“Dr. Caribe,” Eva said gently, “what happened?”
He drained his glass. “The police called me five weeks ago. I treat their prisoners. Thieves, murderers, prostitutes. So I thought I had some idea of what to expect. Well. When I got to the station, I was shown to the Federal Police Unit. Special Section. I’d never been there before.”
He paused. “They led me into a dark room. A thin joven lay on the cement floor. Unconscious. Blood all over him, a deep gash in his head. His face was so bruised that, I swear to you, his own mother would not have known him. I examined him, and two of his fingers and one of his ribs were broken. He had lost a lot of blood.
“I was told to clean him up and get him well—without transporting him to a hospital. That’s impossible, I said. He’s in critical condition; he needs a hospital. The officer looked at me with a kind of snarl. Just fix him up, he said. A second officer took me aside. Look, he said, it’s like this. The beating was unauthorized. Necessary, of course, but not something we can broadcast. He has to stay here until he’s, you know, presentable. That’s your job. I protested, a little. What if I don’t do it? The officer got impatient. He said, Then maybe no one will.” Dr. Caribe’s bottom lip shook.
Roberto looked away, delicately. Eva’s breasts tingled, full of milk; she saw herself pulling the doctor across the coffee table, past the roses, into her chest, as she might a child who’d scraped his knee on the pavement. “Doctor, it’s all right.”
“No, it’s not at all.” He stared down at his hands. “I’m ashamed to tell you that I stayed. But the boy needed five doctors. If I left, he’d have none. So I started to clean his body. It took all night. Halfway, I heard the officers outside the door. The first one wanted to kill the joven and call it a traffic accident. The second one was undecided. They spoke as if he were an old rag to dispose of. I thought I might be sick, right on the concrete floor.
“At that point, of course, I should have left. I should have refused to come back, ever. But instead I thought, What will they do to me? What will they do to the boy? God, I was such a coward.” Dr. Caribe stared over Eva’s shoulder as though the concrete-and-iron room were just behind her. “The boy became my life. All my waking hours were with him. When I slept, he filled my dreams. In my dreams he’d turn, sometimes, into my son—they’re roughly the same age. Well. In four days he regained consciousness. The officers bandaged his eyes so he couldn’t see me. They gave me a pseudonym to use in his presence. They wanted to move him from the prison, but he was still too fragile. It took five more days to stabilize him for transport.
“We took him to a suburban house. A secret place used by the police to … do whatever things they do. They set it up for his convalescence. As his face healed, he reminded me more and more of my son. He never spoke to me, except to ask for food or water or help shifting positions on the bed he was handcuffed to. He had been warned not to talk, of course, by the police. We both had. But still, I was tortured by the thought that he despised me. That he saw me as one of them. I wanted to explain myself, I wanted to run. Instead I did as I was told.
“Three weeks passed. Finally, an order was issued for his release. It was over. I thought I’d saved him, and saved myself. I was going to put it all behind me. I went home and slept for twenty-two hours.
“The next morning, I saw the Democracia and almost dropped my mate on the floor. That’s how I learned the boy’s name.” He held up the clipping. “Ernesto Bravo.”
Eva’s breasts hurt, they were too full, they raged against their compress. “I don’t understand.”
Dr. Caribe shook the cut page. “Bravo couldn’t have attacked the police. He was under my care. He was framed.”
Eva leaned against the sofa, trying not to swallow anything—not spit, not air, not what filled the space between them. The French peasants were ridiculous on their wallpaper, prancing as if there were nothing wrong with their golden tree. Ridiculous, yet she longed to be like them, to keep on dancing, hold on to what was bright and polished and well worth burning up one’s life for. But something else, a lesion, had opened in her home. A doctor crumbles beside white roses; a young man is brutalized beyond recognition; peasants dance around a painted tree whose real trunk, trapped inside, is dying.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
His voice was small, the knee-scraped boy. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Antonio.” Roberto leaned forward. “Put it behind you.”
“I can’t. I’ve betrayed everything—my profession, my conscience. Even my wife, who wonders why I never sleep. If I don’t do something to right this wrong, this could destroy me.”
Eva took in his haggard face and believed him.
Roberto looked wary. “What would you do?”
“I’ve got to tell people. Besides you. I need advice on how to do it.”
“No.” Roberto’s body almost raised from the sofa cushions. “You’d endanger your job, your family—everything.”
“I know.”
Eva burned for her guest, for his sorrow, for the young Ernesto Bravo, for the mouth of her baby, sleeping upstairs in a pink crib. “What if you wrote a letter and let it land in the right places?”
“Eva—” Roberto said, a hint of iron in his voice.
“Anonymously,” she added. Roberto stared in open warning. She pretended not to notice.
“I can’t,” Dr. Caribe said. “I tried. I couldn’t find words. It’s as if there’s a boulder in my way.” He smiled at Eva, a tired smile, his first of the evening. “Not all of us have your gifts.”
“It’s just as well,” Roberto said. “You could write tomes about this and still not change what happened.” His hands pressed together tightly; Eva felt the low emanation of his fear. “The last thing Argentina needs is another good man in exile.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“By the way.” Roberto swept the air with his hand, wiping it clean. “I read your paper on leprosy. It’s fascinating.”
The conversation moved, changed, grew fraught with medical terms Eva did not understand. She shifted restlessly; time to unwrap; time to go to Salomé.
“Excuse me,” she said, and headed to the stairs.
Salomé Ernestina Santos slept in her crib, her hand a tiny fist, pacifier covering her mouth. Eva pulled the pacifier out and Salomé opened her eyes, cried, and reached toward her mother. She bared her breasts. The little mouth was warm and fierce. Her fist loosened and grasped her mother’s skin. There it was, the hotsweet pulling, her power to pour something that was needed. She tried not to think of Ernesto Bravo, twice broken, or of the woman who’d once fed him with her body; she tried not to think of the Peróns, with their pink palace, their shine shine shine over the radio, their dispensations of hope, their printed lies, the intricate equation of their existence, complex, indecipherable, Einsteinian in its paradoxes; she tried not to think of herself, tomorrow and the next day and the next, moving through her life with this secret in her gut, a respectable woman, safe and tidy, with her jewels and crystal cups and damask drapes, letting other people bleed on concrete floors. She disgusted herself already. She tightened her grip on Salomé; the baby writhed and sucked. She could have told her daughter many things, was readying herself to say them, this is who I really am, breast bared, feeding you, longing to be brave, large, angry, to believe the man who said it’s all possible, but baby and mother opened their mouths at the same time, and Salomé released the nipple, smacking her lips. Eva nestled her daughter back in the crib, settling for a lullaby, “arrorró mi niña, arrorró mi sol,” and the baby slept.
She returned to the drawing room. The men were on their feet.
“You’re leaving already?” Eva spread her palms to show her disappointment.
“It’s not exactly tea time.”
“But still! Let me at least accompany you to the door. Roberto.” She touched her husband’s arm. “You must be exhausted. Why don’t you head to bed?”
He did, and mi
nutes later, just as the doctor stepped out into the rain, Eva whispered, “Come back in the morning, when Roberto’s at work. I’ll help you.”
Dr. Caribe squinted at her. Rain beat at his umbrella. “How?”
She leaned forward and drops caught in the edges of her hair. “With the words.”
It didn’t take long. In three days Roberto burst into the drawing room.
“Eva!”
She looked up from her notebook, where she’d just written, You burn and. His face was close to hers, mouth hard, brow pressed, a hunted animal.
“What’s wrong?”
“You tell me, Eva. What you did with Antonio.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“That night. The things he told us. There’s a mimeograph circulating among politicians. Today it was leaked to the press.”
Eva set her notebook on the coffee table. “What makes you think I had anything to do with it?”
Roberto glared. “Look me in the eyes and tell me you didn’t.”
“Surely it was anonymous.”
“You have no idea what they’re capable of.” His eyes were wild, the eyes of a caged jaguar. You’re almost an old man, she thought. “I got a mysterious call today, suggesting we leave the country. Now tell me, dear wife, why would I get a call like that?”
His eyes bored into her. She willed herself not to look away, not to ask how that could be, how they could know.
“You helped him, Eva. Against my will.”
She stood. “Yours is not the only will I follow.”
It happened quickly—hands at her shoulders, a rough shake in her skull, and suddenly she was pushed against French wallpaper and a man who was her husband shouted—“What—have—you—done?”—and his hands were at her neck, she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t breathe, she didn’t need to breathe because she floated from herself, out into the air and if she could only find that fissure—
He let her go. She leaned against the wall. Pain throbbed in a necklace around her throat. Roberto stood a few paces away, his back to her. She could read in the slouch of his shoulders that he was sorry. The living room framed him with its antique table, velvet curtains, plush rug hand-woven in Persia. He loves me. She recited the words to herself.
“We’re leaving,” he said. “Tomorrow. Get the children ready. Eva. You know …”
“I do.”
He stood still for a moment, then left without looking back.
The next night, at 2 a.m., Eva gazed out of the car window at the waters of the Río de la Plata. Dark. Still. Yielding to the curved bellies of boats at dock. Behind her, she heard the scuffle of men at their trunk, pulling out suitcases full of clothes, cash, photographs, reams of unpublished poems, her covert box of baby shoes (outgrown, essential, relics she could not leave or throw away). Salomé lay dreaming in her arms. Robertito leaned sleepily against her, clutching his stuffed bunny, Papagonia. She filled herself with his delicate scent: sweet talcum and tart hair oil. If only she could keep him this way, soft and three and fragrant, somehow defy the speeding laws of time. His intelligence amazed her; today, he had launched inexhaustible questions about where they were going (“to the country I came from”) and for how long (“oh, you’ll see”). Her husband sat at the other end of the backseat, staring out at his city. He had spent the whole drive in silence. Just as well. Eva adjusted the scarf at her neck to ensure that the bruises stayed hidden.
She wondered how and when people would discover their departure: Roberto’s students at the hospital; his parents, with their prim but ample love; María of the breasts that gave and gave. One night, the story would go, in the year of 1951, the whole family simply disappeared. It didn’t look like rain. The clouds had lifted, as if sated by the recent downpour, with no signs of return, at least not tonight when clear skies meant so much to them. No use worrying about what the sky would do tomorrow.
A boat pulled up to the port. The car door opened and a hooded man hustled her onto the boat. She set a foot gingerly inside. Water glimmered darkly all around her. Cierre. Cielo. Cerrado. Siempre. Lock. Sky. Closed. Always.
The hooded boatmen launched them onto the quiet river. Nothing but water could be seen ahead, but Eva knew there would be land because she’d lived there, she had walked and breathed it, six years ago it had been home. Montevideo. City of echoes. City of too many shoes. City of corner butcher shops, green herbs crowding the kitchen, the simple heat of Mami’s stews. Gliding back, encased in night, for the first time in fifteen years she prayed: for her son, Roberto, and for Salomé; for her marriage, laden with new and unnamed weight; for Dr. Caribe and his family, somewhere also crossing into exile; for Ernesto Bravo and his mother and for Evita and Juan Perón and the Argentina that loved and feared them, Argentina so enchanted and haunted and severe; she prayed for Uruguay, for Mamá, her brothers, their children and wives, all the poets at La Diablita, Coco with her letters and her missing son, Andrés; she prayed for the waves to keep chanting at La Rambla and for Uruguayan wool to keep spinning on its wheels; for her father, yes, she prayed for her father and even for Pietro, sí, oh God who art in heaven or wherever you may hide, for Pietro too, since this was the only place where she could do it, here between shores, between homes, on this river that ran between worlds.
Hours later, through the darkness, across the long black water, the apricot lights of Montevideo began to glow.
Monte. Vide. Eu. I see a mountain, a captain said four centuries ago, spying a low hill from his boat, approaching a river that would not have any silver. City of misnomers. City of small things. City redolent of leather, fresh wool, saline evening breeze.
Returning was like traveling back in time. All those memories caught in every stone and step and smell. On the first day, the fountain at Parque Rodó almost felled her. Out of its waters reared a spectre of herself, at the end of the war, bending over to wash vomit from her blouse. It leaped at her, soiled and clawing. She stumbled backward, toward the trees and street beyond.
Things weren’t the same, returning. The city hadn’t changed; it was she who had to adjust her eyes—adjust all senses—to a different light, get used to spectres, get used to things so small and calm. No giant boulevards, no mad blare at the core of Montevideo. Even the cars sounded less tense. Their new apartment was in La Ciudad Vieja, right on Avenida San Salvador. The wrought-iron balcony gazed over ornate buildings, a cobbled lane, old trees swaying their leaves, and La Diablita. Six years ago, before Buenos Aires, living in this neighborhood would have seemed the height of glamour. Inside, the bed was sturdy, if not lush; the carpets clean, if not red; the curtains quaint, if not fine. She would creep from bed (gently, so as not to rustle Roberto’s sleep) and tiptoe to the balcony in slippers and a fur coat. In that safe roost, she’d smoke and sit and stare at the red door as it swung open and closed for customers. The door itself remembered, throbbed and called her; surely if she crossed the street and touched it all the nights of work and longing would rush back to her and show her who she was. That throb kept her awake for hours, cigarette after cigarette burning its slow ash toward her hand.
Returning wouldn’t be returning until she went to Punta Carretas. She couldn’t go to the house where she’d grown up. She could not see Papá. She thought about it, tried to picture it, tried to drum up things that she could say, but her pictures always ended up at Tomás’ wedding, his laugh with Pietro, a pascualina pie dropped to the floor. That pascualina pie was thick and rotten and could easily infiltrate her body. She feared she might not rise from bed, not kiss her children, not keep from killing someone if she swallowed it again. A stalemate was a stalemate and was better than a war. But Mamá. She had to see Mamá.
She sought her out at Carnicería Descalzo. The air inside was pungent and evoked a pirate girl and boy slaying a dragon, laughing raucously, no longer there. The shop looked just the same, and so did Coco: the same round face, yellow kerchief, and bend toward sausages as she rearranged them.
Ro
bertito squirmed against Eva’s skirt. He’d been moody since the move, and would need a siesta soon. Eva waited for Coco, suddenly shy. She too would have liked to squirm against huge skirts. Two flies lazed through the meaty air, perhaps the progeny of the very flies who’d been here when Eva left. The glass case shut and Coco emerged to see her customer, an affluent stranger flanked by a baby carriage and a three-year-old boy.
“What can I do for you, Señora?”
“I’ve come to see my mother.”
Coco blinked. She scanned Eva, up, down, up again. “Eva?” Slowly, as if revving a long-stalled engine. “Eva Firielli?”
The curtain behind the counter opened. Pajarita swept through. She stood in her wool dress, hair half silver, eyes wide. Eva felt a shell crack inside her. “Mamá—” and before she could bolt or sink to her knees for forgiveness, she was gripped by two arms, the scratch of wool, the scent of shredded basil and bitter roots.
“It’s been so long,” Mamá said.
She let her body melt, a little, toward her mother. She was so small but pressed so fiercely; Eva could barely breathe. Pajarita’s shoulders began to shake. Eva resisted the urge to pull away.
Roberto tugged at her skirt. “Mamá.”
Pajarita drew back and squatted beside the boy. “Hola, precioso.”
“Roberto. Say hello to your abuela.”
“Hello, Abuela,” he mimed politely. He studied the woman before him, with her wet eyes and plain dress. She touched his arm, his hair, his face.
Eva gestured toward the baby carriage. “And this is Salomé.”
Pajarita looked into the carriage. Salomé stirred, as if the gaze had broken the thin film of her sleep. Pajarita lifted the infant and saddled her against her waist. The baby grasped a black and silver braid as if it were a rope thrown out for rescue. She pulled hard. Pajarita did not seem to mind, did not seem as though she’d mind if Salomé tore the braid out by the root.
“She’s strong,” Eva said apologetically.
The Invisible Mountain Page 20