The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos by Margaret Mascarenhas Read Free Book Online Page A

on her return. He misses her kisses.
    “Levántate, muchacho,” says La Vieja Juanita.
    He climbs out of his hammock, goes outside. He pisses against the guava tree and walks back into the hut, where he sits on
     a stool next to the slightly lopsided wooden door held up on two sides by wooden fruit crates. It serves variously as a dining
     table, a cutting board, and the work space where his grandmother makes her delicate mobiles of papier-mâché. Suspended by
     nylon thread from pieces of natural wood that Efraín gathers from the surrounding forest, they are delicately crafted human
     forms with wings of exotic bird feathers, arms exuberantly outstretched, giving the impression that they are flying. No two
     mobiles are the same.
    “Anyone would think this was a five-star hotel, the way you lounge about,” says La Vieja Juanita. “I’ve been slaving at this
     maldito stove for over an hour.” Efraín smiles at the daily refrain, inhales deeply the aroma of fresh ground coffee beans,
     shuts his eyes. A few minutes later, she places two fragrant cups of black coffee and two steaming bowls of Pizca Andina on
     the table. This is their usual breakfast before heading to Sorte, a favored tourist destination believed to be the home of
     the Indian goddess Maria Lionza. During the tourist season, which is most of the year, Efraín and La Vieja Juanita pack up
     the vibrant mobile representations of the goddess and her court and walk through the forest to the main road, where they catch
     a bus to the town of Chivacoa. There, they take another bus to the flea market at the foothills of Sorte Mountain, where they
     set up their stall made of cardboard. When they leave, Efraín folds the cardboard carefully and leaves it in the care of Fernando,
     the owner of the only place of business on this stretch with actual walls.
    Though it is their only livelihood, Efraín is always sorry when La Vieja Juanita’s works of art are sold at the flea market
     near Sorte, for they are far too beautiful to be given away for only three hundred bolívares. He thinks that most of the purchasers,
     with their absurdly festive tourist hats and fat wallets, don’t appreciate the time, love, and skill that go into each piece,
     and he is sometimes rude to them. Then La Vieja Juanita makes him apologize. When he is silent and gloomy afterward, she ruffles
     his hair and changes the subject. She asks him to tell her his dreams.

    Efraín can remember his dreams as long as they are not interrupted. Once in a while his dreams have a component of presentiment.
     According to La Vieja Juanita, this is a marvelous thing; it means he is in touch with the spirit world. La Vieja Juanita
     places great store in the spirit world. She says all Indian boys listen to the messages from the ancestors in their dreams
     and that is why they know who they are. “It is the mestizos who try to live in two worlds, white and Indian, who are in danger
     of losing themselves in the commotion of life.”
    “And what about your son, Moriche?” Efraín’s mother had asked with a drop of acid in her voice. And La Vieja Juanita hadn’t
     replied to that because the last they heard of Moriche, he was running guns and drugs for whichever side of the cross-border
     conflict—rebel or military—paid him the most, and even La Vieja Juanita had called him a malandro sin vergüenza.
    Efraín’s mother, who could never remember her own dreams, had said La Vieja Juanita’s ideas were made of straw, that she should
     stop filling Efraín’s head with fairy tales.
    “Fairy tales?” the old woman had snorted. “And what about that time when he was three and refused to get into the bus because
     of his dream? Didn’t that bus drive right off the road and into a ravine a few hours later? And wasn’t everyone on the bus
     killed? Is that a fairy tale?”
    “He was having a tantrum. He has never liked buses. It was just coincidence,” his mother said.
    “There are no