The Vision of Elena Silves, page 16
Inspecting his bare hands, Hipólito spoke.
“I’m prepared to go it alone, Gabriel.”
Gabriel had pledged his support believing there was still time to persuade Hipólito that his scheme was ludicrous. As Gabriel understood it, this involved boarding the evening packet to Requena and striking overland to join Fuente’s last known redoubt in a valley near Manzamari.
In the hut he searched for a piece of paper. The only piece to hand was one of Hipólito’s proclamations. Turning it over, he scribbled a note to Elena. He wrote that he would be gone a week, or perhaps two, he didn’t know how long exactly. She might hear things but she must not believe them: he would be back. He loved her very, very much, he wrote. She had no idea how much. After entrusting Pía Zumate to deliver his letter – a matter of the heart, he explained, knowing her history of delicate lusts – he went down to the river.
They had assembled on the bank above the Requena wharf. There had been five of them, Bonifacio materializing at the last moment in a floppy denim hat.
“The boat’s late,” said Edith. She raised her sunglasses and squinted at Gabriel with the sun setting behind him. “Could be later this evening, could be tomorrow.”
Gabriel glanced at the pile of canvas bags. “We can’t stand here. Let’s find a hotel.”
Julio agreed. It was risky to be seen in town. He had just come from the cathedral square. The police had blocked off the entrance to the Café Nanay. Its owner would love him for that, said Hipólito, smiling. No one said anything. All of them had misgivings about his advertisement in El Oriente.
They carried their bags to a pension two streets behind the waterfront. Hipólito disappeared upstairs to the caballeros. They agreed to meet him at a bar on the Plaza Clavero. Edith left to buy some cigarettes. Julio’s request for something to smoke had revealed the five of them had neither cigarettes nor matches.
“How would we have set off the bombs?” one of them joked later in the bar. The others tried to laugh, but their laughs were dry and without humour. The truth was, they were scared stiff. Gabriel saw his moment to stop them. He cleared his throat to speak.
That was when Hipólito began telling him about the dreams he’d been having in which no one talked to him.
That was when Don Miguel walked by with his tart and realized that the guns he’d let through customs with such a magisterial nod could not possibly be destined as hunting rifles for the Club de Leones. Those rifles, he realized, catching sight of Gabriel and Hipólito and the black bundle at their feet which contained them, might tumble something out of the trees but it wouldn’t be a turkey cock.
Chapter 15
FROM EDITH’S WINDOW Gabriel could see the floating church where he resurfaced.
He had taken two deep gulps and dived again, following the contours of the hull until he was certain it shielded him from the opposite shore. Then he came up for air.
He coughed as he took in a mouthful of water. His feet found the bottom, but to stand there would have meant sinking in mud. He used his hands to propel him to the bank. One of his espadrilles was missing and his arm was bleeding from where he had torn himself against the hull. But he heard no more shots. When his breathing was steadier, he rose.
A police launch throttled into sight. It sent up large waves that rocked the floating church. Across the river, the crowd were pointing at something in the water. They were pointing at Hipólito, thought Gabriel with a lurch as blood and water dripped from him onto the oily mud.
He made for Hipólito’s shed, where Elena found him two hours later. He lay in a heap against the wall, squeezing his arm to stop the blood.
“Oh, my darling,” she said. She rocked him in her arms. “My poor, poor darling.”
When Pía Zumate delivered the letter, she had rushed immediately to the cathedral and begun a fervent prayer. In the middle of it she heard gunfire. She opened her eyes and found herself looking at her grandfather’s Annunciation. As she stared at the Virgin and the Archangel, she realized with horror that she knew the reason for the shots. She had run to the river. All along the waterfront people were talking about how a dangerous terrorist had been killed while escaping. Another terrorist was thought to have drowned, swallowed by Yacuruna, the angry river god.
“I thought it was you they had shot. They hauled this body onto the deck of the police boat. They tried to hide it from us but I saw Hipólito’s shirt. I was so relieved. Isn’t that terrible?”
She spoke through her tears, as if to herself. “But I knew you would be with Hipólito and I prayed and I prayed that you were still alive, that you hadn’t drowned or been shot as well. And I waited while they searched the river and found nothing. Then I decided if you were alive there was only one place you would go and I climbed up here, and sure enough I found you,” she said, looking at Gabriel’s head in her lap and bending to kiss his muddy forehead. “In this horrible place.”
“Come, it’s not that bad,” said Gabriel. He sat up, grimacing.
“Who knows about it?”
“Only a few.”
“Is it safe for tonight?”
“Think of somewhere safer.”
“I’m going to get you some dry clothes and medicine.”
She left and it began raining. No one would look for him in this weather, thought Gabriel, listening to the sting of water on the roof.
Elena returned after dark. She poked her aunt’s umbrella through the door. “It’s me,” she said. She carried a plastic bag. It contained sandwiches, a bottle of iodine, a clean shirt and a pair of jeans. The jeans were too tight around the waist.
“You must leave first thing in the morning,” she said. “You were on holiday in Leticia. When you come back you can say you had nothing to do with this afternoon.”
Gabriel laughed. “No one’s going to believe that.”
“But what have you done?” she asked. She dabbed iodine on his wounded arm. “Nothing,” she went on. “Precisely nothing. Which I dare say is a major problem for a firebrand revolutionary, but which also means they can’t accuse you of anything.”
“They’ll find something. I was a friend of Hipólito’s. That’s enough.”
At his name, Elena knelt back on her heels. She bit her lip. “I’m so sorry about Hipólito,” she said. She stared at the bare floor. “I know what he meant . . .” she added helplessly, and then unable to find the words, her chin dimpled like choppy water and she was about to cry again.
“I know what you and he . . .” but in a sudden movement Gabriel reached out and stopped her mouth with his own. He clung to her, losing himself in the kiss, until, relaxing, she responded and the two of them slowly leant back on the floor.
“Now,” said Gabriel.
She made no reply. Then she said, “Let me get rid of this.”
She sat up. He saw she was still holding the bottle and the ball of cotton wool. Caressing her arm, he waited for her to screw the top back on.
She looked at him. Her blue eyes had never been brighter. He smiled. He bent to take the cotton wool and the bottle from her hand.
When he raised his eyes, she was still looking up.
But no longer at him.
Chapter 16
A NOISE INTERRUPTED Gabriel’s reverie. Edith was in the room. She was saying something.
“What?”
“I said the police are everywhere.”
“Is that unusual?”
“Very.” She placed her basket on the table.
“No one saw you yesterday?”
“No.”
“Not even Bonifacio?”
“Bonifacio?”
“He found me in the market just now. He said he’d tried the door.”
“No,” said Gabriel. “He didn’t see me.”
“It’s better he doesn’t know you’re here.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It could be dangerous.” She began emptying her basket. “He blames you for his brother’s death,” she went on. “He told me they’d found Julio’s body. In an unmarked grave near the beach at San Bartolo.”
Gabriel remained silent. Edith continued tonelessly. “He’s just come back from Lima. He flew down to confirm Julio’s identity and give him a Christian burial. He had to steal the body. He told me he was lucky to find it at all. Some of the bodies had been given false names. The military are still denying everything.”
She unpacked a jar of coffee on the table, from one of the contraband stalls in Sargento Lores which had mushroomed under Don Miguel. Then a bottle of nail varnish remover from Dominica Zumate’s pharmacy.
“Bonifacio now looks after the explosives.”
“Edith . . .”
“He’s a bastard,” she said filling the kettle, raising her voice above the water. Her hands were shaking.
“Edith . . .”
“All right,” she let out, through closed teeth, before spinning round to face him. “We’ll talk about Elena. What is it you want to know?”
“Only if she’s been here.”
Edith sat down. She avoided Gabriel’s eyes.
“Yes, she came. About three years ago.”
“What did she want?”
“You,” said Edith. “She wanted you.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her where you were. I told her I didn’t know when you would be released, if ever. She appeared to understand. She’s not stupid.”
“Did she know about Don Miguel?”
“Yes. She didn’t say much about it, only that she’d heard.”
“What else did you talk about?”
Edith pulled her face around and looked at him. “It’s all right. I didn’t tell her everything.”
“I didn’t mean that. Did you find out where she was going?”
“She didn’t say. I’m not sure she knew herself. She wanted to see me before deciding. I think I was her main chance of finding you. I had the feeling she didn’t expect much to come from it.”
“And that was three years ago?”
“Yes.”
“When three years ago?”
“I can’t remember. Sometime during the Niño.”
“And you haven’t seen her since?”
“No, Gabriel, I haven’t seen her since, not since she walked out that door.”
Gabriel stood. He picked up her purse from the table. He extracted some notes.
“Gabriel . . .”
“I’m only going to the church.”
Edith swallowed. “This meeting with Ezequiel. If you go looking for her, I don’t think I can recommend you attend.”
Gabriel reached the door. “I know,” he said, opening it.
Gabriel walked purposefully through the market for three blocks and turned left down a wide tarmac street towards the river. This was Santa Maria. It led directly to where Hipólito’s shed had been.
Nothing remained of the building. In its place and dominating the area, rose a large basilica with a jelly-mould dome and two grey towers the colour of thunder. To the left, was a modern convent. To the right, stood the abandoned foundation of what was to have been the Bishop’s new palace.
Gabriel approached the gate. A woman sat on a rug selling prickly pears and lottery tickets. On the bars behind hung the religious effigies celebrating the appearance of the Mother of God at Belén. Key rings, medallions, statuettes, and ashtrays with the figure of the Virgin Mary and a girl kneeling rapturously at her feet, unrecognizable as Elena.
In the months after the visions, 26,000 cases of holy medals and rosaries had been shipped upriver to Belén – not to mention the candles, the postcards, the bars of commemorative chocolate.
Gabriel entered the basilica. The church was empty. The only sound was the tape-recorded chant of a choir. It came from a loudspeaker on a pillar near the altar. On a ledge beneath was an angel with a lace mantilla and a bent tin wing. Its enamelled gaze was fixed on the silver altarpiece.
A girl with red hair appeared behind Gabriel. She dipped her finger in a shell-shaped bowl. The bowl was empty. The girl crossed herself and advanced along the left aisle to a cabinet containing the Virgin. She touched the glass. She lit a candle. She began praying.
Gabriel looked about him. He found it hard to imagine that somewhere under this golden dome was the patch of land where the press had stood. The arches, the cedarwood pews, the mosaic letters which rimmed the dome spelling La Inmaculada had extinguished all traces of the dirty wooden shed.
He came across Elena’s favourite painting in a small apse by the altar. A framed notice explained that the Silves Annunciation had been bequeathed to Santa Maria at Elena’s request. An earlier inscription gave the provenance of the painting, believed to be the work of Fra Angelico’s favourite pupil and donated to the municipality of Belén by Alonso Mario Silves, 30 September 1911.
It was the first time Gabriel had seen the painting.
Alonso’s Annunciation had been heavily restored. The Archangel delivered his message beneath a thick layer of varnish. His long wings quivered, two yellow axes embedded in his back below a waterfall of golden curls. He stretched forward. A mysterious wind wrapped his scarlet robe. One hand, holding a lily staff, pointed at the Virgin. The other at the sky. His eyes were focused on the importance of what he was saying. “Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women.” The words curved over a number of small holes where the polilla worm had fed. They reached the Virgin at the level of her halo.
She looked up from her book. She saw the Archangel. She crossed her arms against her crimson chest. Her instinct was to recoil, but what he was saying drew her to him.
Under the varnish, her listening face was phosphorescent.
Gabriel retreated to the altar. He forced his eyes to the crucifix. He thought of the time when Bonifacio had defecated on the lace cloth and inserted a number of consecrated hosts into the pat – “like one of mother’s cakes.” And the time before that when, a week after the basilica’s official opening, he had doused the altarpiece with petrol.
“O Gabriel, it burned beautifully,” he heard him saying, this man now arranging a Christian burial for his brother, Gabriel’s palanca. “I was transfixed. Can you believe it? I stood watching, feeling totally at peace with myself.”
Only in thinking of the flames could Gabriel easily look at the altar. And as he looked his mind cleared and the basilica dissolved and he was back in Hipólito’s shed on that rainy night twenty-one years before.
“A voice was speaking to me, calmly and distinctly. I thought it was your voice. I said to myself, what’s going on, what’s Gabriel up to? Then I saw this light. It was more brilliant than the sun – yet the extraordinary thing was I could look into it. I also wanted to look into it because I began to see the silhouette of someone opening their arms. I saw this person as I see you, but all of a sudden I felt so insignificant I didn’t notice the details. Even now I find it impossible to describe. All I know is that my heart was on fire.”
And what had he seen, kneeling in a pair of jeans too small for him, a ball of cotton wool in his hand?
He had seen Elena’s face as she stood and walked to the door, then out into the rain. He had watched her advance step by step through the manioc patch until she fell to her knees a few yards from the Toyota pick-up. He had looked as she tilted her face to the full moon, all the while nodding and moving her lips. And following her eyes, he had seen the candle-end of moon begin to tremble until it appeared to spin on its axis.
It was the rain, he thought – though later he was certain no water had fallen on either of them.
It could be explained by his state of shock.
But seeing Elena kneeling on the ground, he remembered thinking she had never been so beautiful.
It was a different person who stumbled to her feet. “Oh, Gabriel,” she whispered.
He led her back inside. “What have you seen?”
She looked at him as if he were out of his mind.
“But didn’t you see?”
“Who was it?”
“Didn’t you hear?”
“Was it the Virgin?”
“A priest,” she said. “I must see a priest.”
Gabriel covered their heads with the green tarpaulin. He took her over the river. She refused to believe he had seen nothing except a trembling moon. Had he not seen the face, composed of a light as white as the river at Rapoto where the kingfishers plunge into the fall? Had he not seen the curls of hair which fell like gold lace onto clothes made of no colour she had ever known? Had he not heard the words, words which she was asked to repeat and remember and which reiterated that God existed, that there was but one God, one truth, and that the people must no longer try to advance without God, as if man were his own creator?
“They were not empty words like we use.”
“Of course not, Elena,” said Gabriel soothingly. “Of course not.”
“I must return the same time tomorrow.”
“You will, you will.”
The rain had stopped by the time they reached the cathedral square. Gabriel removed the tarpaulin from their shoulders. He folded it while she waited. Then they continued across the square to the Bishop’s palace.
He paid no attention to the three men on the bench.
“She told me to return at the same time tomorrow.”
Gabriel was only half listening. He was ringing the Bishop’s bell. At the same time he was trying to zip up his trousers. Before he could do so, the door opened and it was not the Bishop, but a strange man, a gringo, who told them in heavily accented Spanish that the Bishop was away in Lima and that he was just staying a few nights before . . . He was about to say before joining his mission in Delicias, but at that moment he saw the girl and decided they had better come inside.
