The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos

by Margaret Mascarenhas

  “Mamá, we’re home,” he said, lighting a candle, which went out almost instantly.

  “We made a killing today,” said La Vieja Juanita, taking the matches from Efraín and lighting the oil lamp. “We will work late tonight and all day tomorrow. I plan to sell three times the number of mobiles,” she said. “And tomorrow night, Coromoto, you will become Maria Lionza and make an appearance in Sorte.”

  “Guess what, Mamá,” said Efraín, “you were right; on the way home I remembered my dream. It was about you and me and Manolo, about the time we went to Playa Azul and you taught me how to swim, remember?”

  From the hammock there was no reply. There was no gentle rise and fall of the chest, no sigh of a breath. It was too still, too quiet. It was as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room.

  Efraín ran toward the hammock in the corner of the hut, pushing the air in front of him as though it were water. In the hammock there was only a blanket.

  “Mamá!” Efraín shouted, running out of the hut. But his mother was gone, and the only sound he could hear was the sound of his own breath quickening.

  It was a bright summer day when they decided to take a trip to Playa Azul, a pristine stretch of sand on the Colombian coastline that received an ocean the astonishing color of Mexican turquoise. Efraín was only five, but he still remembers that day in particular because it was the day his mother taught him to swim. From the main beach, they walked along a narrow ledge on the outer side of a hill to a wide cove with giant brown-gray rocks on either side. With the exception of a few skeletal stray dogs and a lone fisherman, the cove was deserted.

  They spread a blanket on the powdery sand and took off all their clothes, because Coromoto said there was no point to clothes on a hot, deserted beach. She was different then, daring and dynamic, infecting everyone around her with playful enthusiasm. She did not have two deep lines between her eyebrows. She laughed all the time.

  “Don’t you think he might be a bit young for swimming?” asked Manolo, who could float but could not swim.

  “Of course not,” said Coromoto, tossing her hair, bleached blond in places with agua oxigenada. When she tossed her hair that way, it meant that she had truth on her side and didn’t give a damn who thought otherwise. “Before I met you, my love, and began this gypsy life, I lived in an apartment building that had a swimming pool and went to the beach every weekend. I was swimming like a fish by the time I was three. If Efraín is going to learn at all, he needs to start now. So, are you coming with us or not? We’re wasting a lot of good waves.”

  “The view is better from here,” said Manolo, grinning. “Besides, no man likes to be bested by his woman in any sport.”

  “Vamos, take my hand, Efraín, we’ll go into the sea together, you and Mamá, and leave this scaredy cat to tremble on his towel all by himself.”

  Manolo pretended to shake in fear, then shouted, “But afterward I challenge you both to a game of football—two against one.” Manolo was crazy about football and had tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade Efraín that football was at least as good a sport as swimming, if not better. Efraín giggled and took his mother’s hand. Together, they ran naked to meet the blue-green sea.

  “Let’s live on the beach, Mamá,” said Efraín afterward, his lashes crusted with salt.

  “Manolo is the boss of where we live; you’ll have to convince him about that,” said Coromoto.

  As it turned out, only a few weeks later, Efraín’s family and other Guajiro farmers were accused of supporting members of the revolutionary armed forces and forcefully evicted from their lands by the government. By the time he was seven, they had been living in a beach town near Santa Marta for two years. Coromoto and Manolo helped run a small restaurant-cum-hotel called Lugar Perdido, part for pay, part for room and board. Efraín had always been a happy child, but he was even happier here than he had been on the farm, for here he had more children of his own age to play with. Still, he longed for a brother.

  “Can I have a brother?” he asked his mother.

  “Soon, mi amor,” said Coromoto, “when we are settled in a house of our own, you will have more than one brother or sister.”

  “Yes,” said Manolo, “we will have our own football team, why not?”

  Coromoto was an exacting swimming coach, and Efraín could soon swim with a speed and strength that had her jumping up and down in the shallows and clapping each time he splashed his way out of the surf. Every day, after battling the waves for an hour, they would make their way back to the beach, where they would throw themselves on the wet sand, spent but exhilarated.

  “I’ll never be as good as you,” he said. “I’m scared of the big waves and I sometimes get swept by the undertow.”

  “Your body is still much smaller than mine, corazón. You will grow bigger and stronger,” said Coromoto. “Remember that with ocean swimming, respect for nature and your own natural instinct is even more important than strength. We’ll try another way. During high tide, we’ll start by going out into knee-deep water, then turning and facing the shore. As the waves pass by, I want you to jump into the white water and try to feel the wave pushing you along, without fighting it. Catching waves has a lot to do with being able to sense the right time to drop your body into the wave. By practicing, you train your body to sense the right time.”

  They had practiced for a week together before Coromoto said, “I think you have mastered the small waves. We will move out to waist-deep water and start again.”

  By the third week Efraín had progressed enough to swim outside the surf line, where his mother taught him to drop into waves by shooting out of the water like a dolphin and then, in a split second, turning his body and riding forward in the cup of the wave just before it broke.

  When Efraín was eight, Manolo said to Coromoto, “Don’t you think he’s spending too much time splashing about in the ocean and less time doing something productive, like helping us peel the potatoes for the mondongo?

  “Escúchame bien, amor,” said Coromoto in her truth-is-on-my-side voice. “Learning how to swim is practice for learning how to live. Efraín is confident that no matter where he is, in a backyard pool, in a river or in the ocean, he can take care of himself. Good swimmers not only enjoy themselves and get wonderful exercise, they know when it’s time to come out of the water. And they also know when it’s wise not to go in. They know how to navigate safely through any watery environment.”

  “Hmmm. Then perhaps, my love, you should also be teaching me how to swim,” said Manolo. “Some of our compadres in the rebellion are about to get into some very deep water.”

  After she disappeared, Efraín searched for his mother everywhere, in the bars of San Felipe by day, and in the forest by the light of the quarter moon. Of everyone he met, he asked the same question, “Have you seen my mother?” Those he approached felt sorry for him. Some, moved by the tremulous lips and the supplicant gaze, tried to pretend as though they believed in the possibility, taking note of his description, saying they would keep an eye out. But most thought it a cruelty to feed his hope, saying they were sorry and offering him a sweet or a glass of chicha or a compassionate pat on the back. What else could they do? People involved in cross-border politics went missing all the time, either because they were in hiding or because they were dead. It was nothing extraordinary; it was a fact of life: People disappeared.

  La Vieja Juanita allowed him to carry on with his frantic search for two weeks before putting a stop to it.

  “That’s enough,” she said one evening. “There is nothing else to do but wait; I need you to help me at the stall.” And Efraín, waving his hand in refusal of the bowl of soup she offered him, tired beyond words, collapsed into his hammock and tumbled into the blessed oblivion of sleep.

  He dreamt of his mother. In the dream he was swimming in the river, and she was standing at the bank. She looked younger. He called to her to join him, she shook her head.

  “But you are a swimmer,” he said.
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br />   “You are a better swimmer than I,” she replied. Then she waved and started to walk away.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To find Manolo, of course.”

  “Wait!” he called after her. But he could no longer see her.

  Now, every night when he sleeps, he continues the search for his mother in his dreams.

  Efraín finishes his breakfast, rises from the kitchen table and switches on the transistor radio. Tuning into the eight a.m. broadcast of Buenos días guajiro is a daily ritual. Apart from the daily news concerning tribal matters, Buenos días guajiro imparts useful information, such as the weather and the number of tourists expected on any given day in Sorte. During its broadcast, the anchors also randomly insert news from along the border about the rebel insurgency and military raids. They pass messages over the airwaves to the loved ones from those on the run. For some, Buenos días guajiro is a lifeline.

  “This is Buenos días guajiro with today’s news,” says the female announcer. “On the other side of the border, twelve Wayuu men were massacred and thirty more disappeared, at least twenty of whom were children. There has been little mention of the massacre in the mainstream media, even though the final tally likely totaled more than forty victims. According to humanitarian organizations, another three hundred Wayuu are on the run. Pablito says ‘hola’ to his mother, Inez, and that he will see her soon. Alberto has sent money for Carolina and the children to the usual place and asks that she collect it as soon as possible. Esteban wishes Graciela the happiest of birthdays and wishes he could be there.”

  Again, nothing about Manolo or Coromoto, or El Negro Catire. Catire must be hiding too, Efraín says, hopefully. But La Vieja Juanita carries on packing their lunch, behaves as though she is hard of hearing.

  It is common knowledge that the militares from across the border have tried to make Catire disappear, sending secret task forces to capture him. But to their acute embarrassment and frustration, they can never find him. The international community has tried to bring pressure to bear upon the government in locating him, claiming that he is a guerilla leader affiliated with the rebels who is wanted for innumerable offenses, like stealing cars from rich people on one side of the border and selling them to rich people on the other side, to help fund the rebellion. They insist that he is in league with a guerilla sympathizer called El Malandro Yoraco, also known as Zorro, who delivers the money from the cars Catire allegedly steals and sells to the indio and mestizo poor.

  Efraín has seen his grandfather on only two occasions. Both times he was driving a different expensive car without license plates.

  Whether or not these stories are true, Catire has become a living legend, a folk hero to the Guajiro and mestizo populations on both sides of the border, a man they will protect even with their lives. As for El Malandro Yoraco, Efraín has never met anyone who has seen him; some think he was killed in a shootout with the militares, some believe he is still alive. Dead or alive, followers of Maria Lionza, whether they are white, black, indio, or mestizo, believe El Malandro Yoraco is an instrument of the goddess. Many revere him as a saint and pray for his protection, allocating to him his own court, La Corte Malandra, which is comprised of gangsters with names like El Ratón, Miguel Pequeño, Chama Isabelita, who run guns and drugs.

  In addition, most Marialionceros are united in their belief that El Presidente is a believer in Maria Lionza and her pantheon, and that they are under his protection. Whatever the reason, so far the government has turned a blind eye to the alleged activities of both El Negro Catire and El Malandro Yoraco. The local authorities routinely give false information to the bounty hunters from the other side, sending them on elaborate wild goose chases.

  Efraín hides his stash of tobacco, coca paste, and rolling papers in his back pocket. He likes to smoke when he takes his morning shit. When he smokes tobacco and coca he has visions. He does not tell La Vieja Juanita about them because then he would have to explain how they came to him. If she were to find out about the coca, she would become upset. Efraín does not like to upset her. She is already upset enough, even if she does not speak of it. The word in Chivacoa is that Moriche has also gone missing.

  La Vieja Juanita tells Efraín to bring back some wood from the forest. As he walks through the forest, he collects one kind of wood for the stove and another kind for making mobiles, as La Vieja has taught him. He stuffs the wood in a large burlap bag. It is not long before his stomach begins to rumble. He finds a good leafy place, rolls and lights up his cigar. He pulls down his trousers and squats. He inhales deeply, letting the smoke out through his nostrils. While he empties his bowels, he blows smoke rings by making his mouth into a circle, watching the rings float upward, break against the leaves, dissolve into the air. The air grows darker and darker until it becomes a cave. Outside the cave some people are calling. Slowly, with animal caution, he steps, one foot in front of the other, closer and closer to the light. When he emerges, there is a roar from the people gathered outside in the clearing. Efraín can barely hear his own thoughts or distinguish them from the yells of the crowd. At first the noise is dissonant, garbled, but within seconds it is as though the people are shouting in one voice.

  Maria Lionza, Maria Lionza, they chant, over and over.

  Blinded by the light, Efraín holds up his hands in front of his face, then drops them to his sides as his eyes adjust. The crowd falls silent. He wants to ask the sea of expectant faces before him whether they have seen his parents. But when he opens his mouth to speak, no sound comes out. His mouth has dried up and so has his voice. The faces in the crowd, just moments ago alight with adoration, turn ugly. The shouts become vicious, enraged. Move out of the circle, they scream, charging toward him. His brow is bathed in sweat, his heart beating rapidly. He whispers his mother’s words to himself: You know it is only a dream. The vision ends. Shaking his head like a wet dog, he picks up his bag of wood and returns to the shack.

  “And now this, just in from the capital,” the announcer on the radio is saying. “As one of our country’s most venerated religious cult figures and national icons, Maria Lionza has inspired hope and granted wishes to devotees for over two centuries. But yesterday, hundreds of thousands of followers were shaken when the fifty-three-year-old statue of the mythical Indian princess cracked at the waist and fell backward, leaving her staring into the heavens. Fearful, thousands are flocking to Sorte to make offerings in the hope of appeasing the goddess....And now, stay tuned for another episode of Los zapatos rojos, courtesy of Passion Radio.”

  “We should do good business today,” says La Vieja Juanita, switching off the radio.

  On the bus to San Felipe, passengers are already buzzing with the news about the statue of Maria Lionza in the capital. Some believers say it is a sign that El Presidente and his socialist agenda have lost her approval. Others believe it is a clarion call for the spiritual renewal of all humanity. Or perhaps for repentance. They wonder whether a government plan to move the statue of the goddess from the Avenida Francisco Fajardo to the Plaza Bolívar has pissed off the goddess. “Con los santos, no se juega” is a common refrain. At one point a fiery dispute arises at the back of the bus between those who agree with the relocation and restoration plan as a symbol of fundamental change and those who oppose it. Those on opposite sides begin to roll up their sleeves, prepared to resolve the issue with their fists, if necessary.

  “Epa,” yells the bus driver, “why are you discussing as though you poor pendejos know what the gods are thinking and that you can influence the outcome?”

  Efraín and La Vieja Juanita board another bus in Chivacoa. The bus is much fuller than usual at this hour of the morning—indeed, it is packed almost beyond capacity and they have to stand, pressed against others, in the aisle. When they arrive in Sorte, crowds of people are already thronging the shops and stalls and pouring across the bridge to the mountain. Efraín hastens to Fernando’s shop to retrieve the pieces of cardboard and makeshift table that make up t
heir own stall, while La Vieja Juanita waits with their bags, guarding their place from potential interlopers. When he finishes setting up the stall, Felipe Gonsales, a neighboring vendor who sells Maria Lionza rosaries and scapulars, walks over.

  “Oye, Vieja, have you heard the latest?” he says.

  “You mean about the statue? Who hasn’t heard?” says La Vieja Juanita, pointing with her chin toward the crowds.

  “No,” says Felipe, “I mean about the boy.”

  “What boy?”

  “Early this morning a boy is supposed to have emerged from the Lady’s shrine right into the sacred circle of a ceremony dedicated to her. Quite a few people saw him. At first they thought he was just some brat fooling around, and they were angry that he had disrupted the ceremony. Some people are claiming that when they tried to grab him, their arms went right through him. Then the boy vanished into thin air. Now they are saying it is the boy in the legend, El Niño, the messenger of Maria Lionza. Hundreds are already on their way to Sorte to post a vigil in the hope that he will appear again. But the Bancos are saying that the next time he appears, it will be to El Presidente himself.”

  Efraín stares at Felipe as though he has seen a spirit while La Vieja Juanita snorts. “Those fakers and their followers must have consumed too much rum.”

  Felipe shrugs. Like La Vieja Juanita, he is there to make money off the tourists. And anything that brings them to Sorte in droves is good for business.

  This is certainly true for Efraín and La Vieja Juanita. The excitement about the statue is so great that within seconds of setting up their stall, they are mobbed. Less than forty-five minutes go by before their mobiles are completely sold out, and they are able to leave much earlier than expected.

  In the evening Efraín decides to tell La Vieja Juanita about his vision but disguises it as a dream. When he finishes, she is staring at him as if she is experiencing a revelation. He has seen such a look on the faces of some of the Marialionceros just before they go into a trance, just before their eyes roll back into their heads and froth starts coming out of their mouths. He fears she might be on the verge of such a fit. Instead, she slams the table with her fist so hard it cracks the wooden plank lengthwise down the middle and makes Efraín jump. She laughs uproariously. When she laughs, the years fall away from her face. Efraín has never seen her laugh like that. He is both relieved and bewildered by her reaction. It is as though she has hit the jackpot.