No Place for Heroes

by Laura Restrepo

  “In Buenos Aires?”

  “No, outside Buenos Aires on the coast, it seems.”

  “Sounds nice, Villa Gesell.”

  “Yes, Villa Gesell. Not only that, Lorenza, from time to time Ramón would visit the place in Coronda, and bring food to the cats. I bet that he never told you that.”

  “It would have been after we broke up—”

  “No, it was then. It was when you were pregnant, believing that Coronda had fallen and that you were on the run. Nothing had happened in Coronda and yet Ramón told you nothing.”

  “Well, he didn’t really need to tell me, these were things I did not need to know—”

  “Not even about the cats? Didn’t you ever ask what happened to the cats?”

  “I asked, of course, I asked him a thousand times. The worst part of losing Coronda was that Abra and Cadabra had been abandoned. For the second time in their lives, too. Clothes and things come and go, but those cats. He told me a few weeks later that he had been able to rescue them and your grandparents had them in Polvaredas.”

  “No, the cats remained in Coronda with Miche. The thing is, you don’t know a thing about Ramón, nothing.”

  “But why would he hide such a thing from me, what would he gain by not telling me?”

  “Maybe he didn’t gain anything, there were just a lot of things he didn’t talk about. Or maybe the cats spent time with Miche in Coronda and then with my grandparents in Polvaredas. Who knows?”

  “Besides, that doesn’t end the story of Abra and Cadabra, kiddo. I had to face a very dramatic situation because of them later.”

  “Stop, stop. Guess what, Gisella Sánchez gave me Uncle Miche’s phone number at Villa Gesing.”

  “Villa Gesell.”

  “Villa Gesell. Uncle Miche lives there now. And I’m going to call him,” Mateo said, sounding confident. “I need to know. I have a lot of questions to ask him.”

  Lorenza stared at Mateo, sensing that he was not the same as the previous day. They say it’s possible to hear how the grass grows, she thought, and you can also hear how a child grows.

  “You know what, it’s not true that I went alone to Coronda and to the florist,” said Mateo, suddenly. “Lies.”

  “You didn’t go?”

  “Yes I did, but I was not alone.”

  “Then who—”

  “Andrea took me.”

  “What Andrea.”

  “Andrea Robles, daughter of el negro Robles. She had told me that she would help me find my father.”

  “She picked you up at the hotel?”

  “Yes. And we took the metro together to Caballito. She has been finding out a lot about her father on her own, and I told her I wanted to do the same with mine. So today she helped me, to show me how.”

  “And where is Andrea now? I would love to meet her. Do you want to invite her to have tea with us?”

  “What are you thinking about, Mother, she’s an adult, she works. So I took her out at noon, when she was free. She’s back in her office now, and besides she wouldn’t like this place. The truth is, I don’t like it much.”

  “I think that what you like is Andrea—”

  “Don’t say that, I told you. She’s an adult. But she’s pretty, though. Her hair loose and earrings. Very pretty.”

  “And Villa Gesell, where your uncle Miche lives, are you also going there with her?”

  “No, what do you think? I’ll call him and if I find him, I’ll see him alone. As Andrea says, there are things you have to do alone.”

  “UNCLE MICHE SAID it was true that he was a bus driver and that he covered the nighttime route 166, from the Third of February to Freedom. Look, Lolé, here on this napkin he jotted it down and told me to keep the data for when you wrote a book about those times, Line 166, from Third of February to Freedom,” Mateo told Lorenza after his return from Villa Gesell, having traveled there on the 7:40 AM Expreso Alberino, to spend the day with his father’s brother.

  He had called the night before and they had agreed to meet. Apparently Miche knew nothing about Ramón’s whereabouts. They had quarreled a few years ago and had not seen each other or spoken since.

  Uncle Miche was waiting at the bus terminal and Mateo had no problem recognizing him, first because nobody else was standing around, and second because he remained the same as he had been in the picture that Lorenza kept in an album: a rather tall man, thin but with a potbelly, a pinched nose, and Ray-Ban sunglasses with mirrored lenses, smiling politely and holding his nephew, who was only a few days old.

  “You look the same, Uncle Miche,” Mateo said. “You have not changed at all.” He only took the sunglasses off for cooking.

  “Eyewear of the professional bus driver,” Lorenza said. “The same ones he used when he drove.”

  “But now he’s a butcher again, and he still uses them. I think it’s because of the sand. The wind was blowing and picked up the sand and it got in his eyes. There in the Villa Gesell, Miche has a butcher shop, and he lives in the back. The first thing he told me when I got off the bus was that he was going to prepare me one memorable steak, that he had set the best cut of meat aside, that it was the kind of beef we never had in Colombia, and to get ready because I was going to taste the best steak sausage of my life. That was the first thing he said when I arrived.”

  “So? Was it good, the steak sausage?” Lorenza wanted to know.

  “Yeah, very good, but best were the French fries. He made a mountain of fries and we gobbled them down. Miche left the assistant manager in charge of the butcher shop and took the day off to spend it with me. We talked a lot. He said my dad was a wretch, who had never gone looking for me because he was a coward. He also told me that it killed my grandparents.”

  “Then they are dead?”

  “Yes, both. Pierre my grandfather died first, of a heart attack. He was living with Miche, and was in the middle of building a stone fence. Miche took me to see the fence, which was half done, just like it had been left by my grandfather, a few steps from the butcher shop. According to Miche, Grandfather worked until the last minute of his life. And then Grandmother died, Noëlle.”

  “Did he say how she died?”

  “Sadly. He said that my grandmother never could deal with the sadness of losing her grandchild. I really liked Uncle Miche. I liked going to see him. He said that Villa Gesell was gray and desolate during the winter, but that I had to return. He invited me to spend the summer there. You’ll see what beauties come out to the beach in thongs, he said, you have to make the most of the fact that you’re single, kid. I guess he can’t because he is married. The wife wasn’t there, she had gone to Buenos Aires for a few days.”

  “Azucena?”

  “No, not her. With Azucena he had no children. Now he has another woman and a two-year-old child. Roughly the age I was the last time he saw me, so he said, and he showed me the photo of the baby. He said the child was identical to me. I didn’t see the resemblance, but I kept quiet. Guess what the baby’s name is.”

  “What?”

  “Guess.”

  “I don’t know … Ramón … Pierre …”

  “No, wrong. I’ll give you another chance.”

  “Oh, kiddo. Let’s see … His name is Ernesto, Che. No wait, Leon Trotsky.”

  “Nope.”

  “Then Miguel, like his father.”

  “His name is Mateo, like me. Mateo Iribarren. Just like me.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I swear. So I have a double. But it doesn’t bother me. Uncle Miche told me that he hadn’t named him that to replace me, but to not forget me. He said he did it for the sake of Grandmother, who was doing so badly because she had lost one Mateo, and Miche wanted to give her another to console her.”

  “Okay—”

  “Yes, it’s okay. It was a bit sad to see that little wall that Grandfather was building when he died. A very short little wall, you know, Lolé? It wasn’t like my grandfather was making the Great Wall of China or anyth
ing. It was a low wall, nothing more. I thought, so this was the last thing my grandfather did, and I would have liked to have helped. I would have liked to hand him the rocks, which I could have done, even as a child, they were medium-size stones. Mar del plata, Miche said that they were called, an unusual name for stones, sea of silver. In any case, I don’t think they weighed much. I should have asked Uncle Miche what the wall was for, why Grandfather was building it right there. Maybe tomorrow I’ll call and ask him.”

  Mateo liked the voice of his uncle, who seemed calm. He had a slow way of speaking and Mateo understood him well. He had also shown him the set of Swiss knives that he used in the butcher shop and said that they had cost a fortune and were his greatest pride.

  “The brand is Swibo, Lorenza, can you imagine? Think of Swiss Army knives but for butchers, with yellow, ergonomic handles. He had at least twelve of these, all different sizes. There was one that looked like an ax, I swear. They were some impressive weapons.”

  “If you want, we can practice some target tossing,” Uncle Miche proposed and pulled out another set of knives, specifically for throwing, and began to toss them against a board. Mateo told Lorenza that Miche almost always hit the bull’s-eye.

  “Me, on the other hand, I didn’t hit it once. It’s difficult to throw a knife. Have you ever tried it? You have to grab it by the blade, but like this, so as not to cut yourself, and wham, you chuck it. I was a sissy with that and Miche made fun of me. But in a good way, right? He didn’t want to offend me with his ridicule, or make me feel bad. He also has a retractable rattan stick for Filipino kali, a scimitar, and a professional nunchaku. He let me play around with all of them for a while.”

  “Was Grandmother Noëlle also living there when she died?”

  “No, she was somewhere else, with Ramón. She lived at Villa Gesell until my grandfather died and then she went to live with Ramón, I don’t know where.”

  “Do you know why they fought, Miche and Ramón?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ask?”

  “Yes, but I think he didn’t respond.”

  “Could it have been because of that story of the robbery and prison?”

  “Maybe. Told me the same stuff about what we already knew, but in the James Bond style, you know, the hero mode. What was new was that he said that my father told him he wanted the money to organize a political party.” Miche wanted his half to open the butcher shop, and Ramón wanted to continue the revolution. That was what Miche told him. “Then he asked me if I’d like to take a walk along the beach and we went, but we stopped at a tin shack on the shore, and he ordered a beer and treated me to a Coca-Cola. He said that if the sea settled down we could go out on the boat, and I liked the idea, but in the end the sea did not settle down.”

  “Was the beach pretty?”

  “Not really. It was cold and there was garbage. Uncle Miche said that in summer it became spectacular.”

  “Coronda was a wonder in those days. The city bus your uncle Miche drove,” Lorenza said, “it was decorated in black lights, with psychedelic motifs and red tasseled drapes that swayed at every stop and jolt. He had installed hundreds of bulbs, like on a Christmas tree, which turned on whenever he braked. Not to mention the sound equipment and a high-decibel collection of tapes he’d recorded, of whatever songs were popular then in the city.”

  “A magical traveling discotheque.”

  “Yes. And he succeeded, Miche, believe you me. He had his success with girls, who when getting on the bus were delighted to see him there, driving, a real lord of the night with his black tie, blue shirt, and sunglasses, cruising through the sleeping city in his fiery ship with black lights to the beat of some psychedelic romantic ballad. That’s how he picked up Azucena. Then when they became a couple, she put up photos of them on the dashboard, on the outside, and made him paint her name in phosphorescent letters on the body of the bus. One out of every ten nights, Miche was off and then we would take the bus out. Your father equipped it with Campari, soda, olives, crackers, mayonnaise, pickles, and sausages, and we were off and running for the night through Buenos Aires in our own private traveling club. Those were good times, kiddo.”

  EVERYTHING THERE WAS bright, like in a dream. The sky was light blue and the world seemed soft and gentle under the snow. In the background loomed the formidable mountain range that was duplicated, in mirror image, on the lake, with a wisp of smoke rising from the chimney of the log cabin in the foreground. Behind it lay a pine forest stretching up toward the low hills, and down one of them, on an old horse, a man was approaching with a small child tucked in front of him. He held the child in place with his arms as he gripped the reins. Both were protected from the cold with hats, sweaters, and scarves, brightly colored, and the boy looked like a miniature reproduction of the man. As they approached, Lorenza perceived an absolute calm in the boy’s expression. He was happy, she realized. He had been happy, the entire drama has not affected him at all, she thought, and a sense of relief allowed a smile to appear on her face for the first time in a long while. Ramón made the boy turn his eyes to where she was.

  It took a few moments for Mateo to recognize her and then the boy stirred with joy, shocked by the surprise. He began yelling at her to look at the snow, and the horse, and the snow, and was determined to point them out to her as she ran to meet him, the boy still in the arms of his father, and then embraced him, holding him against her chest with all the strength of her soul, falling to her knees in the cold snow.

  Two days earlier, in Bogotá, Ramón’s second and final phone call had come in, and this time they had talked at length. Not about the child, which was the only thing that interested her, she had to bite her tongue again and follow the thread without interrupting the conversation to ask him about the boy. They spoke instead about reconciliation. Ramón raised the possibility and took the initiative and Lorenza echoed it, saying only what she believed he wanted to hear. To everything she responded with a positive, she asked for forgiveness, granted forgiveness, told him she was very sad over the breakup of the relationship, agreed that in Bogotá things had gone very wrong, recognized the infinite class arrogance of herself and her family, agreed to try again, to start over, to love each other like before, she’d return to Argentina, they’d raise their child there, watching him grow up together, making a fresh start, betting on happiness.

  “Sad, that you had to tell so many lies,” Mateo said to Lorenza.

  “I didn’t tell them, Tranzor Z did.”

  “That’s one fucked-up robot.”

  “One who’s been stripped of her child and didn’t care about anything except getting him back.”

  “Poor Ramón, it was some cowardly shit he came up with to shake you down.”

  The call was made from a public phone, somewhere in Argentina, but impossible to identify where exactly. But it wasn’t necessary; Ramón announced that within a few hours he would be sending a prepaid airline ticket. She claimed the ticket, and saw that it was one-way for the next morning at ten thirty, from Bogotá to Buenos Aires.

  For her, it was very clear that this journey had but one goal: to recover Mateo and return with him. Against Ramón’s will. Despite all the precautions that Ramón would take to stop her from doing so. She discussed with her family whether she should be accompanied, and everyone volunteered to travel if necessary. But that would be a declaration of war, and in this conflict she was the one who stood to lose the most. From then on, she would have to figure things out on her own.

  She left on that plane alone, already aloft on anxiety and expectation, alone again to Buenos Aires, once again with dollars hidden and false passports, as if Argentina were a magnetic field, a place that would require her maximum effort and put her to the test, once more, as if the cycle had begun again in perfect symmetry. But it was a perverse symmetry, distorted, because this time the war would be over, and her enemy would be someone who had once been her closest ally. She wanted to ask herself when and how things began to t
urn into this, but she did not. She would dismiss any thought that opened the door to confusion. She could not give accommodation to anything not having direct bearing on what she should do, how she should act, when.

  She arrived at Ezeiza International Airport overcome with longing, certain that Mateo would be there waiting for her. She would open her eyes and see him, as if waking from a nightmare. Within minutes she would be holding him and whatever happened afterward, she would never let go. She went through the military checkpoints knowing that she would not fail, could not fail this time. It would have been a terrible trick of fate to be brought down this time, when this trip had nothing to do with politics, and Mateo was waiting on the other side. Moreover, unlike her first arrival, now she had a minute that the soldiers would find more than respectable: her press card and a document under which the purpose of the trip was stated as a series of features for La Crónica on the most beautiful Argentine ranches.

  Immigration and customs went smoothly, but her soul dropped to the floor when she realized that no one was waiting for her. Not only was Mateo not there but Ramón was not, either. In that crowded airport, she did not know a soul; and apart from the destination of Buenos Aires printed on the ticket, Ramón had not given her any information. Mistake, mistake, mistake! Lorenza wanted to bang her head against the wall, disastrous mistake, not to have realized that Ramón would have suspected a counteroffensive and would not be so careless as to show up at the airport, much less bring the child. She should have demanded a telephone number or directions to go somewhere, some reference point, a hotel, even a café, where they could reestablish contact, in the event of the misfortune that was indeed happening.