Behold Things Beautiful Page 10

  Patrón Pindalo hobbled into the cathedral, one hand bracing his lower back. Not bothering to genuflect, he walked the aisles, hoping to find his son on a pew waiting to be rescued. Damian had cruised the length of Primero de Abríl down to the old market and bus station, west to the bullfighting arena and football stadium, and north on Reconquista, slowing alongside restaurants, ice cream stands and cafés. They’d been to Ernesto’s office, his apartment and gym, the polo fields and yacht club. Nobody claimed to have seen him lately.

  Patrón Pindalo returned to the car idling by the plaza, determination sliding into dejection as evening slipped into night.

  “Where to now, Patrón?”

  “The airport.” All the overseas flights would take off just before midnight. There was a small chance Ernesto had decided to leave the country. If his son wasn’t at the airport, what then? he wondered. For the sake of the children, he’d have to contact Ernesto’s wife in Miami. She might have written off her husband, but she had to take responsibility for the children. Patrón Pindalo had no idea how to explain their father’s mysterious absence.

  Damian drove towards the highway, passing the cemetery. The gates were shut and the graves lay in a dark shroud. It had been years since Patrón Pindalo had visited the family mausoleum. He’d outlived his parents, both dead in their sixties, his father from an infarction in his office at the bank. The old man had bequeathed him the bank, the property in Barrio Norte and most of all, the hard currency of the Pindalo name. His father’s motto, “a Pindalo never rests,” was a solid work ethic. Too bad his children had proven immune to it. He should probably visit the mausoleum one of these days, but he’d long ago decided his orientation had to be the living and not the dead, including Esmiralda. What good was he to her unless he took care of their offspring?

  The car swerved onto the smooth highway, which was illuminated by lights springing from the median. Patrón Pindalo had lobbied for this autopista, arguing it would boost tourism, fully aware it would make his own travels that much easier, cutting the trip to the airport from Barrio Norte by a good half hour. Lately, the casino project had him travelling to Uruguay by helicopter from the launch pad at his yacht club. That, along with Ernesto’s burnout, had tied him to Luscano.

  There was sudden darkness as the car jolted over potholes. “Where in hell are the lights?”

  “They ran out of money, Patrón.”

  Oncoming vehicles illuminated huts and gypsy tents in the fields and the glow of bonfires in the distance. Occasionally the car’s headlights reflected the glassy gaze of a cow or dog on a chain. Pathetically Third World. To avoid the sight of it, Patrón Pindalo stretched out on the backseat, hands clasped on his chest as if he were the type to pray.

  The party began to peter out and the DJ was packing up the turntables and amplifiers. Six of them, not wanting the night to end for various reasons, left El Barco for the beach. Luis Corva offered to drive Gabriel while the rest of them squeezed into Emilio’s Renault because he was the most sober one with a car. The sculptor followed the Renault. Flaco directed Emilio past the plaza and onto the Rambla until they reached a car park not far from the house that had once belonged to Flaco’s grandmother.

  From the back of his car, Emilio produced a guitar, a blanket and some bottles of wine. They walked down to the beach. Then Flaco opened a box and offered cohibas. Gabriel, Emilio, Roma and Luis Corva accepted. Alma, her hand instinctively reaching for her shoulder, declined. Flaco could not know of her horror. He was still in party form and after Emilio tuned his guitar, they sang the folk songs banned during the junta, all the stars as witnesses. Alma surprised herself by remembering the lyrics to the songs of Pedro Malú, Luscano’s folk singer and composer who’d escaped in 1991 by seeking refuge in the French embassy. His record label had helped him get to Paris, where he’d died in exile.

  The coastline was dark and largely invisible, except for downtown streetlights and the red light on the spire of the cathedral that flashed to warn off airplanes. Nobody was out on the beach at this late hour, the cathedral bell’s midnight tolling had long ceased.

  In between the singing, Flaco pontificated to his heart’s content, planting himself on the sand and waving a bottle like a celestial offering. “If you’d let me, Luscano, I would marry you…as dowry and wedding gift I’d give you Dos Ríos and Campo Gitano.” His bastardized version of Lorca’s poem had them laughing, even Gabriel, whose brother had loved the poet’s work.

  Eventually, the banter shifted into the maudlin, that pre-dawn state when the ego’s defences have been eroded by drink and sleep deprivation. Emilio described the last days of Pedro Malú in a Paris apartment, cared for by his lover as the HIV corroded his immune system, a slow interior poisoning that, to Alma, resembled Hannelore’s lymphoma. As she wrapped her sweater around her shoulders, her arm brushed Gabriel’s. He looked at her face and nodded, as if to acknowledge something, her suffering maybe, of which he knew nothing. It didn’t make sense.

  They all fell silent as Luis Corva spoke of the courage of Soviet dissidents during decades of oppression. Then he told of his past, how he was born in 1944 in Estonia the very day his father was executed for being Jewish.

  The surf rolled onto the shore and soon the sky became more sapphire than indigo and they squeezed back into the Renault, stopping to drop Alma off first. Flaco got out of the car and kissed her, holding on a little longer than appropriate for a platonic good-bye. Over his shoulder, Alma noticed the lights inside the house. As she entered the front gate, the door opened to Xenia, her arms outstretched.

  9

  Back-to-back burials, rare but not unheard of, required the energy and precision of an intricate choreography. Castillo prepared the mausoleum, then drove off on his tractor to the second site, leaving Gabriel to ferry the cordons and brass stands to Oligarchy Alley, his private nickname for the lane of marble vaults. The morning’s clarity disturbed Gabriel. He would have preferred a drizzling rain or windstorm to this pastoral scene which only seemed to presage further disaster. The early buds hinted of spring and rebirth, the cheery sunlight disconnected from the cold finality of death.

  After arranging the velvet cordons around the entrance of the mausoleum, Gabriel hurried back to his office for his tie and suit jacket. There was just enough time to check on Castillo’s progress across the field.

  Gabriel found him loading shovelfuls of earth onto plywood planks, immersed in the calculation of soil that would be displaced by the coffin. The planks would be lifted onto the trailer rigged to the tractor, the unneeded soil spread in the new section of the cemetery. Two boys who helped out in emergencies stood thigh deep in the hole marked by a rectangular wooden frame. There was still a good metre of digging required but Gabriel knew enough not to distract them. Hovering never helped a gravedigger, Castillo had often reminded him.

  He stationed himself under the jacaranda and smoked a quick cigarette until the pair of vehicles appeared on the crest of the gravel road. He’d not been told whether a mass had preceded the burial but he doubted such a ceremony could have been held without violating the clamp of secrecy. This morning’s succinct obituary in El Día had emphasized privacy.

  Four uniformed men emerged from the hearse and opened the back door, sliding the coffin out. They engaged the springs of the folded legs on wheels and rolled the coffin along the grass, walking in parade step. Their grey uniforms appeared generic, like those worn by security guards, and they carried no obvious weapons.

  After the children and adults stepped out of the limousine, Gabriel led them through the glorieta to the cordoned entrance of the mausoleum. He retreated several metres, stopping in the dappled shade of what he eventually realized was Flaco’s family vault.

  He stood in the shadows, sweating out his reaction to Ernesto’s death, antagonism towards the deceased ricocheting to pity then terror as he imagined the repercussions, the Pindalo rage and its possible consequences
. The news had crept through Luscano in the same manner atrocities had been conveyed during the junta, rumours repeated and confirmed through whispered exchanges.

  Gabriel had learned of the death at his mother’s house on Saturday evening. His brother-in-law practised medicine in a private clinic and over dinner, Manuel mentioned that Ernesto Pindalo had been unsuccessfully treated for hypothermia that morning. “The body was discovered by some fishermen. Officially, the cause of death is complications from pneumonia.” Gabriel had been too shocked to comment but when he returned to his apartment he’d phoned Flaco and during their conversation had learned that Alma’s mother had also died.

  The next morning he’d gone to the cemetery to alert Castillo and when the calls had come, first Alma’s and then Patrón Pindalo’s secretary with her list of demands, he’d been prepared. Originally, Gabriel had planned to withdraw from this ceremony completely, wait it out in his office, but he’d decided to witness the interment for Ernesto’s sake, concerned that Patrón Pindalo would simply shove the coffin into the vault and leave.

  The bereaved formed a semicircle around the priest in purple robes. They bowed their heads as the red-faced clergyman delivered a prayer. Gabriel could not make out the words. Over the years, he’d developed an engaged detachment to his job, treating every burial on his watch as if one of his own were inside the coffin but without the accompanying grief. Today he felt overly invested, unable to invoke the usual nonchalance.

  The pantomime unfolded with a terse starkness. There were no flower arrangements or music. No one but the priest spoke a word. There was no squirming, just a shocked stillness. Ernesto’s wife gripped her purse, her head bowed, perhaps for the children’s sakes, sunglasses covering most of her face. The boy, whose name Gabriel could not remember, resembled his grandfather, with his squat physique and aloof demeanour. Magdalena looked more like Ernesto, fair and slender, but without the arrogance. Her shining hair reminded him of his last glimpse of Ernesto lying in the campus grass by the river.

  Patrón Pindalo, his tanned face sagging, kept his eyes fixed on the names engraved on the mausoleum, while the priest presided over the ceremony. The straight line of his dyed black hair above the collar of his jacket defined the old man’s perfectionism. The one time Gabriel had met him, years ago, he’d also been immaculately groomed in pressed white pants and a blue striped shirt, monogrammed with a navy PP on the pocket. Gabriel had come to the Pindalo mansion begging for help and after smoking a cigar with Ernesto inside the house, he’d been walking past the pool where an asado was in full swing. Patrón Pindalo very publicly whacked him on the back. “The past is the past. What are you digging around here for?” The warning delivered with a patriarchal smile and a stinging blow.

  The priest intoned a blessing, his purple sleeve swaying as he drew a cross in the air. Magdalena walked to the coffin and grasped the brass handle. She looked up at the adults, her blue eyes perplexed and terrified. The pallbearers stepped forward to deposit the coffin inside the vault but Magdalena wouldn’t let go. Her mother stooped to pry the small hand away. Gabriel projected himself into that claustrophobic enclosure, its smelly darkness and chill. In despair, with everything unsolvable, neither love nor compassion within reach, the totality of your life regrettable and meaningless, maybe you can convince yourself there’s only one way to end the suffering. Ernesto had walked into the sea to wind up in this marble cell.

  The blur of black and purple moved past. A hand grabbed Gabriel’s forearm. Patrón Pindalo stared with venomous eyes. The others, in a huddle, stopped and turned back, waiting. Gabriel felt the silent chorus of their blame. The past is the past, remember? The tableau remained frozen until Magdalena came back for her grandfather. “Abuelo, we’re leaving.” Patrón Pindalo took the girl’s hand and they walked to the limousine, where the chauffeur opened the car door.

  The vehicles drove off and Gabriel lit a cigarette, fumbling with the match. The tractor appeared and he climbed on next to Castillo. They retrieved the velvet cordons and brass stands from the Pindalo mausoleum and drove down through the field of graves.

  Burials at the Cementerio Real were rarely so well-attended. But this afternoon, both sides of the gravel road were lined with parked cars, all the way down to the gates and along the avenue. Some people arrived on foot from the bus stop, others by taxi, until the crowd stretched from the arbour of bougainvillea down to the pomegranate tree flecked with splitting buds.

  Alma stood on a mat of green carpeting, Xenia next to her in Sunday black, more stooped than usual but smiling. From her own hard life she knew that death brought relief and the spirit must be set free before selfish tears could fall. Alma vaguely wondered how this sea of people would squeeze into the house for Xenia’s empanadas and humitas. The one step she’d disregarded on Hannelore’s long list of instructions was to call a caterer for the after-party. Xenia had insisted on preparing the food herself, baking all weekend while Alma attended to the funeral arrangements. Most details of this day were imprinted with Hannelore’s foresight, the ceremony held earlier in the narrow Franciscan chapel with music and ecumenical recitations delivered by favoured students. They read from the texts she’d taught them and some of their voices broke as they repeated how the words had carried them through times like this. But Hannelore had not foreseen the audience size, the chapel overflowing onto the street, where late arrivals stood before loudspeakers transmitting the funeral proceedings. Afterwards, the cortège to the cemetery jammed traffic the length of Reconquista.

  A compact man with a felt hat manipulated a contraption of pulleys lowering the coffin into the hole carved in the ground. Hannelore, or the shell of her, dressed in blue silk saved for this occasion inside her box, as she’d called it, was covered by lilies, camellias, azaleas and magnolias. She would have appreciated the floral extravaganza, just as Padre Rubén, with his young narrow face and head of curls, must have appealed to her standards of beauty. He recited a verse by the Sufi poet Shabistari, “Read the writing on your heart / And you will understand whatever you desire,” authentically Hannelore with its imperative confidence.

  Already, with a suddenness Alma found hard to accept, the memory of Hannelore was reverting to her pre-illness persona, the mother she’d remembered during the years of exile. Alma had been so sure that returning from the beach early Saturday morning she’d find her mother awaiting details of the party. But she’d died alone after sending Xenia to her room to get some sleep. “An ugly thing, dying,” she’d said last week. “I’d much prefer to sit it out,” words which Alma now translated into “So I will do that, die alone, for you.” Her mother’s love, complex but ultimately merciful.

  The Franciscan invited her to speak. Alma turned to face the crowd, her hand clutching a page. A warm breeze rustled the paper on which she’d copied out the lines that morning. Not the whole poem but an excerpt. The mass of faces regarded her with affection, even the ones she didn’t recognize. The last time she’d addressed a group this large, the audience had been expectantly seated in a lecture hall. She lifted her chin so that even those in the back would hear the lines.

  Je m’abandonne à ce brillant espace,

  Sur les maisons des morts mon ombre passe

  Qui m’apprivoise à son frêle mouvoir….

  It didn’t matter that many would not understand the French, the lines were for her mother. Hannelore would cherish the image, her shadow passing over houses of the dead as a gentle wind. And Alma knew this: if I can find beauty in this scene where so many have gathered to honour you, it is thanks to all that you taught me.

  Emilio Rodriguez lifted his bow to Paganini’s Cantabile, taught to him by Eugen, interred nearby. Such music should be heard alfresco, Alma decided, as the sounds seemed to glide along the cemetery grounds, up the tree trunks, through the leaves into the cloudless blue.

  There was a jostling and an elderly man emerged from the gathering, leaning on his cane, his
free arm cradling a loose bouquet. “Con permiso,” he murmured and the others gave him room to pass until he reached the grave. He leaned his cane against the brass stand. Swaying dangerously close to the hole, he dropped white roses onto the floral mound, then removed his hat and placed it on his heart. Alma turned to Xenia, who whispered, “El Professor.”

  The music played through this memorable gesture, the one that defined for Gabriel the burial of Hannelore Álvarez, just as Magdalena’s hand gripping her father’s coffin defined the burial of Ernesto Pindalo. Gabriel stood on a knoll, a fair distance from the grave, ready to smooth over any glitch. He guessed what all those around him were thinking, the one question everyone secretly asked themselves at a post-mortem event this well-attended. How many would come to my burial? When he harboured this thought, an image materialized at his future grave, the small group, his mother and sister with her husband and children, and Castillo, of course, all in various degrees of mourning. Gabriel knew his interment would resemble Ernesto’s more than Alma’s mother’s. Burials were theatre of the highest order; some were one-act plays, short and stripped of only the necessary, like Ernesto’s had been. Others, like this one, were Shakespearean, sometimes celebratory or even comedic, but usually tragic. The sighs he overheard today were not of relief but of authentic sadness.

  Later, as the crowd drifted towards the parked cars, Gabriel waited beneath the jacaranda tree, hoping to ambush Flaco. He spotted him walking with Roma and the violinist towards a car and hurried over. “I need to talk to you. Can you stay back?”

  “What is it?” Flaco asked.

  “Ernesto’s burial this morning…not like this.” Gabriel gestured to the people walking on the gravel road.

  “Why did he kill himself?”