Slash and Burn Read online

  She felt more unsure by the day. She couldn’t say how soon it would end or if it would end at all. All she asked was that he follow their father’s teachings. That he follow them despite everything, like their eldest brother, who she’d no news of other than that he’d come down to the city and never returned. Did he know if he’d been captured by the army? How could he? He was just a grunt at a minor barracks. And he couldn’t ask either. It would raise suspicion. They’d immediately lock him up. They’d ask why he was so interested in the man’s fate. What was he, kin? Why did he have family in the insurgency? Was he a revolutionary, too? What was he doing there? Was he one of their spies?

  Some in the community where he was living now were just that, having either enlisted or let themselves be captured by order of their group. They followed the army’s every rule and spoke with the same words, so they could stay with them and pass information to their compañeros when they were home on leave. They shared reports on the number of soldiers in each place, the equipment they used, and details of their training and what they ate. They informed them of the camps under surveillance and told them how to disarm the landmines the soldiers planted there before leaving.

  Was her brother one of them? Had he enlisted by order of some group she wasn’t aware of? No. He would’ve told her. He trusted her. It didn’t matter that he was in the army, he was still her brother. If he hadn’t been, if he’d really believed in what he was mixed up in, he’d have ratted her out right then and there, or seized her himself and handed her over so they could make her talk. He’d also have told them what he knew about where she’d come from; how to uncover their hiding places and work out when the various members went home to see their families.

  Though she could trust him, she couldn’t ask him to help her find their other brother: it’d be the end of him. The most he could do for her, for him, and for their family was to tell her where to look. If he’d been captured and was still alive, he was likely at a hospital. With her pretty face and pregnant belly, she might be able to get the medical staff to share some information. It might help if she cried a bit. He knew she wasn’t one to cry, but she should at least try so that she could get the information she wanted. She could use menthol salve to get the tears to flow more easily, like in telenovelas. He didn’t think anyone would get close enough to find out the reason for her tears. What’s more, the smell of hospitals was so strong that a little menthol would go undetected.

  She found him in a psychiatric ward thanks to information she got from some nuns at a small hospital. He’d been through the electroshock chair several times. He swore that, despite it all, he hadn’t said a thing, but the truth was he couldn’t quite remember. Later, in order to survive, he made an effort to forget what he still held in his mind. And, later still, he ended up leaving the country to erase as much of it as he could, to feel less and less every day.

  By the time he reached this decision, the war had ended. She tried to stop him, but she couldn’t. No matter how many times she told him they had to stay and cultivate the land they’d fought for, he went and boarded the train that would take him to the house of the brother who had once been a soldier and had left the ranks under pressure from her. She’d told him that although she understood all he’d been forced to do to stay alive, she couldn’t consent to his staying in the army. That if he really believed in what their father had taught them and really valued what she and his brothers were doing, he had to desert immediately. He could find other ways of helping his mother and sisters, who, though still young, were no longer girls but rather young women who could help provide for their education and home. The choice was his. If he decided to stay in the army all the same, she’d respect him but wouldn’t support him. She’d inform her brothers, and, if together they decided that he should be executed as a traitor, she’d do it without qualms. He was too old to be using youth or lack of guidance as an excuse for his actions.

  On the evening of the day he failed to turn up at the barracks, he was deemed a deserter. Orders were given to search his house and its surroundings until he was found. His punishment would be execution for treason. They didn’t tell his mother that when they came asking for him, yet she knew from the way they scoured the house and scanned the area. She kept responding as her daughter had told her to: the boy had arrived early that weekend, but had neither stayed there nor spoken with her. She couldn’t help them. She didn’t even understand what was going on. She begged them to let her know when they had word of him. She was worried. Someone might’ve hurt him. He was just a boy. Her boy. He wouldn’t have left without warning. She couldn’t explain it.

  His sister also said she didn’t know. He’d agreed to go pick something up for her pregnancy cravings, but never made it back home. She couldn’t go looking for him, not in her state. Being with child, she could barely move. How many months along was she? Lots. She was fit to give birth. Why wasn’t her husband around? Because she didn’t have one. Had she created the baby with the Holy Spirit? No: with a good-for-nothing who didn’t want to take responsibility. Her brother had told her not to worry, that he’d help her. Which is why she’d come home to them. And why they hadn’t seen her before, when they’d come to collect him or drop him off in the truck that distributed boys in camo throughout the area. She expects her brother never mentioned her because he was very discreet. You had to be, then: you never knew if the person beside you was a traitor or an informer, or what sort of information could be used against you at any time. She seemed to know a lot about this. Or was it just that everyone knew? The current situation was no secret to the people in the area. Ignorance was a luxury that could only be afforded by people who lived in neighborhoods that were never reached by the sounds of battle and where soldiers never recruited boys old and mature enough to carry weapons.

  Though they left them alone that day, they returned many more times for many more weeks. Her brother, familiar with the process, was hiding where the city’s outskirts turned to fields and only ever came back to receive information on the situation and drop off some fruit he’d collected from land that belonged to no one: her mother and sisters needed something to eat. Even if it was only that. Later, once they’d tired of looking for him, he could find a job and they’d be better off again. For the time being, they had to show the men looking for him that they were going through troubled times. They had to feign anguish even though they were actually proud and pleased about what he’d done, and in the nick of time: just a few weeks later, an operation was launched in the city which her brother certainly wouldn’t have survived, and which she couldn’t have warned him about because, what with being away from the mountains for so long and having a disappeared brother, she not only lacked the relevant information but had also been deemed a person not to be trusted.

  Her brother, on the other hand, believed no one more than her. So when she told him he had to go even farther away because the soldiers were still looking for him and would kill him if they got hold of him, he didn’t think twice and immediately set off with a group fleeing the country. He didn’t stop until he reached the country just before the country of his destination, and not because he wanted to, but because some highway robbers intercepted the forced travelers he was with.

  He doesn’t know what happened to them. Based on the stories he later heard about those men, he assumes they died. He would’ve liked to help them, but he couldn’t help and flee at the same time. He’d have died trying, because none of the people with him had his training or his ability to read places and times, which his dad had taught him. Though he’d regret it all his life, he’d survive, just as his sister had told him to. Except she hadn’t told him to go live in the country her compañeros in the city were protesting against. When she’d said, Go far away, she’d been thinking of the western part of their country. Or, at most, of neighboring countries. But he was just like the third daughter she would eventually have. Nothing you said could convince him to stay or turn back. All she could do was trust thi
ngs would go well for him, that he’d find a way out of his troubles and would, however far away he was, get in touch and let her know everything was all right and that he’d lend a hand to his sisters, just as he had to his brother after his mother had gotten him out of the psychiatric ward.

  24

  What she can’t understand is, why Paris, of all the cities in the world.

  It’s what the girl wants.

  How could that woman know?

  She’d told her.

  Girls will say anything, want anything.

  True.

  Why had she pushed her to choose that place?

  She hadn’t.

  What had she done, then?

  She’d listened to her.

  She’s always listened to her, too.

  She doesn’t doubt it. It’s just that this other woman listens differently. She can get a person to listen to themselves, to access their own answers.

  Is she one of those psychologists they brought to see them at the rehabilitation camps?

  No. She actually understands, and helps. Maybe because she’s walked the same trails they have. Maybe because she isn’t a psychologist.

  Now, that’s better. She doesn’t like psychologists. They’re good people, sure, with excellent intentions, but that awkward way they have of trying to get into people’s heads annoys her, and the mess they make shifting things about seems pointless. She hasn’t heard of anyone who’s found their sessions helpful. Given the choice, she wouldn’t have gone. She hated their tone when they talked to her, and how they looked at her. She didn’t know what upset her more, the way they seemed to pity her or the fact that they could barely understand a word she said.

  The subjects she raised probably weren’t in the manual they’d studied at school. They probably couldn’t even help the people who felt the things in their books: they were always saying they had no solutions to offer, that each person had to come up with their own way of working through things.

  What were they there for, then?

  To listen.

  She didn’t need anybody to listen. There wasn’t even much she wanted to talk about. Which wasn’t a problem, like they said it was, but part of her role as a radio operator: to listen, take instructions, and then convey them to her immediate superior. And no one else. Not even her life partner or her friends-in-combat. Not even her brothers. No one. It didn’t matter whether it was as simple as a greeting or as complex as an execution order for one of them, the result of some misstep they thought significant or dangerous to the cause. It wasn’t her job to let the troop know. No matter the circumstances. Her order was to keep it secret and, until that moment, no one with any authority had said otherwise. That the nice psychologists said she needed to talk, that she was in a safe, trusted space with them, meant nothing. If the war didn’t end, despite what had been announced, or if it started again after a few months of attempted and fruitless reintegration into civilian life, she’d be held accountable. She could end up being executed. What she said could put one of her compañeros, or their entire group, in danger.

  The psychologists didn’t understand. They insisted she had to discuss what she’d seen and heard so her mind could heal.

  She’d never felt sick, not until then, and hated being treated that way. She hated the fact that they couldn’t understand that what they referred to as her own experience didn’t belong to her. The woman who’d listened to her daughter, on the other hand, understood perfectly that some things didn’t just end because the war had. Even though she’d left the movement and even though many years had passed, she still kept the secrets she’d been entrusted with back when she’d had to carry small pieces of paper from one place to another in the city or from one town to the next without anyone being any the wiser. She knew what it was like always to be alert to everything around her: who got on the bus when she did, who sat next to her, who got off and where, who walked beside her, who was in the reflections she glimpsed in the windows of local shops she passed, what they did, what was playing on the radio right then, how many utility poles there were along the way, how many cars drove past and how fast, the number of people inside them, their gender, did they notice her, were their lips moving, or were they gesturing with their hands. The tiniest detail might mean the difference between being captured and not, between being able to continue fighting and not. If she couldn’t tell the sounds of an animal from those of a person, or the sounds of a person from those of her imagination, she could end up disappeared, or dead, as happened to one of her sisters.

  She also understood there were things that couldn’t be returned once you left the struggle. Like her, she’d had to hand over her equipment. Instead of the radio that the mother had placed on the international observers’ table, this woman had returned the typewriter she’d been given and had used to prepare weekly bulletins. Instead of a rifle, she’d handed over the small gun she’d rescued during the episode at school, and what ammunition she had left. The woman had never killed anyone. She hadn’t had to. She, however, had been forced to in combat. She couldn’t say for certain whether she’d ever shot anyone dead, but she couldn’t rule it out either: she’d never stopped to check. It was never the right time.

  The woman says she hasn’t asked about that, not because it doesn’t matter, but because it was something she couldn’t have chosen, something circumstances drove her to. She’d rather skip that part and instead discuss what had brought her there, to her house: her daughter and Paris. Yes, she knows, but she feels there are certain things she should share with her, which she hadn’t with the psychologists. The woman reminds her she’s not a specialist when it comes to the mind. She knows. She isn’t taking her for one. The woman reminds her, rather, of those priests people share things with from the get-go, without even having to be asked. The woman says she isn’t one of those either. She’s never believed in confession. She believes in duty, which is something she admires in her, from what her friend and daughter have told her. She believes that, had they met in wartime, she’d have backed her decision to join the ranks.

  Which is high praise: it wasn’t easy to join back then. They didn’t call on just anyone and didn’t take volunteers. Someone had to see you, size you up, assign you a function, and examine you in order to evaluate your constitution.

  The woman would’ve been delighted to recommend her. The mother says she’s grateful for the thought, but that she would never have joined if she’d had the choice. The woman isn’t so sure. She thinks that, faced with that situation, she would’ve come forward and made herself available of her own volition. And maybe the woman was right: the year she went down to the city to carry her second pregnancy to term, her plan had been not to return to the ranks, not because she’d stopped believing in what they did there, but because she couldn’t bring herself to leave a second daughter. She couldn’t stand the thought of it. Which is why she’d concealed her condition until it had become impossible to, and then delayed her return. She’d ignored their instructions to report and disregarded their summons. She used every excuse she could to extend her time with her daughter, who looked a lot like her firstborn. Yet she woke up a little on seeing her brother in the army, and then a little more when the guerrillas came into the city and she found herself trapped in an army-controlled zone. She’d felt the urge to leave the makeshift hideout her mom and sisters had taken shelter in, to go out and fight. She’d wished she had her boots and equipment on her. Wished she’d grasped the urgency of her life partner’s summons some weeks earlier. She wanted to not feel useless, to be able to tell her compañeros-in-arms how to break through the army’s weak blockade instead of being forced to leave under the protection of the Comandos de Salvamento, behind a white flag. She didn’t believe in surrender. She was only doing it for her daughter and in the hope of seeing her other girl.

  There was nothing more important to her than her daughters.

  That much was clear.

  She’d done what she could to give them
the best possible life.

  She knew it: her daughter had told her.

  She wanted to be able to give her daughter the opportunity she was after.

  She already had. Twice.

  She didn’t think it was enough.

  Why not?

  She wasn’t able to answer.

  There was no answer.

  Only tears: she didn’t want her to leave. She didn’t want her to go to Paris.

  Could she convince her to go to her uncle’s?

  She hadn’t asked if he could help, but she assumed that at the very least he’d take her in and give her advice on how to make a life for herself in that place.

  She wasn’t going off to make a life for herself. She had a plan. Didn’t she know?

  No.

  She was leaving to get money so she could study.

  She’s heard of teenagers who have done that. She knew of one very sporty kid who’d played so well he was put on reserve by a foreign team. Their plan had been to train him and have him join them. But the boy had a different plan: to save up the exact amount he needed to pay for the full four years of tuition at a private university in his country and return there as soon as he had it. She’d do the same and in less time, too, because public universities cost far less. She’d be gone for no more than a season.

  Why not the country where her uncle lived?

  Was Paris the issue?

  Yes.

  She didn’t want to lose a second daughter to that city. She hadn’t wanted to lose the first one either.

  She wasn’t going to lose her.

  How could she be sure? She didn’t even know her.

  How could she not know? It was her daughter she was talking about. And what’s more, if she did get lost, she could find her. Hadn’t she found the other one?