No Place for Heroes (2 page)

“No. I don’t want him to think that I am questioning his life. He is an excellent father, who adores you and cares for
you well, and at that moment it seems to me the most natural thing in the world that he wants to spend a few days alone with you. I also remember thinking that if he was already organizing trips, it was because he had grown used to the idea of the separation. We each take you by the hand, and as night falls, the three of us stroll again through the park. At a certain point, you fall and scrape your knee and cry a little, not long though, nothing major. The strange thing is that Ramón and I chat agreeably, but about nothing in particular. For the first time since the quarrels of the separation began, we have a nice time together. I start to feel that perhaps we can function as a separated couple who share a son amicably, and that makes me happy.”

“Okay,” Mateo says. “And now to the dark episode.”

“Friday, I get you up early, bathe you, dress you, and ask your grandmother to make you breakfast.”

“You said before that you made me breakfast.”

“No, your grandmother does. I pack your suitcase for the cold, a pair of corduroy overalls, a sweater—”

“Pullover.”

“A pullover, socks and undershirts, your teddy bear pajamas, which are the warmest, your raincoat and galoshes. At seven thirty, Ramón rings the bell, and I turn over the child—that’s you—and the suitcase to him. You’re very happy, you enjoy being with your father and are glad to see him. I also give him another bag stuffed with Choco Quick, some apples, powdered milk, a box of Rice Krispies, and two of your toys.”

“Do you remember which toys?”

“I remember each detail with a terrifying clarity. I put a green clown in the bag, one we had given you for Christmas, and a pair of long woolen ropes that you loved to drag on the floor. You say that they are serpets, and we can’t take them away from you, even to launder them. Serpets? At first we didn’t know what you meant or why you were always dragging them on the floor, until we realized the serpets were serpents. Inside the bag, I also put a small bottle of disinfectant for Ramón to put on the scrape you got in the park. This I give to him at the last minute, after he has left the apartment, taken the elevator, and is crossing the lobby that leads to the street. I yell at him to wait, and run after both of you, barefoot and in my robe. I put the small bottle in the bag and I take advantage of the moment to give you a last kiss. You go to throw yourself into my arms, but your father holds you back. I say you are going to enjoy your trip very much, and you ask if there will be cows. You mean horses; you called horses cows. Ramón responds that yes, there will be cows and you will be able to ride them.”

“Cows, horses, serpets. Can we move on to that night?” Mateo asks.

“I work in the national politics section of
La Crónica
, a new weekly that has quickly gained some renown. Friday night is the closing deadline and the newsroom is swarming with people. Ministers, lawyers, opposing political leaders, and friends of the house all stop by. Anybody who has a fresh story, or wants to participate in the discussion about what will
be published, comes by and joins the conversation. And out of that swarm of activity, the weekly articles emerge, always down to the wire.”

“I don’t want to hear about your journalism, Mother.”

“Fine, but don’t call me Mother.”

“But you are my mother.”

“But you always say it with an attitude. Look, let’s not fight. Let’s go back to the newsroom at
La Crónica
. At about one thirty in the morning, we put the last touches on the edition, and it is after two when I get back to my mother’s. She hears me arrive, gets up, heats a vegetable stew for me, and keeps me company while I eat it in the kitchen. As we’re saying good night, she tells me that an envelope arrived for me and that she left it on the bedside table. She goes to her room and I brew some tea and go to the guest room, which has two beds, yours, which is empty, and mine. All I want at that moment before going to bed is to take a long bath in very hot water, to soothe the frenzy that overwhelms me after the closing of each edition. Every day you wake me up before six, but this weekend I will be able to sleep in.”

“So do you open the envelope that someone has left for you?”

“No, I don’t even look at it. When I go into the bedroom, I don’t even turn on the lights. My back hurts, so I throw myself on the bed, in the dark without taking off my clothes, thinking that in a few minutes I will get up and bathe. But I fall asleep. A few hours later, I’m awakened by the cold. In the haze of dawn, I can see the clock, it is almost six. I undress,
put on my nightgown, and because I’m thirsty I look for the cup of tea, which is sitting half full on the night table. That’s when I see the envelope. I would have ignored it but for one detail that catches my attention, it is scrawled with your father’s handwriting. It says, ‘Please give to Lorenza.’ A note from Ramón? That seems odd, but not entirely. Let’s just say that I open it unsuspectingly, and quickly realize that it is not a note, it is a handwritten letter, several pages long, and this does make me grow uneasy. Your father’s handwriting, which is small and muddled, makes me reach for my glasses in my purse. I put them on and read.”

“What does the note say?”

“It’s not a note. It’s a long letter. What does it say? It says, ‘I am leaving forever and taking the child. You will never see us again.’”

“That’s it?”

“No, there are a lot of explanations, pages and pages of explanations, justifications, and accusations. In short, he asks forgiveness for what he is about to do, and then goes on to blame me for everything.”

“Tell me exactly what the letter said. I need to know what explanations my father gave.”

“I couldn’t read any more at that moment. I had just realized that my son had been taken from me, and I was shattered.”

“So you read the whole thing later.”

“No, I never read it all the way through, I didn’t care about his reasons. Only those cruel words: ‘I am leaving forever
and taking the child.’ After I read it the first time, everything went black and I had to hold on to the side of the bed not to tumble over. Then I began to howl, the wild howls of a she wolf whose litter has been taken from her.”

“Grandma says they were like the howls of the night during the dictatorship years. She says that when they woke her up, she thought someone was murdering you.”

“It was worse than that.”

“And then?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember, or you don’t want to remember? That morning, what do you do?”

“Howl, suffer, die several times over. Your father is an expert at living underground, at counterfeiting passports and tickets, forging signatures. He’s used to changing his identity time and again. To hide and disappear, that’s your father’s talent. And he has just disappeared with you.”

Ramón Iribarren, I am your son, Mateo Iribarren. I have come to Buenos Aires to meet you. If you get this message, you can call the Claridge Hotel, room 506. I am going to be here until the end of the month. Thank you very much. Sincerely, Mateo Iribarren
.

On a sheet of notebook paper, in his uneven handwriting, this is what Mateo wrote and signed, years after the dark
episode, after his mother had just gone over parts of the tale with him again.

Lorenza read the paragraph and asked herself how it was possible for her son, now an adolescent and taller than her, to have such awful handwriting, long-legged scribbles crowded together, climbing and falling from the line at will. The contrast between the childlike penmanship and the sober and dignified tone of the content made a knot in her heart. “Ramón Iribarren, I am your son, Mateo Iribarren,” Mateo read in a loud voice, and asked his mother, “Is it okay, Lorenza?”

She had to go out for a few hours and leave him alone in his trance. She had no choice but to fulfill the obligations that had purportedly brought her to Buenos Aires, although she had truly come for something else. She had come to keep a promise she had made to her son years ago, to be with him when the time came to look for his father. She knew that once she left the hotel room, Mateo would remain seated by the telephone, fiercely focused on what he had written in the notebook, going over it again and again, to memorize it, so that when the time came, the words would not fail him.
Ramón Iribarren, I am your son, Mateo Iribarren. I have come to Buenos Aires to meet you
.

“‘I have come to Buenos Aires to meet you’—you think I should say that, Lolé, ‘to meet you’?” he asked, when his mother was already at the door.

“Yes, I suppose you can say that.”

“But I already know him. He’s going to say that we already know each other. Maybe I should say ‘to get to know you again.’ No, I don’t like that, either, it sounds weird. And the ‘sincerely,’ you think I should say ‘sincerely’?”

“You can take that out if you want, or change it to ‘a big hug’ or something like that?”

“‘A big hug’? Are you crazy, Mother? How can you suggest that? Don’t you realize how awful it sounds? If you want, I’ll take out ‘sincerely,’ but don’t ask me to send a big hug to a man who has had nothing to do with me. The only thing he has caused us is harm, and now you want me to send him a hug?”

“Forget it, Mateo, don’t send him a hug. I only suggested it because you asked.”

“Bad suggestion, Lorenza, possibly the worst suggestion ever. I think I’m going to leave it just how it is, ‘Sincerely, Mateo Iribarren,’ and stop fucking around with it, it stays the way it is.”

The boy chose only the words that seemed most precise and discarded the rest, not wanting to overdo it and yet not wanting to leave anything out. His message had to create a certain effect, produce results, and he weighed the possibility that there would be no answer to the telephone call he was about to make, like someone tossing a message in a bottle into the sea.

“What if Ramón doesn’t answer, Lolé?” he asked for the tenth time, his voice betraying his fear. “What if his answering machine malfunctions and he can’t understand the message?
What if something like that happens and then when Ramón wants to call me, he can’t, because the message is garbled, or maybe he doesn’t even remember me. Lolé, do you think he even remembers me?” He imagined a thousand different scenarios of the doomed encounter, as if on this particular Buenos Aires morning he could undo so many years of absence with the sound of his voice alone, with a mere paragraph that he rehearsed again and again. Yet he was unable to pick up the phone and dial his father, whom he had seen for the last time when he was two and a half years old and his father had taken him away.

They had not heard from Ramón since, not a single phone call, or a letter, or only a few letters at first and then nothing, only the vague and contradictory reports that reached them by luck and through third parties. That Ramón had been imprisoned, that he was bald and had lost a tooth, that he lived with a Bolivian girlfriend and was busy helping Bolivian miners organize, that he was now a labor director in one of the poor sections of Buenos Aires. But they never knew his whereabouts, because he did not try to find them and they did not try to find him. Or to put it exactly, Lorenza did not look for Ramón and he did not look for her and their child. They could not include Mateo in this tangle because he had never been given the opportunity to voice his opinion on the matter, not until the moment of this enraged demand, the sorrowful insistence that had forced Lorenza to fly to Buenos Aires to be with him.

After the dark episode, years had followed filled with
suitcases, roads, and airplanes, but the two of them had never run into Ramón. Never even came close. On the contrary, she had imposed upon herself, as a matter of destiny, the urgent task of pushing the son far away from his father’s influence. She warned him that if his father had taken him once, he could easily try it again. But she never spoke ill of him as a person to her son or suggested that he was a bad person. That she would never do.

“Tell me about this man, Lolé,” Mateo asked over and over. “Come on, Lorenza, tell me about him.”

She told him that he was a moody man, but convinced of his ideals, a vibrant and intelligent man. She assured him that he was courageous and good-looking, and that they had been happy in the years that they lived together. But every time that Mateo asked how he could find him, she made up excuses and found ways to stall him.

“You have to be a little older, Mateo,” she said to him. “It’s not so easy.”

“What’s not so easy?”

“Your father, your father is not easy. You have to be a little older and grow strong. And then we’ll go looking for him.”

Mateo relented willingly, so careful not to hurt her, and determined to accept whatever man was living with them at the moment as his father, and that man’s children as his siblings. This is the one, Lolé, he’d say, with this one we can create a family and be happy, and yes, she’d agree, this one will stay forever.

But there was always another one, a new one. And the
routine of everlasting love would begin again, the rented house in some neighborhood in another city, and the illusion of domesticity crafted by taking the bus to school and regular visits to the dentist, the assurance of ordering a favorite dish at the neighborhood restaurant every Sunday, the peace of mind that came from knowing friends’ phone numbers by heart, friends who would always be friends. Mateo and Lorenza put up pictures of horses on the walls of his room, planted flowers in pots, adopted a cat, and got hold of a secondhand bicycle, which they painted to look like new, because this was it, here they would settle forever.