Invisible Country Read online

  In memory of my father, Samuel Puglise, a World War II combat Marine who came home a pacifist and taught me to hate war

  Between 1864 and 1870, the small landlocked country of Paraguay fought against three major South American powers—Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay—the conflict known as the War of the Triple Alliance.… At the war’s end … Paraguay’s cities were in ruins, its economy destroyed, its male population reduced by upwards of 90 percent.

  —Alyn Brodsky, Madame Lynch & Friend, New York 1975

  In representing the courage, the fearlessness of death of the Paraguayans as so extraordinary, my statements are fully supported by every one, of whatever shade of opinion, who has written or spoken of this singular people.… The story of their sufferings and of their heroism should not perish with them.

  —George Frederick Masterman, Seven Eventful Years in Paraguay, London 1870

  Paz Y Justicia (Peace and Justice)

  —The Coat of Arms of Paraguay

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  MARISCAL FRANCISCO SOLANO LÓPEZ, dictator of Paraguay

  ELIZA LYNCH, his mistress

  COLONEL FRANZ (called François) VON WISNER DE MORGENSTERN, Hungarian nobleman

  COMANDANTE LUIS MENENEZ, minion of López

  GILDA LEÓN DE MENENEZ, his wife

  SALVADOR LEÓN, head of the area’s leading family

  ALIVIA, his wife

  XANDRA, their daughter

  PADRE GREGORIO PEREZ, pastor of Santa Caterina

  RICARDO YOTTÉ, close ally of López and Lynch

  MARTITA, his sister

  ESTELLA, his sister

  JOSEFINA QUESADA, village seer

  PABLO, her grandson

  MARIA CLAUDIA BENÍTEZ, devout parishioner

  MANUELA ARAGON, village blacksmith

  HECTOR MOMPÓ, SATURNINO FERMÍN, GASPÁR OTAZÚ, three old men of the village

  TOMÁS PEREIRA DA GRAÇA, Brazilian cavalryman

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraphs

  Dramatis Personae

  Prologue: Paraguay 1869

  Paraguay 1868

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Historical Note

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Annamaria Alfieri

  About the Author

  Copyright

  PARAGUAY 1869

  They faced the edge of a cliff. The deep river gorge in front of them, with rocks and water far, far below, resembled nothing so much as a palisade along the coast of Ireland, which she had left almost twenty-five years ago. From thence to Paris, where after years of surviving on her looks, she met Francisco Solano López, the son of the dictator of Paraguay, a toad of a man with no neck and execrable manners, but limitless wealth. He saw in her everything he lacked: beauty, charm, style, and in return for her company he offered her so much more than freedom from want. With him she could have luxury and adventure, even a chance at becoming an empress like her friend Eugénie. And so she came here to the heart of South America, where he would be the great leader of his people and she his consort.

  The mountains were rugged here in the north, streaked this chilly morning with mist that clung to the ridges and obscured the peaks. Harsh terrain. Not at all like the benign and verdant valley where they had last pitched their lovely white tents.

  The enemy had driven them to this forbidding place. The war, which was supposed to have raised them to be the rulers of the continent, was lost, had broken her heart and his mind.

  “This is as good a place as any,” the great Mariscal López who was going down in defeat said to her in French. It was a statement, not a question, but his eyes searched hers for approval.

  She nodded. Her gray mare backed away from the edge. She reached forward and patted the beast’s neck to calm her. López thought the four trunks on the wagon behind them contained the treasure of Paraguay and hiding it here would protect the gold and jewels from the ruthless invading army that pursued them. He imagined that what he was about to do was sane, though he was mad. Perhaps he had always been mad to think he would become an emperor. She, Eliza Lynch, who was to have ruled with him, knew the trunks contained only rocks. The real treasure was elsewhere, entrusted to people who promised to protect her interests. She had used all her seductive powers to arrange it. Now she could only hope her plans would turn out. But recent life had taught her the limits of what even her iron will could achieve.

  “Mark the spot,” he said, again in French.

  “I have,” she answered.

  He wheeled his stallion around. “Bring up the wagon,” he barked, this time in Guarani, to the two men who were their only companions that day.

  The driver beat a rawhide whip on the backs of the poor bullocks that had dragged their heavy load to this desolate spot. The creaking of huge wheels on wooden axles sounded like a wounded cat. López ordered the two men to unload the four heavy trunks. They sweated and grunted with each one but did with dispatch as they were bid.

  “Cast them over the side,” López ordered. He watched as they toppled the trunks, one by one, over the edge and out of sight, down the cliff, those precious possessions they had carried with them in their desperate retreat through the rough cordillera. Over they went, still nailed shut and bound with heavy leather straps, into the gully below where only jaguars walked.

  As the last trunk fell, López drew his pistol and pointed it at the men who stood at the edge, their shirts soaked with sweat. “Now jump.”

  Uncharacteristically, they did not obey at once. The taller one looked inquiringly at his commander.

  The mariscal, who held the power of life and death over everyone in Paraguay, aimed his pistol. A shot cracked over their heads. “Now! Jump!”

  Without a word, the two men embraced and, still clinging to each other, went headfirst off the precipice.

  PARAGUAY 1868

  1

  From his pulpit, Padre Gregorio looked out over a sea of lovely spider lace mantillas. His congregation was almost entirely women. Only seven males of this village still lived: three old and bent rogues, who were here in the church, snoozing in the back row; a wounded and spent shell of a former boy who would never function as a real man; Salvador, the midwife’s husband, who had lost a foot at the Battle of Curupaity; Ricardo Yotté, the scion of a noble family who had become a close companion of Eliza Lynch, the consort of the dictator, Francisco Solano López, making him one of the most powerful men in Paraguay. Last in the priest’s heart, Comandante Luis Menenez—the local governor—tall, proud, and petty, who inhabited a place safer than that of almost anyone in the country, so sure of his convictions, so secure in his unstinting support of López. The comandante looked up expectantly from the front row. His usual benign expression, the padre knew, masked a wrath that might descend on a priest just for saying what this priest intended to say today. The government dragged men of the cloth to prison as fast as it did rebels and slackers.

  “My children,” the priest, barely thirty-two years old, said forcefully into the thick humid air above the heads of the congregation, “today we must speak of a grave matter. An infinite and rending sorr
ow weighs on all our hearts. The violence that has so long plagued other parts of our continent has now devastated our once-tranquil Paraguay. You have all felt great pain and great loss. Paraguay is like a tree struck by lightning, burnt and withered. Night seems to have fallen.

  “But we must look forward to the sunrise. Though the embers of enmity and conflict burn on, the war’s great battles seem to be over. It is time to put aside weariness and sorrow and begin to rebuild our country. To do so, we must overcome one great obstacle. Here in Santa Caterina only one of ten men remains. It must be the same all over our beloved Paraguay. You can see what this means. If we go on following the church’s laws of only one wife for each husband, our numbers will die out entirely. I and the good Padre Juan Bautista before me have taught you the marriage laws, the sanctity of your bodies, the commandment against adultery. We have enjoined you that you risk eternal damnation if you do not live chastely.

  “I have prayed and fasted, struggled to find a way for you to cling to these laws, but I can see no other way, my children. We must, for now, give up these holy precepts.” He raised his voice and let it ring out over their heads with a conviction he prayed would convince them. “To repopulate our nation, you must accept the necessity to conceive—outside of marriage—the children who will be our future. Unions I cannot bless before this altar, I am sure God will bless in private. Pray to our Holy Mother. She will know you are not committing foul acts of the flesh, but making sacrifices to save your race. She will intercede for you at the throne of heaven. She will understand that these beautiful flowers of womanhood must find a way to bring new souls to Paraguay, so the tree of its life will grow up again from its roots. Paraguay para siempre! Paraguay forever!”

  * * *

  The faithful in the church, silent as they ordinarily were, buzzed with surprise, puzzlement, shock. They sang the responses for the rest of the mass in a state of distraction, until Padre Gregorio placed the chalice in the tabernacle, closed its black wood and silver door, genuflected, and turned to his congregation. He held out his thin, elegant hands. “Pax vobiscum.” He raised his right hand to bless his flock, but they did not go in peace. As he left the altar for the vestry, they filed down the main aisle, singing the recessional with unusual energy, and were hardly out the tall front doors of the church before they began exclaiming.

  A knot of three or four women, straight-backed and barefoot, their traditional white homespun clothing hanging from their thin bodies, whispered together excitedly. The name they spoke most frequently was “Ricardo Yotté.” Yotté—young, elegant, securely connected to the most powerful people in the country—was the first choice of several of them to father their future children. Energized by their prospects, they quickly retreated to Alberta Gamara’s café at the north end of the plaza.

  Cross-eyed, leather-faced Gaspár Otazú separated himself from his elderly male companions and dusted off his quasi-military shirt, complete with epaulettes askew and one brass button. He sidled up to the lithe and winsome Xandra León, doffed his military cap, and leered at her. Within seconds, her parents—Salvador, the wounded war veteran, and Alivia, the village midwife and healer—ushered her off toward their family’s estancia just outside the village. Gaspár then approached Manuela, the lady blacksmith, who also politely rejected the old man.

  Comandante Menenez, after eyeing Xandra León as if she were a pastry in a shop window in Buenos Aires, took his small, smartly dressed wife Gilda by the arm. They spoke to no one. The señora comandante opened her frilly white parasol and marched with her tall, stern husband directly to their stately Spanish-style house, which faced the church across the square, the most prestigious location in the town.

  “That priest is taking his life in his hands,” the comandante said into Gilda’s delicate little ear.

  * * *

  Ordinarily, Padre Gregorio quickly changed out of his vestments and hurried to chat with his parishioners at the front door of the church. Today he shied away, slowly removed the chasuble and alb, hanging and folding the sacred clothing—green for the Sundays after Pentecost. Pentecost, when the Holy Ghost infused the spirits of the apostles. Had the Holy Ghost inspired him? Or had the counsel he had just given his flock come from some base and willful place within his own soul? He could not at this moment deal with their astonishment, their need for guidance through the waters he had roiled. He would exit through the back, would wait to see the villagers in the coming days, a few at a time, and deal with them quietly. Cowardly as it was, he left the vestry through the dim belfry. The only light in the tower slanted down from the unglazed windows high above his head. His foot hit something on the floor. He tripped and nearly fell. A sack had been left there. He opened the back door.

  Bright, early September sunlight streamed on to a scene that tore his breath from him. The sack was a man’s body, lying on its side. He turned it. Good God! How could this be? The young, handsome Ricardo Yotté’s dark eyes stared blankly. Impossible that this man could be dead. But there was a terrible gash in his head, the white of his skull showing under pink flesh.

  The padre’s breath came back in gasps. Yotté’s pomaded black hair was crusted with blood around the horrifying wound. The skin of his face was ashen. His lips slack. None of the man’s considerable power remained.

  The priest looked up into the tower. Had Yotté fallen? But what could he have been doing up in the belfry? The priest put his fingers to Yotté’s neck, feeling for a pulse, though the man was cold, surely dead. Then he remembered himself and ran back into the church for the oils of extreme unction. Yotté’s soul—such as it was—must be a priest’s first priority.

  He returned to the body, uncorked the vial, and took a drop of the holy oil on his right forefinger. If Yotté’s soul lingered, the sacrament might help him into the next world. The padre closed Ricardo’s dead eyes and with the oil made the sign of the cross on the lids. The body still carried the slight lemony scent of Yotté’s cologne. “Through this holy unction,” the priest said aloud, “may the Lord pardon thee whatever sins or faults thou hast committed by sight.” He repeated the words, anointing Yotté’s ears—“sins or faults thou has committed by hearing”—then nostrils and lips. Fervent as he wanted his prayers to be, Padre Gregorio knew full well that Yotté’s eyes and ears and lips had sinned, if not against God, then against many others. He had aided the dictator and his concubine in looting the citizenry of every last trinket of any value. He had reported anyone who lacked enthusiasm for the carnage López had perpetrated. He had embraced any scheme that furthered his own fortunes, regardless of the suffering caused to others. The padre bit his lip and forced his mind away from judgment. That was God’s province. “Whatever sins thou hast committed through taste,” the priest continued. Before he died, Yotté might have repented the evil he had done. His soul could still go to God. At least that was what a priest was supposed to think.

  The padre took the dead man’s limp fingers, intoning, “Whatever sins thou hast committed by touch.” The priest’s hands continued their motion, but his mind stopped. Beneath Yotté’s usually carefully manicured nails, there was grass and mud, as if he had been clawing the ground. Then as he moved toward the dead man’s expensive patent leather boots, intending to anoint his feet, he saw something that redoubled the chill in his heart: cuts in Yotté’s elegant European shirt, with a small bloodstain near each slit. He raised the shirt. Under the fabric were wounds, as if from a knife. He counted six of them in the chest.

  The padre sat back, stunned. Murder. It could only be. And in a country where in the past few years, tens if not hundreds of thousands had died in battle and of disease, this death seemed somehow personal. Mano a mano. That it was this man made it at once understandable and incomprehensible. Yotté was not only a henchman, but also a close friend of the dictator, Francisco Solano López, and a kind of courtier to López’s consort—the beautiful foreigner, Eliza Lynch. Yet someone had murdered him. The comandante would have to be told. The pries
t now had another piece of dangerous news to deliver.

  2

  Still kneeling before the tabernacle after everyone had left the church, Maria Claudia Benítez listened to the congregation making a great noise at the front door, waiting for the padre to appear. But his voice never joined theirs, and they must have given up and drifted out into the tree-shaded plaza. She rose from her aching knees to go find and confront him.

  She did not blame him for not showing his face after what he had said. How could he make such a terrible error? Telling the women from the pulpit that they should fornicate? If the bishop got wind of this, the padre would be—she did not know what the bishop would do. Rumor had it that López had imprisoned the bishop.

  She had to save Padre Gregorio from himself. He was flirting with heresy. This could end his priesthood, which he always called his most precious possession, as if it were a jewel from the Indies or a treasure guarded by a cyclops in a cave. There was no sacristan left in the town, who in the old days might have befriended the priest. He had no one but her to talk sense into him. He was far above her, and not entirely of this world. He loved Paraguay as if it were his own country, but he was born in Buenos Aires, had studied in Rome. She was of this world, and because she knew it, saw things he did not, and she burned to help him do God’s work. Too much familiarity would cause him to withdraw, and she would lose him. She must cloak her worry, act cheerful and respectful, as he would expect of her.

  She dipped her fingers in the holy water, blessed herself, and walked out into the beautiful sunlit spring morning. The coldest months were over and though the nights still chilled, the warmth of the sun, so welcome in the morning, grew uncomfortable by noon. Today a hot wind blew from the north.

  Several people lingered in the square under the shade of the violet-blooming jacaranda trees, speaking with animated expressions.