In the Midst of Winter

  Richard never allowed himself to doubt that those years were the best for Anita as well.

  Lucia, Richard, Evelyn

  Upstate New York

  Their first stop was at a gas station half an hour after leaving Brooklyn to buy chains for the Lexus’s tires. Although Richard had snow tires on the Subaru, he had warned Lucia of the danger of black ice, the cause of most of the serious accidents in winter. “More reason to stay calm. Relax, man,” she had replied, echoing Horacio’s advice without realizing it. She was instructed to wait for Richard at a turnoff a quarter of a mile down the road while he bought the chains.

  Richard was served by a gray-haired grandma with the red hands of a lumberjack, who turned out to be stronger and more skillful than he first thought. She attached the chains herself in less than twenty minutes, apparently without even noticing the cold, all the while bellowing out her life story: she was a widow and ran the business on her own, eighteen hours a day and seven days a week, even on a Sunday like this one, when no one even dared go out. She did not have a replacement for his back light. “Where are you going in weather like this?” she asked when he paid. “To a funeral,” Richard replied with a shudder.

  The two cars soon left the highway and traveled a couple of miles down a rural road, but had to double back when they reached a point where the snowplows had not yet passed through. They met very few vehicles and none of the enormous freight trucks or passenger buses that linked New York to Canada. They all seemed to have obeyed the order not to operate until Monday, when the traffic was supposed to return to normal. The frosty pine woods stretched up into the infinite white of the sky; the road was no more than a gray pencil line between mounds of snow. Richard envied the women and the dog, who were traveling in the Subaru with the heat at full blast. He had put on a balaclava and so many layers of clothes he could hardly bend his elbows or knees.

  As time went by, the green pills Richard had taken began to kick in, and the anxiety he had felt before they set out started to fade. The questions surrounding Kathryn Brown became less urgent: it all formed part of a novel whose pages had been written by other people. He was curious about what came next, wanting to know how the novel would end, but he was in no hurry to reach his destination. Sooner or later he would arrive and accomplish his mission. Or rather, he would accomplish the mission Lucia had given him. She was in charge; he simply had to obey her. He was floating.

  The panorama was unchanging: time went by on the car’s clock, the miles mounted, but he was not getting anywhere, he was held up in the same spot, immersed in a white space, hypnotized by the monotony. He had never driven in such a harsh winter. As he had told Lucia, he was aware of the dangers of the road, as well as of the more immediate danger of being overcome by sleep, which was already making his eyelids droop. He switched on the radio, but the poor reception and the static irritated him, and so he decided to drive on in silence. He made an effort to return to reality, to the vehicle, the journey. He took a few sips from the lukewarm coffee in the thermos, thinking that in the next town he would need to go to the toilet and drink a strong, piping-hot coffee with two aspirins.

  In the rearview mirror he could see the distant lights of the Subaru, disappearing on the bends and then reappearing shortly afterward. He was afraid Lucia must have been as tired as he was. It was hard to remain in the present, for his thoughts kept getting enmeshed with images from the past.

  IN THE SUBARU, Evelyn was still praying softly for Kathryn Brown in the way they did for the dead in her village. Because death had surprised Kathryn when she was least expecting it, the young woman’s soul had been unable to fly up to heaven, but was stuck on the way. No doubt it was still trapped in the trunk. That was a sacrilege, a sin, an unpardonable lack of respect. Who would send Kathryn off with the appropriate rites? A soul in torment is the worst thing in the world. Evelyn felt responsible: if she had not taken the car to go to the drugstore she would never have discovered what had happened to Kathryn Brown, but now that she had done so, they were both trapped. Many prayers and nine days of mourning were needed to free her soul. Poor Kathryn, no one had wept for her or said farewell. In Evelyn’s village they sacrificed a cock to accompany the deceased to the other side and drank rum to toast the journey to heaven.

  Evelyn prayed and prayed, one rosary after another, while Marcelo grew weary of moaning and fell asleep with his tongue lolling out and eyes half-open because the lids only covered the top half. For a while Lucia accompanied Evelyn in the litany of Our Fathers and Hail Marys she had learned as a child and could still recite without hesitation, even though she had not prayed for forty years or more. The monotonous repetition made her feel sleepy, and so to stay awake she started telling another part of her life story and to ask about Evelyn’s. They had begun to trust one another, and Evelyn was stammering much less.

  Dusk would fall soon and as Richard had feared it began to snow again before they reached the town where they were planning to go to the toilet and get something to eat. They had to slow down. He tried to reach Lucia on his cell phone, but there was no signal, so he pulled over at the roadside with his warning lights on. Lucia came to a stop behind him and they were able to scrape the windshields and share a thermos of hot chocolate and muffins. They had to convince Evelyn that this was not the moment for them to fast for Kathryn and that her prayers were enough. However many layers of clothes Richard had on, he was shivering with cold. He took advantage of the stop to stretch his numb legs and to jump and clap his hands to warm up a little. He checked that there were no problems with either car, showed Lucia the map once more, and gave the order to carry on.

  “How much farther is it?” she asked.

  “Quite a long way. There’ll be no time to eat.”

  “We’ve been driving for six hours, Richard.”

  “I’m tired as well, and I’m dying of cold, I can feel it in my bones. I’m probably going to catch pneumonia, but we have to reach the cabin in daylight. It’s isolated and if I don’t spot the turnoff we could continue on straight past it.”

  “What about the GPS?”

  “It won’t show the turnoff. I’ve always done the journey from memory, but I need to be able to see. What’s happened to the Chihuahua?”

  “Nothing.”

  “He looks dead.”

  “He gets like that when he’s asleep.”

  “What an ugly animal!”

  “I hope he didn’t hear you, Richard. I need to pee.”

  “It’ll have to be here. Watch out you don’t freeze your butt off.”

  The two women crouched down beside the vehicle, while Richard relieved himself behind the Lexus. Realizing he had been abandoned, Marcelo raised his muzzle, took a look outside, and decided to contain himself. No one was going to convince him to step out into the snow.

  THEY SET OFF AGAIN, traveling seventeen more miles until they reached a small town with one main street and the usual stores, a gas station, two bars, and low, one-story dwellings. Richard finally realized there was no way they could reach the lake in daylight and decided they should spend the night there. The wind and cold had worsened, and he needed to get warm: his teeth had been chattering so much his jaw hurt. He was worried about spending the night in a hotel because he did not want to attract attention, but it would be worse to continue in darkness and get lost. His cell phone now had reception, so he was able to tell Lucia about the change of plan. There was not much chance they would find a decent lodging, but they came upon a motel, which had the advantage that the rooms gave directly onto the parking lot, so they would not be noticed. At the reception desk, which smelled strongly of creosote, Richard was informed that the motel was being refurbished and that there was only one room available. He paid $49.90 in cash and then went to call the two women.

  “It’s all there is. We’re going to have to share a room,” he told them.

  “At last you’re going to sleep wit
h me, Richard!” exclaimed Lucia.

  “Mmm . . . I’m worried about leaving Kathryn in the car,” he said, quickly changing subjects.

  “You want to sleep with her?”

  The room smelled the same as the reception area and had the makeshift aspect of a poor stage set. The ceiling was low, the furniture rickety; everything was covered in a depressing veneer of cheapness. There were two beds, an ancient TV set, a bathroom with indelible stains, and a permanent trickle from the toilet, but there was also an electric kettle, a hot shower, and good heating. In fact, the room was stifling, and within a few minutes Richard was no longer cold, and had to remove the layers of heavy clothing. The coffee-colored carpet and the black-and-blue patterned bedspreads were in urgent need of a proper cleaning, but although the sheets and towels were threadbare, they were clean. Marcelo scuttled into the bathroom and peed at length in a corner, to Lucia’s amusement and Richard’s horror.

  “What do we do now?” asked Richard.

  “I suppose that among all the rations you packed there must be some paper towels. I’ll go and get them, you’ve suffered enough from the cold.”

  Even so, a short while later Richard, who had gotten over his fear of catching pneumonia, announced he would set off in search of food. In weather like this there was no way anyone would deliver a pizza, and the motel had no kitchen, only a bar where the snacks consisted of olives and stale potato chips. He imagined that however humble the town was, there had to be a Chinese or Mexican restaurant. They still had some provisions but preferred to keep them for the following day. When Richard returned forty minutes later with Chinese food, and coffee in their two thermoses, he found Lucia and Evelyn watching news about the storm on the television.

  “On Friday the lowest temperatures since 1869 were registered in New York State. The blizzard lasted almost three hours, but the snow is going to continue for the next few days. The storm has caused millions of dollars’ worth of damage, and it has a name: Jonas,” Lucia told him.

  “It’ll be worse up at the lake. The farther north, the colder it gets,” said Richard, removing his coat, vest, scarf, cap, balaclava, and gloves.

  He spotted a tiny fly on his undershirt, but when he went to brush it off it jumped and disappeared. “A flea!” he cried, desperately patting himself all over. Lucia and Evelyn barely looked up from the television.

  “Fleas! There are fleas in here!” Richard insisted, scratching himself.

  “What did you expect for forty-nine dollars and ninety cents, Richard? Anyway, they don’t bite Chileans,” she said.

  “Nor Guatemalans,” added Evelyn.

  “They bite you because you’re light blooded,” Lucia teased.

  The cartons from the Chinese restaurant looked depressing, but the contents were less inedible than they feared and helped restore their spirits, even though they contained so much salt that any other taste was obliterated. Even the Chihuahua, who was very picky because he had trouble chewing, wanted to try the chow mein. Richard went on scratching for a while until he grew resigned to the fleas; he preferred not to even think about the cockroaches that would crawl out of the corners as soon as they switched off the lights. He felt sheltered and safe in this sad motel, linked to the two women in their adventure, feeling his way toward friendship and moved at finding himself so close to Lucia. He was so unfamiliar with this peaceful sense of happiness he did not even recognize it.

  Lucia had asked for something she could add to her and Evelyn’s coffee, and he had bought a bottle of Mendez tequila, which was all he could find in the hotel bar. For the first time in years he felt the desire for a drink, more out of companionship than necessity, but he rejected the idea. Experience had taught him to be very careful with alcohol: he would start just wetting his lips and end up falling back headfirst into addiction. It would be impossible to sleep; it was still very early, despite being completely dark outside.

  Since they could not agree on what to watch on TV, and the only thing they had forgotten to pack was something to read, they ended up continuing to tell each other their life stories, as they had done the previous night, although this time without the magic brownie, but with the same ease and sense of trust. Richard wanted to know about Lucia’s failed marriage, because he had known her husband, Carlos Urzua, in the academic world. Although he admired Carlos, he did not tell her so, imagining he was probably not so admirable on a personal level.

  Lucia

  Chile, 1990–2007

  During the twenty years of her marriage, Lucia Maraz would have wagered her husband was faithful to her simply because she thought he was too busy to plan the necessary subterfuges for hidden affairs. In this as in so many other things, time was to prove her wrong. She was proud of having given him a stable home and an exceptional daughter. His participation in that particular project was unintentional at the start and casual later on, not because he was wicked but through weakness of character, as Daniela insisted when she was of an age to judge her parents without condemning them. From the outset, Lucia’s role was to love him, and his was to let himself be loved.

  They had met in 1990. Lucia had returned to Chile after almost seventeen years in exile and found a job as a TV producer with great difficulty, as thousands of young, better-­qualified professionals were looking for work. There was little sympathy for those who came back: people on the left accused them of being cowards for leaving; those on the right saw them as communists.

  The capital, Santiago, had changed so much that Lucia did not recognize the streets she had grown up in. Their former names, deriving from saints and flowers, had been replaced by those of military men and heroes from past wars. The city gleamed with the cleanliness and order of barracks; the socialist realism murals had disappeared, replaced by white walls and well-tended trees. Parks for children had been created on the banks of the Mapocho River, and no one remembered the garbage or the bodies the river had once carried away. In the center, the gray buildings, the traffic of buses and motorbikes, the drab poverty of office workers, the weary passersby, and the boys juggling at the streetlights to beg a few pesos were in stark contrast to the shopping malls of the rich neighborhoods. These were as brightly lit as circuses and offered to satisfy the most extravagant tastes: Baltic caviar, Viennese chocolate, tea from China, roses from Ecuador, perfumes from Paris, all available for those who could pay. Two nations coexisted in the same space: the small, affluent one with cosmopolitan pretensions, and the large one that included everyone else. The middle-class districts exuded an air of modernity on credit, those of the upper classes one of imported refinement. The store windows there were similar to those on Park Avenue, and the mansions were protected by electric fences and guard dogs. Near the airport, however, and along the highway into the city, there were wretched slums hidden from the tourists’ gaze by walls and huge billboards showing blond girls in underwear.

  There seemed to be little left of the modest, industrious Chile that Lucia had known: ostentatious wealth was the fashion. But all one had to do was to leave the city to recover something of the country as it once was: fishermen’s villages; popular markets; inns serving fish soup and freshly baked bread; simple, hospitable people who talked with the same accent as before and laughed hiding their mouth behind their hand. Lucia would have liked to live in the provinces, far from the noise of the capital, but she could only do her research in Santiago.

  She realized she was a foreigner in her own land, disconnected from the network of social relationships without which almost nothing was possible, lost in what remained of a past that did not fit into the bustling present-day Chile. She did not understand the keys or codes: even the sense of humor had changed, and the language was peppered with euphemisms and caution, because there was still the aftertaste of the censorship of the tough times. No one asked her about the years she had been away, no one wanted to know where she had been or what her life had been like. That parenthesis in her e
xistence was completely erased.

  HAVING SOLD HER HOUSE IN VANCOUVER and saved some money, she was able to install herself in a small but well-­situated apartment in Santiago. Her mother was offended that she did not want to live with her, but at thirty-six Lucia needed to be independent. “That might be how they do things in Canada, but here unmarried daughters stay with their parents,” Lena argued. Lucia was just about able to live on her salary as a producer and began work on her first book, on the “disappeared.” She had given herself a year to complete it but quickly understood that the research would be much harder than she had thought. Defeated in a plebiscite, the military government had ended a few months earlier, and a restricted, vigilant democracy was taking its first steps in a country wounded by its recent past. There was a watchful atmosphere, and the kind of information she was looking for was part of the secret history.

  Carlos Urzua was a well-known and controversial lawyer who collaborated with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Lucia went to interview him for her book after trying to arrange an appointment for several weeks, because he was away a lot and was extremely busy. His office in a nondescript building in the center of Santiago consisted of three rooms crammed with desks and metal cabinets with files spilling out of drawers, weighty legal tomes, and black-and-white photographs of people, nearly all of them young, tacked on a bulletin board together with dates and times. The only signs of anything more modern were two computers, a fax machine, and a photocopier. In one corner, typing on an electric typewriter at the speed of a pianist, sat Lola, his secretary, a plump, pink-cheeked woman with the innocent look of a nun. Carlos received Lucia from behind his desk in the third room, which differed from the others only because it had a ficus tree in a container that miraculously survived in the dark shadows of the office. Urzua was impatient.