Invisible Country

by Annamaria Alfieri

  “Would I be able to find it?”

  “I will show you.”

  Suddenly Xandra dashed between the graves toward the plaza. “Come,” she shouted over her shoulder. “Quick!”

  Alivia followed. “Stop. They will see you,” she said as loud as she dared.

  The girl flew toward the horses under the trees. She let out a loud whistle and shouted, “Venga, César!” Their horse, whom Alivia had not recognized among the others, raised his beautiful head.

  Xandra untied him and launched herself into the saddle. “Hurry, Mama.”

  Alivia ran, grabbed the girl’s extended hand, and hiked herself up behind Xandra, who kicked the beast hard in his flanks as she turned him toward the road to the forge.

  * * *

  Padre Gregorio ran with Manuela to where Saturnino Fermín lay unconscious beneath a lapacho tree, his tricorn hat lying beside him. Alberta sat next to him, smoothing his thick white hair and murmuring. The padre thrust the child into Manuela’s arms.

  His priesthood had cracked apart in his desperation to help his people, then evaporated in a passion he had failed to control. Now, though his legs had carried him to his duty, his heart hovered on the doorstep of casa Yotté where the woman he loved, whom he was sure loved him in return, had had the courage to lock herself away from him. Here lay Fermín, needing absolution only a priest could give to see him to his God.

  The padre dropped to his knees, and others gathered around as he blessed himself and began the prayers for the dying. He spoke to God of the repose of Saturnino’s soul, and though he could never pray for what his heart and body longed for, he prayed for the safety of the woman who seemed to have slammed the door on his love.

  22

  “Is there a way out the back?” Maria Claudia whispered, though the din the Brazilians were raising at the front door certainly drowned out what transpired inside.

  Without a word, Josefina took her hand and Pablo’s empty sleeve and pulled them through the house to the rear patio. She pushed them through a thick stand of huito bushes heavy with red flowers. Behind the laden branches, she pulled several bricks out of the wall that protected the property. They crawled through to the fields behind the village where the cattle used to graze.

  “Where did the wagon go that took them to the French ambassador’s ship?”

  “To Villetta.” Josefina gripped her arm with her clawlike fingers. “You will not hurt them.” It was a question and a statement. And from the malice in the old woman’s eyes, a threat.

  “This is not about that.”

  “What is it about then?”

  “They were always my best friends.” She peeled Josefina’s fingers off her arm. “Take Pablo into the forest before the Brazilians get him, and when you see the padre, tell him where I went.”

  * * *

  Xandra kicked the horse’s sides. “Go! Go!” she shouted in his ears. Her mother held on so tight she could barely breathe.

  If César came into the village with the Brazilians, Tomás was there too. He had rejoined the invaders. She wanted to go back and find him, to see if he really meant to protect her as he had shouted he would when he ran away from her father. He should not have run. He should have stayed and helped save her father from that son of a bitch Menenez.

  Still she galloped toward Aliexo. She longed to see him, though her mother said she would not recognize him.

  If she did not turn around now, she might never see Tomás again. He would go away and one day remember her only as that Paraguayan girl with the big breasts, a diversion until even a Brazilian would see his duty and go do it. He would never know the child of their love.

  “Go to the left here!” her mother shouted over the squawking birds and the clopping of César’s hooves. “Through those trees.”

  Xandra slowed the horse to a walk. Vines hung from the trees and caught in their hair. “Where?”

  “In that thicket.” Her mother slid from the horse and ran ahead. “Come on foot. Hola, Salvó!” she shouted through cupped hands. She disappeared into a wall of vines. Xandra followed.

  A cabin built of vertical logs blended in almost completely with the trees. The door stood open. Her mother stared in.

  “Mama? Is Papa there?”

  Gaspár Otazú emerged. “Gone, querida. Don Salvador called you that. Querida.” He smiled, gap-toothed and malevolent. “The comandante took him.”

  Alivia grasped Xandra’s shoulder and groaned. Xandra reached around her mother’s waist and supported her. “Where did that bastard take my father?”

  “To López, of course,” Otazú said, and gave another ugly smile, this one filled with false sympathy.

  “Why are you here? What is your part in this?” Alivia demanded.

  The old man stood at attention and took off his cap in a mock military salute. “I am the mariscal’s eyes in the village,” he said with enormous pride. “I make sure the comandante carries out his orders.”

  Alivia threw off Xandra’s embrace and rushed at him. “What does López want with my husband?” she shouted. She grasped his tattered military shirt and shook him. He put his hands around Alivia’s neck and began to choke her.

  Xandra leapt at him, peeled his hands off her mother, and shoved him into the cabin. An iron hammer and a machete lay on the floor. She snatched up the blade and wielded it over his head. “Which way have they gone?”

  He crossed his arms over his head, as if his skin and bones could protect him if she decided to split him in two. “North along the stream,” he gasped out.

  She knocked him to the floor with a punch to his chest and ran out carrying the machete. She slammed the door behind her. “Can we lock him in?”

  “Yes.” Her mother closed a clamp on the door and threaded a bolt through it.

  Xandra grabbed her mother’s hand and pulled her back toward the horse. “Listen, Mama,” she said as she mounted. “I am going after Papa. You must do as I say. Go back to the village. Find the Brazilian captain Tomás Pereira da Graça. Tell him to come and help me. He can capture the comandante of this sector.”

  Alivia looked up at her as if she were praying before the statue of Santa Caterina in the church. “Keep yourself safe. Please come back to me, Xandra.”

  She smiled at her mother, grateful she did not try to stop her. “Just be here when I get back. I will need your services next June,” she said, and gripping the machete she wheeled the horse toward the stream that led to the road to Peribebuy.

  * * *

  Maria Claudia moved along the garden walls behind the houses to her own bedroom window. She stole in like a thief and threw off her clothing, wet from the sweat of heat and terror. She pulled on the boy’s trousers and shirt that she had worn the first time she had climbed the wall of the Yotté house with Xandra. She quickly braided her hair and took her father’s old straw hat from the peg next to the front door. She cracked open the shutter on the front window and peered out into the sun-drenched street, deserted and eerily quiet.

  She shoved her braid inside the crown of the hat, turned the latch, and walked out into the blazing light.

  At the end of the street, she pressed her back against the front of Luz Martinez’s house and listened intently to men’s voices coming from the square. In this most silent part of the day, she heard them clearly, laughing and chatting, but their lively Portuguese was barely comprehensible. When a sudden commotion drowned out their voices, Maria Claudia screwed up her courage and poked her head around the corner.

  At the far end of the plaza, Alivia León ran toward the invaders and they toward her. Maria Claudia stepped out, thinking she should speed to Alivia’s aid. But when Alivia began to speak to them, they listened and did not threaten her.

  Maria Claudia seized her chance and ran to the horses under the trees. She chose a small mare with a sword hanging from its saddle and walked it away from the crowd at the other end. Mounting astride, as she had seen Xandra do, she urged the beast along the Camino Jesus Maria
in a direction she had never gone, toward Itá, where she could pick up the road to Villetta and the river.

  * * *

  As soon as Alivia heard the name Tomás Pereira da Graça, she knew he was Xandra’s lover. She did not know whether he knew he was going to be a father. The girl seemed sure he would come to her aid. But she always feigned complete confidence when her doubt was strongest.

  When Alivia approached the Brazilian soldiers and asked for him on a matter of great urgency, the looks on their faces confirmed that her daughter’s lover was a high-level officer. They immediately scattered to find him. Then Alivia realized where he would have gone and found him herself, as she expected, on the road to the estancia. He dismounted.

  The two soldiers who accompanied her spoke to him in Portuguese. She understood a bit. When they referred to her as the “mother of your lady,” he smiled and bowed and said in grammatically perfect, if heavily accented Spanish, “I have come to protect Xandra and your esteemed family. I found César gone and thought it must have been Xandra or her father who took him.”

  Alivia told him urgently where Xandra went and the danger of her mission.

  He turned to the soldiers who had accompanied her. “Run to the square and get horses and four other men. I will meet you there. We have no time to lose.” They broke into a run.

  Tomás turned to Alivia. “Please, my lady, I am sorry to put you in any danger, but I am afraid I must ask you to show me the way. I do not know the land. My men and I will protect you, I assure you.”

  “I will gladly come,” Alivia said, “but we must hurry.”

  Tomás leapt into the saddle and pulled Alivia up in front of him. This man and Xandra were in love; Alivia wondered that such a miracle could happen between enemies in the midst of all this misery.

  When they reached the plaza, they gathered six of his men, already mounted. Alivia pointed the way, and they galloped past the forge and followed the stream Xandra had taken in pursuit of her father.

  * * *

  Salvador leaned more and more heavily on his son. Whenever they could, they jogged along the bank where the footing was surer. In spots a dense mist rose from the water. Salvador saw that on the pretense of steadying himself, his son was breaking branches as he went along, as the children used to do to make a trail when they played in the forest all those years ago. “Thank you for helping me,” he murmured after the boy broke and left dangling the branch of a blossoming orchid tree.

  “Shut your mouth,” Menenez snapped. The sun had passed its zenith and was beginning to cast shadows toward the east. “This is taking too long. Much as I enjoy watching you wince with each step, we have to get there by nightfall.” He slid off his horse and drew his pistol.

  Salvador felt the boy stiffen under his arm.

  With the weapon in his left hand pointed a couple of inches from the boy’s heart, the comandante untied the knots holding Aleixo’s wrists. “Untie the ropes from your father’s waist,” he commanded.

  The boy stood impassive.

  “He does not respond. He never does,” Salvador said. “He was driven mad by the war.”

  “Shut your trap,” Menenez growled.

  Salvador turned his back and said, “Untie my hands, Luis, and I will do whatever you say. Do not hurt the boy.”

  When his hands were free, he unbound himself from Aleixo. His son startled him by looking him directly in the eyes. The father saw intention in that glance. He leaned over and kissed the boy’s cheek and whispered, “Not yet.”

  Menenez shifted the pistol to his right hand and slapped Salvador with the back of his left. “Don’t dare try anything.”

  The boy’s fists bunched, but his father held his gaze.

  The comandante threw the end of the rope to Salvador. “Tie the boy’s hands in front of him,” he said, “and then tie the middle of the rope to the girth of the saddle.”

  Salvador did as he was told.

  With the gun pointed at the boy’s head, the comandante checked the knot. “I am glad to see you are not stupid enough to try any tricks,” he said with a grim smile when he was satisfied. “Now tie the other end of the rope around your own waist.”

  When Salvador had done that and Luis had checked the knot, he passed the pistol to his left hand again and held it to the boy’s head while he mounted the horse. Without moving the weapon, he ordered Salvador to mount the horse behind him.

  Salvador saw the chink in his plan. If they moved ahead in this way, a point would come where he could knock the comandante from the beast, and if his son would respond, they could overpower Menenez, tie him up, take the beast, and escape, despite the threat of the gun. If the boy would respond.

  He stared at the boy, hoping to get him to look up, but the physically powerful comandante held the reins in his right hand, with the pistol in his left pointed at the boy’s head. The boy dared not move. “You cannot get the best of me,” he said over his shoulder. “Your half-dead son will be all dead if you move a wrong muscle.” He spurred the animal, and Aleixo had no choice but to run alongside.

  The boy’s eyes met his father’s, and for a second Salvador saw in them the soul of his true son: Aleixo, the daring boy who would chase down a peccary and laugh when he had to scamper up a tree to escape it. Still could he now, damaged as he was, help his father defeat Menenez? How long before the weakened boy lost all his strength from being forced to run like this?

  The call of a carpintero caused the child to turn and glance behind them. With his head, he signaled his father to look.

  Along the bank of the stream, about thirty yards back, through the tatters of fog that rose from the water, Salvador caught a momentary glimpse of César—unmistakable with that distinctive white blaze on his black face and one white leg like a stocking. The Brazilian had stolen the horse. Whoever was riding him now was hidden in the foliage along the bank. Salvador could not see who—no, it had to be Xandra. No one else would have used the signal of the woodpecker’s call. She was moving along the bank of the stream, keeping up with them. The boy slowed his pace and dragged on the rope, pretending to stumble. Then he fell and nearly dragged the horse over on himself.

  At that moment his sister let out a whoop, like a warrior in their childhood games. Menenez growled, but as he pointed the pistol at Aleixo, Salvador kneed his elbow. The shot went into the trees.

  The comandante reined in the horse and leapt down, dragging on the rope and toppling Salvador from the beast. By the time Salvador regained his footing, the comandante had the boy by the throat with the pistol pressed against his temple. A machete grasped in her hand, Xandra rode up at a gallop. She groaned when she saw her brother cowering under the gun.

  “Get down from that horse,” Menenez barked.

  She obeyed. He seized the machete and flung it into the bush.

  “This will do very well,” the comandante said. “Now, we can travel at a proper pace.”

  Without moving the pistol from Aleixo’s temple, he got Xandra to tie her father and brother together. Once they were mounted on César, he switched the pistol point to Xandra’s head, ordered her up on Marengo, and bound her hands behind her back. He mounted behind her and bound her to him around the waist. With the muzzle of the gun at the back of her head, and the reins of both horses in his other hand, he spurred his stallion. In a few miles they would reach the high road to Peribebuy.

  * * *

  As her mare jogged along a deserted road through the forest, Maria Claudia’s heart beat with fear that riding a horse astride like a man might bring on her flux and take away her hope of child. “I need you, my baby,” she said aloud as if talking to the soul of a child hovering nearby, who might enter her body if it heard her voice. And what would happen to her on the road all alone? What if she never found Martita and Estella? She was afraid to go and afraid to turn back. She kicked the horse to make it go faster.

  The road passed through a palm grove and then a low area covered with small lakes where herons and curlews
called good morning to one another. She felt alone in the great world, but instead of the loneliness of her ordinary life, in this completely new place she felt as if she could go on and on to the other end of the world. Flowering trees of spring were everywhere around her: pink, magenta, yellow, and purple. Her country, not seeming to notice how its people suffered, bloomed with riots of flowers, just as Paraguay was going down in defeat. Or, perhaps, these trees saw the sadness around them and displayed their beauty to comfort their countrymen.

  And her? Never had she felt so alive. Her body was not unlike these trees, sad for loss, but full of hope that she, like they, would bloom and bear fruit. She snuffed out the voice inside her that told her to go home.

  Soon the road left the canopy of the trees and curved across a plain dotted with cypresses. A tall, red outcropping of rock loomed near Itá. The houses on the outskirts of the town were all empty. About halfway to the river, she stopped to rest for a moment at a once-lovely estancia next to a steep arroyo and a waterfall. She called out greetings, but this property looked as if it had been deserted for some time. In the yard were two scarlet termite hills, the height of her head, which no landowner would have allowed to grow so close to his house. The whitewashed stucco of the buildings was covered with black mold.

  She drank from the well and found a small, bitter wild orange on a tree near the barn. At her feet, blue butterflies, the color of Gregorio’s eyes, alit on a fallen orange and with pulsating wings, sucked the juice. She whispered a prayer for the people who had lived here and continued quickly on her way. The wagon had to be traveling much more slowly than a rider on a horse, but she was not sure how long ago it had started out.

  She did not understand what she was doing or why. Well, she knew one reason: she needed to get away from him, if only for a little while. She loved him, and she knew that he loved her. But was that love strong enough to break the bonds of his priesthood and sustain him without his vocation? Was she strong enough to bear leaving him?