“They’re all criminals, where have you brought me, this is your family?” The nausea mixed with the tears when I told him that we were going to talk later, that he should shut up now, that yes, there were probably some criminals there and they were going to kill us if he kept provoking them. I looked him up and down: his boat shoes, the sweat stains in his armpits, the sunglasses pushed up over his hair. I didn’t love him anymore, I didn’t desire him, and I would have handed him right over to Stroessner’s soldiers and let them do as they pleased.
I hurried to catch up with Natalia, who was already at the stand of the woman who sold ?andutí. A younger woman was weaving the cloth with vibrant colors. It was the only place in that endless and noisy market where there was something like calm. People stopped and asked about prices and the woman answered in a quiet voice, but they heard her in spite of the radios, the chamamé music, even a man who was playing the harp for the few tourists who had braved the trip into Asunción that hot morning to buy on the cheap. Natalia took her time. She debated between several tablecloths and finally chose five sets with their napkins; my favorites were the white one with details of every color around the edges and in the center—violet, blue, turquoise, green, red, orange, yellow—and another much more elegant one that used only a palette of browns, from beige to mahogany. She bought the five sets, some thirty table runners, and many details to sew onto dresses and shirts, especially on guayaberas that she bought at another stand farther on. To find it, we had to move deeper into the market. I followed her and didn’t even check to see whether Juan Martín was following me. I thought about why ?andutí was called “spiderweb” cloth. It must be because of the weaving technique, because really the end result seemed much more like a peacock’s tail: the feathers with their eyes, beautiful but disturbing. Many eyes arrayed above the animal, which walks so heavily—a beautiful animal, but one that always seems tired.
“Wouldn’t you like a guayabera for yourself, Martín?” Natalia called him Martín; she didn’t use his full name. Juan Martín was uncomfortable, but he tried to smile. I knew that expression, it was his tough guy face and it said I’m doing all I can, so that later, when everything went to hell once we got back, he could rub it in my face, smear it all over my mouth: I tried but you didn’t help at all, you never help. He bought the guayabera but didn’t want to try it on. “I have to wash it first,” he told me reproachfully, as if the shirt could be poisoned. He carried one of Natalia’s plastic bags for her—they weren’t even that heavy, it was only cloth—and he said, “Please, can we get out of this hellhole?” Since the exit wasn’t marked he had no choice but to follow us. To follow Natalia, really, and I saw the disgust and resentment in his eyes.
My cousin linked arms with me and pretended to admire a bracelet of silver and lapis lazuli that Juan Martín had given me on our honeymoon in Valparaíso.
“We all make mistakes,” she told me. “The important thing is to fix them.”
“And how does this get fixed?”
“Babe, death is the only problem without a solution.”
—
Juan Martín didn’t like the trip from the market to the bay; he thought the city looked dirty and poor. He didn’t like the presidential palace and later, at the beach along the river, he started practically shouting at us: how could we be so anesthetized, didn’t we see the potbellied kids eating watermelon under the beating sun, and right in front of the house of government, please, what a shitty country. We didn’t want to argue with him. The city was poor, and in the heat it smelled like garbage. But he wasn’t disgusted with Asunción, he was mad at us. I didn’t even feel like crying anymore. To placate him we looked for a restaurant around there, where the ministries were, the private schools, the embassies and hotels: Paraguay’s rich. We quickly came to the Munich, on Calle Presidente Franco. “Is it named after Franco, the dictator?” asked Juan Martín, but it was a rhetorical question. On the restaurant patio there was an enormous effigy of Saint Rita and the tables were empty, except the one in the middle, where three soldiers sat. We chose a table far from them so they wouldn’t overhear Juan Martín, and also because it is always preferable to sit far away from soldiers in Asunción. The walls were colonial, the square of sky above us was totally clear, but there was shade on the patio in spite of the heat. We ordered Paraguayan corn bread, and Juan Martín, a sandwich. The soldiers, drunk on beer—there were several empty bottles on the table and under their chairs—first told the waitress she was beautiful, and then one of them touched her ass, and it was like a movie in poor taste, a bad joke: the man with his uniform jacket unbuttoned over his distended belly, a toothpick between his teeth, the grotesque laughter, and the girl who tried to brush them off by asking, “Can I get you anything else?” But she didn’t dare insult them because they had their guns at their waists, and others were leaning against the flower bed behind them.
Juan Martín got up and I could just imagine what was going to happen next. He was going to yell at them to leave her alone; he was going to play the hero, and then they would arrest all three of us. They would rape Natalia and me in the dictator’s dungeons, day and night, and they would torture me with electric shocks on my pubic hair that was as blond as the hair on my head, and they would drool while they said fucking little gringa, fucking Argentine, and maybe they would kill Natalia quickly, for being dark, for being a witch, for being insolent. And all because he needed to be a hero and prove God only knows what. Anyway, he would have it easy because they killed men with a bullet through the back of the skull, and done. They weren’t fags, the Paraguayan soldiers, of course they weren’t.
Natalia stopped him.
“But don’t you see what they’re doing? They’re going to rape her.”
“I see everything,” said Natalia, “but we can’t do anything. We’re leaving now.” Natalia left money on the table and dragged Juan Martín toward the car. The soldiers didn’t even notice us, they were so focused on tormenting the girl. In the car, Juan Martín told us everything he thought about our cowardice and how sick and ashamed we made him. It was six in the afternoon. We had spent many hours shopping at the market and trying to sightsee on the oceanfront and downtown, putting up with my husband’s whining. Natalia wanted to get back early so we could have dinner in Corrientes, so she started the car and we headed out of Asunción as the sun was turning red and the fruit vendors were sitting down to drink something cool under their umbrellas.
—