The Invisible Mountain

by Carolina de Robertis

  “It’ll be all right,” he said.

  They piled into the cars, a pallbearer at each steering wheel. Salomé rode in the car Tiburcio drove, with Orlando and two other Tupamaros. The highway grew sparse as they left Montevideo, city streets giving way to square huts and lone fruit stands. The sky expanded like a huge blue tent. They passed a cantegril, with its tin-and-cardboard shacks and a stench that muscled through the windows. Finally the road lay bare and flat before them, an incision between green fields. Tiburcio let his small talk trickle into silence. Orlando was impassive. They drove on.

  The cars in front of them pulled over. It happened fast. The undertaker peered through the windshield. “Why is he—?”

  “Just pull over, please,” Orlando said.

  The car stopped on the shoulder of the road. Orlando pulled out his pistol with celerity. “Sir, please exit the car.”

  Salomé could not see Tiburcio’s face; she only heard a sharp intake of air, followed by the car door and the shuffle of feet on gravel. Orlando got out. Ahead of them, the other cars engaged in the same dance; a driver is startled into standing up and offering his wrists behind his back for wire handcuffs; he submits to the backseat; a well-dressed mourner takes the steering wheel and peels onto the highway, sun flashing against tinted windows.

  Orlando drove. Tiburcio sat next to Salomé in the back, eyes wide and deerlike. Salomé held her pistol in her lap.

  For a minute, there was no sound except the low rush of the road.

  “What the hell is going on?” Tiburcio said.

  “We’re Tupamaros,” Orlando said, eyes fixed on the road. “We’ve seized these cars for an operation.”

  “Tupamaros?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “To Pando.”

  Tiburcio chewed the inside of his cheek. “And your uncle?”

  “Not real.”

  Salomé fished out a leaflet, one hand still on her gun. “ ‘The regime’s sole aim is to humiliate the workers,’ ” she read. “We’re workers, just like you. We want to stop injustice, and set things right for everyone.”

  The undertaker looked at her. His irises were gray, tight, verging on transparent. She felt ashamed of her earlier false tears. “Pues, that doesn’t sound too bad.”

  “Don’t be scared,” she added. “We won’t hurt you.”

  “Scared? Of you?” His laugh was sharp and tinny. “You look like my grandchildren.”

  Half an hour later they arrived in Pando, with its gentle watercolor streets. They drove up to the dappled plaza and stopped the car. Salomé, Orlando, and the two other Tupas tied white handkerchiefs around their arms. Her heart beat aggressively in her chest. Almost one o’clock. In the plaza, on a bench, a young couple ate sandwiches in the sun. They also wore white kerchiefs on their arms. Somewhere, a few streets away, a crew was poised to lay siege to the police. Tinto and others lay in wait at the fire station. Salomé’s target, El Banco República, sat in full view across the plaza, with its stone walls and tall brass doors, an impenetrable-looking building that she was about to storm. Her whole body felt tight, as if composed of wire. Tiburcio leaned against her, chin on his chest, damp and fleshy and relaxed. His lips moved slightly. She slid her arm through his. “You’re going to stick with me,” she whispered. He nodded without looking up.

  Three more black funeral cars pulled up to the plaza, one by one. The woman on the bench turned toward their car. She spied Salomé’s kerchief; they smiled.

  A motorcycle roared up and circled the edge of the plaza. Its rider waved a white handkerchief in the air. They sprang from the car, all four Tupamaros and Tiburcio in his handcuffs. They crossed the hot plaza; halfway across, two mourners joined them with five rifles. They swept into the bank.

  “Everyone stay calm,” Orlando called, raising a rifle into the air.

  The lunchtime line of customers turned. A teller howled.

  “You’re safe,” Orlando said. “Don’t worry, we’re Tupamaros, please line up against the wall.”

  Salomé helped shepherd people, one hand holding the pistol, the other arm threaded through Tiburcio’s. She surged with a hot current of energy. The undertaker shuffled beside her, his sweaty bulk resigned and unimpeding. A chair appeared for a pregnant woman. Orlando left for the vault. The room was a thick sea of sweat and breath and unasked questions.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Salomé urged their backs. “We’re seizing the town on behalf of the people. No one will get hurt.”

  She moved down the row, holding Tiburcio close, passing out leaflets. Customers twisted in place to read the communiqué. “Keep your hands on the wall, please.”

  “But I want to read this.”

  “Good. But keep your hands on the wall.”

  “How can I do that and read at the same time?”

  “Just try,” Salomé said, as sternly as she could. She felt like a schoolteacher with smart, unruly students. She moved on to a bespectacled man in a plaid shirt.

  “Gracias,” he said, taking the leaflet.

  “De nada.”

  “Tupamaros?”

  “Right.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  He brightened, pinned the leaflet to the wall, and lost himself in reading.

  Through the half-open door, she heard an old woman arguing with a Tupamaro.

  “I’m here to collect my pension.”

  “Ta, Señora, but you can’t today.”

  “What’s that, son?”

  Louder: “You can’t collect today. The bank is taken over by Tupamaros.”

  “Tupa—¿qué?”

  “That’s right. You have to come inside now; it’s dangerous on the streets.”

  “Will they give me my pension tomorrow?”

  “Ye—I don’t know. Please, come inside.”

  He entered, escorting the reluctant lady by the elbow. Her chin was high, her face austere. “Why should I come in,” she grumbled, to no one in particular, “if they won’t pay me?”

  Salomé handed the lady a leaflet, which she folded into precise quarters and tucked into her purse. She examined Salomé accusingly; Salomé moved on, quickly, down the row, passing out paper, jostling the undertaker’s shoulder. She wondered how it was going in the vault, on the street, at the firehouse. Stop thinking. Focus.

  A woman burst through the door, her hair a long cape around her. “The Bank of Pando’s being held up!”

  She gaped at the row of captives, the empty counters, Salomé’s pointed gun. “What? Here too?”

  Salomé nodded; the woman laughed. Salomé motioned for her to turn around, and she did so, placing her hands against the wall, still laughing, hair shaking like fine black silk. Salomé handed her a leaflet, wishing the paper could somehow shut her up. It was good, yes, if citizens did not cower in fear, but she was a guerrilla, a warrior, armed and serious, how dare they laugh?

  “Look,” the woman said, “I can’t read like this. What does it say?”

  “It describes our aims. Why we’re here.”

  “Well? Why are you here?”

  “Read the leaflet,” Plaid Man called out. “It’s good.”

  “Why should I, when I can hear it from her?”

  “She wants to set things right,” Tiburcio said, cocking his head at Salomé.

  “Really? That’s why she’s got you cuffed?”

  Tiburcio shrugged.

  The door flew open. Salomé turned, gun cocked for laughers or old ladies or anyone at all. It was Tinto, flushed, fresh from the fire station, hair falling in mad fronds over his eyes.

  “It’s official,” he shouted. “The Tupamaros have taken Pando!”

  He leaped onto the counter and broke into a speech, garbled, impassioned. “Liberation, see, it’s in the air, we’re breathing it, it’s filling up this spectacular country, Uruguay, a forgotten gem on a lost continent—but no m
ore—we’re going to shine, nothing can stop us—uruguayos, dear citizens, brothers, sisters, you are the revolution, and you will be free—all of Latin America will be free. Che is here with us, cheering—can you hear him?” He talked on. Plaid Man’s eyes grew moist behind his glasses. The old lady with the pension pursed her lips, out of annoyance or to keep from smiling. A few stayed wooden, but others nodded, cheered, hooted, their hands still on the wall, their bodies twisting to see Tinto over their shoulders, a large young man with open palms, awkward, damp-faced, bright-voiced, hair flung in several directions, arms wide on his sudden stage.

  Orlando emerged from the vault, hauling sacks. “Let’s go.”

  Tinto leaped down. They headed toward the door. Shots rang outside. More shots. The room fell silent.

  “I’ll look,” a pale Tupamaro said. He came back quickly. “There’s a cop outside. He’s exchanging shots with two of ours.”

  Orlando’s face was a wall of calm. “We’ll wait inside.”

  They waited. Shots punctured the quiet of the room. Someone whimpered at the wall. The shots stopped and they walked outside and sun stabbed Salomé’s eyes. Three funeral cars were parked across the street, the last one riddled with bullet holes. Its tires were shredded. A policeman lay behind it, young, black-haired, his pant leg soaked and shining. A red pool spread slowly from his leg.

  “Shit,” Orlando said. “We’ve lost a car. We’ll have to double up. Pile in!”

  Salomé ran to a car and pushed Tiburcio, the undertaker, into the backseat, then pressed in after him, Orlando after her. Through the rear window, she glimpsed Tinto crammed into the car behind them. She threw the rest of her leaflets out the window as they peeled off, and they fell like huge confetti onto the street, blanketing the asphalt, absorbing, she hoped, some trickle of the officer’s blood. They turned a corner. The avenue was thronged with people: on the sidewalks, perched in doorways, swarming in the middle of the street, waving white kerchiefs from balconies, lunging for their car.

  “Will you be back?”

  “When’s the revolution?”

  “Enroll me!”

  “Take me!”

  “Take my brother—”

  “Hey!”

  “Long live Che Guevara!”

  The driver honked and yelled out of the window. “Clear the way! Please, clear the way!” He swore under his breath.

  There were nine of them, jammed into the car: Orlando, Tiburcio, Salomé, and six others, three of them in Pando police uniforms. Flesh and sweat and thick air pressed on every side. The crowds abated. They pulled over at the edge of town, in front of cemetery gates.

  “Let’s drop him here,” the driver said.

  Salomé removed Tiburcio’s cuffs with rapid tenderness. The feel of him had become familiar, almost second nature. “Thank you.”

  The undertaker squeezed her arm with his. “Listen, you be careful.”

  She didn’t look at him. “I’m fine.”

  The car door opened. He stood alone on the gravel driveway, blinking in the sun, a round man with fine white hair just waking from a dream. She wanted to say more to him, but the door closed and they pulled away. She waved through the back window. He waved back, ornate iron gates looming behind him, his gesture smaller and smaller in the distance.

  The highway opened its long arms to them. She was starving; she could have eaten the upholstery, the pistols, the sky’s bright cloth. The boys in police uniforms were giddy, disheveled, recounting their stories from the front.

  “You should have seen the looks on their faces. Those cops.”

  “I found one in the bathroom, taking a piss; a huge guy; he laughed at me until I poked him with my gun.”

  “No kidding?”

  “No kidding.”

  “On our street we snarled the traffic, throwing leaflets, shouting, ‘Long live the revolution!’”

  She felt their charge: electric, untamable. It shot through her skin. They had done it, they had triumphed, they had come out unscathed.

  Orlando leaned toward the driver. “Is this the fastest you can go?”

  “I’m flooring it, compañero. It’s the extra weight.”

  “Of course.”

  “They won’t catch us. We’re ahead. By the time the Montevideo police get word, we’ll all be safe at our—wherevers.”

  Orlando touched the driver’s shoulder. He was really a gentle man. “Just go as fast as you can.”

  They reached the edge of Montevideo. A police car lurked on the side of the road. They fell silent. The officers—the real ones—sat up at the sight of the long black car, gunned their engine, then spied the uniforms in the backseat and slumped, no, those couldn’t be the Tupas. She felt sick. They were hunted already. She said a silent, clumsy, half-forgotten Hail Mary, Full of Grace, Blessed Are You, isn’t that how it goes, in any case protect us, here in this car, and also Tinto, wherever he is, and Leona, and Anna, and Guillermo, and all the Tupas who kissed me at the funeral this morning, all the Tupas still making their escapes; and Tiburcio as he finds his way home; and the officer with his wet leg; please see our hearts, Holy Mary Mother of, forgive us the wet leg; pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of, again for Tinto. Tinto. Tinto. They kept on, into the folds of the city. The car pulled into a quiet street and parked behind a blue Ford. A young woman with a white kerchief on her arm emerged from the Ford, approached their car, and opened the trunk without a word. The driver began to transfer bags of guns and cash from the black car to the blue. Orlando climbed into the backseat of the Ford and lay down, invisible to the street. She wondered where he would sleep tonight, where he had been sleeping this past year, where his wife imagined that he was. The rest of them scattered in four directions, without good-byes. Salomé stopped to buy empanadas in a bakery, six of them wrapped in crisp white paper. More than she could eat but she was famished. Her bus pulled up; she sat in the back with her surreptitious lunch and watched Montevideo’s streets turn larger, louder, squat dwellings rising into tall apartment buildings, cobbles giving way to asphalt streets. Montevideo, city of urban guerrillas with smooth cheeks. City of pigeons and their shit and possibility. City of damp soft undertakers, hidden guns, stolen copper wires.

  She arrived at the embassy building and headed to the bathroom. She freshened her lipstick, changed her blouse, pressed her searing thoughts into a ball where nobody could see them, and checked her hair in the mirror. It was 2:56 p.m.: and here she was, Good and Quiet Salomé, back from the dental appointment she’d dutifully requested time for weeks ago, ready to work, punctual as always. She slipped behind her desk and started typing the letter at the top of her stack. Mr. Richards came to her station.

  “Salomé. How was the dentist?”

  “Okay; not too painful after all.” She cradled her cheek to nurse her invented ache.

  He dropped his voice. “I’m not sure I believe you.”

  Breath trapped in her lungs.

  He leaned closer, with his Marlboro scent. “The dentist is always painful.”

  She laughed, too sharply. He grinned and sauntered to his office.

  Half an hour later, Viviana, the head secretary, rushed into the room. Her eyes glittered behind her glasses. “The Nameless! Have you heard?”

  “No.” Salomé looked up, careful to veil her face.

  “Well, they did this crazy thing at Pando—”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, it’s terrible, but anyway, the police got them on the way back.”

  “Got them?”

  “There was a shootout at Toledo Chico.”

  Salomé couldn’t speak. Viviana leered in satisfaction. “I know. They thought they were so invincible.”

  She forced a smile. “Well, look at that.”

  “Some of them are dead.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what the radio said.”

  Salomé stared at her typewriter. “And they deserved it.”

  “Exactly what I say.”

 
Viviana left. Salomé ran to the bathroom and vomited up four and a half empanadas. The rest of the afternoon was a dull haze. After work, she went directly to her cell meeting. She could have torn her skin off. Tinto wasn’t there.

  Anna gave the report. She had been in Toledo Chico. Her words were flat; she spoke them to the oil lamp. The police had surrounded two cars. Three Tupas tried to surrender. Anna watched them raise their arms high and walk slowly toward the police through knee-high grass. They were shot down, and when they fell officers ran up and filled their bodies with more bullets, then kicking, then more bullets into corpses. One carload, with Anna in it, managed to escape; the other was captured. Tinto’s car. Nothing to do but wait and hope for news.

  Salomé couldn’t vomit, her intestines were empty, completely stark, as if she’d never eaten and would never eat again. At the close of the meeting, Leona approached, arms open.

  “Salomé.”

  “I have to go.”

  “Salomé.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  She stumbled out before her turn.

  That night, at dinner, Salomé couldn’t touch her food. Her family’s voices meshed and blurred and rose around her. They were talking about Pando, how shocking it all was, how this side or that side had gone too far, the Tupa deaths were a tragedy, the Tupa deaths were a relief, shut up, shut up, and now Abuelo Ignazio was talking to her, Eat, Salomé, Mamá was eyeing her too keenly, What’s wrong, what’s the matter, Roberto at his (far, far) end of the table, she looks sick, Abuelita reaching over, Perhaps you’ve got a fever, her hand on Salomé’s forehead, then shoulder, Tomorrow you should stay home.

  She stayed in bed for four days. Fever shook and pressed and stretched her and hung bits of Tinto in her vision, wide mouth, bent knee, torn hand, broken face. She was breaking every rule in the unwritten Tupa handbook, she should rise and show a calm and healthy face, but she either didn’t care or couldn’t help it anymore. Bad guerrilla, look at you, what shameful cracks in your self-discipline. Shut up, go to hell, where is he now, where is he? She didn’t want to eat or drink, but Abuela came each mealtime with a bowl of soup and deep brown tea. Mamá slept on the floor beside her bed. This forced her to pretend to sleep, until she heard her mother’s breathing grow audible and slow.