The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos

by Margaret Mascarenhas

  She took to waking at noon and moving from her bed to the divan in the TV room, where she would watch telenovelas all day with Muchacha on her lap. She loved the way that in spite of all odds, in spite of the most exaggerated difficulties and tribulations, and opposition from a whole cast of characters, the male protagonist was always a high-minded stud who would fight tooth and nail, defeat his enemies, and win his woman in the end. She knew it was cliché and inevitable, but thrilled anyway when the lovers ended up together at the end, passionately embracing, kissing and rolling about on luxurious outsize beds or on a blanket under a flowering tree. Real life could rarely compete with that, and for this reason telenovelas had her vote. The heady power of making everything come out impossibly right in the end is what motivated her to become a producer at TVista. The station was happy for the fresh infusion of currency, always in short supply these days, and the union was successful. When she insisted on editorial control, the executives readily conceded. It was not a foolish decision on their part, either, for Luz had demonstrated time and again her capacity for choosing winners and staying on budget, steadily rising in their esteem, her influence growing beyond even her own expectations. Where the business of telenovelas is concerned, she is the station’s goose with golden eggs.

  In terms of the present, it means she is in a position to help Carlos Alberto, whom she both loves and hates like a brother, and who, in her opinion, has written some of the best telenovela material ever. In fact, it had been Luz’s idea to have Carlos Alberto’s stories, which he had been selling for a pittance to the radio, adapted for television. And she can hardly wait for his latest one, Fantasmagórica, about a tragic and beautiful woman who doesn’t know she is dead from drowning and haunts the living in their dreams, giving them advice and altering the course of their lives. If Carlos Alberto knew that it was she who had made the calls to TVista, first about having his radio scripts converted into telenovelas, and most recently regarding his documentary of Marialionceros, he would be furious. And so, as much as she would like him to know of her munificence, he must never find out. So quaint and proud he is, just like his sensitive but sexy male protagonists. She is not enamored with the fact that there is something of Lily in all his heroines, evidence that year after year, no matter how fantastical his stories, his love for her is most real.

  She craves such a fairy-tale love in real life. But what she craves most is a belly like Lily’s, ripe with the fruit of passion.

  Camped at the Quintanilla residence since the day Lily fell, Luz watches her with both fascination and distress. The distress is amplified by the recent demise of Muchacha, who had taken the place of a child in her heart and whose absence is a raw and throbbing wound. She had come home one evening from a producers meeting at TVista to find the little dog whimpering and squirming in her wicker bed. Her hind legs had collapsed and trying to stand sent her tiny body into spasms of pain. Luz spent the night weeping and dialing Miguel Rojas’s empty apartment, with Muchacha clasped against her breast, her little doggie heart fluttering against her own.

  “Brave girl, Muchacha, my beautiful little princess girl,” she murmured, hoping against hope that the veterinarian would have a magic cure come morning. But the inexplicable nerve damage was grave and irreversible; there was no cure. And so she was forced to look into her dog-baby’s eyes reassuringly while the sedative was administered before the lethal dose to stop the heart. Now she can barely stand to be in her own apartment where reminders of Muchacha haunted nearly every room, which is the real reason she continues to camp in her mother’s room at the Quintanilla’s.

  “You should adopt a child,” Marta says. “God knows you have enough money to raise a football team of them.”

  Luz says she will consider it. But the mere idea of initiating the process all on her own makes her feel tired and lost. Even as she procrastinates, she knows time is passing her by and that if she doesn’t hurry up, she will end up adopting her grandchild, rather than her child. Still, she would rather wait, she decides, until she finds the right lover, the right companion, the right father for a child. For Luz it is all or nothing, just like in the telenovelas.

  The day before the statue of Maria Lionza broke, Luz had been sitting on the sofa eating dulce de leche straight out of a can and crying over a photograph of Muchacha with La Traviata playing full blast on the stereo. Her taste for opera had been aroused when she and Lily were around twelve and her mother’s friend José Naipaul had taken them to see Madame Butterfly. In the car, on the way, he had told the girls that the opera was all about passion, that people who witnessed it for the first time either loved it or hated it, that it was best to find out how one felt well in advance, to avoid embarrassment or even shock later.

  “My lover took me to the opera on our first date,” he said. “I had never experienced the opera before then, and nearly jumped out of my skin with delight during the first aria of La Boheme.”

  Lily had made fun of Madame Butterfly and of José with Irene the next day, both of them clasping each other, breaking into high-pitched wails, and collapsing on the bed in spasms of breathless hilarity. Luz had pretended to agree with them, and laughed and shrieked, too, but secretly she thought the opera was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen or heard. Of course she still thinks it’s unfair when Pinkerton takes advantage of the oriental girl. On the other hand, the oriental girl is a geisha, so how innocent could she be? She thinks perhaps it is true that even a tragic love affair is better than no love affair at all. But she is too fearful to test this belief firsthand. In any case, such a story would never work as a telenovela.

  When the Lancer sputters and chugs to a stop at a gas station at the outskirts of Valencia, and Luz places the call to Miguel, it is a woman who answers the phone. The voice sophisticated, assured, smooth as silk. So, no, she can’t pretend it is the maid. Luz says she is an old friend from Tamanaco, just passing through, and hangs up before the woman can ask for her name. She is relieved and grateful when Ismael and Carlos Alberto, her traveling companions, do not ask questions.

  As if intuiting her need for distraction and focus, Ismael asks her to take the wheel of the old Lancer again. And she is grateful. As they head full speed away from Valencia, she notices the white-knuckled grip Carlos Alberto has on his knees, and succumbs to a childishly cruel pleasure. Ismael, who also notices, tells her to slow down, and she behaves herself until an hour later when Ismael takes the wheel for the last stretch.

  Luz has always felt the highest regard for Ismael. And this is not so remarkable, since he is really the only father she has ever known. Her own father died before she was born. She doesn’t remember him, feels no connection with the faded black-and-white photograph in her mother’s room at the back of the Quintanilla house. When she was growing up, she used to pretend that her real parents were Ismael and Consuelo. And that her mother was just the maid. She told strangers that her name was Luz Martinez and practiced this signature in secret. Until the day Consuelo gave her the bracelet. After that she had felt too guilty to use that name.

  In the photograph, her father is dressed in country clothes, a cap on his head, the visor casting a shadow upon his face. Because of this, and because the photograph is so old, she cannot fully distinguish his features. Every morning she searches her own face in the mirror for signs of his, mentally subtracting those features clearly inherited from her mother, until her own face blurs before her. It is a useless exercise, she knows, but it has become a compulsion, this search for a reflection of her father in herself.

  In the jungle shack where she, Ismael, and Carlos Alberto take up residence there are no mirrors. After dinner the first night, she had been somewhat distraught to learn there wasn’t even an outhouse and applauded herself for having had the presence of mind to conduct all her bodily affairs at their last truck stop, electing not to tackle the bush until daybreak.

  In the morning, Luz awakens with an involuntary jerk and nearly topples out of her hammock. She looks at her
watch. Six a.m. She cannot remember when she last woke up this early. Gingerly, she sits up and takes stock of the cramped surroundings. The stark poverty of the room, which seven hours ago had appeared so enchanting in candlelight, stands exposed by day. The moldy bamboo and thatch that form the dome, the dirt floor, the wobbly makeshift table, the threadbare bedsheet that had protected her from the onslaught of mosquitoes in the night. Her gaze moves to the primary source of light, the cutout window, where the figure of a naked woman with arms outstretched floats in midair. At first she thinks she is hallucinating, then she remembers how it is that her hostess earns her living. It is a mobile, but the most beautiful one she has ever seen. She must not leave without one. Better yet, she will buy as many as she can carry, for they will make exquisite and original gifts.

  Except for Efraín, who is still asleep, there is no one else in the room. But the door is wide open, and she assumes the others are somewhere outside. Efraín’s eyes move rapidly under eyelids fringed with thick, dark lashes. A solitary teardrop glistens at the edge of one eye. The fragile delicacy of his features, his utter defenselessness, whatever the dream that has produced the tear, all this squeezes at her heart.

  “Buenos días, Señorita,” says Juanita Sanchez, coming through the door, her arms full of firewood. She is followed by Ismael and a puffy-eyed Carlos Alberto, who take their places at the table. “I trust you slept well and have an appetite for Pizca andina.”

  “Very well, thank you,” says Luz, swinging her legs out of the hammock, feeling for her sandals with her feet, and stepping right onto an iguana’s head. She shrieks.

  Efraín sits bolt upright, rubs his eyes, sees the iguana, jumps out of his hammock and grabs the offending creature. He takes it outside, and when he returns he smiles at Luz. It is a big, crooked-toothed smile that makes him look alluringly impish. Luz, recovered, smiles back.

  “Show the señorita where to do her business, Efraín, and take a pail of water so that she can wash up,” says Juanita Sanchez, turning on the radio.

  Carlos Alberto grins wickedly at Luz, and she knows he thinks she won’t last the day. In fact, she was thinking that ruefully to herself, as she observed the welts where the mosquitoes had feasted on her blood, but the smug look on Carlos Alberto’s face has just inspired her to stick this adventure through to the very end. Grabbing some tissues from her purse, she follows Efraín outside.

  “Don’t worry, Señorita, I’ll take you where there aren’t any snakes,” says Efraín sweetly, while Carlos Alberto chortles into his coffee cup. Luz shoots him a withering glance as she takes Efraín’s hand and walks more boldly than she feels out the door and into the dense forest.

  Midmorning, after a breakfast more hearty than any she has permitted herself in years, Luz asks Ismael whether there is a defined plan for the day. Carlos Alberto, who already has his video camera slung around his neck, points it at Efraín, but Ismael steps in front of him and places his hand over the lens. Juanita, who has already begun to preen for the camera, begins to argue with Ismael, but Ismael gives her a warning look. She abruptly stops arguing and tells Efraín that they need more firewood. Efraín looks at his grandmother in surprise, then at the stack of firewood in the corner, then at Luz. Luz, realizing there is going to be a discussion over the filming and that Ismael does not want the boy to be a party to it, holds out her hand to Efraín, saying, “Vamos, Efraín, show me how to find wood in the jungle.” Efraín, tilting his head and smiling in that crooked-toothed way that had taken her heart hostage at first sight, picks up his machete and sack in one hand, and offers Luz his other. And together they go into the forest.

  They walk between the trees, following a faint path of previously trampled leaves for several minutes. They reach a small clearing, where Efraín begins to cut wood while Luz places it in the sack. When the sack is full, Efraín says, “Would you like to see the nest of a Maizcuba?”

  “Yes,” says Luz, “I certainly would.”

  “We can leave the sack here and collect it later,” says Efraín.

  “Let’s go, then,” says Luz.

  Efraín leads her out of the clearing, where there is no path, cutting his way through the overgrowth, and Luz momentarily wonders how they will find their way back. But the boy is so confident, turning every now and then, and smiling at her encouragingly, that her misgivings are quickly allayed. Of course he knows his way, she thinks, this forest is his backyard.

  After several minutes of walking, they come to a stream, and Efraín stops, putting his finger to his lips and pointing up in the branches of a tamarind tree. “Do you see it?” he whispers.

  But Luz is looking somewhere else, to a place her nose has led her eyes, a pungency, faintly nauseating, on the other side of the stream, almost directly across from where they stand. She sees the boot of a man. The man is lying facedown on the bank covered in mud and leaves, arms outstretched. Below him lies a woman; the upper half of her body is in the stream, her face appears to have been eaten by wild animals, her long hair floats in a fan around her on the water. Further on, two others, both men, one lying on his side, the other on his back. Efraín follows her gaze and begins to scramble through the water toward the bodies. Luz reaches out to restrain him, but he is already halfway across, leaving her no choice but to follow.

  Efraín stops near the woman and stares, his eyes growing wider and wider.

  Then his frail body crumples in a faint and he falls backward into the stream, in almost the same position as the woman without a face.

  Luz, holding her breath to avoid the stench, gathers Efraín in her arms and lifts him. Carrying him, she crashes back across the stream and, with a strength born of pure adrenaline, runs through the forest, concern for the boy her only compass. When she reaches the clearing not far from the hut, she falls on her knees still holding Efraín and begins screaming for help.

  Minutes later, Ismael comes running into the clearing with Carlos Alberto close on his heels.

  “There are four dead people by the stream. Efraín saw them and fainted,” says Luz, her breath coming in gasps. She is on the verge of fainting herself.

  Carlos Alberto lifts the boy from her arms and they return to the house. While Luz pulls off Efraín’s wet clothes, Juanita holds guanabana leaves to his nose to revive him. Carlos Alberto grabs his video camera and he and Ismael head back to find the place by the river Luz has described.

  The senior producers at TVista are of the opinion that footage of three dead Guajiro males and one female of mixed race wearing rebel armbands, three shot three times in the back, and one in the stomach, is too politically sensitive to air.

  “Too sensitive?” Luz argues over the smelly pay phone at a corner store in San Felipe. “Why shouldn’t cross-border executions of the poor be news?”

  “Luz,” says Enrique Alonso, her boss, “when did you of all people turn into a champion of the so-called disenfranchised? Forget it. Leave it to our illustrious leader to dole out bread and bricks to fuel the fires of social justice. Our job is to keep the public entertained and happy. Right now people are hooked on this El Niño character. We get hundreds of calls every day since the first story aired. That’s the story we want.”

  “I can’t believe you!”

  “Believe it. Listen, Luz, it is imperative that you stick to the original plan. Since the day before yesterday, El Presidente is putting out the story that each morning he receives an important instruction from El Niño, who whispers it into his ear while he attends morning Mass—the first was he should form an alliance with China, the second was that he should make a book by a Jewish intellectual mandatory reading in schools, and the latest is that he should nationalize the airwaves. The public is lapping it up, and my instructions from above are to demystify the rumors. Just get us the kid. If you don’t we’ll send someone out there who will.”

  Luz finds she doesn’t care that her opinion regarding what constitutes real news has been overruled by her superiors. Certainly not enough to argue, whi
ch would be pointless, anyway. All she cares about is getting back to Efraín, who has been in what appears to be a semicatatonic state ever since he saw the dead people by the river.

  “They won’t air it,” she says to Carlos Alberto, who is waiting in the car.

  “Well, I guess that’s the end of my big break,” he says, sounding almost relieved. But then he looks depressed.

  “What is it?” Luz asked.

  “Perhaps my father was right; what sort of man supports his family with soap opera scripts?”

  “The best kind,” says Luz, smiling.

  “What is the best kind?”

  “The kind who knows how to tell the story of a woman.”

  Of course the story of the executions of four people in the woods would have aired in the days of Alejandro Aguilar. And even today, it would have aired if the senior producers and executives, all big businessmen who hated El Presidente and his protectionary policies toward the masses, had known that one of the dead men was the infamous Negro Catire, whose real name was Diego Garcia; yes, they would have fallen all over themselves to publicize such a victory over the most pernicious of thorns in the side of capitalism. But they wouldn’t obtain that information from Luz or Carlos Alberto. Because, over the past twenty-four hours, there has been an unspoken agreement between them that the true identity of El Niño will never be revealed for public consumption.