Silverland V

Anna too was in candlelight. She trod softly around the room because quiet would help José sleep more soundly in the next room. Beneath the saints’ images the flames were steady, drawn up cleanly into the holy face exactly as her prayers had been.
When they got home, the shop had been undisturbed by the police or other intruders, as she’d expected. José had not believed her assurances until he’d gone through every packet to make sure it was unopened. “Just to make sure,” he’d said. Anna had laughed. But both of them had been alive in the Seventies – it was never foolish to be sure. Still, she’d been certain that it would be all right. God had willed it. Ever since she had decided to come back the certainty had been inescapable.
The strain of driving and everything else that had happened had caught José, though he tried to stay awake while she prayed her thanks for deliverance then and now. When she turned round, his head was nestled on his arm. Sleep and the gentle light had softened his worried face. He offered no resistance when she led, or rather carried him into the bedroom and pulled the blankets up under his chin. God had given rest to his troubled mind and in the morning He would have unmade the valleys carved into his face by the last few days.
Now, in the house, only God and Anna moved. They went around the room together, between the television, the table and the sofa. She was tired too, and she had to have some sleep before the morning, when the shop would open be again and both she and José would have to to persuade people to come into it again, especially if they’d seen, or heard of, the police car that had sat outside.
It had been wrong to try and run away. It would have been wrong to put her troub;es onto poor Carmen, who had to make her own way without being weighed down by her mother’s past. She should have recalled Christ’s actions in Gethsemane, when he stayed where he was in order to atone for the world’s sins.. But she had forgotten that because others had forgotten all Christ’s other deeds, and His words.
She went and stood in front of the crucifix and gazed up at its polished curves. There were no candles below it, but all the others in the room leant their glow to its colours and the shadows alongside them.
“Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do.”
These words embraced them all, the police and the soldiers, even the Englishman Juan Wilson. She closed her eyes as though to force the thought into all the parts of her that were still afraid. She opened them quickly again as she felt herself swaying. It was very late. The presence of her God at her shoulder flickered and she rested her hands on the warm walls to steady herself. But she could sleep now. She atoned for all the sins she had encountered. Now she was in the hands of God’s grace. She went slowly round the room, blowing out each flame. The scented smoke spiralled round and disappeared with the last light.
In the corridor’s dark chill, she shivered. For a second she was utterly alone except for the memories of rough hands on her arms, neck, head and lower down her body. She couldn’t turn her head to see whether the arms wore military shirts or the Englishman’s thick, hairy skin. Oh this was the Devil’s work! Why wouldn’t they leave her alone?
She set her limbs firmly against the hands, resolved not to think of them and went into the bedroom. José turned and moved sideways across the bed in the dark. They wouldn’t follow her when she was with him. Her dressing gown rustled against the floor and fell off its hook on the cupboard. She bent to pick it up. That simple action seemed to catch the hands off guard. They slipped away and she climbed into bed, stretching out her legs into the warmth left by José’s body. In the familiar space around him, she curled up into sleep.

On Ruta Nacional 9, east of Salta, the next morning, a tired-looking man in a truck waved a British passport at a roadblock. The sweat-stained soldier didn’t bother to look up, just waved the man through with an impatient gesture. His comrades were already searching as many trucks as they could; it made it worse when people stopped voluntarily.

In Cafayate, the grocery store opened its shutters earlier than it used to, and José stood on the steps leading down to the Avenida Belgrano chatting with passers-by and inviting them in.

Along Belgrano and on the other side of the plaza, where gaggles of children were making their dusty way to school, kicking pebbles at each other and laughing, the front doors of the hotel swung uneasily. Inside, the receptionist was surreptitiously applying makeup while coffee smell wafted thickly out from the kitchens. The smell crept round Luisa on the first floor. She was leaning, as if by accident, against the outer wall of the manager’s office as close to the door as she dared. Her face was set in the expression her mother always warned her against because it would give her wrinkles before she was twenty. She was listening hard to the raised voices inside. If you weren’t careful you might think they were laughing together.
If Sara kept that up, she might lose her job. Ferdinand was cross with her already because she had forgotten or not bothered about going to the police with the stealing by the Englishman. Now she’d come in late for work and Ferdinand had worked himself up to one of his shouting fits. But then perhaps Sara would get away with it. Her father had been ill, Luisa had learned, and that was why Sara herself was angry. All she wanted to do, apparently, was get on with her job and forget about it.
That was all it was about. Luisa was disappointed. When she’d seen Sara’s pinched lips that morning, she’d really wanted to hear what was going to be said between her and Ferdinand, especially if it had something to do with the Englishman. It would have been a bit of something to talk about with the other girls in the afternoon. This was all boring, and it was even worse because her mother had been right about the Englishman. She always was, whenever Luisa came home talking about one of the guests in the hotel. She’d always shake her head and tell her he’d be forgotten about in less than a week. It had happened so often now that Luisa was beginning to believe her when she said it. But that meant that life would be so boring! The only hope she had left existed because her mother had also said that to be mixed up with strange men might cause a lot of trouble. Then she’d nod to the framed photograph of her aunt, the one she’d never seen and who they never really talked about, as though she’d just disappeared. Something like that could be exciting. It could be really exciting; and she’d have candles lit for her in Cafayate’s church – which she’d never see again because it would be far too boring ever to remember.
She’d forgotten to listen. She clacked her tongue and rolled her eyes at herself, laughing at her grandmother’s facial habits even as she copied them. Now they were talking too quietly for her to hear even when she strained her ears and put one of them against the lumpy white paint on the wall. No, just lots of mumbling. She waited a bit in case they started shouting again, but they didn’t.
Elena was going to come looking for her in a minute. Just a little longer – no, nothing. She tiptoed until she was far enough away for the noise of her shoes not to sound too close to the door. Then she started whistling and twirling the pillowcase she was meant to be folding on the end of one finger.

Some distance north-east of the town, beyond the soft sand of the dune field and before the mountains’ outcrops began to crowd the road into its own narrow channel, the passengers on the nine o’clock bus to Salta might have seen the distant speck of a man seated comfortably on a rock in the midst of the parched earth, reading page after page of some paper. An interested observer might have seen the repeated glint of his watch as he checked the time every minute or so, as though he was waiting for something. But no one saw. All the blinds had been drawn and the stifling cocoon of the bus was completely closed in.

Later that day, the hotel doors slammed to behind Sara Bolivar. Her mop and bucket clanked against her leg and her hair was tied back, the way she wore it for work. She went round the corner away from the plaza with an easy step, even though one leg of her jeans was soaked and clung to her leg. Moments later, she came back out without her work equipment and with her hair swinging loose around her head. She nodded brightly to a shawled old woman at the side of the road and walked round the outer edge of the square. The old men on the low benches in the centre watched with the indifferent interest they bestowed on all the young women who crossed their eye line. But then a confused-looking trio of tourists who had stumbled out of the church distracted them.
Sara crossed the street after waiting patiently for shuddering trucks and cars to go by. Then she disappeared down Belgrano.
“Sara Bolivar!” Anna’s voice sounded a little forced, but her embrace was as perfumed and enveloping as it always had been. “What brings you here? Aren’t you too busy?”
“I am,” she said confidently, “But I just thought I’d come and see you. And buy some cigarettes.” She stepped away and looked down into the old woman’s face. Anna felt her smile falter momentarily – the expression in those dark eyes was impossible to read.
“Oh, we’re well, we’re well. It’s all better now,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “José’s just bringing some boxes of tins up from the stores.”
“I’m glad.” The smile was slow to follow the words, but it seemed real even though her eyes were still distant. There was a pause in which a browsing customer’s rustling seemed comically loud.
“And when will we see your father again?” Anna slammed her mouth shut as soon as the words were out. She hoped that her feelings of guilt about the intrusion into their house and all the attendant complications had remained unseen. The Bolivars knew nothing of the visit, and Anna did not intend to giver herself away.
“Oh, I’m sure he’ll be back here tomorrow. As usual.”
“That’s good.”
“Are you all right? Everything back to normal and everything?”
“Oh yes, yes.” Anna clasped her hands together to emphasise her content. And Sara’s eyes lost their hard inscrutable look at last. Anna smiled back and the two of them paused again, relaxed this time.
“But I’d really better be going. I’ve got an essay to write, and Father’s pestering me for it like he always does.”
“Oh, of course! I’m sorry, I forgot. What brand is it you like again?”
The transaction was done in a few seconds.
“Give José my love!” Sara called from the door.
“Take care, my dear.”
“Was that Sara?” José dumped the box heavily on the counter and wiped his wide forehead.
“Yes dear. Sorry to keep you waiting.” The thick-set customer shook his head and asked for a packet of tobacco.
“How was she?” José’s short arms began dragging the box along the counter.
“All right, thank the Lord. Quite happy, as she always is. She was busy though, that was why she didn’t stay.”
“Everything’s all right then.” He wrapped his arms around the box and disappeared behind the long line of shelves. Anna touched the wood of the counter and crossed herself.

There were tourists on the bus from Salta in the middle of the day and they had rolled the blinds up to take in the landscape. They sat in silence with their bags on their knees and their heads turned out towards the window. Some children were chattering loudly behind them and kicking their seats but they paid no attention.
The bus roared past a narrow track that led off the road and the tourists’ eyes took in the irregular shape of a dilapidated roof a long way from the road. But it was only a shack and there was no sign of life. They looked instead at the brown-streaked sweep of the earth and the sky-framed mountains that stood on endless duty around the horizon.

“So, Peter/Pedro/Mr Atkins, how did you come to discover the silver?” This was the kind of question he had always dreaded. Perhaps it was better to babble out the fantastic story that his rattled mind had churned forth while he was lying concussed on his bed the other day. That, at least, had had some romance in it – treasure maps, secret signs and a lone figure counting out paces until the “X” was revealed on the spot.
A cache of silver – now that was romantic. But to say you found it as the result of a dull ariel survey that had photographed a hitherto unknown and unexcavated settlement site dating from the Inca era – that was awful. But that was the truth. Perhaps he should just spread his hands, murmur “It’s a long story” and smile enigmatically when people flung that kind of direct question at him.
Still, there was the fragment of chance about it. If he hadn’t spoken to the librarian in Buenos Aires and found out about the survey; if the pukara hadn’t been at Quilmes; if he hadn’t been so disappointed with the view of the country around Alemeinia at ground level and tried to climb up higher to get a better look; if he hadn’t sheltered in the cavemouth to get out of the sun…
Archaeologists and historians were always trying to squash chance into the smallest possible space because it was very hard to structure books and articles around random events – but there the silver was, lying in the corner in a group of split sacks. He had to confess (to his interviewer) that the first thought in his mind when he’d picked up one of the coins and seen the date stamped into bright surface was: I’ll have to get some other bags to get it out of there.
Afterwards he’d tried to stroll back into Alemeinia as though nothing had happened – but everyone could see that he was a bit flustered. They looked right through him, even when he bought himself a beer from the weevil-munched bar on the main street. The woman who eventually pointed out the track that led off the side of the road had been deeply unwilling to talk to him and he’d felt his face grow moonlike while he tried to look like an innocent passer-by amongst the run-down huts and dogs of the nowhere village.
Then he was in Salta and hunting round for an Internet café. He would have burst if he hadn’t told anyone.
And so, he said in a resigned voice to his sympathetic interviewer, he sent an e-mail back to Oxford that was full of pregnant hints about his find. He even – and here he ran his hand down his face with self-disgust – he even mentioned the whereabouts of the rock-strewn settlement markings shown in the ariel survey, something that only about two people in the world outside Argentina knew at the time. Well, he had been very excited, he mumbled in mitigation.
After that it was back to Buenos Aires for a while. The silver was half-hidden by all the stones he could find in the area and the Alemeinia site was as empty as it had always been. Peter Atkins was apparently the sober academic he’d always given the impression he was.
He had to go back to Buenos Aires (of course) because he was expecting further results from the ariel survey. That was where the best resources were too (notwithstanding the experts on Indian civilisation at Resistencia University). He had to admit, though, that in the chilly European corridors of the national library was the other draw – the archive of San Martín papers. He already had his own theories about where the silver had come from, albeit without any evidence – what he needed was some snippets of confirmation.
There was enough money and enough time in those early days; he was sure could write his book and discover enough about San Martín’s strategies to knock together a decent article…
Despite much searching, he still only manged to find a very few hints. But there was one letter that referred obliquely to funds in silver, another that mentioned the General’s preparations (though not written by him), and the one that seemed to be describing the landscape around Alemeinia. This had been written by another officer, who, it was thought, had carried out other clandestine work in the newly-liberated Provinces.
Yet every time he turned a page – yes, yes, demanded the supposed interviewer, latching onto the “human interest” angle of the eager, lucky historian – the silver always seemed less and less safe. It was a long, long way away and he wasn’t the only person to have read the results of the ariel survey. He left Buenos Aires earlier than he had planned, clutching a sheaf of photocopies and notes divided equally between speculations about the silver and the Quilmes pukara.
A few days later he had summoned up the courage to drive to Alemeinia again; a few days after that, he and his wife –
No, I’m sorry, that was my mistake. I wasn’t married then. In fact, do you know, when I brought the silver down closer to Cafayate – at that time I had barely even met her.
You met your wife there too? Well, I must say it looks as though Argentina has been a very lucky place for you.
That was where the imaginary interview fell apart. There was definitely still something wrong with his brain. It just kept wishing she was there then. That she was here now, was bound to him in a way she had never committed to. He rested his head in his hands and exposed the back of his neck to the sun’s glare. His head wouldn’t let go of the silver either. How could he give interviews about it when he hadn’t got it any more? And it looked like it had torn Sara from him too. He looked up again, stood on the lumpen shell of the rock he’d been sitting on and inspected the road. There were vehicles on it, gleaming and rushing below the brightly-coloured rocks but none were the right size or shape to be Sara’s truck. There was nowhere else in all the vast valley he could see that she might come from. That meant that at this moment she wasn’t coming.
She wasn’t coming. He jumped down off the rock and sat slumped in the sand.

As it started to get dark in Resistencia, about 800 kilometres east of Salta but only across the river from Corrientes, Isabella looked up from the magazine she was reading. The big man gave off a thick stink of sweat and she couldn’t help wrinkling her nose. His eyes were heavy, almost closing, and his whole head seemed to be a mass of stubble. He curled his mouth in a slight, effort-ridden smile and dumped a big bottle of water, some cheap chocolate bars and a packet of expensive cigarettes on the Formica top in front of her. She noticed that his massive hands were dirty and they shook like an old man’s.
“I want to go east,” he grunted, hesitantly. He had a thick Spanish accent. He didn’t look Spanish, though. The second time, he said it with a better Argentine intonation. He didn’t look right. Elena checked behind her that the white plasterboard door through to where the others were drinking their maté was still open. Even if he did look half-dead, he could still have a gun around him somewhere. The robbers weren’t just in Buenos Aires these days.
The neon lights made him look see-through and it hurt her eyes. “You’ll have to go through town,” she said, keeping her eyes on her own hands as they worked the till, “And then through Corrientes over the river. Are you going to Buenos Aires?”
“Yes.” Then “No. Puerto Iguazu.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” she said quickly. “You’d better ask in Corrientes.”
“I’m going to see the waterfalls.” He tried smiling again.
“Oh yes? They’re very beautiful,” she added automatically. Everyone said that about the Iguazu Falls, even if they’d never been.
“Which way’s the road to Corrientes?”
She gave him quick directions, looking at her nails, neatly arranged in shining rows on the chipped Formica.
“Thanks.” He stumbled out of the shop. Isabella followed at her own safe distance. He didn’t look like the kind of tourist who would be interested in the Iguazu Falls. He might be interested in easy access to the border though. When the man opened the door, diesel fumes blew into the fluorescent hygiene of the shop. Isabella saw him almost trip over one of Resistencia’s hundreds of street statues and climb into a big off-white truck. Its back was empty apart from what she could see of a few bags. He drove off.
Isabella went back to the magazine, shaking her head sadly. It was such a shame that anyone who went to see the Falls had to mix with people like that, who were only there to smuggle things across the border and make poor Argentina as bad as Brazil or Paraguay. Still, there were supposed to be plenty of police and soldiers around Puerto Iguazu. It’d do them good if they caught someone like him.

Peter stopped outside the doors of the hotel to catch his breath. He’d never walked into Cafayate from his hut before. His skin felt as taut and brittle as a drumskin, except where thick sweat made it unnaturally spongy. He drained the last tepid drops of water from the bottle he’d carried all the way in the vain hope that it would dilute the taste of sawdust enough to let him speak.
The hotel, bright and sealed up, was like an enormous blister on the quiet town. As he swilled the water round his teeth, Peter thought grimly of his feet. For the hundredth time that day (at least) he felt irritation with John Wilson lap round his guts. The dust in his eyes, the pains in his legs, the fact that he had had to make the bloody journey at all, these were all Wilson’s fault. It was even Wilson’s fault, though in an obscure way, that the bus he would normally have tried to flag down had long gone when he began walking towards Cafayate. The bastard himself was probably swanning around somewhere having a whale of a time with the silver – even though Peter really didn’t want it back – winking up at him every time he looked round. Still having his fun.
Peter had cursed Wilson all along the road, which was stupid because cursing him wasn’t what he’d come here to do. He had tried to think of other things along the way. He could remember exactly where he’d tried. He tried once where the rocks jabbed out and made the road turn in a tight curve. He’d nearly driven into it once when he had his hand on Sara’s knee – or was she driving that time? It didn’t matter. He tried again, further on where the road followed the bowl of a ravine. A friendly driver stopped by there once after noticing an apparently abandoned truck deep in the stalky grass the side of the tarmac. Sara jumped to her feet holding her shirt over her breasts to tell him that everything was all right. The guy nodded and laughed, sounding his horn as he accelerated up the bank. He tried again as he passed through Medaños dunes, where he’d persuaded Sara to come and look at the silver with him.
Yep, he’d definitely tried to think about her as he got closer and closer to her. Perhaps his mind had mutinied – after all, she’d taken up almost the whole of his thoughts in her absence the day before and the day before that.
Now he’d waited enough. He was at the hotel and it was time to go in. But the hotel looked closed. Perhaps she hadn’t gone into work, not if there wasn’t any work to do. He could wait until she came out. When was she meant to come out? Like a fool he’d left his watch behind. He crossed the street into the centre of the square, looking behind him at every other step in case she came out – so he could shout out to her.
The sight of the clock face was not reassuring. She was due out soon – as long as it hadn’t stopped or begun running slow or fast; these things were always possible. Was the Church good at buying clock batteries? It must be, it must be – but now his heart was going even faster. He loathed the idea that he had missed her for another day. She never finished early. He was sure she’d said that once or twice when he’d encouraged her to make their afternoons even longer. But if the hotel was empty she wouldn’t be working. He could look for her at her father’s house – but that idea terrified him.
He went back and stood in front of the doors again, rocking slightly because his feet crossed two cracked levels of the pavement. He was desperate to see her – but the hotel did look closed. Even if he got through the door, he could already feel his tongue getting flustered as some unknown receptionist asked him to come back later.
The stupid apologetic grin from that non-existent encounter still hovered on his face. It wouldn’t be long before she came out, if she was there. Not too long, not too long. It would be better if he waited outside. No dangers that way. No shouting inside, if there was going to be shouting. Nobody calling the police to protect the hotel guests from the raised voices. He didn’t want the cops back again. He’d wait outside until she came out.
To wait was the coward’s way out, he knew, but the doors did look imposingly shut. He felt very conspicuous; the old men were watching behind him; there were younger men, women and children crossing behind him or in front, looking at him with big, gently curious eyes.
It was very hot. His hair was wilting like a victimised houseplant. He retreated, glad to be away from the temptation of the doors and into the dry shade of the trees facing the church’s off-white façade. He went further back, still watching the doors, until he could see the clock at the same time. There was still some time left before Sara was due to come out. He’d be able to catch her before she got to her truck, though she’d have a head start if she didn’t want to speak to him. That was fair. Definitely fair. He’d respect that if that was what she wanted. It would avoid anything too painful.
He stopped, though his aching knees carried on trembling as they had done all the way up the last hill into town, and found his hand resting on the warm metal forelock of San Martín’s horse. The great general’s hand jutted commandingly out over his head, a black injunction against the sky. Dear old San Martín. He relaxed slightly under the hero’s protection and even found himself faintly regretting that he would never be able to write that revelatory article about El Liberador’s economic and military foresight – and the silver.
“Sara!” he called out involuntarily, chasing after the word as if it might carry him back to the hotel doors.
Her bound hair bobbed to and fro on the back of her neck and she looked for whoever had shouted her name. To Peter, she looked frightened and vulnerable, loaded down by the yellow bulk of the bucket and the mop clutched awkwardly in her hand.
Peter started forward hesitantly in case she did as he half-expected and walked away to avoid the confrontation. When he had thought of how they’d meet again he’d hoped that it would have been a little like when they met at the beginning – uncertain smiles and clasped hands in the hotel’s ordered spaces. But this was still better than nothing, even if the whole of Cafayate and the sky would end up as witnesses.
He stopped in front of her, breathless, not even aware of what he was feeling.

“My Daughter,
“I have penned this note so that we can understand each other. There are many things we’ve never talked of, and if you are to marry the Englishmen it is better that I explain them now. I had hoped it would not be necessary, especially since you have never asked me about them and I have had no desire to speak of them.
“I was away from your mother when she died, carrying out my duty, the transportation of the silver to Alemeinia. She was taken ill after I went away and died before I could return. You were only a few weeks old then, and you were in the care of our neighbours for 48 hours. The duty I was engaged on at that time should never have concerned us, but circumstances have ensured they must.
“Though I was doing my duty for my country, I have always regretted that I was not there to carry out my other sacred duties, to you and to your mother, at the time I was needed. Though I did my duty for the Army and for Argentina, I failed that part of the latter that was closest my heart.
“For this reason, among others, I have never denied you what you have felt to be your duty in your life; I have tried to steer you down the path of the catholic faith and love of your nation, but I have not held you back from other things as long as you believed in them. Like Maria your mother, you will leave me, perhaps soon. But this time it will not be forever. I am prepared and God’s grace will receive me.
“As for the silver, it is not important. It was newly minted when I transported it to Alemeinia, but I was never told what its purpose was. I received my orders from the Colonel, who hinted that they came from very important men in the Army hierarchy. Some, in this cynical age, may say that corruption had a hand in its production and concealment. It is not impossible. Such accusations have often been levelled at us in the armed forces amidst all the others. For myself, I wonder whether it might not have been prepared as a kind of bait or lure to attract the remnants of the defeated Montonero terrorists and lead trap them; such a thing might explain the false date with which most of the coins were stamped. This may have misled your English acquaintances. If such was its purpose the scheme never came to fruition. Whatever it was meant for, the silver was minted to deceive, and so it has.
“Dismiss the silver from your mind. Your choice – to marry the Englishman or remain in Cafayate must be uppermost in your mind.
My blessing will be on you whatever you choose and, iam sure, your mother’s will be too.
“Your Father.”

(This had been pushed under her door during the night. She had read it with growing sadness, but also embarrassment, as though it was possible for him to see through the letters and four walls. He had made no reference to it afterwards and had gone about as normal. After a few hesitant false beginnings, she had done the same.)

The weight of the mop was straining her wrist; she knew she looked edgy and tired. Peter seemed to be fended off by her cleaning equipment. He hovered, out of range of the mop, stopping and starting his sentences. At the beginning the two of them had had many conversations like this, but now Peter was no longer part of the part of her life spent at the hotel.
“Wait here a minute,” she said sharply. “I’ll come back and then you can say whatever it is that you want to say.”
She turned her back on him and walked out of the square towards where the truck was parked. After she took her father home, she’d believed he had left with the other Englishman, but she wasn’t really surprised that he hadn’t. In her mind’s eye, he twitched from foot to foot while he waited, as though the hot concrete under him had grown even hotter. She knew how he would wait. She knew that if she stripped him naked there in the plaza she would be able to pinpoint any mole on his body in half a second.
He would suggest, when she came back to him, that they should go to a bar or a café, go and be English, go and have a “talk”. He’d lean forward as he said the words and then he’d smile and show his teeth as if he was waiting to be told off. It was only after that that she couldn’t guess what he was going to say.
It was strange to find that she wasn’t angry with him any more. Perhaps he’d finally shown how much he needed her. Yes, that must be it. She made sure of the thought.
The mop and bucket fell with a loud clatter into the back of the truck. Sara let her hair fall around her shoulders.
If it was still the old days – she could pretend she was walking into his hut on a warm afternoon. But that would be to act as if the beginning wasn’t on the other side of too many revisions and revelations. She stood for a moment, pretending to herself that she was thinking, but really just reaching into her tight pockets for her cigarettes and matches.
Peter’s slight body seemed to occupy the whole of the plaza. The space around him felt shouldered aside as her gaze took him in. He was still there, dark against the pale façade of the buildings behind him, and fidgeting.
He seemed to be about to smile as she got close to him, but for the second time she pre-empted him, trying to sound friendly and level.

In the bar, Peter squinted as he got his eyes used to the light. The air was thick with cigarette smoke and the television replayed the highlights of a dull goalless draw. Sara went to get them drinks and ignored the looks on the faces of the few men at the bar. They looked like they’d been disgorged from the necks of their own beer bottles.
Peter chose a seat in what he hoped would be a quiet corner. Meanwhile, one of the two middle-aged women behind the bar pulled the tops off two bottles of Quilmes before returning to her position next to her companion, who handed her the maté gourd. All other eyes had returned to the football. This was Argentina at its lowest ebb, Peter thought. These were the couple of hours either side of the beginning of siesta. Everyone was just whiling away the time until life began again in the late afternoon. He wished he could join them; he’d be more ready after a rest.
But Sara was already sitting opposite him, with the beers and the smoke puffed sharply out between them. Peter moistened his lips with some Quilmes and dared to think about speaking.
“How’ve you been these last two days?”
Her eyes were deep and rich as they gazed at him. She seemed to be measuring the question. “I’ve been all right. What about you?”
He swallowed. This was getting a bit like the English conversation classes he had once offered to newly arrived foreign students in Oxford. Still, the simple verbal pattern was comforting. “Yeah, I’ve been fine too.”
He dropped his voice at the end of the sentence, aware that the English words were too brash in the bar’s lethargic fug. The feeling had not affected Sara. “I knew you’d do this.”
“What?”
“Oh, don’t be so defensive. You didn’t really come into town to come here and have a stupid conversation did you?”
She was laughing, but Peter’s mind was running wildly down all the avenues she had opened up, hoping to find what he was meant to say next. He looked at her for clues but there was only amusement on her face. One of her hands was on her bottle of Quilmes and the other was carrying her cigarette to her mouth. She was just being herself; no clues to be gained. He stammered something out that he hoped made sense. Now she was replying – what had he said? As soon as the words had left his mouth he’d forgotten them as though some internal censor had intervened.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on now.”
She stopped, mid-sentence, and stared at him. Now her words had stopped he felt calmer, able to see that she was looking tireder than he remembered, that her hair fell across her face more, and was swept away with more irritation. This was definitely not how she had been, either before or during the last few days. He suddenly felt very sorry.

Perhaps it was her father’s blood that made her see all these weaknesses in him as being wholly English. It was certainly Señor Bolivar’s influence that made her recount what they’d both said as accurately as possible.
“You told me that you hadn’t ‘come into town’, you’d walked because you’d missed the bus. I guessed that either your truck was broken or it had gone, presumably with John in it. I suppose he’s gone, or he would be hanging around here with you.”
“Yes, he’s gone. Don’t know where. Good riddance.”
“And he’s taken the silver with him?”
“Yes.”
“What was that you just said – ‘good riddance’?”
“Yes. I hope he enjoys it.”
“Don’t be so upset –“ She was about to tell him what she’d learned, but since she had chosen to take her father’s advice this time, it was better that the silver fell out of the conversation. “I’m glad you came to see me.”
“I waited for two days. I hoped you’d forgive me.” He was looking round him throughout the last sentence. The smoke-misted corners of the bar wouldn’t sting him for saying the words.
She grabbed his hand across the table, sending one of the bottles into a slow drunken spiral on the plastic. It came to rest upright before she could steady it with her other hand.
His fingers were sticky and limp. “It’s not a question of forgiveness.”
Now he looked at her again, frightened and hopeful. The football came to an end and there were rough murmurings of movement at the bar. Some of the men got up and left; the others ordered more lukewarm beer or lit more cigarettes before the next programme, a quiz show, began. Amid this movement, Sara let go of Peter and sat back in her chair. She stubbed out her cigarette and immediately lit another. Safe, familiar friends.
Peter’s eyes followed her hands in the old familiar way too, full of envy, desire or some other fiery feeling. When he realised she wasn’t going to explain what she’d said, he began to survey the corners again.
“I suppose your father’s made it irrelevant whether you forgive me or not.” His voice was sunk in his throat.
“He must have scared you so much, with all his interviews and grantings of permission and this and that.”
“I might find it funny in ten years, I suppose.”
“Don’t worry about him. It’s me you have to worry about. It’s still my choice.”
“Oh. And I suppose that’s been made.” He drank a few mournful mouthfuls. “Well?”
“Who says I have to have made up my mind? There’s still a long time before you have to go back to Oxford.”
“That depends. It does, you know, it really depends.”
“Oh Peter, don’t tell me you don’t want to wait around for me.”
“Not if your answer’s going to be no.”
“You don’t know that yet.”
“Do you?”
“I don’t know. But anyway,” She leaned forward and grabbed his hand again. “Are you going to walk back to your little hut this afternoon?”
“I suppose I was going to get the bus.”
“Don’t be silly.” She let go of him again while one of the bar women swabbed away at the tabletop and frowned at them under thick brows. I’ll drive you. I can wait while you buy some things if you need them. Anyway, if they’re closing up here that means the bus has gone and then you will have to do some waiting around.”
He laughed unexpectedly and straightened up in his seat as though the devil had jumped off his shoulders. He swallowed the rest of the Quilmes in a single gulp and got to his feet. “That would be great! Thank you!” He stopped, breathless. “But – won’t your father be waiting? Won’t he expect you back?”
“Does he ever expect me back? Now is the same as always.” She stuck the cigarette in the corner of her mouth and raised her eyebrows at him. She could see everything he’d been thinking about evaporating from his mind in the excitement of the moment. Perhaps he was the same as ever, as she’d hoped. She could already feel herself pressing up against his chest again and tormenting him by asking how his book was going.
“You know, I never even thought about how I was going to get back. Never crossed my mind.”
“I know,” she said, dragging him by the hand out into the siesta-drowsy street. Behind them the barwomen bolted the door and shrugged at each other. Americans. They were mad, but there was nothing wrong with them really.

John swung the wheel and the truck skidded off the road, scattering stones. The ends of a tree’s branches raked over the paintwork with screams and then fell silent as the jolting came to a stop. For a couple of minutes there was the sound of the old engine lecturing itself, then a thump and just the ticking of cooling metal. In the cab, John could feel the hot rim of the steering wheel digging into his forehead, but his neck hurt so much he couldn’t lift his head. His fingers hung limply above his knees.
Bloody Argentine drivers. Every time you passed one on the open road they’d beep their horns and flash their lights. The relentless friendliness throughout all the hours he’d been driving had drained him completely. He’d better sit up too, or one of them would stop and see if he was all right. Come back lonely anonymous England, all is forgiven. He forced himself up on his arms and scrabbled around on the seat next to him for the cigarettes. The grime left by Peter Atkins got under his fingernails and the smoke, when it plumed around the cab and out through the windows was arid on his tender throat. He swigged some water too but it just moistened the silt.
All the food he had left was that spongelike bread and a few slices of hard cheese. Bloody disgusting. What he would give to sit in a café and have a proper feed – and a wash, and some proper lying-down sleep. But he didn’t dare leave the truck. No matter how often he read the passage in his guidebook about the essential honesty of Argentines outside Buenos Aires, he couldn’t shake off his England-learned habits – nail it down or someone will be off with it. A bizarre image of him nailing each silver disk to the road giggled from side to side in his head.
After all this he hated the silver even more now than Sara Bolivar ever had. He should just turn it round and drive it straight back to her. But he’d come so far with it, had tried so hard to get it. He’d won it – and he’d never heard of anyone giving up when they’d already won. Except José San Martín, of course, now he’d bothered to read about him.
The cigarette was gluing his tongue to the roof of his mouth – but it had helped his eyes to stay open. Sara Bolivar had never needed them for that, he was ready to bet.
He climbed out onto the fragmenting tarmac and packed earth of the road edge and began kicking mechanically at the truck’s tyres. No punctures then. Lucky, that, because he didn’t reckon Atkins’ spare would’ve been anything to shout about. And if he managed to get the thing the twenty miles or whatever to the nearest house, there’s be no garage any bloody where and he’d have to keep his hands on the silver even more.
What he really wanted to do was go to sleep and forget all about it. No, not in that order. He wanted to forget about it and then go to sleep and wake up with everything fulfilled.
Arse to fulfilment! He should have left the silver and brought Sara Bolivar with him. She wouldn’t have needed watching – well, perhaps she would, but it would have been more fun. The thought of her made him want to smoke again and he climbed back inside the cab. He didn’t know the Argentine social rules about buying pornography, but perhaps he should have tried. That would have been some relief at least, and perhaps the pictures would have overlaid his thoughts of her. Or something. He was knotted up and sick and it was still many many miles to Puerto Iguazu. Then… just a hop over the border and…
The bloody silver it weighed him down. He had no papers for it and it was only luck that most of the checkpoints had waved him through while the others had been satisfied by his passport. Just try explaining why you’ve got a hundredweight of silver belonging to Argentina’s greatest general to a bunch of trigger-happy soldiers. His head slumped back onto the steering wheel and for a while he listened to the crackle of the cigarette burning down between his fingers. If he’d known this while he was sitting in that ruined building in the vineyard he’d have gone straight home, and been glad to lose. Just this once.
Why hadn’t he though of all these complications? He’d planned, oh definitely planned, but only to get his hands on the silver (and Sara Bolivar), not what happened afterwards. It had turned out to be so difficult, she had been so–
He had planned going to Puerto Iguazu. Its proximity to Foz in Brazil and Cuidad del Este in Paraguay had made it the obvious place. Get the silver out of Argentina and all that would be required would be a ticket home. No problem. Should’ve planned it the way he used to do things, before he got all cocky out here because it was so different and tripped himself up. Now he might drive round South America for ever, returning to Cafayate as an old man wizened by an endless diet of cheese sandwiches. He could go back there now!
He’d turned the key in the ignition before he realised how much more driving that would mean. The thought of it almost had him crawling out onto the road again.
Puerto Iguazu was still planned. It was the target, and the sooner he got there the sooner he would be able to sleep and eat and wash and find some way of relaxing.
A sleek new bus swept by, hooting a greeting. He followed its tail with his eyes along the smooth road until it disappeared. The road ahead and behind was empty again, only distinguishable by its colour from the limitless pasture either side of it. He’d better get going, on to Puerto Iguazu under patchy sky. But it was several minutes and another foul cigarette before he could summon up the will to put the truck into gear.

The priest let them go with a blessing. Anna stayed for a few more moments letting the blessed peacefulness of the mass keep its hold on her. Then she followed the other worshippers out via the priest’s handshake and his farewell benedictions.
After the church’s echoing calm, Cafayate’s plaza seemed brashly loud, full of people going every way, chattering, arm in arm. She stole a glance at the time, craning her neck up at the clock face. Her eyes weren’t as good as they used to be, but whatever time it was, José would be all right. As she looked down to her own level again she blinked and jumped.
There was a man standing against the wall, a few steps from the door. For many years that had been Señora Guiza’s space. She used to stand there every morning and hand out pieces of photocopied paper covered in neat handwriting. She never accepted any money for them, even when it was pressed upon her. When the bemused tourists walked on, the ones that could read Spanish would often look back with expressions of surprise and pity.
The people who went to church in Cafayate had long known the graphic and miserable story of the arrest, torture and ignominious death of Lucia Guiza in Buenos Aires the papers had told. It was well known that Señora Guiza had been to the capital a few times, the last occasion in the month or so before she died, to try and get some explanation or apology. The saddest part was that the poor woman had never really found out what had happened to her daughter. The story was reconstructed from other people’s accounts. The porteños in the Navy had denied all knowledge, from the moment the Ford Falcons were seen until the day Señora Guiza died. She had been there so long and was pitied by so many that her death had frightened and upset a good few of them in the town.
More people than did should have gone to her funeral, Anna reminded herself while she stared at the figure now occupying the space that the old woman had made her own.
Señor Bolivar seemed to be praying. His head was bowed and his hands, half hidden by the wide green cuffs of his shirt were folded into each other. Anna stepped forward, stopped and looked around. No one else appeared to have seen him. She went forward again, suddenly seeing in the skin and silver hair that he wasn’t a mirage at all but her real and dear friend.
“Señor Bolivar! What are you doing?”
He lifted his head, without any sign of surprise. “I’m just having a few private thoughts. But I was coming to see you afterward, so it is good that our paths crossed.”
“I’m so glad to see you again –“
“Yes, it had been a while. I hope my absence has not offended you.”
“No, but I was surprised when I saw you standing there…” She hadn’t meant to give the last word so much emphasis.
He laughed and his eyes had the same stern friendliness in them they’d always had. Whatever had changed, it wasn’t him. She was so happy that when he offered her his arm so that they could walk back to Belgrano she almost took it.
“But what would people say if they saw?” she laughed, declining. He nodded and unrolled his faded cap before methodically arranging it on his head. Their handshake was the only physical contact between them.
“And how is José?” he asked from a distance once they’d crossed the street and got a little way from the dispersing crown.
“He’s well, God be thanked. But he spends half the day looking at his maps and hoping Pedro will come back so they can go off to that Indian place they like so much.”
“I’m sure Pedro will come to visit soon,” the old man said placidly. “He’ll be leaving for England soon, of course.”
“I’d completely forgotten he’d have to go,” Anna exclaimed. “That will be a shame.”
Señor Bolivar didn’t reply, but when she looked across the sidewalk at the familiar contours of his beard there didn’t seem to be any sadness in his expression.
Soon they were on Belgrano and climbing the two stone steps that led up into the shop. As ever, Señor Bolivar stepped to one side and with his long green arm motioned her route ahead of him. José was serving a customer, but he came quickly out from behind the counter to greet his bright-eyed wife and her companion. Whatever doubts each one held about the others were suppressed by the rituals of greeting and drawing up chairs to the small table beside the door.
Anna left them as José began to chatter eagerly about a couple of thoughts he’d had concerning the establishment of the estancias under Spanish rule. Señor Bolivar was setting out the cards for another interminable game of truco. Behind the door to the house, she shut her eyes to drive away completely the lingering visual echoes left in her mind by the uniform and photographs on that isolated bedroom wall.
She decided to phone Carmen and moved quickly off down the corridor. In the door-framed sunlight the men idly traced paths through their mutually acceptable history.

August had given way to September before Pablo could slam the car door behind him and confront the decaying old shack whose boards and shutters seemed only to be clinging together by their fingernails.
No one around, it looked like. But then it never looked as though there were people around. Those English liked to keep themselves to themselves, so no one would ask too many questions. It’d worked on the boss, but Pablo wasn’t fooled so easily. It had really annoyed him to have to go and do other things. There was something going on here, and a taste of fifty dollars was a good reason to come back.
For a while he walked around the shack, looking out for anything unusual, but there weren’t even piss-marks in the sand. There were some old cups and dishes in the lean-to at the back, but most of them seemed to be nothing but breeding-holes for maggots. He wrinkled his nose. Dirty bastards. The water barrel was empty, as were the stove gas canisters stacked by the wall.
After a while he kicked the door open and admitted that he had come too late. The air was stale and dry and flies buzzed about through big gaps in the timbers. The floor was covered in junk, paper and plastic and other stuff. He sifted through it with his shoes, but without much enthusiasm. There were still sheets on the bed, but animals were crawling on them. The shelves were empty and the only box in the whole place had nothing but an empty maté packet and a couple of dried leaves in it.
Outside, Pablo threw his cap in through the car’s open window. It was too hot to wear it out here in the valley and not even the boss was here to see it. The boss was a bastard. Maybe the Englishmen paid him to sit tight – and make sure Pablo sat tight too – while they got out of town. He sat on the hood of the car and began to ease his packet of cigarettes out of his pocket. No need to rush back into town.
Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen any of them round the place in the last few weeks – not the English, not the sexy chick, not the old man, not even Hernan. Mind you, Hernan was probably still getting the same lecture as got started when they left him back at his house. Shame. If only one of them had still been here now the boss wasn’t around. He rubbed the butt of his gun with idle friendliness.
He flicked the cigarette end between two thorn bushes and opened the driver’s door. Was there any point going further up the track? He and the boss’d covered a lot of it last time they were up here. But they had seen the English drive down from higher up, over where the mountains started maybe. When the engine was going, he pushed on, over the rocks and ruts. But the car was too low-set, and after a while he wasn’t sure where the track was going any more. It all just looked like lot of dust and sticks in the middle of lots of other sticks and dust. The boss wouldn’t find it funny if the car had something wrong with it because it had been scraped over some miserable bit of desert. Slowly, with much irritation, Pablo switched into reverse and jolted his way back down to the shack.
Once he was there, his mood changed. He turned the car with abandon, lighting another cigarette with his free hand, and accelerated as hard as he could back to the road. A heavy lorry jammed on its brakes to avoid him, but the driver, seeing the uniform, kept his head inside the cab. Pablo ignored him and didn’t look once at the momentary image of the shack’s roof that flashed across his wing mirror. It was all a closed book to him now. He was more interested in pushing the motor hard back into Cafayate.
The shack rattled as a wind got up and sand scraped over it. It had been empty for four days.

The Route Nacional 12 to Puerto Iguazu and the Route Provincial 17 crossed a short distance west of Eldorado. The junction was nondescript and a lot of traffic went through it every day. No one looked twice at the trail that led a few hundred metres off the road before the junction. It was a new trail made by a single set of tyres that had spun in the earth and cut a swathe through the thick green. It was short too, and only led to a patch of dead ground out of sight of the road. A few cattle and other animals occasionally sniffed about the end of it, the wheels of a dirty truck. The driver’s door was open and the seats were covered with rubbish, particularly plastic wrappers. There was cigarette ash on the dashboard and steering column and sweat marks on the windows and backs of the seats.
It would have been obvious to any observer that there was a cargo in the back that had been abandoned as much as the truck, if the collected water and small creatures living in it were anything to judge by. It consisted of seven plastic bags filled with some hard substance that stuck out and misshaped the plastic.
There was nothing left in the vehicle to identify its former driver. All that could be gleaned from the bent grass was that a pair of feet had carried their owner in a direct line back to the road, presumably so that he could hitch-hike to his destination, probably Puerto Iguazu.
No one was looking for it; no one in all Argentina knew what it contained. The silver had disappeared again.

José looked craftily over his shoulder as he signed for the package. The close-set eyes of the delivery man smirked a grimy complicity that José tried to to ignore. Goodness only knew what the man thought was in there. But the moment he had seen the mundane stamps with their repetitive profiles of England’s queen, José had thought he could guess what was it contained. If Anna knew, she’d throw her arms in the air and roll her eyes. He’d tell her about it later of course, but he wanted the first flush of enthusiasm to be undented by her amusement.
The delivery van chugged off into the traffic. José regarded the houses across the street for a moment. With their doors closed and shutters fastened, it seemed that they too had decided on discretion. He tucked the hard cardboard shape under his arm and picked up the crate of loaves from by his feet.
He put the loaves on the counter. Sweating slightly, he surveyed the shop’s interior. There was no one in there who wanted serving at that moment, only a white-haired old woman with thick glasses who was examining tins with deep and personal interest. Satisfied, he pushed open the connecting door and hurried to his study. A few minutes later he returned and stood rocking for a moment on the loose board behind the counter that stuck out from the others. The old woman was still reading the tins.

“Well, I’m glad Pedro can still write in Spanish, even from so far away.” Anna folded the notepaper sheet back along its original lines and handed it to her husband. “He could have written a bit more though, really let us know how he and Sara were finding it.”
“Perhaps he isn’t married yet.”
“Oh, don’t say that sort of thing. It’s wrong, and they know it’s wrong, to live together and not be married.”
“Things are different in England.”
“But Sara isn’t English, and she won’t ever be. With Señor Bolivar as her father – she’ll always be an Argentine. And from Cafayate too.”
José agreed with her. Of course he agreed with her. But he wondered if Anna remembered that in the final days before Pedro and Sara boarded the bus that would take them to Tucuman and then to Buenos Aires and then to England, Sara had become almost silent. Her eyes and her mind seemed to be elsewhere and she barely replied to questions.
During those days, José had reminded Señor Bolivar of the time the two of them had driven up to Salta together for some saint’s festival. Anna and Sara were on the sweltering back seat, and Carmen was at a neighbour’s, because she was ill. It had been a long time ago, Sara must have been about ten. She spent the entire journey with her forehead pressed against the warm glass, staring out at the valley. Anna had been unable to get her to say anything for the whole journey. That was how she had been just before she left, even with Pedro.
Señor Bolivar merely nodded, and they had played a whole game of truco before the conversation had started again, back on the old rails of the Spanish conquest. Since then, the absolute of their marriage had overlaid everyone’s thoughts about the couple. It was easier that way.
The shop was empty – it was almost time to close the door on the darkening street, and the sound of voices outside filled the tired space with their comfortable kind of life.
“He doesn’t say what’s happened to Juan,” José said unfolding the note again. “Perhaps he doesn’t know.”
“The best thing is not to know. God be praised that he hasn’t shown his face here again at least. Not that I want any harm to come to him,” she added quickly, blushing.
“Ah, who knows what’s happened. Perhaps Pedro will invite us to Oxford some time.”
Anna played with some of the packs of tobacco on the shelf for a few seconds, needlessly rearranging them, then replacing them in their plastic ranks exactly as they had been. “So the rest of what he sent was from his book?”
“Oh, in a way,” José said, suddenly feeling an urge to conceal his excitement about the pages by leaning one elbow uncomfortably on the counter. But Anna could see through that; she knew him too well to be deceived. He straightened up.

He’d opened the packet with eager fingers, his head almost brushing the intricate map of the Quilmes pukara he had hung, with justifiable pride, he believed, above his desk. Pedro’s sketches of the same place had been near the top of the heap of pages, and he’d spent some time comparing these scruffy attempts with the broad shapes of his own penmanship even before turning to Pedro’s note. Pedro had been a good friend but no mapmaker.
“They’re more sort of notes and things, but in his note he said he’d put most of them in his book, didn’t he? I suppose we’ll see when he sends us the real thing.”
“I’m sure he’ll remember to send you one. What do you think of his ideas?”
Even though he knew she could never be half as interested as he was, José beamed with pleasure and took a deep breath. Anna leaned back on the counter and prepared herself to listen.

The falcon cruised through the near dark of the valley. The ground below and to either side of her could still be divided into recognisable features – here an outcrop, here the narrow line of the river and the sparse vegetation along its banks. The shapes of the mountains with their wayward lines and crude curves were plain against a sky still faintly tinged by the sun. As the falcon banked and turned across towards the centre of the valley a car’s headlights briefly lit up her belly.
Momentarily dazzled, the falcon flew more slowly, drifting low and carefully over the valley’s flat plain. Once or twice she cocked her head at a sound of rustling coming up from the dark ground, but she didn’t swerve from her course.
A second later, in a rush of feathers, she set uncertain feet down on a sloped surface still warm from the blaze of the Argentine spring. It was the apex of a roof where the flies still fizzed around in the milky air. The flacon snapped at one of the bigger ones that came too close.
Beneath her, the hut was still empty and sand was piling up in drifts inside the open door as though the valley had become a liquid whose volume made it seep into everything. The tyre tracks had already disappeared in the winds.
After a while, and some precisely directed preening, the falcon took a few more steps along the spine of the roof. The heat trapped in the nails sticking up every few centimetres made her uncomfortable. Now that her eyes were used to the light again, she was ready to be off.
She stretched her wings, invading the mountains’ silhouettes for an instant, and then there was just the rapidly vanishing sound of feathers against the air.