Silverland III

“He came here again! On the very same day he dared to show his face here again! I didn’t let him through, he stayed out here in the shop, but I don’t know how he could dare!”
“Did you let him in?”
“We were open… Anna told me to keep the shop open so that no one would know.” José paced behind the counter, letting his heavy arms fling around in space. “He was standing just where you are now.”
At last he could open his mouth, show his feeling. He’d been pretending too hard all day, for the customers, for Anna, and now he felt as though he’d attended every mass the Church chose to give and stayed awake throughout. He couldn’t remember letting anything slip, and now he could stop.
“Did he do anything?”
“He could have stolen all the bread off the shelves for all I saw!” He controlled his voice. “No, no, he didn’t do anything.”
His vision of Juan seemed too unlikely to be real. Under his T-shirt, the Englishman’s shoulders had barely been more than sloped outgrowths from a body shrunk to half-size. He didn’t even raise his hands to the counter. His chest was firmly clamped to his chin. The look of his body, with its remnants of strength, reminded José of nothing so much as how they’d led the Quilmes Indians in chains to Buenos Aires. But that image was his own invention, and he’d still been afraid to look straight at the unwelcome visitor.
“Did he say anything?”
José pulled himself back from trying to describe the apparition. “He said he was sorry.”
Sara’s eyes were amused. “That’s all?”
The shopkeeper sighed and looked round his shelves. “Yes. That was it. Then he left. I noticed that he had his bags with him, and I thought he was leaving. I didn’t tell Anna though. I don’t think she wants to hear anything.”
“She’s not come out into the shop?”
“No. She wanted it to be open so that no one would ask questions, but she won’t come out here. She doesn’t want to be seen. She’s not spoken to Carmen at all of course. I think she’d die if Carmen knew. Do you think he’s really gone? I could tell her that.” He kept looking for the amusement in her face but it had gone the moment it had appeared.
“He hasn’t gone. He’s hiding somewhere around.” José let his head drop and the flat plain of the countertop stretched out either side of his gaze. Sara Bolivar’s faint shadow moved along the lines of varnish reflection. “But I don’t think he’ll trouble you any more. He said he was sorry. He must be frightened by what he’s done.” Her voice was low and rhythmic like the murmur of traffic.
“Not as frightened as we were!” he burst out hoarsely.
He watched her long fingers rest on his upper arm. “I know, I know. But he’ll either be caught or leave by himself very soon.”
It was as though she’d taken on all his years and he was nothing but a boy again. He smiled with awkward gratitude. “Shall I tell Anna?”
“If you think it’ll put her mind at rest.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what I should do.”
Her eyes shone briefly for a second and crinkled like sand under water. “No. Do you think she’d see me? I can tell her.”
“No,” he mumbled, suddenly defensive. He didn’t know what Anna would want, but she was his wife after all, and he didn’t like to ask too many favours of the Bolivars. “She’s staying in the dark, praying all the time. Later perhaps. Bring your father in a couple of days.”
Sara’s fingers touched his arm. She began to move away from him, drawing all his energy and resistance to her. “Never mind. I’d better be going. I’m having a bit of a busy day anyway.”
She was at the door already, not looking at him. He felt as though he was standing up to his neck in sand. “You don’t think he’ll come back again?”
“No. Not for now, anyway. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye.” Her shape disappeared from the doorway. José started pacing behind the counter again, ready to open the door to the house, to go and tell Anna she was safe. But the idea of seeing her with her head bowed and the tears staining her clothes always frightened him back into pacing. After a while, he started staring at the door through which Sara had gone, comparing endlessly the ways in which she and Juan the invader had crossed his floor.

Calling in a favour. What a stupid phrase, as though you whistled and small services crept in like dogs. There wasn’t a chance of Atkins helping him anyway. He’d gone through everything he could remember from the time he had first got to Oxford, and Atkins owed him nothing. But he’d known that. He’d been wasting his time thinking about it. The silly bastard really was screwed in the head anyway. Whatever. He, John Wilson, was stuffed.
He shuddered. He tought of people pushing him and barking orders. There’s be nothing he could do about it. They’d call him some name, and every time he tried to fight back there’d be twenty of them. He’d be powerless. The thought of it made him sick.
Only once had he let anyone get away with calling him a “fat shit” without at least trying to get them back. It wasn’t long after he realised he was cleverer than the rest of them, and could easily be stronger, and he’d believed he always knew better. This sickness he felt now he’d felt in the bow of a rubber dinghy when the other lads ignored what he’d told them and they’d drifted round the rainy lake. At last they tried his suggestion, and ended up sinking in Lakeland water. John had got it wrong, and so he never punched the kid, though he’d thought since that he ought to have.
After that, he always thought things through. Things worked out better if he planned them, so he knew his moves before the other person knew what was happening. Or they used to. This country seemed to do peoples’ minds in. yes, this place had made him act like an idiot. But the sickness remained. He wondered if he’d get back to Oxford. No one would welcome him back there.
His knees clicked and cracked as he straightened his legs and dusted the sand from his skin. Bloody stuff – under his nails, and if he spread his hands out flat it ran like little strings across his palm. He went back into the warehouse, or so he called it. The building stood at the edge of the field, across the end of several rows of vines. It was a roofless ruin, and he could only guess at what it must have been for. There were still corroded pipes and taps against the walls, and in amongst the thick mat of vegetation covering the floor, he could see other fragments of corrupted metal. It had been something to do with the vineyards anyway.
Viciously, he kicked at a few stalks by the doorway, then turned away and looked out over the green-and-shadow parades of vines. He could feel his shoulders sagging and his hands hot on the skin of his thighs. So that was where all his energy had drained to.
His head had been hollowed out since he’d run from José’s shop. Every step meant another spoonful scooped out. Even going back on his hands and knees to say he was sorry – on his hands and knees, dammit! – just made him weaker. What had he been thinking? It was a moment of crazy guilt, the sort of thing that got you caught. He hadn’t got anything by the stupid thing he’d done or by apologising, and he hadn’t got anything by giving that greasy shit Hernan the kicking he deserved. It was all a bunch of stupid mistakes, when he should have been concentrating on getting Atkins sorted out.
Now here he was, sleeping in a ruined box and probably being hunted left, right and centre. He sat on the piece of semi-cleared ground inside the walls and stared glumly at the irregular shapes of broken bricks.
That stupid mood he’d got himself worked up into hadn’t helped. He’d got carried away, getting so close to what he’d come for. And Sara Bolivar. The sudden memory of her at Atkins’ window sent a tiny resurgent burst of energy through him. But that had all gone wrong too… For a second his body twitched as he realised again what he’d almost done to that old woman. He squashed the thought back and the guilt disappeared. The less he thought about it, the less trouble it caused.
He wriggled back into the shade, leaving only his pale legs out for the sun’s touch. In doing so, he put his hands on the cigarettes he’d bought the day before. For a second he wavered, then remembered the bitterness of the smoke in a dry mouth and took his hand off them.
Perhaps he should go back to sleep, unroll his sheets and doze out the day and another night. But his feet tingled at the idea of being exposed to whatever creatures might emerge from the thick leaves and hairy stalks surrounding the building. Nothing for it. Just waiting until he could risk the bus.
Oh God! He’d shrivel for what he’d done!
No he wouldn’t, no he wouldn’t. they wouldn’t dare touch him. There was always going to be a way out of this. It was just about thinking it up.
Why hadn’t he shaken hands with Atkins at that first meeting in Oxford? Another bloody stupid question – because it was hot and sticky. And anyway, it had been good to see that within seconds Atkins was already hiding the offence, looking away and talking too brightly to a high-collared physicist.
John never understood why Atkins kept objecting to his proposals, when all the other tutors were prostrate at his feet. Anyway, what difference would it have made to him who got which room, how the students were to be notified of new College Rules, what those rules might be? It made a difference to John, because if they weren’t all doing what he wanted they might start sneering at him. But Atkins never got sneered at. There was no reason for him to care. His spirit flared briefly again at the thought, but it faded. He slumped. He contemplated his legs in the sun and the shadows on them from overhanging fronds.
Perhaps the walls were crumbly enough to fall in onto him. If he stayed here long enough they would, and he’d probably never be found. They never demolished anything in this country because they’d got so much space. He felt like he was staring this possibility out, waiting for it to blink and give up. Then he’d be in control of him own mind again.
Atkins would just let it happen, he thought bitterly. Just let the bricks come down, wouldn’t even try to hold them off… That was the difference between them. John breathed in and tried to make himself like he had been. This was just temporary, just the result of a mistake. He was going to see Hernan later on, and then he’d be able to make his move.
God, he was bored. He checked his watch, checked again, looking longer to make sure that the hands were still moving. That was a relief. Would’ve been difficult to know when to meet Hernan if it’d stopped.
But there were still nine hours to go. They stretched out and around him, wrapping the whitewashed walls, his legs, the plants and biting bugs an in interminable grip. Time to go over and over everything from the day before. Time to measure by how much exactly he’d crewed up his chances of laying his hands on what Peter had found.
Perhaps the police would come. After all, the road was only on the other side of the far wall. Dodging them would be fun, but they wouldn’t come, and his legs would end up being burnt right through by the sun. Don’t keep thinking this crap!
He concentrated on his plans. He’d meet Hernan, and after that everything would be sorted out.

“When I was younger I always knew what my responsibilities were.”
The greeting sentence hung between them like a Buenos Aires smog. Señor Bolivar had kept his mouth firmly shut since then and just waited, as though under siege. He’d taken in all of his daughter’s words but emitted nothing. Even the lines on his face were on the parade ground.
But there was little else he could do, having inadvertently broken one of his own rules and mentioned the past. Sara’s explanation had not made any reference to it, but had bounded on about Pedro being beaten… it was not the picture he had prepared in his mind, but he was unwilling to declare himself satisfied.
Now Sara had stopped speaking and was looking at him with a side-on stare. Her lips moved to and fro and twisted up. Her eyes were not passively waiting. He sensed that she’d made ready a new attack if he were to deviate from what she was expecting. He closed his eyes and straightened his body, fending off the stiffness in his hip. Undisciplined thought, too much reminiscing, had brought him to this unguarded mention of the past.
He’d woken sweating in the night and crept round the house by his finger-ends. Of course he knew where she was – at Pedro’s… but the image of Ford Falcons pulling onto the tarmac at Corrientes in lines fretted away in his brain. But the people they dragged out were all communists… Sweating still, he’d had to banish the 1970s to the recesses of his mind. The rest of the night had been sleepless while he succeeded in that goal.
But his tongue had slipped in his anger and worry and those years had raised their heads again. Now there was a rumour of war that hissed in his ears while he looked at her. When she finished he maintained his look.
“You must sit down, Sara.” He turned and went over to his table by the television to bring back his flask and a gourd while she obeyed. As he turned back he caught her looking past him to the bound book that occupied a corner precisely. She met his eye and suddenly the frayed grey chair was too large for her. She’s only a child, he told himself. He licked his lips and held his hands steady. The hot water crackled onto the maté leaves. He offered the maté gourd to her tiny hands and watched as she sipped inexpertly. The leaves on the surface lurched as she tipped the gourd.
But when she spoke he remembered that she was twenty three and that he had let her make her own choices. But she asked: “What have you decided?”

“Is that what he did to you?”
The man’s black arm-hairs seemed to leave misty trials he crossed himself. Peter let the door swing until it bumped against the inner wall. His visitor’s shape was fully revealed in all its vague familiarity.
“Who the hell are you?”
Surely it was his imagination that his words were slurred. Perhaps the figure in front of him was a hallucination. He looked around the man’s edges, which were firm as a photograph’s. Beyond him the dips and ruts of the track in front of him were as they had always been, in all their various shades between yellow, silver and brown. The valley and the mountains were the same too, as always, entirely self-sufficient. It all looked like real life. Still, what were visions for if not to appear real?
He stopped himself wandering and a phrase from the man’s lips refocused his mind. “You’ve been spying on me?”
At least the guy had the decency to look embarrassed. He wore a bruise matching Peter’s, which linked his mud-like hair to the cactus brows. The squinting eyes were always going left and right, apparently frightened of something approaching. A muddy green shade too, he noticed. Like a bad choice for house paint. “Are you being paid?”
The visitor was taken aback. For a moment his eyes focused on Peter before going on with their flicking. “I said,” he rasped, apparently annoyed. “It’s your English friend who’s making me do it.”
“So why’ve you come to tell me?”
The man opened his mouth. His teeth seemed to be swamped by an unnaturally-coloured tongue.
“Don’t tell me any crap about how you felt guilty or any of that. I recognise you. I’ve seen you lying in the road so drunk you’d pissed yourself.”
The tongue was hidden for a moment by a knowing smile that cut lines at every angle across the face. The man moved closer. Even in the open air of the valley Peter could smell old beer in his clothes. “He’s paying good money.” Said the visitor. “He must have a good reason.”
“I can’t think of one.”
“I don’t owe him anything. Look at my head, and here, and here. You can tell me.”
The bruises were pink-purple on the sagging flesh. The visitor pulled his T-shirt down. “He did this to both of us. We can get him back.”
Peter breathed deeply and slowly. The bastard’s guessing now. He steadied himself, hoping that the big man wouldn’t guess he was lying. “The best way to do that is to stop waving your nose around here where it’s not wanted. He’s just playing a game.”
“He plays very roughly, which makes me think he’s not playing.” The man’s eyes were away flicking again. Were they being watched, even now? Peter kept his head still. “Don’t keep on pretending – look, we can look after each other. We can get him back.”
It was the most trusting smile you could imagine, except for the eyes measuring him and what he might say.
“Look, there’s nothing. Why don’t you just take his money and lie to him? You’re just going to die, sitting out here day after day. And for what? Listen to me, he’s got nothing to find out. There – is – nothing.”
Peter dropped his hands. He hoped that the firmness of his last words had got in the other man’s ears.
“You’re lying to me, and you want me to lie to him?” The flicking of his eyes intensified. “I don’t think lying to him is a good idea.” He’s thinking now, Peter thought. The breath passed through the man’s nostrils with a rough sound. “I’ll sort him out and you can give me half of what you get. Is that fair?”
A series of answers passed through Peter’s mind. On the other side of all of them he saw painful confrontations lasting hours, days, leading to consequences that were as real and as horrible as they were defined. He felt all the history he knew weighing down on his decision-making powers. Moist eyes watched his face as he tried to keep it still. “Yes,” he said at last, leaping on the path of least resistance and regretting it. To qualify his surrender, he tried to add: “How will you get rid of him? How do you know I’ll get anything? I don’t want any violence.”
But the big soft palm was already grabbing at his hand and squeezing, jolting it up and down. His sentences lurched out in half measures and the visitor was crushing them under his own verbal motion. “It’s a deal, it’s a deal. Don’t worry, don’t worry, I won’t break the law. Half, you said?”
Some other words were spoken, but Peter’s head was reeling. The man, his puffy grin unchanged, was already making off into the sun, shouting whatever he was saying to the far end of the valley, where patient cacti waited to waft it back to Peter. He leaned drunkenly on the hard corner of the doorpost. “But what’s your name?”
“Hernan. Don’t worry.”
Hernan, Peter mused as he pushed against the post and the throbbing pain that had joyfully returned to his temples. He slumped to the ground, reassured by the floor’s hardness against his buttocks, and whispered “Omygogohmygod I feel so ill.”
“He wouldn’t have dared attack Anna in England,” he remembered saying.
“Why not?”
“Too frightened of getting caught.”
Sara had paused with the damp dressing poised over his head “But it’s OK in the Third World?”
He didn’t answer, struck into dumbness by the momentary coldness of her expression. She applied the dressing roughly.
The answers he could have given earlier that day rattled by as he bowed his head between his swaying knees and clutched at his stomach. He’d been afraid to say them out loud, and now they all danced invitingly, mockingly. But then his stomach and his head lurched together.

Her eyes were stinging and the rocks’ shapes altered into blurs, altered again while she kept her shoulders taut, resisting the motor’s mild vibrations. But the driver did not turn the engine off. A hand snailed across her body and she recoiled, afraid to bring her own fingers up to cross herself in case she soiled them on the slime her mind insisted covered the hand.
There was a thump and a bang and a sudden influx of light and dry air. She blinked; the tears were disappearing and the tops of the mountains leapt into clarity. They seemed easily within reach as she stared at them, as though the little trickle of dark rocks against the sunburnt skin of stone and earth had been pulled closer by the officer on her left. The engine grumbled on.
They were just off the road, where God had willed strings of dull plants through bleached white fragments. A little further away, the roadside veered up into a bank of disintegrated pieces; beyond it she could see the vast golden valley floor. It seemed featureless and endless in the hot sun and gave the lie to the proximity of the mountaintops. Like the plants from the ground, a realisation was plucked from her mind. She knew this place. This was the turn in the road just after Los Castellanos. In front of her, at the edge of the road, was a gaunt outcrop. Its foot lay many metres below, where the desiccated riverbed met friable rock. It was a precipitous drop that could only be fully gauged belly-flat, with a cautious nose peering into the gulf. Anna had dared only once before to risk peering down.
Her head snapped round to the officer as she felt the blood tide creep under her skin. “I – I…” she stammered, almost pretending that she didn’t understand.
The officer’s face was two-thirds shadowed, but his mouth was viciously lit through the Falcon’s back window. It, and its grey-edged moustache, moved into a smile. He waved the hand that had opened the door. She saw it as if disembodied, the sweat shiny on the palm, the phantom dirt faintly colouring under his nails. It gestured again – The door is open; leave the car.
As if already pushed to the bottom of the valley, she saw her legs unfold and follow their instinct onto the tarmac scales of Route 68. Their heat swept up through the soft soles of her shoes. She touched a hair and it was blown back from her face to join the rest swinging heavily behind her. The car engine was still running. There was the sound of a car door and her back tensed, waiting to sense the officer’s approach. She could see the valley on the edge of her vision, an indefinable message from God. She tried to steel herself through her faith, resign herself to a final knowledge of His secrets. The idea of it comforted her, even though prickles of fear still disturbed her skin.
But the note of the engine changed. She turned her head to its buzzing, but the sleek metal was already shifting. Her eyes followed the lurch, then the turn, the swift acceleration, and then just the uncertain movements of dust across the road’s camber. Her nose picked up the remnants of exhaust fumes. There would be no push in the back.
They hadn’t lied, she thought to herself. Despite all her ordeals with them, they hadn’t lied this time. It had just been a mistake – though they had covered their tracks with a photograph of her accepting money to pay for the bus. And perhaps they never took the girl they really wanted – neither of them had felt the sharp pain between the shoulder blades or fallen… No, no, the ones they didn’t shoot were drugged, she recalled, as she always did; drugged as they were loaded into the helicopters; drugged as the Atlantic waves closed over them.
The Englishman’s depravity had returned the memory of how the army had let her go to her. Such crosses were meant to be borne, Anna reminded herself, and she promised herself a moment when she would be able to go to mass at the call of the bells, give thanks for her two escapes and confront her neighbours’ unsuspecting looks without any inner shame.
For now, it was enough to raise the sash on the window and look up to heaven. But that, too, reminded her of her first shame, because that was the first thing she had done once she was alone on the cliff top. Even today, how many other women on the Salta bus closed the blinds on the valley for reasons other than keeping the sun out? How many were avoiding remembering?
But forgiveness was the way.
She frowned as she looked out onto the yard. She had expected to hear José’s voice on the telephone. He often called Carmen in the afternoons because she didn’t usually take siesta either. Perhaps he was with his maps. She moved back across the room, towards the dim corner where she’d propped the pillows up, but stopped as the door swung slowly open. José was scratching at his stomach; he looked frightened again.
“What is it?”
“Señor Bolivar has come. He wants to see you – Sara has told him.”
Her face leaped into heat. “Let him come in.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes – he knows all that’s necessary. But wait – just a minute.” She needed shoes, a fully decent gown. José watched her with a worried face, but didn’t offer any protest. “I’ll go into the other room.”
Señor Bolivar was not to be embraced; he was not to be admitted into the bedroom. These were rules that she only remembered sketchily – far less clearly than the moments in and out of the car in the valley.
“Sit down please, Señor .” Señor Bolivar felt perched on the chair. He pushed himself firmly further back onto the seat and arranged his legs in front of him. There was a tickle in his beard, but it could not be scratched because the surface of the moment was too fragile. Anna Achua was a strange apparition. She moved to and fro like a bird.
“Would you care for a little maté , Captain?” He’d spent too much time in the heat. Anna Achua would not have the voice of Colonel Coruna. She would never have used his rank, even if she knew it. She had offered him coffee, in any case.
“Yes, I would. Thank you.”
She took her shawled shoulders out of his sight, but he still sat firmly upright and regarded his mental list of duties in such a situation. His sympathies he had brought; he could offer his assistance. He sipped his coffee once this was done, and she returned his gaze, though only the whites of her eyes reflected the light from outside.
“I hope the police won’t waste any time pursuing this man,” he said.
She didn’t reply, but looked on. Her gaze was like that of his daughter sometimes, though Sara always replied, no matter what the subject was. He began to speak again but his mouth made a wet sound that boldly jolted in the silence.
“It’s very strange,” Anna Achua began in a bright voice. “I’ve told José this, and you made me think of it again when you asked me how I was, but though I feel like I’m thinking of it all the time, if I really consider it, I’m not thinking about it at all.”
“That’s perfectly natural,” he said, beginning to slip into the easy rhythm of conversation that he and the Achuas usually shared. “It’s the mind’s response to trauma.”
“I suppose it is, in the same way as you never talk about death at a funeral,” she laughed. Señor Bolivar allowed a quick smile to slip over his face. He abruptly remembered the funeral he should have gone to the other day. This was some amends, he reasoned. Life was to be balanced.
“Where did you learn about things like trauma?” The question was brittle, light but bladed.
“We – er, we learned that kind of thing from the Americans. There – er – there was a good deal of writing on the subject during and after, after Vietnam. They trained a lot of us, not me though, up in the States in the 70s.”

José stood and looked at the shop. He saw every detail of it, but his ears were at the other end of the corridor, against the door of the room where his wife sat with Señor Bolivar, their friend. What would he say to her?
Anna knew him better, of course. She always said that Señor had been a good friend. They’d known the man and his daughter for fifteen years. Anna and Señor Bolivar must have met in the church. Neither of them had ever thought to tell José how they started talking. All he knew was that every time he had mentioned history, the tall moustached figure had expressed interest.
José had not at first understood why Anna had chosen Señor Bolivar out of all the people in the church. He knew what had happened to her in 1977, and couldn’t grasp how she could bring herself even to share the air of the church with him. Now, he wondered if it was their faith. Perhaps they really did put judgment in God’s hands, and that was why certain things were never to be spoken of, because they might tempt human judgement. That was why they were so happy in each other’s company.
Some things were never to be thought, either. José wasn’t jealous, but for the first time he wondered about the way in which his wife’s friend had gradually become his own. He wished someone would come in to buy something.

“I see. Do you like your coffee? It’s a new kind that José persuaded me to try, from Sao Paulo.”
The conversation tinkered on. Señor Bolivar classified each statement as it was spoken – sometimes there was a hint of something, mostly nothing at all, and he began to wonder if he’d imagined her question about trauma in the same way as he had imagined the Colonel’s voice. But that had clearly been an auditory failure, and the same could not be said of Anna Achua’s question about trauma. That single query floated unclassified round his head. Was it a slip caused by her distress? Or was she seeking a new conversation beyond their normal parameters? A reasoned consideration and analysis would have provided the answer but the fact that she was speaking, and he replying, precluded it.
She seemed as well as could be expected. A little fragile; there were deep lines around her mouth; she did look pale; and then there was the fact that she had not been to church. He rose from his seat. His duty was done and it was time to leave.
As he encouraged her to go and sit among the candles at mass and offered again his assistance and his sympathies, passed down the corridor in front of her, wished her farewell, thanked José and urged him to rest too, he wondered if he should have crushed the speech about the past he had been going to make quite so completely.
“I hope all will be well with you very soon,” he said as he shook José’s big hand.
“Oh it will be, it will be,” The shopkeeper’s eyes were less wide and tired now. He spoke in a warmer voice. But Señor Bolivar’s pleasure at this was less than it might have been.
There were dozens of people gathered outside the church, spilling across the road, chattering cheerfully. He passed through them with one hand raised to his cap in acknowledgement of the ones he knew. It was a wedding, he supposed, though the married couple seemed already to have left. Many of the guests still stood on the steps of the church. Their bodies blocked his view of where Señor a Guiza, the mother who had gone to Buenos Aires because of the loss of her daughter, had always stood. It was still strange to see that she had gone after her years of vigil. It had been for the best that he hadn’t gone to her funeral. He paused for a moment opposite the open door of the church, almost tempted in. But a glance at the clock and the necessary calculations told him he would have no time to do more than kneel before the altar. He passed on; his daughter was waiting.
Perhaps he could tell her what he had been going to say to Anna. She had reached the stage in her life when it was good for her to know the things he hadn’t said. If Maria had lived, he wouldn’t have had to decide the time to speak for himself, but he was sure she would have approved of this moment too.
He weighed this belief up and down as he straightened his back and picked up his feet to defeat his limp. He was off the square now, and onto the rougher surface of the road beside the hotel. Sara was waiting. Her arms were pale against the dark windshield of the truck. She saw him, smiled and started the engine to take him home.

“You know I can turn you in to the police any time?” The bastard even had slobber running over his cheek. John swallowed back the dryness in his throat and carried on circling. Hernan turned as it on a pivot, keeping the distance between them constant. “I can make demands, whatever you say.”
Two small boys ran along the side of the road, their eyes wide under black hair. They didn’t stop, though there was a pause in the clatter of their dog’s paws. A wind had got up as the day cooled. It hissed and rattled the leaves and branches from the vineyards where the white-sided buildings began.
“All right, I’ll tell you.” John stopped and watched with satisfaction as Hernan swung on, tried to reverse and almost toppled onto the tarmac. But when he’d recovered himself he got his eyebrows up mockingly. Bastard.
“Don’t shout too loud.” Hernan’s thick finger was tightly pressed to the thick lips. Thick head, too. “The wrong sort of people might hear you.”
“You are the wrong sort.”
A car appeared at the junction. They stepped into the grass on opposite sides while it made its choking way between them. The driver looked neither right nor left.
“The guy you’ve been watching,” John began.
“Señor Pedro.”
“If you like. The guy you’ve been watching has got a lot of money.”
“I don’t believe you.”
But John had already spotted Hernan’s grin. “Yes you do. You’re working out how many more beers you can get, and you don’t even know how much it is yet.”
“How much is it?” He didn’t like being watched like this. It was like the Englishman was pulling little strings on his face to make him pull the expressions he wanted.
“I don’t know.”
“This is all a joke! How can you know he’s got money but not how much it is?”
“Because,” John said with exaggerated slowness, “He told me it existed but not what its value was.”
“Why that? Why do you have to spy on him then? Can’t you just ask him?”
John wondered if the moron had heard of e-mail. Hasn’t bought any new clothes since 1984. “It’s not cash. I know that. It’s old stuff. Very old stuff. Precious metal, I think. But, obviously, it can be turned into cash.”
Hernan’s face brightened. “And I’ll have half?”
“Looks like you can have what you want, since you can report me to the police whenever you like. You can have half. But you can only have half if I find out exactly where it is. What did you see today?”
“Oh, I saw nothing. Nobody came, nobody went.”
“Not even Sara Bolivar?”
“Oh, oh I forgot about her.” Glib answers, a satisfied smile. The little shit. “But she always comes and goes doesn’t she? Living it up in there with the Englishman.”
“How would you know about that?”
Hernan just smiled while his brain registered something else that amused him. The Englishman was jealous.
“She just went to and from the road?”
“To and from the road, yes, yes.”
He’s lucky he’s over there and out of reach. But then tiredness and gloom swept over and dissolved John’s vicious impulse. The air was getting cold and the goose pimples on his skin reminded him of the coming night.
“No more questions? May I go now?” He’s practically bowing like some costume drama idiot. Thinks he’s won the game because he can show a couple of bruises to the cops.
“Yeah. Piss off.”
Hernan ran for his bike and was rapidly out of the range even of a running man.
“Fifty dollars tomorrow,” he let fly over his shoulder. John stared after him with a kind of idle loathing until he was a speck on the grey road surface.
Half, he thought. Just the cash and no more questions. No one had to do anything. It was possible to do that sort of thing here, he guessed, to grab your treasures from the past and swap them for a big wad of notes. It was no problem in South America because there was so much space to spread yourself out in, and the police were as corrupt as you. For a second, he relished the freedom of it in a way he couldn’t when he’d found himself using violence.
Half… In Oxford you could bitch and but you could only take your cut by writing articles. Here, you could actually steal the whole damn thing. Yes, “With thanks to Dr Peter Atkins, without whom…” on the title page pf a crossover bestseller.
But here was the wall he had to climb. By the time his belly was pressed against the fragmented mortar top, and he had untangled his legs from creeping tendrils, complications were beginning to tiptoe quietly around the smooth face of his hopes. He dropped down onto the greenery on the other side and looked at his toes, all covered in white dust and cobweb from the fissures they had gripped on the other side. In front of him sat his bag and the sheets, and between them was a cold wind. He though of Peter “living it up” in his hut.
It was OK, it was OK. He’d get there.

“San Martín was a cautious man even after his victories in 1810 as I’m sure you know, Señor Bolivar. He ran a great by marching to attack Lima even after his victories in what became Argentina. That was why, after all, he liberated Santiago first and went by sea to Greater Peru. In addition to this, and in addition to the careful training of his troops at Mendoza, he’d made careful preparations in case he was beaten back by the Spanish to the newly-liberated United Provinces…”
“My Colonel was a very busy man, young man. There was a lot on his shoulders in those days. He had to play his part in governing Corrientes and there were communists and atheists in every part of the country who had not been… who were still resisting what was good in Argentine life. At any rate, he had a tremendous amount of civic duties to attend to. It was a great honour to be invited to speak to him in person…”
“In many ways it was typical of San Martín that he should make an irrevocable step such as the projected invasion of Peru after have made sure that the irrevocable nature of the step was strictly limited. The great general was possessed of a good deal of the wealth of the new republic, much of it abandoned by the wealthier estancieros who had attempted to maintain loyalty to Spain. Appropriately enough, given the name of the new country both then and now – the United Provinces of the Rio del Plata; Argentina – the bulk of the ready cash consisted of minted silver…”
“Like all young men, I was easily humbled in the presence of a lot of power and I do believe I trembled when I was ushered into his presence, my whole body at attention. Who knew on what side the blow would fall? I could have been called on to expiate my sins rather than take on some new honourable duty…”
“Once the immediate monetary demands of the campaign were satisfactorily settled, the remainder was divided into equal portions. The number of these portions is nowhere explicitly started in the sources available, but we may assume that one was prepared for each of the potential routes trough which the United Provinces forces could have retreated had the campaigns in Chile and Peru met insurmountable obstacles. San Martín then chose a number of trusted lieutenants and made ready his final arrangements…”
“The Colonel couldn’t be said to have been a kind man – that was not his way, but in my experience at least he was scrupulously fair and always acted with honour. He saw at once that I was rather overawed, and he sought to set my mind at rest. He at once sat down and asked me how I was faring. I was eager to impress him with my diligence and I launched into a brief account of both good and bad elements – impressions only, of course – of the military vehicle compound. However, he brushed these aside and I understood that I had misunderstood. Was I fully satisfied? was the real thrust of his question. With some trepidation I confessed that though not a word could be said against my role, I had rather hoped that I could have taken a more active part in ridding Argentina of those malign forces that had brought her to the very brink. After I had spoken, he was briefly silent. I trembled, but again I had misunderstood. He had required my attendance on him, he said, because he needed me. I – lowly as I was (I paraphrase his exact words) – could at last take up arms in the country’s struggle…”
“Alas, none of those trusted lieutenants were up to the task that San Martín had chosen them for. At least, so it seemed. So far I have been using material from sources other historians have used – correspondence, journals and official documents, all of which have been cited before, but we now come upon uncharted territory. For one account has survived, and it lay undiscovered in the National Archives in Buenos Aires for over 100 years. I came upon it by chance and it wasn’t until I pursued some of the threads in it, which were incidental to my main research, that I realised the potential treasure trove it revealed. The issue of San Martín’s silver has until now been passed over in virtual silence because nothing concrete was ever known about it – until now…”
“It was not an order – it was a request. Would I, Captain Miguel Bolivar, undertake my first active command in the field at the head of a detachment? I stammered my assent, and the Colonel shook my hand…”
Sara could feel herself frowning, but she managed a smile as Peter and her father hesitated several feet apart. Their faces showed that they’d talk forever once they got started, but neither could tip over into sound. It was clear that the each wanted the other to speak first. At last her father cleared his face of its stern lines and stepped forward to embrace Peter’s slight form. The Englishman was accepted.
As the formal entanglement ended, she let her smile drop. She was tired of an upheaval and she wanted to be rid of her father. His unreal game had been played out – it was time for him to go back into his normal world, where she could be a daughter to him, look after him with all the love that was due to him. And when that was done, Peter would be here, and their afternoons would go back to their old pattern. Until, of course, it was time to fly to England and a whole other world. But nothing was going back to normal.
“I need to have a few words with him alone,” her father nodded to her.
She nodded back. She retreated, staring at the two men until the door was closed behind her and she was in the hallway with the sun and sand trickling in over the worn threshold.
For a second she contemplated making a drink for each of them, but the alien activity of setting out three cups instead of two contained a revulsion of its own. A cigarette and the feel of the sky’s heat were infinitely more attractive. She was neither daughter nor wife while the smoke clouded around her.
John watched her pulling at her clothes in the heat. He could see she was uncomfortable. She kept looking towards the doorway and turning away. He shrank back into the dead ground behind a ridge of stones and wood. Even at this distance, even though she was clothed, it wouldn’t be good to be caught again.
“I hope you’ll be happy, my dear,” Her father had returned to her. His voice seemed on the verge of cracking. “Your mother would wish you the same.”
Sara’s heart quivered as he spoke of her mother, but it was for him she felt the sudden grief. She imagined him shrinking gradually as he sat in his high-backed seat. He was an old man, widowed and childless. But he had had given her up. As he had always said he would, he had let her make her own choice.
“Thank you.” Their cheeks grazed against each other.
Peter stood by abjectly, unsure whether he was allowed any role. It was preferable, perhaps, for him to sink back into his old hut until he could emerge bearing the Liberator’s silver. He cleared his throat and they looked at him, their eyes almost indistinguishable. “Perhaps we should celebrate,” he said helplessly.
Señor Bolivar regained his authority. As he spoke, the eagerness Peter had been so afraid to divine on his face was replaced by firm, closed organisation. “I would like the union to be blessed here in Argentina, even if the marriage is to be in England.”
“Of course, of course,” Peter managed to agree.
Sara said nothing. She was a spectator again, only required so that the performance did not play to an empty house. She could feel the space behind her and around her disappear like the old river, like the Indians. Marriage, England. They had forgotten that she had chosen these things, not them.
“I know you’re not a catholic, but the priest will make no objections.”
“Nor will I,” Peter struggled to convey open-mindedness, but hurried in to fill the gap he felt might follow. “But I’d be very glad to go – I’ll leave the arrangements to you, if that’s all right. Can – can I offer you a drink, or some food –“ He thought again of how Señor Bolivar had looked at the mess inside his hut, and hesitated. “We could sit out in the sun.”
He looked up hopefully at Sara. But she was looking away, at the hard dry ruts in the track.
“Of course, of course if it’s too hot…”
“No, no,” Señor Bolivar spread out his clean old hands. “I shall go back home now.” Perhaps that wasn’t the way these things were done, Peter thought, rushing forward at the old man’s gesture to shake his hand.
Once the truck’s engine was running, Sara escaped the knots of her feelings. She ran lightly across the burning ground to where Peter was trying to fix the slipping bandage more tightly to his head.
“Is it all settled then?” he asked breathlessly, holding out his hands to hers.
“You were so English,” she laughed.
She gave his hand a squeeze, then ran back to the truck. When they were gone, Peter stood, suddenly forlorn and uncertain, until the skin under the dressing prickled its way into drops of sweat running down his face.

In the truck, her sudden burst of affection had burned away. Now there was just the road, black and boiling, winding the way she knew so well towards Cafayate. Her father sat on her right, with his hands folded in his lap like a saint’s effigy. He did not speak and she was grateful not to have to hide the feelings that cut into her like the seams and straps of her clothes.
She looked about anxiously as she drove: at the boulders resting in their places, the cacti and the limping-low trees. Even, as the dunes dropped away and the trees around the vineyards rose up, at the lurching figure of a man pulling a cart piled high with dead branches. The truck’s sides and windows hemmed her in with the familiar breathing of her father.
“The rosary.” She didn’t look round, but she could see him struggling into pockets whose mouths were tight against his legs. He grunted and spluttered, but finally drew it out with a cluster of little clicks and held it up so that she could not but turn her head to it.
“Why are you worried about it?”
“I forgot.” There was a sudden nervousness, almost tearful. “I forgot. I was going to give it to him.”
“Is it important? You know he isn’t catholic.”
“It’s a pair with yours – the one that was our mother’s, that you never wear.” He was firm again now, modulating the sternness in his voice.
“But you know I don’t like to take it around – to work, where I might lose it,” were the words that immediately formed on her tongue. She could hear herself saying them into the enclosed air. But instead she slowed the engine so that she could think more clearly. “She gave me that when she was dying.”
Neither of them had spoken out loud about her mother for a long time before today. Her father paused. “I wanted to pass mine onto your husband, so they’d always remain a pair.”
She tried to smile and remembered Peter’s body stretched out and sleek with soft sweat, and his voice imitating her father’s old solemnity. “Marriage is going out of fashion in England, you know,” he was saying.
“He isn’t my husband yet.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Why don’t you just give it to him when we are married? Aren’t I your daughter until then?”
“You’re betrothed now. Marriage will follow as a matter of course. And I won’t be at your wedding because it will be in England. I meant to give him this rosary.” His words softened into the rattle of the beads in his hand. The crucifix swung below. The truck was going so slowly now they could hear the crunch of the road under the tyres. Sara abruptly applied the brake and all sound except the engine jerked to a stop.
“I’ll take you back to him then,” she said.
“Thank you, my dear.” There was a smile behind the angles of his beard. Because of it, she didn’t swing the wheel round roughly but completed the manoeuvre with resignation. A car passed them before they could start again and it sounded its horn in acknowledgment. At this, resistance crumbled into rubble inside her. She leaned heavily on the wheel as the truck gathered speed in the wake of the other vehicle’s plumes of exhaust.
Señor Bolivar gazed at the tiny movements of the green rosary beads in his palm.

That banging again. Every time Peter heard it, he felt himself growing dizzy and his head toppling towards the floor. He couldn’t work, and still they came clattering for his attention like bloody pilgrims to a shrine.
He threw open the door without even trying to prepare a friendly face.
“I need your help, Pete,” John said.
“What in the flying fuck brings you here you fucking little great piece of shit?”
“I know, I know, mate. Look, I’m really sorry. I’ve acted well out of order. I’m sorry. I was out of control, didn’t know whether I was coming or going. But I’m paying for it now. I mean, look at me, I’m in deep shit, I know, because of what I’ve done, but I’m sorry. I need your help otherwise I’m going to go down, mate.”
It all fell out of his mouth in broken pieces. John almost believed he had to go down on his knees and start scrabbling for shreds of his tongue. But saying it was easier than he had thought. All the way up to the door the grovelling had stuck in the back of his head. On his tongue had hovered: “Up that road is it? Well, you can take me to it.”
Peter surveyed his visitor with interest. His whiskers had sprouted and grown thickly. His eyes were sunk right back into his brain. There were immense sweat stains on his shirt and sand clung to them like a parody of gilding. He was filthy, thin and a leaf was somehow stuck into one of his trainers.
“What do you want my help for?” Peter was laughing, enjoying his cruelty.
“Look mate, you’re the only person I can turn to right now-“
“Why?”
“We’re both English aren’t we? We’re both stuck out here – well, maybe you don’t see it as stuck. I’ve been sleeping out in the open the last couple of nights and I can’t stand it. I need somewhere to go.”
This had seemed like such a good idea as the sun rose. He’d moved into its rays as soon as he could, and watched as the hairs on his arms relaxed and the outer parts of him warmed slightly. With his sheets round him and a cigarette burning itself out between his fingers, the idea of another day and night of being out in the open was unendurable. Peter would help him – had to, especially if he acted like he was sorry enough. And he was. He said it again to prove it.
“Why don’t you just give yourself up to the police? I’m sure their cells’ll be comfortable enough. You won’t get any twigs in your back.”
“Mate, mate, if you think I should go to the cops then I’ll go to the cops. I mean it, I’ll turn myself in. but I don’t want to. I just want to go home. But if you want me to go to the cops, can’t you just let me have a rest before I go? I’ve barely slept for two nights. Please mate. I am sorry.”
Peter felt his expression softening. Poor bugger looks done in. He can’t do any harm. I’ll take him in when Sara gets back. It was definitely better than trying to turn him away now. Sara would approve of taking him to the cops – the police – he decided.
“Let me in, then.”
Peter stood in the doorway for a second, annoyed. But John was gazing dully at his belly. Peter dropped his arms from the doorposts and moved aside out of the sun. It was only when he saw the water stains and thick grime on the bag John swept past him that the drumming pain in his head started up again.
John stood in the study, looking round with childlike eyes. “Is it OK if I put this down?” he asked, meaning the bag.
“In that corner. Try not to let it get anything dirty.” He though he heard a laugh, but if it was one, it was instantly suppressed and John was looking about again.
“Can I sit down?” Was he taking the piss? But his face was so crushed by tiredness it didn’t seem likely. Peter moved forward quickly and picked some papers off a shredded-looking armchair that had not been sat on since the last person to live here had left. He tried to put them in order as he lifted them, but it was useless, so he scattered them over the most recent notes on the desk.
John sank down without hesitation, even though guffs of dust spurted out from the joins in the cover. “Thanks mate,” he drew out as he rested his head on the curved back. “It’s really good to have walls and a roof round me again.”
Peter tried to sympathise, but all he could think about was how the smells of the man and the chair mingled with the smells he knew and wrapped round him in the little room. He pushed the shutters a little wider open and tried to take in the presence of the bag and the Englishman in the space he had considered wholly his own. He remembered how the thick arm had whisked past him to pull back the shutter bolt and the grating laughter that had followed the crack of the metal. But his suspicious glance showed only that John’s eyes were fluttering closed. Poor bastard can’t keep himself awake. He’s even beginning to snore.
Well, he’d leave him to it, he decided and went to the door. All the same, he wouldn’t close it. All the same he was glad he hadn’t been able to get past making the first preliminary notes for his San Martín article.

More knocking – Sara wouldn’t knock, just push the door open. It wasn’t her then. He hurried to see who it was, his heart spilling up into his throat.
Hernan was very angry. They were tricking him, these Englishman, tricking him even as he stood there. Did they think he had no eyes?
“You told me I could have half!”
“You can have half, you can have half… Oh God, I thought he must have got rid of you.”
“Where is your friend?”
“He’s inside. He’s asleep.”
“Well, wake him up and bring him to me. I want to take him to the police. That’s my duty, we arranged it.”
“We didn’t arrange anything, you idiot.”
Peter put his head in his hands. His eyes seemed to be bulging out and their fluids running down over his face. The heat, the track and the nearby bushes were the whole of the world and everywhere in it there was revolution and disorder. If Señor Bolivar had embraced him now he would have bitten through the smart cloth on his shoulder as a preparation for what was to come. If the old man had left clutching at the blood on his arm, perhaps everything would have ended there. Perhaps this was the blessing he was fated for, he thought as Hernan’s bearded mouth made shapes to accompany its sounds. He wanted Sara with him so she could send the intruders away – and not know that they had ever come.
“I’ll get him for you shall I?”
He slammed the door. The welcome dark of the entranceway was broken almost immediately as Hernan kicked the handle into the wall. He stepped onto the splintering boards and almost seemed to be sniffing the air.
“Stay there,” Peter said. “This is my house and I’ll fetch him for you.” Hernan stopped where he was, but watched with careful eyes. No ambush could get Hernan. He kept his fists clenched in readiness for the bigger Englishman.
“Wake up, you wanker.” The aftershocks of Atkins’ blow on his cheek were all John was aware of, but they danced across the whole of the side of his face. He was on his feet in a second, but whoever it was would surely have seen that he wasn’t himself.
Then he saw Peter standing grinning, haloed by light from the window. The knuckle of his fist went up to his teeth and dropped away. How long had he stood there before he’d had had the guts to hit him?
“Your minion’s here. Get rid of him. Pay him off or whatever it is you do with spies. Come on, get the fuck rid of him!” John watched one foot jerk convulsively – a stifled kick, he guessed. But he kept his own hands loose: they were too tired and flabby to be fists.
“All right.” He went to the door feeling the dry air suck at his eyes, though the sun seemed cool where Peter’s blow had landed. “What do you want, Hernan?”
“I want – what we had arranged… you remember.” Hernan’s eyes rolled as he tried to work out how his bargains with each of them might work. “Half!” he said clearly at last. “You both said half – you’ll have to divide the rest between yourselves.” He chuckled and fed one sandy finger through the web of his beard. The two Englishmen looked at each other; he stepped back out onto the sand and stones where they couldn’t touch him. And he could outrun them, too. Look at the state they’re in.
Peter shrugged in answer to John’s questioning look. “OK. Is that all? Come back tomorrow and we’ll divide it then.”
Hernan’s slow yellow eyes moved across the two men in the doorway. John was inventing answers for the question he knew was coming: “But how can I trust you?” He hoped Peter would back him up.
But it was the noise of the truck that was uppermost in Hernan’s mind. “Who’s that? The police?”
“Yes.” Peter’s voice was so sharp that John turned to look at him, wondering how he’d managed to get them here so quickly. “You’d better not be around when they get here. You know what they’re like.”
The final sentence struck fear into both listeners. Hernan’s eyes rolled; he didn’t quite believe it, but self-preservation was instinctive. “I’ll leave them to you then. But I’ll be wanting my half.”
He winked at the others and then, with a quick look over his shoulder to measure the distance, waded his thick body off.
John just found himself staring along the fragmented track surface, seeing nothing but imagined wheels, imagined sun, imagined uniforms and feeling only a nagging doubt. He didn’t know what the cops were like.
They were not, he realised, like Sara Bolivar and an old man dressed in what looked like military fatigues. Peter was standing with his arms hanging limply. Under his bandage, his eyes were blinking furiously. John went forward, happy to be able to smile with self-assurance again.
“Hello,” he said as he got close to them. They did not take his hand or embrace him. The old man fixed his sunglasses on him and his beard twitched with threatening rhythms. Sara did not grace him with a look, but stared past to where Peter met the full force of her disgust and flailed helplessly.
God, she was fit. If only he could have her. Her clothes were not tight enough to be revealing, but they suggested everything he remembered. Her hair fell onto the red cloth on her shoulders as if each colour were feeding into the other. The skin of her neck and face invited him closer, to try the smell and taste. She would be dry and hot. He could feel his face edging closer. Man, he was losing it. Now her eyes turned their green hatred onto him and he looked away, suddenly aware again of the size and brightness of the sky. He was very tired, he almost mumbled to himself. He’d been letting his imagination run away with him.
But now the old man was coming closer. “You are Juan?”
“My name is John.” And there was spit, sickly warm, sliding down his skin. The old man was wiping his mouth. The spit was full of phlegm and hung in pendulous droplets between John’s fingers.
“What’s he doing here?” The first time she’d spoken in English in his presence. Her accent was unyielding, like her face.
“He came asking for my help – he was sleeping in the open. I – I said he should go to the police – I was just waiting – waiting for you.” Peter could feel his face turning into the sun and his words cooking into shells.
“How dare you let him come here! Don’t you remember what he’s done?”
Peter pointed to the bandage on his head but his finger was just a minute twig in the vastness of the valley. Señor Bolivar didn’t speak again, but his hand jerked into a pocket. When it came out again the green beads that had been swinging from it had gone.
Now he was stalking back to the still and silent truck. Sara watched him as he made another decision. “Wait!”
But he walked on.
“I didn’t invite him! I didn’t want him here!”
“Father stop! Isn’t Peter allowed any defence?” The upright back was frozen. The three younger people watched the top of the cap move slowly round. Sara swallowed. The word “Defence” hung over her, a sudden escape from what was never to be mentioned.
“Very well. Explain yourself. But his presence here is disgusting.” He spat again. The fluid sank into the ground near John’s feet.
“There’s only one reason why he came.”
“Be quiet, Sara. It’s not your place to speak for him,” said the old man.
Fucking idiot Atkins. Why doesn’t he just tell the old git to piss off? But John didn’t speak. He watched the blank lenses inch closer and closer to Peter’s face.
“It’s – I’ll have to explain everything –“
“Come on! Tell me!”
“Peter – Peter! You’ll just have to show them.”
“Wha-what? Show them what?”
“You know what she means, you stupid sod! Show us!”
The mask was gone completely. There was energy in him now, shooting out, blasting the sweat from his palms. He stamped on the old man’s spit. He stared at Sara in wild excitement, his voice clattering on in his head: “Show us! Show us!”

Sara seized Peter by the elbow. He stammerd, then became indignant. “Why?”
“Because it’s the best thing to do.”
“How do you know, how are you deciding what’s best? Look at him – he wants it all already and he doesn’t know what it is.”
“You could just let him have it. I’d let him have it, so long as he left us alone.”
“You’d let him have it?”
“Don’t you think it’s mine too? Whose country is it?”
“But – but –“
“Let him have it, let him take it away. You’ll still have your book, and you’ll still be able to be with me. Or would you rather just have the silver?”
“I’d rather have everything.”

“Father, Juan, please be quiet. I can’t hear what Peter’s saying.”
“Is he going to show us?”
It was as though a weight was being winched infinitesimally slowly from Peter’s shoulders. But still his voice was sickly. He turned his head away, as if to shield his own ears.
“All right. I’ll show you.”
Señor Bolivar’s face was at war with itself; sternness and curiosity pursued each other through its creases. But he stayed quiet and disciplined.
“Shall we drive or walk?”
“I don’t know, Sara. You decide.”
“We’ll drive. You and Juan had better go in the back.”
They were swept by the wind of passage. In the mirror, their faces were shaken and blurred by the grinding of the wheels and the grime on the cab’s rear window. She could visualise the tight skin on Peter’s fingers as he held onto the raised sides to keep himself from sliding into his countryman. He stared vacantly at the passing rockscape, but Juan’s gaze was tightly focused on the mirror. Her every glance at it revealed the different planes on his cheeks, forehead and the narrow lines around his eyes. She kept having to look at him, though the road should have required more attention. This was his victory, and it stung even though she had granted it to him. As she stepped out onto the cold shadowed earth around the cave, all her thoughts suddenly channelled. How would he look when he had the silver in his hand?
Her father frowned when he saw her trembling fingers holding a cigarette, but she did not ask why. That was all for later, when explanations could be evaluated.
“It’s in there.” Her words floated up on the smoke and impressed themselves onto the rocks. She kicked off her shoes and buried her toes in the patch of sand on the far side of the track from the gash in the rocks. The cool half-liquid feel of it made her feel rooted. Here she could watch it out to the end. Her father was gazing up at the mountain crests above him, the cracked high angles that declined away on either side into the plain. Peter was staring out towards the other side of the valley, with his hands in his pockets and his neck driven down into the shell of his T-shirt. His lower lip had disappeared, only to protrude again as he grunted a dull warning. “Watch out for creepy crawlies.”
John snorted and snorted again. It didn’t help to shift the liquid accumulating in his bowels. The others stood about wondering, but there wasn’t going to be any faffing about from him. He surveyed the gaping black mouth with a workmanlike air. “Should be fairly easy to get in,” he muttered. “Bugs, you say? Sure you don’t mean snakes?”
“They crawl don’t they?”
“All right, all right.” But he stuck his arm into the cave without premeditation. If the mountain’s shadow was cold after the sun, the cave’s dark interior was like Oxford in the rain. He could feel the hairs on his arm resuming the position they had taken for the last two nights. His hand flailed about. Every moment his fingertips expected a surface, but there was only the strange feel of moisture-clammy air.
“There’s nothing I can reach.” He expected dirt and cobwebs on his wrist, but his skin was clean.
Sara Bolivar was watching him through wide mock-surprised eyes. He grinned at her – let me in on the joke. The only response was a half-turn from Peter, who looked away again, and the old guy pushing his shades further up his nose.
“Right then,” he said into the silence. He turned back to the cave mouth.
A few minutes later, his hands were patting the tops of the bags over and over again and he was grinning into the pitch dark. He could hardly bring himself to leave the bulk of it behind, despite the pressure of the rock lip on his belly. But one bag was all he could lift. He kept the grin on his face though, all the more to hide the pain of rock-scrapes on his neck and head. “Peter Atkins, you cunning bastard! No wonder you wanted to keep it to yourself!”
They came forward slowly, drawn by the thick disks spiralling back into the plastic from his fingers. The novelty of them had worn off for Peter and Sara. They watched with different kinds of distaste as John’s hands plunged in and out and the metal clacked against itself. Señor Bolivar reached out his hand. He brought the first one he caught close to his beard and studied the markings, first on one side, then on the other. When he had finished he extended his arm gravely again and allowed John to restore it to the milling silver between his hands.
“How many bags are there in there?”
“Six… maybe seven…”
No one saw that the old man had paled and that he seemed to retreat behind his whiskers, because he restrained his grim expression.
“What the hell were you going to do with it?” John asked, like a six-year-old. “Where did it come from anyway?”
“Why did you keep it from those to whom it really belonged?” demanded Señor Bolivar.
“I wasn’t going to – not forever… I – I… Sara knew what I was going to do with it,” His mind reverted to the unwritten draft of his San Martín article. He had almost recited it to the old man earlier that day. Señor Bolivar’s anger did not lose any of its intensity. “It was just a matter of waiting for the right time…”
“Until all the good work of the past was undone and Argentines were starving in the streets? It’s always been the same with Englishmen in this country, you, the IMF and Menem.”
Sara stood by helplessly as her father spoke thoughts she should have had. He thought about the good the silver could have done when he first saw it. But she still wanted the glorious revelation of its history to an admiring world Peter had planned.
Her father was stumbling where he stood, mumbling in his throat, growing redder and redder until it seemed that his skin must burst and his blood flow through the sand to her toes. He struck his arm out wildly and snatched one of the coins. As he fell he pressed it to his chest before coming to rest with his face in the earth.

The journey back crossed a wasteland in Peter’s mind. He could only see the trail the truck left between the stones, when the wind did not whip his hair over his eyes. He could not look forward – that would show him Señor Bolivar leaning against his daughter’s shoulder, and Sara talking to keep him with her, with barely a glance for the road. He could not look at the flatbed of the truck – John would be there, still resurrecting something like his grin, and beside him the silver swayed in its bag. So there was only the valley, revealed to him in all its sparseness now as a wasteland where a whole Indian race had been exterminated by European invaders and where wind, desiccation and predators kept it ruthlessly subdued to a mere cracked frame of life. All he could fill it with was the sight of Sara’s expression, her father slumped onto the soil.
He turned when the jolting of the truck’s side into his spine suddenly slowed. John whispered “Oh, shit.”
Through the glass, Sara’s face was turned to him. He watched her lips shape the word “police”. He dragged his thoughts away from the way her tongue brushed against her teeth and peered past, to where a smart blue car was shining outside his hut. Two men, one burly and moustached, were leaning on it. Their caps were black disks on the bright bonnet. He saw a plume of white smoke rise and dissipate in front of the thinner one’s sunglasses. They were talking. Only the two squat revolvers lying between them were watching the truck’s approach.
The veins stood out on his wrists as he grabbed the bag of silver from under John’s knees. Twice he tried to knot the neck, but it came unravelled in his slippery hands and reared up at him. He knocked aside John’s outstretched paws and managed it the third time. Clutching the jarring metal with burned fingers, he ran to the end of the truck.
The bag pitched into the sand with a dull thud and rolling chink. He saw it roll from its own crater and flop belly first into another made by a group of black stones. Then he sat, coiled and clutching, looking forward and insisting to himself that the truck’s body had hidden his act from the policemen. He and John jumped down onto the uneven ground with expressions approximating to surprised innocence. They went forward side by side. The truck’s engine ticked and there was no sound from Sara or her father.
That’s it Atkins, keep your arms spread like you’re surrendering. We can talk them off. But John didn’t speak and Peter’s opening were were curtly cut across by the clean-shaven officer.
“What was that you dropped off the back?”
His voice was brittle but full of impending damage. Peter felt a guilty expression climb out of his belly and out from under his hair, releasing painful heat as it went. He spread his arms wider but no lie came from between them.
“It doesn‘t matter,” said the other putting on his cap but keeping his other hand open next to the slug-body of his gun. The other one looked down and away, quickly cowed, John noted desperately. “We can go up and have a look later if we need to.”
His voice was thick and careful. The gun slithered over the car metal as he picked it up and approached them. Peter stood absolutely still, as if that would make the predator’s eyes flick over him and onto some more obvious prey. He could see John’s cheek, where fat drops of sweat rolled together and he focused his entire mind onto it. The policeman was closer now. Unwillingly, he was conscious of the frayed cotton ends protruding from the buttons on the man’s shirt. “We’ve had some crime reported. A bit of violence done here and there, and a bit of thieving.”
Tired skin and narrowed eyes sneaked in on Peter’s mind. There was a dull weariness in the man. Even the pistol barrel pointed down. But the crimes were John’s. He could have what he’d done, no problem. “I thought we’d better come and ask the people your friend said were involved.”
“Friend?” John asked.
“Hernan di Calle. He said he knew you. And he showed me the money you’d given him.”
“He was just lying.”
“I saw the bruises on him, and I can see a big lump on this man’s head, where he said it would be. And anyway, where else would he get that kind of money? I told him I’d check it out.”
“Where do you think you’re going?”
It was the younger officer. The metal on his badges and buttons shone harsh light into Peter's eyes as he turned his head. He was standing in front of the door to the hut. Sara had backed a little way off, her hair swathing her father’s head as it rested on her shoulder. Peter was glad he couldn’t see her face. He imagined he should leap manfully forward and intervene, but that idea only came to him because he was too drained to consider any action. With sagging eyes, he watched the shape of her shoulder blade against the cloth of her T-shirt.
“He needs to lie down and he needs a drink.”
“You aren’t going anywhere. You’re a witness.”
“Since when have you ever needed witnesses, you lot? Let me take him in.”
The officer showed his teeth in a joyless grin. He weighed his pistol in his hand and half-raised it as if to strike her. Peter found himself considering this and noting it as something unusual – an Argentine wouldn’t strike a woman, he’d always told people, not in public anyway. As the hand fell without reaching Sara, he retrospectively considered a reaction of horror. But, it seemed, the fall of the silver into the sand and out of his power had consumed his strength.
“No. You all stay out here until we decide what to do with you.” He looked towards the other then as though for approval. But a frown had entrenched across the wide forehead.
“Let her in, Pablo. Like she said, we don’t need witnesses. You can keep an eye on her if you want.”
Crestfallen, then more cheerful, the officer did as was suggested. He stepped aside to watch as Sara wrestled the door open and dragged her father’s heavy limbs inside. He followed shortly afterwards, his gun raised.
The other one turned his attention to the Englishmen. “I think I can work out which of you is the one your friend accused. Do you want to make it easier and tell me what you did?”
“Look, that Hernan, he’s a bit of a drinker isn’t he? Don’t you think he might just be trying to pin one on me because he and this guy were fighting? Might have stolen the cash as well.”
“Why would he pick on you? Anyway, it wasn’t just him. Your hotel-owner said you’d stolen his sheets.”
“That was an accident. I put them in my bag without thinking.”
“That’s not what he thought. He was upset we hadn’t already caught you, and he nearly coughed up his breakfast when I told him we didn’t know anything about it.”
The conversation seemed to be closing in on John, chopping off the limbs of his escape with grudging persistence. With every attempt the policeman’s voice grew thicker and thicker. He was choking back increasing frustration at the tourist’s writhing. The bags under his red-lined eyes hung down with ponderous resignation.
“You mean you’ve never picked Hernan up and he’s never told you any stupid stories? You mean you’ve never picked him up out of the middle of the road?”
“Like I said, we came to find out what was going on.”
“I’ll get the sheets for you if you want. You can take them back to the hotel man.”
“And you,” said the officer, suddenly impaling Peter, jabbing him where he stood with redirected words. “What are you doing with him?”
“I live here.” Pointing at the doorway.
This was satisfactory, it seemed. Peter slipped back into apathy. “Like I said, we came here to see what was what. We don’t have to take you with us if you can give us some good answers.”
Peter could see a way down a bright tunnel. John could talk his way down there, he reflected, and imagined his colleague dropping out of some mystical chute and sprawling with the ants under a cactus.
“Stop lying, John Wilson.” Sara’s face seemed to appear right up close to Peter’s own. He observed the strained skin around her eyes and mouth. Then she was at her distance again, coming out of his home with her hair in a ponytail and her shoulders pushed back. The man with the gun followed with his teeth still showing. “He attacked him and stole from the hotel. He probably attacked that other man as well, whatever his name was. You make sure you keep hold of him.”
The man behind her looked ignorantly at his superior, who turned again to John. Peter weathered the shifts in talk immovably. “Well, I’ve never seen her lying drunk in the Avenida Cordoba.”
“She didn’t mention the attack on the woman in the grocery store on the Avenida Belgrano, and she was even there.”
“What attack?”
“Well, she can tell you, she was there.”
“We don’t know anything about this. Do you know anything?”
“No,” John laughed.
The young officer whistled slowly. He stared at his boss with a proud air, proved right in spite of it all. “So, were you there?”
Sara plunged forward three steps after the brutal push. She pursed her lips and glared at John through narrow eyes. He smiled serenely but looked elsewhere. Another push. “Were you there?”
Peter could see the man’s hands shaped so that the knuckles stood out and he could jab them into her back. His own back began to arch away from the blows. He wanted to spread his fingers out over her bruise and try to meld it back into the well-mapped skin all around it. It would be like burying a stone in the sand. “Were you there?” There were tears in her eyes now, but still John Wilson was the object of her stare. She insisted on holding his gaze as much as the river insisted on its own fraction of the valley. Peter felt a pain in his throat and something like to action rising up inside him. His arms were still spread, but beginning to tense. “Were you there?”
“Look-“
“Pablo-“
John and the moustached officer looked at each other. The man in the uniform fixed the Englishman’s thick fingers where they were, creeping towards the pocket on the left side of his stained trousers. John dropped his hand apologetically. The policeman smiled.
“Stop it Pablo. You’re not going to get anywhere.”
The young policeman took his hand from Sara’s taut muscles with a gesture of regret.
“What were you going to say?”
“None of us is going to go anywhere.” Peter watched John’s hand creep towards the pocket again with a dull throb of envy. He himself was still vainly waiting for action to erupt inside him. Suddenly the creeping was over. The hand was in the sun again and paper was unfurling in it. If he concentrated, Peter believed he would have seen a fifty-dollar note.
The man behind Sara laughed and raised his gun again. John ignored him and turned to the other one.
The officer regarded the limp paper with distaste. But he beckoned it with tiny jerks of his fingers. When John was close enough, he took it from between the extended knuckles. John kept his eyes on the horizon but Peter watched the expression run across the officer’s face with agonised rapidity. One beckoning over, another began. The young officer joined the older reluctantly. His words sprang out clearly despite the thickness of his voice, despite the massive stillness enveloping the valley.
“There’s definitely more to this.” The officer looked around to make sure that they were all listening. The younger man nodded. “We’ll check out this business in Belgrano and then see what’s what.”
As the officer spoke he crushed the note tightly in his fist. When he looked at it again the disgust was plain on his face. But he pushed the money into his pocket and climbed into the passenger seat, his gun dropping heavily against his hip. His colleague started up the engine while he stared at them. The wheels straightened out at last and the car went off, with a thousand stones clattering at the underside every metre of the way.
“Money always talks,” John said. The sweat ran down his face now and left gleaming trails on his bulging flesh.
“It does when no-one’s got any,” Sara snapped back in a fragile voice.
“Whether he feeds his babies or his drug habit it’s all the same.”
“It’s not! What would you know about it, you bastard?” She was crying now, and lunging, fingers extended as the tears swept over her cheeks and down her heaving throat. John stepped back, alarmed. But the novelty of tears had reawakened the active love in Peter. He ran, huge clumsy steps across the crumbling terrain. He and Sara collided in a confusion of muscles. They swayed, bound completely together, then fell as one onto and between the edged stones. Sara was screaming and biting his shoulder, but he clung on as her ribs vibrated against his arms. At last he rested his head on the earth, under the pressure of her ear and tangled in the hot dry-smelling familiarity of her hair. She lay heavily on him and he tried to believe that here, in his arms, she could feel safe. But even after the sobbing stopped her heart kicked cruelly against his ribs. Either side of him, her fists were bound round black valley-stones.