No Place for Heroes

20

SANDRITA AND AURELIA kept the apartment on Deán Funes clean and orderly, completely unlike the pigsty apartment in Madrid, or the “war sty” as they had called it, where a whole gang of people lived, all of them Latin American — a Chilean woman, three Argentineans, and Lorenza. When a Brazilian couple moved in above, they christened it the war sty.

All of them, except Aurelia, had been fleeing one dictatorship or another, for at that time the Southern Cone was infested with dictatorships and that apartment was a refuge for exiles. People came and went. The living room functioned as a backstage of sorts, with a lot of romance and episodes in the beds, the kitchen became a deposit box for flyers and newspapers, and the ashtrays were always replete with butts. Those butts were the most difficult part for her; and waiting for your turn to use the bathroom, or walking into your room and realizing you no longer had a blanket because it had been allotted to someone else.

In Buenos Aires, on the other hand, they had to keep up appearances, and so they tried to eat at proper hours and keep the refrigerator stocked. Not like in Madrid, where there was never anything in the fridge but a dried-up onion and few cans of beer. Things in Buenos Aires were strange as well because other people in the party never set foot inside your home. For security reasons they didn’t even know where it was. Also, you had to keep your windows and door wide open for the neighbors, so they would take no interest in you. Step right up, lady from 4B; come on in, renter from 2A. Would they like some coffee while they went on about the leak that was soaking their carpet? Of course, señora, of course, señor. Let them look all they wanted, let them sniff out and discard any suspicions. Let them walk away with the best of impressions, so they would have nothing to rat to the cana about. Let me help you with those grocery bags, señora from 4B. Do you want to borrow an umbrella, señor from 2A, it’s drizzling?

“Then how would you meet up with other party members to conspire?” Mateo asked.

“Only in public places, in cafés mostly, meetings which were never arranged by phone. Using phones was playing with fire, so meetings had to be arranged by intermediaries who sometimes took weeks to deliver a message. At least three-quarters of our time was taken up with these details.”

“Tell me about the day that you met Ramón.”

“If you want, we can go to Las Violetas tomorrow and I’ll tell you there.”

Las Violetas didn’t exist anymore, the receptionist of the hotel would inform them the following day. It was a shame that she could not take her son, Lorenza thought. How precisely she remembered the languid air of that place, the rhombus designs in the marble floor, the lilac-and-mauve rosettes in the stained-glass windows, and even the golden hue of the tea they served in white porcelain cups. And yet how deceitful the memory of that girl she once was, who Monday afternoon waited for a young man she did not yet know, a man who in a couple of years would become Mateo’s father. Lorenza tried to envision Aurelia seated there in Las Violetas, checking her watch obsessively, restless, looking up at the door and then again at her watch, self-conscious that the three boxes she had with her were too conspicuous.

“Three boxes? I thought there were two,” Mateo asked.

“Two raviolis and one from the Bally shoes.” Since everything hadn’t fit in between the layers of ravioli, they had decided to build a false bottom in the box with the Bally shoes, with her Mamaíta’s pardon, where she hid the dollars and put the Ballys back on top. It was finally six o’clock. Six? Was that really the time of their first meeting? Suddenly Lorenza wasn’t so sure. She was sure it had been a Monday, there was no doubt about that, and Mateo would soon see why there was no doubt. She arrived a few minutes early and had a furtive look around. There were about thirty or forty people there, no more than that, so the place was not full, a lot of ladies, a few older men, some girls, and a couple of young men, one to her right and another in front of her, much farther away. Either one of them could have been Forcás. But neither of them was alone: the one on the right was with what appeared to be his girlfriend and the other one with a woman whose face Aurelia could not see. And if they were coupled off they couldn’t be Forcás. Although, come to think of it, no one had told her that he would come alone to meet her. In the end, all he had to do was pick up a package. She shouldn’t forget that this was not a blind date but the perpetration of a tiny act of war. She should also not ignore the fact that if they had set up the meeting there and not in some other place, it was solely because a busy confectionery would arouse less suspicion, and because the location, on the corner, had two exits, one to the avenue, which would make an escape easier if things got ugly. That is, it had nothing at all to do with her, or with the encounter of the two people fast approaching, or with the small napkins with violets embroidered in the corners, or the Bavarian creams and éclairs that whizzed by on trays to various tables, or with the pretty white tablecloths with the stained-glass reflections. What a shame, this elegance is not for me at all. Being in the resistance still felt like a game to her, or being onstage. Bit by bit she would come to terms with what it meant to live one’s whole existence completely in secret, alienated from the day-to-day routine, on the margins of everyone else’s normal life. Although who knows, who can say that anybody else’s life is so normal, or what strange things they’re up to. Even right there in Las Violetas, there was likely someone else with a plan similar to hers, somebody about to whisper some banned information in another’s ear, or slip a mimeographed sheet under the table, or perhaps an informant who feigned ignorance while jotting notes about everything.

In any case, it bothered her that she had built all these false hopes around Forcás, although truly, she had no idea what sort of hopes they were, maybe the hopes of good conversation over a cup of tea, or even more to fulfill the need to confess to someone that her father had died recently and she felt terrible about it, or the longing for some affection that would ground her in this city that was so beautiful and so full of spies. And besides, why shouldn’t she build up her hopes about meeting a man whom she considered more or less a hero.

“A hero, Lorenza? That’s ridiculous, to call somebody made of flesh and bone that.”

“A little bit yes, but a little bit no.”

“A little bit hero and a little bit buffoon.”

“Like all of us.”

At eight minutes after six, she began to think that she shouldn’t linger too much longer. She would ask for the check, wait two more minutes, and if no one arrived she’d be off. Then she focused more intently on one of the two young men who were sitting there, the one whose reflection she could see in the mirror in the back, and realized that he was looking at her as well, also dissemblingly through the mirror, as his girlfriend continued talking to him.

He was rather good-looking, or at least better-looking than the one on the right, who was ugly, plain and simple. The one in the mirror could be Forcás, must be Forcás, although his hair and eyes weren’t really honey-colored, and Sandrita had been emphatic about those traits. Well, as for the eyes, who knew what color they were. It was impossible to tell from far away. And the hair? The hair did not have a trace of honey, but was more or less dark, you could say black. And until he stood up, who knew if he was bowlegged. But if it was Forcás, why didn’t he come up to her? If he wasn’t Forcás, why was he looking at her? Maybe the poor man had nothing else to look at, and was rattled that she was looking at him so much. Aurelia shifted her eyes to the door because she sensed that now someone was walking in, and her instincts told her it was him; but no, not so, it was a group of señoras, so Lorenza decided she would stand up now, because the period of waiting had expired. She would take her boxes, drop them off at home, and go to the control meeting to warn them that something must have happened to Forcás.

“You brought me that vaina?” he asked from behind her, almost brushing her nape, a hoarse voice that of course was his, you didn’t have to be a magician to figure that out. She jumped. She hadn’t expected it to happen like this, that he would surprise her from behind, and she must have grown suddenly, because when she said hello, her voice sounded like an impostor’s, like theater parley. He, on the other hand, was very calm as he sat beside her. He was, in fact, grinning.

“A pretty smile,” Lorenza told Mateo. “Your father had a pretty smile.”

“He hadn’t lost the tooth yet,” Mateo cut in. “He used the word vaina? You’re saying Forcás told you vaina? He used that exact expression, You brought me that vaina? It’s so Colombian.”

“That’s what he said. He must have already known where I was from.” Aurelia knew right away that the man beside her smoked, it was the first thing that her nose registered when she met a person. But she noticed another smell as well, one that she liked, the smell of raw wool from the heavy pullover he wore.

“His famous thick wool pullovers.”

“This one seemed woven by hand, and it emitted an aroma that inspired confidence, a pleasant animal smell.”

“A pleasant animal smell or the smell of a pleasant animal?”

“A smell like sheep. I’m just trying to tell you that he was wearing sheep’s wool. But your father also smelled like a third thing. He radiated energy and youth, and that smells too. It smells strong and is alluring.”

“It’s called testosterone, Lolé.”

“I wouldn’t have called it that. But now that you’ve said it, he was a hunk of a man, your father. Of course he exuded testosterone.”

“If anybody questions us, let’s just say that we met in your country, last year,” Forcás proposed, to get their minute straight.

“Got it,” she responded. “And what were you doing there?”

“I have an export business.”

“What do you export?”

“Leather goods: When we parted there, you said you would call me as soon as you arrived in Buenos Aires, so that I could show you the city.”

“Nice. And who introduced us in Colombia?”

“Someone in your family. You tell me who.”

“My brother-in-law?”

“Your brother-in-law was my contact for the sale. Give him a name.”

“Patrick.”

“Patrick what?”

“Patrick Ferguson. Let’s say he’s an Australian.”

“If they ask you anything else, say we’re just getting to know each other and don’t know a lot about each other.”

“Not even names?”

“You’ll say my name is Mario.”

The place was loud, and Forcás spoke very softly and with a pronounced Buenos Aires accent, so she had trouble understanding everything and had to lean in closer. Maybe it was because of this that at first she smelled him more than watched him. A little bit later, when she leaned back and adjusted her angle of vision, she noticed that indeed his shoulders were wide and his hair was pretty, not exactly the color of honey, more a light chestnut, but it was the same, it was still handsome, everything about him was handsome, Sandrita had not lied about a thing.

“So then it’s true, my father has wide shoulders like Patrick always said. But you didn’t tell me what happened with the chat.”

“What chat?”

“The one you left in Humberto’s Mercedes.”

“Shawl, kiddo, shawl, the scarf.”

“Right, right, shawl.”

“I never found out. Since I never saw them again, I never knew what became of the chat.”

“And the boxes?” Mateo asked.

“The boxes?”

“The ravioli, Lorenza, the ravioli.”

“That’s exactly what your father asked on the day we met at the table in Las Violetas. He asked me what was in the boxes, and it surprised me that he was surprised.”

“Oh, I just brought you this vaina. It’s ravioli,” Aurelia told Forcás.

“Ravioli? Are you nuts? Who would be stupid enough to walk around with boxes of ravioli on a Monday?”

“You see, Mateo, why I was so sure that our first meeting was on a Monday?”

“What was wrong with ravioli on Monday?”

“Very bad. When Forcás threw it in my face like that, I started blubbering, embarrassed that I had screwed up again. ‘But she told me,’ I tried to explain, ‘yesterday my contact told me … ’”

“Listen, yesterday was Sunday, nena,” Forcás whispered in her ear. “The ravioli would have been good yesterday, but not today. The pasta makers are closed on Mondays. It’s suicide to walk around with that on Monday. Except for you, there’s no other retard walking around Buenos Aires with boxes of ravioli. No one eats ravioli on Mondays here.”

“You’re the one who switched Sunday to Monday, how was I supposed to know? How should I know what they eat here on Mondays, as far as I am concerned they eat shit,” she exploded. Sandrita had already lectured her and now this Forcás was copping an attitude from the start. “Besides, I’m warning you,” she told him, “don’t start calling me stupid, or petit bourgeois, and definitely not retard or nena, because I am not a nena, and will not put up with this shower of insults, I’m up to here with all of it.”

“Did the comrades harass you too much?” Forcás asked, softening his voice to placate her and unleashing his seductive smile.

“That’s all they’ve done lately.”

“There must have been other fuckups like this one. It’s stuffed, this one with the ravioli. What about the other box?” Forcás asked, half mocking.

She turned red again because she knew he was right, she had to be more careful or there would be a catastrophe. By then he would have lit one of the green-label Particulares 30, which he sucked on willfully, as if eager for cancer.

“Okay, so now tell me why they called my father Forcás. Aside from the sheep smell, what else made him seem like he was from the country?”

“Just that, the sheep smell. I learned later that your grandmother Noëlle knitted those pullovers for him, using wool from the different types of sheep they raised at the farm in Polvaredas.”

Maybe if she had observed Forcás with a more prophetic eye, she would have even then picked up on how aggressive he was, which was evident in the violence of his movements and his intransigent opinions. Although it had to be that way, more so because he was a soldier than because he was from the country. The truth was that on that first day, Aurelia didn’t see him as someone from the country, perhaps because all she noticed was that he was the most attractive man she had ever met. She never found out what time he had arrived at Las Violetas, or if he had already been there when she arrived, watching her and waiting until the last minute to appear. The thing was that he was there now, seated beside her, gazing at her with those presumptuous eyes and quizzing her on why she had brought so many boxes.

“There are a lot of boxes because there are a lot of vainas,” she replied.

Forcás wanted to know what else there was aside from the passports, and she explained that there was microfilm and money, dollars.

“I thought it was only passports,” he said. “I had no idea about the rest. Why would they send all that with one messenger? It’s crazy.”

“I did what I was told without asking questions. In fact, I was told not to ask questions.”

“You’re right, it’s not your fault.”

“That would be the icing on the cake, if it were my fault.”

“True, true, the noose is tight around our necks. But what balls, those sons of bitches comrades in Madrid, they were making you walk the plank, sending you with all that.”

“Are you sure that’s how my father spoke?” Mateo asked. “With that accent and those exact words.”

“Yeah, well, something like that. I don’t know how to do the Argentinean accent.”

“It’s all right, go on. But maybe just do his part in a normal accent. It sounds a little forced the way you’re doing it.”

“I’ll do it however I want, kiddo, don’t pressure me. Besides, it’s almost over. Or do you want to leave the story there?”

“I want you to finish, but without an accent.”

Aurelia asked Forcás if they had not told him that she would be bringing all this and he said that they had talked over the phone with Europe but that he hadn’t quite understood everything — there were so many codes to throw off the enemy that they were themselves thrown off.

“And that’s how the first story ends, Mateo. Nothing else happened,” his mother said. “We couldn’t linger there because of all the ravioli and dollars in our possession. We had to go. The best thing was for each of us to go our own way as soon as possible. But it was evident that both of us wanted to stay, we felt good together, more than good, I imagine we were both already half in love.”

“Already?”

“Well, let’s just say we were hooked. Chemistry, they call it. Chemistry, what else? Because when it comes down to it, we had barely talked. Some flirtatious gestures, a tap on the shoulder, a graze of the knees, a goodbye kiss, a few minutes chatting about contraband, goodbye again, a kiss again, ciao, ciao again, ciao, for real this time.”

“You go first,” Forcás suggested when it was no longer possible to prolong their goodbyes, and she went for her wallet to pay for her tea and his coffee.

“Don’t even think about it. Put that away, nena.” There he went with the nena again, but this time it didn’t irk her as much. “You evince yourself if you pay, sorry. You have to let the man pay at these meetings.”

“Evince?”

“Make evident, betray yourself.”

Aurelia was almost at the door leading out to Rivadavia when she turned around and walked back toward the table where Forcás was still seated.

“I forgot to tell you that the microfilm is in the bottom of the shoe box,” she whispered in his ear, taking a last whiff of that rich sheep smell, and he grabbed her by the arm as she was about to go. “Can I see you next week?”

“All right, stop, Lolé,” Mateo said. “I want you to explain to me why you fell in love with Forcás. Was it his pretty hair, his wide shoulders, the wool smell?”

“What a question! Let’s see. First, because he was a party member. At that time, I would have never fallen in love with someone who wasn’t.”

“So you liked him because he was a laborer?”

“He wasn’t a laborer.”

“From the country, then.”

“Originally from the country. But that wasn’t a social class that we cared much about, we favored the industrial laborers. As you know, the muzhiks betrayed the October Revolution.”

“What?”

“Nothing, never mind. Second, I liked that he was the complete opposite of any boyfriend that Papaíto would have wanted for me. And third, pure old-fashioned attraction, I guess.”

“Sexual?”

“Yes, but he also seemed like a very interesting guy.”

“Did he seem like he would be a good father?” Mateo aimed the question point-blank and it caught his mother off guard. She felt embarrassed to have gone on about such trivialities, such dreadful tomfoolery. She remained silent for a moment because she did not know how to respond, anything she said would have been inadequate.

“A good father? No, Mateo, I didn’t think to ask myself that. I didn’t even ask myself if he was a good man.”