The Gringa

  * * *

  —

  At the 2002 civilian retrial, Lorenzo Garza Strauss testified that the defendant made frequent calls from the payphone in his bodega, often arguing with whoever was on the line, hanging up agitated. The government claimed to have records, provided by Telefónica, of calls to “known subversives,” but refused to produce those records, citing national security. Leo’s lawyer challenged the testimony on the grounds that Garza was legally blind, but the presiding judge dismissed this with scorn:

  “I think the señor knows who was in his store.”

  * * *

  —

  That night she waits on a concrete bench, squinting at Moby-Dick in the thin glow of a streetlamp. It’s been months since she read even a page of it—she’s confused by the interstitial sections, unsure what the crew of the Pequod have been doing all this time. It’s a warm, wet night, a quarter moon sailing through tears in the clouds. Across the street, young professionals stand outside the Café Haiti, smoking and perusing the menu, their laughter ringing clear in the night’s otherworld lucidity.

  For two weeks the plan has occupied her dreams. It comes to her personified, an object of desire, of an almost rabid lust, whose face she never quite sees. In daylight she finds herself in a state of double consciousness, body engaged in some rote task while her mind is picturing the cataclysm, anticipating the exquisite satisfaction when Vía América is swallowed by the sea.

  But things are not happening fast enough. With just over a month until the opening, Marta seems unmoved by urgency, content to lock herself away with the remaining cumpas to debate this or that philosophical point, to rehash dogma. “Soon, compañera,” she says when Leo confronts her, then ascends the stairs once again with her mug of tea. Waiting was hard enough before the plan—but now this inactivity has come to feel like a kind of indolence, an immorality.

  Around nine o’clock, Julian sets his tray on the bar and unties his apron. She waits until he’s disappeared down the alley, then shoves Moby-Dick in her bag and follows. When she next catches sight of him, he’s exiting a shop with a bouquet of flowers clutched under one arm. Her steps quicken in anger and an odd jealousy: all these months of waiting, living on three-day-old stew and bad cheese, while he consorts with the leisure class, wasting money on something as sentimental and bourgeois as flowers?

  She keeps him in her sights through the silent streets, past the dark synagogue, the stacked condominiums painted with light. After ten minutes he stops at a roundabout and lights a cigarette, standing under a bronze statue of a horseman with sword raised against the pearled sky. The floodlit, dignified homes, each with its wide metal gate; a steep, tiled roof; the pompous statue—all familiar somehow. When he crosses the street to one of the houses, presses buttons on a keypad and opens a door in the gate, Leo crosses after him, stepping into a scene from a luxury magazine: a driveway of cut stone circling a marble fountain, from which streams of water shoot through penumbras of colored light.

  “Where are you going, cumpa?”

  Julian spins, guiltily clutching the flowers. The house rises behind him, three stories of white stone, brick balconies and oriental roofs, trees trimmed into unnatural forms. “Listen to me,” he whispers, taking a step toward her as the iron lanterns flanking the front door flicker on. “Go back to the house. I’ll come later—”

  “Did you forget about us? We’re all there because of you.”

  As he scans her face, panic shining in his eyes, Leo has the exhilarating sense of their having changed places. She feels larger, stiff with authority—while Julian, her tormentor, has shrunk to a comic figure, entirely at her mercy.

  “Augustín,” comes a voice. Julian’s eyes go still. He flashes Leo a pleading look and turns to face the woman in the doorway.

  “Buenas noches, Señora,” he says with a mock bow, producing the flowers from behind his back. She’s in her sixties, wearing a dark green dress with a high collar, a necklace that gleams in the lantern-light. Fine-featured, with a sharp nose and small ears studded with diamonds, her hair a graying auburn cut fashionably short.

  “You’re very late.”

  “I told you. I was working.”

  The woman’s eyes flick over Leonora. “Who is this?”

  “This? Oh, she’s my new girlfriend. Te presento—”

  “Linda,” Leo says, linking her arm in Julian’s. “Mucho gusto conocerle.”

  Julian forces a laugh. “Good, Linda. Que bue-no!” he says, enunciating as if to an idiot. “This is Señora Ma-ri-a An-to-nietta E-che-varria de Ze-la-ya de Du-e-ñas.” Then, to the woman in the door: “No habla español. Yo soy su profesor.”

  “I see.” The woman’s gaze moves between them, her irritation checked by thin-lipped stoicism. When she reaches out her hand, Leo almost takes it. “I’ll tell the girl we’re four for dinner,” the señora says, accepting Julian’s flowers, already turning back to the bright foyer. “Now go inside. The general is hungry.”

  Julian cinches Leo’s arm tight to his ribs. “Sí, mamá,” he says.

  * * *

  —

  Julian’s father, the retired general, is thickset, imposing without being particularly tall. His eyes are close-set with tender pouches, his complexion patched with whiskers the razor missed. He gives the impression of grumbling even when he’s made no sound at all. In the library, where an oil painting of Simon Bolívar hangs spotlit between shelves filled with Shakespeare, Hugo, Dante, he sips a glass of whiskey, turning it in the light, while his wife delivers observations in a bright, fricative accent Leo can’t place.

  “Mamá,” Julian says, draining his glass. “You understand English. Why do you make me translate everything Linda says?”

  “I also understand when a dog barks,” says the señora. She has not looked at Leo since they arrived. “Pero in esta casa, se habla español.”

  “It’s a lovely house,” Leo says. “Did…Augustín grow up here?”

  The señora won’t meet her gaze. “Both of my sons did. They had an ideal childhood. Lima was different then. Safer. You weren’t bothered in the street, shouted at. They used to ride their bicycles to Barranco without the least danger.”

  Leo waits for Julian’s translation, then feigns vacuousness. “It seems safe now.”

  “It has been ruined. By people with no respect for history or culture. Criminals.” She laments the pestilent shoeshine boys in the plazas, the new buildings that block the ocean view. “When my sons were born, we knew every family in this barrio. We saw their children at festivals and weddings. We didn’t worry those children would one day point a gun at us. The invasions changed all that,” she says. “Isn’t that right, General?”

  Julian’s father sighs into his glass. “Leave it alone, mi amor.”

  “There are police everywhere now. And beggars. Young men whistling at women. People banging on pots and pans. They think the city belongs to them. And the government allows it,” she says. “It lets the animals do as they please.”

  She sets her glass next to a framed photograph: a younger version of herself flanked by two teenagers outside the Louvre. The shorter boy, coarse black hair and chipmunk cheeks, is clearly Julian; the other has lighter, curlier hair, a quarterback’s shoulders, a finely sculpted face that resembles his mother’s. It could be anyone’s family, Leo thinks, recalling a similar shot of her own family at Buckingham Palace that hangs on the kitchen wall.

  Following her gaze the señora asks, “Augustín told you about his brother?”

  “I’ve heard a lot about him.”

  “But he didn’t tell you that tonight is Casimiro’s birthday?”

  “Mamá…” Julian says.

  “No,” Leo says, distracted by the photograph, by Casi’s beauty, his posture of easy confidence. She feels the señora sizing her up: her frayed jeans and shapeless sweater, the bandanna that can�
�t quite restrain her unwashed hair.

  “I didn’t think so. I’m sure you would have dressed differently.”

  In the dining room, they sit at a long table of polished walnut while a plump indigenous woman in a maid’s uniform sets plates before them and refills their glasses. “The food is wonderful, señora,” Leo says, tucking into a perfectly marbled steak, cold Caesar salad, asparagus thick as her thumb and sizzling with garlic and ají pepper. She forces herself to chew slowly—when has she last eaten this way? She tries not to think of Marta and the cumpas, the boiled potatoes they’ve had every night this week.

  “This is Casimiro’s favorite meal,” the señora says. She looks down the table at her husband, raising her voice slightly. “You remember that, General?”

  “Sí, mi amor,” the general says.

  While Julian and his mother discuss cousins in Miami, friends he hasn’t seen since he left school, Leo concentrates on the rich flavors, the musical clink of silverware, safe in the cocoon of her presumed incomprehension. She struggles to absorb this new idea of Julian, to reconcile oil paintings and Argentinian steaks with the hotheaded radical who’d once thrown her into the street. When she meets his eyes she makes her face soften in fondness, playing along. But the señora hasn’t forgotten Leo, has only allowed the meal to lull her, cobra-like, the wine to wear down her vigilance.

  “Tell me, Linda, how long have you been in our country?”

  After the translation, Leo says, “About nine months.”

  “And still you don’t speak Spanish?”

  The wine has made Julian’s voice throatier, his gestures sloppy. “She’s from the United States, mamá.”

  The señora ignores him. “And how did you meet Augustín?” This time, Leo really does have to wait for the translation: though she’s heard the name several times now—Augustín—her brain still won’t connect it to the man she knows.

  “We met at the café,” she chirps. “I ordered an Inca Kola.”

  “Of course.” Then, to Julian, “You must meet many girls at that restaurant.”

  “I thought he was so charming,” Leo says, reaching for his hand with a thrill of dark pride at her ability to play this role—inamorata, well-bred ornament—so convincingly. “You must be proud to have a son who’s so smart and hardworking.”

  “Trabajar en un restaurante no es difícil,” she says. The general moans, “Maria, please…” but she pays no heed. Preempting translation, she says, “Es una diversión. Algo para adolescentes. ¿Tú me entiendes?” she says, watching Leo’s face.

  “Mamá, I told you—”

  “Augustín was a brilliant law student. Did he tell you that? But my baby doesn’t care for responsibility. He has always avoided the difficult things. He doesn’t understand that a country is built by hard work and sacrifice. That without these things you have anarchy, like we had for twelve years—children with guns, not willing to be adults, not willing to work, who only want to take what has been earned by others.”

  The general, who’d spent this recital probing his back teeth with a toothpick, clears his throat. “I can tell you, cariña, those children shot their guns like adults.”

  “Adults don’t shoot guns at innocent people.”

  Julian leans back in his chair. “The army also killed innocent people, mamá.”

  “The terrorists killed them,” the señora says. She has not taken her eyes off Leo. “No one died who distanced themselves from the animals, or reported them to the authorities. No one who made their loyalties clear.”

  “Lupe!” the general calls out. “Time for dessert.” Leo glares at Julian, whose translation has lagged, until he tells her in reluctant English what his mother just said.

  “But what if your loyalties aren’t clear?” Leo holds her voice steady as the señora’s. “What if it’s your friend or your cousin, someone from the same village?”

  “Linda,” Julian says.

  “Eso no importa,” his mother says. “Si tu amigo sea terrorista—”

  “What if it’s someone in your own family? You expect people to turn in—”

  “I expect people to denounce terrorists.”

  Ignoring Julian’s alarm, Leo switches to Spanish. “Señora, would you denounce your own children?”

  A flicker at the señora’s jaw. Leo holds her breath, waiting for the señora to lose her composure, throw wine in her face. But she’s played right into the señora’s hand.

  “If they associated with terrorists, they would no longer be my children.”

  At this, the general pushes back his chair and brushes crumbs from his shirt. “Your children…” he starts to say, but seeing his wife’s face he stops himself. “The war is over, my love. Now it’s time for coffee.”

  After he leaves, the room is very still, the warm-lit space too large. The señora refills Leo’s glass, sets the bottle firmly in front of her.

  “Of course the young are susceptible to all kinds of ideas,” she says. “In Argentina it was the same: the communists and the liberation theologists and the Jews. They appealed to the sense of grievance. They seduced many young people, corrupted many families with their fantasies. The army was forced to fight at their level. No había opciones. No se puede pelear contra el fuego sin que la gente se queme.”

  “Mamá—” Julian says helplessly.

  “Tú me entiendes, Linda, ¿no?”

  “Sí, señora,” Leo says.

  For the first time, a genuine smile crosses the señora’s face. “What I don’t understand,” she says, “is what a person like you is doing in this country. Don’t you have a family in the United States?”

  “I work for an NGO.”

  “Which one?”

  “It’s called Oportunidad Para Todos. We work with poor women in the new communities. We teach them how to read, how to open a bank account—”

  “Yes, I know of it. Wasn’t that group involved in a problem recently?”

  “Last Christmas. The government destroyed some homes in Los Arenales. Several demonstrators were killed.”

  “Were you there?”

  “Yes,” Leo says. “One of my friends died.”

  The señora nods thoughtfully, folding her napkin into a perfect square and setting it on the table. “You must have told Augustín about it. I remember he was very upset.”

  “Señora—” Leo says, but she cuts her off.

  “Well, I don’t understand how stupid a person must be not to know how to read. You seem intelligent. Why would you choose to work with such people? I myself would be ashamed if a lazy girl from another country had to teach me to read.”

  “Mamá, this is enough,” Julian says. “Linda? It’s time to leave.”

  But Leo won’t be moved. This is where the revolution is fought, she tells herself: against French wine, the family silver, the jeweled crucifix on the wall. “I’m sure you had the best tutors in Buenos Aires, señora.”

  Another carnivorous smile—and now she sees the resemblance between Julian and his mother. “Yes, I did. And still I brush my own hair every day.”

  Now Julian comes around and tries to pull out Leo’s chair. “I think I’ll take Linda home, mamá. You’re very rude.”

  “Others are not so fortunate,” Leo says. “I’m sure you care about them. That’s what Jesus teaches, isn’t it? ‘As you do unto the least—’ ”

  “It’s people like you who harm them by giving them such ideas. If those women had stayed in their homes, they wouldn’t need to read or open bank accounts. They knew everything they needed to know when they lived in the campo.”

  “If those women had stayed in their homes they’d be dead.”

  “Por el Sendero Luminoso.”

  “Or by someone else. The army didn’t ask if you were rich or poor. They didn’t distinguish.” Leo brings her eyes to meet the señora�
��s. “As you know.”

  The señora sniffs and answers wearily, disappointed by this direct thrust. “What I know is that my sons are attracted to cheap, impertinent women. But they’ll grow out of it. Augustín,” she says, turning from Leo as if she were an unpleasant smell, “I found some old photographs I want to show you. Please come upstairs.”

  * * *

  —

  Outside, Leo sits on the front step and lets the mist cool her face, realizing how parched the wine has left her, how stifling those paneled walls and chandeliers, the portraits of gluttonous ancestors in absurd uniforms. The neighborhood is quiet: a few notes from a passing car, the hiss and mewl of a cat cornering some nocturnal intruder. She breathes in the night-blooming jasmine, holding onto her fury, controlling it. So this is what Julian is fighting against, she thinks. All these months she’s been cowed by what she saw as his authenticity, the purity of his ideals, when in fact she and Julian were just the same. The realization gives her power over him; she hadn’t been sure what she wanted when she came looking for him. But she knows now.

  A deep voice from the shadows cuts into her thoughts: “ ‘Call me Ishmael.’ ”

  The general stands a few yards away, backlit by the library window. The tip of his cigar pulses bright red.

  “A classic,” he says in English, pointing to the book in her hand. “When I read it in university I thought, ‘Melville is a strange name for a Peruvian.’ Because this book describes perfectly the Latino mind.”

  Leo eyes Julian’s father, who seems not to notice the mist darkening his shoulders. She’s had enough of polite conversation, enough pretense for one night.

  “Thank you for dinner, señor.”

  He smokes his cigar, regarding the colorful fountain, the broad gate that seals them off from the street. “Always the impossible quest, the fantasy of total victory. A man must fulfill his destiny. He must stop at nothing, even if he tears down the world in his obsession. This is Ahab, no? God’s plan has a pattern. It can be read in only one way. I’ve met many men like this. Prophets. Tyrants. Murderers.”