Laura Restrepo - No Place for Heroes

“No, the cats remained in Coronda with Miche. The thing is, you don’t know a thing about Ramón, nothing.”

“But why would he hide such a thing from me, what would he gain by not telling me?”

“Maybe he didn’t gain anything, there were just a lot of things he didn’t talk about. Or maybe the cats spent time with Miche in Coronda and then with my grandparents in Polvaredas. Who knows?”

“Besides, that doesn’t end the story of Abra and Cadabra, kiddo. I had to face a very dramatic situation because of them later.”

“Stop, stop. Guess what, Gisella Sánchez gave me Uncle Miche’s phone number at Villa Gesing.”

“Villa Gesell.”

“Villa Gesell. Uncle Miche lives there now. And I’m going to call him,” Mateo said, sounding confident. “I need to know. I have a lot of questions to ask him.”

Lorenza stared at Mateo, sensing that he was not the same as the previous day. They say it’s possible to hear how the grass grows, she thought, and you can also hear how a child grows.

“You know what, it’s not true that I went alone to Coronda and to the florist,” said Mateo, suddenly. “Lies.”

“You didn’t go?”

“Yes I did, but I was not alone.”

“Then who—”

“Andrea took me.”

“What Andrea.”

“Andrea Robles, daughter of el negro Robles. She had told me that she would help me find my father.”

“She picked you up at the hotel?”

“Yes. And we took the metro together to Caballito. She has been finding out a lot about her father on her own, and I told her I wanted to do the same with mine. So today she helped me, to show me how.”

“And where is Andrea now? I would love to meet her. Do you want to invite her to have tea with us?”

“What are you thinking about, Mother, she’s an adult, she works. So I took her out at noon, when she was free. She’s back in her office now, and besides she wouldn’t like this place. The truth is, I don’t like it much.”

“I think that what you like is Andrea—”

“Don’t say that, I told you. She’s an adult. But she’s pretty, though. Her hair loose and earrings. Very pretty.”

“And Villa Gesell, where your uncle Miche lives, are you also going there with her?”

“No, what do you think? I’ll call him and if I find him, I’ll see him alone. As Andrea says, there are things you have to do alone.”

“UNCLE MICHE SAID it was true that he was a bus driver and that he covered the nighttime route 166, from the Third of February to Freedom. Look, Lolé, here on this napkin he jotted it down and told me to keep the data for when you wrote a book about those times, Line 166, from Third of February to Freedom,” Mateo told Lorenza after his return from Villa Gesell, having traveled there on the 7:40 AM Expreso Alberino, to spend the day with his father’s brother.

He had called the night before and they had agreed to meet. Apparently Miche knew nothing about Ramón’s whereabouts. They had quarreled a few years ago and had not seen each other or spoken since.

Uncle Miche was waiting at the bus terminal and Mateo had no problem recognizing him, first because nobody else was standing around, and second because he remained the same as he had been in the picture that Lorenza kept in an album: a rather tall man, thin but with a potbelly, a pinched nose, and Ray-Ban sunglasses with mirrored lenses, smiling politely and holding his nephew, who was only a few days old.

“You look the same, Uncle Miche,” Mateo said. “You have not changed at all.” He only took the sunglasses off for cooking.

“Eyewear of the professional bus driver,” Lorenza said. “The same ones he used when he drove.”

“But now he’s a butcher again, and he still uses them. I think it’s because of the sand. The wind was blowing and picked up the sand and it got in his eyes. There in the Villa Gesell, Miche has a butcher shop, and he lives in the back. The first thing he told me when I got off the bus was that he was going to prepare me one memorable steak, that he had set the best cut of meat aside, that it was the kind of beef we never had in Colombia, and to get ready because I was going to taste the best steak sausage of my life. That was the first thing he said when I arrived.”

“So? Was it good, the steak sausage?” Lorenza wanted to know.

“Yeah, very good, but best were the French fries. He made a mountain of fries and we gobbled them down. Miche left the assistant manager in charge of the butcher shop and took the day off to spend it with me. We talked a lot. He said my dad was a wretch, who had never gone looking for me because he was a coward. He also told me that it killed my grandparents.”

“Then they are dead?”

“Yes, both. Pierre my grandfather died first, of a heart attack. He was living with Miche, and was in the middle of building a stone fence. Miche took me to see the fence, which was half done, just like it had been left by my grandfather, a few steps from the butcher shop. According to Miche, Grandfather worked until the last minute of his life. And then Grandmother died, Noëlle.”

“Did he say how she died?”

“Sadly. He said that my grandmother never could deal with the sadness of losing her grandchild. I really liked Uncle Miche. I liked going to see him. He said that Villa Gesell was gray and desolate during the winter, but that I had to return. He invited me to spend the summer there. You’ll see what beauties come out to the beach in thongs, he said, you have to make the most of the fact that you’re single, kid. I guess he can’t because he is married. The wife wasn’t there, she had gone to Buenos Aires for a few days.”

“Azucena?”

“No, not her. With Azucena he had no children. Now he has another woman and a two-year-old child. Roughly the age I was the last time he saw me, so he said, and he showed me the photo of the baby. He said the child was identical to me. I didn’t see the resemblance, but I kept quiet. Guess what the baby’s name is.”

“What?”

“Guess.”

“I don’t know … Ramón … Pierre …”

“No, wrong. I’ll give you another chance.”

“Oh, kiddo. Let’s see … His name is Ernesto, Che. No wait, Leon Trotsky.”

“Nope.”

“Then Miguel, like his father.”

“His name is Mateo, like me. Mateo Iribarren. Just like me.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I swear. So I have a double. But it doesn’t bother me. Uncle Miche told me that he hadn’t named him that to replace me, but to not forget me. He said he did it for the sake of Grandmother, who was doing so badly because she had lost one Mateo, and Miche wanted to give her another to console her.”

“Okay—”

“Yes, it’s okay. It was a bit sad to see that little wall that Grandfather was building when he died. A very short little wall, you know, Lolé? It wasn’t like my grandfather was making the Great Wall of China or anything. It was a low wall, nothing more. I thought, so this was the last thing my grandfather did, and I would have liked to have helped. I would have liked to hand him the rocks, which I could have done, even as a child, they were medium-size stones. Mar del plata , Miche said that they were called, an unusual name for stones, sea of silver. In any case, I don’t think they weighed much. I should have asked Uncle Miche what the wall was for, why Grandfather was building it right there. Maybe tomorrow I’ll call and ask him.”

Mateo liked the voice of his uncle, who seemed calm. He had a slow way of speaking and Mateo understood him well. He had also shown him the set of Swiss knives that he used in the butcher shop and said that they had cost a fortune and were his greatest pride.