Shadows Across America

by Guillermo Valcarcel

  Stobert didn’t come up with a strategy—he just improvised, trying to keep all the lies he’d told straight, lies that might send him to prison or, at best, ruin his standing in the community. He’d ordered his wife to keep Friedrich in their cabin in secret and then had come back to sneak him away to Florianópolis. Still, he knew that the rumors would spread, and if he didn’t justify his absence beforehand, he was finished. Although they’d dealt with their accuser, he was still in danger.

  The hills rose translucent and ghostly in the waxing moonlight. That was how he’d always remember them: he’d never see them again. The deed had been bitter, clumsy, dirty, and horrible. The woman had screamed and cried hysterically, her nightmare having suddenly and unexpectedly returned. She’d cursed them and pleaded for her life. During the struggle she’d lost her bra, so she’d fallen half-naked into the gorge, coming to rest in a grotesque, indecent posture.

  It was almost midnight, and they still had forty miles ahead of them when Friedrich pulled over, saying that he needed to stretch his legs. The truth was that he was still trembling. He was driving like a drunkard. The coward hadn’t failed just to thank Stobert for his help; it looked as though he might run off at any moment. “It’s not like it was before,” he’d said. “Things have changed.” Friedrich had grown soft—he’d shown that with his receptions and expensive hotels. He’d become bourgeois and could no longer be trusted. He smoked cigarette after cigarette with shaking hands and grumbled about getting back into the car. Stobert was disgusted by his former comrade. Disgusted and ashamed. In his annoyance an idea came to him. It wasn’t, however, a structured response. He didn’t plan his next step; it was spontaneous. He knew this might be his last chance to get rid of someone who had become a dangerous liability. Stobert took the belt from his trench coat and wrapped it around his fists. Friedrich couldn’t be trusted.

  Michelle had stopped again to cough and clear her throat. But there was no complaint in her voice.

  “Henrique never came back. I was left alone, and then my life really did go to hell. The next day, when he didn’t come to pick me up at school, everyone knew. I could feel them all talking about me. My mom was the worst—she called me names, said I was disgraced, and blamed me for everything. I’d driven him away . . . I had to leave school and find work because she said that she wasn’t going to support another mouth to feed at home if I didn’t contribute anything. Then Michi was born, and we never had any contact with him. Well, we did once. Before the birth, I looked for him like crazy, and only then did I realize that I had no way of finding him. He had always taken the lead. He took me to a rented loft in the city, and we always took his car. I didn’t know how to get there, and my friends who knew him didn’t know how to find him either. He’d changed his phone number and just disappeared. That was how easy it was back then. But I kept on looking. I even found his apartment, but of course he didn’t live there anymore. The doorman told me that he’d rented it before we met and left it the day after the examination, but he did have another number to reach him on. I called him then and there. By then I was eight months pregnant, and the only examinations I’d done were the public health ones, which were poor quality. I couldn’t afford any better . . . I walked around in my school uniform and a belly twice the size of my body . . . I was very young and felt so unhappy and alone. I called him, and when I heard his voice, I started to cry. I didn’t know why. I wasn’t capable of feeling joy or sadness or hatred—I just cried. He recognized me, but he didn’t hang up. He just offered a vague explanation and asked me where I was so he could come pick me up. I don’t know; I can’t remember very well. He gave some kind of explanation that I chose to believe and repeated the same old promises, even more this time. He was going to send lots of money home just to show how committed he was. I wanted to see him right away and told him to come: that was what I needed, not money. He told me that he wasn’t in town but he’d be there the next day . . . just to show he meant it, he’d send me money that very afternoon. I went home. I had no choice. I didn’t know what to do or how to react . . . and so I waited again, until I fell asleep. That was the last time we were in contact. When I called him the next day, the number had been changed. After I gave birth, I found work. When Michi was a little less than two years old, I was able to leave my mother’s house, and when Andrés asked me to join him in the States, I went right away. Andrés was always the only one who ever helped me. That’s my story.”

  Ari was speechless. Her companion blew her nose.

  “A few years later, some people I knew gave me an address in Florianópolis, the capital of Santa Catarina. He’d stayed in touch with the people she knew—he hadn’t tried to disappear from the face of the earth, but he had ditched me like a dog. At seventeen years old I didn’t have the tools to find him. And what good was that address? All I knew about him was that he was a con man who’d used me and abandoned me. I wrote him a letter, pouring out everything I felt. I don’t know if he ever got it, but at least it helped me to get over the ordeal. A long time later, about three years ago, I suddenly got an email from him apologizing. It was so strange—it didn’t sound like it came from the same person. He said that he regretted his actions and had really loved me and worried about me but at the time he had no control over his life. He asked me for my address so he could send money to help the girl. He wanted to take responsibility for his actions. I sent it to him and started to receive fifty or a hundred dollars every two or three months, and he always let me know when it was coming. I asked our mutual acquaintances, and they said they never saw him anymore. He’d gone to live in Joinville and joined a Pentecostal congregation, the Universal Church of the Celestial Kingdom, and they’d not seen him again. He still sends me a little money, I suppose whenever he can. After I left the other day, I wrote to him, but he didn’t answer. I found the Joinville church on the organization’s website. The main service is on Saturdays, and the faithful are obliged to attend. If he’s still with them, he’ll be there.”

  Ari just nodded. She didn’t know what to say.

  “I’ve brought Michi’s passport. If we find her, we’ll need it to get her out of the country. And this.” Michelle handed over a sealed, stamped document. “I’ve thought about what might happen, because of what happened to Beto and me. We don’t know where this will end, and . . . it’s a notarized statement in which I name you Michi’s legal guardian. It’s just us. I don’t know if Ethan will come back, and I was afraid to think of what would happen if something happened to me. She can’t be with a father who never loved her or even knew her. I’m sorry for not telling you before; it’s just insurance. I don’t want Michi to be alone ever again.”

  Ari tried to reassure her, but her voice gave her away. All she managed was a weak “Of course.”

  Angela woke up when she heard him come back in the middle of the night. She got up to make him a snack or warm up water for him to bathe, but what she saw turned her stomach inside out. Faithful to the restrained traditions of her church, she didn’t make a sound and ran straight over to help him: he had obviously been the victim of a violent attack. Neither of them said a word. She undressed him, filled several buckets with water, and calmly and carefully washed away the dried blood and mud, cleaning, dressing, and covering each wound. Once she was done she saw that most of the wounds were superficial, and the only ones that would be visible once he’d dressed would be the scratches and bruising around his eye.

  Stobert was oblivious to his wife’s attentions. It was as though he hadn’t yet arrived home. The rational part of him knew that the situation had become worse and he had no way out, but his mind was still tied up in a knot he couldn’t unravel. He couldn’t remember what his subsequent actions had been even though he’d driven forty miles with the body lying next to him. He knew that he’d wiped away the fingerprints and dragged him back into the car, but he couldn’t recall a single part of the journey. He could easily recite the route he’d taken as though he’d learned it by rote,
but it made no emotional impact upon him, like a story he’d read in an imaginary book. His spirit returned again and again to the warmth of Friedrich’s head against his forehead, the hair in his mouth, and the tension of the belt, which had felt as though it was about to break. The idea that amazed him in that memory was the fear, their terror, and the dying man’s incredible strength. The shared fear: a monstrous communion. Friedrich’s fear had somehow spread to him. The whole ordeal now seemed nothing more than a blind struggle of which only the scratches, the gasping, and his wounds were real. He’d never felt anything so intense before, and he never would again. From that moment on, his obsession with repeating the experience would grow more and more desperate with each failed attempt. He was sure that it hadn’t been transmitted through touch but via a sense unknown to science, a sense that had helped him to chart his victim in detail: the violence of the spasms, the limbs like roaring motors, all depicted in his mind without ever truly touching him. He knew that it hadn’t been a random feeling or a false memory. Friedrich had died fighting: his flailing punches, the thrusting knees, the nails digging into his face. Stobert had been bonded to him in panic, afraid to let him go, worried that the belt would snap or that his painful act of survival would fail. It was like some inhuman sexual act.

  It was Stobert’s body that had won the battle, not him. Animal panic had strengthened his muscles and made him immune to the pain of a nail gouging his eye. It was his body that had stayed firm until the claws had gone limp, their heat fading into the air, scalding him just before the man’s life ebbed away completely. And there was the other voice, like the whisper on the path, that had rejoiced in an unintelligible language, making them both suffer. The voice that had revealed both fears, the one he knew well and Friedrich’s terror in asphyxia. The voice, he knew, had opened a channel between them just to share the horror of the absurdity, the emptiness of death. Just to show him. Until Friedrich’s strength had failed and he’d gone limp and heavy, letting go like an empty wrapper collapsing in on itself, a bag leaking into the sea. The voice had pushed him until he’d lost his self-control. And all on a whim. Just to enhance the terror that now would never leave him.

  Stobert had cleaned the seat, laid the body out, driven along with it, and left the car in town before walking back to the colony. He’d come up with a story that he knew no one would believe. The locals would find the dead body and come for him, but none of this stuck in his memory. All that came back to him was a never-ending death, like the prelude to his own hell. It went on forever.

  Stobert didn’t sleep. He was obsessed with the brief sensation of warmth that he’d felt after more than twenty years of feeling nothing but cold. Reality returned with the sun, determined to make him pay for his mistakes. Now, his premises looked flimsy; nothing of what he’d planned seemed likely to work, as though he’d been drunk when he’d come up with it.

  Angela woke up before dawn and dutifully made him breakfast without asking a single question. Exhausted, starving, and red eyed, he asked her to call a meeting of the community elders first thing that morning, before news of his nocturnal movements reached them from other sources. Resigned to his fate, he decided to press ahead with his plan, if only to win some time with which to get away.

  When he was sitting in front of the elders in the large, empty hall, he began his tale just as he’d originally planned, even though it was filled with holes and inconsistencies that he couldn’t explain. He told them again that he and Federico were devout Christians. His friend had come to him for advice, having discovered that their fellow countrymen in the town were fugitive war criminals, and he was afraid for his life. Stobert knew that most of the German colonies overseas had supported the Nazis and so had no idea how these supposed wise men might react, but he rolled the dice, trusting that his gift for persuasion would help tip the balance in his favor. To his relief, he was right. These Christians, who had little idea of what had happened and had even less experience of mendacity, saw no reason not to believe him. They were horrified by the term war criminal. They asked where Federico was, and he asked forgiveness in both their names for failing to share such a terrible truth before now, saying that it was Federico who had asked him to remain silent so he could confront the two evildoers alone. Guided by his faith in God, he had been confident that he would make them see the error of their ways. Of course, these people weren’t naive enough to believe that it would end well. Shocked, they immediately sent a cart into town to find out what had happened and, if necessary, contact the authorities.

  Stobert was amazed at his initial success. He calculated that the trip and commotion would give him a couple of hours to disappear, assuming that Marcelo wouldn’t make much effort to find him. After all, it was in his interests to keep things quiet as well. At the last moment he realized that he should have ditched the body and hidden the car. He could have used it to get away. He went to his cabin to get hold of a knife and thought about stealing a horse but decided against it so as not to give the Mennonites a reason to chase him.

  However, events didn’t play out as he’d expected. Just as he was getting ready to leave, the only police car in the area appeared on the main drive, kicking up dust on either side and attracting the attention of children and the elderly, who’d barely ever seen such a vehicle before. The car was being towed along behind it. Stobert stopped, knowing that there was no point even trying to escape. The patrol car’s doors opened, and Marcelo stepped out with a pair of officers. They came over, and Marcelo greeted him with surprising friendliness.

  “Good morning, Aspiazi. We keep seeming to run into each other.”

  “I’m afraid that I don’t understand.”

  The colony residents watched them curiously. Angela’s face appeared alongside the others, but she stayed quiet.

  “We met the cart on its way to town. They told us what you’d told them. It was a great help.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “A cowherd came across the body of your acquaintance Federico, the smuggler, as she was taking out her livestock this morning. They called us from the town phone, and when we arrived, your two compatriots, with whom I know you have no contact, had disappeared. With your statement—which, if you please, we’ll take down at the station—we can clear everything up and issue an order for their arrest.”

  His neighbors listened on in amazement. He couldn’t believe it; somehow he’d become a hero. For want of a better idea, he’d left the body near the Germans’ house with the vague, ridiculous intention of blaming the crime on them, simply because they were close by. The former soldiers, whose senses were more attuned than farmers’, had been the first to find it. They’d seen it as a Zionist threat: the area was no longer safe, and their military discipline had helped them to get away before anyone woke up. They’d disappeared without a trace.

  When Marcelo questioned him, Stobert changed his story accordingly. Just as Stobert had imagined, no arrest order was issued. No one cared. The exile would be laid to rest in one of many anonymous graves.

  Following this sequence of events—the spiritual guidance requested and given to his friend, the respect for his determination, the secret he’d kept, and the moral values he’d demonstrated—the council informed Stobert that he was under consideration as a candidate for pastor. He was invited to give a sermon to the congregation. In the most absurd way, his moment had arrived.

  The main gate of Colônia Liberdade opened, revealing what lay behind it: a two-lane drive leading to a small plaza where the original entrance had been. Lucas and Armando’s car drove on and turned left toward the community center, where the houses of the main families were located along with the different meeting rooms, the church, and the school. These buildings surrounded the incredible glass construction that had been the leader’s residence for many years. In the distance, the profile of the old hospital, which was now abandoned, could be seen.

  The construction consisted of two floors, the lower one surrounded by
dark brick walls decorated with childish murals while the top one, which could be accessed by interior stairs, held the Grandfather’s greenhouse residence. The strange design was fully intentional: the greenhouse was built over the boiler room that served the entire complex, thus enhancing the heating, just as Fausto Aspiazi had required. In the 1980s, when he’d given up his pastoral work, he’d moved his office there and had barely left in the past fifteen years. Since then, his staff had made obligatory visits and the children attended a weekly class to keep his influence alive, but even so it wasn’t what it had been. The youngest among them hated going to the big glass sauna.

  Armando and Lucas prepared themselves as best they could to withstand the heat and opened the misted glass door. Inside, lush vegetation pressed up against the roof, and a swarm of insects fell upon anyone who entered but ignored their benefactor. The condensation could grow so concentrated that it sometimes fell like rain. A barely discernible path led through the undergrowth into the central space, which appeared to have been set up as a minihospital. From the damp bed, a weak figure with a drip connected to his arm pushed a walker to an office desk. Once there, he fell into an executive chair with a grunt. Walter Stobert, or Fausto Aspiazi, awaited them. His body was little more than a skeleton draped in aged skin, and his bony fingers trembled under their own weight. It looked as though his flesh had outlived itself. His skull was covered in spots and the odd gray hair while his eyes, blinded by cataracts, still seemed to bore into everything they looked at. He lifted his head, shuddered, and turned occasionally, as though listening to an invisible voice. Sometimes it made him laugh while at others he appeared afraid. These were the moments that his followers most feared, when he seemed to have forgotten they were there. Now his reedy, barely audible voice welcomed them in German, the only language allowed in his presence. In spite of the muggy atmosphere, he exhaled mist with every breath, as though he were on the frozen tundra.