The Invisible Mountain

by Carolina de Robertis

  “How do you know?”

  “He wants to help the people.”

  “Hmmph! He says that because he needs the people’s help.”

  Artigas, slicing slabs of meat from bone, stayed silent. He knew nothing of the politics of Brazil, but he sensed that he’d entered a thick and murky stream of history. The timbre of Ana Clara’s voice stayed with him; there were few things she spoke of with such passion. He looked at the fresh meat in his hands, being cut for João’s birthday; they had not cooked goat in weeks. If a president raised wages, they might eat meat more often. He thought of Galtero, and the company that had destroyed his tribe’s home and crops with the full permission of the government. Perhaps a new leader would protect families like Galtero’s, raise workers’ pay, and create a school where Xhana could learn to read. If that was what rebellion meant, what Ana Clara hoped for, it must be a good thing, and he should support it, except that the thought of soldiers in their midst, close to his daughter and pregnant wife, filled him with dread.

  Three days later, bureaucrats rode up the hill with a decree. Artigas and Ana Clara stood among their neighbors, staring at the men in ornate saddles. One of them opened a scroll and read: Vargas and his army were close to Rio. They threatened the present government of Brazil. All civilians were ordered to take up arms for their country. They were to report to the military base in four hours.

  The man rolled up his scroll. The crowd under his horse was silent. He coughed, pulled his reins, and led the small procession down the path, and out of sight.

  Voices rose, an angry flood.

  “I’m not going to war for them.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Why should we risk our necks?”

  “If we don’t, it could cost us our lives.”

  “It’ll cost us our lives if we do.”

  “If we have to fight, we should do it on Vargas’ side.”

  A rush of sound concurred. Artigas tightened his arms around his wife.

  A boy ran up the hill. “Look! Look!” He pointed down the incline into the city. “The city is turning against the president!”

  All eyes turned down toward Rio: it writhed with people, thronged so close that from a distance they looked like a single liquid. The crowd poured down to join them in a blur of running shapes. Ana Clara pulled away. “I’m going too.”

  “Going? Where?”

  “To the streets.”

  Artigas grabbed her arm. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t try to stop me. This is my city. I’m going.” She loped out of his reach, down through shaking grass. At the last curve in full view, she looked up at her husband and he drank her in, Ana Clara, obstinate, round-bellied, red and white dress ruffling in the breeze, waving at him against the backdrop of a seething city. “Take care of Xhana,” she called. Then she turned behind a rock face and was gone.

  Those were her last words to him. Hundreds of thousands swelled the streets that day. Police opened fire; the mob panicked; it shoved and pressed and lurched in terror. Ana Clara fell to the ground, unseen in the stampede until João’s second cousin’s nephew came across her underfoot. It was too late.

  Ana Clara, Ana Clara, Ana Clara.

  Grief scraped through Artigas like a knife. It gutted his will to live. He slunk into his bedroom and did not eat or drink or sleep or talk for six days. On the seventh night, an hour before dawn, Ana Clara appeared at the edge of the sleeping mat in her red and white dress. She was not pregnant. She was not smiling.

  “Artigas.”

  “My God. It’s you?”

  “You promised. You promised you would take care of Xhana.”

  He reached for her. “But, Ana—”

  She was fading, already, into a red and white mist. “You promised …”

  Artigas rubbed his eyes. He was alone. He crept from his room and found his five-year-old daughter sleeping on her grandfather’s mat, curled into his arms. He knelt on the floor to kiss her forehead. Her scalp smelled of melted cocoa butter. Her nose was tiny, sculpted, innocent, emitting little breaths, in time, he imagined, with her dreams. He lay down on the floor, wrapped his hand around hers, and watched her breathe until the room grew pale with light.

  It took two weeks for the troops from the south to break the government. The rebel army swarmed Rio; Vargas arrived on a huge dark horse, his uniform blazing with medallions. Masses filled the streets again, this time in celebration. A NEW BRAZIL! one banner read. WELCOME VARGAS, WELCOME FREEDOM, read another.

  João and Artigas stayed indoors. João fumbled with Xhana’s hair and Artigas watched his hands, those masterful hands, braid and unbraid and braid again, groping for the skills his daughter took with her into death. The sight invaded his mind, the way soldiers invaded the marketplace, the way fear now invaded Rio’s streets. There were guns everywhere these days, along with reminders of what he’d lost. Ana Clara in the plantain-curves of beaches hungry for the sea. Ana Clara in the steep cliff-path into the city and back home. Ana Clara in the taste of mangoes and the sound of a machete cutting sugarcane. Everything familiar was unbearable. He wondered what Ana Clara had been seeking in those streets before she fell, what vision she’d held, how much of it had died with her, what it would take for the rest of it to survive. He dreamed, at night, of fires burning throughout the continent as he ran to quash them with bare hands. He dreamed of leaving. He yearned for the open road, an empty slate, a destination free from the weight of memories and armed young men.

  One night he awoke to the sound of a ghostly invitation. Tú. Túuuu. He rose and went outside. Tú. Túuuuu. He hunted for the source in the faint moonlight. “Where are you?” A laugh drew his attention to a treetop. A child sat on a branch: his sister, Pajarita, as she had perched long ago.

  “Aren’t you coming?”

  “Where?”

  She cooed her answer, as if the word held its own tune: “Mon-te-vi-de-o.”

  He burned with questions, but before he could speak, the girl disappeared, an owl in her place the color of pristine sand. Tú, it hooted. Túuuuu. Artigas stared into its huge, unfathomable eyes. When he returned to bed, he slept more deeply than he had since his wife’s death.

  A week later, with João’s reluctant blessing, Artigas and Xhana boarded a train to Uruguay. They sat on wooden seats in a car that, for all its sweat and chickens, smelled like heaven compared to his last ride. Xhana pressed her nose against the window and stared at the lush mass of rain forest rushing by, immune to the crushing heat and clack clack clack of insomniac poultry. Artigas watched her with as much marvel as she had, watching the world. There she was. His lamp of a daughter. The unexpected quarry of his long hunt.

  Once in Montevideo, he dove into the city in search of his sister.

  Pajarita poured the last ladle of hot chocolate into her brother’s cup. “I’m glad you found me.”

  “It wasn’t hard. People know about you at grocery stores in every neighborhood. You’re respected—even feared a bit.”

  Pajarita looked at the potted plants and jars of herbs that filled the kitchen. They whispered to her in a rustled language, messages that pushed up from quiet dirt.

  “Look at you. When I left, you were still a girl.” He drew closer. “Tell me how you got here.”

  “Another night. The sun is almost up.” She gestured to the window, a square of drizzle tinged with gray.

  “Right. Tomorrow?”

  Pajarita nodded. “How long will you stay?”

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “Well, for example—how long can we stay here?”

  “Artí. Don’t insult me.”

  “Thank you.” He reached for her hand. His palm was tough from years of drumming. “If it’s all right with your husband.”

  Pajarita thought of Ignazio, a dark shape in her bed. “You let me worry about him.”

  Once she had watched Artigas go to bed on the living room floor, Pajarita tiptoed to her bedroom. She changed into her ni
ghtgown without turning on the light. Ignazio’s elongated breaths came through the darkness.

  “Ignazio.”

  The breathing halted. Sheets stirred. “Sí.”

  The floor was cold against her bare feet. “Artigas is staying until he finds a home.”

  The rustle of black shadow, sitting up. “Pajarita.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you—are you—coming to bed?”

  She swayed slightly. Her linen nightgown stroked her legs and they were strong, her legs, they could still stand, she could stand alone for decades if she had to. But she longed for rest. “Yes.”

  She heard the swish of sheets drawing open. She slid in. They were warm, his arms, large and solid folding all around her. Tonight, at least, these arms were solid. She felt his heartbeat, then his hand, then the melting of her body toward his, as they glided, together, into the dark unmoored trajectories of sleep.

  “Xhana?”

  “¿Sí?”

  “Are you sleeping?”

  “No.”

  “Are you scared of storms?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Me too. I always wanted a sister.”

  “Me too.”

  “Can we be sisters?”

  “Sure.”

  “You can sleep here, in my bed, anytime.”

  “All right.”

  “And we’ll be sisters.”

  “Sí.”

  “For our whole forever.”

  “Sí.”

  He was there. Again. Artigas stared at the field around him—a soccer field in the shape of South America, a huge grass-grown map, the borders between countries marked in chalk along the ground. Fires shot up across the continent, sudden bursts of glaring light. Quick quick he raced back and forth across the field, putting them out with bare hands. He quenched one in Peru, bolted west to save Guyana, then down to Chile, back across to Brazil. Faster and faster the fires arose. He was so small, he was exhausted, he couldn’t possibly keep up. He stopped in his tracks, defeated, blazes all around him. He looked to the north. A blinding fire loomed and glowed and ignited the horizon: a massive conflagration, its sparks shooting south, falling on the grassy map and making it burn—

  He woke up in a sweat, the sharp imprint of fire before his eyes. Xhana! He felt the floor beneath him and remembered where he was. Xhana was safe, sleeping in the other room, with her cousin. Eva. Her name was Eva.

  He crept to the bedroom where they slept, opened the door, and peered at them. They faced each other, arms around each other’s small shoulders. Early sunlight washed over their skin. They reminded him of how he’d slept, with Pajarita, growing up—cradling each other, warmed by limbs and hides, dreaming their own dreams beneath one blanket. The way these girls now nestled, the dreams seemed calm and good.

  “Sleep well, mijitas, you’ve got a lot ahead of you,” he whispered, closing the door.

  EVA

  Tres

  ——————

  VOICES, FACES, WINEGLASS,

  TABLE, WORDS

  When Eva was very small, her world still lambent and unbroken, she loved to walk past the Punta Carretas prison. She feared it with the vague and hallowed fear of a child, and yet she slowed down as her family passed it on the way to church. Those high, pale walls; that entryway, its lofty arch sealed by iron gates; beyond those gates, a courtyard, and glimpses of the thick-walled thing itself. It was so big. And pretty too, with its castle pattern along the top, the same up-down-up-down shape her brothers made when building a fortress in the sand. Walking past, peering in, Eva thought of the people locked inside. It was a men’s prison, but imagination being what it is, the birthplace of rebellion, she always envisioned women there. Bad women who had done wrong things. In her mind’s eye, they were gorgeous, with cherry lipstick on angry mouths. Surely they heard everything that happened on the street—the baby crying at the church door, the women talking at the carnicería, the proud, flashy automobiles, the sharp foot-song of horses, Eva’s own child-size steps. It seemed to her, sometimes, that she could hear the women laugh. No sounds ever came from El Penal, but she could feel them laughing, a shrieking sort of texture to the air. She couldn’t imagine why anyone would laugh in prison, unless they were laughing at the people outside. She saw them with dreamlike precision: these reckless women, all in uniform, heads thrown back, making vast and vivid sound. (Four decades later it would amaze Eva that she’d ever looked at the prison and seen that, heard that, when all she could see now was her own daughter, running, running, leaving fresh tomato sauce to scald on the stove.)

  They passed it on the way to church, and if, after church, Papá was happy and the sun was out, they went for a stroll along La Rambla. They ambled through a crowd of ambling people, on a cream and maroon sidewalk, gazing at the shore. The water was different every time. Brown, green, calm, chopped. Stretching out to meet the sky. Eva squinted in search of Argentina on the other side of the river, but she saw only an infinitesimal line, sky on one side, water on the other. Yet she knew Argentina was there because she had learned this fact in school. She had also learned that El Río de la Plata was named that because the first Europeans thought it would lead to silver and gold. They were quite disappointed, Señorita Petrillo explained, her eyes roving the room like an eagle’s, sprigs of hair escaping her bun. In fact, though the name stuck, it was not true, no fue cierto. Cierto. Cierto. Eva rolled that word in her mouth. Something about the sensuous ssss against the palate, followed by the dramatic burst of ier, ending with a strong, decisive to, enticed her, as though the very taste of it made it worth saying. She would walk that Rambla on Sundays and roll that word under her breath, watching the waves spread onto the sand. The River of Silver had promised something, but it was not true, not cierto, like cierre, cielo, cerrado, siempre: lock, sky, closed, always. She murmured in time with the waves: Cierre. Cielo. Cerrado. Siempre. Lock. Sky. Closed. Always.

  They were silly, her word games, and she knew it. She didn’t tell her parents about them. Papá, especially, said she took words too seriously. “There’s more to life than words,” he said, and he should know, having built the house they lived in with bare hands. But Eva loved words for the way they bent and danced around her thoughts, as if her thoughts and words could dance a tango, the thoughts warm and sweating, the words bright and graceful, a rhythm pressed between them. Only Tío Artigas would understand her secret game. He was like a bottle and music was the wine—tangos, folk songs, candombe, anything. She liked to be near him when it poured. Once they made up a tune, The spider has gone fishing, the bird is flying home, I am bigger than an elephant, but smaller than a gnome, and he played it over and over for her on his guitar. Occasionally, at dawn, after Artí had been performing all night long, he sneaked to Eva’s bedside and shook her awake, smelling of cigarettes and that sweet-liquor scent of grappa miel. She’d open her eyes to see her uncle’s weathered face, and hear him whisper, “¡Che! ¿Quieres ir a pescar?” She always said yes—I want to go fishing, I want to watch the sun get strong over water that shivers in sleep, I want to be still with a rod in my hand and not care if anything bites, I want to sit on a rock with you while light fills up the sky.

  Once, on those rocks, Eva did catch a fish, and Xhana gutted it right then and there. She sliced the belly open, pulling organs out with slick and nimble fingers. She skinned it as though the flesh had just been waiting, under scales, for her to free it. She was like that, her cousin; she knew how to grasp a knife, did not fear what was hidden in the body of a fish. She knew so much about knives and songs and the grown-up things musicians spoke of. Xhana had read Marx’s Das Kapital by the time she was seven years old. Eva tried to follow suit, but found the book impenetrable, big words strung together in odd ways. Still, she gathered that it had something to do with freedom, and maybe music, and everyone in the whole world having those two things. Artí and Xhana seemed to have them. They lived in Barrio Sur, closer to downtown, on a street with old carved doors that were
splintered at the edges, where the buildings pressed together like very close friends. Sometimes they disappeared for a month or two, without warning, to Brazil or Paraguay or the Andes. They returned with stories, mosquito bites, holes in their clothes, a photograph of Xhana with her abuelo João, painted drums and quena flutes and lessons on how to play them.

  Such a life could not hope for universal approval. Coco Descalzo, the butcher’s wife, clucked her tongue each time she heard news of Artigas’ departure. “There he goes,” she said and slapped a stack of sausages. “Wandering dangerous roads with that poor girl. She needs a decent home, a stable home. ¡Qué barbaridad!”

  “Sí, Coco.” Mamá’s black braids swung close to the meat. “But he’s not going to change.”

  “Why should he?” Clarabel Ortiz, La Divorciada, stood in the door, hat in hand. The hat was festooned with crumpled paper flowers. Even Eva knew that Clarabel held an unrequited passion for Artigas. “Just think of the adventures they must have. Xhana’s lucky to see the world!”

  “Yes, yes,” Coco said. “Buenos días to you too. We all know what you think and how you’d like to”—her face alight, she glanced at Pajarita, then at Eva attentive in the corner—“este”—sighing—“travel. Sausage? It’s fresh as can be.”

  “No, thank you.” Clarabel plucked a fake petal from her hat. “I’ve come to consult with Pajarita.”

  Mamá and Clarabel crossed the leather curtain behind the counter. Eva followed. She agreed; Xhana was lucky. Who cared that their apartment was small? That two of its windows were broken? On the road, the whole world could be their home, the world with all its dust and flutes and secrets. Eva wanted to see the world too, and so she’d become a pirate in her games with Andrés Descalzo. He was older than she was, by three whole years, but they’d played in the back of the butcher shop since her earliest memory. He had a quick and sparkling mind and together they sailed the seas. Long slabs of ribs, hung from meat hooks, became the sails of their ship. They quested and swung their swords and found treasure in holes they dug in the floor with imaginary spades. Their friendship had evolved out of minor exiles: Andrés was not allowed into his older sisters’ elite world of dolls and teacups, and Eva could not join her brothers’ knee-scraping bouts of soccer. In exacerbation of these matters, Andrés did not do well with soccer, and Eva was bored by serving empty cups of tea. It was far better to board a ship and explore the oceanic wilderness in all its unbridled perils with Andrés, the captain, who wore an eye patch made of brown wrapping paper colored with black pencil (“that thing will give you headaches,” his mother said, but each time she tore one up he made another). Eva, the first mate, had an amazing nose, known across the seas for sniffing beneath the smell of cow flesh for the scent of gold and rubies. Andrés navigated. While Eva kept her nose on precious metals, he kept his uncovered eye out for danger. There were plenty of dangers: crocodiles, dragons, waves big as houses, mean ships full of nasty men who wielded long knives, sharp rocks, mad mermaids, sorcerers with moldy teeth. Andrés steered through it all, toward the lands where treasure lay, waiting to be exhumed and brought to light. That was the best part: the sifting, the finding, the poring over extraordinary jewels—a sapphire ring that made you fly; necklaces that heard the whispered secrets of the heart; bracelets made of bright, delicious candy that could be licked and licked and never get spent, never whittle away, because they were made of Oro Dulce, Sweet Gold, which, for fearless pirates, was the prize.