Beyond the Snows of the Andes

by Beatrice Brusic

  Her eyes widen. “Susana Valda?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did she say?”

  “That she is convinced Patiṅo did it.”

  She looks interested now and I tell her all I know. The whole country is particularly fascinated with the case of Susana Valda, a beautiful socialite who has been brutally killed by her lover. The details of her murder are so horrific everyone is talking about it and the newspapers can’t get enough of it. She had been in a hotel with another man and someone had told her possessive lover about it. Hugo Patiṅo del Valle is a powerful man in politics with an ego to match, and he had hadn’t taken kindly to the betrayal.

  He had been seen by several witnesses roughly shoving her out of Hotel Sucre and pushing her into a cab. They had found her dead in her residence of Sopocachi [ an upscale neighborhood] the next day, and her body had shown signs of brutal torture, after which she had been shot in the head and chest execution style.

  “Well, what else did Luisa say?”

  “That the inquest found him guilty of physical abuse only, and that he will go to jail for six months at the most.”

  “I’m surprised he’s even getting six months when everyone knows he is a big shot who didn’t have to do one single day in jail. I’m sure he bribed everybody, starting from the police to the judges,” says mother indignantly.

  “Luisa said it was a crime of passion.”

  “And she told you all that in the street?”

  “She told me some; I heard the rest at my aunt’s house from her friend Clarissa.”

  “What did Clarissa say?”

  I repeat verbatim what I heard at my aunt’s house because I know that Clarissa happened to be a personal friend of the victim who had told her that the first time you marry for love, the second for money, and you should have a lot of fun in between and be very, very expensive.

  Mom lifts her eyebrows. “It cost the poor woman everything to be very, very expensive.”

  I tell her the details of the torture and she is horrified. Clarissa said Hugo Patiňo del Valle had burned her with cigarettes and stabbed her long enough to inflict pain without killing her for hours, before finally shooting her in the face and shattering her beautiful face.

  Mother crosses herself. “!What a sadist, what a monster! Why is Clarissa talking like that in front of a child? Frankly I’m surprised at her. I thought she had more sense than that.”

  “They told me to go to the bedroom to look at magazines while they talked in the living room, but I was listening through the door.”

  “You should be ashamed of yourself for doing that. Look at the horrible things you find out, things that can only hurt your spirit. I don’t ever want you doing that again, do you hear me?”

  I promise, but I have no intention of listening to her. I enjoy hearing the conversations between my aunt and her friends, and also her long conversations on the phone, it’s a lot less boring that the conversations I hear at school or at home where it’s always the same litany of money troubles. I had lied about meeting Luisa Calero but I knew how to fix that. I would stop by her house on the way to the store and ask her not to tell mother I hadn’t ran into her.

  Out of all her friends I love Luisa Calero the most; she is a wonderful woman who is always there for us. Once she noticed by the marks on my arm that mother had pinched my arms in a fury, and begged her not to do to me what they had done to her as a child. “You never got over the abuse you suffered as a child, María, don’t do that to your children.”

  “I don’t,” said mother, blushing. “It just happens once in a while when I really lose my temper. I have to discipline them, you know, I’m their mother.”

  “Leaving marks on their arms is not discipline, that’s abuse, and it’s not worthy of you. You are a good mother, a great person, why do something that’s only going to make you feel bad about yourself?”

  ~~~

  Mother had known Luisa since she was a child and although they didn’t keep in touch when mom moved to La Paz, their friendship had remained unabated until Luisa also relocated to La Paz. Luisa never married or had children but emotionally adopted her two teenage nieces who are wild and unruly, always running around with shady characters and unreliable people. She often stops by the house seeking support and understanding, with mom consoling her that my aunt was also wild and promiscuous in her day and she still managed to land a pearl of a husband.

  I love Luisa’s visits because she makes mother happy and is always sending me to the market with the pretext that she feels like eating chicken, beef or liver for lunch. Mother sees through her kind schemes and urges her not to spend her hard earned money on us, but nothing deters Luisa. She is a music teacher whose salary is always compromised by the frequent strikes and instability of the country, but she has a good sense of humor about it and never complains. Physically, she is a tall, homely looking woman with short, sparse brown hair and blotchy, pockmarked skin due to chicken pox she got as a child, but to us she’s beautiful.

  The dream of Luisa’s life was to go to Vienna, the city of music as she calls it, and to study in a conservatory there, but she tells us that not every dream comes true in life, and we have to make do with what we have. I always walk her to her bus when she comes to visit mother, and we have long conversations. She knows I want to get away from Bolivia very badly, warns me to adjust to the possibility that it may never happen, and urges me to try to find happiness in my life regardless of where I live.

  I listen to her respectfully, but I don’t agree because I’ve already decided that if I can’t get away from Bolivia, I will simply kill myself. I don’t want to be like her, resigned to a life of misery and frustration. I want more. I want Vienna, I want the world. I don’t want to give up my dreams, there is a fire burning in me and I don’t want to quell it, I want to use it to liberate me. I don’t want to learn to live with the sadness and defeat I see all around me, mother, Seňora Lita, Luisa, Clementina, Gustavo, the indigenous women at the market - the many beggars in the streets with their eyes empty. I want to be happy, I want to be the one to fulfill my dreams, there has to be someone in this world enjoying life and it might as well be me; life can not be just one long suffering stroll, because if it is, I don’t want it.

  ~~~

  Oblivious to mother’s dire situation with my aunt; Gustavo continues drinking and making a spectacle of himself. Now that he is out into the open, he comes in singing and dancing and daring the “great lady upstairs,” to get out of her pampered cocoon and meet him face to face once and for all. Under the influence, he touches mom’s growing belly and tells her she’s carrying the next president of the republic or the biggest soccer player since Pelé. He grabs her arms and makes her dance to the music in his head, his favorite song for her is an old, romantic bolero that mentions green eyes, and mom hates that song because it reminds her of my father. He used to whistle that song for her all the time, and it brings back painful memories.

  “Just my rotten luck,” she tells me, indignantly. “Out of all the songs in the world, he has to choose that one to torture me with.”

  “You should ignore him, ma,” I tell her. “He knows how much it bothers you so he does it on purpose.”

  But it was their song and she feels Gustavo has no right to sing it. It reminds her of the times she would fight and reconcile with my father, crying in his arms with happiness afterwards. He would whistle that song outside her window, and she would sneak out in the middle of the night to be with him. It’s a song that she still can’t bear to hear on the radio today, for she turns it off right away, and now Gustavo has tainted it.

  ~~~

  Fed up with his irresponsibility and fearful for the welfare of the upcoming baby, mother decides to approach his family for help directly. Taking great pains because Gustavo prefers to keep their illicit relationship hidden from the world, we locate his house by searching for his “carnet de identidad” [“ID card”] when he is sleeping, and jot down the address.
It’s no easy task to search his pockets because he takes to hiding his wallet from us, claiming we are always taking his money, and mom jokes that we must have gone to the school of seven bells because we have developed silk fingers to cope with the situation, and that “la necesidad tiene cara de hereje,” [“necessity is the mother of invention].

  She leaves Oscar home to finish the knitting, and we take the bus to Alto Obrajes, a remote neighborhood located at the outskirts of the mountains. Here the rents are cheaper and the streets steeper, and climbing the street mom has to stop a few times because she feels out of breath.

  “It’s the pregnancy,” she tells me with red cheeks. “When I was expecting Oscar, I would get breathless too. But it happened on my eighth month, now I’m starting early since I’m only five months along.”

  She has taken pains to look pretty by washing and setting her hair and putting on some lipstick. As a concession to the pregnancy she is wearing flat shoes because she hates the fact that now I’m taller than she is.

  “Why did you grow so tall anyway? Your father is short and I’m short, something fishy happened here,” she says with a smile. I’m holding onto her arm, looking at the truly spectacular red mountains bordering the area, and today the sky seems a deeper blue, the air feels crisp and pure, and the majestic Illimani is glowing in the distance. I’m surprised at the poverty of the neighborhood; I had imagined he lived in a house as pretty as my aunt’s, and not a dilapidated brick house in a corner of the street, full of dust and grime from the frequent passing of trucks and buses.

  “This house and neighborhood would make Aunt Sonia cringe,” I say while we wait for the door to open.

  “A fine point to make at a time like this, only you could think of something like that,” snaps mother. “Would you care to offer more gratuitous comments or are you done for the day?”

  A small, dark-skinned, frail looking woman with salt and pepper hair held in a tight pony tail opens the door a crack and peers at us with suspicion.

  “Si?” [“Yes?”]

  “I have some news about your son that I think you should hear,” says mother in a tremulous voice, her resolve faltering at the sight of her.

  “Si?” she repeats still unwilling to unlock the heavy door chain.

  “Look, we’ve come a long way and it’s very cold here. We won’t take much of your time.”

  “I can’t just open the door to strangers. You’ll have to talk to me from out there.”

  “I already told you it’s about your son and it’s very personal, I can’t shout it out from here.”

  “How do I know you know my son anyway? Have you got proof?”

  That is the opening mother needs. “I’m five months pregnant with your son, would that be proof enough? Or should I stand here and let the whole neighborhood know what a louse your son is? It’s your choice, dear lady, you decide if you want to do this peacefully or whether I should create a riot right here and now.”

  Reluctantly she ushers us in, and we pass the courtyard where a pathetic Doberman with the saddest, most heartbreaking eyes I’ve ever seen, comes out to greet us wagging his tail. He looks filthy and neglected; he is nothing but skin and bones and is drooling copiously. I sense he’s starving for affection and bend down to pet him.

  “Vicky,” yells mother, and I quickly follow her into a tiny kitchen with a creaky wooden floor. Gustavo’s mother offers us a seat and takes off her apron explaining that she was cooking and didn’t mean to be rude, but one had to be careful these days with strangers ringing the doorbell at all kinds of hours with mischief in their minds. Mom feels faint and dizzy and she offers her “mate de coca.”

  “I guess it was the cold,” says mother drinking it. “I’m feeling better already.”

  Regaining her composure she explains the situation to her while the woman who identifies herself as “Edna” looks at her with a quizzical expression on her face. She hears her out and proceeds to tell her that her son is the most irresponsible person on earth and that his antics have driven her husband, bless his soul, to an early grave because he is always drinking and getting himself into trouble, but he has never gotten anybody pregnant before. She says it’s a shame mother didn’t realize this before she found herself in this unfortunate condition because nothing will make her son grow up, and he will always be a big problem.

  “In every family there is a black sheep,” she tells mother with a little sigh. “And in direct contrast with my four daughters who are responsible members of the human race and work hard for a living, Gustavo has always been a problem child from day one. Maybe we all spoiled him too much as a child because he was our only boy, but the reality is that my son has never adjusted to anything in his life. He hated school from the beginning and all he wanted to do was play soccer and get into fights. We tried everything, including military school but he ran away. He is always getting fired from his jobs because of the boozing too, and the only reason he’s lasting as a teller in the bank now is because my daughter’s fiancée keeps pulling strings for him, but I don’t know how much longer that’s going to last. He doesn’t drink during the week but we know he gets drunk on the weekends because he disappears on us all the time and they say he is sluggish and ill tempered every Monday morning at the bank, and frankly they are getting pretty fed up with him there too.”

  “He’s in my house every weekend,” says mother, sharply. “That’s where he disappears to every weekend, and yes he drinks all the time, and it has gotten me in trouble with my sister who now wants me to move out of her house on account of him.”

  “Well, he’s still a young man,” she say refilling our cups with “mate de coca” “But I’m afraid a baby isn’t going to change him, nothing is going to change my Gustavo.”

  “Are you implying I did this on purpose?”

  “No, please don’t misunderstand me, but you already have a daughter and you seem to be more experienced than he is.”

  “If by more experienced you mean older, yes I’m a couple of years older than your son, so what.”

  Edna notices her anger and softens her rhetoric, telling her not to misunderstand, they are not bad people and they won’t let her face this burden by herself, but she has to realize that he will never marry her, and the most she can hope for is for him to recognize his baby. Mother thanks her for seeing her in her hour of need, and she gets up from her chair still wobbly on her feet. Edna says she’ll talk to her four daughters about the situation and they will be in touch with us. We get out into the dusty street and mom has tears in her eyes.

  “That woman’s coarse manners and features gave her away,” she says leaning on me for support. “Edna is obviously of mixed blood and that’s why Gustavo didn’t want me to meet her.”

  Mom is fuming because the woman implied by using the word “experienced” that mother had gotten herself into this condition to entrap her son, and she doesn’t feel she stood up for herself the way she should have.

  “El ladrón piensa que todos son de su condición,” [“a thief always thinks everyone is corrupted”] she says, seething. “That’s probably how this half Indian woman got her white husband, by getting pregnant and now she thinks I did the same.”

  “She said she would help us, ma,” I say trying to cheer her up.

  “She can shove her help up her “Culo.” [“Ass”]. She is bitching because her son is only twenty five years old, but your Uncle Berto was already working and supporting his parents at nineteen, now that’s a real man.”

  ~~~

  She carries on for days, smarting from the insult, living and reliving their brief meeting and hating herself for not having put the insolent woman in her place. She is outraged that he called her “experienced” as though she had seduced her son who was as pure and pristine as the mountain snows.

  “Leave it to me to pick the black sheep of the family; there must be something in me that attract all the losers of the world. I seem to bring out the worst in men.”

  I remind
her again that she had promised to help us but all she can think about is the indignity of it all, the fact that Gustavo has insinuated himself into her life with dinners and flattery like a crawly worm and now is nowhere to be found, just like my father and Oscar’s father. To make matters worse, Gustavo is furious when he finds out we have been to his house and confronts mother forbidding her to ever see his mother or sisters again.

  “What am I supposed to do when you never show up here without being drunk anymore? How am I supposed to raise this new baby?”

  “When the time comes I’ll do right by you.”

  “The way you do right by me now by hiding behind the bottle? The way your mother did right by me telling me I’m too old for you? You’re a coward and your half Indian family is no good, no wonder you didn’t want me to meet them, you’re ashamed of your heritage.”

  In response he grabs her by the hair and smacks her face. “Don’t you ever disrespect me like that,” he says reddening through clenched teeth. “Because pregnant or not I’ll smash your face in nice and good, is that clear?”

  Oscar begins to cry and I calm him down hiding my own fear because this is the first time I have ever seen him hit my mother who just sits there in stunned silence with tears running down her cheeks. I observe her reactions of shock and fear while he, with a red, puffy face, quickly dresses and leaves the room without another word. I’m aware that a dangerous boundary has been crossed and that things will never be the same between them.

  ~~~

  Mother starts looking for other rooms in earnest now; anxious to get away from Gustavo who has done the unthinkable, hit a pregnant woman. She starts venturing into seedy neighborhoods where the rents are cheap and the rooms not a vast improvement over our own. We see some dark, dank and scary areas, and accompanying her in her daily hunts, I feel apprehensive and anguished. The thought of living in unpaved, dilapidated places full of mud, potholes, drunkards and vagrants, fills me with dread.

  “Couldn’t we beg Aunt Sonia to let us stay?” I ask clinging to her arm in the narrow streets full of traffic and pollution. “She can’t just throw us out onto the streets if we tell her we couldn’t find anything.”