Out of the Line of Fire (18 page)

He saw again the slight frown appear on her face as their eyes met, saw her lips falter, saw her profile as she looked away, glimpsed again the slenderness of her body as she made her way self-consciously out through the sunlit archway of the tiny church and into the nothingness beyond.

In the film, one can still hear the voices of the children singing as this scene dissolves to show an image of Placido’s face staring impassively out through the compartment window. For Placido, Inocenta is like music—something that is always there, that inhabits him, yet always remains for him unknowable, ungraspable.

Ramon Fernandez
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Kreuzer Verlag, 224 Seiten. DM12.50

night after returning from a trip far along the coast, Inocenta came to his bed again and re-aroused in him the passion he had felt for her in the first few weeks of their marriage. They made love in a strange and frenzied silence. Afterwards, as he lay there in the darkness exhausted, he felt Inocenta’s weight rise from the bed and inexplicably steal away from him.

Six weeks later a telegram was delivered to him in the hotel of the small town of Aguila. It read simply: ‘Choose a name for your son’. He had been overjoyed. He read and reread the telegram. A son. At last, a son!

Two days later when he arrived home, the joyful embrace he had imagined as he and Inocenta shared their happiness together for the first time became instead a moment in which they stood separated from each other, he in the doorway holding the telegram in his hand, she on a chair by the stove, sewing. Each remained looking at the other, each unable to move.

Neither came to the other that night. Instead, they both lay awake in their isolation, wondering where destiny would take them from here.

The child, a boy, was born a month early. Nevertheless, he was strong and healthy and Placido had been overjoyed to have a son at last. But the gulf which separated them remained. It was as though he were recovering from a long illness. Time, he told himself, would eventually heal the wound they shared in common.

*

Two days before his son’s third birthday, Placido found himself in the town of Coyoacán, sitting in the office of Carlos Rivera whom he had not seen for ten years. He was growing impatient. He had waited all morning for his friend to arrive from the capital. Inside it was hot and muggy. He watched the ceiling fan turning in slow, insolent circles. Outside it was raining. Even the rain was hot.

When Carlos’s young secretary brought him the news that the bridge at Tostada had been washed away and no one would be arriving from the capital that day, he sat for a moment wondering what to do. He watched the girl putting papers into the cabinet by the door. Under her dress he could see she had small, hard buttocks, like those of a boy. He wondered idly if she was Carlos’s mistress. He stood up, said goodbye to her and left.

He walked across the main street in the rain and from there continued under the eaves of the shops opposite to the post office. He would stay another day in Coyoacán awaiting his friend. He wrote out a telegram to Inocenta: ‘Delayed. Return Friday. Placido.’

Then he walked back to the small bar opposite his friend’s office. He had been sitting there for not more than five minutes when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to see Carlos’s smiling face.

Carlos? They told me the bridge had been washed away.

He laughed.

You should know a little washed-out bridge wouldn’t stop Carlos Rivera from seeing his old friend.

They went back to his office. The girl he had seen earlier was still there. As soon as they entered, Carlos ordered her to bring them two coffees. He eyed Placido watching the girl as she left. He gave a strange high-pitched laugh.

I see nothing’s changed, Carlos said, making an obscene gesture. That girl will do anything for me. You want her for the afternoon?

Before Placido could answer, the girl returned.

Margarita, Carlos said.

Yes, Don Carlos?

Don Carlos, Don Carlos! Do you hear that Placido, Don Car-los. I like that. Come here Margarita. I want you to meet an old friend of mine. Placido,
Don
Placido Alvarado—Margarita.

Placido smiled at the girl. She smiled faintly at him and then stood uneasily looking at the floor. Carlos was standing behind her. He raised his cupped hands to his chest and bounced them up and down. He threw back his head and rolled his eyes.

Fan-
tas
-tico, he said.

The girl looked around and saw what Carlos was doing. Carlos turned to her.

Margarita has the most fantastic tits, don’t you Margarita. Why don’t you show my friend Don Placido your tits.

She glanced quickly at Placido.

No, come on Carlos. Leave the girl alone.

No, I insist…Margarita, show my friend your tits—now!

He moved menacingly towards her.

She turned to Placido and began slowly unbuttoning her blouse. When she had finished she parted it slightly so that Placido could just make out the inward curve of her breasts. Dissatisfied with this, Carlos reached out and pulled her blouse violently down her back.

Now hold your head up high so that my friend can see your face.

She looked at Placido with a look not of humiliation but of defiance, challenging him not to find her beautiful after all, as if to say, no one, not Carlos, not him or anybody else could strip her of her dignity.

Carlos quickly grew bored with Placido’s lack of interest and impatiently dismissed the girl.

What’s the matter with you? What happened to the good old days? Don’t you like women anymore?

Sure, he said.

He walked over to the window and looked out. The clouds had begun to break up. Great shafts of sunlight lit up the facades of the buildings opposite.

Is there a train to Charada tomorrow? he asked.

There’s one at eight to San Domingo. In the afternoon from there you can get the mail train to Charada.

He thought for a moment. If he took the mail train he could be home by eight the next evening.

When he left Carlos half an hour later he walked back to the post office to send the second telegram that day to Inocenta. But when he got there he found the line was down. He would have to wait until the morning.

That night he dreamt that Margarita came to him. They made love, slowly at first and then, like two animals, they were clawing at each other. She bit and scratched him, pulling his hair with a wild, fiery passion. Then, with a start, he was awake and Margarita was gone. He lay there blinking, disoriented. He could feel the cold, wet perspiration of his shirt clinging to his back. He felt the rough stubble of his face. Outside, through the curtains, he could see it was already light. Still dazed he looked at his watch. Seven-thirty. Seven-thirty! He could not believe his eyes. That only gave him half an hour. He lay staring at the ceiling.

A few minutes later he staggered out of bed, looked at his face in the mirror and decided a shave would have to wait. He searched through his bag for a clean shirt and with it half-buttoned up sat on the side of the bed and pulled on his boots. He remained sitting there for a moment. Why hurry, he thought, he wasn’t expected home until tomorrow. If he missed the train he missed the train.

But in reality, he knew he had made up his mind to go and a few minutes later he descended the hotel stairs and once again emerged into the thorny sunlight of another day. He glanced at his watch—a quarter to eight. He had plenty of time.

It was only at the ticket office, when he asked for his ticket to the capital, that he realized how really
happy
he was to be going home. Home to Inocenta, home to his young son.

Seating himself in the empty compartment, he smiled to himself. Home at last. He enjoyed these return journeys. For him they meant the return to his centre, the end of an unidentifiable yearning in his soul which began the moment he left Charada.

He suddenly realized how weary he was of all this travelling, how much this endless trekking from one town to the next had been a need to get away from something he could not face in himself. He could see the day when his love for Inocenta would be rekindled, when once again they would live together as man and wife, and he would re-experience that strange animal fierceness to which Inocenta had surrendered herself in the first year of their marriage.

Distractedly he watched as the occasional farmhouse approached then receded through the window of the carriage. It occurred to him that he could not remember leaving the station, so lulled had he been by the rocking motion of the carriage and the repeated, hypnotic rhythms of the wheels. When he got back he would ask Santiago if he could once again manage one of the plantations near Charada. This life of continual travel was no life for a man with a young son.

He arrived at the capital a little after twelve. The mail train for Charada didn’t leave until after two. When it did it would wind its way slowly up into the mountains, until eventually an hour, perhaps two, after sunset it would stop briefly at Charada before continuing on into the night.

And when Placido did board the mail train for Charada, it was once again with the feeling that there existed some mysterious, unfathomable force which guided the world. In a toy shop near the station of San Domingo he had found the perfect gift for his young son. It was as though fate had led him to it. He knew already the delight he would experience watching his son unwrap it. It would be like unwrapping part of history. He felt its comfortable weight resting on his knees. He smiled to himself as, with a jolt, the train started to move.

But at Carmelo, Placido was awakened by the harsh crackle of the platform loudspeaker, the same loud-speaker that years before had advised passengers that the war had finally ended. He looked at his watch. Four-thirty. He tried to concentrate as the message was repeated. For some reason they were going to be delayed. He asked the young boy sitting opposite what the problem was. He shrugged his shoulders. No sé. He did not know. One of his companions leaned out the window to talk to the conductor on the platform.

A tree has fallen, he yelled back to them, grinning.

The conductor said something else and the youth slumped back into his seat.

How long will it be? someone asked.

He doesn’t know. An hour, maybe two. He says for us to stretch our legs. He slapped his forehead in a gesture of feigned exasperation.

Placido could see that some of the passengers had already begun to disembark and the group of youths opposite got noisily up. The carriage began to empty. Drowsily he looked across at the old woman sitting adjacent to him. She was staring at him intently. She grinned conspiratorially as his gaze fell to two large cloth-covered packages at her feet. Her tiny head with its hair pulled back and the crevassed texture of her face reminded him of the puppet figures he had seen as a child whose heads had been carved from walnuts. When he looked across at her again she beckoned him with one thin bony finger. At first he was at a loss to know just what it was she wanted of him, but as he slid along the carriage seat towards her she looked quickly around, raised her finger to her lips and slowly lifted one of the cloth covers. Beneath was a wire cage. Inside sat and then stood a magnificent, jet-black rooster. it looked back at him with the same restless eyes of the old woman. She lowered the cloth again and threw back her head in an inaudible laugh. This was no ordinary rooster. This, he knew, was a fighting cock—a champion. She raised her finger to her mouth again and pursed her lips. In return he lifted the clenched fist of his right hand to his chest and smiled. Then she pointed to the package on his lap. He held it up and she nodded. So this was what she wanted, he thought. Slowly he pulled the present he had bought his son out from its bag and held it up for her. He opened its lid and a tiny soldier carrying a drum rose from its centre. He turned the box towards himself and saw the solitary figure multiplied endlessly in the mirrors behind it, as though it were now proudly standing at the head of a whole battalion of tiny soldier-drummers. He cranked the handle and the familiar march tune which had become their national anthem, first under the dictatorship, and then again, in sensational circumstances, after the revolution, began to play.

Chavez, the old woman said, clasping her hands together and raising her eyes heavenwards.

Every man, woman and child knew the name Chavez, the man who had been transformed overnight from a despised traitor into a national hero.

And one day he would teach his own son the story of how this tiny elf of a man had been compelled by the military dictatorship to compose a national anthem for their country and how after the revolution he had been denounced for acts of treason against the people. He would tell him of how eminent scholars, noted musicians and distinguished conductors had all testified against him, claiming his music embodied the ‘oppressiveness of the overthrown regime’ and the ‘regimentation of the human spirit’.

He would tell him how he had been at his trial, how he had seen Chavez standing there openly, sometimes uncontrollably, laughing at their testimony, but saying nothing. His behaviour had scandalized the court. The presiding judges had had to call repeatedly for order. After all the evidence against him, apparently conclusive, had been heard, Chavez, still beaming, was asked if he had anything to say before sentence was passed. He did. He asked that an orchestra be brought before the court to hear the offending piece. After a long discussion his request was agreed to and the court adjourned.

The next day an orchestra was assembled in the courtroom and after tuning up, and with Chavez back in the witness stand, it began to play. Immediately tears of laughter began to stream down his face. He slapped his knees with glee, bent double and hooted as the march changed tempo, chortled to himself as though he’d been told the funniest joke of his life when the music modulated into a minor key and then, for the remainder of the piece, stood before the court red-faced and trembling with barely suppressed laughter. Everyone, including the judges, thought his mind had become unhinged.