No Place for Heroes by Laura Restrepo Read Free Book Online Page B

and with a big smile announced that she had ordered twoplates of roasted pork loin with pineapple, which had been one of her father’s favorite dishes.
    “You mean you ordered pork loin with pineapple for you,” Mateo said, emphasizing the “for you.”
    “For both of us, you’re going to love it. My papa loved it. What a pleasure it will be to eat the same dish he always ordered when we used to come here.”
    “But you know I hate pineapple and pork gives me a stomachache.” Mateo’s disappointment seemed unfathomable.
    “No, no, you’ll like this dish, I promise. As soon as you taste it you’ll agree, just see.”
    “Don’t do that, Mother. I wanted to order something else. When are you going to stop making decisions for me?” The radiant expression had completely disappeared and his confident air had evaporated. He sunk in his chair and began to anxiously twirl a loose lock, forgetting about the great care with which he had fixed his hair. Lorenza tried to apologize but immediately realized that it was too late, that no one could break through the absorbed silence that had overtaken her son. No one except the waiter, who approached the table to hand them the menus again because they had sold out of pork loin.
    “Everything else is available,” he offered. “But we’re out of that.”
    “Thank God,” Lorenza said, and asked for a ham and cheese sandwich, a salad, and tea. Mateo took the menu disinterestedly, but sat up in his chair. He grew more cheerful ashe read through the list of pastas, and after considering all the choices, he decided on fettuccine alla panna , which he devoured as soon as they put it in front of him and which quickly restored his spirits.
    “So you came here with your papa?” he said, suggesting to his mother that he was ready to consider a truce. “Did you ever come with Forcás?”
    “We wouldn’t have been able to afford it. Besides, the resistance had once attacked this restaurant. They set off a bomb and it was closed for some time.”
    “Stop, stop, I didn’t ask you for stories about attacks or wars. What I wanted you to tell me is how you ended up in Buenos Aires the time you met Ramón.”
    “Life works in mysterious ways.”
    “Ah, no, I’m falling asleep already. Can you please not start with such a cliché?”
    “You know what, Mateo? I don’t want to talk to you anymore. I was wrong to order the pork, all right, but stop being so rude.”
    “Oh, come on, don’t get mad.”
    “Then stop being such a pain in the butt.”
    “Fine, I’ll stop.”
    “This is the thing, if you’ll listen, you can learn. You’ve come here searching for your father, and years ago I too came here trying to find mine.”
    “But your father lived in Bogotá. And wasn’t he already dead?”
    “He had just died, a few days before.”
    “So?”
    “So I had to go looking for him. We all do it, go searching for our dead.”
    “You wouldn’t cry when he died. You’ve told me that.”
    “They say that a death that truly matters to you never makes you cry, instead it defeats you,” she told him, and then asked if he wanted some of her salad. He shook his head, but she insisted. When she tried to put a few lettuce leaves on his plate, he grabbed her by the hand and glared at her, enraged.
    “Again with this, Mother?”
    It was their old war about food, in which they had been engaged for a long time, forever, it seemed. And what she felt at that moment was, in some ways, also rage. It unsettled her that her son refused to eat fruits and vegetables. She felt infuriated, worried, and confused, not understanding how he could feel such an aversion for any food that had more than one color or texture, that strayed too far from the primary flavors.
    This predilection for white and soft food, milk, bread, vanilla ice cream, pasta, seemed to her to go against all instincts of survival, decency even, as if he feared bringing anything dark, unfamiliar, or surprising to his mouth, as