“Should I tell it?” asked the blond, and he looked at my cousin. Natalia smiled at him and nodded.
“Okay,” he agreed, and he told us that he came from Oberá province, he lived in Misiones, and that around twenty kilometers away there was a town called Campo Viera. A creek ran through it, the Yazá. “One afternoon, the middle of the day, right? Don’t get the idea I imagined this because it was night. I wasn’t drunk, either. So, one afternoon I went out there in the small truck, just to run an errand was all, and as I was driving over the Yazá bridge I saw this woman run across the road. I didn’t have time to swerve, I would’ve killed myself, and I felt the bump from her body, man. I jumped out of the truck and ran to her, cold sweat all down my back, but I didn’t see anyone. No blood, no dented fender, nothing. I went to the cops and they took my statement, but they were in a shitty mood about it. I had to run the errand another day, and when I was in Campo Viera I told the story just like I’m telling you. They told me that the military had built that bridge, and they’d put dead people in the cement, people they’d murdered, to hide their bodies.”
I heard Juan Martín sigh. He didn’t like this kind of story.
“You shouldn’t fuck around when it comes to things like that,” he told the blond guy.
“Excuse me, sir, but I’m not fucking around. The military is perfectly capable of hiding their corpses that way.”
Our food came and Juan Martín started to eat. They brought us wooden plates. I’ve always preferred those to ceramic ones for eating barbecue. The flavor is richer and the oil on the salad is absorbed better and doesn’t reach the meat. It was delicious.
The blond guy said that in Campo Viera they’d told him a lot of other things about the bridge and the stream. “That whole area is strange,” he said. “You see car headlights but the cars never come, like they’ve disappeared down some road. But there are no drivable roads, it’s all jungle.”
“Speaking of cars that disappear, here’s a funny one,” said one of the other truck drivers, smiling, maybe to clear away the heavy atmosphere and my husband’s antipathy. I felt ashamed again and I smiled at the blond truck driver, who had a delicious dimple in his chin, and he smiled back at me. Hopefully he’d become Natalia’s boyfriend, and then she’d get bored with him like she did with all of them and then he would realize that always, from the very first moment when we’d looked into each other’s eyes in the hotel lobby, he’d been in love with me.
“And it happened right here! Well, at the grill off the highway, ten blocks from here. So this guy comes with his mobile home, a real pretty little house. He was with his family, two kids, they told me, and his wife and mother-in-law. So they went to eat some barbecue and they left the mother-in-law in the mobile home. She didn’t feel good or something like that.”
“Then what?” asked the third truck driver, who looked sleepy.
“Someone swiped the mobile home with the old lady in it!”
Everyone laughed hard, even the waitress, who was tending the fire as it died down. The guy had been desperate; he’d run to the police and he spent about a week in Clorinda, with his wife having a nervous breakdown. There was a massive search all over Formosa and they found the mobile home, but it was empty. Everything had been stolen, including the mother-in-law.
“How long ago was this?” Natalia wanted to know.
“Hmm…must be a year ago now. Time sure flies. A year. It was a crazy case. I’m sure the thieves got into the mobile home and they didn’t realize the old lady was inside and maybe she died on them from the fright, and then they tossed her. Around here you can just toss anyone, there’s no way in hell they’ll find you.”
“The man still calls all the time,” the girl from the restaurant broke in. “But the woman never turned up.”
“The thieves didn’t either,” added the trucker. “Poor gal, what a way to go.”
They went on for a while talking about the mother-in-law’s disappearance, and Juan Martín, annoyed, excused himself and went up to the room. I’ll wait for you, said his look, and I nodded. But I stayed there until very late; my hair dried and the girl gave us the key to the fridge so we could go on taking out beers. Natalia even told the story about the burning house she’d seen from her boyfriend’s plane, although she said he was her cousin. Then she yawned and announced she was going up to sleep. The blond trucker followed her. I went after them to the reception desk and asked for another room. I told the girl that my husband was very tired and that if I went in at that hour, I’d wake him up. Then the next day, if the mechanic brought the car, he would have to drive to Buenos Aires badly rested, because he had a hard time going back to sleep when someone woke him up. “Sure,” said the woman at reception—it was all women at that hotel, apparently—“we hardly have any guests, it’s the low season.”
“Low season is right,” I told her, and when I laid my head down on the pillow, I fell asleep immediately and had nightmares about an old woman who was running, naked and engulfed in flames, through a house that was collapsing. I saw her from outside, but I couldn’t go in and help her because a beam was going to fall and hit my head, or the fire would get to me or the smoke would suffocate me. But I didn’t run for help, either; I just watched her burn.
—
The auto club brought our car in the morning. They explained the problem, but in very general terms, taking it as given that neither Natalia nor I would understand anything. The only thing we wanted to know was if it would make it to Corrientes, and he told us sure, it was only three hours away. We’d still need to take it in to get a more permanent fix, but any mechanic would realize the problem right away and if not, we should call them. We thanked them and went to have breakfast. There was only toast and coffee—not even a croissant—but it was fine. The blond trucker had left two hours earlier. He’d promised to call Natalia and she thought he would come through. “He fucks like a god,” she told me. “And he’s the sweetest guy.”
I envied her. I choked down the half-cold coffee with my tears and went to find Juan Martín. But when I went into the room, he wasn’t there. The bed wasn’t even unmade, as if he hadn’t slept there. I couldn’t be sure he had gone back to the room; I hadn’t even seen him go into the hotel. I went back to the breakfast room and asked Natalia. “I definitely saw him go inside,” she said. The girl at reception assured us he had taken the key with him. At least, she definitely didn’t have it hanging on the key rack on the wall.
“Maybe he went for a walk,” she murmured.
But, of course, she hadn’t seen him come down. I got nervous and my hands started shaking. I told Natalia we had to call the police, but she put her hair back into a ponytail like she’d done in the market and told me no. “Don’t be silly. If he left, he left,” she said.