Mapuche (43 page)

A tropical rainstorm was pecking at the roof of the workshop.

Jana still had a lump in her throat, but she was no longer crying. She had wept too much, her sorrow had dried up. Sadness, impotence, despair—the Mapuches had always fought on to the end. Jana Wenchwn had been a
welfache
, a warrior, since the day the carabineros had broken down the door of her house. She would not kill herself without fighting.

Caupolicán, the Mapuche chief fighting against Spain, had been cruelly tortured in the public square in Cañete: he had been dismembered for hours without making the slightest complaint. Their enemies called them the Auracan, “the rabid ones”: Jana had that blood in her veins.

Now she no longer felt anything. Only a boundless hatred.

He couldn't sleep. He turned over and over in his bed in the attic, every thought came back to the surface, plunging him into bouts of insomnia that no prayer could end. Hadn't he done his duty? Brother Josef officiated at the Immaculada Concepción de María, the church where Rosa the mystic used to come to spit out her madness and her bitterness, a few blocks from the laundry. Had he done the right thing by informing his superiors? Brother Josef hadn't thought it would go that far. He detested violence, and the sight of blood disgusted him; his world was that of the Holy Scriptures and wise advice given to the tormented souls who came to him seeking absolution. On the other hand, he told himself that he had ignored the consequences of his acts, as if doing his duty would excuse him from having to account for them. But men had come to see him, and they had made him an accomplice to a murder. Since that accursed night in the back room, doubt had gnawed at Brother Josef, to the point that it deprived him of sleep. To whom could he refer the matter, if not to God? Would God even listen to him? And then what did he think, after all, that doing that would settle things, as if by magic?

The street was deserted at that early hour. The priest felt alone with his doubts, more alone than he had ever been. His bare feet jammed into leather sandals, he walked with bowed head down the sidewalk that led to his church, deep in an abyss of reflections. A car with faded paint stopped alongside him.

“Brother Josef?”

An Indian woman was addressing him from a Ford that was in as bad shape as her nose. He stopped, surprised.

“Yes?”

The young brunette got out of the car, swinging open the door in a movement that made him jump back.

“Get behind the wheel,” she said in a hoarse voice.

The priest stood there a moment in the middle of the sidewalk, speechless, met the Indian's dark eyes, and shivered when he saw the revolver that she was hiding under her poncho.

“Get behind the wheel and nothing will happen to you,” she said. “Go on!”

The man did not react—the sky was pale, the street hopelessly empty. Jana grabbed the collar of his cassock and, planting the barrel of her gun in his back, pushed him toward the seat.

“Move, Goddammit!”

 

*

 

The old Retiro train station seemed to have been abandoned, with its disused buildings under a highway interchange and its fallen sculptures lying about pell-mell in the weeds. Brother Josef had tried to reason with the Indian on the way, to tell her that she was taking him for someone else, but she had just guided him to Libertador Avenue, keeping her gun pointed at him. They arrived. With a wan sun as his escort, the man walked in front of her as far as the shed, obediently.

“Our church has no money, if that's what you want,” he said, opening the sliding door. “And there's no need to threaten me, I'm not dangerous.”

“I am,” Jana said behind him. “Move.”

It was a weird workshop, cobbled together with whatever was at hand—a moveable bar, cooking utensils, old car seats. The churchman shuddered when he saw the arsenal leaning against the wall.

“Be reasonable,” he stammered. “Put down that revolver and let's talk.”

With the barrel of the gun, the Indian signaled to him to back up as far as the stacked pallets that served as a table.

“Kneel and put these on,” she said, throwing him a pair of handcuffs. “Cuff yourself to the pallet: both hands. Hurry up!”

Her voice resonated under the corrugated iron roof. In the distance, the noise of traffic on the superhighway could hardly be heard. The priest was scared. No one would hear his calls for help or the sound of a shot. He was alone and at the mercy of this Indian whose eyes were still swollen with tears and who was threatening him with a firearm. He passed the handcuffs through the planks and attached his wrists to the pallet, keeping his eyes on her all the time.

“What do you want?” he whispered. “Huh?”

The position was uncomfortable, his chances of escape nonexistent. Jana stood a yard away and pointed the revolver at his face.

“It's simple, Christian,” she said in a neutral voice. “Either you tell me what you know or I'll shoot you down like a dog. Is that clear?”

He nodded.

“Rosa Michellini,” she continued in the same tone. “She was one of your parishioners.”

It wasn't a question. The priest began to tremble. The Indian's eyes were dark, sad, dangerous.

“Rosa, yes . . . Yes. I . . . I learned that the poor woman died,” he said stiffly.

“She was murdered,” Jana specified. “Do you know why?”

“No . . . ”

She cocked the revolver.

“No!” he cried.

“Answer me!”

“Rosa showed me a document,” the kneeling man yelped. “A paper about children stolen during the dictatorship.”

So that's what it was.

“A record from the ESMA that concerned her son Miguel?” Jana helped him.

“Yes . . . ”

“Who gave it to her?”

“A woman. María Victoria Campallo.”

“The old woman showed you the document, and who did you show it to, his father?”

The priest was dripping, drenched with sweat.

“Who did you show it to?”

“To the cardinal,” he finally said. “Cardinal . . . von Wernisch.”

Jana frowned.

“Who is he?”

“My superior,” the brother answered. “When I began my study at the seminary.”

She hadn't expected that.

“Why? Was this von Wernisch's name also on the ESMA document?”

“Yes,” the young priest replied. “He was the chaplain at the time. The document could compromise him . . . ”

Not only the cardinal, but the whole Roman Catholic Church.

Christians.

The Mapuche gripped the handle of the revolver more tightly.

“You warned him of the danger, and von Wernisch rounded up his old accomplices,” she went on. “Is that it?”

Brother Josef, still on his knees, paled visibly.

“I don't know anything else,” he said. “I swear it.”

“Is that right? Where can this von Wernisch be found?”

“In a monastery,” he mumbled, “far away from here.”

The scene in the delta. The killers. They had mentioned a monastery.

“Are the others hiding out down there?” she began again, her heart pounding. “The general and his men? With the cardinal?”

“I don't know. I swear it!” the priest repeated. “The Los Cipreses monastery, that's where the cardinal resides: that's all I know!”

“Where is it?”

“Near Futalaufchen,” he hastened to reply, “a mountain village close to the Chilean border.”

The province of Chubut: the old Mapuche territories. Jana's face changed.

“I beg you,” the man at her feet squealed. “Let me go. I won't say anything, to anyone, I swear! I swear it before God!”

“You're going to need him, Christian.”

She put her gun back in its holster. She couldn't let him go. This traitor would warn the others, the general and the killers accompanying him. Rosa's confidant was trembling, the pallet's prisoner.

“I'm going to leave you there,” she announced in an expressionless voice. “Los Cipreses, is that right?”

“What? But . . . ”

“The Los Cipreses monastery,” she repeated in a threatening tone, “are you sure? Think about it, Christian. Nobody ever comes here. You can shout all you want, no one will hear you.”

Her dark eyes were shooting thunderbolts.

“Yes,” Brother Josef stammered. “Yes . . . Los Cipreses, near the border. Don't leave me here,” he begged, “I won't say anything, I swear!”

“Don't worry, I'm going to leave water for you.”

“What? No, wait . . . ”

“Save your spit, that's my advice to you. It's a long way.”

The sun was climbing into the royal blue sky when Jana left the workshop, her bags on her shoulder. The Ford was waiting in front of the gate. She closed the sliding door, ignoring the priest's supplications. The Mapuche breathed in the air in her sculpture garden. A smell of wild game was floating somewhere between the plains and the tall grass: it was hunting season.

Jana hadn't taken much with her: Rubén's weapons, her great-grandmother's dagger with a bone handle, the woolen poncho that had kept her warm ten years earlier on the way to Buenos Aires, the few surviving clothes on her shelves, and herbs from her garden to make poultices. She had thrown the keys into the brush as she left the workshop, threw up what bile remained to her in front of the unhinged aviator where they had kissed, and left the city without regret, her stomach twisted with spasms.

Buenos Aires was no more than an old lady walled up in her memories, counting her last jewels in front of the dreary Atlantic, which no longer looked at her. The Mapuche had been driving for hours, gazing out over the immensity of the pampas. The sun erased contrasts, a shapeless catastrophe that brought her back to the original void. She had eaten practically nothing since leaving the delta, slept not at all, and had the constant sensation that her face was bleeding. Jana drove past great lakes covered with birds, cranes, herons, ducks, and flamingos; everywhere the colors of nature were sparkling, and she saw nothing but dead people.

A furious blast of a car horn made her jump just as she was drifting into the left lane: a cattle truck shaved the Ford, spewing its black smoke on the highway and spreading a slaughterhouse odor in the car, whose windows were all open. Jana stopped at the next service station, stuck out in the middle of nowhere.

Two dusty pumps stood erect in the yard crushed by the heat. There was no employee to fill the tank, just gas vapors that made her dizzy. Jana put her hand on the hood. The Ford's engine was boiling hot—all she needed was for it to give out. The head of an old dog appeared between the pumps. A bit of pink tongue hung from its jaws, a skinny, ageless mongrel whose coat must have been black and fawn-colored. She filled the car's tank, had a look at the shop in the phantom station. The dog observed her from a distance, its long snout in such bad shape that it must no longer smell anything. Jana smiled vaguely—it looked like he had cancer.

She paid for the gas at the counter and went off to the toilet, a dirty hole indicated with letters painted by hand, where she applied a new poultice. Her swollen nose was turning blue in the mirror speckled with filth, but the septum was not deviated. She caught a glimpse of her reflection and shuddered in spite of herself—she had a terrible face.

Four o'clock in the afternoon. Jana took a Coke out of the shop's fridge to help her forget the smell of shit, rejected the plastic-wrapped sandwiches, and located the liquor behind the guy at the counter, who was picking his nose and leafing through a car magazine.

“I'd like a vodka,” she said.

The counterman reluctantly looked up from his magazine.

“What kind?” he asked wearily.

“Doesn't matter.”

The man turned around, took a bottle off the shelf, stuffed it in a brown paper sack, then picked up the bill on the counter and went back to his magazine. “What about my change?”

“Isn't any. Thirty pesos, can't you read?”

Jana looked at the label. “Piranov. What is that, a brand from Chad?”

“It's the basic vodka,” the man retorted. “All the drunks drink it.”

What an asshole.

A truck had just stopped in front of the pumps, its chrome glistening in the torrid heat. Jana kept her distance from the elephantine driver who was climbing out of the cab and walked to the Ford. She frowned when she saw the mutt's head looking at her through the side window.

“What are you doing there?”

The flea-bitten dog had jumped through the broken window and was sitting on the passenger seat. He was gazing at her oddly, with his eyes half-closed or pretending to sleep, as if it wasn't really he . . .

“Listen, Brad Pitt, get out of there,” she said, opening the door.

The dog perked up an orange ear covered with scabs. His only other reaction was a sigh. Maybe he was deaf, too. She looked at the graying muzzle of the animal, who had clearly made up his mind to get out of this godforsaken place. She shook her head and got behind the wheel.

“Fine, for all I care,” she mumbled.

There was still a long way to go before reaching the foothills of the Andes. Jana left the service station without even looking at the patched-up sphinx sitting beside her—the tear running out of his eye must be a year or two old. He smelled of gas, fleas were running all over him, but he suffered them stoically, as if they were old friends.

She named him Diesel.

 

*

 

Route 3, which had become Route 22, crossed the country from east to west, angling toward the deserted South. Jana stopped at nightfall, in the middle of the pampas. The Ford's trunk contained violent treasures: a billy club, a grenade, a .22 caliber rifle, three tear-gas bombs, three pairs of handcuffs, an electroshock pistol, and a sniper rifle in its case, along with several boxes of ammo.