Meet Me Under The Ombu Tree

by Santa Montefiore

  children.’ And she fixed Sofia with steely eyes. ‘He wants to stay here for Maria. He adores her. He will be inconsolable once she is gone - but life will go back to normal again. I suppose you will return to your family?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I will.’ But Sofia wanted more than anything to stay.

  ‘How do you find it here after all those years away?’ the other woman asked, and a small smile of triumph appeared on her lips.

  ‘It’s like nothing’s changed. It’s amazing how one slots right back in again.’ ‘But have you - slotted right back in again?’ Claudia asked silkily.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘People change though, don’t they? On the surface it appears as if it is still your home, but you probably feel an outsider in both places.’

  ‘Not really. I don’t feel an outsider anywhere,’ Sofia lied.

  ‘Well, you’re lucky. It is very common. I’m surprised you feel at home. There are so many new faces - a new hierarchy. You’re not part of the place any more. Santi told me how you used to dominate everyone’s conversation at Santa Catalina; now no one talks about you at all.’

  Sofia was stung by her bluntness and inwardly recoiled. ‘I don’t really want to be talked about, Claudia,’ she replied icily. ‘Maria is the reason I have come.

  We have a friendship you could never understand. What you think is irrelevant. My roots here run deeper than yours ever will.’

  ‘But I live here, Sofia, and Santi is my husband. In the end you will leave and return to those you belong to. You don’t belong here any more.’

  At that moment Santi sauntered out onto the terrace followed by Miguel, Panchito, Eduardo and Chiquita. He at once noticed Claudia's pink cheeks and a look of concern swept across his face as his eyes darted from his wife to his lover.

  ‘Will you stay for lunch, Sofia?’ asked Chiquita. ‘Or dinner, perhaps?’

  ‘I’ll eat now with my parents, Chiquita, but I would love to join you for dinner.’ Then turning to Claudia she added, ‘I don’t suppose I’ll see you later.’ Claudia’s neck flushed with inner rage as Sofia smiled at her with satisfaction. ‘Have a safe drive to Buenos Aires.’

  As Sofia walked through the trees she almost skipped with happiness. She felt victorious. Claudia was on the offensive. If she felt threatened by her, that must surely indicate that things weren’t well between husband and wife. She filled the void I left, but now I’m back, Sofia thought triumphantly to herself.

  It must have been about five in the afternoon when the cars departed for Buenos Aires. Rafael and Jasmina’s children left with the chauffeur, Santi and Claudia’s left with Maria’s. As the dust settled behind them, glinting in the sunshine, Sofia skipped victoriously over to Chiquita’s house.

  After dinner with Santi’s family they all sat outside on the terrace. In the humidity there descended upon them a heaviness of heart. They sat in the darkness watched by the hidden eyes of the animals of the pampa and talked openly about Maria. Sofia could barely look at Eduardo’s gentle face. However, it was somehow cathartic to talk about her all together like that. For once they were realistic. She was not going to live for much longer. Miguel had called Fernando, who had decided to come back to Santa Catalina for the first time since his imprisonment to say goodbye to his sister. He would overcome his fear for her sake and perhaps let go of the shadows that haunted him.

  Chiquita and Miguel sat holding hands for comfort. It was not going to be easy in spite of the months of preparation. It could be days, literally. In those moments Sofia felt very close to her cousins. They all shared a past; they all shared a love for Maria. Those things formed a bond between them. A bond that whatever was to happen subsequently could never be undone.

  Later when the household had retreated to their beds, Santi and Sofia sat on the bench like the night before. They sat in silence. They didn’t feel the need to talk. They were comforted by the fact that they were close. He held her hand and pulled her to him. Sofia didn’t know how long they sat like that, but after a while her body ached in discomfort.

  ‘I have to move, Santi,’ she said and stretched. She felt stiff and sleepy - and melancholic. ‘I should go to bed. I can hardly keep my eyes open.’

  ‘I want to spend the night with you, Chofi. I need to be close to you tonight,’ he said. She looked at his crumpled face. He was a big man, and yet tonight he looked vulnerable.

  ‘We can’t stay here,’ she objected.

  ‘I know. It’s not appropriate. I’ll come with you.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Perfectly. I need you, Chofi. I feel so miserable.’ She embraced him like a child and he clung to her. There was something touching about the way he hugged her. Her heart ached for him. ‘There’s nothing any of us can do,’ he grieved. ‘I feel so useless. And then I think, what if this happened to one of my children? How would I cope? How are my parents coping?’

  ‘You cope because you have to. It hurts and it will never stop hurting, Santi. But you have to be strong. These things are sent to test us. We don’t know why they happen, but God wants Maria back. We must be grateful that we have been loaned her for as long as we have,’ she said, blinking away the tears. She reflected back on her words and thought how like her mother she sounded. In spite of all her rebelling she had absorbed more of her mother’s philosophy than she had realized. ‘Come on, let’s go to bed. You’re more emotional because you’re tired. You’ll feel stronger in the morning.’

  They walked through the trees holding hands. They should have been elated that they were able to spend the night together, but instead their hearts felt heavy and empty with an inexplicable loneliness.

  ‘I have never thought about death, you know. I have never had to face it. But it scares me. We’re all so damn vulnerable.’

  ‘I know,’ agreed Sofia flatly. ‘We’re all going to go sometime.’

  ‘I look into the faces of my children. What am I supposed to say when they ask me where she’s gone? I don’t know what I believe in any more.’

  ‘That’s because you’re angry with God. I spent my childhood being angry with God simply because my mother was a fanatic; it irritated me. But now I do

  believe. There must be some purpose to all of this.’

  ‘I have to be strong for Mama, but inside I feel weak and ineffectual,’ he confessed miserably.

  ‘You don’t have to be strong in front of me, Santi.’

  And he squeezed her hand. ‘I’m glad you came - you came when I needed you most.’

  Sofia closed the door behind her and walked over to the window to fasten the shutters and draw the curtains.

  ‘Listen to the crickets,’ she said. She felt nervous. They had made love before, but tonight it would be slow and intimate. She heard Santi approach behind her and then he slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her to him. Softly he kissed her neck. She lay back against him and closed her eyes. His hands slid under her shirt and she felt his roughened palms on the surface of her belly. It was humid and her skin was damp. Then his hands were on her breasts, so gently she could barely feel them. His bristle tickled her neck and she writhed in pleasure. She turned to face him and his mouth descended onto hers with the fervour of someone who wants to blot out the pain of the present and forget himself in the arms of a loving woman. At last they abandoned themselves to each other and in the secrecy of the night she shared him with no one.

  ‘Am I old?’ she asked him afterwards when she noticed him looking at her body.

  ‘You? Never old.' he said tenderly. ‘Just older.’

  Chapter 44

  Monday, 1o November 1997

  Fernando felt the sweat trickle down his back as he disembarked from the ferry that had brought him across the muddy waters from Uruguay to Argentina. It had been almost twenty years since he had last stood upon Argentine soil. Twenty years since he had taken part in political demonstrations against the military government that had marched into power on 24 March 1976. Although the co
up itself had been bloodless, the following five years had seen the disappearance of nearly 10,000 people. Fernando had almost been one of them.

  He looked back across the brown waters and remembered his escape all those years ago. Terrified and defeated, he had vowed never more to set foot in Argentina. He had seen too much violence to ever want to be that close to death again.

  During that period, Fernando had learnt a great deal about himself. He didn’t like what he had learnt. He was a coward. Not like those brave men and women who risked their lives and often sacrificed them for the good of their country, for democracy and for freedom. Who came in their hundreds to protest against General Videla and his henchmen in the Plaza de Mayo. They were the faceless heroes of Argentina’s ‘Disappeared’, stolen from their beds in the middle of the night never to be seen or heard of again. Perhaps, he thought, it would have been better had he vanished with them, perhaps to a watery grave at the bottom of the sea instead of running into hiding in Uruguay. If the police had only realized just how innocuous he really was, how his blatant parading and crowing was all for show, all to make him feel and appear important, all to make up for the years of living beside a brother whose light shone so brightly there was nowhere for Fernando to shine. Until he befriended Carlos Riberas and joined the underground guerrilla movement. That was a corner so dark he was able to shine all on his own.

  Once in Uruguay he had bought a small, dilapidated house on the beach, grown a beard, grown his hair, barely washed except for the times he swam in the sea. He had lost all self-respect. He hated himself and so he tried to lose himself beneath the thick black hair that grew up around him like the thorny forest in the tale of Sleeping Beauty. Except there was no princess to wake him with a kiss. He avoided women. He wasn’t good enough; why would anyone love him?

  He had written articles for various Uruguayan magazines and newspapers, attempting to continue the fight from across the water. But he didn’t need the money - his family made sure he had what he needed. In fact, he had more money than he deserved so he gave it away to homeless beggars who roamed the dusty streets in drunken stupors, clutching their bottles of liquor in brown paper bags. He didn’t feel any better about himself, though. He just felt dead inside.

  Then one night he had awoken after one of his usual nightmares with the sweat soaking into the mattress leaving it soggy like marshland, and decided that he couldn’t bear the mental torture any more. He got up, packed a few items into a rucksack and locked the door to his house. For the next five years he travelled extensively around South America. To Bolivia, Mexico, Equador. From the Chilean lakes to the mountains of Peru. But wherever he went the shadow of his torment was always one step behind him.

  Standing on the top of Machu Picchu, with only the heavens above him and the mists of the earth below, he realized he had nowhere else to run to. He had reached the top. He had only two choices: to continue up into the realm of the gods or to go back down again and learn to live with himself. It was a difficult choice to make. The mists swirled below him in a hypnotic dance, beckoning him to hurl himself into the sweet silence and oblivion that they promised. The silence of death. The oblivion that enables you to forget even yourself. He stared down at it, swaying on the edge of the world. Yet, that too would be running away. He’d be no better than before when he had run away from Argentina, no better than a deserter. It would be so easy, too easy perhaps. There’s no merit in that, he thought to himself, there’s nothing brave about dying like this.

  He collapsed onto the grass and held his head in his hands. The most difficult thing in life is living, he thought miserably, resigning himself to the fact that there were probably a good number of years ahead of him. I can either live them unconsciously, like a spectre, waiting to die, or I can hurl myself at life and make it as good as it can be.

  When he arrived back at his house the telephone was ringing. It was his father, who’d been trying to reach him for weeks. Maria was dying of cancer. It was time to go home.

  When Fernando arrived in Buenos Aires he asked the chauffeur, who had been

  sent by his parents, to take him to the Casa Rosada in the Plaza de Mayo. He just wanted to drive around it once. He wanted to see whether it still haunted him like it did in his dreams. The government house, painted pink by mixing beef fat, blood and lime together, dominates the square, flanked by the Banco de la Nacion, the Catedral Metropolitana, the Consejo Municipal and the Cabildo. It is a beautiful square lined with tall exotic palm trees, busy flower gardens and colonial buildings. But to Fernando it had become a dark and menacing square, the scene of so much disillusionment.

  As the car approached the square Fernando felt the fear rise up from his belly and sit in his throat like a fat toad making it almost impossible to speak without croaking. Cold sweat collected in his clenched fists and his breathing became shallow and irregular. Yet once in the square, the summer sun shining innocently down upon the plants and flowers, Fernando felt his terror dissipate as if dispelled by God Himself. The shadows were gone. Argentina was now a democracy and he could smell it in the sweet air and see it in the carefree faces of the people who ambled by. He looked about at the city’s new face and noticed how it prospered, how it smiled. The fear no longer hung heavy about him but fell off his shoulders like a worn-out coat no longer appropriate in the new, warmer climate. ‘Enough,’ he said to the chauffeur. ‘Take me to Santa Catalina.’

  Fernando’s arrival was a momentous occasion for his family. Reminiscent of Santi’s return after his trip abroad well over twenty years before, they all gathered on the terrace of their home squinting into the sunshine for the first sighting of Fernando’s car. Except his arrival was awaited with sadness for he was returning to say goodbye to his sister.

  ‘He’s much changed, Sofia,’ said Chiquita sadly. ‘I don’t think you’ll recognize him.’

  Sofia smiled at her aunt sympathetically. ‘Do you think he’s come back to stay?’ she asked, making conversation. She didn’t really care whether he came back or not. She glanced over at Santi who was talking to his father and Eduardo. Fernando’s arrival was shaded with apprehension. Miguel had worried that he wouldn’t return in time. Maria was fading fast. No one could remain still. They either shuffled their feet or paced the grass. Even the dogs lay panting in the shade with their tails heavy and unmoving.

  When Fernando’s car turned the corner and drove slowly up the drive with

  the dignity and sobriety of a hearse, the small gathering breathed with relief rather than joy. Fernando looked out of the window and felt his heart inflate with affection and sweet melancholia. This was where he had grown up. This is what he had sacrificed for so many years and it hadn’t changed at all.

  He stepped out of the car and into the frail arms of his mother. He embraced his father, Panchito, his aunts and uncles who all commented on his long hair and black beard. He was barely recognizable. When he saw Sofia he gasped with astonishment.

  ‘I never thought I'd see you again,’ he said, looking down at the woman who reminded him of a cousin he had once loathed. But they were both different people now, as if their childhood had been an extended play which had long since closed down, their roles discarded along with the script.

  ‘It’s good to see you, Fercho. I’m glad you’ve come home,’ she replied, for want of anything better to say. She felt awkward. Fernando was like a stranger to her.

  When he saw Santi he did something that surprised them both. He wept. In Santi he saw the friend who had set out that cold winter’s night to punish Facundo Hernandez. Yet he cried not because Facundo had saved his life, nor because they had both saved Maria’s, but because he looked into the honest green eyes of his brother and saw only the wasted years caused by jealousy, resentment and fear. He wept because he had come home and because he was home to stay. He looked behind him and the shadow was no longer there.

  Chiquita led Fernando inside to see Maria. Santi caught Sofia’s eye and they both knew that this was not a m
oment for them; Fernando needed time alone with his sister.

  ‘Let’s go into town,’ he said solemnly. ‘No one will notice where we are now Fercho’s home.’

  ‘He’s so different. He’s like another person - someone I never knew,’ she said wistfully, following him through the trees.

  ‘I know. He’s different for us, too.’

  ‘I should feel something for him, but I don’t,’ she said, reflecting on the fickleness of time that allows you to connect with some people after long years of separation and not with others.

  ‘He’s been through a lot, Chofi. He’s not the same as he was. You’ll have to get to know him all over again. So will I.’

  When Fernando saw his sister he was humbled by her brave smile and sparkling eyes but devastated by the destruction the disease had caused. Her face was gaunt, the cheekbones sticking out, reminiscent of those harrowing photographs from the German prison camps of World War Two, and she had lost her hair which emphasized the shape of her skull that was only too apparent beneath the thin layer of skin that clung to it. But her spirit was so big it dwarfed her appearance and seemed to illuminate the room. She extended her bony hand and welcomed him home and he fell to his knees and kissed it, in awe of her courage and only too aware of the lack of his own.

  ‘Look at you!’ she laughed, her eyes smiling at him with tenderness. ‘What have you done to yourself, Fercho?’ Fernando was unable to speak. His lips quivered but no sound escaped them. His dark eyes filled with tears. ‘I have this terrible effect on everyone who sees me. I reduce them all to shivering wrecks!’ she said, but her humour was unable to hide the tears that began to well in her own eyes and fall down her sallow cheeks. ‘You’re a silly, silly fool,’ she continued with a tremulous voice, ‘to leave us for so long. What were you doing over there, when we who love you were all over here, missing you? Did you miss us too? Are you here to stay?’

  ‘I’m here to stay,’ he croaked. ‘I wish I . . .’