Invisible Country

by Annamaria Alfieri

  “We might find the comandante faster if we separated,” she suggested.

  He looked into her eyes. “No.” It was final.

  “How can we possibly stop the comandante, if we do find him?”

  “We have to try.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I love you,” he said without looking at her. The child was drooling in her sleep, leaving a wet spot on the shoulder of his cassock.

  19

  Comandante Luis Menenez, from his vantage point astride his tall stallion, scanned the roads and peered into the trees on either side, searching for a glimpse of his brother-in-law. When he arrived at Manuela’s house, the fire still smoldered in the forge, but there was no sign of Salvador’s whore.

  Gaspár Otazú came shouting through the woods. “I saw a cart coming this way, drawn by two stout horses. It must be the Brazilians.”

  “Armies send cavalry ahead, not carts,” the comandante said. “Have you seen Salvador León? I have to find him.”

  “Good idea,” Gaspár said. “He can help us kill those Brazilian devils.” He licked his lips, hungry for a fight at his ridiculous age.

  “Have you seen him?”

  “No, Comandante, but I saw your señora. She is looking for him too. Is she helping you to find him?”

  The statement confused the comandante. He had told Gilda to warn the citizens, not to go after her brother.

  A frightening thought speared him: Gilda could be López’s spy. All those intimate visits with La Lynch. She could have been reporting on her own husband. “Where did you see her?” he snapped at Gaspár.

  “In the plaza, a little while ago.”

  Menenez wheeled his horse to the left and then to the right. Gilda was out of his control and could harm him. He should stop her before she put them both in jeopardy. But he had only today to deliver Salvador to López.

  His mind was made up for him by a glimpse through the trees of a figure in a white shirt, barely visible, but surely from the pace and the stumbling way it hurried, it was Salvador.

  “Find my señora,” he told Gaspár. “Take her to the forest near the estancia León, where those tall palms rise above the other trees. I will return tomorrow and meet you there. Keep her with you and protect her. If you do not, I will kill you when I find you.”

  Once he saw the fear in the old man’s eyes, he pointed his horse in the direction of the figure in white disappearing into the trees.

  * * *

  “The trunks will be here very soon,” Eliza Lynch said to Francisco Solano López. “You go ahead. I will wait for them and then follow.”

  He gave her an inquiring glance, tinged with suspicion.

  “Leave Maiz with me,” she said, knowing that at this point López trusted only Father Maiz, who had at first stood up to him but later led the torture squad.

  He nodded. She followed him out of the tent.

  Two silent stalwarts in Monkey Tail uniforms boosted their corpulent dictator into his saddle. Her firstborn sat tall and handsome astride his beautiful chestnut stallion, like a page in an epic poem about knights of old. Her heart melted at the sight of him. Then it solidified and crumbled. He would go with his father. Every time they retreated, they had fewer soldiers to defend them. All the Brazilians had to do to find them was to follow the trail of bodies of executed traitors and the wounded who expired.

  López would die rather than surrender. But what of her dashing and dutiful son?

  Live, please live, her mind called after him, while first at a canter and then at a gallop, he disappeared into the trees.

  Then her bright eyes turned to the south. If those accursed trunks arrived soon, she could follow her boy.

  * * *

  Xandra heard movement coming toward her as she waited in the hidden clearing, hoping for Tomás to return. But this was not a horse but something smaller, moving too fast to be her father. Perhaps Tomás had met her father in the woods, given him the horse, and had now returned to her. She ran toward him.

  “Xandra?” Her mother’s voice.

  “Mama?”

  They met under a yellow flowering acacia tree.

  “Where is your father?”

  “Gone to Aleixo.” There was too much fear in her mother’s eyes. Her mother who seemed to fear nothing.

  “He took the horse?” Alivia looked over Xandra’s shoulder.

  Xandra could not answer.

  “Well?” Her mother’s demand was sharp, almost threatening.

  “No,” she said tentatively. “He did not take César.”

  “Why not?” An accusation in the question came like a slap in the face.

  Xandra did not reply. “Why are you afraid?” she said instead.

  “The comandante came for him with weapons.”

  “Already?”

  “What happened to the horse? They have to go quickly. Maria Claudia says the Brazilians are invading the town.”

  “Oh, my God!” Xandra took her mother’s hand and started to run toward the village. “Come, Mama. Quickly. Take me to where Aleixo is. Hurry.”

  * * *

  The comandante reined in his horse before he neared the figure fading deeper into the forest. His quarry was going not to the forge but somewhere else, with a determination that betrayed desperation. He decided to let his brother-in-law find his precious thing, whatever it was, before he bound him and dragged him off to his death. He dismounted and tied the horse to a tree off the road where no one would see it. Then, stealthily, he easily picked up Salvador’s trail and closed in on him.

  20

  The padre and Maria Claudia found not a soul in the plaza or in the lanes.

  “I pray Salvador escaped in time,” the priest said. “We had better get away before the Brazilians attack.”

  Maria Claudia started walking in the direction of the casa Yotté. “Let’s look for Martita and Estella.”

  The padre followed her. “They would not stay at home with the enemy practically upon us.”

  “It will take only a minute to see.”

  “You want to find out if you are right.” He smiled at her, a sunny smile that had nothing to do with the predicament they were in. “Quickly, then. When the Brazilians get here, there will be chaos.”

  “Just one look.” She had to get to the bottom of Ricardo’s murder, as if solving it would take away all her doubts. Which was stupid, but she was angry at herself for not seeing the truth sooner.

  “The Brazilians will not hurt a priest, especially an Argentinean. I will protect you.”

  When he pounded on the Yotté’s’ front door, the child stirred. They waited a moment in silence, but no one answered.

  She tried the latch, but it did not open. Unlike the other houses in the village, which had doors at street level, the casa Yotté had three steps up to the entrance. When she turned to look at him, she noticed tracks in the dirt of the road, which had been softened by the recent rains. Two sets of shallow tracks coming from the north and two sets of much deeper tracks, one going north and the other south.

  She pointed to them. “Two wagons.”

  “Or one that went away and came back and went away again?”

  “I want to look inside. The sisters could be hiding in the house.”

  “This rich house is the first place an invading army would take over.”

  “Martita and Estella would not know that,” she said. She had not known it. “You have to boost me up to the top of the wall. I will show you how.”

  He gave her that sunny smile again. “I know how. I was a boy before I was a priest.”

  And a man before you were a priest, she thought, picturing the love they had made.

  “Maybe I should be the one to go in,” he said.

  “I am not sure I can lift you.”

  They went to the spot where she and Xandra had scaled the wall. She opened her rolled-up poncho and laid it on the ground so he could put the sleeping Rosaria down on it.

  She took off her
sandals and put her foot in his intertwined hands. She leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth. He held her foot and looked into her eyes. She saw love in him, love that thrilled her heart but one that a voice within her told her she ought to have refused. “Boost me,” she said.

  When she reached the top, she dangled her legs over the other side and held on with her hands to lower herself as she had seen Xandra do. But she could not hold on and with no one to catch her she scraped along the rough stucco and fell. She cried out despite herself.

  “Maria Claudia, are you okay?”

  She stood and brushed the dead leaves from her arms. The skin on her legs burned like fire. “I’m fine.”

  At that moment a kind of distant thunder started up, coming from the south of town.

  “Can you hear that?” she called.

  “The Brazilians,” he said. “Come out. I will take you away.”

  “Take the baby into the forest. I will find you.”

  “I will not leave you.”

  The rumble from the south continued to grow louder. Suddenly there was shouting from the other direction. “Padre! Padre!” Manuela’s voice called out.

  “Come back out, Maria Claudia,” his voice demanded. The baby started to cry.

  “I will,” Maria Claudia called and ran to the front door. The casa Yotté seemed deserted.

  By the time she reached the hall and swung open the heavy door, the padre was on the top step clutching the crying baby, and Manuela, breathless, was reaching his side.

  “Saturnino Fermín,” she gasped, “climbed a lapacho tree to see how close the Brazilians were.” She looked in the direction of the hoofbeats. They could not see the approaching horde, but they could tell it would not be long before they arrived.

  Manuela snatched the baby from the padre’s arms. “Saturnino fell from the tree. He is dying, Father. He wants to confess before he dies. Come with me. He needs you.” She took a few steps away and looked expectantly over her shoulder and back to the Padre and Maria Claudia in the doorway.

  Padre Gregorio looked pleadingly in Maria Claudia’s eyes. She read his thoughts instantly and knew at once what her soul demanded. “Go,” she said.

  “Now,” Manuela insisted.

  Maria Claudia saw the grief in his eyes. She slammed the door between them and threw the bolt with a sharp clank.

  * * *

  Salvador had no choice. Knowing silence would have served him better, he swung the heavy hammer again and again to break the chain that manacled Aleixo to the cabin wall. Salvador sweated and smelled his own stink. The stink of rushing through the humid jungle, the stink of the pain that came with every step, of anger that his virgin daughter had been seduced by a Brazilian bastard. Rage that the son of a bitch had taken the horse and terror that he would not get the boy away in time.

  The boy flinched with each blow to the chain, as if he feared his father would bludgeon him. Finally the link broke, and the boy was free.

  “I am going to take you away from here, my son,” Salvador said quietly.

  For the first time, the boy responded to what his father said. He stood up. Salvador stopped and considered this. He looked into Aleixo’s eyes and saw a spark of life. “We have to hurry. Take this.” He tried to hand the boy the rolled-up poncho, but Alé did not take it.

  Salvador wrapped the boy’s arms around the bundle. Alé held on. A few links of chain still dangled from his wrist. “Thank you,” his father said gently. Despite his pain and rage, Salvador’s heart lifted. “We must move quickly.” He rolled up the boy’s blanket. He grasped his cane and put his other arm around the boy’s bony shoulders. “Come, my son,” he said.

  He opened the door to see the comandante’s smiling face and the muzzle of a pistol pointed at his heart.

  * * *

  Eliza Lynch pulled her spring-green lawn dress over her head and turned to let Carmencita, the only one of her girls who had not run off or died, do up the buttons. She had walked in it in their lovely camp among the orange groves after the dreadful battle of Tuyutí. The dress had elicited adoring glances from the English engineers. She chose it today because it matched the leafy jungle where she might have to hide from the relentless enemy. An hour ago, a horseman had arrived, sweaty and exhausted, to tell her the trunks would be here at about this time. Her ploy to keep Luis Menenez from discovering them had worked. He had been kept busy following his useless instructions.

  “There, my lady,” Carmencita said as she finished with the buttons.

  Eliza heard the wagon and stiffened her spine. She would follow López to protect her darling Juan Francisco, he who had prepared the decoy trunks with his own hands and had not betrayed her to his father.

  21

  Gleeful to have two prizes to offer López, the comandante marched Salvador and the boy toward the horse. With the rawhide rope, he tied father and son together and bound the other end around his own waist. “When I heard the hammer banging on metal,” he said, “I thought you were banging your blacksmith whore.” He laughed at his own joke.

  Salvador spat at him, but the spittle landed on his sleeve. The comandante rubbed it into the boy’s face and laughed the harder. “Vamanos, amigos.” He mounted his horse and headed north with the man and the boy trotting along, arm in arm, beside him.

  * * *

  Maria Claudia slumped against the door she had slammed on the padre’s pleas. She bit back moans of anguish lest he hear them. Her throat ached, and her eyes burned.

  “Hide,” the priest called from outside. “In the place under the bed. I have to go, but I will come back for you.”

  She did not respond. After a few seconds, she heard them run off, baby Rosaria’s cries fading into the distance, the sound soon overwhelmed by the swelling rumble of hoofbeats and the shouts of soldiers coming from the plaza. The Brazilians had entered Santa Caterina.

  Her remorse should be for her beautiful, flower-filled town, so picturesque and tranquil in days gone by. Tormented for years by the war. Now engulfed by it. But her inner grief broke her heart, even as her loins longed for new life.

  And him? She could not let herself keep him. He was a priest. Needed by everyone, for the things no one but a priest could give. She could not figure out if she wanted him as much as she wanted his child.

  She listened to the quiet within the house. The place must be deserted or someone would have heard her voice and come to find out what was happening.

  “Hola,” she called, just in case. She crossed the hall and entered the central patio. “Hola.” No one responded.

  This house had been the scene of her childhood fantasies of perfect family life: a wealthy father; an elegant mother; an older brother who would grow up and introduce a girl to his handsome friends; sisters to share all her secrets. What secrets did Martita and Estella share? Had they killed their brother? What did those wagon tracks mean?

  It would be a while before the Brazilians found this house on the outskirts of town. Martita and Estella must have run off to the forest.

  Questions gnawed at Maria Claudia. She made for Ricardo’s bedroom and gasped when she saw the disarray. The bed had been moved from its position over the hiding place. The carpet was rolled back and the trapdoor left open, leaving the empty hole exposed. All eight of the trunks were gone. Those tracks out on the road, were they of wagons taking the trunks to Señora Lynch? Why would anyone take gold and jewels to such a place as they must be heading? The whole Allied army was on this side of the river. The mariscal and his lady must be running for their lives. One would always want to keep valuables away from danger.

  In Martita and Estella’s room, she found their wardrobe ajar and empty. A large photograph of the stern-looking Don Cecilio and the impassive Doña Antonia that had hung on the wall beside their bed was missing from its frame. Odd bits of clothing were strewn on the bed and the chair, but the bulk of their belongings were gone.

  Maria Claudia picked up a grayish homespun skirt and examined it. It had been
washed, but the ghost of a stain on the front remained. Blood did this, not mud, as every girl, once she got her first period, knew. Mud stains came out of the hems of petticoats that had been dragged along wet roads on the way home from parties, but blood from an unexpected period or a murder victim’s head remained, sometimes forever.

  A cough behind her startled air into her lungs and every ounce of it back out into a scream. She spun around to see Josefina and the pathetic Pablo staring at her from the doorway. She dropped the skirt.

  “You did not know, did you, the day Ricardo died? You have just realized, right?”

  “Earlier today I figured it out,” Maria Claudia replied.

  “I told Martita you did not know, but she would not believe me. Estella believed me. But they have always been that way. Estella accepting too much and Martita too little.”

  “Where have they gone?”

  “To the big river. That tall man, the friend of Señora Lynch, took them in a wagon at dawn. The French ambassador has a boat going to Buenos Aires this afternoon. One of the mariscal’s foreign doctors is going too. They are saved.”

  “Which one killed Ricardo?”

  Josefina pursed her lips and shook her head, her habitual signal that she knew but would never say.

  “The eight trunks?” Maria Claudia asked.

  A pounding on the front door and a shout in Portuguese stopped their hearts and their mouths.

  * * *

  Alivia and Xandra entered the belfry from the campo behind the padre’s house, stole into the church, and then out the side door and into the graveyard. They hid behind the thick foliage and magenta flowers of a bougainvillea vine that grew over the church doorway. Alivia blessed herself. This was the door used only when grieving relatives followed coffins out of the church for burial.

  Peering through the leaves, they saw Brazilian soldiers dismounting and fanning out to sack the comandancia and the comandante’s house on the other side of the plaza. For now they seemed to be ignoring the church and cemetery. Xandra became agitated at the sight of them. “Where did Papa hide Aleixo?” she whispered.

  “In the forest, beyond the forge.” The thought of the forge plagued her soul. Yesterday, in her grief and anger, she had wished harm on both Salvador and Manuela. She now promised God she would forgive her husband anything, welcome Manuela’s baby, if only he would let Salvador live.