Laura Restrepo - No Place for Heroes

“And what were those two words I had learned?” asked Mateo.

“Ook, snu.”

“Ook, snu?”

“Look at the snow. But to find that out, I had to wait another three days.”

“GISELLA SÁNCHEZ THOUGHT he was a guerrilla fighter,” Mateo told Lorenza during one of the musical teas offered after five under the glass dome of L’Orangerie, at the Alvear Palace Hotel, amid potted ferns, large vases filled with roses, and a quartet that played Brahms, watering it down to background music, and waiters in white gloves, coming and going as they deployed silverware, served finger sandwiches, warm scones, and mini gâteaux. Lorenza had dragged Mateo to this spot through the circuits of her nostalgia. She had stayed at the Alvear Palace as a girl and then as a teenager, when she visited Buenos Aires with her family.

“Who was a guerrilla?” she asked Mateo.

“Forcás, who else?”

“Forcás was not a guerrilla, who believes that?”

“I told you, Gisella Sánchez believes that.”

“But why do you say that?”

“Because she told me.”

“Who told you?”

“I told you, Gisella Sánchez, your Coronda neighbor. Today I went to talk to her.”

“What?”

“Today I went to talk to her.”

“What do you mean you went to talk to her?”

“Today. At lunchtime.”

“What? Yesterday you didn’t even let me ring the bell—”

“It’s better without you, Lorenza,” Mateo said, while searching among the tarts on the pâtisserie cart for one with no fruit. “I found out things. The paralyzed man was named Anselmo and has since died. I bet you didn’t know that.”

“And Gisella Sánchez?” she asked, still perplexed. She could not believe that Mateo, who only a few days ago had been paralyzed before the PlayStation, suddenly had decided to embark on a mission to track down his father. “Well, kiddo, good! You don’t know how happy I am that you went … And Gisella, what did you find?”

“I was told she had remarried, but not another paralyzed man. This time it was a dentist. I found her at the florist, she still works there. I think she now owns the business. It’s called Flowers and Gifts.”

“And did you go that far, in what, a taxi?”

“Yes, a taxi.” Mateo asked the waiter to bring him milk instead of tea. “Lie, I took the subway.”

“How did you know where her flower shop was? I didn’t even know that.”

“I asked around. I got to the florist and a saleswoman thought I wanted to buy flowers. It was Gisella Sánchez.”

“How did you know?”

“I said I was the son of Forcás and was looking for my father, but she kept with the flowers and said if they were for my father she would suggest some white roses, and began to pull them out. I tried to explain that I did not want flowers, that I was looking for my father. Then she asked what Forcás, she knew no one by that name. She reacted differently when I explained that Forcás was his nickname, his real name is Ramón Iribarren and he lived in Coronda. I told her that I was his son, Mateo Iribarren. From then on, she understood everything I was talking about.”

“No more, what a great investigator, you’ve become a tiger, kiddo, and to think that yesterday you pretended ignorance. And how is she, describe her.”

“She is a señora with the face of a señora.”

“It must be her. But why did she think that Ramón was a guerrilla?”

“Because he listened to rock argentino , I guess. I explained that he had not been a guerrilla. I told her that he was a Trotskyite who was against the armed struggle and that during the dictatorship had been part of the underground but without weapons. It’s good, right, Lolé? Did I tell it right? She told me that from the very beginning she knew that he was involved in something because revolutionary music came from his room. That’s what she said. Then she suffocated me with kisses, and said, You, the son of Ramón, a spitting image.”

“Did she ask about me?”

“I told her that I had come alone to Buenos Aires, looking for my father. She said that she had not seen him in years, but she’d seen Uncle Miche. Uncle Miche lived for a while longer in Coronda, with Azucena. Did you know that, Lolé?”

“How?”

“After the Ford Truck for Sale incident. She remembered the story of the sign, that part was the same. But you don’t know half the story. When you saw the sign, Forcás and you went into hiding. So far the two versions match. What you don’t know is that Miche did not leave. Ramón didn’t tell you that. See? You know nothing, Lorenza. Not even that. You did not know what happened right there in the house of Forcás, but he knew that you had inherited a farm far away in another country.”

Gisella Sánchez told Mateo that one Saturday at noon, she was walking home from the florist when she saw at the corner of Centenera and Guayaquil two guys who had seized Azucena, her neighbor, and were dragging her toward the house. Azucena looked very ill, pale, wilted, with blood dripping down her face and staining her shirt. Gisella Sánchez believed that it was two cana who had beaten her so that she would denounce the others, so she hurried to hang the sign on the door as she had agreed to do for Ramón.”

“That could be,” Lorenza told Mateo. “So we scrammed out of there and never came back. How could we?”

“Listen to what I’m saying, Mother: Miche returned. He continued living there. Those two guys were not cana , Lolé. They were just two ordinary types passing by, when they saw Azucena fall to the ground because she was an epileptic. They wanted to help, that was it. Two strangers. One put a handkerchief in her mouth so she did not swallow her tongue, and after the attack happened, she said she lived at 121 Coronda and they took her there. Gisella Sánchez had mentally created her own movie of the situation, believing that the men were cana and had beaten Azucena, so she got ahead of herself and put the sign up. When she realized her mistake it was too late; Forcás and you had seen it and had left. Miche arrived later, and there was no longer the sign up and he went in as usual. Inside he found Gisella Sánchez, who was caring for Azucena, who with the attack had fallen hard and had a wound on her forehead. That’s the thing, Lorenza, and thus they continued to live there. Miche and Azucena adopted the cats. Gisella Sánchez says that some time later, Miche was able to contact Ramón to tell him that it had been a false alarm. They lived there until three years ago, do you see? And then moved to a place called Villa Gesell.”

“In Buenos Aires?”

“No, outside Buenos Aires on the coast, it seems.”

“Sounds nice, Villa Gesell.”

“Yes, Villa Gesell. Not only that, Lorenza, from time to time Ramón would visit the place in Coronda, and bring food to the cats. I bet that he never told you that.”

“It would have been after we broke up—”

“No, it was then. It was when you were pregnant, believing that Coronda had fallen and that you were on the run. Nothing had happened in Coronda and yet Ramón told you nothing.”

“Well, he didn’t really need to tell me, these were things I did not need to know—”

“Not even about the cats? Didn’t you ever ask what happened to the cats?”

“I asked, of course, I asked him a thousand times. The worst part of losing Coronda was that Abra and Cadabra had been abandoned. For the second time in their lives, too. Clothes and things come and go, but those cats. He told me a few weeks later that he had been able to rescue them and your grandparents had them in Polvaredas.”