No Place for Heroes

19

“FORTUNATELY, I DIDN’T inherit my father’s legs,” Mateo said, and asked his mother if it was true that Ramón was bowlegged. But he didn’t let her reply. Tired of walking and suddenly irritated that he didn’t know where they were going, he hailed a taxi. Once they got in, he opened the window and then claimed it was cold.

“Roll up the window,” Lorenza proposed, but he ignored her. “Roll it up just a little bit then.”

“Ramón never said goodbye to me before he left, right, Lolé? I don’t remember him saying goodbye. The last time I saw him was on the lake in Bariloche. There were red mountains all around. The mountains reflected on the lake seemed real, and the ones that were real were so far away that they seemed fake. Ramón was there with us and then he was lost, lost like the Turk in the fog,” Mateo said. And Lorenza thought, but did not say aloud, that the scene he was describing was not so much from memory but from a photograph, the last one she had taken with Ramón, on the shores of Lago Nahuel Huapi. “Or maybe what I remember is only from a picture,” Mateo realized on his own. “But I am definitely sure that he never said goodbye. It was only much later that I began to suspect that he was not coming back. With you it was different. I think that when I was little I would cry sometimes when you went to work or traveled. I remember I hated your hair dryer and I used to hide it from you, because if you dried your hair, it meant you would be going out for the night. But the next day you would be there when I woke up. But I didn’t miss Ramón at first. Maybe I didn’t even realize he was missing for years, or I realized it for a moment and forgot it just as quickly, until one day I discovered how much I had needed him without even realizing it. If he had said goodbye, everything would have been much clearer. I would like to know, Lolé, why do you think he was imprisoned?”

“Who knows what mischief he got into?”

“You say mischief and it sounds almost charming. My charming father and his mischief. Oh, Lorenza, you chose the bastard and I covered up for him,” Mateo said, and they both laughed. In spite of everything, there was some comedy in it.