Laura Restrepo - No Place for Heroes

She arrived at Ezeiza International Airport overcome with longing, certain that Mateo would be there waiting for her. She would open her eyes and see him, as if waking from a nightmare. Within minutes she would be holding him and whatever happened afterward, she would never let go. She went through the military checkpoints knowing that she would not fail, could not fail this time. It would have been a terrible trick of fate to be brought down this time, when this trip had nothing to do with politics, and Mateo was waiting on the other side. Moreover, unlike her first arrival, now she had a minute that the soldiers would find more than respectable: her press card and a document under which the purpose of the trip was stated as a series of features for La Crónica on the most beautiful Argentine ranches.

Immigration and customs went smoothly, but her soul dropped to the floor when she realized that no one was waiting for her. Not only was Mateo not there but Ramón was not, either. In that crowded airport, she did not know a soul; and apart from the destination of Buenos Aires printed on the ticket, Ramón had not given her any information. Mistake, mistake, mistake! Lorenza wanted to bang her head against the wall, disastrous mistake, not to have realized that Ramón would have suspected a counteroffensive and would not be so careless as to show up at the airport, much less bring the child. She should have demanded a telephone number or directions to go somewhere, some reference point, a hotel, even a café, where they could reestablish contact, in the event of the misfortune that was indeed happening.

She waited five minutes, ten, twelve. Nothing, nobody. Again the black hole, the daily first sensation of paralysis, again that chasm between her and her child. In the haste of planning, she had not anticipated this. The possibility that Ramón wouldn’t come to pick her up but would leave her there, stranded in a void, had not even occurred to her. She had considered a thousand other adverse contingencies, but not that one. Again she felt aimless and without a possible plan of action, again at zero, in pure anguish. Blood drained to her feet and her ears buzzed. She breathed deeply so as not to collapse, and then saw Miche walking toward her. Ramón had commissioned his brother to receive her, and he had been running late.

“Miche helped me with the suitcase and we took a taxi to the Avenida la Plata Station together,” Lorenza told Mateo. “From there we took the metro to Plaza de Mayo, changed to line A and rode to Castro Barros, where we got off and took a taxi back, with Miche always looking back, checking and counterchecking to verify that we were not being followed.”

“Followed by whom?” Mateo asked.

“My people, I suppose. Now that my people were the enemy. Suddenly everything we did made both the Iribarren brothers and me seem very pathetic. One of the strangest games. And ridiculous on top of that, for when Miche had arrived late to the airport, or rather from the beginning had blown the operation, the very first thing he said to me was not to tell Ramón that he had arrived late because Ramón would give him shit for it. How not to think of Marx, who said that the events in history happen the first time as tragedy and the second time as comedy. What was happening to us now was ridiculous and at the same time terrifying, because you were involved.”

“And you complain of Wei-Wulong on my PlayStation.”

“Wei-Wulong is a naïve child compared with these full-metal warriors that we had become, kicking each other in the groin.”

“Why are we going around in circles?” Lorenza said to Miche. “Nobody’s following us, I came alone, I swear. I’m not the enemy, Miche, I am just a poor woman who wants to see her son. I’m tired, come on, save me the fares.”

“I have nothing to do with this, che,” Miche replied. “I follow orders.”

“We finally arrived at a building in Palermo,” Lorenza told Mateo. “And don’t ask me how, with my terrible sense of direction, I managed to record in my head every turn, every block, every traffic light, to the point that I could repeat today the labyrinthine journey we undertook that night. From the moment I landed at Ezeiza, and until I had you with me safely back in Bogotá, I made it my business to know exactly where I was standing.”

Lorenza asked Miche how Mateo was and he said that he was enjoying himself, those were his exact words, and she didn’t know whether to interpret them as naïve or sarcastic.

She did her best not to get agitated. She couldn’t afford to lose control. Foremost, she needed a cool head, every step and every word had to be calculated, so she shut her mouth and walked in silence, amid tension you could slice with a knife, until they reached a furnished apartment, apparently uninhabited, at the building in Palermo, and Miche told her to take the bedroom, he’d sleep on the sofa in the living room. Then he ordered a pizza that they ate in silence, or rather that he ate almost entirely on his own because she hardly ate, either out of courtesy or hypocrisy.

It was all very strange. To Lorenza it was surreal to be there in that impersonal place, a sort of anteroom or limbo, on the journey to Mateo, with Uncle Miche acting as her jailer, but at the same time her guide, the one who would take her to her son. After they ate, Miche asked her if she wanted to watch TV for a while and she said maybe not, and he also asked if she wanted to shower, since the trip had been so long, and she accepted, said it would do her some good, so he struggled for a long time to light the boiler but in the end failed, and said it was better this way, better to go to sleep, because the next day they’d have to leave no later than six in the morning, and she was infinitely glad they’d start early and she asked where they’d be going, but he repeated that she had to have patience.

“What are we playing, Miche?” Lorenza confronted him.

“Don’t ask me. I don’t understand anything, I do what I am told and ciao, this dump stands between Ramón and you.”

“You’ve always been a good guy,” she said, or rather begged.

“Why don’t you sleep a little, piba , you’re exhausted.”

Miche seemed to understand her appeal and took her hands for a moment. “Mateo is fine and you’re going to see him tomorrow. As sure as my name is Miguel, you’ll be with him tomorrow, I swear by my mother.”

The bedroom had a double bed but she couldn’t lie down. She paced from one side of the room to the other so as not to explode with impatience, six steps from one wall to the other, back and forth, back and forth, just as she’d done the night before the birth, in the Hospital Ramón Sardá, in Parque Patricios, the very popular Maternidad Sardá, when she refused painkillers and refused to go to bed, while Ramón, his mother, the internists, and the nurses tried to convince her to rest, but she just wanted to be left alone to walk through the halls, up and down, up and down. You’ll be exhausted when the time comes, Ramón tried to reason with her. But she wouldn’t stop, couldn’t stop, walking and walking all night, stopping only when the contractions doubled her over and she realized she was early: the labor, expected for eight or nine in the morning, began at five. They were not able to get her doctor and she had to be attended by the internist, and they couldn’t apply the epidural because the child was already on the way. She never even reached the delivery room and there on the couch, she realized that the moment had arrived and that she would have to make a brutal effort.

The cataclysm shook her, she felt her bones rattle and a pain so intense took possession of her that it was no longer pain, she thought, must have had some other name, since it was more like a force, and not only hers but a force of nature that zeroed in on her body and would intensify to an unbearable degree. And then came peace. She held on to the most serene creature she had ever seen, a little boy with delicate features and amazing, tiny, perfect hands, as comfortable in the world as he had been for nine months in her belly, gentle, like a gurgle of joy that so often announced itself with a slight kick, and that at the same time was a powerful presence, terrifying and overwhelming. And there he was, as close to her as before the birth but even more so, because now she could see him in the clear light of day, and maybe he saw it too, and perceived the intensity of that first blue morning of his existence.