09.2 Crossroads

A day later, they arrived at Salta. That French lady wore high-waist tailored pants in black, a white corporate shirt with a sleeveless jacket blazer on her arm and a black felt hat on her hair. Dark sunglasses and bracelets on the wrists, a chrome necklace around the neck and a disc dangling on it. She paused at the counter holding a cigarette in a slender tube in a gloved hand.

“Claudine Cartier.”

“How long do you wish to stay in Chile, señora?” asked the immigration officer.

“Two weeks,” replied the madam.

“And señorita…”

“Eva Lowell,” said Madeleine waving to her assistant in long shirt and belt, blue jeans, felt hat and not much jewellery, in white shoes and holding a folder. She just served a cup of coffee to the mistress.

“Please wait!”

They sat down to drink coffee and chat. “I’ve been in Salta before. There are few people who could help and few I want to avoid on this trip,” Madeleine told Marina, “You know, when you want to do something legal, all the doors close at the consulate. On the contrary, if you do it the other way, the gates open.”

Marina glanced nervously.

“Sit straight!” said Madeleine Blanche.

In forty-five minutes, their names were called and travel documents passed into their hands to proceed with crossing the border.

Madeleine ran towards the car holding her hat in a brush of wind. One of her tall heels nudged into a joint on the cracked pavement resulting in an ankle sprain. Luckily, it did go away without causing much trouble.

Reaching the SUV, she quickly removed the white shirt and threw it into the rear. She wore a black bodysuit under the black blazer she just pulled on.

At the border, a day later, Argentinean police checked the papers and they were good to go. In thirty minutes, they reached the overhead pipe post indicating the border crossing – 200 km to San Pedro de Atacama.

Climbing off Route 51 and on Route 23, there were white lines of gravel roads snaking through the mountainous terrain, barren flatland on the sides and mountain peaks in the sights with snow patches. Madeleine relied on an Etak Navigator and kept with her some SIDE tapes that covered this entire region travelled before and recorded. Margin of error is small however – you’d never know.

Meanwhile, at the secretariate of SIDE, Juan Carlos Bauzá who was made head after removal as Minister of Interior in 1989, got a call; “Claudine Cartier crossed the border with a French woman.”

They arrived at San Pedro de Atacama in the Andes Mountains on a paved road.

Marina at the helm and light falling at dusk, Madeleine enjoying a cigarette, a village of tiny huts on a side. “Where do we break for the night?”

“There!” pointed Madeleine.

An open-air cafe in a grove of scrawny barks and bare branches in a gravel-filled lawn with too many seats and nobody around. A nice couple there told them of a place to stay around the corner. Madeleine and Marina had food here and drove to this other place.

It was an incredible villa paved of wood plank pathways and dry branch rails, thatched roofing and wood chunk walls. Dimly lit to the romantic eye, trees in the corners and cottage bungalows. Behind a fence, they passed into a corridor with deep blue sky and stars above, bungalows on both sides and a bedded jacuzzi at the end.

Madeleine removed all her clothes and jumped into the pool before booking a room. They took bungalow 16 in front of the jacuzzi and spent the night under the dim lights in the tub – both naked despite the chill.

In the midnight hour, their ears filled with chirps of the crickets. Besides; the hotel manager sat on a lounger busy rolling another calm joint.

Silvio picked a tiny drop using a toothpick, heated it so the oil smoothly ran over it. Then he inserted it into a cigarette to treat the fill of tobacco with a penetrative blend. Lit it and passed to Madeleine Blanche.

Stars appeared in the sky as seen from the corridor between the bungalows while the two relaxed in the warm water. They came so near to touch the stars – better than any observatory in San Pedro de Atacama could bring in the crossover heavens.

“You will only understand it if you get stoned!”

Marina tried to hold her gaze at Madeleine, “That sounds very personal.” Tightly held by the middle finger of each other’s hand.

That was Silvio’s extra-large pouch of cannabis and he passed a jug of chicha saved from last September. They drowned.