No Place for Heroes

42

“UNCLE MICHE SAID it was true that he was a bus driver and that he covered the nighttime route 166, from the Third of February to Freedom. Look, Lolé, here on this napkin he jotted it down and told me to keep the data for when you wrote a book about those times, Line 166, from Third of February to Freedom,” Mateo told Lorenza after his return from Villa Gesell, having traveled there on the 7:40 AM Expreso Alberino, to spend the day with his father’s brother.

He had called the night before and they had agreed to meet. Apparently Miche knew nothing about Ramón’s whereabouts. They had quarreled a few years ago and had not seen each other or spoken since.

Uncle Miche was waiting at the bus terminal and Mateo had no problem recognizing him, first because nobody else was standing around, and second because he remained the same as he had been in the picture that Lorenza kept in an album: a rather tall man, thin but with a potbelly, a pinched nose, and Ray-Ban sunglasses with mirrored lenses, smiling politely and holding his nephew, who was only a few days old.

“You look the same, Uncle Miche,” Mateo said. “You have not changed at all.” He only took the sunglasses off for cooking.

“Eyewear of the professional bus driver,” Lorenza said. “The same ones he used when he drove.”

“But now he’s a butcher again, and he still uses them. I think it’s because of the sand. The wind was blowing and picked up the sand and it got in his eyes. There in the Villa Gesell, Miche has a butcher shop, and he lives in the back. The first thing he told me when I got off the bus was that he was going to prepare me one memorable steak, that he had set the best cut of meat aside, that it was the kind of beef we never had in Colombia, and to get ready because I was going to taste the best steak sausage of my life. That was the first thing he said when I arrived.”

“So? Was it good, the steak sausage?” Lorenza wanted to know.

“Yeah, very good, but best were the French fries. He made a mountain of fries and we gobbled them down. Miche left the assistant manager in charge of the butcher shop and took the day off to spend it with me. We talked a lot. He said my dad was a wretch, who had never gone looking for me because he was a coward. He also told me that it killed my grandparents.”

“Then they are dead?”

“Yes, both. Pierre my grandfather died first, of a heart attack. He was living with Miche, and was in the middle of building a stone fence. Miche took me to see the fence, which was half done, just like it had been left by my grandfather, a few steps from the butcher shop. According to Miche, Grandfather worked until the last minute of his life. And then Grandmother died, Noëlle.”

“Did he say how she died?”

“Sadly. He said that my grandmother never could deal with the sadness of losing her grandchild. I really liked Uncle Miche. I liked going to see him. He said that Villa Gesell was gray and desolate during the winter, but that I had to return. He invited me to spend the summer there. You’ll see what beauties come out to the beach in thongs, he said, you have to make the most of the fact that you’re single, kid. I guess he can’t because he is married. The wife wasn’t there, she had gone to Buenos Aires for a few days.”

“Azucena?”

“No, not her. With Azucena he had no children. Now he has another woman and a two-year-old child. Roughly the age I was the last time he saw me, so he said, and he showed me the photo of the baby. He said the child was identical to me. I didn’t see the resemblance, but I kept quiet. Guess what the baby’s name is.”

“What?”

“Guess.”

“I don’t know … Ramón … Pierre …”

“No, wrong. I’ll give you another chance.”

“Oh, kiddo. Let’s see … His name is Ernesto, Che. No wait, Leon Trotsky.”

“Nope.”

“Then Miguel, like his father.”

“His name is Mateo, like me. Mateo Iribarren. Just like me.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I swear. So I have a double. But it doesn’t bother me. Uncle Miche told me that he hadn’t named him that to replace me, but to not forget me. He said he did it for the sake of Grandmother, who was doing so badly because she had lost one Mateo, and Miche wanted to give her another to console her.”

“Okay—”

“Yes, it’s okay. It was a bit sad to see that little wall that Grandfather was building when he died. A very short little wall, you know, Lolé? It wasn’t like my grandfather was making the Great Wall of China or anything. It was a low wall, nothing more. I thought, so this was the last thing my grandfather did, and I would have liked to have helped. I would have liked to hand him the rocks, which I could have done, even as a child, they were medium-size stones. Mar del plata, Miche said that they were called, an unusual name for stones, sea of silver. In any case, I don’t think they weighed much. I should have asked Uncle Miche what the wall was for, why Grandfather was building it right there. Maybe tomorrow I’ll call and ask him.”

Mateo liked the voice of his uncle, who seemed calm. He had a slow way of speaking and Mateo understood him well. He had also shown him the set of Swiss knives that he used in the butcher shop and said that they had cost a fortune and were his greatest pride.

“The brand is Swibo, Lorenza, can you imagine? Think of Swiss Army knives but for butchers, with yellow, ergonomic handles. He had at least twelve of these, all different sizes. There was one that looked like an ax, I swear. They were some impressive weapons.”

“If you want, we can practice some target tossing,” Uncle Miche proposed and pulled out another set of knives, specifically for throwing, and began to toss them against a board. Mateo told Lorenza that Miche almost always hit the bull’s-eye.

“Me, on the other hand, I didn’t hit it once. It’s difficult to throw a knife. Have you ever tried it? You have to grab it by the blade, but like this, so as not to cut yourself, and wham, you chuck it. I was a sissy with that and Miche made fun of me. But in a good way, right? He didn’t want to offend me with his ridicule, or make me feel bad. He also has a retractable rattan stick for Filipino kali, a scimitar, and a professional nunchaku. He let me play around with all of them for a while.”

“Was Grandmother Noëlle also living there when she died?”

“No, she was somewhere else, with Ramón. She lived at Villa Gesell until my grandfather died and then she went to live with Ramón, I don’t know where.”

“Do you know why they fought, Miche and Ramón?”

“No.”

“Did you ask?”

“Yes, but I think he didn’t respond.”

“Could it have been because of that story of the robbery and prison?”

“Maybe. Told me the same stuff about what we already knew, but in the James Bond style, you know, the hero mode. What was new was that he said that my father told him he wanted the money to organize a political party.” Miche wanted his half to open the butcher shop, and Ramón wanted to continue the revolution. That was what Miche told him. “Then he asked me if I’d like to take a walk along the beach and we went, but we stopped at a tin shack on the shore, and he ordered a beer and treated me to a Coca-Cola. He said that if the sea settled down we could go out on the boat, and I liked the idea, but in the end the sea did not settle down.”

“Was the beach pretty?”

“Not really. It was cold and there was garbage. Uncle Miche said that in summer it became spectacular.”

“Coronda was a wonder in those days. The city bus your uncle Miche drove,” Lorenza said, “it was decorated in black lights, with psychedelic motifs and red tasseled drapes that swayed at every stop and jolt. He had installed hundreds of bulbs, like on a Christmas tree, which turned on whenever he braked. Not to mention the sound equipment and a high-decibel collection of tapes he’d recorded, of whatever songs were popular then in the city.”

“A magical traveling discotheque.”

“Yes. And he succeeded, Miche, believe you me. He had his success with girls, who when getting on the bus were delighted to see him there, driving, a real lord of the night with his black tie, blue shirt, and sunglasses, cruising through the sleeping city in his fiery ship with black lights to the beat of some psychedelic romantic ballad. That’s how he picked up Azucena. Then when they became a couple, she put up photos of them on the dashboard, on the outside, and made him paint her name in phosphorescent letters on the body of the bus. One out of every ten nights, Miche was off and then we would take the bus out. Your father equipped it with Campari, soda, olives, crackers, mayonnaise, pickles, and sausages, and we were off and running for the night through Buenos Aires in our own private traveling club. Those were good times, kiddo.”