Of Love and Shadows (10 page)

They heard commands, and before anyone could react, the soldiers invaded in a body, occupying the patio and rushing into the house with weapons in hand. They shoved people aside, scattered the children with their shouts, used their rifle butts to beat anyone who stood in their way, and filled the air with loud orders.

“Face the wall! Hands behind your head!” bawled the bull-necked officer in command.

Everyone obeyed except Evangelina Ranquileo, imperturbable in her trance, and Irene Beltrán, frozen in her tracks, too shocked to be able to move.

“Your documents!” bellowed a sergeant with Indian features.

“I am a journalist and he is a photographer,” said Irene in a steady voice, pointing to her friend.

They frisked Francisco, slapping his ribs, armpits, crotch, and shoes.

“Turn around,” they commanded.

The officer they would later come to know as Lieutenant Juan de Dios Ramírez stuck the barrel of his machine gun in Francisco's ribs.

“Name!”

“Francisco Leal.”

“What the shit do you two think you're doing here?”

“We're doing an article, not shit,” Irene interrupted.

“I'm not talking to you!”

“But I'm talking to you, Captain,” she smiled, ironically raising his grade.

The officer hesitated, unaccustomed to impertinence from a civilian.

“Ranquileo!” he called.

Immediately, a dark-haired giant, armed with a rifle and with an addled look on his face, stepped forward from the troops and stood at attention before his superior officer.

“Is this your sister?” The lieutenant pointed to Evangelina, who was in another world, lost in tenebrous copulation with the spirits.

“Affirmative, Lieutenant!” the man replied, rigid, heels together, chest expanded, eyes front, face like granite.

At that instant a new and more violent rain of invisible stones lashed the roof. The officer sprawled face-down on the floor, imitated by his men. Stupefied, the others watched them slither on elbows and knees to the patio, where they sprang to their feet and zigzagged to take up positions. From behind the laundry trough, the lieutenant began firing in the direction of the house. It was a prearranged signal. Maddened soldiers, crazed by uncontrollable violence, squeezed their triggers, and in seconds the air was filled with noise, shouts, sobs, barking, crowing, and gusts of gunpowder. The people on the patio threw themselves to the ground; some took shelter in the irrigation ditch or behind trees. The evangelicals attempted to rescue their musical instruments, and Father Cirilo ducked beneath the table, clutching the rosary of Santa Gemita and crying out to heaven for the Lord of All Armies to protect him.

Francisco Leal saw that bullets were striking close to the window; some penetrated the thick adobe walls like a burst of dark omens. He seized Irene by the waist and threw her to the floor, shielding her with his body. He felt her trembling in his arms, not knowing whether she was suffocating from his weight or shivering with fear. The moment the shouting and terror subsided, he got up and ran to the door, sure that he would find a half-dozen corpses; the only cadaver that met his eyes, however, was that of a chicken with its guts shot out. The soldiers were out of breath, possessed with madness, beside themselves with power. Neighbors and curiosity seekers lay on the ground, covered with dust and mud; children were crying; and the dogs were straining at their leashes, frenziedly barking.

Francisco felt Irene pass by his side like an exhalation, and before he could stop her, she was standing in front of the lieutenant with her hands on her hips, shouting in an unrecognizable voice: “Savages! Beasts! Who do you think you are! Don't you know you could kill somebody?”

Francisco ran toward her, certain the lieutenant would place a bullet between her eyes, but was astounded to see that the officer was laughing.

“Don't be so nervous, honey, we were firing in the air.”

“Don't call me ‘honey'! And what are you doing here in the first place?” Irene scolded, unable to control her nerves.

“Ranquileo here told me about his sister, and I said to him: ‘Where priests and doctors have failed, the armed forces will triumph.' That's what I told him, and that's why we're here. We'll see if the kid keeps having her fits once I've taken her prisoner!”

He strode in the direction of the house. Irene and Francisco followed like automatons. What happened then would remain engraved in their memories, and they would remember it as a succession of turbulent and disconnected images.

Lieutenant Juan de Dios Ramírez marched over to Evangelina's bed. The mother made a move to stop him, but he pushed her aside. Don't touch her! the mother managed to scream, but she was too late; the officer had already reached out and grasped the afflicted girl's arm.

Before anyone could have predicted it, Evangelina's fist flashed out and cracked against the officer's ruddy face, striking him in the nose with such force that he tumbled backward to the floor. Like a useless ball, his helmet rolled beneath the table. The girl immediately lost her rigidity, her eyes were no longer wild, she stopped foaming at the mouth. The person who effortlessly seized Lieutenant Ramírez's tunic, lifted him into the air, and carried him out of the house, shaking him like a mop, was a gentle fifteen-year-old girl with fragile bones, who not long before had been serving cool water with toasted flour and honey beneath the grape arbor. Only the prodigious strength betrayed her abnormal state. Irene reacted swiftly. She snatched the camera from Francisco's hands and began to snap pictures, ignoring the aperture, hoping that some shots would come out in spite of the abrupt change in light intensity between the interior shadows and the reverberating light of midday.

Through the lens Irene saw Evangelina haul the lieutenant to the center of the patio and with total indifference throw him to within a few meters of the Protestants who crouched there trembling. The officer tried to struggle to his feet, but she struck a few well-aimed blows to his neck that forced him back to the ground; she kicked him several times without rage, ignoring the soldiers who had surrounded her and aimed their weapons but in their shock did not dare fire. The girl seized the machine gun Ramírez still held clutched to his breast and hurled it aside. It fell in a mudhole where it sank before the impassive snout of a pig that snuffled at it, then watched it disappear, swallowed up in the mire.

At that moment Francisco Leal came to his senses and remembered his training as a psychologist. He approached Evangelina Ranquileo and gently but firmly tapped her on the shoulder, calling her by name. The girl seemed to return from a long somnambulistic journey. She lowered her head, smiled timidly, and went and sat beneath the arbor, while the uniformed soldiers ran to recover the machine gun, clean off the muck, look for the helmet, give aid to their superior officer, help him to his feet, brush off his clothing. Are you all right, Lieutenant? Trembling, the pale officer pushed them aside, clapped the helmet on his head and grabbed his weapon, unable to find in all his vast repertoire of violence any action adequate for this situation.

Motionless, terrorized, everyone waited for some atrocious response, some dark madness, some final calamity that would mean the end of all of them; they expected to be lined up against the wall and shot on the spot, or at least to be kicked into the Army truck and “helped” to disappear in some mountain ravine. After a long moment of hesitation, however, Lieutenant Juan de Dios Ramírez turned and walked toward the truck.

“Retreat, assholes!” he shouted, and his men followed him.

Pradelio Ranquileo, Evangelina's oldest brother, with a stunned, sick expression on his dark face, was the last to obey, reacting only when he heard the roar of the engine. He ran and jumped into the rear of the truck beside his companions. Then the officer remembered the photographs, issued an order, and the sergeant turned and trotted to Irene; he took the camera from her, removed the roll of film and exposed it to the light. Then he tossed the apparatus over his shoulder as if it were an empty beer can.

After the soldiers departed, a total silence reigned in the patio of the Ranquileos. Everyone was frozen in his purpose, as in a bad dream.

Suddenly, Evangelina's voice broke the spell: “May I serve you another refreshment, Reverend?”

And then they could breathe, they could move, recover their belongings, and shamefacedly leave.

“God save us,” sighed Father Cirilo, brushing off his dust-covered cassock.

“And keep us,” added the Protestant pastor, white as a rabbit.

Irene recovered the camera. She alone was smiling. Once her fright had passed, she remembered only the grotesqueness of what had happened; she was thinking about the title of her article, and wondering whether censorship would permit her to mention the name of the officer who had received the drubbing.

“That was a bad idea my son had, to bring the soldiers,” Hipólito Ranquileo offered.

“Very bad,” added his wife.

Shortly afterward, Irene and Francisco returned to the city. She was hugging a huge bunch of flowers to her breast, a gift from the Ranquileo children. She was in a good mood, and seemed to have forgotten the incident, as if she had not the slightest idea of the danger they had been in. Apparently the only thing that bothered her was the loss of the film; without it, it would be impossible to publish the information, because no one would ever believe such a story. She consoled herself with the thought that they could return the following Sunday and take new photographs of Evangelina during her trance. The Ranquileos had asked them to come again, since they were planning to slaughter a hog, an annual fiesta that brought together a number of neighbors for a barbaric feast. In contrast, Francisco's indignation mounted throughout the return trip, and by the time he left Irene at her door he could scarcely contain himself.

“Why are you so angry, Francisco? It was only some bullets fired in the air, and a mangled hen,” she laughed as she said goodbye.

Until then he had tried to shield her from the unresolvable misery, the injustice and repression that he experienced daily and that were normal topics of conversation in the Leal household. He thought it extraordinary that Irene could sail innocently across the sea of anguish inundating the country, absorbed only in the picturesque and anecdotal. He was amazed to see her floating on air, untouched, buoyed up by her good intentions. Her unjustified optimism, her clean, fresh vitality provided a balm for the torments he suffered knowing he was powerless to change them. That day, nevertheless, he was tempted to take her by the shoulders and shake her until her feet touched the ground and she opened her eyes to the truth. But when he saw her standing by the stone wall of her house, her arms laden with wildflowers for her elderly friends and her hair tangled by the motorcycle ride, he felt that this creature was not made for sordid realities. He kissed her on the cheek, as close as possible to her lips, desiring passionately to remain forever by her side to protect her from the shadows. She smelt of herbs and her skin was cold.

— PART TWO —

Shadows

The warm earth still guards their last secrets.

—Vicente Huidobro

F
rom the time he started working for the magazine, Francisco had felt as if he were living a life of perpetual surprises. The city was divided by an invisible frontier that he was regularly obliged to cross. The same day that he photographed exquisite dresses of muslin and lace, in his brother José's barrio he treated the little girl who had been raped by her father, then carried the latest list of victims to the airport where, after reciting the password, he delivered it to a messenger he had never seen before. He had one foot in compulsory illusion and the other in secret reality. In each situation, he had to adjust his frame of mind to the demands of the moment, but at the end of the day, in the silence of his room, he would review the day's events and conclude that in facing the daily challenge his best course was not to think much at all, to avoid being immobilized by fear or rage. At that hour the image of Irene would grow in the shadows until it filled the room.

Wednesday night he dreamed of a field of daisies. Normally he did not remember his dreams, but the flowers were so fresh in his mind that he woke up convinced he must have been outdoors. At the office, midway through the morning, he ran into the astrologer, the woman with the coffee-black hair who was determined to tell his fortune.

“I can read it in your eyes, you've come from a night of love,” she said the minute she met him on the stairs to the fifth floor.

Francisco invited her to have a beer and, lacking other cosmic signs to aid her in her predictions, told her his dream. She informed him that daisies are a sign of good luck, and that he could count on something pleasant happening to him within the next few hours.

“That's some consolation, my friend,” she added, “because you've been marked by the finger of death.” She had told him this so often that the prediction no longer frightened him.

His respect for the astrologer increased, however, when shortly after her prediction was fulfilled: Irene called his house and said she wanted to meet the Leals, and asked him to invite her to dinner. They had scarcely seen each other during the week. The fashion editor had wanted to take a series of photographs in the Military Academy, and Francisco was tied up with the assignment. That season, romantic dresses with bows and flounces were in style, and the editor envisioned contrasting them with heavy artillery and uniformed men. For his part, the Commandant believed that this was an opportunity to present the armed forces in a more favorable light and, after increasing security measures, opened his doors to them. Francisco and the rest of the crew spent several days inside the military compound, at the end of which time he did not know whether he was more repelled by the patriotic hymns and military ceremonies or by the three beauty queens who posed for his camera. Both entering and leaving, they were subjected to a rigorous inspection. Amid a level of confusion akin to an earthquake, the guards turned their cases inside out, pawing through dresses, shoes, and wigs, prodding everything with their electronic equipment in search of any hint of covert activities. The models began the day with expressions of utter boredom, and spent the rest of the day complaining. It was the mission of Mario, the elegant and discreet stylist always dressed in white, to transform the models before each photograph. He was aided by two assistants, recently initiated into the homosexual world, who darted about him like two fireflies. Francisco, who was responsible for the cameras and film, had to force himself to remain calm if the guards exposed a roll during their inspection and ruined the day's work.

This traveling show, unsettling to anyone not accustomed to such a spectacle, caused some minor breakdowns in Academy discipline. The soldiers who were not excited by the beauty queens were distracted by the assistants, who flirted with them unrelentingly, much to Mario's annoyance. He had no tolerance for bad taste, and years ago had conquered any tendency toward promiscuity. He had come from a miner's family of eleven children. He had been born and raised in a gray town where the dust from the mines coated everything with an impalpable and deadly patina of ugliness and choked the lungs of the inhabitants, turning them into shadows of themselves. He was destined to follow in the footsteps of his father, his grandfather, and his brothers, but he had no taste for crawling into the entrails of the earth to dig at living rock, or for facing the backbreaking labor of a miner. He had delicate hands and a spirit inclined toward fantasy, a quality his father had tried to beat out of him. Drastic measures had not, however, cured his effeminate mannerisms or altered his inclinations. As a child, if the family turned their backs for an instant, he slipped away to entertain himself in solitary pastimes that provoked pitiless ridicule: he gathered stones from the river and polished them for the pleasure of seeing colors shine; he scouted the dismal landscape looking for dry leaves to arrange in artistic compositions; he was moved to tears by a sunset, wanting to capture it forever in a line of poetry or in a painting he could imagine but felt incapable of realizing. Only his mother accepted his peculiarities, seeing them not as signs of perversion but as evidence of a soul that was different. To save him from his father's merciless floggings, she took him to the parish priest to enroll him as an assistant to the sacristan, hoping to disguise his womanly gentleness among the skirts of the mass and offerings of incense. The boy's mind always wandered from his dog Latin, however, diverted by the golden particles floating in the light that streamed through the church windows. The priest overlooked his ramblings and taught him arithmetic, reading, and writing, and some rudiments of culture. At fifteen, Mario knew almost by heart the few books in the sacristy, as well as others lent him by the Turk who ran the general store and whose aim was to lure him into the room behind the store and there reveal to him the mechanisms of pleasure between men. When his father learned of these visits, he led Mario by the ear to the mine whorehouse, accompanied by his two older brothers. There, with a dozen men impatient to spend their Friday wages, they waited their turn. Only Mario noticed the filthy, faded curtains, the stench of urine and Lysol, the infinite desolation of the place. Only he was moved by the melancholy of those women exhausted by wear and the absence of love. Threatened by his brothers, when his turn came he tried to play the macho with the prostitute, but she needed only a glance at the boy to see that he was destined for a life filled with mockery and solitude. She was moved with compassion when she saw him trembling with revulsion at the sight of her naked flesh, and she asked the men to leave them alone so she could do her job in peace. As soon as the others left, she bolted the door, sat on the bed beside Mario, and took his hand.

“This isn't something you can be forced to do,” she said to Mario, who was weeping with terror. “Go away, far away, boy, where no one knows you, because if you stay around here they'll end up killing you.”

In all his life he had never received better advice. He dried his tears and promised never to spill them again over a manliness that in his heart he did not desire.

“If you don't fall in love, you will go far,” the woman told him as she said goodbye. Then she pacified his father, thus sparing Mario another thrashing.

That night Mario talked with his mother and told her what had happened. She reached into the back of her cupboard, pulled out a small roll of wrinkled bills, and put them in her son's hands. With that money, he took the train to the capital and found work sweeping up at a beauty salon in exchange for his food and a place to sleep, a straw mattress in the salon itself. He was dazzled. He had never imagined the existence of such a world: bright colors, delicate perfumes, smiling voices, frivolity, warmth, leisure. He marveled as he watched, in the mirror, the hands of professionals dressing the clients' hair. Seeing the women unveiled, he learned about the feminine soul. At night, alone in the salon, he practiced hairstyles on the wigs, and tried shadows, powders, and pencils on his own face to learn the skills of the art of cosmetics, and so discovered how to improve a face with colors and brushes. Soon he was allowed to work on new clients, and in a few months he was cutting hair better than anyone, and the most demanding ladies were requesting his services. He was able to transform a woman of ordinary appearance, using the frame of a nimbus of hair and the artifice of cosmetics skillfully applied; even more, however, he convinced each one of her attractiveness, because, finally, beauty is merely an attitude. He began to study with dedication, and to practice audaciously what he learned, helped by an infallible instinct that inevitably led him to the best solution. He was sought after by brides, models, actresses, and the wives of foreign ambassadors. Wealthy and influential ladies of the city opened their doors to him, and for the first time the miner's son walked on Oriental rugs, drank tea from translucent porcelain, and admired the glow of wrought silver, polished wood, and delicate crystal. He quickly learned to distinguish objects of real value, and vowed that he would never be satisfied with less, because his spirit suffered when he was faced with any form of vulgarity. Once he was a member of the inner circle of art and culture, he knew he could never go back. He gave free rein to his creativity and his entrepreneurial vision, and within a few years he was the owner of the most prestigious beauty salon in the capital and a small antique shop that served as a front for discreet deals. He became an expert in works of art, fine furniture, and luxury items, and was consulted by people in high positions. He was always busy, always in a hurry, but he never forgot that his first real opportunity had come to him through the magazine where Irene Beltrán worked, and any time they requested him for a style show or an article on fashion and beauty, he set aside whatever he was doing and showed up with the famous kit of wigs that were the tools of his trade. He became so influential that at elegant social affairs ladies wearing his outré maquillage proudly displayed his signature on their left cheek like a Bedouin's tattoo.

When he met Francisco Leal, Mario was a mature man with a narrow, straight nose—the result of plastic surgery—an artificial tan, a slender, trim physique won at the price of diets, exercise, and massage, a man impeccably dressed in the best English and Italian clothes—in sum, he was cultivated, refined, and famous. He moved in exclusive circles and, under the pretext of buying antiques, traveled extensively. He lived like an aristocrat, but he never denied his humble origins; any time the subject of his mining-town past arose, he spoke of it with tact and good humor. His simplicity won the sympathy of people who would not have forgiven his inventing a fictitious family tree. In exclusive circles, those to which one was admitted only by family name or great wealth, Mario was respected for his fine taste and his ease in good company. No important gathering was considered a success without him. He never returned to the house where he was born, nor ever again saw his father or brothers, but every month he sent a check to his mother to provide her with certain comforts and to help his sisters study for a profession, set up a business, or marry with a dowry. His sentimental involvements were discreetly expressed, never strident, like everything else in his life.

When Irene introduced Mario to Francisco Leal, only a slight gleam in his eyes betrayed the impression Francisco made on him. Irene noticed, and later teased her friend, telling him he should guard himself against the hairdresser's advances if he did not want to end up with an earring in his ear and a soprano voice. Two weeks later, they were both in the studio working with the new cosmetics of the season when Captain Gustavo Morante came by to look for Irene. His face changed when he saw Mario. The Captain had a violent antipathy to effeminate men, and it bothered him that his fiancée worked in a place where she brushed elbows with someone he considered a degenerate. Mario was absorbed in stroking golden frost onto the cheeks of a beautiful model, and his instinct failed him; he did not see the Captain's disapproval and, with a smile, held out his hand to him. Gustavo folded his arms across his chest, staring at Mario with unveiled scorn, and said, sorry, he never had anything to do with fairies. A glacial silence fell over the studio. Irene, the assistants, the models, everyone, stood frozen in consternation. Mario paled, and a shadow of pain clouded his eyes. Francisco Leal put down his camera, walked slowly forward, and placed his hand on the stylist's shoulder.

“You know why you don't want to touch him, Captain? Because you're afraid of your own feelings. Maybe all that rough camaraderie at the barracks is just a cover for homosexuality,” Francisco said in his usual deliberate and amiable tone.

Before Gustavo Morante could appreciate the gravity of the statement, or react in accordance with his upbringing, Irene stepped in; she seized her fiancé by the arm and dragged him from the room. Mario never forgot the incident. A few days later, he invited Francisco to dinner. Mario lived on the top floor of a fashionable building. His apartment was decorated in black and white, in a tasteful, modern, and original style. Geometric lines of steel and crystal were softened by three or four very old baroque pieces and by Chinese silk tapestries. On one of the soft area rugs purred two Angora cats, and near the hearth where hawthorn logs were blazing dozed a sleek black dog. I adore animals, said Mario as he greeted Francisco. Francisco saw two goblets beside an ice bucket where a bottle of champagne was cooling; he noticed the soft lights, smelled the aroma of the wood fire and incense burning in a bronze censer; he heard the jazz from the hi-fi speakers, and realized he was the only guest. For an instant, he was tempted to turn and walk out, to avoid raising any hope in his host's heart, but his desire not to hurt Mario, to gain his friendship, won out. As he looked in Mario's eyes, Francisco was moved by a mixture of pity and sympathy. He searched among his gentlest emotions for the one most appropriate to give to the man who was timidly offering him his love. He sat down beside Mario on the raw-silk sofa and accepted a glass of champagne, calling on his professional experience to help him steer through uncharted waters without doing something foolish. It was a night they both remembered. Mario told Francisco his life story, and delicately hinted at his growing passion. He anticipated a refusal, but he was too moved not to voice his emotions; no man had ever appealed to him so strongly. Francisco combined virile strength and assurance with the rare quality of gentleness. Mario did not fall in love easily; he distrusted stormy affairs, the cause of much unpleasantness in the past. He was prepared this once, however, to risk everything. Francisco also talked about himself and, without overtly saying so, communicated to Mario the possibility of sharing a solid and deep friendship, but never love. Through that long evening they discovered shared interests, laughed, listened to music, and drank champagne. In a burst of confidence forbidden by the most elementary caution, Mario spoke of his revulsion for the dictatorship and his desire to oppose it. His new friend, able to read the truth in his eyes, offered his secret in return. When they said goodbye, shortly before the hour of curfew, they exchanged a firm handshake, sealing a pact of solidarity.