He released her and began to pace the dining room. “Exactly what I thought, but how many? Two? A hundred? I will have to start beating information out of people if I am going to prevail with the speed López demands.”
Gilda preferred her husband to be forceful but despaired that he would learn to use subtlety and charm instead of brute force. Ricardo had known how to seduce people into giving him his way. That was how he earned the trust of Eliza Lynch. “The Yotté sisters are your best source,” she said, “You are not considering torturing them?”
“Certainly not,” he barked.
“I am glad,” she said. “Señora Lynch came all this way to console them. It would not do to harm her special friends.”
“She came looking for important government secrets.” He tapped the back of his fingers on López’s letter. A bit of the red wax seal fell off onto the floor. “La Lynch evidently did not find them, so the mariscal has engaged me.” His dark mood suddenly brightened. “You can help.” He walked into the front hall. She followed him. He took his cap from the hall tree and placed it carefully on his head. “You must find out what you can from those silly girls. They were not at all cooperative with me, but they must know something. Use your womanly wiles.”
“I will, but—”
He waved away her objection before she spoke it. “Do as I ask.”
Gilda had another idea of how to proceed. “Are you going to turn whatever you find over to the mariscal?”
“We do not know what la Parisienne has hidden here. Whatever it is, we will have to give it over, but we may earn a handsome reward by doing so.” He gripped her around the waist and kissed her again. “Go make special friends with the Yotté girls. Bring them food. Get that old hag who takes care of them on your side. Bring her some food too. And while you are at it, ask about that brother of yours. He walks around the countryside more than a man with one foot should want to. Find out what he is up to.”
* * *
In the little casita Tomás had built in the hours when she was not with him, Xandra untangled herself from his hot embrace. The smell of him that she loved so well was still on her, but so was hunger from having given him half the meager food she had found in the forest. Foraging was getting impossible. Every edible thing within a mile of the village had been picked and eaten, and the hour new shoots emerged, they were taken—sometimes to be consumed on the spot. She had taken César halfway to Caazapá to look for birds’ eggs and pineapples and found nothing but a few palm nuts, which they had roasted. All the while when she was chewing on the bitter oily nuts, she was sure the smoke from their fire had given them away, and that at any moment people would descend on them and kill them—Tomás for being an enemy and her for loving him. The sun had burned away the cool of the early morning. Muggy air collected under their thatched roof and stifled her breath.
“What is it?” he asked. He reached for her, but she jumped up from the straw pallet where they had lain together. She put on her chemise and underdrawers and pulled her tupoi over her head.
“My parents are suspicious. I tell them I am coming to take care of the horse. Even my father sees through that.”
He started to dress too. “Maybe it is time I met them.”
“Are you crazy?”
He looked down at the ground. “I know.”
She put her hand on his shoulder. “I wish it too. But something is going on between my parents. Before the war, they were like one person. Since Yotté’s death, they never let me hear what they say.”
“Do you think they could have had something to do with killing Yotté?”
She stopped dressing. Sweat broke out on her face, more from anger than the heat. “Are you crazy? What would make you think such a thing? My parents? My parents?” She wanted to slap him so hard she would knock him down just for thinking such a thought.
“Well,” he said as casually as if he were discussing the flowers or the trees, “Yotté was hit over the head and stabbed. That could mean two people were involved.” He was buttoning his fly.
“How do you know he was hit over the head and stabbed?” He suddenly looked like a total stranger.
“You told me, after you came back from the funeral.” He picked up his shirt and put it on.
“I do not remember telling you.” She studied him for a moment. “It could have been one fierce person.” Like him, for instance. He was missing the morning they found Ricardo. As soon as the idea came to her, she was sorry.
* * *
Later that morning, in the tiny cabin behind the thick forest foliage, Alivia León let loose the anger and frustration she had kept dammed up for the months since Salvador had returned. They had come to feed Aleixo, but the sight of her child shackled like a mad dog drove her to scream. “Release him. I insist. How can you keep your son chained like an animal?”
Aleixo’s eyes followed the words she had thrown at his father, but the boy said nothing. Nor did Salvador.
Too late, she bit her lip against her outburst. She added to the boy’s hurt by shouting in front of him. It had been three days since she discovered him closed in this little hovel—thin, silent, looking as if he would spit at the next person who came near him. She had brought him his own proper shirt and trousers of homespun. They hung on his bony body as if he were a little boy wearing his father’s clothes. She had made him a pallet with a mattress stuffed with soft old rags to ease his emaciated body. She gave him an elixir of pine she hoped would calm him. It had not. How could anything cure a boy kept prisoner like this?
She looked at Salvador expectantly and waited, playing on him his own waiting game.
At last, he relented. “The boy might have killed Yotté,” he said.
The only response she could give was to blink her eyes. Her mouth, her limbs, her mind could not move.
“Alivia?” he said as if her were trying to wake her up. “Did you hear me?”
She exploded again. “How could anyone think that our Aleixo was—” she was going to say “a killer.” But she saw that in the war they must have all been turned into killers.
Salvador explained that the boy had been free the day the padre found Yotté’s body.
“Whenever I ask,” she said, “you refuse to tell me what made him this way. If I am going to understand your actions, I have to know the truth of him.”
Salvador winced. “He was mad when he came from the war.”
She sat down on the floor and took the boy’s hand. “Tell me everything. You have been saying that it would be better for me not to know, but I must. You never gave me a chance to help him when he first came home. I could have tried to cure him sooner. He might be better by now.” Even as she said it, she knew that there was nothing on her shelves of herbs and tree saps that could take away the anguish she saw in her son. Time might do that. Might, but not certainly.
Salvador sat down too and took the boy’s other hand. Aleixo let them do it. He did not struggle; he did not weep.
“A corporal came to the meadow near our house and kept the boy there until he saw me returning from the village alone. The corporal was deserting with a handful of starving fugitives—all too weak to fight. They had somehow managed to elude the authorities. On their way south, they brought Aleixo home, already mad. They had to tie his hands behind him and bind him to the strongest of them to keep him from being violent to himself or others, or from running away. He believed they were Portuguese who had captured him and were bringing him to Brazil as a slave, the way the traffickers took the Indians in the old days. They left him with me and continued toward their own villages. I hope to God they found some people alive when they got home.”
“But what destroyed my son’s soul?” she demanded
“The officer told me they were defending a bridge at Ytororo. They had not eaten in three days, not slept for two. They were positioned to fire on the Brazilians crossing the bridge. At first the enemy took a lot of casualties, but then our men were out of shells and had to fight hand
-to-hand with lances and machetes. Alé was fighting beside his best comrade—a boy from Caacupé. A Brazilian shell exploded and—” Salvador stopped abruptly. He could not go on.
Alivia looked at him. He was looking into the boy’s eyes. They both had been in combat. The father could not speak of the horror the boy had endured. She had not been there, but she could imagine. Blood. Torn limbs. Pierced bellies. Stench. She took the boy in her arms, his head against her chest. She gripped him to her and wept tears that wet his hair.
Salvador jumped up and paced the small space like an animal trying to find a way out. “Twelve hundred Paraguayans died in that battle. When the few survivors escaped, their own officers took them prisoner for being cowards and not fighting to the death. Cowards! When they had stood up to overwhelming odds.” He stopped and looked down at her, eyes blazing with outrage. “They brought them to a prison camp where hundreds of people were in shackles. When the corporal saw what their fate would be, he took his men and ran away. Somehow they got here.” He crossed his arms over his chest. He would not, could not tell her more.
“That does not tell me why you hid my son from me,” she said. She raised the boy’s hand and kissed it.
“When he first came back,” Salvador said, “he cursed you. ‘I want to kill her for giving birth to me.’ He said it over and over. How could I let you hear that?”
She let the idea sink in. “How does this lead you to believe he killed Yotté?”
“I am not sure he did, but he has been so ferocious for so long. He seemed capable of it. When you told me about Yotté, I had just returned home from finding Alé had gotten loose. You said that whoever killed Yotté was so enflamed he stabbed a dead body. It seemed it must have been him.”
She looked again into the boy’s dark eyes, which used to be so full of mischief and charm. There was challenge in them now—the first look from him in these past days that in any way resembled a human thought. “Do you remember how sweet he was on Estella Yotté before he went away?”
Salvador crouched next to her and touched her forearm. “I do.”
“I warned him,” she said to Salvador without taking her eyes off Aleixo’s, “that he must not seduce her, that it was not right to do such a thing to a maiden. He was so beautiful and so engaging, it was hard to imagine any girl could resist him.” He took after his father is what she thought, and more tears she could not stop flowed down her cheeks. She turned to Salvador. “He should have made love to Estella. How could that have been worse than this?”
They were silent for a moment.
“Even if the comandante never suspects him of killing Yotté, at best, if he finds him, he will call him a deserter,” Salvador said. “If Menenez takes him to López, they will shoot him for that, and I would not put it past my brother-in-law to take us too, for harboring him.”
She knew he was right, but she could not stand the idea. They had killed Aleixo’s spirit. She was not going to let them kill his body. She thought she had gotten used to the idea that he was dead. Now that he was alive, she would never be able to accept his death again.
“Come,” Salvador said at last. “We have to leave him. I told you. If we spend too much time here, he will be found. You go first, by the road. Pretend you have been foraging. I will come home through the forest.”
She looked again into Aleixo’s eyes, searching for a glimmer of his old spirit. “Every time I leave him here like this,” she said, “I betray every bone in my body.” His eyes were empty again. She kissed his cheek, which he let her do, and left.
* * *
Gilda obeyed the comandante in word and deed, motivated by the thought of a delicious outcome. Whatever La Lynch had entrusted to Ricardo must be something that would make a person powerful or rich. These were the things Eliza Lynch cared about. If Gilda had her way, she and Luis would take whatever it was and escape to Buenos Aires. She pictured a sunny, elegant apartment filled with real French furniture, upholstered in green silk—the color of that beautiful jacket she had seen on Señora Lynch’s Hungarian count. She would buy flattering ensembles where everything matched, even the shoes. The theater. The dances. A life such as this had tempted her in dreams evoked by La Lynch’s stories of Paris: fittings at the dressmaker; assignations with lovers.
As soon as Luis left, she donned her best sky-blue dress and put on shoes to show she was not a lowly woman who went about barefooted. At her command, Lelia, the cook, packed a basket of yams, rice, cured beef, Ceylon tea, and a packet of precious salt for the Yotté sisters and a smaller basket of manioc, cornmeal, and onions for Josefina. She found Gaspár pretending to sweep her front yard and made him wash his hands and button up his faux military shirt before pressing him into service carrying the baskets to the casa Yotté. On the way, she fantasized about being a noble Parisian woman, returning from shopping with her livered footman carrying her purchases, though Gaspár with his bare legs and crossed eyes hardly made an elegant impression. She deserved much better. If whatever La Lynch was looking for was valuable enough and she found it first, she and Luis would live in Paris.
Gaspár set down a basket and knocked on the Yottés’ mahogany front door. When it swung open, Josefina Quesada bid her enter with a gesture of a hand holding a lit cigar. The crone led the way toward the patio, her grandson shuffling behind her. He smelled rotten. Gilda waited until Josefina’s back was turned to wrinkle her nose. If anyone in this house knew what Ricardo did with La Lynch’s valuables, it would be Josefina. Better not to alienate her.
Gilda found Martita and Estella weeding a pathetic vegetable patch. “What are you doing, my darlings,” she exclaimed. “You should not be doing that.” She turned and snapped her fingers at Gaspár. “See to it.” He put the baskets on the patio table and trundled out to the garden.
Gilda motioned to the sisters. “Come, my dears, and see my gifts.”
The girls wiped their hands on their skirts. They looked decidedly rustic.
“We were not expecting you,” Martita said. She eyed Gilda’s baskets with a skeptical glance.
Gilda handed Estella the larger basket. She gave the smaller one to Josefina, saying, “This is for you and little Pablo,” hoping the old lady would leave her alone with the sisters. Josefina took the gift but did not move away.
Estella lifted the napkin covering the contents. “Is this salt?” she asked with genuine awe.
“It is. And this is tea from Ceylon. They drink it in London and Paris. Señora Lynch gave it to me. I myself have adopted the refreshing habit of taking some with cakes in the late afternoon.”
“The rice and yams will be helpful,” Josefina said, peering over their shoulders.
“The comandante has heard from the capital,” Gilda said, certain they would be suitably impressed. These simple village girls would not understand that the capital of Paraguay was a tent in the middle of nowhere. “The mariscal has commissioned my husband to bring your brother’s murderer to justice. Perhaps he will soon send us some eggs or a chicken. He usually does when he asks for special work to be done. When we get them, we will share them with you, my dears.”
Josefina made a doubtful-sounding grunt.
Gilda refilled the baskets and thrust them into the old woman’s hands. “Perhaps you should take those to the kitchen.”
Josefina and her foul grandson finally left them, and they took seats at the table. “I know how devastated you must be by the loss of your dear, dear brother,” Gilda said once they were alone. “I wanted to come sooner, but the comandante keeps me busy helping with his important work.”
Martita and Estella looked at her and said nothing.
Gilda decided to get right to the point. “I wonder,” she said lightly, “if you know anything about documents entrusted to Ricardo?”
“You know about Señora Lynch’s documents?” Martita asked.
“Oh, yes. The comandante knows all such things.”
Estella shook her head. “Señora Lynch said that we must not—”
Gilda felt Martita’s foot reach under the table and kick her sister.
“We never saw any documents,” Martita said. “We told the comandante Señora Lynch’s men came and searched the house.”
“They hunted everywhere?”
“They were very thorough, and we looked everywhere again after the señora’s visit. We found nothing.”
“Well, they must be somewhere. Have you looked in that secret place beneath the carpet under Ricardo’s bed?”
A snicker came from behind Gilda. She turned to see Josefina’s sneering face and with her that sanctimonious pain in the neck, Maria Claudia Benítez. “Oh, hello,” she said to Maria Claudia. “Well, Martita, Estella, I hope you enjoy the gifts I brought you. I will come back soon with more.”
Estella touched her hand. “Is there a place under Ricardo’s bed?”
Gilda froze.
“How do you know this?” Estella insisted.
Gilda stood up and smoothed the blue muslin of her dress. “I had better go home now,” was all she could think to say. Only after she left did she think of other answers to satisfy Estella’s question. Of course, she could never have told the truth—that Ricardo had told her about the hiding place when they were in his bed together. But she could have given another explanation: Ricardo offered the space to Luis to hide their own valuables or that she had heard Ricardo tell Señora Lynch about it. At the very least, she could have said that this wind from the north always gave her a headache. Her big mistake was getting flustered and leaving the question unanswered. Gilda did not know how long that sanctimonious Maria Claudia had been standing there. She might have overheard the whole conversation. Suppose news of her liaison with Ricardo got out? The only one who knew was the priest. She had told him in confession and then had broken off with Ricardo once and for all, because he loved not her, but only La Lynch. Gilda had received the results of his intense desire for Eliza. Their lovemaking always began with a few minutes’ conversation about his idol, and then he would be ready to close his eyes and enter the only elegant woman he could get his hands on. She was just as guilty in her own way, for when he made love to her she fantasized that she was La Lynch—with that skin, those eyes, that hair, receiving the adoration of men. But not from the fat mariscal with his hairy arms and crooked legs and smelly breath. She could not fathom how a woman as beautiful as Eliza Lynch could bear his touch. Gilda’s imagined lovers were elegant men in Parisian clothes, who offered her jewels and fine wine and whose underclothes were made of silk. At least Ricardo Yotté had had silk underwear.
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