Invisible Country

by Annamaria Alfieri

  Estella wailed, a sound that seemed to well up from the earth below her feet and grew in pain and volume as it poured out of her anguished mouth. Josefina came running and gathered the girl in her arms. “Ayee!” the girl wailed again. “Now we will die.”

  Josefina rocked her. “No, querida, no.”

  Tears streaked Martita’s soiled face. Her fingers gripped Maria Claudia’s. “Tell me what you know,” she whispered.

  Guilt assailed Maria Claudia again. “Oh, my dear friend, the padre found him in the belfry. He was—” she broke off, unable to say “murdered.”

  “Say it,” Estella demanded.

  “Alivia León saw the body. He was murdered.”

  “Eeee!” Estella wailed again, writhing in Josefina’s strong grip.

  The old duenna rocked the girl. “His soul will linger,” she crooned. “The old gods and the new one will protect you.”

  When they were children, Josefina had taught them the old Guarani religion: that the Indians had already believed many things the Spaniards preached when they arrived—that the soul lived on after the body died and then flew to a land in the sky. The old Guarani, however, believed the soul did not go immediately to the heavens, but hovered nearby, an invisible presence, sometimes for years, before it went to the stars.

  “How can his soul protect us?” Martita demanded. “He brought us riches and food when everyone else was starving, but he also brought us shame. We will live with shame till we die.”

  4

  Sweat trickled down Xandra’s sides. Without slowing her pace, she undid the red sash from her waist and used it to tie up her heavy hair and keep it from slapping against her back. She had told her parents she was going to take care of the horse, but she ran to Tomás. He had been so gentlemanly with her, so correct, nothing like what was written in El Seminario: that the invaders, especially the Brazilians, were devils and rapists. The newspaper said nothing about long, muscular legs, golden brown eyes, of silly teasing jokes or a sweet Portuguese accent that sounded like whistling a song, or a man too polite, maybe just too weak, to try to kiss a girl.

  Today, she would kiss him. The padre said it was okay, even though the nuns had taught her, when she was too young to understand what they were talking about, to guard her virginity.

  From the moment she saw Tomás, she felt tender feelings for him. The day two weeks ago when she found him, she had been walking this path toward the place in the deep woods where she had hidden her father’s favorite stallion from the army. A huge white rubicha vulture circled overhead, terrifying her. César! The horse was dying. Oh, dios mio. Could a jaguar have gotten him? She ran toward the spot where she had managed to secrete César, along with a rooster and a few laying hens.

  As she entered the clearing that day, she saw immediately that the horse was fine. He lifted his great, dark head and trotted toward her. She put her hand on his powerful neck, and he nuzzled her.

  She moved toward the chicken coop and saw something that stopped her forward movement and her heart: tall, fine brown cavalry boots, encrusted with mud, lying on the ground next to the lean-to, as if they had been dropped in haste. Her skin moist from the heat of her walk turned suddenly chill. She moved cautiously toward the open part of the shed.

  The boots were still on the man, who lay staring at her. His light brown eyes, full of gold flecks and pain, made her heart hold its breath. She hid her fear and confusion with pretended anger. “What are you doing here?” she had demanded. “I will kill you if you try to take the horse or even one chicken.”

  He smiled wanly, and those golden brown eyes sparkled. “Then it is good that I am too weak to steal anything. Are you the goddess of this forest? Do you have a magic cure for this fever?”

  He was a foreigner. He spoke, not in Guarani, but in Spanish, but even his Spanish he spoke with an accent. Portuguese? All these lonely months and years she had longed to meet a beautiful stranger, and here he was, but a Brazilian—the enemy.

  “Angry goddess,” he had said in his thin, weak voice, “could you not bring me a sip of water? I have been lying here dreaming of the cool mountain stream I knew as a boy. I am so thirsty.”

  “You are an invader. I should kill you.” But for all the fury she put in her voice, she had known immediately that she could never harm him.

  “This fever, I think, will do that for you. Please do not think of me as your enemy, but as poor lonely Tomás far away from home.”

  A lost boy, like her youngest brother, who had marched off when he was still such a baby. She took the bucket for César’s water to the spring under the little wild orange trees. She rinsed it and filled it with sweet, cool water. An orange blossom fell into the pail. The perfume of the trees surrounded her. She scooped out the flower and held it in her wet hand. She should report the presence of this enemy so near the village. But to whom? Not that pig of a comandante. There was no militia here. She had not heard of a battle nearby. How had this soldier come to be here?

  She walked slowly back to the lean-to, suddenly fearful. What if he was fooling? Not weak? But strong enough to overpower her? He had a pistol in his holster. He might take César, whom she had kept so carefully hidden for more than three years. Surely he would steal the horse if he could. He might be gone already.

  She ran back, her bare feet catching in the fallen scarlet liana vines, the water sloshing in the pail, wetting through her skirt and petticoat, but when she came back to the clearing, César stood peacefully, flicking his jet-black tail to shoo the flies from his flanks. She walked round the lean-to to face the stranger again. His eyes, though still open, had not seemed to see her. He moaned and spoke. “Swimming in the sea … Guanabara … I must go into the water.”

  Delirious. The fever was taking him just as he had said, and she had been dawdling in the forest with silly thoughts about abduction.

  She grabbed a drinking gourd from its peg and filled it. She knelt beside him and felt the heat of his skin burning up. She carefully opened his lips with two of her fingers. They were soft and warm. She poured a little water between them and after he swallowed, a little more and a little more, but still his breath came quick, unsteady. His eyes closed. He babbled. “Quero isto? Coxim? Faça favor. Coxim. Faça favor.”

  She took off her white petticoat, the only one left, which she had mended many times. She said good-bye to it and tore it into rags. Slowly she bathed his face and neck in cool water. A short, narrow golden brown beard framed his jaw. She removed his shirt and bathed his beautiful chest. The water turned the golden hairs dark. Her brothers had the Indian trait—almost no hair on their faces and bodies. Her brothers. All dead. Even skinny baby Mariano. He could have been killed by the likes of this man. Sure as she was that she should kill him now, she continued to bathe him, and the heat of the fever seemed to enter and spread through her own body. The sickness would probably take him anyway. Her hand trembled as she removed his trousers. She rinsed the cloth in the cool water and with it stroked his long, muscular legs. She dried him with the soft cotton of her petticoat. She let her fingertips touch the beautiful, golden brown hair of his calves. His breathing subsided, but hers quickened.

  Finally he slept peacefully. With regret, she withdrew her hand. She dressed him again, took the machete into the forest and picked a wild pineapple, which she cut up and left beside him with the water.

  She had returned the next day with molle resin mixed with chicha stolen from her mother’s store of medicines. For five days, in constant fear of being discovered, she had gone to nurse him. He had lucid moments when the fever abated, but it always returned and cast him again into a fitful stupor. Finally, a few days ago, in desperation, she took César and risked exposing him, herself, and Tomás by riding six leagues to Valenzuela. She kept off the roads, tied César to a tree in the woods, and got from her mother’s sister the powerful healing fruit of the mammon tree. She brought the rare melonlike pear to the clearing and with it saved the life of her enemy. This morning she wo
uld make him her lover. Even if she had never been with a man, she knew what desire felt like.

  She wanted to run straight to him, but she had gone that way too often. As she had throughout the war, she varied her path through the woods. If she went the same way every day, she would make a trail that would betray César and the chickens. Despite the heat of the sun, she took hard detours through brush and around trees, her bare feet squishing on marshy spots and her skirts tangling in brambles. It was more important than ever that she protect her hidden treasure, now that it included Tomás.

  She entered the clearing and began to sing “Las Cosas,” a song that would let Tomás know she had come alone and he was still safe. César lifted his great, beautiful head, neighed, snorted, and with ears erect and his mane and tail flowing, trotted over to the fence. She ignored the horse and ran to the lean-to, raising her voice in song, expecting to see smiling eyes.

  The lean-to was empty. She was happy Tomás was at last strong enough to walk. She had cured him, and that made her feel like a heroine. He was hiding somewhere to tease her. “Okay,” she said in a loud voice, “I’ll play your childish game.”

  Her search began with giggles that soon turned to frantic shouting and ended with tears. Everything of his was gone. His boots, his red sash, his hat. He had left without a good-bye.

  * * *

  In a cabin behind a natural wall—thick trees intertwined with lianas, creepers, and bushes—Salvador retied the ropes around the boy’s skinny wrists, careful not to constrict the blood but making them tighter than before. The young body was still bony and gaunt, his thick black hair lank and unwashed, but the boy was filling out a bit, getting stronger. Salvador would have to ask Manuela, the blacksmith, to make something of metal to hold him, if she had any iron. His heart twisted with images of the shackled prisoners the dictator kept in misery up north in Peribebuy. He did not want to be a dictator to this poor wretched soul. “I do not know how you freed yourself, but I will not let you go again.”

  The boy’s eyes blazed with anger, but he said nothing. He had not spoken since a few days after Salvador had brought him here and imprisoned him to protect himself and others from the boy’s rage.

  The boy had escaped from López’s prison for his own men. When he first came home, he had growled like an animal, threatened to kill anyone who came near him. If he had not been starving like most Paraguayan soldiers, Salvador would never have been strong enough to subdue him. Now he was gaining strength. There were calm moments when the only emotion he displayed was greed over bits of food. But then after he had eaten, rage overwhelmed him again. He beat his heels against the floor like a two-year-old having a tantrum.

  Salvador put his hand on the boy’s head and wished his touch could calm his brain.

  He put a bowl of water on the floor, though it shamed him to force a human being to drink like an animal. “I will come back with more food soon,” he said. “Try to say your prayers.” He always made the same farewell and for weeks now had prayed for nothing but that the boy might not bring punishment on them all.

  Salvador locked the cabin door and bore away in his heart the affliction of this secret, carried it along the banks of the stream back to the road. As always, the beauty of the land offered some comfort: the wild diversity of the forest where orchids bloomed on the tree trunks and bees buzzed among the webs of twisted vines, where the bright green trees of early spring met overhead, as if they wanted to protect and comfort him.

  Once the red clay road turned toward home, it left the soothing shade, and he had to content himself with a stately honor guard of acacia trees that led all the way to the entrance of his house.

  He had walked down this avenue the day he returned from the war, exhausted, famished, nearly naked. His compatriots in the trenches had often fainted for lack of food, only to be declared traitors by their leaders because in their starvation they were failing to defend their country from the invaders.

  They had started out proud in their uniforms—white cotton trousers, scarlet blouses with blue facings, and wide white belts that held their cartridge boxes. They had drilled and marched, and because they were dressed like soldiers, they thought they were an army. Full of faith and fully dressed—except that most of them had no shoes—they marched off to war, as if they were going to a fiesta. They soon discovered that only a few had cartridges in those boxes and almost none had rifles. Through the long years, their trousers had torn to shreds in thorny thickets. They had ripped apart their filthy blouses to staunch the wounds of their comrades. Along with their clothing they had lost their belief in their invincibility. How glad he was that he had been content to be a corporal, rather than taking a commission as one of his education might expect. Officers had to force the men to spy on their brother soldiers. They had all learned to fear one another even more than they feared the enemy.

  He was wounded one sunny, cloudless day at Curupaity. At high noon, General Díaz had ordered them through a narrow pass, and like good soldiers, through smoke that stank of hell, they went, screaming, “Independecia o muerte!” Independence or death! They ran right into the arms of six thousand of the enemy. Suddenly a howitzer shell exploded overhead. Smoke stung his eyes. Another mortar, and a tree came crashing down. He dove into the underbrush as blue-shirted attackers came hollering toward him. He struggled to reload his rifle, but before he could get off a shot, another mortar exploded, and hot metal seared into his ankle. The shock knocked him to the ground.

  He woke up screaming and flailing. A man with a thick foreign accent held him down. At first Salvador thought he had been captured, that the Brazilians were killing him, but this cool and reserved foreigner turned out to be an English doctor the mariscal had brought to Paraguay. Were it not for him, Salvador would have lost his life, or at the very least his whole leg. As it was, he lost his foot and a part of his mind there in that place of darkness, pain, and stench with men shrieking under the knife. “Don’t cut,” one had screeched in the night. “Please don’t cut anymore.” Salvador could do nothing but lie there with two other half-dead men, in a bed meant for one, and listen to the moaning of the wounded who lay outside on the wet ground with no bed at all, to the buzzing flies, and to sweat and pray and curse and weep.

  He had come home. Without his foot, he had managed to walk the narrow roads through the vast cemetery that was his country. He saw, as if in delirium, his life—like a river. In his youth it had bubbled and grew, sometimes turbulent, full of energy and hope, rushing toward the future, but as soon as it was full and seemed to have settled into its path, it had hurled itself over the precipice of a great salto—the war—and shattered itself on the rocks below.

  He had survived. In those early days of combat, when all he wanted was to get through it and go home, he had feared he never would. Then, after he had committed the sin that cost him his soul, when he deserved to die, he could not.

  Now, on this bright, hot Sunday morning, when even Padre Gregorio seemed to have taken leave of his senses by redefining sin, Salvador reached the end of the tree-lined road and neared his house, leaning more and more heavily on his cane. If only there were another man in the village who had been to the war, someone he could talk to about it. But there was only his accursed brother-in-law and that spy Yotté. They had not experienced war. They marched in parades wearing silly, overdecorated uniforms as part of López’s honor guard and traveled back and forth to the capital, getting rich while others fought and died, doing their duty in terror and remorse.

  He crossed the little bridge onto his property and entered his house through the front doorway. The long one-story building was of whitewashed adobe with a thatched roof and a colonnaded portico across the front. The arrangement of rooms was simple. Beyond the front door, a short passageway led to a wide hall running the length of the house. This main room contained a dining table and at the other end four old ox-leather chairs. Here in the days before the war, at siesta time, his children and any guests hung their hammock
s from the broad beams of the ceiling. With windows on three sides, it was cool, even on a day like today.

  He called out, “Hola. Hola, Alivia. Hola, Xandra,” as he walked through to the back of the house where the big hall opened onto the veranda, also covered with a thatched roof and an awning of grapevines. The windows of the house had only shutters; none of the outside doorways had doors. At one end of the veranda was a brick fireplace for cooking. Alivia was not there, which surprised him, even worried him a bit. A creamy aroma drew him to the hearth, where Alivia had left a platter of pastel mandi’o to keep warm. They were made of boiled mandioca and cornmeal, and today in honor of Sunday each one contained a slice of hard-boiled egg from their secret chickens. He took two and wrapped them in the scrap of cloth he kept deep in the pocket of his trousers for taking food to the boy.

  “What are you doing?” He jumped at Alivia’s voice behind him. She stood in the hall doorway, looking more fatigued than if this had been a workday.

  He straightened up and held the packet behind him. “I confess,” he said, knowing his guilty look would betray him. “I ate a pastel. The war has made me a sneak thief.” He tried to keep his voice light.

  She came to him and put her hand on his shoulder. “You are hungry. We are all hungry most of the time. The food in this house is yours. You cannot steal from yourself.”

  He put his arms around her, moving the packet behind her. “Our food has more to do with you than with me.”

  Her head reached only to his chin. She kissed his shirt over his heart and turned to lift a cauldron of vegetables from the table and place it on the fire.

  He slipped the pastel into his pocket. “Where were you?” he asked, and immediately saw she might have asked him the same question.

  She turned and looked into his eyes for a second, and he saw that she realized it too. “I had to go back to the church.”

  Something in the timber of her voice chilled his scalp. “What happened?”