Invisible Country

by Annamaria Alfieri

  “Xandra! No one would do such a thing.”

  “I would. How else can we find out what Ricardo had that Señora Lynch came all this way to find?”

  “Martita insists she came only to console them. That much she did tell me.”

  “Oh, Maria Claudia, you are such an innocent. Why would someone as important as Señora Lynch come all this way in the middle of a war to say, ‘I’m sorry your brother died’? This is about something she is desperate to have. We will understand the whole thing once we know what it is.”

  “Yes, but Martita and Estella heard what Gilda said about the hiding place. If Señora Lynch’s valuables were under the bed, they will have found them.”

  “Maybe. But they would have to send a message all the way to Piribebuy, and someone would have to come to take the valuables away. Whatever it is could still be there. If it is, we should find out about it.”

  “To go into someone’s house without permission? You cannot. Besides, their house is not like yours or mine. The front door is bolted, the garden is surrounded by that high wall, and the windows facing the street have bars. How would you get in?”

  Xandra pictured the wall: its height, the stucco surface, and the flat stones on the top. “You will have to help me.”

  “I will not.”

  “You must. Come on, be a person who does something. All you have to do is stand outside the wall and help me get to the top. I will do the rest.”

  “We should stick to the plan we made with the padre and your parents yesterday. We are going to meet at the padre’s house tomorrow. There could be an answer by then.”

  “And if not? Will you go with me then?”

  Maria Claudia did not say yes, but she did not say no either.

  * * *

  Eliza Lynch sniffed at the armpits of her most seductive afternoon frock of an azure blue lawn that perfectly matched her eyes. The airing the maid Carmencita had given it had cleared away most of the musty smell caused by too much perspiration in the wet heat of this swampy backwater of a country. Even up here in the hills, one risked the complete ruination of one’s best clothing despite the use of shields, to say nothing of smelly fires to keep the insects away.

  Everything about today’s luncheon must be perfect. She dressed, put some fresh red liana blossoms in her hair, and went to the dining tent to check the table. How miraculous Monsieur Cuberville would think it to dine here in this wilderness at a table unmatched anywhere but in Paris. Her last bottle of champagne was under guard, chilling, in a manner of speaking, in the stream that ran at the edge of the meadow where their tents were pitched. Francisco was away tending to the war, so she would have the new French ambassador’s ear all to herself. His eyes too. Von Wisner would be with them, but that would not limit how flirtatious she could be.

  She fingered the bright floral centerpiece of orange and yellow blossoms, which matched the colors of the Empire pattern of her Sèvres. “Everything looks wonderful,” she said in Guarani to the butler whom she called Guillaume for effect, and whom she had chosen because he was tall and slender and not clumsy.

  From outside the tent she heard von Wisner’s warning: his voice calling a loud greeting to Monsieur Cuberville. She pinched her cheeks and bit her lips to brighten them and smiled at the flap in the tent. Guillaume opened it. The French ambassador and Colonel von Wisner entered, bowing to her. The butler forgot to close the flap as he ran off across the green meadow to fetch the bottle from the stream.

  Cuberville was a typical French bureaucrat, so like the ones who had frequented her salon in Paris: short and dapper, with a round face and small, hard eyes, dainty hands and feet. A dainty male member too, no doubt. Like López’s. All the easier to manipulate a man so lacking. His glance lingered on her cleavage as she warmly shook his hand. “It is so kind of you to come.” He smelled of calendula and lavender—perfume he must have brought with him from Paris.

  “The pleasure is all mine.” His smile showed fine white teeth. Every man had one desirable feature. Monsieur Cuberville actually had several, not the least of which was a diplomat’s right to come and go despite the war.

  She indicated the table and watched his eyebrows rise. “Quelle surprise,” he exclaimed, as if his own perfectly clean and pressed striped trousers, snow-white shirt, and spotless calfskin boots were not also miraculous in the middle of this remote and muddy jungle. As soon as they took their places, Guillaume opened the bottle he had carried in from the stream and poured the almost properly chilled wine into her Baccarat flutes. Pretending to believe winning the war was possible, she and von Wisner raised their glasses when Cuberville proposed a toast to “la victoire.”

  They spoke of Paris and the music in its concert halls. The meal was almost good. The fish, though of indeterminate genus, was edible, thanks to the butter sauce with wild herbs. The beef had been cooked within an inch of mush to make it chewable but was quite tasty. Eliza waited until Cuberville took a spoonful of lovely pineapple meringue and closed his eyes to savor it before she brought up the subject closest to her heart. “Monsieur Ambassador,” she said, her voice sweet as the dessert on his tongue, “I wish to speak to you of the plight of two lovely young women who recently lost the brother who was their only protector. I need your help reuniting them with their uncle in Buenos Aires.”

  * * *

  Salvador talked to the boy about everything that had transpired, keeping hope alive that someday Aleixo’s mind would come back and understand. When the son finally fell asleep, the father slipped silently out of the cabin.

  He looked up at the sky. It was well past noon. He would have missed his dinner, if there had been any.

  He made his way toward Manuela’s forge to ask about Ricardo Yotté’s comings and goings from his house on the days before he died, and also to find out if she had seen the boy when he was loose. But before he reached his destination, Josefina approached him on the road. “How is it,” she asked without preamble, “that you are always in the woods near here? If I were a suspicious person, I would find it very odd.”

  Salvador knew better than to offer the excuse that he was foraging. He thought of telling her he had some chickens hidden in the forest, but that would only bring on dangerous snooping.

  While he cast about for something to say, she spoke again. “Someone you love is in danger.” She turned her back, and Pablo followed her to their hovel.

  Her hollow tone chilled his heart. He tried in vain to convince himself that Josefina was not an oracle.

  He clumped to the forge, crossing a fallow field on the shortest route. As he neared Manuela’s house, he heard her singing to the rhythm of metal hitting metal. Her voice floated to him on a light breeze across the waving waist-high grass. He found her at the anvil, holding nails in her pincers and pounding them straight with a ball hammer. When she saw him coming, she grabbed a cloth and wiped the sweat from her face, leaving a streak of soot along her smooth cheek. Her tawny skin looked golden in the afternoon light. “I am glad you have come to see me,” she said softy. “I had planned to come and speak with you today.” Her voice had none of the strength of her arms and her hands. She was only twenty, perhaps twenty-one, but she had seen and suffered more than most women ordinarily did in a lifetime of fifty years. She gave him a shy smile.

  He smiled back. “Then it seems we both have things to say to each other.” He pointed at the bench next to her front door. “May I?”

  She looked down at his false foot. The flush of working near the fire deepened into a blush on her dirty, pleasant face. “Of course. I am sorry. I should have asked.”

  “No, no,” he said as he hobbled toward the bench. His hips hurt more than his leg today, and he remembered his movements in bed with Alivia. This ache was nothing compared to the one making love to his wife had removed. “I came to ask,” he said once he was off his feet, “if you have seen anything unusual along the road.”

  She grabbed a crate and sat opposite him. In the distance, the sky behind h
er was clouding over. “That is what I wanted to tell you.” She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees and spoke earnestly. “The comandante came early this morning and asked the same question.”

  The wariness brought on by Josefina’s warning prickled his back again. “What did you tell him?”

  She shook her head. “Just that Señora Lynch came in her beautiful landau.”

  She looked so benign, but fear that she had seen the boy near the Yotté house still gripped Salvador. “What else?” He hated that his question came out sharp and brought a hurt look to her kind face.

  “Nothing.” She looked around and lowered her already soft voice, though no one could be closer than a hundred yards away. “I did not tell him what else I saw.”

  “What was it?” He could not keep the demand out of his voice.

  “A wagon.” She hiked the crate closer and leaned nearer him. She smelled of peaches and smoke. “It came twice. One day at siesta time, I was lying in my hammock, but not asleep. I heard it arrive. Some men got down and went into the Yotté house. They came out about an hour later and went away again. They took in nothing and brought out nothing. Then, last night very late, they came back. The creaking of their wheels woke me up. It sounded like a wounded cat. I looked out. The moonlight made it clear. This time the men carried four trunks into the house and left very shortly afterwards.”

  It was not what he had expected her to say. “How big were the trunks?” some vaguely engaged part of his brain caused him to ask.

  “The kind people pack when they are going to Buenos Aires or across the big ocean.” She said it almost reverently. She was, after all, a girl who would never own such a thing or go to such an exotic place.

  The padre said Menenez was looking for documents. Could there be four trunks full of them? “And you did not tell the comandante?”

  “Yes,” she said, and then, “I mean, no. I did not tell him.”

  He left it at that. She had already entrusted him with a great deal, given the fear Paraguayans had of betrayal by their friends.

  He had to make sure of the question that had been burning him. “Did you ever see a boy coming or going on the road?”

  She looked completely puzzled. “Other than Pablo?”

  “Anyone else—a little older perhaps?” He was going to add “in raggedy clothes,” but everyone wore raggedy clothes these days.

  She stuck out her lower lip and shook her head. “Never,” she said. “I watch the road a lot. I am alone here, and I am often at the forge, though there is little to do.” She pointed to the window of her little house. “My hammock is there, so I can see the road when I am lying down.”

  She seemed to be trying to reassure him, as if she knew he wanted her not to have seen the boy. But of course the boy could have been on the road, could have killed Yotté, even though, vigilant as she was, she had not seen him. He rose from the bench. His hip was stiffer than ever. He replaced his straw hat as he walked out into the sunlight. The clouds were coming, but they were not here yet. He would have to walk home in the sun.

  Her fingers went to her mouth. “I should have offered you a maté.” She looked as if she would burst into tears over this small breach of etiquette.

  ‘No, no,” he said. “I did not want one. But I would like a little cup of plain water.”

  She went to the well near the forge and brought him a dipperful, which he drank down. When he gave her back the ladle, she caught his hand in hers, and looking right into his face with her sad, determined eyes said, “Señor León?” Her voice had turned very formal.

  “Yes?”

  “One day. One day soon, please. I would like you to give me a baby.”

  12

  After siesta that afternoon, the comandante approached that hole-in-the-wall the villagers called the café, as if it were a gathering place for Parisian artists or Venetian poets. Hector Mompó lounged on a bench in the shade. At his age, his new sexual activities ought to have been killing him, but he looked younger every day. The old goat sported one of Ricardo Yotté’s fine jackets, which now looked as if it had been sat upon by an elephant, and a fancy silk cravat tied in a silly bow at his neck. He wore no shirt, only his double leather apron, and nothing but silver spurs on his feet.

  “Are you sure there was nothing in those pockets?” the comandante demanded.

  Mompó hugged the jacket as if he expected the comandante to rip it from him. “Nothing, señor,” he said. “You are looking for Señora Lynch’s missing valuables, yes?” Mompó nodded gravely.

  “What do you know about that?”

  Mompó showed his empty palms and shrugged. “Josefina told us Ricardo had valuables. People think it was papers.” He pointed his thumb over his shoulder at fat Alberta Gamara who stood impassively behind him. “We were just saying that Señora Lynch would be looking for gold, and the snake god Moñái probably stole it and buried it in the forest. We are too afraid of yaguaretés to be out in the night or we would watch for Plata Yvyguy, the headless dog. He would find the buried gold.” The backward nincompoop showed the gaps in his teeth in a stupid smile. “You have a pistola, Señor Comandante; you can go out at night. Just follow the dog god. He will lead you to the gold.”

  “What gold? Ricardo had government papers, not gold.”

  Mompó looked dismayed. “Why would the snake god steal papers?” he moaned.

  The comandante walked away from the ignoramuses, but instead of disdain for their superstitions, he was filled with terror. Gold? Suppose La Lynch had really given Yotté gold to hide for her? How could he find gold if he was looking for documents? López would kill him if he did not find whatever it was and very soon. And in the matter of the murder, he had no idea whom to accuse, except for Salvador. Did Salvador know anything of the missing documents? Or was it gold? If gold, anyone would steal it—not just Moñái.

  Menenez stoked his moustache. Urgent as these other matters were, his wife’s niece had come looking for him, and he thought he knew why. He would attend to that little hothead first. He might get some useful information out of her in the bargain.

  * * *

  As the afternoon heat began to dissipate, Xandra rose from her hammock, grabbed a big homespun towel, her tortoiseshell comb, a clean chemise and underdrawers, and went down the path through an orange grove to the stream that ran between her house and the village. There under a thick, fern-leaved paraiso tree was the pool where they bathed and washed their clothes. Josefina, who believed very much in bathing, said that the Spanish, when they first came, hardly ever bathed. They were appalled that the Guarani bathed almost every day. “The Spanish said they came to civilize the Indians,” Josefina would say, and she would laugh until she coughed so hard you thought she was going to die from all the cigars she smoked.

  As Xandra approached the bank of the bathing pool, a red ibis that had been standing in the water flapped its wings, spraying droplets that glistened in the sunlight. The bird took off slowly, straining to lift its own weight. As hungry as they were, her mother would never let them kill and eat an ibis. She said that anyone who ate its flesh would always be unhappy. It seemed to Xandra that the whole country must have eaten a gigantic ibis.

  She alone was happy. Though guilt tinged her satisfaction, she rejoiced. Her thrilling time with Tomás imbued her with joy. However long it continued, she was determined to love him and to take all the love he could give her.

  She hung her towel and clean underthings on the branch of a flowering lapacho tree. Rose-colored petals showered down around her. A flock of hummingbirds hovered and drank from its blossoms, their feathers like bright emeralds and sapphires. She took off her sash, her skirt, her tupoi. Ordinarily, she would have left on her chemise and underdrawers, but after a glance around, she stripped herself naked. She undid her hair.

  Before disturbing the surface of the pool, she looked at herself. She was not pretty. Her father’s uppity sister Gilda had told her the truth. A classic beauty must look fragile—like Se�
�ora Lynch—have a tiny nose, more delicate lips, smaller breasts, paler skin. Tomás said she was beautiful, and if he thought so, that was all she wanted. That and the secret growing inside her. She smiled at herself, and the girl in the water smiled back, though her looks were all wrong.

  A breeze kicked up ripples that broke her reflection. The hummingbirds flew to the golden flowers on the opposite bank.

  She walked into the water, slipping on the mossy rocks, and swam to the center of the pool. The cool water flowed over her body. Her mother would know soon. She already suspected something. She had kissed her twice before she went to sleep last night and pretended not to sniff her hair. Alivia León was like a dog. She smelled what people could not see. When people came to her with ailments, she put her nose to their heads and necks to figure out what was wrong. She probably knew a girl was pregnant by her smell. But she would not be angry with her daughter; she loved babies too much to reject one of her own flesh and blood. When Alivia León held a baby, especially a chubby one of a few months, she beamed with physical pleasure. Xandra imagined cuddling her own child. It had been so long since she had been around an infant. Her brother Mariano was the last baby she had held. But she could not let herself think of Mariano.

  She floated on her back in the middle of the pool and looked up at the blue sky and puffy white clouds, picturing her own baby boy with fat arms and legs and golden hair. She tread water and tried to rub her skin clean. They had not seen soap in more than a year. There was no lye, and after the last of the beef was slaughtered, no tallow—therefore no soap. She swam toward the bank and when the water became too shallow, she stood up and let her feet sink into the slimy mud. Then she saw him. The comandante. Sitting on his horse, staring knowingly at her.

  She dove again, and when she surfaced and looked back, he had not moved.

  “Are you going to scream?” His eyes laughed at her.