The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra

by Pedro Mairal

  Boris told me that the museum wanted to know how the export documents were going. They were anxious for a date when the move could take place because they would have to hire special transport. I didn’t tell him about the difficulties we were having with Customs. I said everything would be sorted out soon. Boris told me he would go on working until Saturday. If they carried on at the rate they were going the whole canvas would be digitalized by then. After that he’d have nothing more to do. He said that perhaps he’d go back to Holland until the work was ready to be shipped.

  “So Saturday is your last day?” I asked him.

  “Yes, Saturday,” he said.

  Before they left I wanted to go and look for Ibáñez over in Uruguay. I was desperate to find the missing roll.

  When Luis arrived on Friday, we decided to put on a farewell barbecue at home the next night for Aldo and the Dutch couple. We still had no idea what we were going to say about the bureaucratic obstacles. It wasn’t a simple matter. Luis had gotten nowhere trying to make the National Heritage Commission see reason. Once a work had been declared “of cultural interest” or “part of the cultural heritage,” that could not be rescinded. We would have to follow the legal procedures to have its ownership transferred back to us. We had to re-acquire something that not only was ours, but had been neglected for years by the institution that now, according to the law, was its legal owner.

  We talked for some time in the kitchen. I suggested we cross to Uruguay to try to find Ibáñez. Luis said he didn’t have the papers needed for the car to get over the Uruguayan border, and that anyway my idea about where the missing roll might be was ridiculous. I told him we could get across by boat without the car, and that possibly it would be easier to look for a fisherman by water than by land. He told me I was crazy. My brother listened to my arguments without looking at me, pacing round the kitchen, snorting scornfully from time to time. Then he started washing the dishes. I told him what Jordán had said, and the things I had discovered by looking at more of the rolls. Luis didn’t reply, but dried the plates in silence. He wanted Salvatierra’s work to become known, not his life. He preferred not to find out if Salvatierra had been a smuggler. He wanted the canvases taken away once and for all: the shadow of that life rolled up in the shed seemed to weigh heavily on him.

  “If you don’t want to come, I’ll go on my own tomorrow,” I said to end the discussion, and went to my room.

  I heard him prowling around the house for a while, then I fell asleep.

  31

  I woke up very early, when it was still dark. I sipped some mate tea in the kitchen, wondering how on earth I was going to get across the river in a motorboat. I would have to cycle all the way up to Gervasoni’s quay again. Yet I was determined to do it. I had a shower, and put on the last change of clean clothes I had left. Then I went out into the yard to get my bike. I have to admit that because I was angry with my brother I made more noise than necessary. I put a few crackers in a bag, and went to the front door. Just as I was going out, Luis appeared, looking disheveled, without his glasses, and in his pajamas. The notary in pajamas, I thought. I hadn’t seen him like that for at least twenty years. “Wait for me,” he said.

  He dressed, had a cup of coffee, and we left in his car. Day was just breaking over the river.

  “Listen to me,” he said, “OK, so we’ll go across by boat. But if we don’t find this Ibáñez by noon, we come back.”

  “No problem. We have to be here by this afternoon to prepare the barbecue anyway,” I said, to keep him calm.

  It took us ten minutes to cover the distance that had taken me an hour riding my bike the day before.

  We left the car near the Customs post and boarded a boat that was supposed to be leaving at seven but finally got under way at a quarter past eight, because it was waiting for some cargo from Concepción. It was the same man on board as on the previous day. He charged ten pesos for the two of us. I asked him if he knew Ibáñez, and he said he hadn’t seen him for a long time, but that he was usually to be found in a place called El Duraznillo.

  The river turned golden before the sun came up. As the water slid around, the surface looked like giant sheets of metal shifting at different speeds. When the boat pulled away from the shore, we could feel the force of the river. The engine strained and spluttered with its prow pointed diagonally across the current, and yet the river still gained on us, pushing the boat to the south.

  We saw a yacht sail by, then a Coast Guard boat shot past, with most of its hull raised out of the water.

  We went up to the prow and leaned on the rail. Luis remembered a soccer championship we had played as youngsters against teams from Paysandú on the Uruguayan side of the river. Wearing our team jerseys, we’d crossed a couple of times in a diesel barge we always thought was about to sink.

  We stood silently for a while, staring down at the water curling round the hull. We passed two men in a canoe, and were passed in turn by a dinghy with an outboard motor carrying a family and their furniture. That made me think of Salvatierra smuggling goods across at night with Jordán. The river wasn’t so wide after all, and on the far side it was another country, with other laws. I gripped Luis by the arm.

  “I’ve got an idea.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The canvas can’t get out of Argentina?”

  “Well no, it can’t.”

  “But it could get out of Uruguay ...”

  Luis stared at me.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We transfer it to Uruguay and send it to Holland from there.”

  “We ‘transfer’ it?”

  “Yes, we transfer it.”

  Luis’s face brightened.

  “That’s not a bad idea at all,” he said, and we both laughed.

  The low, wooded cliffs of the Uruguayan coast came closer, until we could make out a landslide, the big clumps of whitish earth down by the water. We disembarked in a port that was new to both of us. A Uruguayan Customs officer asked to see our documents, then we got off without knowing where to head.

  A man came up offering us a taxi. We asked him if we were far from El Duraznillo, and he said about fifteen minutes. He drove us along a gravel road; from the low houses on each side we could tell we were in a different country: they had neat flowerbeds with flowers and plants in them. It took us over fifteen minutes to get there. El Duraznillo was a cluster of houses beside a path that ended in the river.

  Asking the taxi driver to wait, we banged on the door of a closed store. A woman came out drying her hands on a dish towel. We inquired if she knew where Ibáñez lived, and she said he was on the coast, in a plot of land owned by the municipality, beyond Los Linares ranch. She had to explain how to get there because we didn’t know the area.

  It would have been easier to go along the river, but there was no one who could take us, and so Luis and I climbed back into the taxi. He drove along a dirt road, talking politics the whole time and glancing at us in his rear-view mirror to see if we would respond. But neither of us encouraged him. We were as silent as two hit men: although we didn’t look dangerous, the driver was unnerved by us. Perhaps that’s why the guy never stopped talking.

  The road was pretty bad, and the car bounced over the dry potholes. We went past a ranch called Los Lanares. (I thought the woman had said “Los Linares.”) There was an entrance that was blocked with a loose chain and padlock. We got out. We tried to see if we could lift the chain so the car could pass underneath, but it was impossible. We would have to walk down to the river. The driver didn’t want to wait for us. We could understand him not wanting to stay there, in the blazing sun. Luis paid him for the journey and something in advance for him to come and collect us two hours later, at the same spot.

  We set off down the white path, crossing a field with a few sparse trees in it. We weren’t wearing shoes for walking over rough ground. I had on a pair of loafers; Luis was wearing smart shoes that were soon covered in dust. He began to run out o
f breath, and asked if we could rest for a while. He wiped off the sweat with his handkerchief. Angry at our invasion, some lapwings skimmed over our heads. They had a point. What were we doing out here in the middle of nowhere beneath a sun that was already warming our backs?

  As we approached the river, the trees grew denser. The shore couldn’t be far off. We carried on walking and it wasn’t long before we reached a small brick-built house alongside some posts that had once been a corral. We saw a man stripping an engine outside, and asked him where Ibáñez lived. He told us to carry on until we reached the river, then to continue along the shore until we saw an old bus. That was where we could find him.

  We bordered a field of stubble, then a pond covered in water hyacinths, a patch of thorny undergrowth, and finally came out on to the riverbank. It was odd to see the river from the other side, as though it were flowing in the opposite direction, as if the water were rising and time was flowing backwards. We walked along the shoreline, crossed a barbed wire fence and eventually caught sight of a gray bus with no wheels, held up on four barrels, and with a metal awning projecting from one side. We went closer and clapped our hands. Nobody. There was no boat tied up in the water. We decided Ibáñez must be out fishing.

  We sat on a couple of crates in the shade of a tree near an extinguished fire. We talked a bit about how we could get the sixty-five rolls of the painting over to this side of the river. We would have to find a boat, a smuggler willing to make several trips. We would have to see. We ate the crackers I’d brought in the bag. More than an hour went by.

  We were already planning to make our way back when a man appeared in a boat downriver. He was whistling a tune absent-mindedly. We couldn’t see his face beneath the broken brim of his hat. When he spotted us, he used the oar to slow the boat down, and peered at us from a safe distance. He looked too young to be Ibáñez.

  “Good morning,” I said, loudly and in a friendly voice, trying to reassure him, because I could understand that he wasn’t thrilled to see two intruders standing there waiting for him outside his home, like ghosts. “We’re looking for Fermín Ibáñez.”

  “Fermín Ibáñez?” he said, and we saw his dark-skinned face.

  “Is that you?”

  “No, Fermín was my uncle,” he said. “He died some time ago.”

  “Are you the nephew?” asked Luis, although it was obvious.

  “Yes,” he said. “What is it you were after?”

  “We wanted to know whether your uncle Fermín still had a roll of canvas our father Juan Salvatierra painted. A roll this big,” I said, spreading my arms. “A canvas with drawings on it.”

  The guy kept staring at us.

  “Your uncle and our father were friends,” I said.

  Less suspicious by now, he maneuvered his boat into the bank. He climbed out, tied a piece of rope round a fallen tree trunk, slung a sack over his shoulder and came up to where we were standing. He didn’t offer his hand.

  “Do you have any idea if your uncle had that roll?” Luis asked impatiently.

  “Yes, he did have it,” said the man. “He kept it over there in the bus engine, wrapped in sacks. Then he went to jail and died.”

  “So where is it now?”

  “I gave it away years ago.”

  “You gave it away?”

  “Yes, to Soria, the boss of Los Lanares near here. He never paid me. He said he was going to give me a mare and her foal, but he never did.”

  Ibáñez tipped the contents of his sack onto the sand. Slimy looking fish fell out: a surubí and several sábalos. He started cleaning them right there, in the water. Barely visible beneath the surface, tiny fish nibbled at the innards as they fell.

  “Do you know if that Soria fellow kept it?”

  “No, I don’t ... He said he wanted it for decoration.”

  Ibáñez finished gutting the fish and, seeing that we made no move to leave, invited us to eat with him.

  “It’s not luxurious, but there’s plenty for everyone. I’ve got some wine as well.”

  Luis said a taxi would be coming for us in a short while. I would have gladly accepted the offer. Ibáñez passed some warm wine around in a mug.

  As he lit the fire he told us that as far as he could remember the roll was kept under the hood of the bus when he was a boy. On one occasion he had been curious to see what it was, but his uncle had driven him off with his whip. This place had once belonged to the municipality, which used it to collect brushwood for use in road building. Fermín Ibáñez had been taken on to look after the machinery, and he was allowed to live in the old bus. Then the brushwood ran out, and the machines were taken elsewhere. His uncle had gone on living there for many years, before he was arrested for killing a man south of Paysandú in a bar room brawl. He had died in prison. By then his nephew was already settled in the bus. Later on, the spot began to be known for its fishing, and for a while he ran a drinks stall and a barbecue. Later still, the Day of the Fisherman was celebrated there. People came to it from all over, even from Argentina and Brazil. Ibáñez told us that during one of these celebrations he had unrolled the canvas to show it and Soria, who had just bought the Los Lanares ranch, offered to exchange it for a mare and foal. Soria was crazy about horses and according to Ibáñez part of the canvas depicted some rural horse races. Fifteen years old at the time, Ibáñez had accepted Soria’s offer, and helped load it in the trunk of his car, but never got anything in return. He used to occasionally run across Soria, and the old man always said: “I’m putting aside a nice little mare for you,” and yet he never kept his promise. Soria had died five years earlier; his children started a lawsuit over the property with some creditors, and it was now abandoned.

  32

  “Are you sure there’s nobody there?”

  “The only caretaker lives at the entrance to the property, and he’s always either drunk or in town.”

  It took us some time to make up our minds, or rather it took me time to convince Luis, who at first didn’t want to know anything. In the end he reluctantly climbed into the dinghy: we had let the taxi go back, and to him that was like burning our bridges. Ibáñez took us downstream to the Los Lanares ranch. Possibly because the wine had gone to my head I felt almost happy, especially watching my brother the notary sitting in this muddy little craft, clinging to the sides and constantly readjusting his glasses with a quick jerk of his thumb as if he was afraid they would fall in the water.

  We followed the coastline without having to row: the current took us along slowly but surely. After a while, eucalyptus and pine trees started to replace the native thorn bushes. Ibáñez told us the house was behind the screen of trees, and took us in to the bank. We clambered out at a small jetty where only the wooden posts were left standing.

  “I’ll be back later,” said Ibáñez, rowing off upstream.

  We stood there, looking around. Now we really had nothing but our feet to rely on. We began to walk slowly away from the river. Panting with exhaustion, Luis kept saying things like: “We have to ask permission first,” “If it’s locked we’ll leave,” “I don’t know what on earth we’re doing here,” “It’s me who’s the idiot for following you.” All of a sudden the house appeared among the trees: a big stone building with a tower and balconies. We came to a halt.

  “There must be people in there,” said Luis.

  We crossed the grass of what had once been the lawn around the house, jumping over fallen tree trunks, dry branches, and through thistle bushes that came up to head-height. Every so often we stopped so as not to make any noise on the leaves and to listen. But no dogs barked; the only sound was a buzzing like cicadas or wasps that seemed to be coming from the ranch house. Then we startled a tinamou bird, and it startled us back with its cries and beating wings. We reached the veranda. Some of the guttering had been brought down by storms, tufts of grass were growing through the floor tiles, there were bird nests, earth. It looked completely deserted. We walked around the house. At the front, Luis clapped
his hands, then knocked on the door. Nobody answered. He pushed, but it was locked.

  We tried to peer through the window bars, but could only make out the vague shapes of furniture in the gloom. We went around the house again. I found a wooden door that had a half-rotten lower part. I bent down to see if I could tear a slat off. Luis wanted to leave, but I pretended I didn’t hear him.

  “What are you going to do now? Go in and steal?”

  That incensed me. I straightened up and told him I wasn’t going to steal anything; on the contrary, I was going to recover something that had been stolen from us.

  “If you’re going to moan at me the whole time, I prefer you to go. Right now,” I said. He walked away among the thistles.

  I tried to loosen the door. I kicked it, barged it with my shoulder. I took out all my pent-up anger at my brother on the door. This went on for a good while. Whenever I grew tired, I would pause, then start again. Now that I’d gotten this far, I wasn’t going to let a stupid old door stand in my way. I insisted, but got nowhere apart from raising a few splinters. All of a sudden a big piece of wood landed beside me: I jumped to one side. Luis had reappeared with a huge branch. Without a word, he pushed it through the rotten wood to gain some leverage. Between the two of us we managed to smash in the bottom part of the door, until there was a hole large enough for someone to crawl through.

  “You first,” he said, so I pushed my way in.

  It was like going inside of a smell. A smell of ammonia and rot that was too strong for me to breathe. I had to cover my nose. It was the smell of bats. I stood up in the darkness. I groped for a wall, and my hand collided with something made of tin.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Luis, still crawling through the door.

  “Nothing. But be careful, there are some metal things here.”