Of Love and Shadows (23 page)

“What do you want? For poor people and decent people to be all the same?”

Irene smiled, not daring to look at Francisco, but her mother continued, imperturbable. “This is just a period of transition. Soon we'll be seeing better times. At least we have law and order. And don't you know that democracy leads to chaos? How many times the General has made that clear!”

The trip was completed in silence. When they reached the house, Francisco carried Beatriz's luggage to the second floor, where Rosa was waiting. Grateful for his attention, Beatriz invited Francisco to stay for dinner. It was her first friendly gesture, and he immediately accepted.

“Serve dinner early, Rosa,” said Irene. “We have a surprise downstairs.”

At Irene's request, Beatriz had bought little gifts for all the residents and employees. Irene had bought cakes and made a fruit punch for a celebration. After dinner they went downstairs, where they found everyone waiting dressed in their best clothes, the nurses arrayed in starched aprons, and large vases overflowing with spring flowers, all to welcome home the
patrona.

The actress Josefina Bianchi announced that she would entertain them with a scene from a play. Francisco caught Irene's wink, realized that this was the surprise, and immediately tried to think of a way to leave before it was too late, because he suffered when anyone made a fool of himself. Irene, however, gave him no opportunity to find an excuse. She led him to a seat on the terrace beside Rosa and her mother, and disappeared into the house with Josefina. Several minutes passed, extremely uncomfortable minutes for Francisco. Beatriz made banal conversation about the places she had visited on her trip, while the nurses arranged chairs in front of the large dining-room window. The guests made themselves comfortable, wrapped in jackets and blankets to protect them against the chill of advanced age, when not even the warmth of a spring night can warm old bones. The bright lights in the garden were extinguished, the chords of a familiar sonata flooded the air, and the curtains parted. For a moment Francisco wavered between the empathy that impelled him toward flight and the unexpected spell of the spectacle before his eyes. He saw a stage bathed in light, like an aquarium in the darkness, its only furniture a yellow brocade chair beside a floor lamp with a parchment shade; a golden circle of light fell upon a figure transported from the past, a shade from the nineteenth century. At first he thought Josefina Bianchi was Irene; all the havoc of time had been erased from her face. Languorous, seductive—her every move was harmonious. She wore a magnificent dress with accordion-pleated flounces and ivory lace, faded, wrinkled, but still splendid in spite of the ash of years and long travels through wardrobe chests and trunks. Even from that distance he heard the faint rustle of silk. The actress did not so much sit as float on the air like an insect, pale, sensual, eternally feminine. And before Francisco could recover from his surprise, the music from the loudspeakers faded and he heard the ageless voice of the Dame aux Camélias; his hesitation vanished and he surrendered to the magic of the performance, the tragedy of that courtesan, her long, uncomplaining—for that, all the more moving—lament. With one hand she rejected her invisible lover; with the other she summoned him to her, pleaded with him, caressed him. Her elderly audience seemed paralyzed in memories, far away, silent. The nurses felt their hearts constrict, moved by that woman so frail and slight that a breath of air might turn her to dust. No one escaped her spell.

Francisco felt Irene's hand on his shoulder but, seduced by the performance, he did not turn to her. When a paroxysm of coughing—her role or the ravages of age—signaled the end of that immortal lover's words, Francisco's eyes were brimming with tears. Deeply saddened, he did not join in the applause. He got up from his chair and walked to the darkest part of the garden, followed by Cleo, trotting happily at his heels. There from the darkness he watched the slow movements of the old people and their nurses, all drinking punch and opening their gifts with unsure fingers, while Marguerite Gauthier, suddenly aged a hundred years, looked for her Armand Duval with a feather fan in one hand and a cream cake in the other. Ghosts slipping among the chairs and wandering along the honeysuckle-bordered paths, the intense perfume of the jasmine, the yellow radiance of the lamps—all contributed to a dreamlike atmosphere. The night air seemed electric with portents.

Irene saw Francisco and walked toward him, smiling. Then she noticed the expression on his face and guessed his emotions. She rested her forehead upon his chest and her unruly hair brushed his lips.

“What are you thinking?”

He was thinking about his parents. In a few years they would be the age of these old people who, like them, had brought children into the world and worked untiringly to provide for them. They had never dreamed they might end their days cared for by the hands of a paid employee. The Leals had lived together as a family forever, sharing poverty, happiness, suffering, and hope, bound by ties of blood and responsibility. There were still many families like theirs; perhaps the old people who had witnessed Josefina Bianchi's performance were no different from his parents; they were, nevertheless, alone. They were the forgotten victims of a wind that had scattered people in every direction, the residue of the diaspora, those who had been left behind with no place in the new era. They had no grandchildren to look after and watch as they grew up, no children to help them with the task of living; they had no garden of their own, no canary to sing as dusk fell. Their only occupation was to avoid death, but always thinking of it, anticipating it, fearing it. Francisco swore an oath that this would never happen to his parents. He repeated the promise aloud, his lips buried in Irene's hair.

— PART THREE —

Sweet Land

I carry our nation wherever I go, and the
oh-so-far-away essences of my elongated
homeland live within me.

—Pablo Neruda

A
fterward, Irene and Francisco would ask themselves at what precise moment the course of their lives had changed, and they would point to the fateful Monday they entered the abandoned Los Riscos mine. But it may have been before that—say, the Sunday they met Evangelina Ranquileo, or the evening they promised Digna they would help in her search for the missing girl; or possibly their roads had been mapped out from the beginning, and they had no choice but to follow them.

They drove to the mine on Francisco's motorcycle—more practical in rugged terrain than a car—carrying a few tools, a thermos of hot coffee, and the photographic equipment. They told no one the purpose of their trip; they were both obsessed with the feeling that what they were about to do was madness. Ever since they had decided to go, at night, to a place they had never been before, and open a mine without permission, they both knew such foolhardiness could cost them their lives.

They studied the map until they knew it by heart and were sure they could reach their destination without asking questions that would raise suspicions. There was no danger in the softly rolling countryside, but once they turned onto the steep mountain roads where shadows lengthen long before sunset, the landscape became wild and lonely, and echoes returned thoughts magnified by the distant cry of eagles. Uneasy, Francisco had debated the prudence of taking Irene along on an adventure whose outcome he could not foresee.

“You're not taking me anywhere. I'm the one who's taking you,” she had joked, and perhaps she was right.

A rusty but still legible sign announced that the area was patrolled and entry forbidden. Several threatening rows of barbed wire blocked access to the property, and for a minute Irene and Francisco were tempted to seize the pretext and retreat; immediately, however, they set aside that subterfuge and looked for a break in the network of wire that was large enough for the motorcycle to pass through. The sign and the fence further confirmed their hunch that there was something here to be discovered. Just as they had planned, night was upon them, helping to cloak their movements, by the time they reached the mine. The entrance to the mine drilled in the mountainside looked like a mouth shouting a soundless scream. Sealed with rocks, packed dirt, and masonry, it gave the impression that no one had been near it for years. Loneliness had settled in to stay, obscuring marks of a trail or any memory of life. They hid the motorcycle in some bushes and scouted the area to be sure there were no watchmen on patrol. The search calmed them somewhat since they found no trace of human life but only, some hundred meters from the mine, a miserable hut abandoned to wind and weeds. The wind had blown off half its roof, one wall lay flat on the ground, and vegetation had invaded the interior, covering everything with a carpet of wild grasses. Such a deserted and forgotten place so near Los Riscos and the highway seemed very odd.

“I'm afraid,” whispered Irene.

“So am I.”

They opened the thermos and drank a long swallow of coffee, a comfort to both body and soul. They joked a little, pretending this was just a game; each tried to make the other believe that nothing bad could happen to them, that they were protected by a guardian angel. It was a clear moonlit night, and their eyes soon grew accustomed to the darkness. They took the pick and flashlight and walked toward the shaft. Neither of them had ever been inside a mine, and they imagined it as a cavern deep beneath the earth. Francisco remembered the tradition that forbade the presence of women in mines because they were thought to bring on underground disasters, but Irene mocked that superstition, determined to continue at any cost.

Francisco attacked the entrance with his pick. He had little skill when it came to physical labor; he scarcely knew how to handle the pick, and soon realized that the job would take longer than they had planned. Irene did not attempt to help him but sat on a rock, her heavy sweater pulled tightly around her, huddled against the wind blowing from the surrounding mountains. She jumped at every sound, afraid that wild animals might be circling around, or, what would be worse, that soldiers were spying on them from the darkness. At first they tried not to make any noise, but they quickly resigned themselves to the inevitable; the ring of steel against rock resounded through gorges and ravines that trapped the echo and repeated it a hundred times. If there was a patrol in the area, as the sign warned, there would be no escape. Before a half hour had passed, Francisco's fingers were stiff and his hands covered with blisters, but his efforts had opened a hole that would allow them to remove loose stones and dirt with their hands. Now Irene helped, and soon they had opened a gap wide enough to slip through.

“Ladies first,” joked Francisco, motioning to the hole.

As her answer, Irene handed him the flashlight and stepped back a couple of steps. Francisco thrust head and arms through the opening, shining the light inside. A rush of fetid air assaulted his nostrils. He was tempted to retreat, but he told himself he hadn't come this far to give up before he began. The beam carved a circle of light in the darkness, revealing a small chamber. It was not at all what he had imagined: it was a room excavated from the hard entrails of the mountain, opening onto two narrow tunnels blocked with debris. The wood scaffolding set there to prevent cave-ins when the ore was being mined was still in place, but the timbers had been eaten by time and were so rotten that some were in place only by the grace of a miracle and they looked as if a breath would bring them crashing down. Francisco flashed his light around the room, wanting to see what awaited him before he crawled inside. Suddenly something ran over his arm a few inches from his face. He cried out, more surprised than frightened, and the flashlight fell from his hand. Outside, Irene heard him and, fearing something horrible, grabbed him by the legs and began to pull.

“What was it?” she exclaimed, her heart in her mouth.

“Nothing, only a rat.”

“Let's get out of here, I don't like this a bit!”

“Wait, I'll just take a quick look inside.”

Francisco wriggled through the opening, carefully avoiding sharp rocks, and disappeared, swallowed by the mouth in the mountain. Irene watched the blackness envelop her friend and felt a pang of anxiety in spite of the fact that her reason told her danger lay outside the mine, not inside. If they were caught, they could expect a bullet in the head and a quick burial on the spot. People had died for far less. She remembered all the ghost stories Rosa had told her when she was a little girl: the Devil lurking in mirrors to frighten the vain; the boogeyman carrying a sack filled with kidnapped children; dogs with crocodile scales on their backs, and cloven hooves; two-headed men who crouched in the corners to catch little girls who slept with their hands beneath the sheet. Cruel stories that had caused more than one nightmare, but tales so spellbinding she could not stop listening; she would beg Rosa to tell her another, as she trembled with fright, wanting to cover her ears and squeeze her eyes shut so she could not hear them but, at the same time, avid to know every detail. Did the Devil wear clothes or was he naked? Did the boogeyman smell bad? Did pet dogs also turn into ferocious beasts? Could a two-headed man enter a room protected by a picture of the Virgin? That night, waiting at the mine entrance, Irene again experienced the mixture of fright and attraction she had felt in the long-ago days of her Nana's terrifying tales. Finally she decided to follow Francisco and, being both small and agile, she easily crawled through the hole. It took only a few seconds to get used to the darkness. The smell, though, was unbearable, like breathing a deadly poison. She took the kerchief tied around her waist and used it to cover the lower half of her face.

They walked around the cavern and examined the two passageways. The tunnel on the right seemed to be closed only with rubble and loose dirt, while the one on the left was sealed with masonry. They chose the easier and began to move rocks and scratch away the dirt at the mouth of the first tunnel. As they dug, the stench grew stronger, and often they had to go to the entry they had crawled through and lean outside to draw a breath of fresh air, which seemed to them as clean and healthful as a mountain stream.

“What exactly are we looking for?” asked Irene as her raw hands began to burn.

“I don't know,” Francisco replied, and continued working in silence, for even the vibration of their voices made the rotted supports quiver.

They were nervous and apprehensive. They stole glances over their shoulders, peering into the blackness behind them, imagining watching eyes, stealthy shadows, whispers from the far side of the room. They heard the old timbers creak and, between their feet, the furtive scurrying of rodents. The air was close and heavy.

Irene tugged at a large rock with all her might. She worked it back and forth, loosened it, and it rolled free at her feet: the light of the flashlight revealed a dark gaping hole. Without thinking, she thrust her hand inside and at that instant felt a terrible scream rising from the pit of her stomach; the sound filled the chamber, ricocheting against the walls as a muffled and alien echo she did not recognize as her own voice. She flung herself against Francisco, who covered her with his body and pushed her against the wall just as a beam crashed from the ceiling. For a moment that seemed eternal, they stood embraced, eyes closed, almost without breathing, and when finally silence returned and the dust raised by the collapse of the beam had settled, they were able to rescue the flashlight and make sure that their exit had not been blocked. Still holding Irene, Francisco pointed the light to the spot where the rock had rolled free, and the first discovery of that cave of horrors leaped toward them. It was a human hand—or, rather, what remained of one.

Francisco pulled Irene outside and, holding her close, forced her to breathe great gulps of the pure night air. When she was able to stand without his help, he brought the thermos and poured her coffee. She was beside herself, speechless, trembling, unable to hold the cup. Francisco held it to her lips, as he would for an invalid; he stroked her hair and tried to calm her, telling her that they had found what they had come to find; surely the body was that of Evangelina Ranquileo, and even though it was gruesome, it couldn't hurt them, it was only a dead body. Although the words had no meaning for her—she was still too shocked to recognize them as her own language—the cadence of his voice lulled her, consoling her slightly. Much later, when she was more herself, Francisco knew he must finish the job they had come to do.

“Wait here for me. I'm going back into the mine for a few minutes. Can you stay here alone?”

Irene nodded wordlessly, and, pulling up her legs like a boy, she buried her head between her knees, trying not to think, not to hear, not to see, not even to breathe, suspended in her unbearable anguish while Francisco, carrying the camera and with the kerchief tied over his face, returned to the tomb.

He pulled away rocks and brushed aside dirt until he had exposed the entire body of Evangelina Ranquileo Sánchez. He recognized her by the color of her hair. She was partially covered by a poncho; she was barefoot, and was dressed in something like petticoats or a nightgown. Her body was in such an advanced state of decomposition—putrefying in a broth in which maggots were feeding, fermenting in her own desolation—that he had to call on every ounce of his strength to control his nausea and get on with his work. He was a man with a great deal of self-control; he had had professional experience with cadavers and he had a strong stomach, but he had never seen anything like this before. The despicable place, the inescapable stench, and his mounting fear—all contributed to his undoing. He could not breathe. Hurriedly, he shot several photographs, not bothering about focus or distance, hastened by the bile that rose in his throat with each flash lighting the scene. He finished as quickly as humanly possible, and fled from that sepulcher.

In the fresh air he dropped the camera and flashlight and fell to the ground on his knees, head sunk to his chest, trying to relax and conquer his retching. The stench clung to his skin like a plague, and etched on his retinas was the image of Evangelina stewing in her last consternation. Irene had to help him to his feet.

“What do we do now?”

“Close the mine, then we'll see,” he said as soon as he was able to reclaim his voice from the fiery claws gripping his chest.

They piled up the stones they had removed, and closed the entrance, stunned, nervous, working with frenzy; it was as if in sealing the mine they could erase its contents from their minds and turn time back to the moment before they had known the truth; as if they could again live innocently in a radiant reality, removed from that awful discovery. Francisco took Irene by the hand and led her to the ruined hut, the only visible refuge on the hill.

*  *  *

It was a mild night. In the virginal light, the landscape faded into nothingness, the outlines of the hills and the great shadowy eucalyptus trees disappeared. The shack was barely visible in the soft darkness, rising from the ground like an extension of nature. In comparison with the mine, the interior seemed as welcoming as a nest. They lay down in a corner on the wild grass and stared up at the infinity of the starry sky lighted by a milky moon. Irene put her head on Francisco's shoulder and released her distress in tears. He put his arms around her, and they lay there a long time—hours, perhaps—seeking solace in the quiet and the silence for what they had discovered, and strength for what they would have to bear. They rested together, listening to the faint murmur of leaves stirred by the breeze, the cries of nearby night birds, and the secret movement of rabbits in the meadow grass.

Little by little the weight pressing upon Francisco's spirit began to lighten. He became aware of the beauty of the sky, the gentleness of the earth, the fresh smell of the fields, the feel of Irene against his body. He followed her contours in his mind, and felt the weight of her head on his arm, the curve of her hip against his, her curls caressing his neck, the subtle delicacy of her silk blouse, almost as fine as the texture of her skin. He remembered the day he had met her, how he had been dazzled by her smile. He had loved her from that moment, and the insanity of the events that had led them to this cavern was but an excuse to bring him finally to this precious instant when he had her for himself, close beside him, all her guards lowered, vulnerable. He felt a surge of compelling and overpowering desire. His breath caught in his throat and his heart raced in a frantic gallop. He forgot the tenacious fiancé; Beatriz Alcántara; his own uncertain future—all the obstacles that lay between them. Irene would be his because it had been written from the beginning of time.