Erased Faces (27 page)

Rumors abounded regarding the fate of the three older Mayorga brothers. One tale claimed that the oldest one was poisoned. Another brother was killed in an airplane crash, and since he was the pilot, tongues speculated that he had been a victim of foul play. Gossip had it that the engine had been damaged intentionally. The last of the Mayorga boys had turned out to be a drunkard who mysteriously disappeared from Las Estrellas. Once again, gossip had it that
someone
had murdered him. Orlando discovered different versions of these stories, but all had one element in common: Rufino's unspoken name was at the root of the explanation for the deaths and disappearances of his brothers.

Soon after Orlando's arrival in San Quintín, the city clerk was called away on business, but he told Orlando that he was welcome in his office to use any files that he needed. He accepted the offer one evening, when he took time to go through files looking for photographs. When he stumbled upon a thick dossier filled with pictures of the Mayorgas, he took the top sheets and slipped them into his knapsack. After that, he focused on pictures of the Mayorga family.

Orlando thumbed through black-and-white prints, most of them yellowed and fly-speckled. He recognized the one of Don Absolón with his wife and children, all of them seated on the vast lawn in front of the main house. Orlando narrowed his eyes as he concentrated on the image of Rufino, guessing that he was fourteen or fifteen years old at the time. Orlando wondered if the photo had been taken before or after his exile into the jungle.

He sifted through the pile of pictures until he came across a more recent one of Rufino. In it, he appeared tall, dressed in white casual but elegant trousers, and a loose-fitting shirt, and he had his head to one side as Orlando remembered he used to do. By Rufino's side was an aristocratic-looking woman with blond hair, also elegantly dressed, and between the two of them was a child dressed in white knee pants.

“¡Mierda!”

Orlando snorted the disdaining word through his nose as he experienced a deluge of disgust for Rufino, for his wife, and for the child with the round, overfed face that stared at him from the picture. Feeling overcome by the intense heat and flickering dingy light of the office, Orlando pushed aside the pile of photographs, got to his feet, and headed for the door, where he clicked off the naked bulb and left the place.

Once outside, Orlando stepped down off the uneven curb and began walking at a brisk pace. He turned the corner, crossed the cobblestone street and headed for a small room with a light glowing in the window. He knocked.

“¿Quién?”

“Orlando Flores.”

The heavy wooden door creaked open to let him in. His eyes squinted as they adjusted to the light of the small room that was shared by other recruiters. He nodded to two women and a man that were bent over documents; one was reading out loud and another was transcribing notes. Not trusting his own interpretation of the papers he had gathered, Orlando turned to one of the recruiters.

“Amiga
, I have some papers here that I would like you to read to me.”

“Now? We're almost finished with this project. Can you wait?”

“Of course.”

Orlando plopped down on a chair as he extracted the sheets from his bag. He waited patiently, still thinking of the images he had just seen. After a while, one of the women approached him, sat on the floor and extended an open hand. Orlando handed her the short stack of papers.

“Let me see. This one says that a certain Bonifacio Zaragosa owes the Mayorga
finca
ten sacks of coffee beans. This other declaration states that the son of a Berta Espinoza was caught trying to steal food from the
patrón
's kitchen. And this one… hmm… this one is more serious.”

“What does it say?”

“It's a warrant for the arrest of a certain Quintín Osuna. He's charged with murder. It doesn't state the name of the victim, only the date of the crime. 1968.”

Orlando stared at the woman. She looked up at him, startled by the expression on his face. His pupils dilated, and she thought she saw dark rings forming around his sunken eyes.

“1968. Is that the date of that paper?”

“No,
compañero
. This document is recent. It's dated only three months ago.”

“But if it doesn't name the person who was killed, or any witnesses, or other details—doesn't that make the paper invalid?”

“Maybe somewhere else,
compañero
. In these parts, however, the only thing that matters is a signature. And here it is:
Rufino Mayorga.”

“What if this paper disappears?”

“Another copy will surface. Tell me, why are you so interested in this document?”

Orlando shrugged and rolled his eyes without saying a word. He got to his feet, and without retrieving the reports, he excused himself.

“Buenas noches, amigos.”

“Adiós, compañero
Orlando.”

Orlando walked out of the tiny room into the darkness of the night. The village was quiet, and its only light came from the small yellow bulbs that hung from spindly posts located at each street corner. His sandaled feet sometimes tripped on the cobblestones as he walked aimlessly. Finding that paper had triggered new emotions and thoughts in him. Orlando realized that, despite the passing of the old Mayorga, he was still a hunted man. Rufino would not allow his father's hatred to disappear; he had inherited the rage and vengefulness from
El Viejo
.

Orlando asked why this had to be: Why did a son take on the hates of a father? To understand this, he knew, would explain why families repeated what their ancestors had done before them. It was the same with his people; they followed in the steps of their fathers and mothers.

This thought evoked the images of his own mother and father, and fear for them filled him. The idea that they might come to harm because of him was more intolerable than ever for Orlando, and he did not know how to deal with what he was feeling. He finally stopped pacing and took refuge from his anxiety under the yellowish circle cast by one of the street lights.

Orlando went on with the work of recruiting for the insurgents. During that time he enrolled men and women, from regions covering the length and breadth of the Lacandona. When he finished his east-west trek, he began a campaign taking him from north to south and back again. When this was completed, he crisscrossed the paths leading him to untouched areas of the jungle. As the months turned into years, Orlando grew to know the floor of the jungle by heart; he could recognize trees and distinguish one from the other.

His work yielded a profit as the insurgents' ranks grew almost daily when men, as well as women, trekked into the camp and pledged to follow. The unique quality of Orlando's work, compared to that of the other recruiters, was that the people who followed him stayed. Rarely did they experience a change of heart, no matter how difficult they found the life of a guerrilla. Not one of Orlando's recruits wavered in the conviction that one day they would rise, weapons in hands, to shatter the yoke that had oppressed them from birth and even before that time.

Most of Orlando's anguish during his first years as an insurgent was rooted in the disgust he felt because he had not had the courage to return to Lacanjá to his mother and father after his escape from the
caoba
fields. His moment came, however, when he was in Yaxchilán, a village close to Lacanjá. It happened when he was recruiting a group of Lacandones and one of them approached him.

“Compañero
Flores, you must be careful.”

At the moment, Orlando thought that the man was warning him because of his message to rise against the
patrones
, but he was struck by the look in the recruit's eyes; it was different from that of all the others who had cautioned him. Instinctively, Orlando stepped closer to the man. When he spoke, his voice was a whisper.

“What do you mean,
amigo?
Of what should I be careful?”

“Are you not the son of Domingo and Ysidra Osuna?”

Orlando was startled to hear his parents' names. He had not identified himself as being an Osuna since the days when he was an organizer and he had changed his name.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because my father remembers you. He was a
boyero
with you in the
caoba
fields of the Mayorga family. Are you not Quintín Osuna?”

Stunned into silence, Orlando took hold of the man's arm and nudged him over to a place far removed from anyone who might overhear their conversation. He was silent for a while as he wrestled with a decision: to be honest with this stranger and risk capture, or to be false and save himself, yet miss the opportunity to discover news for which he had spent years of his life waiting. Orlando's desire to know at least something about his mother and father compelled him to decide on a middle road.

“I once knew a Quintín Osuna, of these parts I believe. What I don't know is why he should be careful.”

The man nodded, and with an understanding smile, played along with Orlando. Now it was his turn to walk toward an even more secluded fringe of the village so that both men might be able to speak openly.

“I understand the caution you show for that man. My father was a witness to the murder of the Mayorga overseer, a sorcerer often called El Brujo. My father has told me this story from the time when I was just a boy. He swears that the sorcerer received justice on that day when Quintín Osuna cut off his head, and he also swears that El Brujo's blood was white, like the milk of the
yuca
.”

Orlando had turned partially to one side so that all the man could see was his profile, chin jutting out, eyes clamped into slits. He held one hand, fingers outstretched and palm flat against his throat; he did this to disguise the wild beating of his heart, which was making the thick vein in his neck throb visibly.

“Amigo
, what does this have to do with me?”

“Since you know Quintín Osuna, it might be a good idea to tell him what old Don Absolón did to Quintín's mother and father, when, after searching, he was unable to find him and punish him.”

The mention of his parents made Orlando flinch. He turned to face the man. He wanted to speak, but he felt heat racing up from his stomach. He feared being sick in front of the stranger, so Orlando chose to keep silent. His silence, however, signaled the man to continue talking.

“The villagers of Lacanjá were witnesses to
el patrón'
s rage when he burned the Osuna
palapa
to the ground. Then he sentenced Domingo and Ysidra to death.”

Orlando felt that his knees were buckling, but reminding himself that he had long feared what he was hearing, that it was really not unexpected, revived his strength. He spoke despite an overwhelming urge to vomit.

“How did they die?”

“They were dragged to the site of a
caoba
camp by overseers. There the
boyeros
were forced to witness the fulfillment of the sentence.”

“I asked you,
how
did they die?”

“They were drowned in a mud pit.”

Orlando kept silent, weeping inwardly as he remembered the last day he saw his mother and father. He knew the cruelty and pain of dying in a mud pit, and the thought of their torment was intolerable. He waited until he regained his composure.

“How long ago did this happen?”

“Only a few months had passed since the death of El Brujo.”

Shortly after finding this out, Orlando returned to Yaxchilán, and from there he made his way to Lacanjá. Keeping cover in the jungle, he traveled secretly day and night. He was clear as to what he intended to do, and he understood the risk involved. The worst that could happen, he reminded himself, was death by execution, an end that was certainly his destiny anyway. Memories of Don Absolón, of his son Rufino, of El Brujo, and even of his friend Aquiles, filled him with an insatiable desire for vengeance, making him forget his commitment to justice, to freedom—all the ideals that had led him to join the insurgents. He was accosted by regret, knowing that years earlier, when he had been so close to Lacanjá, when he had discovered that he was a wanted man, his mother and father, unknown to him, were already
dead and he had done nothing. Above all, he was filled with disgust, knowing that old Don Absolón was now dead, ripped apart by an ox, and that he, Orlando, had been cheated of the pleasure of executing the old man.

It was dusk when he arrived at Lacanjá. As he skirted the village, he felt some comfort in seeing women stoking campfires, men and children carting water from the river; the fragrance of fresh tortillas made his mouth water. But, he could not stop to visit; it was too dangerous. He pushed on toward the fringe of the village, heading for Finca Las Estrellas.

It was past the family's dinner time when Orlando quietly made his way onto the property. He moved stealthily over the darkened parts of neat, manicured lawns, gingerly stepping over plush flower beds, avoiding the areas where he remembered watch dogs were kept. He moved cautiously, slowly, crouching, as if walking on brittle telltale twigs. He halted every few steps, eyes peeled wide open, ears tense and vigilant for any noise that would alert him to his being discovered. Nothing. The dogs, bellies filled and asleep, ignored him as he stole closer and closer to the room with the glittering chandeliers.

The entrance used by house servants was open. There was no one in sight. Orlando paused to remove his
huaraches
and made his way barefoot through the kitchen, heading for the parlor. He still remembered the way. The house was wrapped in silence; Rufino's wife and children were already asleep or elsewhere on the
finca
.

He rounded a corner and entered the dining room, now shrouded in shadows. From there he caught a full view of Rufino Mayorga sipping from a tiny goblet. Seeing how much his boyhood friend now looked like old Don Absolón, Orlando's memory zoomed back in time. In the same brocaded armchair, he sat dressed in similar white linen trousers and shirt. Orlando took his time to observe his prey, savoring the moment, taking in the details: graying blond hair that had begun to thin, well-fed paunch not yet as pronounced as the old man's, polished fingernails, white leather slippers, one of them dangling from a leg elegantly crossed at the knee.