Behold Things Beautiful

by Cora Siré

  Alma asked for a glass of water and when he returned with the sparkling water, he stood beside her, pouring from the bottle, and she felt the brush of his trousers, smelled his cologne. She moved her chair over and he took his seat.

  “I invited you here to confess. I loved Hannelore for many years, not the way you would know or long for at your age…the kind of love an old man might permit himself without having to change his ways. Your mother understood me. I was fully aware the flowers were a cliché, but when she was first diagnosed I had to come up with something. Hannelore was so demoralized. Taking her dancing, well, that was not a possibility in my advanced years and her weakened condition. Although I like to think that we danced conversationally, that she enjoyed our exchanges almost as much as a turn on the dance floor.”

  “Did she visit you here?” Alma tried to imagine her mother leaving the house, her husband and child, for secret rendezvous with this man. It was easy enough to conceive of, but harder to fast-forward to the time of the junta, after she’d left Luscano, to think of her father waiting at home for Hannelore, or worse, hearing snatches of the rumours swirling around. Luscano’s specialty, the gloating repetition of innuendo and gossip.

  “Your mother preferred livelier, stylish locales. The Hotel Colonial for drinks or the Café Prague, where I bought these pastries. But in your case…I must tell you that she spoke of you with great pride. Look what she gave me for Christmas some years ago.” He reached for the book he’d set aside for this moment. It was Flaco’s anthology, a thin book with a black cover, the title, Voces acalladas, in white, blood-spattered lettering.

  “I wrote the poem a long time ago…the words are not what I would write today.”

  “Many authors feel that way. Even Borges fantasized about the erasure of his work. The words disappearing as he wrote them, a liberation of sorts, no holding of account, no quoting out of context.” He put down the book. “You paid dearly for that poem.”

  “A week in prison. I survived. Others paid with their lives.”

  “Your mother paid, too.”

  The blame in his voice was unmistakable. He didn’t seem so frail anymore. No, he seemed grotesque. Alma pushed aside her cup and saucer. “Every thinking person paid. The insult of the junta…my mother resisted in her way, she always had.” Unlike you, she could have said, an opportunistic collaborator.

  “She resisted me, I can tell you that. She stood by her daughter and her husband and I had to take second place. Another reason I invited you here today, to remind you how much she loved you. Even after you left, she spoke of you, not with regret but with respect for the life you created for yourself in exile. One aspect in particular that she admired was your independence. I think she would have wanted more of a career than tutoring the children of prosperous Barrio Norte residents. She abhorred the domestic and the type of women who rely on men to define their existence.”

  There was an element of truth to this. Hannelore had repeated the words “value your freedom” to Alma throughout her life, a mantra that became loaded after her time in prison. But he was overlooking Hannelore’s beauty and the way she used her appeal to her own ends, the manipulative coquette inside of her. Alma didn’t want to redefine her mother after death, to idealize her. She’d been careful with Xenia not to criticize Hannelore; it would have been tacky. And so she said, “My mother’s countenance, the impact she knew she had on men especially, contradicted her feminist ideals.”

  “It’s true that in the machismo culture of this continent, doors opened easily for Hannelore. Her beauty and her European aura…Alma, I’ve observed many women in my life. You have no cause to suffer under your mother’s shadow, you’re quite the graceful swan yourself.”

  She left soon afterwards and walked down to the beach, kicked off her sandals and splashed through the shallows. The salt water was warm, pulling her in. She waded to her knees until a wave chased her back to shore. She saw him then, the Professor on his terrace, lifting his cane in a final salute. He was repulsive but he had touched a nerve. It was ridiculous competing with a dead mother but so ingrained, a Freudian case study irrelevant now that both her parents were dead. That small triangle, Alma, her mother and father, did not include the Professor, a traitor and interloper. No wonder Hannelore had chosen not to speak of him, had never admitted who was sending her flowers every week.

  The first postcard from Xenia arrived in the mail at last. Someone had printed the message that she’d arrived well in Todos Santos, adding the instructions, “Visit your mother’s grave for me.” Alma celebrated with a breakfast of scrambled eggs, avocado and toast. She left the house, walking briskly towards the avenue. The gods were living up to their end and she’d live up to hers.

  A hearse and several cars were parked on the gravel road outside the cottage. Somewhere a burial was in progress but the field with her parents’ graves lay quiet. The lemon and pomegranate trees had flowered since Hannelore’s burial. Spiders had cast webs over the grave and the sod where the casket had been lowered had meshed with the surrounding grass. Alma sat on the ground. How quickly nature absorbed its dead and regenerated growth. The cemetery served to compost. Burial grounds transformed into parks with markers for the dead. Here we lie, exactly here. Two lines etched on the grave, Hannelore Stern de Álvarez followed by 1927–2003. “Just the facts,” she’d stipulated. “No quotes or religious symbols.” The maiden name, Stern, had always struck Alma as enigmatic. Meaning strict in English, star in German. Hannelore deserved to have an astral body named after her, an intense flare in the southern constellation burning across billions of light years. Alma didn’t believe in an afterlife. The spirit lived on in the memories of those left behind. And it consoled her that the two graves, her father’s and mother’s, lay side by side.

  Alma stretched out on the grass and regarded the sky. She didn’t miss her parents, absent from her life since she left Luscano, but she felt a sadness and regrets of various kinds along with gratitude for having spent the last weeks of Hannelore’s life by her side. The experience helped demystify death. It had deepened her understanding of the complexity of her mother’s character, witnessing her as an adult, how she’d looked at her own life with clarity, facing death without self-pity. Hannelore had railed against her husband, foisting her suspicions of adultery on Alma, but she had loved Eugen, weak as he was, for bringing music into her life. It was clear, if the Professor was not completely deluded, that there had been hypocrisy in Hannelore’s accusations, but Alma was certain that even if divorce had been legalized before 1995, her mother could not have left Eugen. Not for the Professor, in any case. But she was falling into a trap she recognized from her work on the poet, that post-mortem phenomenon of re-examining personal history and in the process, formulating conclusions to replace what was with what might have been.

  “Alma?”

  She sat up, brushing blades of grass from her hair.

  Gabriel held out his hand and pulled her up. “Are you all right?”

  He must have thought she’d collapsed with grief. Alma tried to reassure him.

  “We’ve just finished a burial,” he explained as he accompanied her towards the gates. “A ninety-two-year-old who died in her sleep, the family subdued but relieved. Her children in their seventies, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren, a whole clan of them, close-knit and supportive. My favourite kind of burial.” Gabriel suggested lunch and they dodged traffic on the avenue and walked to the adobe shack with the Coca Cola Lite sign on the roof. Tables outside were occupied by men in coveralls and students with knapsacks at their feet.

  “It doesn’t look like much,” Gabriel said, “but the empanadas are the best in Luscano.” Inside the shack, a woman behind the counter greeted them. Gabriel introduced her as Juanita, Castillo’s girlfriend. They ordered chicken and cheese empanadas, red wine and sparkling water. Gabriel carried the bottles, Alma the glasses, setting them down on an empty table bes
ide a wall covered in a tangle of crimson bougainvillea.

  “You should see this place on Sundays,” Gabriel said. “There’s a lineup down the street by noon. Everybody buys empanadas here for their asados.”

  “I haven’t been to an asado since I left Luscano,” Alma said.

  “They have barbecues in Canada, don’t they?”

  “Not the same.” She couldn’t express the difference succinctly but surely it had something to do with frequency and the notion of time. Her teaching job didn’t allow her to fritter away her Sundays, eating and drinking from noon to midnight.

  Juanita brought the empanadas, plates, cutlery and a bowl of salsa. She set the table and poured the water and wine for them, shyly checking out Alma from the corner of her eye. Instead of an apron, she wore a guardapolvo like the ones Alma and Roma had worn to school, navy lab coats of durable cotton. Her black hair was pulled back into a thick coil of braids and her eyebrows met in a V above the bridge of her nose. She moved with grace, every gesture gentle and determined. After placing the sauce between Gabriel and Alma with a warning, “Careful, it’s piquant,” she left to clear tables of plates and glasses.

  Alma took an empanada and blew on it. “You can’t imagine how I missed these in Montréal,” she said. “Our muchacha used to make them.” She told Gabriel about Xenia’s long bus trip and her relief this morning when the postcard arrived.

  Gabriel expounded on the regional differences of empanadas. “The best,” he confirmed, “are from the Andes, northern Argentina and Bolivia.”

  Alma laughed. “You remind me of the Latinos in Montréal, arguing over tamales, ceviches, empanadas and coffee, everyone claiming their country’s as the best.”

  Gabriel asked about Montréal. Alma told him of the intriguing mix of immigrant cultures, the unbearable, long winters and the unrelenting influence of the gringos to the south. He seemed unusually aware of local politics, how close Québec had come to winning independence in the nineties. Alma asked how it was that he knew so much about Canada.

  He chewed slowly, weighing the question. “I thought of moving there at one point. But I probably couldn’t find work, would have trouble adapting.”

  Alma silently agreed with him. “You’ve lived here all your life?”

  “My parents came from Argentina. My mother was born there, my father emigrated from Belgium. He died when I was a baby, my mother remarried and we moved here. I’ve often thought of going back to Buenos Aires. There’s so much going on there. But there’s something to be said for Luscano. I’m not sure what it is. Maybe you know, having lived elsewhere.”

  Alma sensed what he was getting at. “It depends who you are. If you’re an immigrant from Brazil or Bolivia or if your skin is dark, it’s rough. But if your family’s European, and your skin is white, doors open because of Luscano’s inferiority complex. Canada has a similar complex of being a former colony but it’s more subtle and evolves more quickly. A lot of immigrants suffer, especially if they don’t find work.” Her parents had arrived with next to nothing but they’d been received in Luscano like minor celebrities.

  “But you feel more exposed in a small country. Aren’t you glad you left?”

  “When you live in a place where you spent your childhood, it gives you a certain confidence. The reverse is like performing in a play without a script. You improvise.” Alma wanted to articulate the ambiguity of her feelings towards Luscano but she stumbled, as usual, concerned that criticizing the country would offend him. “Canada is far from perfect but it’s safe.” Alma paused. After 9/11, it depended on your origins. The backlash against the Muslim community had shocked her. If someone from Luscano had been found planning or executing a terrorist act, she would have been vulnerable by association.

  “When did you leave?”

  “January 1991.”

  “An ugly time.” He seemed to want to say more and Alma waited as he drank some wine to fortify himself. “My brother…Roberto…was kidnapped by two guys who came to the house he shared with other students. He’d spoken out against the junta and participated in some demonstrations. You couldn’t call him an activist, not like Flaco, but he was courageous. I’m sure now that he was in La Cuarenta.” And he repeated his brother’s name, Roberto Seil.

  Alma had stopped eating. She couldn’t bring herself to tell Gabriel of the trucks leaving La Cuarenta at dawn full of prisoners, how they’d returned empty except for the guards and drivers.

  Gabriel lit a cigarette. “A few years ago…Roberto’s remains, his skull actually, was identified in a mass grave…upriver from the prison in a field. Imagine, Alma, he disappeared twelve years ago…and we still don’t know how he died.”

  Maybe Roma was right. Maybe there were deeper reasons Gabriel worked in a cemetery. “So what happened?”

  “The human rights group that organized the forensic work, they moved on to the Balkans. They’re probably in Iraq now or Afghanistan. Crisis of the month.”

  “But this prosecutor, Lalo Martín — ”

  “Every government elected since the dictatorship promises a full investigation while they’re campaigning. Once in office, they secretly agree to amnesty deals with military. Sometimes they’ll revoke the immunity of certain officials to secure international aid. They might even go so far as to name a prosecutor, find a judge. Some charges are laid, media reports start circulating. As soon as they move to arrest anyone, the judge is discredited, removed or assassinated, a journalist’s mutilated body is found in a car somewhere. Nothing’s resolved and the more time passes, the more people want to move on and forget about what happened.” He crushed his cigarette in the ashtray.

  Alma played with the fork on her plate, contemplating Carlos Cruz and his ordinary existence. Gabriel poured the last of the wine into their glasses. Unlike Flaco who’d adopted a language from repetition so that when he spoke of Luscano’s junta, the words spewed out effortlessly, Gabriel was struggling. Instead of diverting the conversation elsewhere, Alma stayed with him. “What about the generals who’ve been indicted in Chile and Argentina?”

  Gabriel rocked on his chair. “If you look deeply…it was justice by public relations…basically to cleanse an incoming regime’s image.” He claimed the impetus for serious investigations into military dictatorships had usually come from foreign sources. The Germans who consistently sought justice for disappeared nationals in Uruguay during the seventies or the judge in Spain who pushed for Pinochet’s arrest in London. “Last month was the thirtieth anniversary of the coup in Chile and Allende’s death…and they still haven’t nailed Pinochet.”

  September 11th, a day that had come to represent another horror, overshadowing Pinochet’s coup in 1973. Alma was seven when her father left for his concert in Santiago. Hannelore had been frantic when she’d heard the news over Radio Luscano. “Your father is so naive,” she said. “What if he doesn’t even notice there’s been a coup?” Of course he had and the orchestra had managed to board a plane for Buenos Aires before flying home.

  Gabriel referred to the colonels and generals who’d retired with generous pensions and the protection of the oligarchy to which most of them belonged. They were slowly dying off and all they had to do was stall for time with the help of their lawyers and connections. Gabriel went on about the burden of proof. “There’s no one left to testify. Like Roberto, they all disappeared.

  “General Galtí, the one who masterminded the crackdown, he shot himself five years ago…one of my first burials, a nightmare. Despite their promises, the government can’t antagonize the military. They’ve got the arms and tanks to do it all again, oust the president and take over the country. All that’s stopping them is their neighbours, Lula in Brazil and Kirchner in Argentina. Did you know that both men were imprisoned during the juntas there? They’ve taken a stronger position on persecuting the military even though they haven’t done much yet.”

  None of thi
s was new to Alma. She’d simply relegated the injustice to a far corner of her mind where it wouldn’t fester. She had nothing to add, leaving Gabriel to talk and talk, get the venom out. But it crossed her mind that both of them were too young to be this bitter.

  Gabriel rose to pay the bill inside the shack. Alma watched a sparrow pecking an empanada crust on a nearby table. Clinging to the rim of a plate with tiny claws, the bird crumbled the crust with its beak. Another sparrow whizzed out from the bougainvillea so close to her she felt the flutter of wings on her face. It swooped to attack the crust. Then another one and another until at least a dozen sparrows were pecking at crumbs. From one fragile bird, the swarm became a menace.

  Alma walked downtown as daylight faded with the setting sun. Carlos Cruz would be arriving home from work at this time. She’d mapped out his workdays and weekends but his evenings remained a mystery. Did he eat dinner, play with the children, watch television every night? She rounded the corner of Calle Libertad. Lights were on inside most of the houses and the smells of grilled meat and fried potatoes drifted in the warm air. With practised nonchalance she proceeded to the house, strolled past the window. Shadows moved behind the curtains.

  By a neighbouring gate, a boy appeared holding a soccer ball. “What are you looking for?” He was twelve at most, skinny legs in high-tops, shoelaces untied. “I’ve seen you here before.”

  Alma walked past him to the corner and turned. The boy was still staring and beyond him, a figure left the house of Carlos Cruz, walking away from Alma and the boy. She hurried in the opposite direction, gambling that the man was heading towards Reconquista, perhaps the bar where he ate pizza, if that was him.

  Alma cut through an alley. A streetlight up ahead illuminated the balding head and broad shoulders. She followed him down the busy avenue towards the old port. He entered the Plaza de los Marineros. A skateboarder crisscrossed the cobblestones in front of Alma. The rattling wheels had Carlos Cruz stop and turn. Alma ducked behind the statue until she saw him walk past El Barco towards a winding, narrow street. There were fewer pedestrians and Alma kept her distance.