Laura Restrepo - No Place for Heroes

Did Ramón not remember, would not remember, that they were separated, that they no longer lived together, no longer slept together? Lorenza chose not to protest. She too would play dumb, as long as it was necessary.

“At that instant, Mateo appeared with a package bigger than himself. I unwrapped it and it was a pullover for me. Handwoven by village women, said Ramón. Lovely, really. Open in front, a deep black, with blue-and-white trinkets.”

“If it was open it wasn’t a pullover.”

“A sweater?”

“Nope.”

“Then I don’t know what the hell it was.”

“A cardigan. It must have been a Scandinavian cardigan, back stitch. In Bariloche they make divine ones. I have some from there. Look at this scarf. It’s made with Scandinavian backstitch. For the front to come out right, you have to hold the thread through the back. It’s really not that complicated.”

“But they also gave me a black cap, which I used for many years, who knows where I lost it, and snow boots, fur-lined. Well chosen, wouldn’t you know, just my size. My heart melted to see Mateo’s enthusiasm, the jumps and hops when he saw the three of us with our outfits on, looking like forest gnomes. I hugged them. Both of them. They had caught me by surprise with this generosity, Gabriela, how was I not going to celebrate it.”

“I see where this is leading. He was always a charmer, that Forcás.”

Hikes were still possible because winter had not yet descended on the region, and that same afternoon they went out to make a brief trek around the property. A short one, Ramón had decided, not going too far, just to warm up, with the kid riding on the horse, held by his leg from below to prevent him from falling. Although Lorenza was determined not to be impressed by anything that would muddle her resolve, the beauty of those snowy heights left her agape and it took her breath away when they contemplated from a peak the entire universe spread at their feet. But she also noticed how deserted the surroundings were. They were alone at the end of the world, and it was neither metaphor nor reassurance. They started to come down the mountainside in the afternoon. Mateo dozed, as if enraptured with the rocking of the horse, and the last rays of the sun spread golden streaks on the locks that escaped from under Ramón’s cap. You can’t deny it, she thought, the son of a bitch has very pretty hair.

With no electricity, the fireplace was the only source of heat they had. The chimney rose on the wall against the headboards, warming the loft space. It was night, the first one the three of them would spend together in the cabin. Lorenza put pajamas on the boy, who failed to drink his milk before he fell asleep, and she set him down in the small bed. She lay down, wrapped in blankets and without taking off all of her clothes, on the side of the bed nearest Mateo, keeping near the edge, as close as possible to the child, to feel in the darkness his sweet breath. Ramón remained downstairs.

“I didn’t want to fall asleep,” Lorenza tells Gabriela. “Mateo was with me and I wanted that long-yearned-for moment to last forever. I didn’t want to fall asleep, but eventually I did.”

The mixture of absolute fatigue and a restored sense of calm made her let her guard down. At least for this night, they would not escape, not even in her dreams could she take Mateo from that heated refuge into the frozen night and across the snowy field to fly through the curtains of sleep on an old horse or in a white car. At some point, she was awakened by the cold.

The fire must have died out. She felt Ramón’s body stretched out beside her, facing away. Mateo had crawled to the big bed, leaving the three huddled tight like in a den, with her in the middle.

“And I felt good, Gabriela. What a difference from those tormented sleepless nights that I had spent alone. In times like that I forgot the monstrous things that Ramón had done. Well, and also the monstrous things I’d done to him as well in Bogotá.”

But soon enough she remembered the disaster she was in and began plotting an escape. In the end, that cabin was just a trap, a baseless illusion, an untenable, extravagant situation that Ramón had pulled out of his hat to mend things. She would have to raise an invisible barbed-wire fence between them. But she felt his body against hers, and appreciated its warmth.

“Wait a minute,” Gabriela said. “I still don’t understand what had happened in Bogotá. What do you mean when you say that you were guilty of monstrous things as well? Which ones?”

“Ignoring him, leaving him alone, tossing him to the side when I should have supported him, as he had done with me in Buenos Aires, like he was trying to do again in Bariloche.”

“But the measure of the two wrongs is so different. Come on! Taking a child from his mother! Even though it is his own father doing it, it’s a brutal tactic that bears some resemblance— some , right? — to what the enemy did. I don’t understand how you didn’t throw it in his face. If it was me, the first thing I would have done was beat him senseless. I’d smash his teeth, shit. You didn’t even reproach him for the money?”

“I’ve told you, it would have screwed everything up. Words were dangerous, Gabriela. I had to avoid them. He did too, he knew the settling of accounts would have ended the game. We talked about other things. About Mateo, mainly; about the cuteness that made Mateo Mateo. The two of us were crazy about the child and there we had no disagreement. And politics, of course. That was during the Falklands War. And we were up there, stuck with our drama and listening to the little battery-powered radio about the godforsaken mess developing below. Our ears glued to that little radio, keeping up with the news, we talked all day long, the two of us alone but like at a party meeting, arguing about whether we should support the Argentinean army in its just claim of a piece of national land. But how could we support such patriotic bluster from the junta, which was only looking to tame the domestic crisis; we shit on the junta but also the imperial vigor with which Thatcher mobilizes the Royal Navy, its Gurkhas, and task forces to continue their dominion over a few coin-size islands that were not theirs and were an ocean away.”

Fearful of having to deal with personal issues, they busied themselves with hiking, mountain climbing, chopping firewood, clearing the snow from the road with a shovel, walking beside Mateo on the horse, rowing on the lake: anything that used their muscles, until they collapsed from fatigue. It was the only way they could be together, their busy bodies then less likely to turn aggressive or vengeful, more likely to go with the flow. Ramón, who knew all the ins and outs of those mountains, took them to visit places that had become legendary, since she’d previously heard of them from him, the cave where Slovenian nuns hid, the glacier called Black Snowdrift, the slopes of Cerro Catedral, which led into the waters of Lago Gutiérrez, the peak of Cerro Otto, where they witnessed cosmic sunsets with a cup of hot chocolate in hand. When their excursions brought them to steep cliffs, they’d leave the horse behind and Ramón would carry Mateo on his shoulders.

They paused to dig a crib in the snow, which they lined with fur, so that the child could drink his milk and take a nap. This crowned their eight- or ten-hour crossing, from sunrise until reaching the refuge of the high mountains, which remained open to every traveler seeking shelter, firewood, and blankets at night. From peak to peak and cliff to cliff, they skirted the depths, like a devil’s nose, standing on huge black rocks looking over the void. With one little push, Lorenza thought when she saw Ramón nearing the edge, just a little push and that would be the end of their problem. But he thwarted the initiative as his eyes countered hers, seeming frightened and strange, as if he were plotting exactly the same.