Of Love and Shadows (22 page)

“Evangelina? What is the matter with Evangelina?”

“Don't you know?”

“What happened to my sister!” screamed Pradelio, rattling the door like a crazy man.

“I don't know anything. Don't yell like that, because if they find me here I'll pay for it good, Ranquileo. Don't give up hope, now, I'm your kin and I'm going to help you. I'll come back soon,” said the sergeant, and hurried away.

Ranquileo dropped to the floor of his cell, and for hours every man who walked through the yard heard a man's wails that he would not soon forget.

Ranquileo's friends organized a committee to go to Lieutenant Ramírez on his behalf, but nothing came of it. The men became restive; there was whispering in the latrines, in the corridors, in the armory, but Lieutenant Juan de Dios Ramírez ignored it. Then Sergeant Rivera, the boldest among them, decided to take things into his own hands. A day or two later, taking advantage of the complicity of darkness and the temporary absence of Lieutenant Ramírez, he approached the solitary confinement cell. The guard on duty saw him coming, instantly guessed his intention, and helped by pretending to be asleep, because he, too, thought Ranquileo's punishment was unjust. Not even troubling to be quiet or avoid being seen, the sergeant took the key hanging from a nail on the wall and walked to the iron door. He freed Ranquileo from his cell, gave him clothes and a service revolver with six bullets, led him to the kitchen, and with his own hands served him a double ration of food. Then he gave Ranquileo a little money his friends had collected, and drove him as far as he dared in the Headquarters jeep. Everyone who saw them looked the other way; they did not want to know any of the details. A man has a right to avenge his sister, they said.

Dragging himself along by night, and lying low in the fields by day, Pradelio Ranquileo was free almost a week before daring to seek help; he could imagine the lieutenant's rage when he discovered the escape, and he knew the guardsmen could not disobey their orders to move heaven and earth to find him. Hulking in the shadows, he waited until impatience and hunger finally drove him home. Sergeant Rivera had been there and had told everything to Digna, so there was no need to talk about that. Vengeance is a man's business. When he said goodbye, Rivera had asked him to go look for his sister, but he really meant, go avenge her. Pradelio was sure of that. As he was sure that she was dead. He had no proof, but he knew his superior officer well enough to imagine.

“I'll pay for doing what I must do, because when I come down from this mountain, I'm a dead man,” he told Francisco and Irene.

“Why?”

“Because I know a military secret.”

“If you want our help, you'll have to tell us.”

“I'll never tell.”

Pradelio was highly agitated; he was sweating and gnawing at his fingernails; his eyes were wild, and he was rubbing his face with his hands as if to erase horrible memories. It was obvious that he had left a lot unsaid, but his lips were sealed by loyalty. Once he stammered that it would be better to die and get it over with, because there was no way out for him. Irene tried to calm him: he must not give up hope; they would find some way to help him, they simply needed a little time. Francisco had sensed several omissions in his story, and instinctively mistrusted him, but he kept running through the possibilities in his mind, trying to think of some way to save Ranquileo's life.

“If Lieutenant Ramírez killed my sister, I know where he hid her body,” Pradelio blurted at the last moment. “You know that abandoned mine in Los Riscos?”

He stopped abruptly, regretting what he had said; by the expression on his face and the tone of his voice, however, Francisco knew he was not talking of a probability, but of a certainty. He had given them their clue.

It was midafternoon by the time they said goodbye and began their descent, leaving behind a beaten Ranquileo muttering about death. Going down the mountain was as difficult as the climb had been, especially for Irene, who shuddered every time she looked into the ravine, but she did not stop until they reached the place where they had left the horses. There she breathed a sigh of relief, and when she gazed up toward the cordillera, it seemed impossible that they had climbed those sheer cliffs now blending into the color of the sky.

“That's all we can do today. I'll come back later with some tools to see what's in that mine,” said Francisco.

“And I'll come with you,” said Irene.

They looked at each other and knew that each was committed to follow to the end an adventure that could lead them to death, and beyond.

*  *  *

Beatriz, heels clicking, walked arrogantly across the polished airport floor, following the porter with her blue suitcases. She was wearing a low-cut, tomato-colored linen dress and her thick hair was in a bun at her neck because she had lacked the energy for a more elegant style. A large baroque pearl in each earlobe highlighted her burnt-sugar skin and the gleam of her dark eyes brightened by a new sense of well-being. Several hours of an uncomfortable flight with a Galician nun for a seatmate had not obliterated the happiness of her latest rendezvous with Michel. She felt like a new woman, rejuvenated and sexy. She walked with the insolence of a woman who knows she is beautiful. Men's eyes turned as she passed, and no one could have guessed her true age. She could still wear a low-cut dress without fear of sagging breasts or flabby arms; her legs were trim and the line of her back proud. Sea air had lent happiness to her face, brushing out fine wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. Only her hands, spotted and veined in spite of all her magic creams, betrayed the passing of the years. She was satisfied with her body. She considered it her handiwork, not nature's; it was the end product of enormous willpower, of years of diet, exercise, massage, yoga, and the advances of cosmetology. In her suitcases she carried little bottles of oil for her breasts, collagen for her throat, hormone lotions and creams for her skin, placental extract and mink oil for her hair, capsules of royal jelly and pollen of eternal youth, machines, sponges, and horsehair brushes to tone the elasticity of her skin. It's a losing battle, Mama, age is implacable, and there's nothing you can do but delay it for a little while. Is it worth all that effort? When Beatriz lay on the warm sands of some tropical beach wearing nothing but one tiny triangle of cloth, and compared herself with women twenty years younger, she smiled with pride. Oh, yes, daughter, it's worth it. When she walked into a room and could feel the air charged with envy and desire, she knew then that her efforts had been rewarded. But it was especially in Michel's arms that she was secure in the knowledge that her body was a valuable commodity; it was he who gave her her greatest pleasure.

Michel was her secret luxury, the reaffirmation of her self-esteem, the source of her deepest vanity. He was young enough to be her son: tall, with a
torero
's broad shoulders and narrow hips, sun-bleached hair, blue eyes, charming accent, and all the necessary knowledge at the hour for love. Leisure, sports, and lack of responsibility kept an eternal smile on his face and gifted him with a playful disposition. He was a vegetarian who neither drank nor smoked; he made no pretense at any intellectual interests but found his delight in outdoor sports and amorous adventures. Gentle, tender, uncomplicated, and always good-humored, he lived in another dimension, like an angel mistakenly fallen to earth. Ingeniously, he arranged his life so that it was an eternal vacation. He and Beatriz had met on a beach beneath swaying palm trees, and when in the darkness of the hotel ballroom he first took her in his arms to dance, they both knew that a greater intimacy was inevitable. That same night Beatriz opened her door to him, feeling like a teenager. She was nervous, fearing that he might discover tiny signs of age that had escaped her stern eye, but Michel gave her little time to worry. He turned on the lights, so he could know her in every detail; he kissed her with expert lips and removed her adornments—baroque pearls, diamond rings, ivory bracelets—leaving her naked and vulnerable. At that moment she sighed with contentment, because in her lover's eyes she found the confirmation of her beauty. She forgot the hurrying years, the wear and tear of the struggle, her boredom with other men. She and Michel shared a happy relationship, and never dreamed of calling it love.

Michel's company was so stimulating that when Beatriz was with him she forgot all her worries. His kisses had the uncanny ability to erase the elderly occupants of The Will of God Manor, her daughter's bizarre behavior, and her financial difficulties. Beside him, there was only the present. She smelled his young animal smell, his clean breath, the sweat of his smooth skin, the salty trace of sea in his hair. She ran her hands over his body, the wiry hair on his chest, the smoothness of his recently shaved cheeks; she felt the strength of his embrace, the renewed thrust of his sex. No one had ever made love to her like this. Her relations with her husband had been clouded with stored-up bitterness and unintentional rejection, and her occasional lovers were older men who made up for lack of vigor with pretense. She tried not to think of their thinning hair, their soft bodies, their pernicious smell of tobacco and liquor, their striving penises, their niggardly gifts, their useless promises. Michel never lied. He never said, I love you; he said, I like you, I feel good when I'm with you, I want to make love to you. He was a marvel in bed, eager to give her pleasure, to satisfy her whims, to arouse new desires.

Michel represented the hidden and, at the same time, the brightest side of her life. She could not possibly share her secret; no one would have understood her passion for a man so much younger than she. She could imagine her friends' comments: Beatriz has lost her head over some boy, a foreigner; of course he will exploit her and take all her money; at her age, she should be ashamed. No one would believe the tenderness and shared laughter, the friendship; he never asked for anything, and would not accept her gifts. They met twice a year, anywhere on the globe, for a few perfect days. She returned with her body gratified and her soul refreshed. Again she took up the reins of her work, resumed her duties, and returned to the elegant relationships with her perennial suitors—widowers, divorced men, unfaithful husbands, endemic seducers who showered her with their attentions without touching her heart.

As she walked through the glass door into the unrestricted area, Beatriz saw Irene waiting for her in the crowd. She was with that photographer who had been accompanying her constantly for months—what was his name? She couldn't hide a grimace of displeasure when she saw how careless Irene was about her appearance. At least when she wore her gypsy garb she showed some originality, but in those wrinkled slacks, and with her hair pulled into a braid, she looked like a country schoolteacher. When she was closer, Beatriz noticed other disturbing signs, although she could not decide exactly what they were. There was a touch of sadness in Irene's eyes, an anxious smile on her lips, but in the commotion of getting the suitcases into the car and beginning the drive home, Beatriz could not pursue her thoughts.

“I bought some beautiful clothes for your trousseau, Irene.”

“I may not need them, Mama.”

“What do you mean? Did something happen between you and Gustavo?”

Beatriz glanced at Francisco Leal and was about to make an acid comment, but decided to wait until she was alone with Irene. She inhaled and exhaled deeply six times, relaxing her throat, emptying her spirit of all aggression, placing herself in positive syntony, as her yoga instructor had taught her. Relaxing, she began to enjoy the beauty of the city in springtime: the clean streets, the freshly painted walls, the courteous and well-behaved people—you could thank the government for that, everything orderly and neat. She looked at shopwindows filled with exotic merchandise that once had been unknown in this country; high-rent apartments with penthouse swimming pools ringed by dwarf palms; spiral buildings housing luxury boutiques to satisfy the whims of the newly rich; and high walls hiding the slums of the city, where life did not follow the order of time and the laws of God. Since it was impossible to eliminate poverty, it had been forbidden to mention it. The news in the press was soothing; they were living in a fairyland. Rumors of hungry women and children storming bakeries were completely false. Bad news came only from outside the country, where the world struggled over insoluble problems that had no relation to their esteemed homeland. Japanese automobiles so delicate they looked disposable, as well as enormous chrome-trimmed executive motorcycles, crowded the streets. Advertisements offering exclusive apartments for the right people, trips to exotic places—on credit—and the latest advances in electronics were at every corner. Brightly lighted nightclubs had sprung up everywhere, their doors guarded until the hour of curfew. Everyone was talking of opulence, the economic miracle, the streams of foreign capital attracted by the new regime. Anyone who was discontented was considered anti-patriotic; happiness was obligatory. Through an unwritten but universally known law of segregation, two countries were functioning within the same national boundaries: one for a golden and powerful élite, the other for the excluded and silent masses. Young economists of the new school pronounced that this was the social cost, and their words were repeated in the news media.

When their car stopped for a red light, three ragged children rushed out to clean the windshield, sell them religious prints or packets of needles, or, simply, beg. Irene and Francisco exchanged a glance, both with a single thought.

“There are more poor every day,” said Irene.

“Are
you
going to sing that tune, too?” complained Beatriz. “There are beggars everywhere. The fact is that people don't want to work. This is a nation of loafers.”

“But there aren't enough jobs for everyone, Mama.”