. And wasn’t he already dead?”

  “He had just died, a few days before.”

  “So?”

  “So I had to go looking for him. We all do it, go searching for our dead.”

  “You wouldn’t cry when he died. You’ve told me that.”

  “They say that a death that truly matters to you never makes you cry, instead it defeats you,” she told him, and then asked if he wanted some of her salad. He shook his head, but she insisted. When she tried to put a few lettuce leaves on his plate, he grabbed her by the hand and glared at her, enraged.

  “Again with this, Mother?”

  It was their old war about food, in which they had been engaged for a long time, forever, it seemed. And what she felt at that moment was, in some ways, also rage. It unsettled her that her son refused to eat fruits and vegetables. She felt infuriated, worried, and confused, not understanding how he could feel such an aversion for any food that had more than one color or texture, that strayed too far from the primary flavors.

  This predilection for white and soft food, milk, bread, vanilla ice cream, pasta, seemed to her to go against all instincts of survival, decency even, as if he feared bringing anything dark, unfamiliar, or surprising to his mouth, as if his innards only tolerated those first foods from the age before fear set in, the childish pap and puddings that he seemed to yearn for still.

  “So what’s the story with that, the fact that you couldn’t cry for your own father?” he asked, his tone suddenly calm and seeking a quick cease-fire.

  “It’s not a story, I’m allergic to tears. They burn my skin. They’re salty water, after all.”

  “Maybe your personality is shaped a little too much by that allergy.”

  “Perhaps. Those who can cry don’t flee in the face of some sorrow, they stay put and weep until they learn to tame the tears.”

  “And you, on the other hand, fled instead of going to your own father’s funeral. But I’m not sure I buy this whole tears thing. Tell me why you weren’t there, if you loved him so much. Because instead of taking a return flight to Bogotá to bury him, you took another flight, one that brought you to Buenos Aires.”

  “One morning in Madrid, the phone woke me with the news of Papaíto’s death, a massive coronary, his heart had burst into a thousand pieces. I hung up, got up, bathed, dressed, took the train, went into the party’s office in Virgen de los Peligros, near the Puerta del Sol, and told them I was ready to fly to Argentina.”

  “You mean you didn’t even tell them your father had just died?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Think of the party as a mosque, and your feelings and all the other personal stuff as your shoes. Before you enter the mosque you take your shoes off. When Papaíto died, I didn’t tell anyone, and a few days later, I was on a plane to Buenos Aires.”

  “This is bizarre, Lorenza, very very bizarre. You need to explain it to me.”

  “I will, but let me finish my tea in peace first. You know how I love to drink my tea … in peace.”

  There was a brief silence.

  “Ready now?”

  “Here goes. Every single day since I had left my parents’ home, I dreamed about returning. I was doing my duty in Madrid, basically performing supporting tasks for the Argentinean resistance from the outside. I lived my life, followed my passion, worked like crazy. It was fine. Let’s just say that I thought I was fulfilling my destiny, or that thing that we each call our destiny, and who knows what it truly is, or why we insist it’s got to be one thing and not another. We say ‘my true destiny’ with such conviction that who knows where it comes from, but it is the crazy cow that we jump on.”

  She had felt she was fulfilling her destiny, yet deep down what she wanted was to go back home. But she never did it; so perhaps she both wanted to and didn’t want to. Although she would have liked it to be different, the truth was that she missed her father too much and every day she told herself the same thing, today I won’t go back, but tomorrow I will, this week I can’t, but next week I’m out, I can’t take it anymore, I’ll stay for the summer, but by fall I’ll be there, back with my people. And so time passed, and she continued to postpone her return, month after month, year after year. When her father died, a return was no longer possible for her. She had always been able to return to her mother and sister, and in fact often did, but the reunion with her father remained pending. To return for his burial would have been dreadful, that wasn’t the kind of return that she had wanted, she would not have been able to get through it.

  “I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told you,” she said. “It’s about my father, a little story about Papaíto. It’s about a present that he sent to me in Madrid a few days before he died. It was a dress that he must have sewn himself at his tailor shop, death looking over his shoulder, although he must not have suspected that, because he was relatively young and the heart attack hit him without warning.

  “I never got that parting gift of his. The news of his death arrived first and I took off for Argentina. Months later, I found out through the comrades in Madrid that it had arrived, but I never saw it. I never knew what color it was, or if it came with a letter, or what that letter said. And do you know how much that dress eats at me, Mateo? For years that memory has been seared in me, and it still hurts to think about it.”

  THE INCIDENT WITH the pork loin with pin
eapple had been a replay of a much earlier one, with mango. The same story repeating itself. Mateo must have been eight or nine years old and Lorenza wanted him to eat a mango, whether he wanted to or not. There were things that his mother did not understand: for one that his problem wasn’t with fruits and vegetables but with Lorenza herself, especially when she tried to force him to eat fruits and vegetables. He considered himself a tolerant person. If she wanted to eat mangoes, many mangoes, a dozen mangoes, then so be it, he wasn’t going to stop her. She could eat a carrot if she felt like it, or a tomato, or spinach, or bite into a raw onion for all he cared. He was a tolerant person. As opposed to Lorenza, who was obsessed with putting whatever atrocious thing that came out of the earth, or the sea, in his mouth. She tried to stuff him with mollusks and squids and other things with claws and spines, animals that God created to live secretly in the depths of the sea, where whatever they might do, they were out of sight. In the great darkness of the ocean is where they belonged, not in his stomach. But she insisted that they would nourish him and make him stronger, and for the life of her, swore they were delicious. Just taste them, she pronounced in a false and honeyed tone. She was a sadist with food. She knew that Mateo would not want to taste anything that came from her plate, or even her fork, but she never relented. You don’t know what you’re missing, she said, lustily putting a bite into her mouth. When he heard her saying have a taste, Mateo, or worse, have a taste, my child, his tolerance plunged to nearly zero. First of all, he wasn’t a child, damn it, so when was she going to stop calling him that? And he felt like retching and spitting as if he were possessed. But she persisted, her tolerance reserved only for her political views. She always pronounced that word in an affected tone, like, “The government should be tolerant of the opposition.” Couldn’t she understand that tolerance also meant not becoming hysterical because Mateo was repulsed by some green tuber or some rotten cheese? It’s a French cheese, she would say, as if that would win him over. And it’s delicious, a word that soon became hateful to him because she so often repeated it while brandishing a fork. Was he exaggerating? No, it wasn’t an exaggeration, the scenes were grotesque, but Lorenza was wholly unaware, she could not look at herself objectively, making those endless speeches and creating such a circus around their meals. From the time he was very young, Mateo closed his eyes, opened his mouth, and chewed. Sometimes he cried and regurgitated a bit, but without opening his mouth so she would not get mad, and then he swallowed that sour filth. Three more little bites, she then said sweetly. But he was older now and he could not stand her “it’s delicious” looks anymore; he wanted to slug her in the face. Of course he wouldn’t do that. He would never hit Lorenza, but it would be good for her to know that sometimes he wanted to.

  Many times before, he had given in and accepted anything just so that she’d remain calm and happy. And she had taken full advantage of this, like the time with the mango. She proclaimed that a mango was joy itself, the passion of the tropics, the fruit of paradise, or something in that vein. But Mateo did not open his mouth, not even when she speared his lips with the end of the fork. It’s true, she had tried to spear his mouth open, but not even then did he open his mouth, he was not going to have a second bite, not on his life, or hers. He had spit out the first one as soon as he felt the uneven and fibrous texture of that repulsive bright-orange fruit inside his mouth, something not uniform and which therefore could not be trusted. Lorenza warned him, if you don’t have some fiber, your stomach will suffer. And he wanted to scream back, what’s making my stomach suffer is that poison you’re trying to stuff into me. But they had each gone too far to go back, it was life or death now, mango or catastrophe. Zero tolerance, Mateo sought refuge under the table, feeling that his mother would rather see him dead—choking with a piece of mango lodged in his throat—than accept defeat. Lorenza got down on all fours, closing in on him with a fork in her hand, like a demon with its trident, making him feel like an idiot for not eating a mango—especially since later, at school, he found that almost no kids like mango, so that when it came down to it, he wasn’t that unusual.

  The weird thing was that she would lose control of herself in such a fashion, how her brain would shut down when she grew angry, so she couldn’t think straight. Guadalupe had saved him that time with the mango. She had walked in on the scene and screamed, “Both of you, stop.” And her admonition had its effect. In their household, Guadalupe was the head of the sensible and communicative faction and Lorenza of the delirious faction, and more than once Guadalupe had saved him from Lorenza. There were many times when Mateo liked his mother’s nature, that frenzied manner in which she accomplished things. But when she overdid it, it was a nightmare, and for the most part, she overdid it with him. As far as he was concerned, her best side came out when she sat down to write because she’d remain still for hours, forgetting that he had to eat right. Mateo took advantage of those lulls to eat spaghetti and drink milk, spaghetti and milk. And since he was at peace, he’d sneak into the kitchen and perhaps taste a grape, without her knowing, of course. Because if she were ever to find out, she would be so thrilled that she would want to celebrate the eaten grape and then begin an educative campaign, buying grapes by the bunches, forcing the issue until Mateo realized that they were delicious and ate them one after another.

  He enjoyed the time when she was writing because he knew he wouldn’t have to go chasing after her if she decided to travel on a whim, make sudden decisions, or take up new political causes and leave everything else to go to hell, for the sole reason that she was Lolé and Lolé did whatever the fuck she wanted. Hadn’t Mateo noticed the murderous fury in her eyes when he refused to eat something? Now that he was tall and robust, no one could force him to do anything, and even if he didn’t lift a finger against her, she glared at him as if he were a monstrous abuser of mothers.

  When they reminisced about the incident with the mango, Lorenza laughed because she thought it was funny, and maybe Mateo even joined her in her jubilance, but not in earnest, because deep down he hated her for it. And now to the mango incident he could add the incident with the pork and pineapple, which he would likewise never forget. Never. Have a taste, child, I beg you, a little taste. No, Lorenza. That was it. From that moment on, Mateo would never again taste anything she offered. He just didn’t have to anymore.

  GET USED TO not going around asking about what doesn’t concern you, her comrades had warned her in Madrid on the eve of her departure for Buenos Aires, where she went after the death of her father. This was their response when she had asked why Forcás was called Forcás, a nickname that made her recall that strange poem by Rubén Darío, “Forcás from the Country.” This Argentinean Forcás was one of the leaders of the party inside Argentina itself, a being of mythical proportions—that is, for those who supported the resistance from the outside. Since they didn’t know him personally, they considered him a legend: after all, he was the secretary of the organization, the one who controlled the strings for the whole clandestine operation. Secret printing presses, movement of money, safe houses, placement of directors, lists of sympathizers, the forging of passports and other documents so that fugitives could sneak out of the country—all this depended on him. In Madrid they knew him well because they often collaborated with him on things that could only be done from the outside.

  “Should we get an ice cream?”

  “Maybe some caramel flan instead.”

  Many Argentineans had sought exile in Madrid and collaborated from there, and comrades from other countries had joined them. She was one of them. They made denouncements, raised funds, and coordinated campaigns all over Europe, hoping to find those who had disappeared still alive somewhere. But the dream that some of them most truly longed for was to return some day to Argentina to join the proper resistance against the dictatorship from the inside.

  “We thought we had to lay it all on the line.”

  “What line?”

  “It’s just another expression
, I guess that’s how we put it.”

  “We thought? We put it? Why are you speaking in the plural as if you were a crowd? Like the devil in The Exorcist, who gives me the chills when he says, ‘I am not one, but legions.’ So tell me, why did they call Ramón Forcás?”

  “That’s just what I had asked in Madrid, and since they told me that they had no idea, I recited what I remembered from the Darío poem.”

  “They called Ramón Forcás because his parents were from the country. Pierre and Noëlle. My grandfather Pierre, my grandmother Noëlle. Pierre Iribarren, Noëlle Darretain. Lolé, do you think Grandma Noëlle loved me?”

  “She loved you very much, you were her only grandson. When you were a baby, we dressed you in clothes she knitted for you, wool for the winter and cotton for the summer.”

  “I wonder what became of them, Lorenza. Do you think they’re still alive?”

  “We’ll know when you work up the nerve to call your father, won’t we?”

  Lorenza remembered the mordant incident when Mateo was ten and she found by accident a photograph of Alice Hughes Leeward in his wallet. She was an Englishwoman who had lived for a while in Bogotá, a casual friend of her own mother, but aside from that not very closely connected to the family. But nevertheless, the boy had carefully tucked the photo into his billfold—Alice Hughes Leeward. Lorenza had to laugh.

  “What is this woman doing in your wallet?” she had asked. “Where did you get this picture?”

  “I found it in one of Mamaíta’s albums. Don’t touch it, Lorenza, it’s a picture of Noëlle,” he had responded in a very serious tone, grabbing the wallet from her.

  “Noëlle? Noëlle who?”

  “My grandma Noëlle, Ramón’s mother, my grandma.”

  “Oh, my love!” Lorenza had hugged him. “That’s not Grandma Noëlle, no, no, but if you want a picture of her, we’ll find one somewhere. And you’ll see, Mateo, Grandma Noëlle has beautiful eyes, like yours, you inherited those gray eyes from her.”