Cantoras Read online

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” Romina said. “I love you, and you’re my friend, but there’ll be no more chucu-chucu for us, not ever.”

  It was enough for Flaca. She didn’t press the question. From then on, their bond was sure and unconditional. They told each other their secrets and turned to each other whenever they needed help.

  With the passing of years, Romina had seemed safe. But then, just two weeks ago now, Romina had disappeared for the second time, and Flaca had been possessed by fear that she’d never see her again, that she’d been caught up in the great hidden machine. She was wrong about the first fear, but she was right about the second. After three nights gone, Romina reappeared again at the side of a road at the outskirts of the city, almost but not quite naked, and more or less in one piece, with just a few cigarette burns and a new glassy look in her eyes to separate her from the woman she was before. Flaca was flooded with gratitude to have her back, a gratitude shot through with rage and pain at the cigarettes, at whatever had given rise to the glassy look. She wanted to offer something, a way to forget, a way out, a way through. Something special, she thought. A reprieve, an escape.

  “We’re going to celebrate,” she told Romina over mate at the butcher shop.

  Romina stared at her as though she were crazy; it was the first time she’d made eye contact that afternoon. “What the hell is there to celebrate?”

  “The fact that you’re alive.”

  Romina didn’t answer.

  Flaca pulled out a map of the Uruguayan coast and spread it on the counter where she usually wrapped meat for customers. “There’s this place I’ve heard about, from my tía, this beach. A beautiful beach.”

  “I’ve been to Punta del Este. I’m never going back.”

  “Bah! I’m not talking about Punta del Este. This is the opposite. No glitzy nightclubs, no expensive bikinis, no luxury apartments. Actually, there’s no luxury at all in the place I’m talking about.”

  “None?” Romina couldn’t keep her curiosity from showing.

  Flaca smiled, thinking, it’s working, this project is going to take her out of the sinkhole in her mind, keep her busy with something else. “None at all. There’s a lighthouse, a few fishermen’s shacks—that’s about it. There isn’t even electricity out there, or running water. It’s all candles and oil lamps—”

  “What about flashlights? Do people use flashlights, or are there no batteries out there either?”

  “I don’t know. We could take flashlights. Look, don’t worry. The real thing is that we’ll be far away from the city, from the noise of—all of this. It’ll be fun, a kind of a party. In the wilderness.”

  “With no running water? What are we going to do, shit behind trees?”

  “I don’t know yet. But there are fishermen there, I’m sure they shit somewhere! Anyway, what makes it a celebration is that we’re out there together. And—there’s a woman I’d like to bring with me, too.”

  “Aha! So that’s what this is about!”

  Flaca put her hands up in an exaggerated gesture of innocence. “I have no idea what you mean.”

  “You just want to have a romantic escapade, seducer that you are, and you’re dragging me out on some lovers’ escape—”

  “If I wanted it to be like that, do you think I’d be inviting you out there with me?”

  Romina stopped, and registered the hurt on Flaca’s face. “I’m sorry, Flaca. I was joking.”

  “This is our trip, Romina. Actually, to tell you the truth, I’m terrified of going. I’ve never lived without running water or electricity for a single day of my life. I have no idea how we’re going to shit or what will happen to us. Maybe we’ll starve, maybe we’ll freeze, maybe we’ll hate each other by the end, I don’t know. It’s not really a vacation at all.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I don’t know. An adventure. No. More than that. A test.”

  “A test of what?”

  “Of—staying alive. Of coming back to life. Because—”

  She stopped and stared at Romina. The words caught in her throat.

  “Say it,” Romina whispered. “Just say it, Flaca.”

  “I’m dead here in the city. Everybody is, we’re all walking corpses. I have to get out of here to find out whether I can still be alive. Montevideo is a fucking prison, a huge open-air prison, and I’m sorry if that sounds like I’m reducing what you’ve been through but—”

  “Shut up for a moment,” Romina said. She reached for Flaca’s pack of cigarettes on the counter. Flaca struck a match and gave her a light. Her hands were shaking and so, she realized, were Romina’s. They both pretended not to notice. Romina inhaled.

  “Romina, I’m sorry, I—”

  “I said shut up.”

  Flaca nodded. She lit a cigarette of her own. A good deep scratching of her lungs.

  “I understand,” Romina said, eyes on the smoke. “I’ll come.”

  And so the trip had come together. In the evenings, they met in Flaca’s bedroom to plan, as her parents watched television just down the hall. Flaca spread three different maps open on her bed, trying to get the lay of the land, and started various haphazard lists of the things they’d need to survive out in nature. On their last night of planning, the night before their departure, as Flaca was packing and organizing her rucksack, Romina brought a friend over: Malena, a woman whom Romina had met in a plaza near the university, during the lunch hour, each of them eating empanadas from the nearby bakery. They had a parallel ritual of buying one ham and cheese and one creamed corn empanada and saving a bit of crust for the pigeons; this had led, naturally, to conversation. Malena was an office worker and looked the part: she was efficient, prim, tidy. Pretty, yes, with a sensuous mouth and almond eyes, but her bun was as tight as her smile. She was three years older than Romina, twenty-five, and dressed like someone twice her age. That matron’s cardigan. Flaca would not have guessed that this woman was one of them.

  “Malena’s never seen a sea lion,” Romina declared, as if that settled everything.

  Flaca didn’t contest this until Malena went down the hall to use the bathroom. “Are you sure about this?”

  “It’s fine. She’s fine. She’s one of us—”

  “Have you asked her?”

  “Do you ask women what they are before you bed them?”

  “You’re going to bed with her?”

  “No—not that it’s any of your business.”

  Flaca sighed. She couldn’t fight Romina and win; her friend knew her too well.

  “Anyway,” Romina went on, “you’re bringing what’s-her-name, your latest housewife, so it’s only fair.”

  “She’s more than just the latest housewife. She’s—”

  “Aha! So she is a housewife! I knew it.”

  “—she’s different.”

  Romina looked skeptical. “Different, how?”

  “I don’t know. She just is.” Flaca fidgeted. She’d waited as long as she could to break this last bit of news. “Also, eh, I’ve invited one more person.”

  “Who?”

  “A girl I met at the butcher shop.”

  Romina laughed. “And what’s your what’s-her-name going to have to say about that?”

  “No—it’s not like that. With this girl, I mean. She’s—don’t get angry, Romina? She’s young.”

  “How young?”

  Flaca looked down.

  “Flaca. How old is she?”

  She’d meant to lie to Romina, to keep this detail out of sight, but what was the use of lying to someone who could see right into you? It always caught up with her in the end. And, with all the lies and silence Flaca relied on to keep her life intact, it was this very being-seen-into that made her bond with Romina as essential as breath. “Sixteen.”

  “Flaca.”
r />   “But she’s definitely one of us. And she seems to be alone.”

  “Did you ask her? Whether she’s one of us?”

  Flaca stared at a stain on the wall as if it might suddenly reveal secret hieroglyphs. “Checkmate,” she finally said.

  “This is crazy,” Romina said. “Absolutely reckless. Five of—you know—of us? Have you ever done such a thing before?”

  Flaca considered this. Us. The word glided through her mind like a leaf, or a stone, troubling the waters. Over the years, she’d encountered a range of women who could be seen as part of this us, whether they’d admit to it or not. She and Romina trusted each other, had forged a bond, a miraculous secret society of two. But five. Five? All in one place, all of them admitting to what they were? Not that everyone on this trip was doing so yet, but wasn’t joining the trip a kind of incrimination? Five, together. She’d never heard of such a thing. Here, now, in this Uruguay, you could be arrested for holding gatherings of five or more people in your home without a permit. As for homosexuality, it was a crime that could land you in the same prisons as the guerrillas and the journalists, prison with torture, prison without trial. There was no law against homosexuality, but that didn’t matter because the regime did whatever it wanted, laws or no, and also because there was a law against affronts to decency and since long before the coup few things had been more of an affront, more repugnant. No worse insult for a man than puto. The men were more reviled. And more visible. “No.”

  “You amaze me, Flaca.”

  “We’ll be all right,” she said, uncertainly. “It’s not like the city out there. There’s no one to snitch, to know what we’re doing or—what we are.”

  “How do you know?”

  “From what my aunt told me.”

  Romina stared at her as if making a furious calculation. “This beach of yours. It’s either going to be Ithaca, or Scylla.”

  There she goes again with her literary references, Flaca thought. It was from the Odyssey, wasn’t it? She’d had to read it in school. One of those was the site of a shipwreck, the other one was home, but which was which? She couldn’t remember; unlike Romina, she’d been a poor student, hadn’t really cared.

  Malena was back, scanning their faces as if sensing that she’d missed something. Had she been listening in the hall? How long ago had the toilet flushed?

  “What do you think, Malena,” Romina said, glancing wryly at each of them in turn. “Are we headed to Ithaca or Scylla?”

  “I don’t know,” Malena said, with a gravity that surprised them both.

  The three women stared at each other in silence for several seconds, which stretched and ached around them.

  “I suppose,” Malena went on, “the real question is, which one are we looking for?”

  * * *

  *

  Where in God’s name am I? Anita thought the second she opened her eyes. Confusion spilled through her as she stared at the sky above her, blue and already growing hard with sun. She sat up and looked around. An incomplete house. Rocks, ocean. Flaca and Romina were a few paces away, sitting, drinking mate together in an easy silence. Anita had been nervous to meet Romina, her lover’s best friend, who, it seemed, was also her lover’s ex-lover; to meet her lover’s ex-lover seemed a combustible thing, something no woman should ever voluntarily walk into, a murder waiting to happen, but here, the rules seemed different, distorted, as if left to melt in the sun. The way Flaca had talked about Romina made her sound less like a jealous ex-lover and more like a trusted sister, one whose approval would be necessary if this thing was to last.

  Do I want it to last?

  The question seared her. It had been an insanity, to strike this up with Flaca, to return her gaze. It had never once occurred to her to think of a woman the way one thinks of a man—not consciously, not with the serious part of her mind—until she saw that look in Flaca’s eyes as she handed over the skillfully wrapped package of raw meat. That linger. That message of hunger, a declaration of wanting, all in a look. She hadn’t known that women were capable of it. She expected it from men, saw it in them every time she walked down a city street, but—from a woman? It caught her off-balance. She pretended not to notice and quickly tucked the meat into her shopping bag. All night, as she cooked and nodded at her husband’s long complaints about work and washed the dishes while he watched the television news anchors tell their same dull lies, she thought about that gaze. What it might mean, what it could possibly mean, for a woman to look at another woman that way. Perhaps she’d made it up, misunderstood, she thought as she dried wineglasses. It was nothing. She was being stupid. No reason to keep thinking of that butcher with her lean grace and muscular arms. She heard a splintering sound, and only then did she notice that the wineglass had burst under the pressure of her hands.

  She went back to the same butcher shop the following afternoon, even though it was out of her way, not her usual spot, a place she’d ducked into spontaneously on the way home from tea at a friend’s house. She was returning just to be sure, she told herself. Just to understand.

  Flaca had been there and ready and now Anita’s days were filled with Flaca or with thoughts of her when they were apart.

  The horror on her friends’ faces if they should ever find out. If she could still call them friends, those childhood classmates she’d played with because they grew up on the same block in the sleepy neighborhood of La Blanqueada. Each of them had grown up to become a good wife, a mother, with carefully done hair and too much floral perfume. She saw them sometimes on Sundays, when they all went back to their parents’ homes for family luncheons, and found each other in the neighborhood plaza afterward. They were dolled up, but in a dutiful and tidy way, like old ladies in training. What’s new with you? they’d ask, eager for gossip in which other people could be cast as the villains. Once, when Flaca was making love to her, Anita had imagined these childhood friends gathered against the far wall, awash in horror, and she’d come with a ferocity that had astounded them both.

  There were parts of her own self she hadn’t known existed, that were locked up tight until Flaca came along with her glinting key.

  Do I want it to last?

  She didn’t know the answer, didn’t want to know, not yet. She knew only that she wanted to have the choice to go on. She wanted to win. She’d always loved to win. She’d picked her husband out of a flock of men who would have married her in a heartbeat. She was the prize, back then. Now, five years later, she felt old, used up at twenty-seven, her life already shrunken and defined until she died. She wanted to escape that. Wanted to follow Flaca into a reality where more was possible: joy, for example. Expansion. And she wanted something else, too, something nebulous, something aching: to understand this secret club she’d stumbled into, this strange new labyrinth of women. To know what, if anything, it had to do with her own life. Was she one of them? Would they accept her as such? Who will I be, she thought, after seven days alone with these strange women? The question frightened her; she pushed the fear aside, and stood up.

  She stretched, and peered out of the window. The landscape stretched before her, green land rolling out to rocks and sandy beaches, languorous against the blue. There was so much blue. The ocean glistened, vast, majestic. Something about it hurt her. “Por Dios,” she said.

  “Good morning,” Flaca said.

  They looked at each other. That burn in her eyes. Anita couldn’t look away.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, you two,” Romina said, though not without good humor. “Isn’t it a bit early for that?”

  “It’s never too early,” Flaca said, “to say good morning. Which is all I said.”

  “Oh!” Romina crowed. “Flaca the innocent.”

  “Why not?” Flaca grinned, poured another mate, and handed it to Anita.

  Romina snorted, but she smiled at Anita.

  Anita sipped the mate
, relieved and bewildered by Romina’s ease. “I didn’t know it would be this beautiful here.”

  “That’s exactly how I feel,” Romina said.

  “What,” Flaca said. “Neither of you believed me?”

  “Oh, calm down.” Romina smacked Flaca’s arm. “In any case, you hadn’t been here before either, right?”

  “True.”

  “So you didn’t really know.”

  “No,” Flaca admitted. “I didn’t. But my aunt described it so vividly that I had an idea.” Enough of one to drag you all out here like a madwoman, she thought.

  “I’d never heard of Cabo Polonio.” Anita finished her gourd and handed it back. “All my life, I thought I knew about the beaches of Rocha, or at least knew their names. But this?”

  “The best part,” Romina said, “is how many other people haven’t heard of it either. It’s like we’ve traveled into a zone where nobody can find us.”

  They were silent for a moment. Anita fidgeted, unsure of what to say. She knew of Romina’s recent arrest and had sat with Flaca two weeks ago as Flaca fought back tears and panic over what could be happening, where her friend was, whether she’d ever see her again. Romina’s quick return had been the most profound relief—but, still, this didn’t mean that horrors hadn’t happened. Like everyone else she knew, Anita had learned, in recent years, to avoid the subjects of arrests, torture, terror, censorship. Was Romina making a direct reference here, or an accidental one? She didn’t know her well enough to tell.

  “That,” Flaca said, cradling the gourd as she took her turn drinking, “is exactly the point.”