Ways of Going Home: A Novel Read Free Page B

“I’m really interested in how you’re doing.” And I smiled with a satisfaction in which fear and desire also breathed.

 
     
    I started spying on Raúl right away. The job was boring and easy, or maybe it was difficult, because I was searching blindly. From my conversations with Claudia I was vaguely expecting to see silent men with dark sunglasses traveling at midnight in foreign cars, but nothing like that went on at Raúl’s house. His routine hadn’t changed: he went out and came back at regular office hours, and he greeted people he met with a stiff and friendly nod that precluded all possibility of conversation. In any case, I didn’t want to talk to him. I was just waiting for him to do something unusual, something that was worth telling his niece.
    I arrived on time or early to my meetings with Claudia, but she was always already there, in front of the pastry case. It was as if she spent the entire day looking at those pastries. She seemed worried about our being seen together, and every time we met she pretended it was coincidental. We walked around the supermarket, peering attentively at the products as if we really were out shopping; we left with nothing but a couple of yogurts that we opened at the end of a zigzagging route that began in the plaza and followed side streets to the Maipú Temple. Only when we sat down on the temple’s long steps did she feel safe. The faithful few who appeared at that hour passed by with lowered gazes, as if getting a head start on their prayers or confessions.
    More than once I wanted to know why we had to hide, and Claudia would only say that we had to be careful, that everything could be ruined. Of course, I didn’t know what it was that could be ruined, but by that point I’d already gotten used to her vague answers.
    However, on a whim one afternoon I told her that I knew the truth: I knew that Raúl’s problems had to do with the fact that he was a Christian Democrat, and she burst out in a long, excessive peal of laughter. She seemed to regret it immediately. She came over, put her hands ceremoniously on my shoulders, and I even thought she was going to kiss me; but that wasn’t it, of course.
    “My uncle isn’t a Christian Democrat,” she told me in a calm and slow voice.
    Then I asked her if he was a Communist and she fell into a heavy silence.
    “I can’t tell you any more,” she answered finally. “It’s not important. You don’t need to know everything in order to do your job.” She decided, suddenly, to follow that train of thought, and she talked quickly and a lot: she said she would understand if I didn’t want to help her, and maybe it would be better for us to stop seeing each other. When I pleaded for our meetings to continue, she asked me to just concentrate on watching Raúl in the future.

 
     
    To me, a Communist was someone who read the newspaper and silently bore the mockery of others—I thought of my grandfather, my father’s father, who was always reading the newspaper. Once I asked him if he read the whole thing, and the old man answered that yes, when it came to the newspaper you had to read it all.
    I also had a memory of a violent scene, a conversation at my grandparents’ house during independence week. They and their five children were sitting around the main table and I was with my cousins at what they called the kids’ table, when my father said to my grandfather at the end of an argument, almost shouting: “Shut up, you old Communist!” At first everyone was quiet, but little by little they started laughing. Even my grandmother and my mother laughed, and even one of my cousins, who certainly didn’t understand the situation. They didn’t just laugh, they also repeated it, openly mocking: you old Communist.
    I thought my grandfather would laugh too, that it was one of those liberating moments when everyone gives themselves over to laughter. But the old man stayed very serious, in silence. He didn’t say a word.