Of Love and Shadows (21 page)

Pradelio del Carmen Ranquileo had always been aware that Evangelina was not his sister. Everyone else treated her as if she were, but to him she had always been different, ever since she was a toddler. Using the excuse of helping his mother, he had bathed her and rocked her and fed her. The little girl adored him, and at every opportunity she put her arms around his neck, or climbed into his bed, or curled up in his arms. She followed him everywhere, like a little puppy, hounding him with her questions; it was his stories she wanted to hear, and she would only go to bed if he rocked her to sleep with his songs. For Pradelio, the games with Evangelina were charged with anxiety. He suffered whipping after whipping for putting his hands on her, in that way repaying his guilt. Guilt for the wet dreams where she called to him, obscene, tempting; guilt for hiding and watching as she squatted in the bushes to pee; guilt for following her to the irrigation ditch when it was time for her bath; guilt for inventing forbidden games where they hid far away from everyone, hugging and petting until they were both on the verge of collapse. Obeying the instinct that all women have, the child kept her brother's secret; she was as sly as he was. She was innocent and shameless, flirtatious and modest, and she used these emotions in turn to drive him crazy, to rub his senses raw, to keep him her prisoner. Their parents' restrictions and vigilance merely fed the fire that boiled in the blood of the adolescent Pradelio, a fire that led him to prostitutes at much too early an age, for he found no consolation in a boy's solitary pleasure. When Evangelina was still playing with dolls, he already dreamed of possessing her, calculating how the thrust of his manhood would go through her like a sword. He sat her on his knees to help her with her lessons, and as he looked for the answer to the problems in her notebook, he felt his bones dissolve, and something warm and sticky flowing through his veins; his strength melted away, he could not think, he felt he would surely die when he smelled the smoke of her hair and the lye soap of her clothes and the sweat of her neck, and felt the weight of her body on his. How could he stand it, unless he howled like a dog after a bitch in heat, unless he grabbed her and gobbled her up, unless he ran to the nearest poplar and hanged himself by the neck till he was dead to pay for the crime of loving his sister with such sinful passion? She could sense what he was feeling, and she wiggled around in his lap, pressing, rubbing, shifting, until she felt him grow tense and moan like a drowning man, pressing his knuckles against the edge of the table as a sharp, sweetish smell enveloped them both. Those games lasted throughout Evangelina's childhood.

At eighteen Pradelio Ranquileo left home to fulfill his military service, and he never went back.

“I left in order not to sully my sister with my hands,” he confessed to Irene and Francisco in the mountain cave.

After completing his service, he immediately enlisted with the police. Evangelina had been frustrated, confused; she could not understand why she had been abandoned; she was oppressed by feelings that she could not name but that had been in her heart long before the stirring of sex. This was why Pradelio had fled his destiny as a poor farmer—he had fled from a girl becoming a woman, and from memories of a childhood tainted by incest. In the years that followed, he had grown to his full size and found a certain peace. Change in the political scene had contributed to his maturity and dimmed his obsession for Evangelina; overnight he had ceased to be an insignificant rural guardsman and had found what power was about. He had seen fear in other men's eyes, and he liked that. He felt important, strong—in command. The day before the military coup, he had been told that the enemy intended to wipe out the Army and set up their Soviet tyranny. The enemy must truly have been dangerous and skillful, because to that day no one had ever learned of their bloodthirsty plans except the commanders of the armed forces, who were always vigilant on behalf of the nation's interests. If the military had not made their move, the whole country would have been sunk into civil war, or would have been occupied by the Russians, as Lieutenant Juan de Dios Ramírez had explained to him. The timely and courageous actions of every soldier, Ranquileo among them, had saved the country from a terrible fate. That's why I'm proud to wear the uniform, although some things I don't like. I follow orders without asking questions, because if every soldier started arguing over what his officer told him to do, we'd be in it up to our asses, for sure—the whole country would go straight to hell. I had to arrest a lot of people, I admit that, even men I knew, and friends, like the Floreses. A bad business about the Flores men getting mixed up in the Farmers Union. They seemed like good people, and who would ever have thought they would get it in their heads to attack the barracks? What a crazy idea. How did Antonio Flores and his sons ever get mixed up in something like that? They were smart enough, they'd been to school. Luckily, Lieutenant Ramírez had been warned by the
patrones
of the neighboring farms and he'd been able to act in time. It was tough for me to arrest the Floreses. I still remember the screams of the other Evangelina as we took off all the men of her family. It hurt me, because she's my true sister, as much a Ranquileo as I am. Yes, there were lots of prisoners in those days. I made a lot of them talk. I took them to the stables and tied them up and beat the hell out of them. We shot some too, and other things I can't tell because it's a military secret. The lieutenant trusted me, he treated me like a son. I respected him and looked up to him. He was a good chief, and he sent me on special missions that he couldn't trust to weaklings and bigmouths like Sergeant Faustino Rivera, who loses his head after one beer and starts blabbing like an old woman. Lieutenant Ramírez told me many times: Ranquileo, you'll go far, because you know how to keep your mouth shut. And you've got courage. Tight-lipped and courageous, those are a soldier's greatest virtues.

Once he had some authority, Pradelio had overcome his horror of his sins, and had escaped the ghost of Evangelina—except during visits home. Then she stirred his blood again with her little-baby hugging and kissing, except she was not a baby now, she was a woman, and she acted like one. The day he had seen her arched backward, turning and twisting and moaning in a grotesque parody of the sexual act, all the torrid, almost forgotten torments came flooding back. He tried desperate measures to get her out of his mind: long ice-cold showers at dawn and chicken skin doused with vinegar, to see whether ice in his bones and fire in his gut would bring him to his senses. But nothing worked. That was when he had told everything to Lieutenant Juan de Dios Ramírez, bound to him by old and strong bonds.

“I'll take care of your problem, Ranquileo,” the officer promised after listening to his bizarre story. “I like for my men to tell me their worries. You did right to confide in me.”

*  *  *

The very same day of the debacle at the Ranquileo home, Lieutenant Ramírez sentenced Pradelio to solitary confinement. He gave no explanation. Pradelio spent several days on bread and water without knowing the reason for his punishment, although he supposed it had some connection with his sister's indelicate behavior. When he thought about what happened, he couldn't help smiling. He couldn't believe that a skinny little girl who was about as big around as a worm, a kid who didn't even have a woman's breasts yet, just two plums poking out of her rib cage, could have lifted the lieutenant in the air and shaken him like a mop in front of all his men. Ranquileo thought he must have dreamed it; maybe he'd gone a little out of his head from hunger and loneliness and desperation, and that in fact it had never happened. But then he had to ask himself why he was in solitary. It was the first time anything like this had ever happened to him; not even during his military service had he suffered such humiliation. He had been a model recruit, and now for several years he had been a good policeman. Ranquileo, his lieutenant always told him, you were born to wear this uniform. You must always defend it and have faith in your superiors. And he always had. Lieutenant Ramírez had taught him to drive the company vehicles and had even made him his driver. Sometimes they went out together to drink a few beers and visit the whores in Los Riscos, just like good friends. That's why he had dared to tell him about his sister's attacks, about the stones raining on the roof tiles, the dancing cups, and the restless animals. He had told him everything, never dreaming that the lieutenant would take a dozen armed men to raid his parents' house, or that Evangelina would make the lieutenant a laughingstock by dusting him around in the dirt of the patio.

Ranquileo liked his job, he told Francisco and Irene. He was a simple man, and had never liked to make decisions; he would rather keep his mouth shut and follow orders, and was happier when he placed the responsibility for what he did in someone else's hands. He stammered badly as he spoke, and his fingertips were bloody where he had chewed his nails down to the quick.

“I never used to chew them,” he apologized.

He was much happier in his rough military life than he had been at home. He didn't want to go back to the country. He had found a life in the armed forces, a destiny, a new family. He had the strength of an ox when it came to standing his shift, or going on wild sprees, or doing nights of guard duty. He was a good comrade, ready to share his rations with a hungrier man, or his poncho with one who was colder. He never took offense at his comrades' clumsy jokes or lost his good nature; he smiled happily when they kidded him about being the size of a Percheron, and hung like one as well. They laughed at his eagerness to do his job, his reverent respect for the sacred military institution, his dream of being a hero and giving his life for the flag. Suddenly all that had collapsed. He had no idea why he was in the cell, or how much time had gone by. His only contact with the outside world were the few words whispered by the man who brought him his food. Once or twice the guard had given him cigarettes, and he'd promised to bring a cowboy novel or some sports magazines, although there wasn't any light to read them by. During those days, he had learned to exist on whispers, on hopes, on little tricks to make the time go by. He tried to sharpen all his senses, to feel he was a part of what was going on outside his cell; even so, there were moments he felt so alone he thought he had died. He listened to the sounds outside; he knew when the guard changed; he counted the vehicles entering and leaving the compound; he tuned his ear to recognize voices and steps distorted by distance. He tried to sleep, to shorten the hours, but inactivity and anxiety robbed him of sleep. A smaller man could have stretched and exercised in that confined space, but for Ranquileo the cell was a straitjacket. Lice from his mattress nested in his hair and rapidly multiplied. He clawed at the nits in his armpits and groin until he was bleeding. He had a bucket for a toilet, and when it was full the stench became his worst torture. He decided that Lieutenant Ramírez was putting him to the test. Maybe he wanted to confirm his endurance and his mettle before he entrusted some special mission to him; that's why Pradelio had not used his right to appeal during the first three days of confinement. He tried to stay calm, not to give in, not to sob or yell as most of the men in solitary did. He wanted to put his best foot forward, to show his physical and moral strength, so his officer would be impressed with him; he wanted to prove that he would not break even under the most extreme conditions. He tried to walk around his cell to stretch his muscles and avoid leg cramps, but it was impossible because his head touched the ceiling and when he opened both arms he touched the walls. In the past they had confined as many as six prisoners in that cell, but only for a few days, never for as long as Pradelio had been there; besides, they weren't ordinary criminals, they were enemies of the nation—Soviet agents and traitors—Lieutenant Ramírez had left no doubt on that point. Pradelio was a man used to exercise and fresh air, and the forced immobility of his body also affected his mind; he got dizzy, he forgot names and places, he saw monsters in the shadows. To keep from going mad, he sang to himself. He liked to sing, although normally he was too shy. Evangelina liked to listen to him sing; she would lie quietly with her eyes closed, as if she were hearing the voices of sirens: Sing me some more . . . sing me some more. . . . While he was a prisoner, he had more than enough time to think about her, to remember everything about her, about the pact of forbidden desire they had shared since they were children. He gave his imagination free rein, and imposed his sister's face on the memory of his wildest sexual excesses. It was Evangelina who opened to him like a ripe red watermelon, juicy and warm; she who sweated that clinging, fishy odor; she who bit him, scratched him, sucked him, moaning with shame and pleasure. It was into her compassionate flesh that he plunged until he stopped breathing and turned into a sponge, a jellyfish, a starfish at the bottom of the sea. For hours he stroked himself, evoking Evangelina's ghost, but there were always too many hours left over. Inside those walls time was frozen in an eternal instant. Sometimes he reached the limits of his endurance and thought that if he banged his head against the wall until his blood trickled under the door and alerted the guard, maybe they would at least transfer him to the infirmary. One evening, when he was at the point of doing just that, Sergeant Faustino Rivera appeared. He opened the slit in the iron door and passed Pradelio cigarettes and matches and chocolate.

“The boys send their greetings. They're going to buy you candles and some magazines to help pass the time. They're worried about you, and want to talk with the lieutenant to see if he won't get you out of here.”

“Why
am
I here?”

“I don't know. Maybe because of your sister.”

“Everything's all fucked up, Sergeant.”

“It looks that way. Your mother came to ask about you, and about Evangelina, too.”