Invisible Country

by Annamaria Alfieri

  13

  Late that afternoon, after the comandante had retaken his post in the comandancia, but had not regained his composure, a muggy wind blew in and enervated the padre, who awaited his friends in his sitting room. He opened the shutters of his unglazed window and looking out saw Maria Claudia walking away, across the field between the church and the woods. She was avoiding coming into his house until the others were there. He did not blame her. He had been a fool. Now that he had shown her the part of his heart she did not want to see, she would rather wait out there in clouds of mosquitoes than be alone with him. And how was he to face her when she came in? She would not shirk her duty by staying away completely, but she no longer trusted being alone with him. “Maria Claudia,” he whispered her name to the heavy air in his room.

  He had said his regular Sunday mass that morning, though his soul felt dead. He was supposed to be in a state of grace to consecrate the host. It had been more than a year since he had seen another priest to whom he could confess. Ever since he had given his flock his fateful counsel, he found himself further and further removed from the certainties that ought to mark his beliefs. He was lost in a jungle of conflict and desire and doubt. Today’s mass gave comfort to his parishioners, he hoped, but none to him.

  He turned away from the window and did what any Paraguayan would when he had a troubled heart: make tea and hope. He busied himself spooning the yerba maté leaves into gourds. Stimulating and comforting, this tea was the country’s most plentiful product. It grew on trees found only in Paraguay, was exported everywhere, and had made the country rich. That they had an ample supply despite the war helped them survive. Those who had survived. Their leaders had used the riches made from exporting maté to buy arms and fight for their own glory. Bastards.

  He was thinking about this to avoid thinking of her. How he longed to grasp her to him, to make love to her, to take care of her, to drown his weakness in her strength. He looked out again at her in the distance, tiny and still. Then he saw her wave. He started to wave back before he realized she saluted not him, but Salvador, Alivia, and Xandra. Xandra appeared first and took Maria Claudia’s arm, walking quickly, putting distance between them and her parents, who followed at Salvador’s pace. The young women’s heads inclined to each other, sharing a secret. The back of his neck burned. Could Maria Claudia be telling Xandra what he had done, what he had said?

  No, she would never do that. He was certain. Still, when he went to his back door, he worried for the first time in his priesthood whether his parishioners saw him for the sinner he was.

  When she came in, she glanced quickly at him and took a chair at the table, sitting so still she seemed to be trying to be invisible. When she was a child, she used to think these rosewood chairs in the priest’s house were thrones for kings and queens. Even now, if she sat all the way back, her feet would not touch the floor.

  He did not allow his eyes to linger on her, yet he felt her presence on his skin. He concentrated on serving the tea. By the time Alivia and Salvador arrived, the hot water had been poured into the maté gourds. They took their places around the table. He sat next to her, knowing that it would make her uncomfortable, but unable to resist.

  Maria Claudia was relieved that the padre took the chair next to hers. It would save her having to feel his eyes on her from across the table. “I think I should begin,” she said before anyone else had a chance to offer information. She told them of her treatment by Martita and that she had learned nothing new. She refused to look at Xandra, who had spent the whole walk across the campo demanding that they meet at midnight and sneak into the casa Yotté.

  “Strange that Martita, a friend, should act that way,” Salvador said.

  “People do strange things when they have suffered losses,” Padre Gregorio said. “Martita has never had to make an important decision in her life. Now, she has to take responsibility for herself and her sister, who is sort of—” He paused.

  “Who is sort of dumb,” Xandra said with that annoyed face she made when other people were being too polite to speak the truth. “But the answers to our questions lie more in the casa Yotté than anywhere.” She gave Maria Claudia a questioning look.

  Maria Claudia stuck out her tongue and was glad the padre could see only the back of her head.

  Alivia pointed a mother’s warning finger at Xandra. “We can do nothing about that.”

  Xandra pretended to examine the pretty painting of the Holy Family on the padre’s wall. She hated that her mother could read her mind.

  Alivia pulled her chair forward. “I have been thinking about the way the corpse looked,” she said, all business. “I think I can explain the odd way the mud looked on the back of Ricardo’s clothing. Suppose it was two people who carried it? If they were not strong enough to hold it off the ground between them, they would have had to let it drag on the ground.” She wanted the murderer to be two people, not her mad son, who would have acted alone.

  “That could have been a lot of people,” Xandra said. “Unlike the rest of us who are starving, Ricardo had plenty of meat on his bones.”

  “Josefina and Pablo, for instance,” Maria Claudia blurted out.

  Salvador held out his hands in disbelief. “Why would Josefina kill Ricardo? He gave food to her and Pablo.”

  The padre leaned forward, careful not to let his arm touch Maria Claudia’s. “Josefina would not destroy her meal ticket. Whoever killed Ricardo did it out of hate. We saw that in the stab wounds.”

  Maria Claudia said, “Who would have been that angry at Ricardo?”

  “The comandante,” the padre said, half question, half statement.

  “Or Gilda.” Alivia sounded much more certain, “if her love affair with him went sour.”

  “Who would have helped her?”

  “Gaspár,” Alivia and Maria Claudia said in unison.

  “She had a reason,” the padre said. They all looked at him, expecting him to say more, but he let his face go blank—the way he would in the confessional. Gilda’s love affair was known to them now, but his conscience prickled at discussing it openly.

  “She would not have,” Xandra said. She pushed her chair back from the table, got up and paced to the window and back. “I know her. If she was sleeping with Ricardo, she was just playing both ends against the middle. Paraguay is going to lose the war, right? She wants to end up with a powerful man. Her husband and Yotté were her two choices. Until she knew which would come out ahead, she would not kill either one. And if you ask me, Ricardo was in the better position.” Her father looked hurt by what she said. No matter how nasty people were, he wanted to think good things about them.

  “I still think Señora Lynch’s missing valuables must have something to do with it,” Salvador said, changing the subject. “I have some information about that.” He looked around at his daughter standing behind him near the window and indicated her chair. She put her hands on her hips and glared at him, but then after a couple of seconds, she sat down. “I spoke to Manuela,” he said. He could not look at Alivia. She had accused him of making love to Manuela. And he had not. Yet. “She saw two men deliver four heavy trunks to the casa Yotté. Those trunks could have something to do with what La Lynch is looking for.”

  “Four trunks? I had heard there are just some government documents missing.” Maria Claudia said.

  “Was this before Ricardo was murdered?” the padre asked.

  “Yes, four,” he said. “If they were documents, there were a lot of them. And no, it was not before Ricardo died.”

  “Still,” Xandra said, “if they were involved somehow, those men could have killed Ricardo.” Impatience continued to tinge her voice. With documents involved, Tomás could be the killer. If he was, most of what he had told her would have to be lies.

  “If they could carry heavy trunks, they would have been able to carry the body without dragging it,” Alivia said. What was wrong with Xandra, she wondered, that she kept coming up with impossible ideas?
/>   They all looked around at one another, puzzled as to what to think next.

  “I doubt the trunks contain documents,” Maria Claudia said. “What could be in such papers to make them so important to Señora Lynch?”

  “They could contain secrets,” Salvador said, “useful to keep power, to gain it, to blackmail someone.”

  Maria Claudia shook her head. “Four trunks full of secrets?”

  “Maria Claudia is right,” Padre Gregorio said emphatically. “How could documents be so critical at this point in the war?”

  Alivia held up her hands. ”Suppose they incriminate La Lynch and López? When the war is over, people might want to prosecute them with that evidence. They may be trying to keep them out of the wrong hands.”

  Salvador shook his head. “If it were that, they would just burn them. Besides, López has killed so many. His deeds are well known. I had a passing thought that the mariscal could have killed Yotté because he suspected him of conspiracy. Then I realized he hauls in anyone he wants. He is a madman.” Salvador gulped as soon as those last words left his mouth. Not even here among these safe people did one speak such treason in full voice.

  He saw fear in their faces too. They all looked around at the windows and doors.

  Xandra alone remained distracted by the thought that all those documents were just the sort of reason Tomás might have come to kill Yotté. She had to find out what was in those trunks.

  Moved by fear of being overheard, the others brought their heads closer together.

  “Be careful,” the padre whispered. “At any rate, I agree. The war is a lost cause. López and the señora must be planning how they will survive. Most likely what is in those trunks has something to do with that.”

  “The señora must be thinking that way, even if the mariscal is not,” Maria Claudia said. “Maybe she gave Ricardo their means of escape.”

  There was an intake of breath around the table.

  “Like gold,” Xandra said.

  “And the jewels from our statue of the virgin,” Salvador put in.

  “That must be it,” Maria Claudia said. They were all nodding.

  Xandra could not believe how simple they were being. “What is wrong with you? Manuela said they were bringing the trunks into the house. If Señora Lynch gave them to Ricardo, the men would be taking them away, not delivering them.”

  This quieted them.

  “Perhaps Manuela was mistaken, or I did not understand properly,” Salvador said. “Perhaps I should ask her again to be sure.” He did not look at Alivia.

  “If Ricardo was hiding four trunks of gold,” the padre said, “that would be a very powerful reason for a lot of people to kill him. Salvador, go back to Manuela and make sure of which way they were going.” The padre did not understand why Alivia gave him a dirty look, or why Xandra threw Maria Claudia such a determined one.

  * * *

  Comandante Luis Menenez stood with his back to the wall of the priest’s house. Weeds and brush choked what had been flower beds when the padre had had someone to keep nature at bay in his garden. Now, after three years of war, the thicket was dense enough to hide a man in broad daylight. Slowly, trying to imagine himself as the hands of a clock, he made his way around the corner of the building so that he could overhear the conversation inside.

  Gaspár had been out foraging and had seen Maria Claudia cross the campo behind the priest’s house. Soon the León family met her, and they all crossed to the priest’s back door. Good man that he was, Gaspár had sped to the comandancia to tell his patrón. As Menenez suspected, his brother-in-law and the priest were up to something. Gaspár had offered to come and spy on them, but the comandante, though exhausted from his hard ride in the noonday sun, seized the opportunity.

  His wife’s relatives would never spy for him, but his brother-in-law, the padre, and that overly pious war widow, Maria Claudia, were the only people in the village intelligent enough to outwit a donkey. If anyone could figure out who killed Yotté, it would be them.

  The room was silent for several seconds after he approached the window. He was about to conclude Gaspár had been mistaken when that virago Xandra said something that turned his sweat to steam. She suggested that his wife had been sleeping with Yotté. His body stiffened at the insult of such an outrageous lie. He stifled an urge to put his head through the window and bark at her. Then he heard the bitch’s explanation for why Gilda would take up such a liaison. The heat of his anger turned to ice. His ambitious wife was capable of just such a betrayal.

  He could barely tear himself back from his enraged thoughts to hear what they were saying only six or eight feet from where he was standing. They were discussing who had murdered Yotté—a man Menenez now thought he himself should have killed. But not as idle gossip. They spoke in earnest, like a council of judges with the power to punish a lawbreaker.

  His infuriated heart screamed at him to barge in and arrest them all for treason. Or to rush off and kill his wife for betraying him. Or to enter the room and kill all of them on the spot to blot out what they seemed to know, which shamed him to the core.

  Somehow more of their words seeped into his boiling brain: four trunks in the Yotté house might contain gold. Those knuckleheads in the café were right. And these sanctimonious upstarts knew about it. While he had been looking for papers hidden in a dead man’s pockets, they had found out about trunks that were likely filled with the national treasure of Paraguay. Then his brother-in-law, overconfident as always, blurted out that the mariscal was a madman—a statement that would condemn him to the firing squad. Luis Menenez almost smiled at his stupidity. Even among fast friends, one risked death speaking treason in Paraguay.

  He listened intently, but their voices became hushed; he could make out only the sibilant sound of their whispering. He moved closer to the unglazed window the better to catch their words, but that stirred up chattering crickets and calling birds in the thicket that drowned out the voices of the conspirators. Mierda! He stewed in his own rage and frustration until their chairs scraped the padre’s brick floor and their clearly audible farewells drifted out. The only comment of interest in their good-byes was a name: Manuela. They had gotten information she had refused to give her comandante.

  He barely had time to slip around the corner and out of sight before they were on top of him.

  * * *

  As they left, the padre said good-bye, taking each one by the hand as he would if they were leaving church after Sunday mass. Until he got to Maria Claudia. He backed away to give her a bit of room, but she was determined not to see rejection in that motion. She had given him reason to think that she wanted him to stay clear of her. But she did not. Not anymore. She smiled and looked into his eyes as she never had before. “Nos vemos,” she said.

  “Yes, I’ll see you,” he responded.

  Salvador and Xandra went through the church toward the plaza. Alivia headed out to the campo. Maria Claudia skipped to catch up with her. “May I walk with you?” she asked.

  “Certainly,” Alivia said. “I have some honey I can share. Come to my house.”

  “Thank you.” In the past she would have refused to take food from anyone, but not now. Xandra’s words had been ringing in her head all night and all day: “Come on, be a person who does something.” Maria Claudia had decided what that something would be.

  “Alivia, how can a woman tell when she is fertile? Alberta told me that you explained to her how to avoid getting pregnant by not—er—doing it on certain days. That must mean certain days are better if a girl wants a baby.”

  Alivia stopped and looked her in the face in a way that made her blush. “I can tell you, but using your cycle is not foolproof.”

  “But if a girl wanted a baby…” Maria Claudia let the thought complete itself without words.

  “If the baby is meant to be, it helps to try at the right time.”

  “So tell me,” Maria Claudia said as they tramped through the waist-high weeds.


  * * *

  The comandante lounged against a jacaranda tree in the plaza and smelled fear and outrage in his own sweat. He wanted to rush home and kill his wife, scream so loud they would hear him in Buenos Aires. But he held still and watched his wife’s niece and his brother-in-law exit the church and embrace before parting like a perfect father and daughter, instead of the miserable gossips and spies they really were.

  The girl called out something about wild oranges and sped away across the square. Salvador limped in the other direction. He stuck his hand in his pocket and took out something wrapped in a square of white cloth.

  The comandante held his place, almost invisible in the dappled shade, and watched until Salvador was nearly out of sight on the road to the forge. Luis Menenez put on his hat, and feigning a complete lack of urgency, followed.

  Salvador made his boringly slow way directly to Manuela’s. As soon as he was through her door, Menenez ran as silently as he could diagonally across the field to the back of the house and for the second time that day, took a position next to an unglazed window to listen to the conversation within.

  To his surprise, they exchanged only pleasantries and then fell quiet. He heard only the scrape of a chair and rustling noises. And then a groan of pleasure from the girl. Good God. Salvador was fucking her. His pure and holy family man of a brother-in-law was going around getting bastards. And not just doing his duty as the padre had urged, but from the sound of it, with great pleasure to himself.

  Luis Menenez, who had not had sex with anyone for weeks, found himself with an enormous erection, and try as he might he could not think the thing away. Not even by concentrating on how his wife who gave him only matter-of-fact liberty to exercise his marital rights while she was—if that bitch Xandra with her defiant, glistening eyes and heavy breasts was correct—screwing Yotté.

  The comandante unbuttoned his fly and in anger and desperation and lip-biting silence, relieved his own urges while he listened to Salvador León and his whore Manuela groan with pleasure on the other side of the wall.