“Our house is your safe house.”
“And we’ll give you some money to open a post office box under an assumed name, in case we need to correspond with you.”
We spent the rest of the evening playing old Beatles records and listening to stories about Bolivia from our hosts, both hard-working teachers and leftists. Too quickly, it was time to leave.
“We’ll send you a note once we’ve reached our destination safely,” I told Adriana.
“Anything for our comrades, Carmencita. Anything.”
22
I’D HAD THE runs for the entire ten days in La Paz. Unluckily for me, they were now accompanied by extreme bouts of vomiting. Things would have been manageable if we’d been back at Lorena’s house, but instead we were on a twenty-four-hour train ride from La Paz to Villazón, on the Argentinian border. Our packs could never leave our sight, an almost impossible requirement with me running back and forth to the bathroom and a car so full that people were lying underneath our seats and in the racks above our heads. Then there were the robbers. The train was packed with them, and they carried razors between their fingers.
By the time we reached Villazón, my gut was wrung of every last drop. As usual, the trip had taken almost twice as long as scheduled, because of breakdowns and the fact that whenever we passed a cornfield, the train would slow down to five miles an hour. This allowed the train workers, and many of the passengers, to jump off, grab a few ears of corn and jump back on. People ate the raw corn on the spot.
Crossing the border on foot was a piece of cake. Smugglers, pick-pockets, backpackers from around the globe, businessmen, adventurers, families and vendors crowded the crossing, and after passing the guard two twenties we were waved through. Just like that, we were in La Quiaca, Argentina’s northernmost city. At the station there, we boarded a second-class bus heading south.
We were startled awake at four in the morning. “Everybody off the bus!” a male voice barked.
Alejandro and I scrambled down the steps with everyone else and waited by the side of the highway. The bus drivers checked the tires, cigarettes hanging out of their mouths, while the Argentinian federal police released two German shepherds onto the bus. All the luggage was pulled off to be opened. Most of the passengers were Bolivian families who had come to look for work in Argentina, and two men in plainclothes shouted in their faces.
“You think we want your filth in a civilized country like Argentina? Well, you’ll see what’s coming to you if we find anything illegal. You’ll see what an interrogation really looks like.”
Alejandro and I stood silent.
“We know there are people on this bus transporting something of great interest to us. You can turn yourselves in right now, or you can wait till we find your goods. And believe me, we’ll find them. So, what’s it gonna be? If you turn yourselves in, it won’t be as bad for you. Here in Argentina, we like people who co-operate.”
When the dogs came off the bus, they went straight for my open packs. One of the men shone a flashlight in my face. I knew my pupils must be dilated, and I knew that dilated pupils signalled fear. Marcela, Lucas and Juan had taught us that. A rat clawed at my spine. But then something happened. It was as if someone had split me open with a machete, pulled out my terrified heart and thrown it on the ground to die, leaving my chest an empty cage. My pupils shrank, and my breathing slowed. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the dogs making a mess of my clothes and toiletries. The items were carefully stashed, though, and impossible to find, I hoped, without tearing everything apart.
Within fifteen minutes we were back in our seats as the bus pulled out onto the highway. No one had been thrown into the police cruisers. All the bags had been closed and returned. Parents held their crying children close, and the sound of frightened whispers filled the bus.
“Welcome to Argentina, dear Bolivians,” Alejandro muttered.
I was wondering how to get my heart back into my body. I was numb, my breath shallow. It was critical to stop the fear, but did that mean having no feelings left at all? If that was the only way to keep doing the work, it was a price I was willing to pay.
WE ARRIVED IN Villa María, Alejandro’s hometown, in the early morning on a cold, cloudy winter day. His parents, María and Paco, were waiting for us at the bus station with open arms. Tears ran down María’s face as she patted her son’s head. As the three of them hugged, rocking together like a boat on the sea, Paco’s legs vibrated with emotion. I stood to the side, my hands clasped in front of me, listening as the bus station came alive with the shouts of newspaper vendors and the hiss of espresso machines. On our way to the car, Paco offered me the crook of his arm, but María remained aloof.
Villa María’s cobblestone streets were clean, and already the sidewalks were full of ladies in housecoats and curlers sweeping and washing the pavement in front of their doors. María and Paco’s house was long and narrow, with a freshly waxed floor and a gleaming table where we sat to have croissants and coffee. As the day wore on, María started to warm up to me. I walked with her to evening mass, and that seemed to help. Her beloved son was back in Villa María only long enough to marry a woman she didn’t know, and though she’d accepted long ago that he was an atheist, it still hurt her that her only boy would not have a church wedding.
My grandmother Carmen had a phone in her house by now, so I’d called her from La Paz and invited her to come. My grandfather had died a year earlier. Because of the blacklist, Mami and Uncle Boris had mourned him from afar.
When there was a knock on the door the next morning, I leapt up from the table and ran to open it. There she was, holding the same large cake box she’d brought to Bolivia for my fifteenth birthday. She wore a widow’s frock and the grey winter coat she’d had for years. Her 1940s suitcase was at her side.
“Abuelita!”
“Why didn’t anyone inform me that Villa María is two days’ travel from Limache? I thought it was just over the border. And then there I am at the Mendoza bus station, telling a taxi driver to take me to Villa María, and he doesn’t understand me. Finally he realizes I’m talking about Villa María, Córdoba, and that it’s two provinces over. I had to sit on a bus for another day to get here!”
“I love you, Abuelita,” I giggled into her hair.
“Now, let me go so I can get a good look at you.”
We stood on the sidewalk together as she shook her head, hands on her hips.
“You’re a woman now. A woman.”
Alejandro and I were getting married for political and immigration purposes, and that was that. I’d been announcing to the world since the age of eight that I would never marry, and as far as I was concerned, I was just doing some necessary paperwork, taking care of legal matters in a town I didn’t know, surrounded by strangers. My wedding dress was a fuchsia satin tube skirt with matching top. María and Paco’s next-door neighbour had curled my hair, and my new sister-in-law had made me a bride’s bouquet of dried flowers. Alejandro’s relatives and family friends crowded around us in the civil registry as we exchanged our vows. My only blood present was my grandmother, and she cried as she signed her name next to mine. She was my witness, the person I loved the most in the world.
“Why were you crying, Abuelita?” I asked at the reception as we sat watching people dance.
“Because I hate that son of a bitch so much.”
I’d never heard her swear, and I almost fell off my chair.
“Alejandro?”
“No, no. I’m referring to Pinochet. Because of him I’m here, in a foreign country, watching my exiled granddaughter getting married far from her rightful home. You left when you were six years old, Carmencita. Now you’re eighteen, and I’ve lost it all. I’ve lost it all.”
As my heart expanded painfully in my chest, I rose and staggered to the bathroom. Inside a stall, I bent double, flooded with homesickness—for my parents, my siblings, all that was familiar. My feelings had returned with a vengeance, and it took all
I had to get them under control. Back at the table, I choked down the cake that had taken my abuelita three days to make and two to transport. I held her hand tightly in mine.
The following day we saw my grandmother off at the bus station. Her beloved dog Muchacho awaited her in Limache, as did her new vocation. Since my grandfather’s death she’d started making figurines, brooches and earrings, described in detail in the weekly letters she’d sent to me in Canada. After spending fifty years kneading dough for bread, pies and pastries, she’d begun to people her solitary house with witches, babies, cats, trolls, and invented creatures that sprang from her agile hands. The dough told her what to do, she explained, and she used toothpicks for the finer work. Food colouring gave her creations a soft pastel glow or the brightness of the rainbow. Once a month, her sister Perlita, one of the three virgins, came to visit from Santiago and took my grandmother’s crafts back to the boutique in the Plaza de Armas gallery, where they sold like hotcakes. I was wearing her wedding gift that day, a brooch and matching earrings so delicate people had gasped when they learned they’d been made by her hand.
After waving goodbye from the platform, Alejandro and I picked up our bags and walked to another part of the station. Twenty-four hours later we would start our brand-new life. We had two hundred dollars to our name.
23
AN EIGHTY-MILE-AN-HOUR WIND greeted us in Neuquén. Dirt, garbage and the odd tumbleweed flew through the freezing air. We locked away our bags at the bus terminal, first visiting the bathroom so we could transfer the goods we were carrying to the inside pockets of our coats and our money belts. It was noon, meaning we had two hours before businesses shut down for siesta. The city was booming, we knew. People from every corner of Argentina were arriving in droves, since this was the oil capital of the region, with work to spare. We headed for the closest rental agency, leaning our bodies into the gale.
The rental agent frowned when we told him what we could afford. “There’s not much I can do for you for 150 australes,” he said.“ The cheapest place I’ve got right now is 170. I suppose you have no guarantor?”
“No, we just got here, and we don’t know a soul.”
“What do you do?”
“She’s an English teacher, and I’m an electrical engineer,” Alejandro lied. I’d completed a night course in English as a second language in Vancouver, but a teacher I was not. Alejandro was merely an electrician.
“Oh well, then, you’ll both have jobs within the hour. I’ll tell you what. For 170 australes I’ll throw in the damage deposit and I’ll cosign. Seventy years ago there was nothing here. Now look at us! Hop in the car and we’ll drive out to your new place. If you like it, you’ll hand me the money, sign a few papers and we’ll be all set.”
The austral, the new currency introduced in 1985 by Argentina’s president, was now worth more than the U.S. dollar. Alfonsín had frozen wages and cut government spending, and much of the country had fallen into private hands. The plan, referred to as “structural adjustment,” had been imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which had agreed to refinance Argentina’s $50-billion foreign debt if Alfonsín followed their conditions. Most Argentinians had urged Alfonsín to refuse the deal. The debt, accumulated by Argentina’s military during the dictatorship, had been used mainly to buy arms to terrorize the population and to fatten the military leaders’ Swiss bank accounts. But the military still held a great deal of power, and Alfonsín worried that refusal would mean another coup, financed and orchestrated by Washington. As we’d learn, the situation was the talk everywhere—in cafés, on buses, at work.
We drove through town in the agent’s tiny Fiat till we crossed the Transnational Highway. A few fat prostitutes in neon spandex leaned against posts, waving lethargically at the passing trucks. Now we were on dirt roads, and the tumbleweeds were plentiful. There were few finished houses here, just half-built structures and huge circular tents. Children in ripped sweaters ran through the streets as packs of dogs followed. Women in multicoloured skirts with gold teeth leaned in the open doorways of rooms just large enough to accommodate the bedding on the floor.
“Gypsies,” the agent informed us. “Originally from Romania. Just ignore them, and they won’t bother you. They deal in cars, and they can be trusted to sell you a good one. For everything else, stay as far away as possible. They’ll steal your money and your children, and tell you lies.”
We turned onto one of the dirt roads, and the agent stopped in front of a completed house. He went to the front door and came back with a woman in her fifties, who led us around the side of the house. We passed five metal doors along a dirty passageway. She opened the sixth one.
“This is it.”
The door banged against its flimsy frame as clouds of dirt flew in. It was a tiny apartment with a ceramic floor. The kitchen consisted only of a sink. The bathroom had a lidless toilet, a sink and a pipe protruding from high on the wall that served as a shower. The bedroom was barely big enough for a double bed. There were no closets or cupboards. The lone window looked out onto a dumping ground, where small children and dogs played in mounds of garbage.
“It’ll go by the end of the day,” she said.
“Okay. We’ll take it.”
“You kids married?”
“Yes. We got married yesterday.”
“Okay, I’ll throw in a small stove and fridge. Consider it my wedding present.”
The rental agent dropped us off at the bus terminal so we could pick up our packs. It took us forever to walk back to our new place. Exhausted after our journey, we collapsed on the bedroom floor and fell into a deep sleep. When I awoke two hours later and stepped out into the “yard,” I saw a newborn puppy lying dead a few feet from our window.
BY FIVE THAT AFTERNOON Alejandro and I were having coffee and croissants on Argentina Avenue, Neuquén’s main street. The downtown was bustling after siesta, in spite of the wind. We studied a map of the city.
“Okay, Skinny. You go your way, and I go mine. We’ll meet back at the house at ten o’clock. Let’s hope we’ll both have jobs by then.”
As I walked along Argentina Avenue, I noticed that all the jeans in the store windows were the same price as our rent: 170 australes. (“Pay in 17 monthly installments of 10 australes!”) Even underwear cost 12 australes. (“Pay in 4 monthly installments of 3 australes!”)
Within two blocks of the main artery, I spotted a bronze plaque on the door of a small white building that read: “English Institute of British Culture.”
A young woman wearing a blue smock clanged away at an ancient typewriter behind the reception desk, using only her index fingers. She was chewing on a great wad of bubble gum, and she completely ignored me as she sought out the next letter on her keyboard. I cleared my throat.
“Hello. I’m here to inquire about a possible job.”
The woman sang along with the tiny transistor radio by her side, tossing her head a little. Her frizzy brown hair stood out a good foot from her face. An entire can of hairspray must have been emptied to reach the desired effect.
“Is there someone I could speak to about—”
She let out a sigh and rolled her eyes. “Miss Mary!” she yelled.
A tiny, very old woman dressed in a plaid skirt suit emerged. She inhaled deeply on the cigarette as she looked me up and down.
“Come with me,” she ordered in a crisp British accent.
I followed her into an office, where a woman in her late thirties sat behind an antique oak desk. She had jet-black hair and blue eyes. A large diamond flashed on her perfectly manicured hand, the nails painted a fire-engine red.
“I’m Miss Silvina. Do sit down.” She extended her hand. Her English pronunciation was perfect, despite her heavy Argentinian accent. “Please tell me about yourself.”
“Tea?” asked Miss Mary.
I nodded.
“I am Carmen. Miss Carmen from Canada. I just arrived today—”
“Ah. A native speak
er,” murmured Miss Silvina with appreciation.
Within an hour, I’d been hired as head of the institute’s language laboratory, at a wage of 150 australes a month. I spent the rest of the evening installed at my post at the front of the lab, correcting the pronunciation of rows of students in headphones who listened to cassettes of English conversation and repeated phrases into small microphones.
Getting home was a feat. There was no electricity in the Gypsy neighbourhood, which meant you navigated the dirt roads by the light of the moon, if you were lucky, or by the faint light emanating from tents and open doors. The roads were packed with people. I’d played stupid when my new boss at the institute asked where I lived, pointing vaguely toward the river.
“Be sure never to go to the other side of the Transnational,” Miss Silvina had warned. “Gypsies live there. The men are rapists, and the women are whores. They’re all robbers with sharp knives.” I clutched my purse to my belly as I battled the wind. Dogs ran barking at my feet. As male voices swirled around me, I couldn’t decide if I was more afraid of being intercepted by secret police or of being kidnapped by one of the bands of men who loitered on the corners.
Alejandro was waiting for me in our new apartment. He’d landed a job at the hydro plant as an electrical draftsman. His shift started at 6:00 AM and finished at 2:00 PM, just when my workday began. His salary was 200 australes a month. That would leave us with 180 australes for living expenses after rent.
“There are lots of post office boxes available for rent in town, Skinny. There are also some money transfer agencies around—I guess everyone’s sending their families a little something. We’ll ask our bosses for advances, rent a post office box and mail a note to Lucas and Juan in Lima as soon as possible. And to our helpers.”
We never spoke out loud about the goods we were carrying, for security reasons. I looked to where Alejandro was pointing now. He had dislodged a few tiles in the bedroom and dug out a small hole underneath. I stashed the goods I had in my coat and purse alongside his.
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