The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos (36 page)

Though it was thought by many that Diego Garcia, like all pure revolutionaries, was incapable of romantic love, Ismael had
heard that his reaction to Lucrecia’s accidental death by a stray bullet during a skirmish with the militares had been that
of a madman. From all accounts, he had begun taking ever crazier and exaggerated risks in his cross-border activities, taunting
and provoking his foes as though he actually wanted his life to be given a punto final, dragging his sons and even his daughter-in-law
down with him.

When Ismael’s arms begin to strain and ache beyond endurance, Carlos Alberto quietly removes his shirt, takes the shovel from
his father-in-law’s hands, and continues to dig. Ismael, sitting exhausted on the ground, watches his boxer muscles ripple,
the sweat pour down his torso, and he is overcome by affection for this strong, gentle man who has married his daughter. It
takes two hours to make four shallow graves. They lay the bodies to rest in the graves without coffins. When the dead are
covered with dirt it begins to rain lightly. Efraín’s face contorts violently before becoming flaccid again. It is all right
to cry, says Luz. But Efraín mutters that the drops on his cheeks are from the rain and brushes them aside roughly with his
fists. He will plant flowers, he says defiantly. Then his eyes glaze over, his body goes limp, and he does not speak again.

“I’m taking the boy, Vieja,” says Ismael.

Juanita emerges momentarily from her veil of sorrow to say, “You cannot have him.”

“It is Diego’s wish, as I told you the day I arrived.”

“To hell with Diego, his wishes, and his endless revolution. The boy is my grandson.”

“He is Lucrecia’s grandson. And you have allowed him to draw too much attention to himself.”

“He has a gift. Why should it be hidden?”

“Such a gift untrammeled and exposed to the public will surely destroy him.”

“And who will teach him and raise him to manhood? Not you, surely; you’re as old as I.” Juanita’s voice is tired and Ismael
knows her defiance is half-hearted, hollow, unsustainable.

“I will raise him,” says Luz. Ismael hadn’t realized she was listening from the doorway. He looks into her eyes and wonders
whether a motherless child and a childless mother might not be the right combination under the circumstances.

Juanita lies down in her hammock, turns her face to the wall. “The little bastard is cursed. Only bad things happen around
him. Take him then, and leave me to mourn my sons in peace.”

And so they begin the drive home to Tamanaco, Luz in back with the unresponsive boy’s head in her lap, Carlos Alberto at the
wheel, and Ismael in the passenger seat, staring out the window and humming a song called “Consuelo,” which he had composed
for his wife on the day they were married.

They arrive in Tamanaco in the cool of the summer afternoon. And when they turn into the driveway Consuelo is already standing
in the middle of the garden waiting for them, surrounded by roses, her hair blowing in the breeze. After the initial reunion
jumble of hugs and kisses, Luz collects Efraín from the backseat of the Lancer and carries him to her own bed, while Carlos
Alberto, his arms around Lily, quickly recounts their adventures in telegraphic hushed tones to an astounded audience.

This excitement, it seems, is all that is required for Lily to go into labor. Amparo and Alegra fly into action, joyfully
barking out orders and assigning roles to everyone. Lily’s labor progresses into its fourth hour, but the business of birthing
is not enough to dissuade Marta from commencing the eighth Novena to Maria Lionza promptly at eight p.m. Afterward, Ismael
is enjoined by Lily to tell a story. In increments, between his daughter’s contractions, pulling and tugging at the memories,
forgetting in the heat of the moment to edit the happy from the unhappy, jumbling everything together, Ismael sings his story
to his daughter.

Before he met Consuelo, the only thing Ismael enjoyed as much as music was diversity in women. Every woman had something alluring
and irresistible that caught at his belly like the claw of a jaguar. With this one, it was the sharp angles of her shoulder
blades that moved him to tears. With that one, it was the curve of a calf descending into the fine art of an ankle that made
him ache with yearning. With another one, it was the composition of the foot with delicate arches and toes like ten delicious
little shrimp that took his breath away. The swells and curves that rose and fell along the terrain of a woman’s topography
made him want to take up sculpting—in order to mold over and over again the balance and counterbalance of women’s bodies,
to re-create the juxtaposition of breasts, the roll of derriere, the differential between waist and hip, the outline of thigh,
the sharpness of hip bone, the soft swell of the pelvis, mysterious repository and origin of life. Unfortunately, sculpting
was not among his many talents, and his creations were monstrous, the precise opposite of what he meant them to be.

Immune though he was to deep and binding attachments of the heart, there was nothing devious about his love affairs. He made
it a practice to make love only with those women who made the first move, warning them in advance that the only promise he
could make to them was that he would leave. The terms of the contract were always clear, and it never occurred to a single
one of his lovers to stake her claim to him or keep him longer than he wanted to stay; it was his very wildness that made
him so attractive to them, and they were happy merely to be among those with whom he had dallied for a time.

All that changed the moment he locked eyes with Consuelo the night of Alejandro and Amparo’s fifth wedding anniversary. All
other women suddenly paled in comparison, and he could imagine himself with no one but her. It was as if he had been struck
by a thunderbolt, every cell of his being electrified at the sight of her. He wanted to bury himself forever in her hair,
which swirled, curled, cascaded from her delicate and perfectly formed skull, obscuring or framing the features of her face
as she moved, playing hide and seek with the nape of her earlobes and neck....What wouldn’t he give to drink from the triangle
at the base of such a neck, so perfectly cupped by bones of exquisite delicacy? Without waiting for permission, his heart
pledged its allegiance to Consuelo, and he could hardly believe his good fortune when hers returned the favor.

When they were first married, Ismael, who had never before been responsible for the safety and security of anyone but himself,
had at first yielded to the opinion of the majority that the jungle was no place for a woman. He began to search for a place
to rent in Tamanaco so that Consuelo could be near Amparo and Alejandro, and have the pleasure of their company while he was
away, for of course it did not occur to him to give up his nomadic ways, and neither did it occur to Consuelo to expect it.
Though his heart was captive, his wandering soul was not. And though the length of his travels was greatly reduced, his life
as a married man was not so different from his life as a bachelor. Instead of returning to many lovers, he now returned only
to Consuelo. Similarly, in what Amparo said was the quintessence of hubris, the fact of his marriage failed to temper his
bold politics of resistance to an all-powerful regime. Once a friend and an ally of the incumbent, he saw no danger to himself
or his beloved; friends could disagree and still be friends, he argued with an idealistic innocence that confounded Amparo.
Or at least that was the substance of his argument until some other “friends” began to disappear, but by then he would be
in too deep and it would already be too late.

His income from public performances and sales of his handcrafted cuatros was irregular, but it was enough to afford a small
rented apartment in the rough and tumble neighborhood of Carmelitas. At least this was its reputation, the newspapers said
as much—nearly every day there were noticias about some robbery or stabbing or drug arrest, and editorials on the government’s
“determination” to restore law and order. It was a determination that resulted in a type of reverse ghetto-izing of the cities
and their environs, where the rich were permitted to create vast prime property enclosures for themselves, with high walls
and gates and rigorously policed by contracted guards, while the poor were left to fend for themselves in the overcrowded
neighborhoods of the inner cities.

On a busy street in Carmelitas he found an affordable one-bedroom apartment, where the mostly mestizo neighbors were friendly.
The women brought the newlyweds baskets of fruit, steaming pots of food, small items of furniture they could barely spare.
The men brought their tools and set about repairing the leaky kitchen sink, the broken window, and the busted light socket
in the living room. Lacking cross-ventilation, the apartment was almost unbearably hot during the day, making the use of clothing
an unthinkable torment, though it cooled to a tolerable temperature by late evening. The kindly neighbors from the other side
of the street, who caught sight of the couple’s daily naked parade past the solitary window in the living room, kindly advised
them to wet a bedsheet and place it over the window “so that they would not feel the heat so much.” And Ismael, assured that
Consuelo would be safe amidst such generosity and solicitude, had continued to travel around the country, carrying his song
of resistance to the inner recesses of the nation, returning to Tamanaco every few weeks with a renewed vigor and inspiration
that manifested in the marital bed, a double feather mattress on the floor of their bedroom.

As soon as he walked in the door, he would pick up Consuelo and swing her in the air, bury his face in her bosom. Then, in
a flurry of purpose, as though he might forget what he had seen, he would sit down at the all-purpose card table near the
window where the light was good and begin to write, until Consuelo, impatient, would pull him away from the table and into
the bedroom.

Already popular in the neighborhood, for anyone who can sing melodically while caressing the strings of the cuatro is always
abundantly feted among the people, Ismael had rounded up his musician friends, organized a concert in the Plaza Bolívar, and
donated the proceeds for a center in Carmelitas that rehabilitated local dropouts, a feat that elevated him to new heights
in the eyes of the community. To show their appreciation, the men from the neighborhood kept an avuncular twenty-four-hour
watch over Consuelo when he was away.

Consuelo declined Amparo’s invitation to stay with her when Ismael was gone. She, like Ismael, thought the newspapers exaggerated,
or focused too much on poor neighborhoods like Carmelitas, or even made things up. She read aloud to him with surprise about
the fulano who had been taken into custody for beating his wife, after the police had heroically entered the dangerous neighborhood
of Carmelitas and subdued him. She was acquainted with the protagonists of the story, she said; she knew through her new friend
Maria Pagán, who was a writer and ran the small secondhand bookstore down the street, that the police had been called but
had arrived hours after the wife beater’s own neighbors took matters into their own hands, gave him a walloping he would never
forget just to show him what a walloping felt like, and broke his right arm to make sure he would remember the lesson when
he awoke sober.