The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind Read online

  Conchita thought for a moment and smiled to show her perfectly white teeth.

  “Of course. Guillermo Arroyo’s woman,” she said, as if they’d known each other all their lives. “We all miss him terribly.”

  “A million pardons, señora,” Pancho said quickly before a clash of insults could dash his plan to pieces. “May I trouble someone for ice?”

  Mongo stopped what he was doing and frowned. He gave Tía Neli a suspicious look as he popped two dirty ice cubes from a plastic tray.

  “Next time, you break their nose first,” he whispered, pressing them against the side of Pancho’s head. “No matter who it is.”

  “Thanks, Mongo.”

  “It’s my nephew we are here about,” Tía Neli said. “Rafael Ocampo. Do you know him?”

  Conchita Fo chuckled. “So. You are the family of that darling specimen? Lucky you to be a relation! Such a handsome young buck is hard to forget. Has he considered being in the cinema?”

  Tía Neli straightened her shoulders. “Have you any idea where he might be? We are crazy with worry trying to locate him.”

  “¿Quién yo?” Conchita looked with feigned surprise at Mongo. “She acts as though men tell me their secrets!”

  “Arenas suggested that Rafael has gone north,” Tía Neli persisted. “Do you know if it’s true?”

  “El norte. Everyone loves the idea.” Conchita sighed. “I spent years there entertaining my faithful public and for what? It is as brutal a place as any, señora, for those of us cursed with humble beginnings. Look at me. Right back where I started.”

  “Well, taking a risk might be better than starving,” Tía Neli said.

  Conchita took a long drag of her cigarette. “Some would say that, señora. Of course, those of us who stay behind aren’t the ones who are bending our backs to work, are we? We are — what do we call it? — the beneficiaries of their sacrifice.” Her eyes traveled along the fancy lace of Tía Neli’s collar.

  Pancho could hear Tía Neli’s teeth grinding. He scrambled between them just in time.

  “Excuse me for speaking,” he said. “But look! I have found something here on the floor, señora. I’m very sure it’s yours.”

  He smiled and pressed the only bill he had earned that day into Conchita Fo’s hand. “Forgive me for interrupting. Go on. You were about to tell la señora about her nephew.”

  Conchita let out six perfect smoke rings and stubbed out her cigarette as they floated through the air. Pancho watched Mongo carefully; he was buffing the same spot a bit too ferociously.

  “I heard some men talking about a trip,” Conchita said with a shrug. “He might have been among them. I can’t recall exactly.”

  Tía Neli planted her feet. “Who were those men?” she whispered, leaning in.

  “Now, how would my customers like it if their secrets were shared with anyone who came asking? Don’t put me in such a position, señora. It’s bad business.”

  Tía Neli’s face was mere inches from Conchita Fo’s. “The men’s names, por favor.” It sounded like a threat.

  “Heavens, señora!” Pancho interrupted again. “I almost forgot!” He held up his lucky silver piece and placed it on the bar, without a second thought about how he would miss its comforting weight in his pocket. “To your continued beauty and good fortune!”

  Conchita patted Pancho’s face sweetly and tucked the coin in her bosom with a flourish. “All I can tell you is this,” she said, turning to Tía Neli once again. “He left here with a man who barely knows what he’s doing. These are dangerous times for an inexperienced man to bring boys across, señora. Anything can happen crossing the Haunted Valley — you know that. That’s how we get dead boys tossed out on the road.” She signed the cross over herself.

  “Pancho!”

  The sharp voice echoed inside the empty bar. At the door was the silhouette of Armando, a younger taxista. He was perspiring and panting.

  “I’ve been crazy looking for you! Good thing I saw your bike outside.”

  “What is it, then?” Pancho asked, racing for the door.

  Armando stared at the swollen mass at the side of Pancho’s head. “What’s wrong with your ear?”

  “Never mind that!”

  Armando shrugged and pointed at the dirty clock over the door. “Señor Pasqual needs you at the mayor’s house in thirty minutes, hands and feet washed. There’s a party.”

  “Forgive me, señora,” Pancho told Tía Neli. “I must go at once. May I take you home?”

  By the time Tía Neli arrived at her door, her face was crumpled with grief.

  “Stay calm, señora,” Pancho told her. “You never know what is coming around the bend. Perhaps a solution lies up ahead on our path.”

  Tía Neli shook her head sadly. “Go on, Pancho. You’ll be late, and you shouldn’t keep the mayor waiting. This is in the hands of God now.”

  Moments later he was careening down the mountain, his mind whirling as fast as his wheels.

  In God’s hands? Or would a taxi boy’s hands have to do?

  THE WORLD BEYOND Tres Montes was glorious. How irritating that her parents had tried to keep her — and Rafael — from it. Sonia pressed her nose to the train window, wishing that her brother were by her side to enjoy the view.

  The train had climbed high along rickety tracks and then lumbered into La Fuente, the place the Gypsies called the Haunted Valley. It was a long and deserted stretch between mountain peaks that belched plumes of smoke. No Gypsy ever crossed La Fuente; they claimed it was filled with the restless spirits of all who died there.

  They lurched around perilous turns that opened unexpectedly to dizzying canyon views. Hawks hung outside her window, and far below there were waterfalls cascading into rushing rivers, where rainbows rose in the mist, like bridges to some other world. It seemed like an eternity before they found civilization again, stopping at last in a town that was even smaller than Tres Montes. Mule-drawn carts waited, laden with stews and meat pies for sale along the tracks. Passengers in other cars got out to stretch their legs, but Sonia, remembering Tía Neli’s advice, hung out the window to get air. Soon hands were reaching up. Children, a woman with no teeth, even a young man about Rafael’s age, who walked stooped and with a cane.

  “He must have come through the valley,” Eva whispered to her, when she saw Sonia staring at the beggar. “One of the lucky ones.”

  Sonia, still too nervous to eat, tossed him down all that her mother had packed.

  Silence descended on the train that night as it chugged through yet another pine forest, dark as a wolf’s mouth. The other passengers were sleeping uncomfortably in their seats. Even Marco, who had been making eyes at her all day, had grown pensive and was now far off at the front of the locomotive. Ramona was snoring softly, too.

  Sonia settled in once again to read Pancho’s story. She was grateful for the distraction and had savored it slowly throughout the long ride. The adventure kept her from thoughts of Rafael, which seemed to find her even more frequently after seeing the beggar. Instead of worrying, she could lose herself in Pancho’s world of a beautiful Arabian girl born mute and kept prisoner by her silence and her warlord uncle. She thought of Pancho’s intelligent eyes and the long fingers with which he would have turned each page if they were reading under their shade tree. Would he really be thinking of her every day? She hoped so. If only he could know the truth about why she had left, without hating her for being a fraud, Sonia thought. If only Pancho knew she was trapped in silence, just like the girl in his story.

  Footsteps stopped near her seat.

  “Hungry?” Eva held out a napkin with white cheese and crackers she’d bought at the last station.

  Sonia reached politely for a morsel. “Thank you.”

  She was already fond of Eva, who had pointed out sights on the trip all afternoon and made the time go by with explanations of what girls were wearing in the capital, what colors most favored her skin, whose boyfriend was running around with whom. She
was a fount of personal information about others, but she seemed without malice. Best of all, she treated Sonia as if they’d been friends for years.

  “The first time in the city is always exciting, isn’t it, amor?”

  Sonia nodded. “Don’t tell me it ever gets boring!”

  “¡Ay, no! Just being rid of that dull beast Irina Gomez makes it exciting. Do you know she had the nerve to tell my mother that nail enamel is for harlots?” She held up her newly manicured hands as proof of the impossible. “Such a killjoy!”

  Sonia shook her head and turned back to the window, thinking of Pancho once again. “Irina Gomez knows nothing,” she agreed.

  “What are you reading?” Eva asked, peering at the story.

  Sonia folded it quickly.

  “Nothing important,” she said, stuffing Pancho’s gift in her bag.

  “A private person, I see,” Eva observed coyly. “I like a girl with secrets. Anyway, corazón, the important thing is we’re free. We’re practically women now, off to work — and not the kind of jobs that pay pennies, the way they do at home. We’re going to earn real money — more than a country schoolmistress, for certain. That’s probably why Irina Gomez hates us.”

  Suddenly the train whistle blew, and the wheels screeched to a halt. Eva was thrown against the seat ahead of her. Sonia’s satchel of milagros clattered as it fell to the floor and rolled away.

  “Why are we stopping?” Sonia tried to sound calm. She thought of train robbers and bandits. There were no station lampposts in sight. Outside, only blackness.

  “God deliver us if it’s a boulder from a landslide.” Eva rubbed the bump on her head and sucked her teeth irritably. “Last year we were stuck in this valley for five hours.”

  Ramona, deep in sleep, did not stir. Eva peered out into the night and then called to someone farther back in the train car.

  “Mi amor,” she whispered. “Go sweet-talk Marco. Find out what’s going on.”

  Dalia made her way up the aisle. Her curly brown hair wasn’t bouncing loose around her face, as it had been at the party. Instead, it was tucked behind her ears demurely. Unlike Eva, she hadn’t spoken a word to Sonia. In fact, she showed no interest in her — or in anyone else, for that matter.

  “That fool probably fell asleep at the switch,” Dalia said. She ignored the NO ADMITTANCE sign and slid back the door to the locomotive. In a moment their voices were murmurs. Laughter floated through the cars.

  Sonia watched with fascination, thinking of something her mother often said. “In the arms of a beautiful woman, a man’s mouth runs like a river.”

  What might her besotted brother confess to a pretty girlfriend? Maybe he had shared the specifics of his plans.

  “Stupid cows on the tracks,” Dalia announced when she returned a little while later.

  “Oh, well, that’s not too bad,” Eva said, turning to Sonia.

  But Sonia wasn’t thinking about cows as she watched Dalia recede into the darkness. She started down the aisle.

  “Where are you going?” Eva asked.

  “The facilities.” She held her stomach as if it were cramped.

  “The toilet hasn’t worked for the last three hours,” Eva said. “Prepare yourself, corazón. It’s a horror.”

  Sonia hurried off, searching the dark seats for Dalia’s shape. She found her at last, sitting alone at the back and staring out at the sky. For a moment neither girl spoke.

  “You look like him.” Dalia was studying her in the reflection of the darkened window. “The eyes, I think.”

  “Thank you.”

  Sonia crouched low in the aisle and whispered, “Dalia, do you know where Rafael is?”

  Turning, Dalia regarded her with a cold look.

  “What Rafael tells his friends is his own business, Sonia. Take it from me,” she said with an ugly smirk. “If there’s one thing he appreciates, it’s a girl who can keep her mouth shut about what he’s up to.”

  “But he must have told you he was leaving. I’m his blood, Dalia; I have the right to know.” She looked around at the sleeping passengers to make sure she was not being heard. “What if evil finds him?”

  “Por Dios, let your brother do what he has to do. He knows his risks.”

  “Please,” Sonia continued. “I’m worried.”

  “Worry about something else, then — like your own hide. Or didn’t your bossy aunt tell you that you’ll have plenty to keep you busy at the widow’s house?”

  Loyalty fueled Sonia’s growing temper. “Take care how you speak of my aunt. She’s done me a great favor. I owe Tía Neli nothing but thanks.”

  “Thanks?” Dalia clicked her tongue and shook her head as though Sonia were someone to be pitied. “Go sit down, niña.” The train started to move. “Rafael would never forgive me if his precious little sister got hurt on the journey.” With that, she turned back to the window.

  Sonia found her empty seat. Anger was stuck in her throat like a lump of bread. The thought of working with a girl so hateful made her want to scream.

  “Are you sick, amor?” Eva asked. “You don’t look well.” She gasped and sniffed the empty napkin in her lap. “Did I poison you with rancid food?”

  Sonia shook her head and curled up in her seat. She called to her grandmother in her mind, but the only sound was the train inching forward and the terrible protest of cows against someone’s leather switch. She moved as close as she dared to Ramona and thought of her brother.

  “What are you humming?” Ramona said, a little while later. “It sounds so sad.”

  “Me? Nothing.” Sonia hadn’t even realized she was making a sound. “Just an old miners’ tune.”

  SONIA AWOKE AND rubbed the last threads of awful dreams from her eyes. Rafael had been drowning in the river, calling her name as the current dragged him to the froth near the waterfall like the ones in La Fuente. Sonia, he called. But no matter how hard she paddled toward him, he was always just out of reach in the mist.

  When she sat up, heart still pounding, she stared out the window in awe.

  The golden dome of the presidential palace shimmered opulently against the dawn sky. They had reached the capital at last, and now she could see that it was even more magnificent than she had ever imagined. The old cliff-side city had withstood the centuries proudly, its grandeur untouched by modern vulgarities, like highways or architecture in glass or chrome. Here the roads were still cobblestone, and the buildings were preserved like European palaces. Potted bougainvillea climbed up columns to the wrought-iron balconies that overlooked the main thoroughfare. Shop doors were inlaid with stained glass. Even the railway station was a work of art. Its intricate mosaic floors were befitting of a sultan’s quarters.

  As the train came to a stop, Ramona walked the aisle to shake her charges awake. She snapped her fingers in front of Sonia’s unblinking eyes.

  “Gather your things,” she said. “We’re here.”

  It took six breezy trolley stops and a fifteen-minute walk along the rows of trumpet trees to arrive at Casa Masón from the railway. But when they at last crossed the gates of the estate, Sonia could scarcely believe her eyes. There were fountains with stone nymphs, exotic flowers, and two aloof greyhounds lounging elegantly on a carpet of grass. Several other large homes peeked over hedges nearby. Punta Gorda was clearly the most luxurious neighborhood in the capital.

  Sonia took care to stay beside Eva, who chatted as though she were a tour guide.

  “It’s very ordinary,” Eva said importantly, “to see famous people sunning themselves on a patio, so be sure not to gawk. Last year I even saw the president’s wife exercising her mare in la señora’s paddock.” She lowered her voice. “She’s a graceless rider. No posture at all. A rancher could do better.”

  “The president’s wife?” Sonia exclaimed. She would write to Pancho at once to tell him.

  Ramona led them along the fieldstone path until it cleaved in two. She straightened her wrinkled skirt and turned to hand Eva a key.
r />   “Air out our quarters.” She motioned to the path that wound around the back of the house. “Dalia will wait here for the luggage cart; it’s on its way. I’ll let them know we’ve arrived.”

  After the long peal of the doorbell quieted, Sonia craned her neck to see who opened the door. It was an old woman, nearly bent in two with age, with an unpleasant face to match her crooked body. She motioned for Ramona to step inside.

  “That’s Señora Masón?” she asked.

  “Certainly not!” Eva said. “That’s only Teresa. She runs everything around here.”

  “But she’s so old,” Sonia blurted out.

  “And unfortunately still alive,” Dalia muttered.

  Seeing Sonia’s astonishment, Eva shook her head. “Dalia’s right. You’ll have to keep your eye on that vieja. Teresa is la señora’s best spy.”

  With that, Eva started down the second path. “Well? Are you coming?”

  The greyhounds dashed past the girls in a blur. It felt good to move after so many hours on a train, especially in a yard of such splendor. The interior garden was magnificent. How her father would love such a place! Bottlebrush trees were heavy with an army of thirsty monarch butterflies; a stone bridge arched over a fishpond carpeted with lily pads; roses of every variety perfumed the air. Around the first bend were the horse stables, and then came a large garage, where bored drivers were buffing long black cars. The young men stopped to wave as the girls passed. Eva pushed out her bosom a little farther.

  They walked on, arm in arm, as though in a park, until all that was left of the main house was the tile rooftop over the trees.

  “What is Señora Masón like?” Sonia asked. “She must be so elegant to live in a grand place like this.”

  “Elegant, yes. Friendly, never,” Eva explained. “But I suppose that’s natural. She learned long ago not to love servants, mi vida.”

  According to Eva, who had read the story in the old society pages, one of the biggest scandals of the day was the death of Katarina Masón’s nanny. The family dog had bitten the manejadora de niños savagely on the ankle.