Departing at Dawn

13 Perhaps

68 13 Perhaps Fall passed and the Southern Hemisphere winter arrived with a freezing, dust-laden wind that drove everybody inside by four in the afternoon while it whipped the clothes hanging on the line and threatened the delicate plants in cans. Uncle Tristán Nepomuceno settled even more into his little dwelling behind the house, taking with him as many of the plants as he could. They would spend the winter with him and share his fate “no matter what might happen,” as he put it. AuntAvelinapackedawaythesummerclothesandbrought out the embroidered bed covers from Catamarca that decorated the beds with the buds of enormous, completely imaginary flowers that stood out against their dark background. They had been embroidered by hands that for generations now had been sleeping the sleep of the just. She also brought out the huge, heavy blankets that weren’t really all that warm so everybody had to sleep in wool socks and thick clothing anyway. That was preferable to using those blankets of stiff, rustic wool that caused horrible nightmares when they touched the sleepers , who would feel completely alone, vulnerable, and naked as 69 they faced the life and death situations all those dreams placed them in during the night. BertawassleepingintheroomthathadbeenUncleTristán Clímaco’s, the uncle they hardly ever talked about, who lived with his wife in Buenos Aires and didn’t keep in touch with the family very well. The room had been closed up for several decades before Aunt Avelina fixed it up for her. Berta did the best she could to warm up the bed, which had been Grandmother Justina’s until she died. The bed had been disassembled after Uncle Tristán Clímaco moved out, and the pieces stored in the saddle room with the fur saddle pads and the leg protectors, the same room where the spurs, crops, and lassos—given to each brother at birth by her grandparents —were still hanging on the wall, glinting in the dim light. All of that was from when the ranch still had good horses and Old Man Celestino Riera used to stay out in the countryside for months and even cross over into Chile with his cattle; when the grandmother was a woman with strong legs and statuesque arms, with enough energy for dancing so hard she left footprints on national holidays, and making five hundred empanadas in half a day. The Old Man even managed to keep that hard-working family, some cows, some crops, and some power, as well as plans for reaping something from that stony ground until he died and the grandmother hit hard luck and the children chose to work in the public sector rather than in the country. The railroad and governments sank the town even deeper into ruin, and the hot dry wind of La Rioja took care of the rest, so that the few with an enterprising spirit gave up, and people just kept leaving as they had for centuries. 70 In one way or another, most of the Rieras got out of there, each with a particular way of doing things, each trying to make it in the best way possible, to create a place to survive, have clothing, get help and television, and not be, under any circumstances , talked about by anybody who might be able to harm them or their property, here on earth as it would be in heaven. But their security was bound up in words they would not utter. They were people who did not talk any more than necessary. Such people would never in any context use the word “change,” or the word “evolution” (by now linked to sin), or “atheist,” “free thinker,” “intellectual,” “political,” or the word “utopia,” for example, because all of those words might create the impression that one was a revolutionary. But the two most important words that should never be said were the worst: the most dangerous one, “sex,” was already the most disastrous of all words; and “love” was a word to be careful about for it was okay when said by women but really bad when used by men except in the context of Christ and his church. The Rieras who stayed in La Rioja learned well how to survive and had nothing to hide, because they did absolutely nothing that could not be done with the door to the house unlocked day and night, as...