Invisible Country

by Annamaria Alfieri

  Though the day was warm as well as wet, the padre offered him a seat near the fire and gave him a towel to dry his face and a cup of hot maté to warm his stomach. Salvador looked down and saw he had trailed red mud across the padre’s tile floor. It looked like pools of congealed blood.

  “Don’t worry about that,” the padre said, as if Salvador had spoken an apology. “Tell me what brings you here on a day like this.”

  “Padre, I am in grave danger.” Salvador looked not at the priest, but into the fire. “My brother-in-law, the comandante, is going to arrest me. I have to run away.”

  The priest took a step forward and put his hand on Salvador’s shoulder. “What makes you think so?”

  “I saw him sneaking around behind me yesterday. That could mean only that the government wants me, or Menenez thinks it does.”

  “How can I protect you?”

  Salvador looked up into the padre’s kind blue eyes. What could two half-starving men do against the power the comandante wielded? Salvador pulled the towel around his shoulders and hugged it to him. A shutter banged somewhere in the house. He told the priest about Aleixo. “I am afraid he may be the one who killed Yotté,” he said at last.

  “But that may not be true,” the padre exclaimed.

  “That will not matter if the comandante finds him. He will take the boy.”

  “How, if he does not know about him?”

  “If Menenez spies on me, he will find Aleixo,” Salvador insisted. He looked away from the priest. “It was only by chance that I saw him following me. He has asked Manuela why I have been so often in the area of the forest where the boy is hidden. You know how the government is. They spy on everyone.”

  “Everyone but whoever killed Ricardo,” the priest said.

  They shook their heads. Salvador grasped the priest’s arm. “I do not trust myself to do what is right.”

  The padre looked at him, incredulous. “Then you are not the Salvador I have known all these years.”

  Salvador lowered his head. “I am not. You must hide the boy from me. If I know where he is, he is dead.”

  Padre Gregorio grabbed a chair and dragged it near. He sat down and looked at Salvador with the concern of a confessor. “My friend, I still trust you. Tell me why you no longer trust yourself.” He waited.

  After a few moments, Salvador unclenched his fists and felt his body sag, unable to protect himself from his own disgust. He turned away from the priest and gave up his secret. Like vomit. Searing shame poured out of him, and he saw his vile self in the story as he told it.

  It was after the Battle of Tuyutí—where the ground was so littered with corpses they had had to tread on dead bodies in their retreat. Their colonel had joined the few surviving of Salvador’s platoon with the remnants of another regiment, men from San Pedro they did not know. They had had nothing to eat for days but a few bites of putrid horse meat that Salvador could hardly swallow. With no caña or aguardiente for consolation, they were drinking sickeningly sweet liquor they had made from tiny wild oranges. In the middle of night, completely drunk, he had gone away from the others a few yards into a little copse to think of Alivia and masturbate. But he could not come. He had shouted at the top of his voice at his limp penis, “This war is shit. This war is shit. I hate this fucking war. I hate you too, López. I hate you and your fucking war.”

  He must have fallen asleep after that. In the morning, he awoke, his head throbbing, to kicks at his back and legs. His sergeant took him at knifepoint to the colonel, who said, “You were heard making a treasonous speech in the night.”

  Vaguely, through the haze of the drunken memory and the blinding headache the alcohol had left, he remembered what he had shouted. He stood in the attitude of salute that he had learned when he first entered the army, with his hands together in front of him. To do the salute properly, he should have been clutching his cap, but he no longer had a cap. He feigned an innocent look, like a schoolboy denying speaking behind the teacher’s back. “It was not me.”

  “Then who was it?” the colonel demanded.

  He smiled meekly.

  “Do you know?”

  He said nothing. He knew how to play this game with the teacher. But instead of the rod his schoolmaster would have used, the colonel gave him the Uruguayana. They sat him on the ground, tied his legs together and his hands behind his back, palms facing out. They put a musket under his knees and bent his legs around it and tied his ankles to his thighs. Then they put a bundle of three muskets behind his neck. With thongs of leather, two sergeants tied the muskets behind his head to the one under his knees, and pulled them tight, forcing his knees up and his head down. They bound him in that position. He felt the bones in his spine crack from the pressure.

  “My feet went numb first,” he told the priest, “and all I could think was we could have won the battle at Tuyutí if we had those weapons and proper bullets. As the pain grew, I tried to count the sounds I heard, to name and number the insects crawling on the ground under my face, anything to take my mind off the excruciating pain burning in my body. When numbness reached my knees and my hands, all I could think about was the agony.

  “They asked me over and over. ‘Who shouted in the night? Was it you?’ Like a coward, I denied it and denied it. “If it was not you, who? If not you, who? Give the name of the person who shouted treason in the night.’ I said nothing. Nothing. Then they untied me; I thought I had beaten them. But the next day they tied me again in the same position and kept me there—it must have been two days. My whole body shook, and I was soaked with sweat. The bastards left me there in the sun and the rain—until I had to give them someone or die of the pain. I swear I did not want to. I could hardly speak; my tongue had swollen in my mouth. My throat was on fire. ‘Vargas.’ I gave them the name of a man I disliked from the other regiment. ‘Vargas.’”

  Then they untied him. He was hardly able to unbend, much less walk after days tied to the muskets, so the colonel dragged him with one hand while he gripped his pistol with the other. Through the whole camp until they found Vargas. Without a word the colonel shot the innocent Vargas in the head. “Thank you,” the colonel had said and dropped Salvador there in the mud.

  The other men beat him. He wanted them to kill him. But they did not. They did something worse: they shunned him. In the next battle, at Curupaity, he ran, charging ahead of the others to try to die. But God knew how to punish him.

  “He took my foot and forced me to live,” Salvador told the priest. He wiped the tears from his face before looking up.

  The padre’s expression filled with pity.

  “I have received Holy Communion without confessing this sin, Padre. I deserve to go to hell.”

  “No, Salvador. What you did was not a sin in God’s eyes.”

  “How can you say that, Padre? That poor bastard Vargas is dead—when he did nothing but boast and tease and swagger. He was a son of a bitch, but he did not deserve to die for that. I am evil.”

  The priest put his hand on Salvador’s shoulder. “No. What a man says under torture—” He sighed deeply. “It is the people who inflicted that pain on you who are responsible. A man should not risk death for speaking his mind while drunk. And drunk is what any man would have gotten if he had seen what you saw in the battle the day before.” He ran his hand through his hair, and his blue eyes brimmed with tears. “Listen, Salvador. This guilt is not yours. Even drunk, you were right. This war is shit.”

  “All war is shit, Padre,” Salvador said. “It is impossible for men to obey the Commandments in war. I have read of the glories of past wars, but they must all be like this one—full of disease and stupid orders carried out by men too afraid to do otherwise. But I should have been better. I should have let them shoot me rather than give them Vargas.”

  The padre stared out the window, into the gloom of heavy rain. “Does Alivia know this?”

  Salvador threw off the towel. “About the Comandante following me or about the torture?”


  “Any of it.”

  “None. She has suffered enough,” Salvador said, as if he were not hurting her more by hiding himself from her. Before the war, they had kept no secrets from one another.

  The priest sat down again beside him. “Listen, Salvador. You could not have known that the colonel would kill Vargas. You were not in your right mind.”

  “It was me, Padre. I did it. And I received Communion without confessing it. I asked God to come into my black soul.” He looked at the priest, daring him to disagree.

  “I am going to give you absolution, Salvador. We are going to wipe this guilt from you.” He raised his right hand in blessing. “Absolvo te in nomine Patris et Filius et Spritus Sanctus,” he said, as if a man could forgive himself such an act, even if God could.

  Salvador made the sign of the cross but felt no relief. “Do you see now why I cannot know where Aleixo is? I am a coward. When my brother-in-law takes me to be tortured, I will betray my own son.”

  The priest looked up at the ceiling in thought for a few seconds. “Neither of you will be here. You will take Aleixo away. To the south. I know a priest in Encarnación. You can stay with him until the war is over. You must go right away, before the comandante finds Alé.”

  Salvador sat up. “No, Padre, I have just thought of a better solution. I will just confess to the comandante that I killed Ricardo.”

  The priest’s head snapped around. “You did not kill him,” he said, half accusing. “No, of course not,” he said quickly.

  “No.”

  In their silence, the rain beat hard on the tiles of the roof.

  “You will not confess to a crime you did not commit,” the priest said. “That would be suicide. You will not condemn your soul like that.”

  “No.”

  “You will take the boy away.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I only wish you had a horse to make the journey easier.”

  Salvador told him about César.

  “Thank God,” the priest said.

  Salvador stood up. “Manuela wanted my baby.” The statement roused a desire in him he did not think possible at a moment like this. “Will you look after her? She has to have enough food.”

  “Certainly,” the priest said, “and Alivia and Xandra too.” Then he smiled. “Not that any of them needs much help. Your women are all strong.”

  “I guess I prefer them that way.”

  “I do too.” A blush reddened the padre’s cheeks. “Forget I said that.”

  Salvador nodded. He grasped the priest’s shoulders. “I will take the boy away,” he said and a lightness entered his soul and frightened him.

  15

  Eliza Lynch caught her reflection in her dressing table mirror as she bent to open her jewelry box. She grabbed a pot from the table top and dabbed some cream on the dark streaks beneath her eyes. “Take my gray pearl earrings, François,” she said to von Wisner’s reflection.

  The count gave a shy smile. “They would not look well on me. Gray is not my color. The emeralds now, those would bring out the green in my eyes.”

  “Stop it. There is no reason for levity these days. None.” But she smiled nonetheless. Without him, she would have cracked long before this. She said this to herself, but deep in her gut she knew nothing would break her.

  Though she feared López would miss the gray pearls, she put them and the emeralds, into a red velvet pouch. “I am serious, François. You must go to Buenos Aires with Dr. Stewart and the French ambassador to make sure they do as they promised. Take these with you.” She tried to hand him the earrings.

  Gently, but firmly, he pushed her hands away. “I have told you, Eliza. I am not going to leave you.”

  She touched his hair. He was her island of normalcy amid the chaos. Except for Juan Francisco, who would not leave his father’s side, her boys were safe in Cerro León with McMahon, the United States minister. She longed for the joy and purity of their love. In the eyes of her children she saw the adoration that truly satisfied her soul. She had always craved the worship of men because she used their desire to get what she needed. That was quid pro quo. But her children gave her unsullied affection, looked upon her with the eyes of saints in paintings worshiping the Virgin. If only Juan Francisco would go with her, she would leave. When she tentatively suggested it, he immediately called any such plan a betrayal of his father. So she stayed to protect her boy. “I wish I could see my babies,” she said. “I did not expect to feel this way about children. I thought that like my mother, I would consider them—” She broke off. She did not allow herself to think about her mother that way, much less reveal such thoughts to von Wisner.

  He put a hand on her shoulder. “The end will come very soon—one way or another.”

  She folded a pretty green shawl that still carried the faint scent of the jasmine perfume she used to wear to balls in Asunción. She stuffed it into a satchel she had been packing for von Wisner to take to the Yotté sisters. She hoped he was right, that it would not be long now. But she had hoped that for too many months to believe it.

  * * *

  In Santa Caterina that siesta time, murky clouds gathered as the trusted friends entered an unused, windowless storeroom in the church. The air was dusty, but cool as a cave. Thick doors and walls separated them from prying ears and eyes. The comandante had been following Salvador, which meant the spies would all be out, trying to earn a few crumbs from his table or to save their own necks by giving him information.

  The room contained only an old Spanish carved wood table. They dragged chairs in from a side chapel. Maria Claudia lit the small pitch-dark space with stubs of altar candles. The padre had brought a few precious scraps of paper, a pen, and ink and placed them before him.

  The padre had decided they must meet once more before Salvador left with Aleixo. They needed to try to finish the work they had begun. If they could prove who killed Ricardo Yotté, Luis Menenez would have to arrest that person and would have no reason to pursue Salvador.

  When they were all seated, the priest began. “We must tell one another the whole truth,” the padre said. “Lives are at stake.”

  In the small circle of light made by the candle, Xandra’s arms showed the scrapes she had gotten climbing the Yotté garden wall. Her suspicious mother eyed them and the scab on Maria Claudia’s forehead above her left eye. Alivia would find out soon enough where the little injuries came from. “Whose life specifically?” Xandra demanded.

  The priest held up his hands. “We will come to that,” was all he said.

  Maria Claudia took some pleasure in being the first to speak. She watched the padre’s kind blue eyes flicker to disbelief and then admiration as she reported her and Xandra’s midnight foray into the casa Yotté.

  “Holy Mother of God!” Salvador exclaimed. “Where do you get your nerve, Xandra? I have no doubt you were the perpetrator of this.” But there was a hint of pride in his expression.

  Alivia gave Salvador a sour look. “Eight trunks! What could it mean eight, not four?”

  “We have no idea,” Xandra said. “I could not open any of them. They were bound tight with thick straps and very heavy.”

  “I am not sure if I should feel impressed or horrified by your audacity,” the priest said. Maria Claudia smiled at him.

  “Manuela confirmed seeing men carrying four trunks into, not out of, that house only last week, well after Ricardo’s death.” Salvador was careful not to look at Alivia when he spoke. “I can only think those four must contain things Señora Lynch sent to the Yotté sisters.”

  “Why Señora Lynch?” the priest asked.

  “Who else has trunks of things to give away?” Salvador asked in return.

  “But what is so heavy and why is it still locked up?” Maria Claudia asked.

  “Exactly,” Xandra cut in. “All those trunks have something to do with Ricardo’s death.”

  “Yes,” said Salvador. “Very odd that Señora Lynch suddenly took an interest in helpi
ng those girls. She has always been much more interested in helping her own countrymen. I saw her myself at the siege of Humaitá—when the mortars were exploding—walking in the battlefield to encourage her countrymen, but never ordinary Paraguayans.”

  “Suppose Solano López himself sent those men to kill Ricardo,” Alivia said. “You know the gossip about Ricardo and the señora. López could have had him killed out of jealousy.”

  “We have been over this,” Xandra said. “Those men would not have had to drag the body.”

  “And López would not need to conceal it,” Salvador said.

  “And why did the murderer bring the body into the church?” Maria Claudia asked.

  “I think we should make a list of all the people who could be suspected,” the priest said. He took a paper from the center of the table and dipped his pen into the ink.

  “Gilda and whoever would have helped her,” Alivia said. “If Ricardo was breaking off with her—” She did not have to finish her sentence.

  The padre wrote Gilda’s name on the paper, though he knew from her confession that Gilda had broken off with Ricardo, not the other way around. “Who would have helped her carry the body?”

  “Anyone to whom she promised a chicken leg,” Xandra said in disgust.

  “Should we consider Josefina?” the priest asked. “I hate to believe she can be—”

  Alivia stopped his thought. “Certainly it could have been Josefina. We said that the last time. Ricardo took away all the boys. Look what going to war did to Pablo.”

  The padre wrote down their names.

  “Menenez,” Salvador said, “if he knew his wife was putting the horns on him with Yotté.”

  “Or to get rid of his political rival.”