The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos

by Margaret Mascarenhas

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2009 by Margaret Mascarenhas

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Grand Central Publishing

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  First eBook Edition: June 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-446-55143-4

  Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Contents

  Copyright

  Lily

  Efraín

  Consuelo

  Amparo

  Carlos Alberto

  Luz

  Marta

  Ismael

  Irene

  Acknowledgments

  Extract from "The End of the Colombian Blood Letting Could Begin in Washington"

  A Goddess, a Snake, and a Double-Edged Sword

  Discussion Questions

  Una diosa, un serpiente y una espada de doble filo

  Para discuitir

  About the Author

  For Saryu and Vinod

  It is better to die on your feet

  than to live on your knees.

  —Spanish writer, communist, and politician

  Dolores Ibarruri, also known as

  “La Pasionaria” (“Passion Flower”),

  who formed the Spanish communist party

  The passiflora edulis produces an exquisite and fragrant flower, with five white sepals and a fringelike corona that is deep purple at the base. Pollination is best under humid conditions.

  Lily

  In Lily’s dream it is raining and Irene thunders past on what appears to be a giant wild boar. “Vamos, vamos!” She leans down, arm extended, hand reaching to pull Lily up in front of her. Lily also reaches, but their hands are wet, their fingers slip, the grasp does not hold. In that split second, just as their fingertips separate, a lightning bolt strikes Irene full on the chin; she falls back against the rump of her mount, which continues galloping away into the forest. The dream ends as the honeyed song of the golden-winged Maizcuba announces the break of dawn in the postcolonial city of Tamanaco.

  As the first light filters through the windows of the freshly whitewashed Quintanilla residence, Lily opens her eyes and stretches her arms. Using her elbows as leverage, she laboriously hoists her body, over eight months heavy with child, into a sitting position. She leans over to kiss Carlos Alberto, who is still asleep, but her belly gets in the way. She will kiss him later, from a more comfortable position.

  Easing herself awkwardly but quietly out of bed, she slips on an ankle-length kimono, black and white, and pads barefoot to the kitchen. Her mother’s voice, the voice of her childhood, light and bright, accompanies her down the hallway, reminding her not to mix too much water in the Harina P.A.N. for the arepas.

  The sounds of cooking in the large, airy kitchen with the speckled gray Formica table, where Lily had dutifully done her homework as a child, are the most comforting sounds she knows. It is in the kitchen that her mother reigned supreme, creating the perfect arepas, buoyant and filling at the same time. Lily is certain she has never tasted arepas comparable to her mother’s. Or cachapas. Or hallacas. Or mondongo. Or anything gastronomic. Although she has learned eight of her mother’s most familiar recipes, executing them with military precision, the result is never as delicious. She suspects Consuelo of withholding a secret ingredient, but Consuelo, laughing, says the secret is love. “When you are cooking you should pour your love into the pot. You are too distraída, mi amor, thinking of other things.”

  It was in the kitchen that Consuelo taught Lily to dance to the music of the transistor radio, which her father, Ismael, had installed on the wall over the counter. Merengue and salsa—un, dos, tres...un, dos, tres—Consuelo’s full, rounded hips swirling sensuously, Lily’s bony ones jerking, awkward. Afterward, their faces flushed with pleasure, they would go out to the garden and pluck passion fruits from the loaded vine that Ismael had brought all the way from the rain forest. It took twelve passion fruits to make enough juice to quench their thirst. Then her mother would teach her to draw, the subjects selected from items at hand—a jar full of carnations, a bowl of fruit, her mother’s face. Lily could never quite master the art of shading, and her renditions lacked depth.

  Consuelo tells her daughter that the preparation of a meal is as much a creative act as drawing or painting. I won’t be around forever, she says. Debes aprender. But since Lily does not acknowledge the possibility of a world in which her mother is not, Consuelo might as well have said nothing at all. In any case, there is Marta, who cooks almost exactly like her mother.

  Marta, an immigrant from Cuba, has been with the family almost as long as Lily can remember, first working for Consuelo and now for Lily. Marta thinks of herself as Venezuelan first and Cuban incidentally. Every Sunday morning she takes an hour-long bus ride to Caracas to visit her Trinidadian friend José Naipaul, who is dying of lung cancer, returning by noon.

  On Sundays, Marta is not expected to cook; Lily is in charge of breakfast, Carlos Alberto of lunch, and dinner is comprised of sandwiches from the week’s leftovers. The only food Carlos Alberto knows how to prepare is steak, which he marinates in olive oil and parsley, sears, and serves rare, accompanied by heart of palm salad, chilled beer, and a butter-yellow rose from the garden. After dinner they play cards, or sometimes dominoes, which Marta prefers to cards. By now their Sunday routine is established, automatic; they never give a single thought to a different type of Sunday.

  Though it is from her mother, a painter, that she learned to draw, it is architecture that Lily has chosen as her profession. Architecturally, and in spite of her self-inflicted culinary deficiencies, the kitchen is her favorite design subject as well as her favorite room in the house. When designing a house, she always saves the kitchen for last, like dessert. She works out her preliminary drawings, freehand, on the kitchen table, an arrangement that works well, since it gives Carlos Alberto full occupancy of the tiny study, where he pens his stories for the producers of telenovelas. Since Lily’s best childhood memories are from her mother’s kitchen, she has designed her own as almost a replica of Consuelo’s, separated from the living room by a wide, open arch instead of a wall, though her kitchen table is wood, not Formica. Thus, the living room and the kitchen are one. There is no dining room.

  Lily doesn’t like it when Marta points out similarities between her own life and her mother’s, certain that her taste in kitchen layout is where the resemblance ends. For example, Lily would never allow her husband to roam the countryside as he pleases, spending more time away than at home.

  It is not that her father doesn’t love her mother, she knows this. It is just that he has other, perhaps equal, loves. Poetry. Music. The Gran Sabana. The life of one such as her father, who is constantly traveling for inspiration in the jungles or the plains, is unpredictable. Lily does not appreciate unpredictability. She reads the endings of novels first and never watches telenovelas, not even those written by her husband, whic
h undergo many nerve-racking twists and turns, and take too long to come to a resolution. In her work and in her life, she likes straight angles and areas with well-defined, proportionate boundaries, efficiency of space. She has installed hidden storage units in her kitchen, stocked with utensils and household supplies, in neat, regimented rows. She stows her passions and desires in the same way. Spontaneous, unexpected bursts of emotion are quickly reined in, put in their place, though she finds such exercise of control increasingly difficult ever since she became pregnant. But this, she believes, is simply a matter of hormones; it will pass as soon as her body is her own again.

  “Why don’t you let me make the breakfast today; I’ll be out in a moment,” calls Consuelo.

  “Don’t worry, Mami, I can manage,” she says.

  She pours the milk and the water for coffee into separate pans to boil. She lightly fries the arepas until they have formed a skin, places them on a brightly hand-painted plate, a souvenir from her father’s travels. She likes this plate because, besides being cheerful and attractive, it can go in the oven with the arepas.

  She squeezes fresh orange juice into a glass pitcher and heaps coffee into the old-fashioned French percolator, which she received as a wedding present from her godmother, Amparo Aguilar. From the refrigerator, she removes butter, queso blanco, and ham, and places them on another, less dramatic plate. Around these, she symmetrically arranges slices of avocado sprinkled with salt, pepper, and a dash of lemon juice. She sets the table for breakfast. Pouring two cups of coffee, to which she adds frothy boiled milk and a single spoon of sugar, she takes her seat at the table. While she waits for her mother to join her, she slips her hand into the pocket of her kimono, draws out the letter from Irene, reads it again.

  Consuelo enters the kitchen, eyes still puffy with sleep, and kisses her daughter lightly on the lips.

  “Buenos días, Mami,” says Lily, placing the letter back in her pocket.

  “Buenos días, cariño. And what were you reading just now with such concentration?”

  “I found a letter yesterday in a box of old school things. It revived so many memories.”

  “Good memories, I hope?” says Consuelo. “Are you glad I didn’t throw all your things away in spite of all your criticisms about hanging on to old junk?”

  “Yes, you were right, I’m glad you kept them. The letter is from Irene. Do you remember her? Te acuerdas, Mami?”

  “Ay,” sighs Consuelo, “who can forget her?”

  “I wish I knew what happened to her.”

  Not knowing what happened to Irene bothers Lily in the manner of a faint itchiness. Without that knowledge, she feels incomplete, unresolved, part of a never-ending story. But her mother changes the subject abruptly, “Have you heard from your madrina? She promised to be here in time for the delivery of your baby.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be here; she knows we’re depending on her. Anyway, Mami, about Irene—”

  Carlos Alberto comes into the kitchen, sniffing the air hungrily. He is already dressed in brown corduroys and a black pullover, his Sunday uniform. Carlos Alberto kisses his mother-in-law good morning and moves behind Lily’s chair. He bends and plants a wet, sucking kiss on her neck in the special place that gives her goose bumps. He smells of lime soap and shaving cream. She turns her head to catch his lips with hers, but the kiss is interrupted by the doorbell.

  Carlos Alberto opens the door. It is Marta’s daughter, Luz. Returning her quick embrace, Carlos Alberto says, “You’re just in time for our special Sunday breakfast.” He ushers Luz toward the kitchen, where Lily and Consuelo are seated at the table.

  “¡Ay, qué bueno, Luz!” says Lily, pulling herself to a standing position, opening her arms in welcome. “What a lovely surprise!”

  “So, what are you cooking?” asks Luz, smiling, as she walks toward her embrace.

  “We are cooking up life!” Lily says, patting her belly, just before she slips on a patch of spilled milk and crashes to the floor.

  The new girl stood out like a neon sign in her white frilly dress with pink ribbons on the first day of school. Cinnamon skin, and green eyes far older than her ten years. Her long dark brown hair was primly pinned back from her face on both sides of her middle parting with delicate gold-plated barrettes, making her look quaint and old-fashioned, a girl from another era. But what struck Lily was the contrast between the daintiness of the girl’s attire and the tremendous size of her feet, which were encased in lacy ankle-socks and white patent leather shoes. A size thirty-seven, por lo menos, Lily thought.

  “This is Irene Dos Santos,” said Señora Gutierrez, the principal of Academia Roosevelt, the bilingual American school built with American oil money, which shone like a sparkling jewel in the sun above the filthy, poverty-stricken barrio of Las Ruinas.

  Only the medium to very rich could afford to send their children to the prestigious Academia Roosevelt, and even then there was a long waiting list. To Lily’s good fortune, her godfather was Alejandro Aguilar, media magnate and jefe of the regional television station TVista. Alejandro Aguilar was also on the board of directors at Academia Roosevelt, and so Lily’s enrollment had been a foregone conclusion.

  Señora Gutierrez was holding the new girl’s hand. “I want you to take Irene to the fifth-grade homeroom and help her get oriented,” she said to Lily, and to the new girl, “Irene, this is Lily Martinez.”

  Irene cast her eyes to the ground, where one self-conscious foot tried to hide the other one.

  “Come on,” Lily said, taking her hand and feeling superior in her skintight jeans and platform shoes, “let’s go.”

  That was the first and last day Lily saw Irene in a dress.

  “You looked so saintly,” Lily said to her later, when they’d become best friends and told each other everything.

  “Coño, its true,” she said, “Mercedes made me wear that dress. You must have thought I was an imbecile.” Irene always referred to her mother by her name, with an intrepid modernity that took Lily’s breath away. Since no one, apart from the maid, was ever at the Dos Santos residence between three p.m. and eight p.m. or even later, Irene usually came back with Lily, and Lily’s father would drop her home after dinner.

  On most weekdays after school, Consuelo would make the girls sandwiches stuffed with the previous night’s milanesas, before they rushed off to roller-skate at the Plaza Altamira.

  “Cuídense bien, muchachas,” Consuelo would say, kissing them both before they left, “and be back by seven.”

  “Your mother is such a great cook, and really sweet, tan linda,” said Irene.

  “I know,” said Lily, “I don’t know what I would do without my mother. Probably starve.” And then they giggled in that hormone-induced borderline psychotic schoolgirl way.

  Life at the Dos Santos residence and that at the Martinez residence was as different as night and day. At Lily’s house people sat round the table together and talked about food, art, and politics, whereas at Irene’s nobody sat at the table and the focus was on diets, fashion, cute boys, and the right combination of Johnson’s Baby Oil and iodine to make the most effective suntan lotion.

  Irene lived in a luxurious penthouse apartment with expansive terraces in the upmarket Urbanización of Prados, along with her older sister, Zulema, who was studying interior design, and her parents, Mercedes and Benigno.

  In a large enclosure in the midst of the terrace garden, Irene kept a baby water boa as a pet. Sometimes, while she did her homework, she liked to hang it around her neck. Lily thought this wildly and wonderfully adventurous, though she herself was never brave enough to try it. The Dos Santos family had moved to Tamanaco from the capital when Irene’s father, an engineering expert on earthquakes and landslides, was transferred by the Ministerio de Obras Públicas.

  Mercedes and Benigno. A couple of such extraordinary incongruity that Lily was taken by surprise each time she saw them together, which was rarely. Benigno Dos Santos was a large man, bearded to disguise a weak ch
in, a polished passive-aggressive personality of few words who spent his time after office hours in his study with a view of the mountains, sipping vodka martinis and listening to Italian opera on the stereo. Which always seemed strange and disappointing to Lily, given that he was half Brazilian; Lily had expected Carnival in Rio. The voluptuous Mercedes, a mestiza of Chilean, African, and Guajiro descent, spent five days a week in the coastal town of Puerto, where she had a successful gunrunning business, a beach house, and a string of young, adoring lovers. Mercedes Dos Santos hated Pavarotti. Billy Ocean was more her speed.

  “Pero, Benigno, why does your music have to be at TODO VOLUMEN?” she would yell when she came home on the weekend.

  “Perdón, mi amor,” he would say, cranking up the volume even louder.

  Mercedes slept separately from her husband, in a room off the kitchen that was technically the servant’s quarters but was actually the brightest and best-ventilated room in the apartment. No one was allowed to use the kitchen when Mercedes was home. The noise and smells bothered her, she said. This was probably why the Dos Santos family never sat down to dinner together. In fact, there was rarely any normal food in the house. At the Dos Santos residence everyone drank strong black coffee and dined at odd hours on expensive snacks—anchovies on toast, caviar on cream crackers, grapes and cheese, and their all-time favorite, sandwiches stuffed with Diablitos. That is, whenever Mercedes had remembered to stock the kitchen at all, which was about fifty percent of the time. The other fifty percent of the time, the refrigerator contained only beer.

  In all likelihood, it was pure hunger that prompted Irene and Lily to fry bacon and eggs, purchased with their pocket money from the kiosk down the road, on the flat of an electric clothing iron in the bathroom. Somehow, these messy concoctions always ended up tasting more delicious to Lily than even her mother’s cooking. Stomachs appeased, they would invade Zulema’s closet and try on all her clothes, taking whatever they wanted for school the following day.