Hard Red Spring (29 page)

Marcella restacked their bags into a higher wall, then reached into one. “Here, Dorie, I brought a book club read for us.” She handed over a thick volume with a simple title,
Brazil
, in flaking gold letters.

Accepting it in her hands, Dorie managed a thank-you. Why did every damned thing that happened to her seem so significant all of a sudden? “In English? Where did you find this, Marcella?”

“Oh, we've had it for ages around the house. I picked it up last week and finished it already. I'm sorry to report, it's boring as hell.”

—

The flowering vines of Cortez's villa appeared to be either holding the whole building up, or tearing it down. Tender green fingers clutched the windows, climbed the decayed stucco. More problematic, the thick hardwood vines pried up the shutters, the roof tiles, destroying and fortifying with the inexhaustible vigor known only to nature.

Inside, everything gave the impression of being slightly damp—the wallpaper, the rugs, the curtains. The magnificent carved furniture gleamed with recent oiling, though the upholstery had all faded into the same tired pinkish hue. A painting of some porcelain-skinned ancestor surveyed the fate of his fortunes with resignation.

The
Voice of Liberation
signal was strong, rare for any radio station in the highlands, Cortez said. “They must be really close.”

The soldiers had filed off the train, then piled onto idling army trucks at Xela's station. Gone in less than five minutes, into the forests. In their wake, the town shut itself up, shops closed, children scooped from the street, as if there had been an invasion.

Cortez's old woman cook appeared in the room, a character almost not to be believed. She did not wear an Indian costume but fine Western clothes a bit too tight, too young, and too long for her, making Dorie think Cortez had dressed her from apparel left in the house by his fleeing forebears. She sat with the radio an inch from her ear. Cortez did not sit. He walked about, fussing with books that crumbled at his touch and gazing distractedly out the window at his land, which no longer belonged to him.

Since this broadcast was in Quiché, the cook began to translate the show into Spanish, with a high, troubling wail that not even Marcella could understand.

“They just apologized for signing off so abruptly last night,” Cortez translated for the women, peering through the vines. “They had been detected and had to flee. But now they're safe and settled somewhere else.”

Dorie had been slightly skeptical of these broadcasts at first, but Arbenz's outsized reaction seemed to confirm their veracity. He'd never cracked down on the press before, not after Jim's fictitious newspaper stories or
Guatemala Radio's incendiary reporting. Nothing more than a fine. So something big had to be happening throughout the country to cause him to send the military out.

“They're doing the news now, they say the news you won't hear anywhere else, because Arbenz is controlling the media.” He paused, listened. “Thousands of Indians marched in the capital demanding Arbenz's resignation.”

And there it was. “Today?” asked Dorie. “They did today? And to think we just missed it! Just!” She threw herself back on the sofa, sending up a cloud of dust. Of course, in response to mass protests, Arbenz had declared the military sweep. That seemed proportional, that made sense. Why would he send thousands of troops out after a radio show?

“They're interviewing a cabinet member now, who wishes to remain anonymous.” Cortez, flustered at the dynamic change, struggled as this cabinet member spoke in Spanish, followed by the girl María translating for the Indian listeners. The man spoke, Cortez tried to translate, but then María's Quiché muddled him. All made worse by Cortez's cook echoing a few beats behind, translating María's translation back into the original Spanish, but with that wailing accent no one could understand but Cortez.

“He's resigned, along with other cabinet members, with more to resign and abandon the sinking ship of Arbenz's Communist regime. His reason for resigning, he says, is . . .” He paused. The women leaned forward. “Corruption! Arbenz expropriated land from a neighbor to build a swimming pool. It's part of his master plan.”

“Master plan?” Marcella asked. “His master plan is to have a swimming pool?”

Cortez waited for the words to filter back to him through the cook. “No, no. That's not his master plan. The swimming pool was corruption. His master plan is Soviet control! He's slowly spreading the military through the countryside. Soon all opposition will be repressed, freedom of the press suspended, martial law declared, and the Russians will be running the country.”

Marcella, during the interview, stood up and crossed the room to be closer to the radio. She listened to this cabinet member with a peculiar look on her face, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Do you know him?” Dorie asked. “Do you recognize his voice?”

“Yes,” was all she said. She returned to the sofa, smiling, and said nothing more for the rest of the broadcast.

After the show finished, the party settled in the dining room for drinks
and a game of gin rummy. Cortez favored the thick, spiced egg liquor that the Indians made and poured sizable portions for everyone. They drank to the courage of María and Manuel, miraculously spared for another day. Cortez dealt the cards with trembling fingers. He generously laid down runs and tricks the women could play off of, while doing his best not to win.

“It's no fun this way, Cortez,” Marcella scolded him. “Let's make it interesting with a bet. I want your cook. Is she in the union?”

The egg liquor was strong, even for Marcella. The night progressed cheerily enough, with Cortez wielding one of his ancestor's swords, staging a mock attack on his shadow against the wall. He did his best to control it, but during one of the more dramatic moments, had smashed a wooden tea cart. Soon after, the evening took a turn. He fell to lamenting the old days, when God and property meant something. The women had left him caressing the sword, asleep.

The drink had the opposite effect on Dorie, making her giddy with the possibilities of her new life with Tomás. She even decided on the subject she'd study in Brazil. She'd always fallen back on literature, but falling back would be no way to start anew. No, she would study archaeology. The decision had come to her that night, in bed, while reading the book on Brazil. Whole civilizations, swallowed by the jungle. Societies with temples raised to nothing, completely alien moral codes. Human sacrifice, animal gods. Nothing about her situation seemed scandalous in comparison. All the obstacles she anticipated fell away, became nothing more than constructs of a failing society.

She dreamed that Guatemala City had vanished just as completely as those jungle cities, obliterated by Agua and Fuego. A plague of fire and water, erasing all evidence of her unhappiness.

~~~~~

The sound of grinding gears woke her in the morning. Dorie went to the window. A red truck full of Communists turned in front of the villa and made its way toward the coffee fields.

Cortez drove to Xela late that morning and brought back three newspapers. One copy of
Prensa La Verdad
, one of
El
Diario
from two days before, and one copy of the latest
El Patriota
, a notorious echo chamber for Arbenz.
Prensa
's front page featured a grainy picture of peasants somewhere in the south, rallying themselves with guns.
El
Diario
showed similar photos of men, quoted as saying things like, “Communist land is temporary land,” and “Ownership is the basis for laws.”

El Patriota
offered a completely different account of the state of the nation. Three presidential decrees dominated the front page. The first being that Arbenz's cabinet was stable and no one had resigned. The military, also, remained sound. No generals had defected. The third decree insisted that there was no unrest in Guatemala, that a few media outlets had been “hijacked” by a “foreign party,” and because of this, the state had no choice but to suspend freedom of the press in the interest of national security. Any lingering doubts Dorie had about the uprising dissolved with this decree. Freedom of the press, one of Arbenz's most beloved accomplishments, tossed aside. Cortez read on.
El Patriota
, however, would remain in print, to keep the nation informed. Arbenz hoped to soon reinstate the radio stations and printing presses.

“Oh my God,” Cortez cried. “At last it has come to this. We are living under Stalin. No one can deny it now.” He walked to his radio, turned the dial through all the frequencies, to find various tones of static and marimba music. Guatemala Radio had been reduced to an especially jovial song, with trumpets and maracas as well.

“Jenks must be in a state,” Dorie said. “He's either roaring around the embassy or passed out in the hall. We got out of there just in time.”

Flipping through
Prensa La Verdad
, Dorie found an article with an old-fashioned picture of a little white girl.
¡Muerta!
the headline read.

“What's this?”

Cortez read the story with nervous fingers. “Oh, this isn't very pleasant. Not at all.” He folded the newspaper and put it behind his back. “Not vacation reading at all.”

“Cortez, what does it say?”

“Just another terrible story. About a little girl who was supposed to be murdered around here in 1902. A long time ago, Dorie. Nothing to be afraid of.”

“The girl who was murdered with her family?” Dorie lunged and grabbed the paper back. Cortez, unused to women, could not resist.

“Supposed to be, but this says she wasn't. This story says they just found out that she's still alive, that she wasn't killed in 1902.”

“Alive!” Dorie knew it. She knew then Tomás had succeeded, though it didn't quite matter anymore. She studied the blurred image. The little girl with the white shoes that Tomás had so coveted.
Evie Crowder
, the caption read.

“Well, she was alive.” Cortez sighed, shaking his head.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, she was alive, but they found out she was alive because they've just now found her dead. Communists found her in her home in Totonicapán and murdered her because she was going to claim their communal land.” He took the paper back. “
An old lady
,” he read, “
hacked into pieces for inheriting land from her family
.”

Dorie took back the paper and studied the story, published in the human-interest section, where Jim usually placed his articles. It sounded like one of his bullshit stories. Especially that last line.

—

“Cortez, you have family in Brazil, don't you?” she asked over coffee in the sitting room before lunch. Marcella had yet to emerge from her bedroom and, Dorie assumed, her egg liquor hangover.

“Yes, of course. They moved most of the coffee operation there, leaving Guatemala to me.”

“So you've been there? Do they have universities?”

“Oh yes.”

She raised her coffee cup to her lips, but Cortez moved in and snatched it away.

“Sorry, sorry!” He shot up from his chair. “I just realized I forgot to tell the cook to boil it twice. Jim made me promise to boil everything twice for you.” In a moment, he retreated to the kitchen and returned. “It'll be just a moment.”

“Jim said that? Why? I've never boiled twice at home.”

“Of course, not before. But now that you two are trying for a baby—”

“Jim said that?” She pushed back from the table, chair legs screeching.

Cortez's face melted in horror. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to embarrass you. I thought . . .” But he failed to articulate what he thought.

Dorie breathed deeply, her hands gripping the edge of the table. Cortez, across from her, looked as if he might suffer a heart attack. “No, I'm sorry. It's not your fault what Jim says. It's just that we're not trying for a baby.”

“You're not,” he echoed, unmoving.

“No. I'm leaving him, Cortez.” It felt incredible to say out loud. “I'm leaving Jim and he has no idea.” She felt so good, so safe. She knew Cortez would never repeat this to anyone. She could see that he was trying already to forget it for his own sake. He began chugging around the room, vibrating with coffee and fear.

“Why are you so afraid of Jim?” she asked.

“Aren't
you
afraid of him?”

“No. I used to think I was, but then I realized I was just afraid of the unknown. Of starting over without his sphere of influence.” She'd never met any woman she admired who moved through the world without this safety net, until she'd met Naomi.

“But the sphere is everything!” Cortez spun around with crazed eyes. “Without the sphere, we're just bugs struggling in the dirt! We're no different from them out there!” He thrust a hand in the direction of the window, the Communists.

This image chilled her, forced her to picture life in the Brazilian jungle, kneeling in the dirt after some failed civilization. Because she'd been cast out from her own. “What do you think Jim will do for you if I go back and say I had a lovely vacation? What do you think he's capable of, Cortez?”

“
Are
you having a lovely vacation?”

“Yes,” she reassured him. “And I will make sure Jim knows.”

With this, Cortez turned back to the window, she thought to think of an answer to her question. But then his shoulders shook despite his best efforts. He was crying.

—

“
Arbenz has suspended the freedom of the press, so we,
The Voice of Liberation
, are the first and only source to now report that civil war has broken out in Guatemala. The rebel Castillo Armas, with an army of thousands, has invaded from Honduras. This morning, in San Pedro, peasants greeted his army with a parade. There, the locals have joined his march for the capital, increasing his numbers. He and his army have demanded that Jacobo Arbenz resign, and if he does not, they will take the capital by force!
”