Angel Eyes (2 page)

She was an unusual hostess in this snobbish city, for she genuinely loved people, and attended to their individual wants. She and Tori embraced warmly, in the manner of sisters too long kept apart.

She drew Tori aside. In the kitchen uniformed servers were loading chased-silver platters, enormous chafing dishes, with food. Adona ignored these people.

"You look tired. Tori."

"Perhaps I am, a little. But if so, it's only the fatigue of inaction."

' 'Yes.'' Adona nodded.' 'I know you well. You need passion. Like with Estilo and me, there is a passion. But your passion is for what? This violence, living on the edge of the great abyss?'' Her eyes were sad. "I think this is not healthy."

' 'Estilo said much the same thing to me this afternoon.''

Adona smiled. "Estilo is very fond of you." She laughed, a beautiful musical sound. "Did you know that in the beginning I was quite jealous of you?''

"You had no reason to be," Tori said.

"Why not? Estilo is no angel. But then who is? Me? Are you?"

"No," Tori said, abruptly thinking of Greg, soaring like an angel above Earth's atmospheric envelope. And then, while crawling outside, along the skin of his vehicle, something had punctured his EVA suit, and all the oxygen had been sucked from his lungs. A matter of seconds, that's all it had taken. From heaven to hell, with only the brittle blue starlight for company. ' 'Death by hypoxia,'' his death certificate had read, but that was so cold, so clinical. It had not described his iced body, blistered and bruised beyond recognition by the cruel vacuum of space.

"Tori." Adona was gripping her arm. "Here, take some brandy, you've gone white."

"I'm all right." But just the same, Tori downed the liquor.

Adona shook her head. "There was a time," she said, "when I longed for the life you lead: armed to the teeth, in the jungle, me enemy just ahead. It made me feel so ... I don't know, alive." She took the empty glass from Tori's hand. "But times change, I've changed. The truth is that the only time I felt safe was when I had a MAC-10 in my hands and a knife on my hip. Then I knew I was the equal of any man-not sexually, and certainly not emotionally. But still I felt equal. A man could kill, and so could I. I was respected, even at times deferred to. Then, at last, there was no difference between us. You understand."

Tori looked at her. "What changed?"

Adona shrugged. "The world turns on its axis, the seasons change, day into night. Who really can say with certainty? But I suspect that I have found that whatever I was reaching for is nonexistent or, at least, illusory. I feel as though in trying to measure up to men's standards, I've been sucked whole into their world. And I've discovered I don't like it."

"What does Estilo say to all this? He met you in the jungle; that's where you fell in love."

"Estilo doesn't know."

"But you must tell him," Tori said. "Estilo loves you; he wants you to be happy."

Adona's liquid brown eyes locked with Tori's. "Yes, he loves me. But happiness, now that's another matter entirely. Estilo is the consummate businessman-he lives for the deal, it doesn't matter what the deal is. Because each deal is well-defined, and Estilo's world is well-defined. I have spent so much time and effort to become a part of that world, and now, as far as he's concerned, everything meshes perfectly. He couldn't let me go. My role is too well-defined. If I were to leave, a black hole would appear, an undefined gap he could not tolerate.''

"But do you want to leave him?"

Adona gave off a little smile, like the glow of a tiny candle as darkness falls. "I don't know."

"Don't let him go," Tori said. "He's a good man."

' 'Well, at least he's a little good.''

Adona suddenly leaned forward, kissed Tori on both cheeks. "Go enjoy the party. Too much gloomy talk is bad for the soul.''

Tori squeezed Adona's hand, left her to monitor the coming food. The rooms were filled with people-Buenos Aires' most famous artists, models, chantas-and smoke, but somehow Estilo found Tori, pushed a Kir Royale into her hand, kissed her on the cheek, murmured an endearment in German. He used German infrequently, only when he was slightly drunk, and never in a place where he could be overheard. He was Argentine, after all, and had his own myth to foster.

"It is times like this," he said, linking his aim in hers, "when I miss Munich most.'' Tori knew he traveled to Germany several times a year. "Have you ever eaten in Die Aubergine?"

"I've never been to Munich," Tori said with a sense of deja vu. They'd had this conversation many times.

"Ah, to look out on the Maximilianplatz and dine on such food!" Estilo shook his head. "Still, Buenos Aires is home. And, after all, Munich is not such a mysterious place. And the Germans-ach, the Germans never change. That is supposed to be their great strength. But I have never found much to admire in stone and concrete."

He guided her outside, onto the terrace that overlooked Buenos Aires. It faced west, and one could see the boundary, the end of the city's lights, the darkness along the wind-whipped plain where the Pampa-Argentina's great prairie, filled with cowboys, ranchers, people used to a hard, dusty existence -- began.

Estilo pointed to the darkness. "There is where I was born, schatzie. Not in Germany, like my father. He married the daughter of an estanciero, and I like to think I was born atop a horse.'' He laughed abruptly. "But that may be just another myth. My analyst says I rely too heavily on myth. But she doesn't understand. I am half German; I, more than most portenos, need the sanctuary of myth in order to live with myself. I don't know what my father did during the war and, God help me, I don't want to know. Do you think I can tell my analyst this?" He shrugged. "It doesn't matter, really. The truth is, I'd rather take her to bed than talk to her." Estilo looked at Tori suddenly. "And you, schatzie. What is the truth about you?"

' 'I thought we had an agreement,'' Tori said.

"We do. Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies, yes? We have helped each other out in the past without being told precisely what the other did." He shrugged. "That does not mean we don't know, eh?" Estilo was very grave. "But I must tell you that sometimes you worry me. I never had children; I never thought I wanted them; I am far too self-indulgent. But I confess that often I feel as if you are my daughter. I feel the urge to protect you even though I know that is the last thing you want from anyone."

All at once. Tori understood that Estilo was afraid of offending her. She felt a corresponding rush of emotion that threatened

to strangle her: thinking of Greg, who had only wanted to protect her. She went immediately into prana, deep, controlled breathing that sent oxygen through her entire body.

"You're very kind," she said at last. The lights of the city shone through the night, illuminating the undersides of lowering clouds. The air had turned heavy; soon it would rain. "And you're very dear to me." She gave him a tiny smile that had about it an ironic edge. "But it is you portenos who are mad about analysts."

"In my many years on this planet,'' Estilo said,' 'I have come to realize that everyone can, at one time or another, benefit from introspection. You are an extraordinary human being. Tori, but in this, I think, you are no exception."

Tori smiled, kissed him on the cheek, embraced him briefly. "Thank you, Papa," she said in German.

Estilo looked into her eyes, and she was reminded of Ariel, of how the younger man also had looked her in the eyes this afternoon at the Cafe la Biela, of the different emotions the two men stirred in her.

"Ariel has been searching for you since he arrived," Estilo said. "I think he is smitten."

"He is very handsome," Tori admitted.

"I think he will be good for what ails you, schatzie," Estilo said.

Tori laughed. "You sound like a soothsayer. What does he do?"

"Oh, I think that depends," Estilo said. "his business is beef-very boring, as he said. It's perfectly legitimate. But I believe that he has another reason for being here: the disappeared. I think he is conducting a clandestine investigation into the atrocities committed here in the name of justice."

"Interesting."

"I was certain you'd think so," he said. Then he pushed her back into the milling throng of the party. "Go find him before he faints from anguish." Estilo was obliged to shout this last in order to be heard over the din of music and cacophonous conversation.

Ariel was dressed in black. In that first instant when Tori spotted him through the crowd, he looked like an angel she had once dreamed about. He had no halo, however, and when he saw her, he broke out in a smile, his white even teeth shining, and the image dissolved. Angels-at least as Tori conceived of them-never smiled.

"I thought you had changed your mind," Ariel said, coming up to her. "I was certain you weren't coming."

"Didn't you consult an adivina" Tori's tone was deliberately sardonic.

"I will tell you a secret," Ariel said, coming close to her. "I put no stock in fortune-tellers. But don't tell my porteno friends. They would never understand." He grinned at her. "Fortune-tellers and analysts are sacred here, like cows in India."

Tori laughed, surprised at how comfortable she felt with this man. There was a danger in that, but only to her self-imposed exile from the human race. Perhaps, she thought, there was something to what Estilo had said. Perhaps she had come down with an illness for which there was as yet no name. She wondered if there was a cure.

Ariel said something but, in the din, she could not hear what it was. She shrugged at him, pointing to her ear, and shook her head.

He put his lips against her ear, said, "Let's go somewhere else."

Ten minutes later they were entering the Recoleta cemetery where the esteemed ancestors of the alta sociedad lay interred beneath flower-strewn earth and ornately carved marble. This was a city of the dead, a baroque necropolis from which many of the myths of the portenos were born. From death to life: there was a certain poetry to the notion, at least from an Argentine point of view.

The jacarandas dripped moisture, but rain was on the way. A low rumble filled the air, its echoes reluctant to fade away.

Ariel led the way as if he were a frequent visitor here. The oppressive darkness of marble and stone ornately carved in the French and Italian Renaissance styles gave way to a soft glow, increasing as they went forward.

Soon they had come upon a crypt. Around it were laid out wreaths woven of flowers, bouquets, bunches of wildflowers. Under the trees where the rain could not penetrate, the flames of perhaps a hundred candles flickered. Into the crypt's face was carved, simply, Eva duarte.

"Here is myth," Ariel said, pointing to the last resting place of Eva Peron. "More has been written-quite erroneously-about her than anyone in this country. Was she saint or demon?''

"Perhaps she was neither," Tori said. "Perhaps she was just a woman."

"Well, don't let the descamisados, the shiftless ones, hear you say that.'' He was speaking of the workers who had slavishly followed their hope, the Perons. "It would not be enough for them." Ariel turned to look at her. It had begun to rain, a fine pattering through the trees that made Tori think of airports and farewells. "You think it is not understandable? Everything else has been taken from them."

"Even their children," Tori said. "Their future."

"In a very real sense, yes. Those that disappeared in the night during Argentina's reign of terror will never be heard from again. The disappeared are now only mute witnesses to this country's savage history. Oppression stilled their voices forever." Ariel looked out across the sea of baroque headstones and crypts. "It's quite sad."

Stone angels surrounded Tori and Ariel, their tiny carved wings encrusted with the soot of the city. Rain rolled down their cheeks like tears as they remembered the dead. The polished marble of the necropolis was milky, eerily luminous in the aqueous light from the massed candles.

"Does this display mean that after all this time Peronism still lives?"

"Only in a sense," Ariel said. "It is like a dream, you see. The descamisados continue to hope, but now the new leaders of Peronism veer from one political platform to another instead of facing the truth: that the true essence of Peronism is today an anachronism."

Tori stared into the candles' flames. "Here the children paid for the sins of their fathers." She turned to look into his face. ''Where is the justice in that?''

"We are in Argentina," Ariel said. "A place where justice is, at best, misunderstood."

The rain drowned the candles' flames, and darkness once again enwrapped the city of the dead. Tori had the abrupt feeling that she and Ariel both knew what the worst was: justice used as a weapon to destroy, and as a shield behind which to obscure culpability.

Ariel shivered as if the night had suddenly turned cold or a spirit had touched the back of his neck. "Perhaps it was a mistake to come here tonight," he said.

* 'Do you mean Estilo's party or the Recoleta cemetery?'' Tori asked.

Ariel smiled, and Tori realized that she liked his face. In repose it was a formidable visage: stern, strong-willed, with an almost defiant edge-seemingly far from the bored businessman he claimed to be. But when Ariel laughed, the forbidding cast disintegrated into a kind of boyish charm she found irresistible.

She felt this last odd and a bit discomfiting. It had been a long time since she had found anyone irresistible.

Ariel looked at her. "I believe you have the most extraordinary eyes I've ever seen," he said. "This afternoon they were turquoise, green, I thought. Now they are the color of cobalt."

Tori laughed. "My father used to call me Angel Eyes. My brother and I had the same eyes."

"Had?" Ariel had caught a tone as well as a tense.

Tori put her head down into darkness. "My brother's dead."

"I'm sorry."

Tori took a deep breath. "Well. He was a wonderful man. And he was blessed. Before he died, he flew like an angel. And like an angel, he saw the whole planet spread out before him." Ariel looked at her quizzically, and she smiled sadly. "My brother was an astronaut."