The Invisible Mountain

by Carolina de Robertis

  “Commendable,” Orlando said, receiving her report. It was stacked and tidy, full of well-organized recriminations. Leona beamed at her from across the room, in her banker’s uniform. Salomé had thought deployment would devastate Leona, but she’d only said there’ll be time to study later, after the revolution. Her faith in that coming era was unshakable.

  At home, Mamá said nothing. She eyed Salomé’s tight bun and panty hose with suspicion. She treated her daughter like a sudden houseguest, deserving of civility but foreign to her house, whose proclivities and moods could not be gauged. A strange guest who worked for the yanquis and dressed like a drone and did not seem incensed by this man who now called himself president, who had already shut down newspapers, outlawed meetings, outlawed leftist parties, railed about the need for strict force in Uruguay. Mamá, she wanted to shout, I’m not what you think—shut up about the censorship, shut up about the laws, I’m doing more about it than you could possibly imagine, and in fact, when we get out of this mess, if we ever get out of it, you’ll see my sacrifice and you’ll have me to thank. But she said nothing. She swallowed the picture of herself as an office girl, indifferent, eating her spaghetti without taking down her bun, while Mamá made futile complaints about the state of affairs, knowing just how the ritual would go: Abuelo would mutter something about security, Roberto would complain of disruptions at school, Salomé would shuffle food around on her plate, and Abuela Pajarita would make a tired but sincere comment about survival—We’ll get through this, for example—and encourage everyone to have seconds, to eat more, there was enough.

  She found a haven for her lunch hour, on a bench in a nearby plaza. A stone general claimed the center, sword raised high, covered with pigeons and their droppings. She’d never read the general’s plaque and didn’t know who he was. How many people—how many thousands—fought and died for their country without having statues made of them? Who would grace the city’s plazas once the revolution won? I don’t want to be a statue, she thought, I just want to know that I was part of it. That I did something to help the change as it was coming, and can say so to my grandchildren: I knew the change was coming, I gave myself to it, I did everything I could; they’ll look into my face in wonder and be proud. Tell us again, they’ll say. Tell us all about it. I was fighting for you, so you could have a happy Uruguay, where everybody has enough to eat. They’ll be puzzled at the crazy past, where not everyone could eat, and they’ll grow up and grow old and tell their grandchildren. Salomé took another bite of her sandwich. I am fighting for you, she said in her mind, speaking to the city: you, Montevideo, flat and slow and unassuming, the only place I know, with all your hungry mouths and unsung charms, capital of a small land at the far end of the earth, where light falls on fractured pavement, where look, look, two old ladies now walk arm in arm toward a bench carrying purses that match their hats, and beneath those hats who knows what memories lie fallow. She finished her sandwich. The ladies were still walking. Their steps were infinitesimal, they looked as though they’d never hurried in their lives, the journey to the bench could take all day. The wind rustled the leaves and Salomé’s collar and the skirts of the old ladies. Another day, another plaza, in this sweet-sad city. The general bore his pigeon shit in silence. The park bench held nothing but sun.

  Six minutes left of her lunch hour. She threw crumbs at the agitated birds.

  President Pacheco ruled by decree. He routinely overrode the constitution. He proclaimed union strikers to be subject to the draft, which enabled soldiers to open fire on them, force them back to work, and take them into custody in martial jails. Reporters wrote obliquely, burying hints of unrest in careful columns. Jobs were slashed, including Abuelo Ignazio’s, leaving him home each day, slumped on the sofa, staring out the window at the pale walls of the prison, which filled with political prisoners, from socialists to laborers to Tupamaros. His pension was paltry but the family could go on: Mamá still brought home cash from waiting tables, Abuela Pajarita still offered herbs and teas and listening ears in the back of Coco’s butcher shop, and Salomé, of course, brought home a decent salary. Roberto, now a star in the biology department, did not need to leave the university in order to bring home wages, nor did the family have to join the bread lines that coiled around blocks throughout the city.

  Her days were soft and hard, soft and hard, the soft hot lips of Tinto, the hard slopes of guns (twenty of them, newer kinds, including M16s just like the ones being used against Vietnam), the soft wind she read instinctively for signs of danger, the hard heels of her pumps against the office floor, the soft voice of Abuelo as he told and retold stories of an older mystic sepia Uruguay, the hard doors that closed for secret meetings to begin.

  The Movement gathered momentum. Membership swelled. Her cell now had eleven members, more elbows and less oxygen. It was 1968 and the world heaved and gasped and coruscated with uprisings, you could read all about it, they were everywhere, all over their continent and also in Mexico City, Czechoslovakia, London, Paris, Vietnam, Warsaw, Berlin, Chicago, Australia, Japan, places she had never seen or touched but could connect to, was linked to already, one fleck in a gargantuan glittering web that spanned the globe, surrounded it, entangled it in sticky threads of change. Uprising threads. There was no escaping them. In her little peripheral country—she could feel it, sometimes, looking down a dusky street—she fingered the subtle reins of the world and it was true, wasn’t it, the ride to revolution, the slant into a gallop. The time had come for headlong hurtles that would never be forgotten, that historians of the future would write of in grand terms: that’s where liberation began. It called for intensity, concealment, sacrifice. Others sacrificed far more than she, like Orlando, for example, whose name had appeared on a list of people wanted for sedition and who now was in hiding. Tupas were wanted. They were notorious. Their name was banned from the press. Reporters could only use the words “criminal” or “terrorist.” One paper called them “The Nameless Ones,” and the office burned to the ground (buildings burn, thought Salomé, over our name!)—but the term stuck. She heard it on bus rides, in plazas, at kiosks downtown, over Coco’s glass cases of meat.

  The Nameless Ones are at it again—they’ve just robbed a casino.

  They’re just like Robin Hood.

  They’re going to save us from this mess.

  The Nameless Ones, they caused this mess, what are you talking about, idiot, they’re the problem.

  They’re the cockroaches of Uruguay.

  More like the heroes.

  More like the caca.

  They’re going to liberate this nation.

  Pacheco won’t let them.

  The Nameless Ones are smarter than him.

  That’s for sure.

  They care more about us too.

  I hate them.

  I applaud them.

  Careful, don’t clap too loudly.

  Why not? You see? We’re not free anymore!

  The Nameless Ones are free.

  How do you know?

  It’s obvious.

  Nothing about them is obvious.

  You should ask them.

  Ha!

  I fear them, if you’ve got to know the truth.

  I wish I had the balls to be one.

  I wish that I could meet one because, let me assure you, I’ve got a load of things to say.

  Even children heard the whispers, as Tía Xhana recounted one night.

  “Señora Durán, she teaches third grade next door to me. She’s no sympathizer, I can tell you that.” Xhana poured wine into Ignazio’s glass. “But last week, she asked her students to write down a word, any word, that starts with ‘T.’ Nineteen of them—nineteen!—wrote ‘Tupamaro.’ So what did Señora Durán do? She tried to remove all the Robin Hood books from the school library. But guess what?”

  A thick pause settled over the table.

  “What?” Mamá said.

  “She was too late. They were all checked out. Even kids know what’s g
oing on.”

  “As well they should,” said Mamá.

  Abuelo Ignazio looked as if the potatoes had soured in his mouth. “How can The Nameless be a good lesson for children?”

  “How can repression?” Mamá swung her hair, which she wore today in a loose and supple mane. “People need all the hope they can get.”

  Abuelo rolled his eyes. Salomé pictured herself pouring hope—a viscous liquid stored in secret vats, now pouring onto streets, under cars, into gutters, over cobbles, right through walls, like the porridge in that story of the pot that wouldn’t stop. Wine swirled sharply against her tongue.

  ———

  In December 1968, Roberto crossed the river to visit his father in Argentina for the summer. He packed his bag fastidiously and wandered the house with buoyant steps. He assured his girlfriend, Flor, on the phone, Of course I’ll miss you, don’t be silly, leaning absently against the wall. Salomé was invited too, but did not go. She was needed at her embassy deployment. Times were brutal, times were bright; even the Beatles had written a song called “Revolution.” The world sped at full tilt. There was work to do. And in any case, even though he’d offered, her father didn’t want to see her as much as he wanted to see Roberto, a reality made clear by the discrepancy between the conversations they had on the phone. With Salomé, their father was awkward, sometimes monosyllabic. With his son, he seemed to become animated, keeping him on the line for many minutes, with long stretches in which Roberto the younger listened avidly, nodding slowly, then finally responding with a comment related to his studies, or their father’s accomplishments, or a singular biological phenomenon that, of course, yes of course, he should know about, or how wonderful it would be to meet the scientists his father mentioned, eminent men, his father’s friends. Men Roberto the younger looked up to the way his peers looked up to John Lennon. She, Salomé, would be a nuisance on this trip, an afterthought at best, the girl who dropped out after high school, a mere secretary—what would they talk about? When she searched herself for feelings about her father, in the candid dark of sleepless nights, she found not love or hate or rage or even longing, but a hollow absence of emotion, a cavity so old it had no desire to be filled. She lacked the words to explain this to her mother, but fortunately, she didn’t need to. To Salomé’s surprise, Eva responded to her decision with an acceptance that bordered on relief. Her son seemed to cause her far more worry, with his obvious enthusiasm, his distraction during dinner, his preoccupation with what to take and what to leave behind, all of which Eva bore with a tense smile, as though the ride across the river were a ride away from her, as though the pull he felt toward his father might capture him, mothlike, and never fully deliver him home. On the day he left, Salomé stood at the ferry station between Eva and Pajarita, who waved and waved as he walked down the ramp, even though his back was to them. Finally he paused and turned and they not only waved but called, Adiós, adiós, llámanos. They could have set a fire with the energy they generated, calling and waving and rising to their toes, and Salomé felt a sting of envy, not for the voyage, but for the ferocious love revealed in the good-bye.

  She met with Tinto in the park later that night.

  “I don’t care,” she murmured into his chest.

  “How can that be? He’s your fa—” He trailed off, her hand was on his trousers, on his fly, not opening, not ever, but speaking to his hard sex with her fingers. Wind kissed the treetops.

  “Everything,” he breathed later, “in its time.”

  The plans for Pando unfolded on a cool August night. Orlando outlined the operation with rare enthusiasm. It would take place on October 9, 1969, two years exactly after Che’s assassination. They were going to seize the whole town for an afternoon. They would gather funds and weapons and show the world the strength of Uruguay’s resistance.

  “We’re talking about a major military takeover.” He stroked his beard, which had grown back darker than before. “All the most experienced members will be needed. Tinto. Anna. Leona. Guillermo. Salomé.”

  For all her steel-rabbit nights and devoted espionage, Salomé had never been on an operation. She had not held a gun in public, nor robbed a bank or casino or gun club. She felt exhilarated and slightly unsteady. She glanced over at Tinto, who winked at her through semidarkness.

  In the days leading up to Pando—as she rode the bus and typed and washed the dishes—she strained to keep the thrill and fear of it contained. One day Pando could be remembered as the Moncada Barracks of the Uruguayan revolution, the watershed, the start of a new era. A plaza shone in her mind’s eye, with a fountain or a statue at its center, and all of them were there, Tinto, Leona, Orlando, Anna, Guillermo, and dozens of unknown Tupamaros, raising rifles in the air, out in the open, not to shoot but to show their triumph, and the people felt the transformation of their town as a shimmer through the air and fell to their knees at the sight of guns so she called out rise, rise, don’t be afraid, and then they rose and wept and danced and shouted incoherent words.

  On the appointed day, she rose early to pack and unpack and repack her bag. Pistols, leaflets, one white handkerchief, one nice blouse, thirty copper handcuffs, secretarial files arranged across the top. She dressed in black, as directed. Her fingers shook. She tried to calm herself. She recited the instructions in her mind. Arrive promptly at the funeral home. Remember you’re in mourning. Be convincing. Try to cry. Water, she thought. She needed water. And at least some toast for breakfast.

  In the kitchen, Abuela Pajarita had already prepared the mate.

  “Good morning,” she said, and extended the gourd.

  Salomé took it without removing the bag from her shoulder. The bitter drink soothed and woke her throat. This kitchen was not guaranteed, nor was her return to it. The light. The jars. The potted plants. The roots laid in a baking dish to dry, dark and twisted, destined to soothe an old lady’s aching joints or heart or conscience. The stove at which three generations had cooked. All of it could disappear, and she could disappear from it, even though that seemed impossible, and yet it was always possible; contingency was obvious, a fact of life, and today even more so since a single bullet could do the trick, keep her from coming back, from ever learning the names of all the plants in all those pots; the names themselves were fragile, living as they did in Abuela’s solitary mind, and who knew what would happen (to the bundles, the jars, the stool in Coco’s shop) when she died, which seemed more impossible than anything, Abuela dying—surely this house would crumble or explode if Abuela ever died.

  Abuela glanced at her with unnerving clarity. “Do you have time for toast?”

  “Just enough time.”

  “I’ll make it for you.”

  “That’s all ri—”

  “It’s no problem.” She had already placed two slices of bread on the griddle. Her braid poured down her back in a silver stream. Salomé wanted to clasp on to it. She wanted to shout that she was eighteen, a guerrilla, about to seize a town, able to make her own toast. She wanted to eat Abuela’s toast forever, and this shamed her: that with the day’s great battle waiting, she should want to stay here, safe, with her grandmother, surrounded by green smells and languorous light. Abuela buttered the toast and watched her granddaughter take big bites. “You won’t sit down?”

  “I have to get to work.”

  “Ta. We’ll see you for dinner?”

  “Of course,” Salomé said, already facing the door.

  By the time she arrived at the funeral parlor, two dozen mourners had gathered. They were young, somber, dressed in sharp black clothes. They approached her one by one and kissed her cheek. There was no exchange of names. They were supposed to be extended cousins, intimate already, mourning the death of their tío Antuñez, taking him, in a procession of cars, to his hometown for burial. Tupas. Tupas. Their cheeks were smooth as balm against hers; she fought the urge to clasp them in two hands so she could stare at and memorize their features.

  Orlando and Leona approached her, alon
g with a round man with fine white hair. “My name is Tiburcio,” the man said. “I’m the undertaker. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Salomé nodded. She searched for something adequate to say.

  “I understand,” he added. “It seems that everybody loved him very much.”

  “It’s true,” Leona said. She smelled like jasmine oil. “He was so generous. Always gave to the poor.”

  Tiburcio knit his face into a practiced empathy. “Yes. Yes.”

  The funeral was brisk and simple, and afterward the crowd of cousins headed outside. In the driveway, nine black funeral cars glistened in the sun. The hearse stood in front, its back doors open. Six pallbearers carried a coffin toward it. Garlands lay on top of it and guns lay inside. It was too much, the hot spring air, the polished coffin, the uncle who had given but not given to the poor, a funeral with no dead man, a coffin with no remains, no remains but guns, guns for bones, guns for flesh, only guns remain, and all of them standing in a strange and secret family, a family of Nameless Ones, a family of masks, a family mourning the death of—who? what?—and she longed to know them, these anonymous cousins, these jóvenes dressed in black, not their names or favorite foods but what they saw inside that coffin, what had sent them looking, what they mourned and treasured in the darkest corners of their bodies. Do you love what I love, do you know why you do it, and what for God’s sake do you do with all the fear? Their faces were so lovely in the sunlight, fresh and stern and full of bones that could quite easily be broken. She wanted to shield their cheeks and all the brittle bodies of this country, their country, her country, but she could only carry out orders and begin to weep. She wept so well that the undertaker placed a hand on her back. She leaned into him; the hearse slammed shut. Tiburcio’s eyes were wet.