The Invisible Mountain

by Carolina de Robertis

  In the spring, in the time when the Beatles first sang over the radio, Leona called, breathless and urgent.

  “Salomé.”

  “Yes,” she said, her mind crowding with reasons for such a call: a tragic death, a sudden boyfriend, Leona’s first period (it had happened last year to Salomé; she would tell her it wasn’t so bad).

  “We’ve broken ties with Cuba.”

  “What?”

  “The government. It’s broken diplomatic ties.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s serious. U.S. officials told them to do it. Our government owes them money, so they did as they were told.” The line rang with static. “Cowards.” The sound of shuffling. “Wait. I’ll read it to you.”

  “Of course I’ll wait.”

  “Okay. This is what the United States said: ‘Your government is condoning the intolerable presence of communism on this continent.’ Can you believe it? Hang on.”

  Salomé heard Anna’s voice in the background.

  “Look, I’m going out. I’ll talk to you later, ¿sí?”

  “Sure.”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  She hung up before Salomé could say good-bye.

  A protest swelled in the Plaza de Independencia. Salomé listened to the radio and pictured it, the shouting, nightsticks, shots, arrests, Leona and her sister on those streets, risking their lives. It occurred to her to sneak away and join them, but it was impossible—Mamá watched her keenly and would not leave the living room. She pretended to do her homework. Two hours later, Roberto burst in, face flushed. He looked old, not like a boy at all.

  Mamá said, “You’re not in class?”

  “I couldn’t go. It’s occupied.”

  “What is?”

  “The university.” They stared at him. Roberto raised his hands. “There are hundreds of them—students, and I think professors too—they’ve taken over all the buildings. They’ve got banners, they’re shouting. It’s this thing with Cuba.”

  Mamá blinked. “And the police?”

  “They’ve surrounded the buildings.”

  “They have guns?”

  “Obviously.”

  Mamá rose slowly, and she looked pale, red-lipped, black-haired, Snow White after the poisoned apple. “That’s it. You two aren’t going out until this whole thing is over. Salomé, no school.”

  “But—”

  “You heard me. You’re staying home.”

  Salomé bent her head over her books. No school meant no Leona, no updates, no time under the tree receiving stories from the streets. The algebraic formulas stared back at her, stubborn little hieroglyphs with no relevance to this night. From the kitchen, she heard Abuela slicing carrots, or potatoes; she smelled onions frying on the stove. Outside these walls, the world was turning, spinning, whirling on its axis pushed by many hands, fueled by all the cries and chants and marching feet and crowded rooms and burning dreams—and she would not be part of it. She wondered what it tasted like out there.

  Montevideo shook and surged for days. Salomé followed the action closely on the radio. The university occupation kept on. On the third day, the Cuban ambassadors dragged their hasty luggage to the Carrasco Airport. A crowd gathered to show their solidarity and wave good-bye. Salomé heard about the violence on the radio: the police used clubs, did not stop when people fell, there was blood on the street, there was blood on the polished glass doors of the airport. Leona still hadn’t called. Perhaps she was at the airport, perhaps her blood now streaked the windows. Perhaps revolution was arriving in Uruguay, circling lower and lower like an enormous hawk, something spiritual, without borders, casting a long shadow as it sought a place to land, and history would remember those who cleared space for it. She wanted to clear space. She wanted to be brave. She wanted to experience the axis of the world. Today I can’t, she thought, I’ve been forbidden, I can’t find a way to escape. But you, long shadow, circling thing, I promise I will give myself to you. When I am remembered, if I am remembered, it will be for helping the change. If I hold my breath for thirty seconds now, that seals the promise. She looked at the clock. She held her breath.

  The phone rang in the hallway. Abuela picked up.

  “¿Hola? What? César, yes. Oh. Of course … I’m sorry. Is she—? Of course.”

  Mamá’s voice. “What is it?”

  “Xhana’s at the hospital.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “Fractured ribs. Cuts to her head.”

  Mamá made a low, guttural sound.

  “They were at the airport.”

  “I’ve got to see her.”

  “Go—I’ll watch the children.”

  Salomé thought of Tía Xhana, bones cracked, head bleeding, slammed onto the asphalt by an officer’s club. She hoped, absurdly, for Mamá to come in and invite her to go. Of course it didn’t happen. Restless, churning, trapped inside the house, she listened to her mother grasp her keys and hurry out.

  Xhana spent five days in the hospital, and once the university reopened and classes resumed, Salomé was allowed to visit. Tío César sat beside the bed, looking more tired than she’d ever seen him. Xhana lay propped up on pillows, and lit up when she saw the carnations in Salomé’s hands. “How nice,” she said, smiling, and Salomé saw she’d lost two of her teeth.

  Throughout the following year—while she studied chemistry and Hemingway and art, while she whispered with Leona in the eucalyptus shade, through bustling days and nights in the Punta Carretas house—Salomé listened to all the conversations she could find. She was a spy now, surreptitious, urgent, determined to trace the shadows to their source, to see the world in all its tangles and pry herself a space amid the chaos. There were many conversations, hushed, loud, worried, furtive, brash, contemplative, excitable, didactic. She pricked her ears and made herself invisible. In Crandon halls, out on the street, at Coco’s butcher shop, in Xhana’s kitchen, in Abuela’s kitchen, behind Mamá’s closed door, at the bus stop, on the bus, she gathered words and pieced them together like a jigsaw:

  Everything’s changed.

  It’s temporary.

  It’s disastrous.

  This is practically a dictatorship.

  Oh, come on.

  You come on. Look at the police.

  True.

  See?

  Our economy is a disaster.

  We’ve always bounced back.

  This is different.

  We’re a tenacious nation. A stable nation.

  The Switzerland of South America.

  That’s in the past.

  The past never dies.

  You’re out of touch.

  The unions are strong.

  So is poverty.

  So is police violence.

  Honestly, I can’t believe their violence.

  It’s not Uruguayan.

  It is now.

  We’ll rise up in protest, like the rest of the world.

  Look at Cuba.

  Look at Europe, China, Vietnam.

  Look at Mississippi.

  Look at the Tupamaros.

  Tupamaros? Who the hell are they?

  I’m not sure, but they left flyers around the university.

  I think they set off a bomb the other day.

  Yeah, in front of the U.S. Navy building.

  Hm. What nice men.

  I heard they wrote gringos piratas on the wall of the building.

  I heard they’re named after Túpac Amaru.

  I heard they rob banks.

  I heard they have guns.

  I heard they’re saving up for the revolution.

  I heard they give spoils to the poor.

  I heard they’re an arm of the Socialist party.

  They’re lawless.

  They’re heroes.

  Our lawmakers are lawless, so really, who cares?

  You’re exaggerating.

  You’re naïve.

  They’re beating up strikers.

  Well, they are gettin
g too wild.

  Too wild for whom?

  Reporters are getting fired.

  So? Everybody’s getting fired.

  We need a revolution.

  Of course we don’t.

  We’re on the brink of dictatorship.

  Come on—we’re not that kind of country.

  It’s already started.

  It can’t happen.

  Sure it can.

  It won’t.

  I’m telling you, it’s happening.

  If people are just patient, things will turn around.

  But if they don’t?

  Then …

  Then what?

  Fifteen seemed to race up at her, girls are supposed to keel and scheme and bate their breath for the day of their quinceañera, savoring unbearable suspense, but Salomé had to be reminded of it by her mother and Abuela, who rallied for the date months in advance, who sewed the dress during late nights, the living room a garish ocean of white ruffles, asking do you like this? and this? more layers here, what do you think? and Salomé would bob or shake her head yes or no and let them pin, stitch, twirl her slowly, analyze, claim she looked so pretty. She felt gangly in the end result. She was still angular, long-limbed, a sketch of womanhood. And anyway, it seemed to her that the rewards of becoming a woman, the solemn gifts bestowed on her, were disappointing: her first lipstick, pink and sticky on her mouth; high heels on which she lost her balance; long white gloves to match her ruffled dress. Surely there was more to it, more incentive to accept the inscrutable burdens of adulthood.

  The party itself dizzied her with its heat and droves and noises, its spread of enough bizcochos, empanadas, alfajores, pascualina, and churrascos to feed all of Montevideo. The cake seemed to yield a thousand slices. One by one the guests told her how beautiful she looked, which made her sheepish and also a bit suspicious. Nevertheless, once she drank two glasses of Champagne and dancing began in earnest, she succumbed to electric undercurrents of pleasure. Joy lurked in her bones after all, hot and thick and streaming, and she saw it in the guests too, as they danced: Tía Xhana and Tío César dipped and reeled their way through a smoldering tango; Coco’s and Gregorio’s gray hairs mingled as they pressed together; Abuelo twirled Mamá and Mamá laughed and his eyes widened with a kind of baffled awe; even Roberto took to the dance floor, shaking abashedly to the Beatles, do you want to know a secret, with Flor—his girlfriend, Edgar’s cousin, her loose hair the color of acorns, her body serpentine, her face calm and aglow. Salomé would never be like Flor, so attuned to the filigrees of desire, able to command them and draw them into her sphere without uttering a sound. No matter. She didn’t want to be Flor, glossy, vacuous, while the world broke apart and transmuted around her. She kept smiling for the crowd. Leona was not there. She missed her friend, who had been busy lately, and distracted, because her aunt was sick, or so she said. Surely Leona had no reason to lie, not to Salomé, with whom she shared everything; all the more reason that lies would be difficult, awkward, poorly delivered, causing Leona to look away when speaking about the aunt and her long illness, staring at the iron gates beyond the lawn.

  The long white gloves began to itch. Some secrets are told with ease, but others can combust if they are brought too close to words. And if I am a woman now, if it’s true that these white frills can make me a real woman, that this Champagne and dance can strip my childhood, then I want to go inside, I want to see what Leona sees, I want to step into the hidden places that she may not know but that I think she knows now, places hot with danger I can neither name nor imagine but that surely are not for children, would never be for children, are only for men and also perhaps for women who can say they’re a real woman and are unafraid to look their own fate in the eye.

  It took two months. They were in the basement bathroom, a half-abandoned spot that stank of mossy rust. It was raining outside. Salomé had a letter from Artigas.

  “Listen to this part. ‘We’re still recovering from Che’s departure. Some people say he abandoned the Revolution. But I think he’s gone to spread it, elsewhere in Latin America. Who knows where it will turn up next?’”

  She looked up. Pearls of sweat glistened at Leona’s temples.

  “What do you think?”

  Leona tapped the sink with her fingernails. She seemed preoccupied with something: an exam around the corner, a sharp pebble in her shoe. “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s true. I think it’s spreading.” Salomé took a breath of mildewed air. “I want to be part of it.”

  “How much do you want it?”

  Her tone was jolting. “You know how much.”

  Leona stepped closer. Her face grew strident around the jaw. “With your whole being?”

  “Yes.”

  Leona scanned her friend’s face. Her hair was in a ponytail; a few wayward coils formed a frizzy halo. She softened; her gaze grew almost tender. “Would you give your life?”

  Salomé wasn’t breathing. No windows graced the basement bathroom; the only light slunk out of a weak, bare bulb. It hung just above them, so that their foreheads were lit, while their chins were half-lost in the dark. Two schoolgirls gossip in a bathroom. Two young women define their lives. She heard the rain falling in distant thuds against the building. Her world was full of rain and teeth and nightsticks to knock out those teeth, and here she was, schoolgirl, woman, thrilled and alive and afraid, staring at her friend, listening to slick hungers in her body, to the promise she’d made with suspended breath when she was still a child, thinking she’d be strong enough one day, but am I strong enough? how strong is enough? some steps are final, you can’t go back, you can’t know whether you’re ready or even see the road ahead, you can only look into the dark with its dim glints and far explosions and sharp turns and weigh—starkly, rapidly—the cost.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Leona searched her face, smiled. She took paper from her backpack, wrote against the wall, pushed the page into Salomé’s hand, and left the room.

  Salomé read the note. Meet me outside El Chivito Sabroso tomorrow at ten minutes to six o’clock sharp. Make absolutely sure you’re alone. Destroy this note immediately.

  The next day, after school, Salomé hurried through her homework. No time to change; the uniform would have to do.

  “I’m going out,” she told her mother as she headed to the door.

  Mamá looked up from her book. “Where to?”

  “To see a friend.”

  Mamá raised a sculpted eyebrow. “Which one?”

  Salomé thought fast. Hasta la Victoria. “Victoria.”

  “Victoria. She’s at Crandon?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve finished your homework?”

  “Yes.”

  Mami softened, and Salomé felt a pang for lying. She pushed it away, remembering the night Che Guevara came to speak. Her mother also lied about destinations.

  “Will you be back for dinner?”

  She had no idea. “No.”

  “Have fun. Don’t come back too late.”

  At twelve minutes to six o’clock, Salomé stood outside El Chivito Sabroso. The rain had halted; dusk began to stroke the bricks and stones. She tried not to think about the hours before her, gaping and white, blinding, unknowable. Through the window of the restaurant, she watched three melancholy men share a pitcher of beer. A lone woman dove into her chivito sandwich, its insides—steak, fried egg, ham, bacon, cheese—collapsing from the bottom when she bit. A waiter stood indifferent watch. Across the street, two policemen paused at the corner. A bus rattled by, bursting with worn workers. One officer grasped the pistol at his hip, unnecessarily, as they strode away.

  Leona came around the corner. Salomé raised her hand to greet her, but she walked past as if they were strangers. She slowed without turning. Salomé followed, keeping an easy distance. They walked to the end of the block, then to the right, then two more blocks and to the right again. They were on a quiet side street, dimly lit, flanked
by tired buildings. Leona stopped in front of a laundromat. Its lights were off. The sign in the window said CLOSED. She knocked on the door; it opened; she stepped through quickly. Salomé stood alone on the empty street. It smelled of gutters alive with rain. She approached the door and it opened before she could knock. Leona rushed her in and led her through the blackness, past rows of unseen washing machines, into the back of the store. They arrived at the far wall; reaching out to touch it, Salomé felt the handles of mops and brooms. Leona knocked on the left end. It opened and she pulled Salomé by the wrist through the invisible door.

  They entered a cramped dark room with no windows. Four people sat inside: Leona’s sister, Anna, with her long face and gold-rimmed glasses; a young man in a starched collar; another man in his late twenties with a square face and bushy beard; and a broad, large muchacho with hair that wisped into his face, who looked older than Salomé, about seventeen. He looked familiar, but she couldn’t place him, couldn’t think, because they all were staring at her.

  Leona motioned for her to sit down. Salomé arranged herself carefully on the freezing floor, regretting that she’d rushed out in her knee-length school skirt. She tasted the mingled breaths of six people and two oil lamps.

  Bushy Beard nodded toward Leona, who closed the door.

  “So,” Bushy said, “you’re Salomé.”

  She nodded. All eyes were still on her.

  “She can really be trusted?”

  Leona’s nod was decisive.

  Bushy stared at Salomé. His eyes were dark green, shaded by a ledge of brow. “What do you know about the Tupamaros?”

  She cleared her throat. So here it was. “They plan to liberate Uruguay.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “In the papers—”

  “The papers are much less favorable.”

  “And my family talking.”

  The wisp-haired boy grinned and now she placed him, the grandson of Cacho Cassella, the magician from Abuelo’s youth. Tinto Cassella. He winked at her in the low light.

  Bushy continued. “What do you think about the Tupamaros?”

  She had rolled that question through her mind all day. “That they’re important. And brave.”

  “What would you say to a Tupamaro if you met one?”

  She saw Leona in her peripheral vision, lifting her chin, leaning forward, and Salomé could almost smell the eucalyptus, feel the stippled light of their lawn. “ ‘I admire what you’re doing and I want to be part of it.’”