No Place for Heroes (14 page)

“You brought me that
vaina?”
he asked from behind her, almost brushing her nape, a hoarse voice that of course was his, you didn’t have to be a magician to figure that out. She jumped. She hadn’t expected it to happen like this, that he would surprise her from behind, and she must have grown suddenly, because when she said hello, her voice sounded like an impostor’s, like theater parley. He, on the other hand, was very calm as he sat beside her. He was, in fact, grinning.

“A pretty smile,” Lorenza told Mateo. “Your father had a pretty smile.”

“He hadn’t lost the tooth yet,” Mateo cut in. “He used the word
vaina?
You’re saying Forcás told you
vaina?
He used that exact expression,
You brought me that vaina?
It’s so Colombian.”

“That’s what he said. He must have already known where I was from.” Aurelia knew right away that the man beside her smoked, it was the first thing that her nose registered when she met a person. But she noticed another smell as well, one that she liked, the smell of raw wool from the heavy pullover he wore.

“His famous thick wool pullovers.”

“This one seemed woven by hand, and it emitted an aroma that inspired confidence, a pleasant animal smell.”

“A pleasant animal smell or the smell of a pleasant animal?”

“A smell like sheep. I’m just trying to tell you that he was wearing sheep’s wool. But your father also smelled like a third thing. He radiated energy and youth, and that smells too. It smells strong and is alluring.”

“It’s called testosterone, Lolé.”

“I wouldn’t have called it that. But now that you’ve said it, he was a hunk of a man, your father. Of course he exuded testosterone.”

“If anybody questions us, let’s just say that we met in your country, last year,” Forcás proposed, to get their minute straight.

“Got it,” she responded. “And what were you doing there?”

“I have an export business.”

“What do you export?”

“Leather goods: When we parted there, you said you would call me as soon as you arrived in Buenos Aires, so that I could show you the city.”

“Nice. And who introduced us in Colombia?”

“Someone in your family. You tell me who.”

“My brother-in-law?”

“Your brother-in-law was my contact for the sale. Give him a name.”

“Patrick.”

“Patrick what?”

“Patrick Ferguson. Let’s say he’s an Australian.”

“If they ask you anything else, say we’re just getting to know each other and don’t know a lot about each other.”

“Not even names?”

“You’ll say my name is Mario.”

The place was loud, and Forcás spoke very softly and with a pronounced Buenos Aires accent, so she had trouble understanding everything and had to lean in closer. Maybe it was because of this that at first she smelled him more than watched him. A little bit later, when she leaned back and adjusted her angle of vision, she noticed that indeed his shoulders were wide and his hair was pretty, not exactly the color of honey, more a light chestnut, but it was the same, it was still handsome, everything about him was handsome, Sandrita had not lied about a thing.

“So then it’s true, my father has wide shoulders like Patrick always said. But you didn’t tell me what happened with the
chat.”

“What
chat?”

“The one you left in Humberto’s Mercedes.”

“Shawl
, kiddo,
shawl
, the scarf.”

“Right, right, shawl.”

“I never found out. Since I never saw them again, I never knew what became of the chat.”

“And the boxes?” Mateo asked.

“The boxes?”

“The ravioli, Lorenza, the ravioli.”

“That’s exactly what your father asked on the day we met at the table in Las Violetas. He asked me what was in the boxes, and it surprised me that he was surprised.”

“Oh, I just brought you this
vaina
. It’s ravioli,” Aurelia told Forcás.

“Ravioli? Are you nuts? Who would be stupid enough to walk around with boxes of ravioli on a Monday?”

“You see, Mateo, why I was so sure that our first meeting was on a Monday?”

“What was wrong with ravioli on Monday?”

“Very bad. When Forcás threw it in my face like that, I started blubbering, embarrassed that I had screwed up again. ‘But she told me,’ I tried to explain, ‘yesterday my contact told me … ’”

“Listen, yesterday was Sunday, nena,” Forcás whispered in her ear. “The ravioli would have been good yesterday, but not today. The pasta makers are closed on Mondays. It’s suicide to walk around with that on Monday. Except for you, there’s no other retard walking around Buenos Aires with boxes of ravioli. No one eats ravioli on Mondays here.”

“You’re the one who switched Sunday to Monday, how was I supposed to know? How should I know what they eat here on Mondays, as far as I am concerned they eat shit,” she exploded. Sandrita had already lectured her and now this Forcás was copping an attitude from the start. “Besides, I’m warning you,” she told him, “don’t start calling me stupid, or petit bourgeois, and definitely not retard or
nena
, because I
am not a
nena
, and will not put up with this shower of insults, I’m up to here with all of it.”

“Did the comrades harass you too much?” Forcás asked, softening his voice to placate her and unleashing his seductive smile.

“That’s all they’ve done lately.”

“There must have been other fuckups like this one. It’s stuffed, this one with the ravioli. What about the other box?” Forcás asked, half mocking.

She turned red again because she knew he was right, she had to be more careful or there would be a catastrophe. By then he would have lit one of the green-label Particulares 30, which he sucked on willfully, as if eager for cancer.

“Okay, so now tell me why they called my father Forcás. Aside from the sheep smell, what else made him seem like he was from the country?”

“Just that, the sheep smell. I learned later that your grandmother Noëlle knitted those pullovers for him, using wool from the different types of sheep they raised at the farm in Polvaredas.”

Maybe if she had observed Forcás with a more prophetic eye, she would have even then picked up on how aggressive he was, which was evident in the violence of his movements and his intransigent opinions. Although it had to be that way, more so because he was a soldier than because he was from the country. The truth was that on that first day, Aurelia didn’t see him as someone from the country, perhaps because all she noticed was that he was the most attractive man
she had ever met. She never found out what time he had arrived at Las Violetas, or if he had already been there when she arrived, watching her and waiting until the last minute to appear. The thing was that he was there now, seated beside her, gazing at her with those presumptuous eyes and quizzing her on why she had brought so many boxes.

“There are a lot of boxes because there are a lot of
vainas,”
she replied.

Forcás wanted to know what else there was aside from the passports, and she explained that there was microfilm and money, dollars.

“I thought it was only passports,” he said. “I had no idea about the rest. Why would they send all that with one messenger? It’s crazy.”

“I did what I was told without asking questions. In fact, I was told not to ask questions.”

“You’re right, it’s not your fault.”

“That would be the icing on the cake, if it were my fault.”

“True, true, the noose is tight around our necks. But what balls, those sons of bitches comrades in Madrid, they were making you walk the plank, sending you with all that.”

“Are you sure that’s how my father spoke?” Mateo asked. “With that accent and those exact words.”

“Yeah, well, something like that. I don’t know how to do the Argentinean accent.”

“It’s all right, go on. But maybe just do his part in a normal accent. It sounds a little forced the way you’re doing it.”

“I’ll do it however I want, kiddo, don’t pressure me. Besides, it’s almost over. Or do you want to leave the story there?”

“I want you to finish, but without an accent.”

Aurelia asked Forcás if they had not told him that she would be bringing all this and he said that they had talked over the phone with Europe but that he hadn’t quite understood everything—there were so many codes to throw off the enemy that they were themselves thrown off.

“And that’s how the first story ends, Mateo. Nothing else happened,” his mother said. “We couldn’t linger there because of all the ravioli and dollars in our possession. We had to go. The best thing was for each of us to go our own way as soon as possible. But it was evident that both of us wanted to stay, we felt good together, more than good, I imagine we were both already half in love.”

“Already?”

“Well, let’s just say we were hooked. Chemistry, they call it. Chemistry, what else? Because when it comes down to it, we had barely talked. Some flirtatious gestures, a tap on the shoulder, a graze of the knees, a goodbye kiss, a few minutes chatting about contraband, goodbye again, a kiss again, ciao, ciao again, ciao, for real this time.”

“You go first,” Forcás suggested when it was no longer possible to prolong their goodbyes, and she went for her wallet to pay for her tea and his coffee.

“Don’t even think about it. Put that away,
nena.”
There
he went with the
nena
again, but this time it didn’t irk her as much. “You evince yourself if you pay, sorry. You have to let the man pay at these meetings.”

“Evince?”

“Make evident, betray yourself.”

Aurelia was almost at the door leading out to Rivadavia when she turned around and walked back toward the table where Forcás was still seated.

“I forgot to tell you that the microfilm is in the bottom of the shoe box,” she whispered in his ear, taking a last whiff of that rich sheep smell, and he grabbed her by the arm as she was about to go. “Can I see you next week?”

“All right, stop, Lolé,” Mateo said. “I want you to explain to me why you fell in love with Forcás. Was it his pretty hair, his wide shoulders, the wool smell?”

“What a question! Let’s see. First, because he was a party member. At that time, I would have never fallen in love with someone who wasn’t.”

“So you liked him because he was a laborer?”

“He wasn’t a laborer.”

“From the country, then.”

“Originally from the country. But that wasn’t a social class that we cared much about, we favored the industrial laborers. As you know, the muzhiks betrayed the October Revolution.”

“What?”

“Nothing, never mind. Second, I liked that he was the
complete opposite of any boyfriend that Papaíto would have wanted for me. And third, pure old-fashioned attraction, I guess.”

“Sexual?”

“Yes, but he also seemed like a very interesting guy.”

“Did he seem like he would be a good father?” Mateo aimed the question point-blank and it caught his mother off guard. She felt embarrassed to have gone on about such trivialities, such dreadful tomfoolery. She remained silent for a moment because she did not know how to respond, anything she said would have been inadequate.

“A good father? No, Mateo, I didn’t think to ask myself that. I didn’t even ask myself if he was a good man.”

I
T’S A LOVE LETTER,
Dr. Haddad had said after reading the pages that Ramón left her at the beginning of the dark episode. A love letter? Lorenza was enraged. How the fuck is that a love letter? He took away my son, that’s not a love letter. She would not even bother to discuss the matter with this Dr. Heart. They commit the vilest imaginable act against you, the most treacherous, and that’s a love letter? It announces that you will never see your son again, your two-year-old baby, that creature from your entrails, and that’s a love letter? He steals a child using false papers, forging your own signature, even having tricked you into packing his suitcase, and that’s a love letter? All the psychiatrists in the world were famous
for dishing mountains of shit and this Dr. Heart was the worst of all. Lorenza turned to scram out of there, leaving Mamaíta to say goodbye and thank the man for his time.

“Did you read it, Lorenza?” She came to a complete standstill. For a moment she couldn’t move from the door, as if she were making up her mind whether to leave or come back in, and apparently she opted for the second option because she turned around, found a chair in front of the doctor, and sat down. She thought he looked like a cricket, and the cricket was challenging her with his gaze.

“No. Not the whole thing,” she replied. “The first paragraph, that’s all. I am not going to read the rest of it.”

“That’s fine,” Haddad said, and there was an imperceptible triumphant shift of tone in his voice, as if the fish had bitten and all he had to do was hook it. “It’s better that way. Don’t read it. But I have read it, in between the lines.”

“In the actual lines it says that I will never see my child again. What does it say in between the lines?”

“This man doesn’t want to take your son from you, Lorenza. This man just wants you back.”