The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos (32 page)

She acknowledges that it was the fierce determination and force of her faith in La Virgen de la Caridad that had empowered
her mother, who could neither read nor write, to make a way out of no way. In the depth of her soul, though she knew not how
to articulate it, Maria Inocenta had understood the essence of theological ethics from the sidelines, and the role the Church
has played in keeping the poor in their place. Maria Inocenta’s response, to rely on a female deity that always provided the
psychic resources to meet the harsh realities of life, made complete sense. She composed no grand thesis on the subject but
taught her daughter this concept via her oft-stated aphorism: “La Virgen, she is not like the Church. She squeezes, but she
does not choke.”

It was in that spirit that Marta had put Humberto’s life in the hands of La Virgen de la Caridad. But to her profound shock,
La Virgen had betrayed her, failing in her mission to protect Humberto from the paranoiac wrath of a tyrant.

Maria Inocenta had written to her grieving daughter, saying that everything in life was part of a divine plan, and Marta knew
that her mother believed that it was Humberto’s lack of faith in a power greater than the revolution that had contributed
to his destruction in the end. But Marta thought that her own fervent faith and thousands of Novenas should have softened
La Virgen toward her husband, who, in spite of his atheism, was a good and compassionate man. Marta never told her mother
that she had subsequently acquired a more benevolent and powerful patroness who did not insist on martyrs, for it would surely
have broken her heart. So Maria Inocenta had gone on consoling her daughter with holy pictures, reminding her to say a prayer
on the feast days of various incarnations of the Virgin, especially that of Caridad. And Marta had gone on letting her mother
believe that she continued to be faithful.

Maria Inocenta’s life had drawn to a close two decades ago today. And on the seventh day of the Novena to Maria Lionza, Marta
remembers to thank Maria Lionza for her mother’s vibrant life.

Everyone present has already told a story, Consuelo, Amparo, Lily, and herself.

“Someone will have to go again,” she says.

“You tell, Marta,” says Lily. “The last time you told us the story of Maria Lionza. This time why don’t you tell us your own
story and how you came to this country?”

And so Marta begins.

When Marta was fourteen, the villagers of Matanzas became fearful that their lands would be snatched away by a powerful sugar
farmer they called Papa Grande. For a time, Papa Grande alternately threatened and wheedled, and finally doubled and tripled
his offers, making it difficult for small farmers to resist his advances. Marta’s father, one of nine farmers who had managed
to survive Papa Grande’s onslaught for a whole year, was on the verge of capitulating when the intrepid Humberto Galano arrived
in Matanzas.

Humberto Galano was the first communist Marta had ever met and the most beautiful and electrifying man she had ever seen,
with his red, wide mouth, laughing eyes, wild, curly hair and large gesticulating hands that seemed to have lives of their
own. He was part of the Sierra Maestra movement and had come to Matanzas to help the small farmers resist the sugar baron.
Son of a wealthy banking family, he financed much of his activity with his inheritance, which he had received at the age of
twenty-one, when his idealism was at its peak. He brought twenty armed men with him to help in the resistance, and he stayed
until his mission was accomplished two years later. Then he asked Ernesto and Maria Inocenta Torres for the hand of their
eldest daughter, Marta.

It had been a strange courtship. Humberto seduced the farm girl with quotes from Marti. He wooed her with stories about the
leader of the revolution, about his courage, about how he defended the poor and strove to release them from misery. And the
way he spoke, the way his eyes shone, made her want to embrace his struggle, for on some level she realized that he and it
were one and the same. She wanted to prove to him that she could contribute in some measure to his cause, even though she
didn’t understand it, even if it only meant following Humberto to the ends of the earth, if he would let her.

Ernesto and Maria Inocenta recognized the call of love in their daughter’s eyes. Humberto had impressed them with his selfless
work on their behalf, and they had grown to love him. They agreed readily to the union. There was neither time nor money for
a wedding, and, in any case, Humberto was an atheist. But to please Maria Inocenta he promised to say a prayer at the shrine
of the Blessed Virgen de la Caridad before taking Marta with him to a village in Oriente province, where he had a modest house.

In Oriente, Humberto continued his work as an advocate for agrarian reform, offering assistance to other groups of small farmers
in the surrounding areas.

By the end of their first year together, Humberto had also become a courier for the Rebel Army. Now the couple’s nights were
frequently broken by sudden clandestine meetings held by candlelight. While the rebels pored over rough maps, discussing whether
they should camp here or there, attack first in this place or that, Marta cooked and served them platters of food, hoping
to fill the hungry hollows in their cheeks, and cups of rum or hot coffee until, thanking her profusely, they dropped, exhausted,
on mats on the floor, or left under cover of night to prepare for another day of battle with the enemy. It was during this
time that Marta saw Che, who was already a legend throughout the Americas. He arrived on the back of a donkey, his figure
drooping. He was smaller than she had expected, and seemed fragile. She mentioned this to Humberto. But Humberto told her
later there was nothing fragile about Che. He was as tough as steel and an inflexible disciplinarian. According to Humberto,
any and all disorderliness of men in his charge was severely punished by Che, because La Disciplina was critical to a guerrilla’s
survival.

“He doesn’t even take a lover,” exclaimed Humberto, with admiration coupled with disbelief, “that’s how dedicated he is to
the cause.”

Marta replied that while Che was undoubtedly handsome, he was also apparently sexless. Unless they were blind, men generally
observed Marta, who was full-bodied and sensuous, with a great deal of appreciation. “He didn’t even notice me,” she said.

“Just as well,” said Humberto, patting her bottom. “I wouldn’t want that kind of competition.”

When Humberto began traveling as a courier for the Revolution, he shaved and dressed in faded but clean country clothes. A
knife hung from his belt and he carried a gun. During his travels he often slept in ditches by the side of the road, pulling
a broken tree branch over himself for camouflage. Weeks later it would be another Humberto who returned to her with clothes
tattered and filthy, hair long and scraggly, a deeper line etched in his forehead. He left Marta alone for weeks at a stretch
with only a semiautomatic rifle as company. She was good with it, for he had taught her to shoot. But it was then that she
began to hate the Revolution a bit.

After a particularly lengthy absence, Humberto returned with horror and revulsion in his eyes. On the way home he had seen
a murdered woman in the tall corn grass near Guisa. “Her skirts were above her waist,” Humberto told his wife, “her left leg
bent at an impossible angle, her eyes staring without sight at the summer sky.”

It was after he saw the dead woman that he decided to send Marta to the mainland. She did not want to leave him, and she begged
him to come with her. They could start a new life together, she said, a life away from all this killing. But in her heart
she knew he would not be tempted away from his grand mission, and in the end, because she loved him, she had no other option
but to accept his verdict that discipline and sacrifice came before personal desire in times of revolution.

“Then let me stay,” she pleaded. But he said he must not be distracted in his work by a constant concern for her safety.

As yet under the influence of her mother’s beliefs at the time, Marta, too, continued to set great stock in La Virgen de la
Caridad. Humberto had indulgently allowed her to erect an altar in their home, though he said he didn’t care for the idea
of a virgin staring down at their bed while they made love. He made her move it to the kitchen, where Marta prayed daily for
the success of the Revolution. It was later, after her husband was assassinated by the Revolution, a perfidious beast that
consumed its own children, that she eschewed La Virgen de la Caridad and Cuba forever. In exchange, she pledged her allegiance
to her adopted country, and to Maria Lionza.

Marta was frightened and alone when she arrived in Venezuela with her small, worn suitcase. But the thought of her mother’s
bravery when faced years ago with similar circumstances steeled her backbone. She was determined to be open to face anything
and everything head-on during her exile from her homeland. After spending a week with a friend of her husband’s in a horrid,
filthy place called Petare, just outside the capital, she saw an ad in the newspaper for a room to rent in the nearby city
of Tamanaco. The ad read “Gentleman preferred.” But she went for the interview anyway because the rent was cheap, and she
was confident of her powers of persuasion. After taking three different buses, she found herself standing dubiously in front
of a dilapidated building near the Sabana Grande. Taking a deep breath, she marched into the building and took the dirt-stained
stairs to the second floor. A man in a bathrobe opened the door of the apartment. The place was as gaudy as anyone could imagine,
and everywhere there were images of Marilyn Monroe—on the shower curtain, the lampshades, the toaster. There were three men
living in the two-bedroom apartment. A couple and a friend who lived on the sofa in the living room. The second bedroom was
the one available for rent.

At first the atmosphere was uncomfortable. But when the residents invited her to have a drink with them at the kitchen table,
she accepted, and after a toast and a couple of sips, everyone relaxed.

Gentleman preferred,
explained Pepe, the man in the bathrobe, was a kind of code, since they couldn’t possibly have advertised for a man of their
persuasion publicly without being arrested, beaten, or killed. The inhabitants of the flat were the most genuine and attractive
personalities Marta had encountered since her arrival on the mainland. After establishing that she did not care a whit what
they did with their night lives, they invited her to move in.

Living with them was an education in and of itself. Pepe, who had originally leased the apartment, was Puerto Rican. He slept
till noon, and at night he put on extravaganzas in some of the seediest bars in the poorest and most run-down areas of the
city. These were outrageous, colorful, highly staged erotic shows in which he played many different roles. He had hired a
group of women dancers who formed part of his popular burlesque escapades. Pepe conducted his rehearsals in the afternoons,
and it was not unusual for the living room to be filled with half-naked girls who politely covered themselves.

The man who slept on the sofa in the living room was José Naipaul, a tattoo artist from Trinidad and a devotee of Maria Lionza.
At first, Marta was baffled by the Maria Lionza pantheon, a celestial court of disembodied spirits of people, real and imagined,
native warriors, ex-slaves, political leaders, writers, doctors, crooks. Even Simón Bolívar was there, reputedly very useful
when seeking employment with the government, and other things, too.

Marta spent most of her time after work chatting with José Naipaul and learning from him how to make mouthwatering Indian
curries with aromatic herbed rice. His tattoo business was far from flourishing, and to pay the rent he also drove a taxi
around the city. On weekends he took people on tours to Sorte Mountain, where the biggest shrine of Maria Lionza was located.
A believer in Maria Lionza more for the romanticism of it than anything else, José told Marta to think of Maria Lionza as
the Mother Mary of the marginalized, especially the mestizos.

“Maria Lionza is not dead,” José had insisted. “All Marialionceros speak of Maria Lionza in the present tense, because, according
to them, she is immortal.”

The complexity of the belief system and the ever-expanding pantheon of the goddess made Marta’s head spin. There were so many
Immortals who belonged to one or the other of the seven courts of Maria Lionza. José explained that each court was led by
one of the more important Immortals, starting with Maria Lionza herself. Marta knew what the most important of them looked
like because most of them were figures of either history or legend, and statues and figurines representing them were to be
found everywhere at Sorte and in the perfumerias and the tiendas dedicated to the goddess all over the country.

Marta accompanied him to Sorte on occasion, though she was not yet a believer then. She was lonely for Humberto and the company
of men in general, having spent so much of her life surrounded by Humberto’s compadres, who had been, for the most part, male.
So her association with José afforded her both a safe way of passing time with a man, as well as an exotic, strange, and colorful
experience. It was only later, after she had rented a small one-bedroom apartment in La Florida, when her boys, Juan Pedro
and Jorge Luis, were lost and then found, that she believed.