Of Love and Shadows (17 page)

“Your revolver, Lieutenant,” he whispered.

The lieutenant removed his revolver from its holster and walked across the patio. The dull echo of his boots on the cobblestones rumbled in his men's guts. Now the lieutenant and his prisoner were face to face, looking in each other's eyes. They were the same age. The officer raised his arm, aiming at the temple, holding the revolver with both hands to control his shaking. The bright light of day was the last thing the condemned man saw as the shot penetrated his brain. Blood spurted over his face and chest, splashing on the officer's clean uniform.

The lieutenant's sob hung in the air, reverberating with the gunshot, but only Faustino Rivera heard it.

“Chin up, Lieutenant. They say it's the same in war. It's hard the first time, but then you get used to it.”

“Go fuck yourself, Corporal!”

The corporal was right, and as the days and weeks went by it had been much easier to kill for the nation than to die for it.

Sergeant Faustino Rivera stopped talking as he mopped the sweat from his neck. In his drunken haze, he could barely see Irene Beltrán, but he could tell that she was good-looking. He glanced at his watch and sat up straight. He'd been talking with this woman for two hours, and if he wasn't already late for his guard duty, he would tell her a few things more. She knew how to listen, and was interested in his stories—not like a lot of prissy girls who turn up their noses the minute a man gets a few beers under his belt; no sir, a real dish, that's what she was; a good body and some ideas in her head, though maybe a little bit scrawny; he liked a woman with big tits and broad hips, something to grab onto at the moment of truth.

“He wasn't a bad man, the lieutenant,
señorita.
It was later he changed, after he was put in command and didn't have to account to anyone,” Rivera concluded, straightening his uniform and rising to his feet.

Irene waited until his back was turned before stopping the tape recorder hidden in the purse she had left lying on a chair. She threw the last pieces of meat to the cat, thinking about Gustavo Morante, wondering whether her fiancé had ever had to cross a patio with a revolver in his hand to give the coup de grâce to a prisoner. Anguished, she forced those thoughts from her mind, trying to recall Gustavo's smooth-shaven face and clear eyes, but all that came to her mind was the profile of Francisco Leal as he bent over the desk beside her: the black eyes shining with understanding; the boyish grin when he smiled; the different mouth, thin-lipped, hard, when he saw evidence of man's cruelty to man.

*  *  *

The Will of God Manor was ablaze with lights; the drapes in the salons were opened wide, and music filled the air; it was visiting day, and relatives and friends of the elderly guests were arriving on their missions of mercy. From a distance the ground floor resembled an ocean liner that had mistakenly dropped anchor in the garden. The hosts and their visitors were strolling around the deck, enjoying the cool evening, or taking their ease in the lounge chairs on the terrace, like tarnished ghosts, spirits from another day, some murmuring to themselves, some making idle chatter, others perhaps recalling years long gone by or searching their memories for the names of their fellow residents or absent children and grandchildren. At that age, reviewing the past is like being deep within a labyrinth: at times the fog makes it impossible to recognize a place, an event, a loved one. The uniformed nurses moved about silently, tucking blankets around feeble legs, distributing nightly pills, serving tea to the residents and cool drinks to their guests. From invisible speakers came the youthful chords of a mazurka by Chopin that did not have the slightest relation to the measured internal rhythms of the inhabitants of the home.

The dog Cleo leaped with joy when Francisco and Irene entered the garden.

“Be careful, don't step on the forget-me-nots,” Irene warned her friend as they boarded the ship and she led him toward the voyagers from the past.

Irene's hair was pulled back into a knot that bared the curve of her neck; she was wearing a long, simple cotton dress, and for the first time since Francisco had known her, she had removed her jangling copper and brass bracelets. Something about her puzzled Francisco, although he could not say what it was. He watched her as they circulated among the old people; she was smiling and friendly with them all, especially the ones who were in love with her. Each one lived in a present suffused with nostalgia. Irene pointed out the hemiplegic who dictated his letters to her because he could not hold a pen in his rigid fingers. He wrote to childhood friends, to sweethearts long gone, to relatives dead and buried for decades; Irene never mailed those heartbreaking letters, to prevent his disappointment on receiving the letters returned and marked “Not at this address.” She fabricated replies and mailed them to the old man to spare him the pain of knowing he was alone in the world. Irene also introduced Francisco to an addled old fellow who never had visitors. His pockets were stuffed with spicy treasures that he guarded with his life: faded pictures of blooming young girls; sepia-tinted postcards hinting of a thinly veiled bosom; a darling leg exhibiting a garter of ribbon and lace. Then they came to the wheelchair of the wealthiest widow in the land. She was wearing a rumpled dress, a shawl consumed by time and moths, a single white First Communion glove. Dangling from her chair were plastic bags filled with trinkets, and on her knees rested a box of buttons that she counted and recounted to be sure that none was missing. A bemedaled Colonel intervened to tell them in asthmatic whispers that cannon shot had pulverized the lower half of that heroic woman's body. Do you know she has a heavy bag of gold coins she earned fair and square for being nice to her husband? Can you imagine, young man, what a dolt he must have been to pay for what he could have had free? I always counsel my recruits not to squander their pay on whores, because women happily spread their legs at the mere sight of a uniform. I say that from my own experience—I still have more than I can handle. Before Francisco could untangle any of these mysteries, a tall, very thin man with a tragic face approached them and asked about his son, his daughter-in-law, and their baby. Irene spoke to him privately, and then led him to a group engaged in animated conversation, and stood beside him until he seemed calm. Later, she explained that the old man had had two sons. One had left the country to live on the far side of the globe; his only communication with his father was through letters that were increasingly more distant and cool, because absence is as great an enemy as the passing of time. The other son had disappeared, along with his wife and a baby only a few months old. The old grandfather had not been blessed with losing his reason, and the minute they turned their backs he was out on the street looking for his children. Irene wanted to replace his tormenting speculations with the certainty of grief, and she assured him she had proof that his children were no longer alive. He would not, however, give up hope that someday he might find the child, since there were rumors of babies that had been saved through the traffic in orphans. Some already given up for dead had appeared suddenly in faraway countries; some had been adopted by families of other nationalities; others had been located in charitable institutions after so many years they did not even remember having had parents. With compassionate lies, Irene had succeeded in preventing his slipping out every time the garden was left unguarded, but she could not prevent him from wasting his dreams in hopeless torment, or his life in meaningless inquiries and the expectation of visiting the graves of his loved ones. Francisco also met a parchment-and-ivory couple sitting rocking in a wrought-iron love seat; they barely knew their own names but had had the good sense to fall in love in spite of the stubborn opposition of Beatriz Alcántara, who considered it an intolerable breach of decent behavior. Who ever heard of a pair of doddering old fools sneaking around stealing kisses? Irene, in contrast, defended their right to this last happiness, and wished all the guests the same luck; love would save them from loneliness, the cruelest sentence of old age. So leave them alone, Mama. Don't look at the door that she leaves open every night, don't put on that face when you find them together in the morning. Of course they make love, even though the doctor says that at their age it's impossible.

And last, Irene pointed out a woman sipping a cool drink on the terrace: Look carefully, that's Josefina Bianchi, the actress, have you heard of her? Francisco saw a small woman who had doubtless been a real beauty and, in a certain way, still was. She was wearing a dressing gown and satin slippers because she lived her life on Paris time—a difference of several hours and two seasons. Around her shoulders was draped a moth-eaten fox fur piece, with pathetic staring glass eyes and woebegone tails.

“Cleo pounced on her stole one day, and by the time we got it away from her, the foxes looked as if they had been run over by a train,” said Irene, restraining the dog.

The actress had trunkfuls of old clothes she had worn in her favorite performances, garments unused for half a century that she frequently brushed off to parade before the bedazzled eyes of her friends in the retirement home. She had lost none of her faculties, including a talent for flirting, and her interest in the world remained undiminished; she read all the newspapers, and from time to time went to the movies. She was Irene's favorite, and the nurses treated her with deference, calling her “ma'am” instead of “dearie.” To console her in her last years, she had her inexhaustible imagination. Entertained by her own fantasies, she lacked time or will to worry about the pettiness of life. There was no chaos in her memories; they were stored in perfect order, and she was happy when hunting through them. In that, she was luckier than other old people from whose minds entire episodes from the past had been erased, making them fear that they had not lived them. Josefina Bianchi had her full life to sustain her, and her greatest happiness lay in recalling it with the precision of a statistician. Her only regret was for opportunities she had missed: the hand she had not held out; the tears unshed; the mouths left unkissed. She had had several husbands and many lovers; she had lived her adventures without assessing the consequences; she wasted time with great satisfaction, since, she often said, she would live to be a hundred. She had arranged for her future with a good sense of the practical, choosing the retirement home herself when she realized she could no longer live alone; and she charged a lawyer with the task of administering her savings to assure her well-being to the end of her days. She felt a deep affection for Irene Beltrán; in her youth Josefina Bianchi had been blessed with the same fiery hair, and it amused her to pretend that the girl was her great-granddaughter, or was she herself at the height of her splendor. She opened her treasure-filled trunks, showed Irene her scrapbooks, let her read letters from lovers who had lost their peace of mind and all control of their senses over her. She and Irene had made a secret pact: The day I dirty my drawers, Josefina Bianchi had pleaded, or can't put on my lipstick, you help me die, daughter. And of course, Irene had promised.

“Mother's gone away on a trip, so we'll have dinner alone,” Irene said as she led Francisco up the inside stairway to the second floor.

The lights from The Will of God Manor—and the music—did not reach the second floor; everything was dark and silent. By the time the visitors had left and the residents had returned to their rooms, the calm of night was settling over the house, casting its peculiar shadows. Rosa, fat and magnificent, met them in the hall with her wide smile. She had a soft spot for the dark young man who always greeted her so warmly, joked with her, and was not above rolling on the floor and wrestling with the dog. She felt much closer and more familiar with him than with Gustavo Morante, although she had no doubt that he was not as good a match for her little girl. In the months she had known Francisco, she had never seen him in anything but the gray corduroy pants and the same rubber-soled shoes. What a pity. Well dressed, always blessed, she thought, but immediately corrected herself with the contrary proverb: Clothes don't make the man.

“Turn on the lights, Irene,” she recommended before plunging into the kitchen.

The living room was decorated with Oriental rugs, modern paintings, and a few art books scattered in strategic disorder. The furniture looked comfortable, and a profusion of plants lent their freshness to the room. While Irene uncorked a bottle of rosé wine, Francisco settled onto the sofa, thinking about his parents' house where a record player was the only luxury.

“What are we celebrating?” he asked.

“That we're lucky to be alive,” Irene replied, without smiling.

He watched her without speaking, confirming his sense that something about her was different. He watched her pour the wine into the goblets with an unsteady hand, a sad look on her face, tonight innocent of any makeup. To gain a little time and examine his own thoughts, Francisco looked through the records and selected an old tango. He put it on the record player and they heard the unmistakable voice of Gardel coming to them across fifty years of history. They listened in silence, holding hands, until Rosa came to announce that dinner was served in the dining room.

“Wait here, don't move,” Irene said, turning off the lights as she left.

She returned in a few minutes carrying a five-branched candelabrum, an apparition from another century in her long white dress, the glimmer of candlelight streaking her hair with metallic highlights. Solemnly she led Francisco along the corridor to the dining room that had been converted from a former bedroom. The furniture was too large for the dimensions of the room, but Beatriz Alcántara, with unfailing good taste, had overcome that obstacle by having the walls painted a Pompeian red, which contrasted dramatically with the glass of the table and the white upholstery of the chairs. The only painting was a still life of the Flemish school: onions, garlic, a shotgun resting in a corner, and three deplorable pheasants hanging by their feet.