Laura Restrepo - No Place for Heroes

Life biting its own tail. There she was, saying goodbye to Mateo at exactly the place where years earlier she had taken the plane to Bariloche to go looking for him. She thought about telling him, to make him aware of the coincidences, the tricks of time as it pursues itself and reconnects, closing cycles and opening new ones. But she said nothing, obviously this was not the time.

Mateo had on a new face. He was illuminated, as if he had opened some door to the world and a stream of light had poured over him. He was going back to Bariloche, a teenager, wearing the Bridges to Babylon shirt he had bought at the Rolling Stones concert, a little skittish but radiant by the time he approached the other boys and girls going on the trip, sixteen in total, with a couple of ski instructors, two polite, athletic women, at home in their roles as those responsible for the group, who gave Mateo an effusive welcome and introduced him to the others in the group, some new, like him, but most veterans of several winters, making the same trip with the same people. They called for their plane to board over the PA and Mateo ran after the crowd, lugging his red backpack and without saying goodbye. He was so excited that he didn’t even realize he hadn’t said goodbye to his mother, and she had to simply wave with her hand, in case he turned to look at her.

“I stood there like an idiot, and I swear I had to make an effort not to cry,” she told her friend Gabriela a few hours later.

“The orphan of your son,” replied Gabriela. “I know that sad figure well.”

Lorenza headed for the window to look at the runway, to make sure that Mateo boarded the right plane, when someone shoved her from behind and almost made her fall.

“Goodbye, Lolé, I love you very much.” It was Mateo, who rushed to hug her and ran back to catch up with the others.

She had accepted the invitation to spend the week in Gabriela’s apartment, at 6000 Zelada Street, in the Mataderos neighborhood on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

“It’s full of fuzz,” said Gabriela, passing her hand over a table, which was covered in gray dust. “My lungs must be full of lint. It’s because of my job, I embroider here at home, and the fabric and threads shed lint.”

“You embroider?”

“Yes. Sheets, towels, linens, baby clothes, trousseaus—”

“By hand?”

“My old lady embroidered by hand, what beautiful things she made; not me, I work with machines.”

“So that’s why you gave me those dozen little embroidered shirts when Mateo was born.”

“You haven’t forgotten,” said Gabriela while making the bed on the living-room sofa, after picking up and piling on the floor against the walls the dozens of bundles the sofa had been buried under.

“What are they?” asked Lorenza, who had once again become Aurelia, because that’s how Gabriela knew her and what she still called her.

“Sheets. One hundred twenty-seven sets of sheets, which I need to have embroidered, ironed, and ready to go by Monday. Monograms in blue, look: like this, RCH, Rochester Classic Hotel, the place the order is for.”

Her workshop was right there in the apartment, so they had all the time they wanted to talk, as long as Aurelia let her work and helped if she wanted, steam ironing, pressing the sheets and pillowcases after they’d been embroidered, so that the delivery could be made on time.

They used to meet in the Basilica of San José de Flores, when they were both active in the front lines of the resistance. According to the minute they had agreed upon, they met in the alcove behind the altar, overseen from the vault by a young Christ Pantocrator who inspired them with confidence. There, they knelt with rosary in hand and pretended to pray as a duo. Hail Mary full of grace, and interspersed their Hail Marys with party information, blessed art thou among women, planning the activities of the week; and since both were pregnant, before leaving they sprinkled their bellies with holy water, to protect the children.

“Holy water, what nonsense,” said Gabriela.

“If it didn’t do any good, at least it caused no harm.”

“Modesto Zupichín.”

“Lucil Lucifora.”

“Lomolino Lomo.”

“Abramo Lomazo.”

They recalled the list of names for their babies which they had found in the pages of the Buenos Aires telephone book, betting to see who could find the most absurd one, Dora Lota, Lubli Lea, Tufik Salame, Delfor Malanga.

“Delfor Malanga, flower name,” said Gabriela. “And to think that you ended up naming the kid Mateo.”

“And you, Mary, maybe because of the many rosaries that we prayed in San José de Flores.”

“Can you handle the iron?”

“I am a tigress with the iron, mi papito lindo had a seamstress’s shop.”

“In the days of your papito lindo there were no steam irons.”

“I am a tigress with the steam iron.”

“You know who I still see occasionally, Tina, do you remember Tina?”

“Tina, the one from the elevator, how could I not remember. How is Tina?”

“She has two grown sons, both college graduates. She is now retired from teaching. She was a teacher.”

“She must have been older than us. Five or six years older. Have you ever asked her about it?”

“About that? She told me without my asking. She said she had felt a sense of relief.”

“Relief?”

“Yes, relief.”

“Madre mía.”

“She said that when she saw that the cana was behind her and got into the elevator, she thought he’d been following her and that it would be her fault that her comrades in the floor above, waiting for her to begin the meeting, got nabbed. She says that at the time she wanted to die, and therefore when the guy raped her, then got out of the elevator and ran away from the building, among everything else that she felt was that: relief. She had been raped but she was alive, and the ones who were waiting for her were still alive, had not disappeared, had not been murdered. And she felt relief.”

“You think so?”

“It’s what she told me.”

“Could it be—”

“Do you remember Tebas, the one who always came to the meetings with a younger brother, Nandito, who was severely retarded?”

“Tebas was disappeared, that I heard.”

“He was the last disappeared one of the party, at the time the military junta was about to fall. I don’t know if you know about Nandito. They grabbed him with Tebas and disappeared him as well.”

“Bastards. He must have been the most innocent of all the victims. He had such a sweet expression, Nandito.”

“Sweet, yes, but he masturbated in front of people.”

“Hush, what?”

“I swear, you don’t know what a fuss it caused during the meetings when he started up with that. Tebas suffered tremendously, but what could he do, he couldn’t very well bind his hands.”

“As if that would warrant it.”

“Crazy, right?”

“And Felicitas, do you remember her? The lawyer I introduced to you once.”

“Yes, quite the number that one, from Barrio Norte, she was wearing a red fox coat that one time we saw her, imposing with her Gucci handbag and suede boots.”

“Yes, that one. We became good friends. But just friends, no politics, friends to go to the movies with, talk about books and such. And last week I was with her and guess what, she told me that during that time she defended money launderers. I would never have suspected it, would swear she had nothing to do with anything, until recently, when she told me.”

“Just look at her—”

“That’s exactly what I told her. I told her that she looked so elegant in her aristocratic office, I wouldn’t dare open my mouth around her. She told me that she’d never been left wing and wasn’t part of the resistance, but that on becoming a lawyer she had sworn to uphold elementary principles, as old as the French Revolution, and could not stand idly by before farcical trials and arbitrary sentences.”