Meet Me Under The Ombu Tree Read online

  Maria wrote Sofia’s address in her diary, writing backwards in case Santi were to come snooping, and put the letter back into the envelope. She didn’t read the rest. She couldn’t put herself through the torture of reading the details of their affair, not even to satisfy her curiosity. She walked solemnly out onto the balcony with a box of matches. Lighting the envelope she let it burn into a flowerpot, until there was nothing left besides a small mound of featherlight

  ashes that she pressed into the earth with her fingers. Then she slumped onto the tiled floor, dropping her head into her hands and finally allowed the tears to break and fall freely. She knew she shouldn’t have burned the letter but they would all thank her in the end. She wasn’t just doing it for herself, or for them, but for her parents whose hearts would break if Santi left them for ever.

  She hated Sofia, she missed her, she longed for her. She missed her moods, her petulance, her sharp wit and irreverent humour. She felt so hurt and betrayed. They had grown up together and shared everything. Sofia had always been selfish, but she had never shut her friend out before. Not like this. She couldn’t understand why Sofia hadn’t written to her. She felt she didn’t matter: she wasn’t important. It sickened her to think that she had been nothing more than a loyal puppy, following Sofia around, never really appreciated. Well, she’d done it now. Sofia would hurt just as much as she was hurting. Now she would know what it felt like to be treated as if she didn’t matter. When she later reflected on what she had done, she felt a terrible guilt and vowed never to tell anybody. When she looked at her reflection in the mirror she didn’t recognize herself any more.

  When another letter arrived, not long after the first, Maria felt her stomach lurch with guilt. She hadn’t expected Sofia to write again. Hastily she hid it at the bottom of her bag and later condemned it to death by fire like the last one. After that she stalked the post every morning with the cunning of a professional thief. Trapped by her previous deceptions she would have been unable to stop even if she had wanted to.

  Weekends weren’t the same once Sofia left. All that remained after her parting was a bitter residue and an animosity between the families that threatened to destroy their much-cherished unity. The summer faded as the winter set in. The air smelt thickly of burning leaves and damp earth. The atmosphere on the farm was one of melancholy. Each family retreated into itself. The Saturday asa-do was washed away with the rain and soon the burnt ground where the barbecue had been became nothing more than a puddle of muddy water symbolizing the end of an era.

  As the weeks dragged on into months Santi became more and more desperate for some sort of communication from Sofia. He wondered whether she was being prevented from writing to him. All part of the strategy to get over him, no doubt. His mother was sympathetic but realistic. He must get on with his life, she said, and forget about Sofia. There were plenty of other girls about.

  His father told him to stop ‘moping around’. He had got himself into a mess: ‘It happens to us all at some stage in our lives; the trick is to push through it. Bury yourself in your studies, you’ll be glad later on that you did.’ It was obvious that they were both deeply disappointed in him, but there was no point in making the boy suffer more than he was already suffering. ‘We’ve punished him enough,’ they said.

  Sofia filled his every moment, whether he was lying in tormented sleep or out galloping angrily across the plain. He spent every weekend on the farm, retracing their steps, running his hand nostalgically over their symbol in the trunk of the ombu tree. He would torture himself remembering her until he would crumble like a child and cry until he had no more strength left in him to sob.

  In July of that year Juan Domingo Peron, President of the Republic of Argentina, died after only eight months in office, following his return from exile the previous October. Whether loved or hated Peron had been in the public eye for thirty years. His body was not embalmed and the funeral was simple according to his own instructions. His second wife, Isabel, became President and the country spiralled into decline. Intellectually challenged, she relied on her Machiavellian adviser, former policeman and astrologer, Jose Lopez Rega, nicknamed ‘El Mago’ (the Wizard), who claimed he could raise the dead and speak to the Archangel Gabriel. He even mouthed Isabel’s speeches as she gave them, claiming that the words came directly from the spirit of Peron. But the blood was gushing out of the country and neither Isabel nor Lopez Rega could stop it. The guerrillas broke into revolt only to be met with the death squads of El Mago. Paco predicted that it wouldn’t be long before their President was overthrown.

  ‘She’s a nightclub dancer, I don’t know what she’s doing in politics. She should stick to what she’s good at,’ he grumbled.

  He was right. In March 1976 the military deposed Isabel in a coup and put her under house-arrest. With General Videla at their head they proceeded to launch a bloody war on anyone who opposed them. People suspected of subversion or antigovernment activity were rounded up, tortured and killed. The Great Terror had begun.

  Chapter 21

  Geneva, 1974

  Sofia sat on the bench overlooking the deep blue lake of Geneva. Her eyes, fixed somewhere amid the faraway mountains, were red and sore from crying. It was quite cold although the sky was the most magnificent cornflower blue. She sat huddled in her cousin’s sheepskin coat and wool hat and shivered. Dominique had told her to eat. What would Santi think if she returned to Argentina a poor version of the woman he had said goodbye to? But she didn’t feel like eating. She would eat once he replied to her letter.

  Sofia had arrived in Geneva at the beginning of March. It was the first time she had been to Europe. She was immediately stunned by the differences between her own country and Switzerland. Geneva was meticulously tidy. The streets were clean and smooth, the shop windows framed with gleaming brass, their interiors luxuriously decorated and scented. The cars were glossy and modern and the houses free from the kind of blemishes that a turbulent history had bestowed on the buildings of Buenos Aires. Yet in spite of all its order and polish Sofia missed the mad exuberance of her home city. In Geneva the restaurants closed at eleven whereas Buenos Aires only awoke at that time and continued to buzz until well into the small hours. She missed the froth of activity, the noisy cafes, the street parties and entertainers, the smell of diesel and burnt caramel and the sound of barking dogs and screaming children that were all part of the ambience of the streets of Buenos Aires. She found Geneva quiet. Polite, cosmopolitan, cultured but quiet.

  Sofia had never met her father’s cousin Antoine and his wife Dominique before, although she had heard her parents speak of them. Antoine was her father’s second cousin; she knew all about him from her father’s stories of his ‘London days’, when they had enjoyed the city together like two hounds on a hunt, and Anna had told her that she had lived with the couple in Kensington during their engagement. Sofia seemed to recall that Anna hadn’t taken to Dominique - she found her too ‘over the top’, whatever that meant. Dominique had never liked Anna, she recognized an opportunist when she saw one, but she warmed to Sofia the minute she laid eyes on her. So like Paco, she thought happily.

  To Sofia’s relief, Antoine and Dominique turned out to be the most delightful couple she had ever met. Antoine was large and humorous and spoke

  English with a very heavy French accent. At first she thought he was putting it on to make her laugh. She certainly needed a laugh when she arrived. But it was genuine and he enjoyed her amusement.

  Dominique was a woman in her forties. She was curvaceous with a candid, generous face and large blue eyes that opened very wide when she wanted to show interest in something. She tied her long blonde hair (which she was happy to point out wasn’t at all natural) into a ponytail with spotted hankies. Always spotted hankies. Dominique told Sofia that she had met Antoine thanks to a spotted hanky, which he had handed to her from the row behind at the Opera in Paris. Antoine had noticed her wiping her tears on the sleeve of her silk dress. From that moment o
n she always wore a spotted hanky in commemoration of that important day.

  Dominique was loud and flamboyant, not only in the way that she laughed, for she sounded like a big exotic bird, but also in the way that she dressed. She always wore brightly coloured flowing trousers and long shirts she bought from an exotic shop called Arabesque in London’s Motcomb Street. Every finger had a ring on it that sparkled. ‘A good knuckleduster in times of need,’ she had said, before telling Sofia of the time she knocked the false teeth out of the leering mouth of a grubby flasher at Knightsbridge tube station. ‘If he had been well-endowed I would have shaken his hand,’ she joked. ‘London is a strange place, the only place I’ve ever been flashed at or threatened. Always on the tube, too.’ She added wryly: ‘I remember a man, another grubby little man, who barely reached up to my navel. He looked up at me with these livid eyes and said “I’m going to fuck you”. So I looked down my nose at him and told him, very firmly, that if he did and I found out about it, I’d be very, very, cross. He was so startled he jumped off at the next station like a scalded cat.’ Dominique enjoyed being outrageous.

  Sofia was dazzled by the violet and shimmering blue eyeshadows she used to enhance the colour of her eyes. ‘What’s the point of using natural colours? Nature can do that by itself,’ she had laughed when Sofia asked her why she chose such vivid colours. She smoked through a long black cigarette-holder like Princess Margaret, and painted her fingernails blood-red. She was confident and opinionated and sassy. Sofia understood exactly why her mother hadn’t liked her, for they were the very qualities that Sofia immediately admired. Sofia and Anna had rarely agreed on anything.

  Antoine and Dominique lived in opulent splendour in a large white house on

  the Quai de Cologny, overlooking the lake. While Antoine spent long hours working in finance, his wife wrote books. ‘Lots of sex and murders,’ she replied with a grin when Sofia had asked her what she wrote about. She had given her one to cheer her up. It was called Naked Suspect and was appallingly bad; even Sofia with her inexperience of good literature could see that. But it sold well and she was always running off to sign copies and give interviews. The couple had two children in their teens - Delfine and Louis.

  Sofia had trusted Dominique right from the moment she had shown sympathy for her situation. ‘You know, cherie, years ago I had a roaring affair with an Italian. I loved him with all my heart, but my parents said he was not good enough for me. He owned a small leather shop in Florence. In those days, I lived in Paris. My parents sent me to Florence to study art, not men - but I can tell you, cherie, I learned more about Italy with Giovanni than I would ever have done in a classroom.’ She had laughed, a deep throaty laugh. ‘And now I cannot remember his second name. It was a long time ago. What I am trying to say, cherie, is that I know how you are feeling. I cried for a month.’

  Sofia had now cried for more than a month. She had lain on Dominique’s white damask bedspread one rainy afternoon and told her everything, from the moment Santi had arrived back home that summer to the moment he had kissed her goodbye under the ombu tree. She had lost herself in her memories and Dominique had sat back against the pillows chainsmoking, listening sympathetically to her every word. She had left out no details, describing their lovemaking without blushing. She had read Dominique’s novels, so she knew there was little that would shock her.

  Dominique had supported Sofia right from the start. She couldn’t understand why Anna and Paco hadn’t allowed the two to marry and have their child. If she had been Sofia’s mother she wouldn’t have stood in their way. There must be more to all this, she thought, and blamed it on Anna. ‘So unlike Paco,’ Antoine had said when Dominique had recounted Sofia’s story.

  Then they had discussed the baby. Sofia was adamant that she would keep it. ‘I have told Santi about the baby in my letter. I know he will want me to have it. He’ll make an adorable father. I’ll take it back to Argentina. It will be out of their control then. We’ll be a family and that’s the end of it.’

  Dominique was encouraging. Of course she shouldn’t abort the child. What a barbaric thing to do. She would help her through it - she’d be proud to. It would be their secret until Sofia decided she was ready to tell her family. ‘You

  can stay as long as you like,’ she had said.'l will love you like my own daughter.’

  At first it had been quite exciting. Sofia had written to Santi the minute she had arrived and Dominique had inscribed the envelope for her with wholehearted enthusiasm. Dominique had then taken her shopping up the rue de Rive to celebrate and bought her the latest European fashions. ‘Wear these while you can. You won’t fit into them for long,’ she had laughed.

  They had gone skiing on weekends in Verbier where Antoine had a beautiful wooden chalet nestled in the mountainside, looking down the valley. Louis and Delfine brought friends and the house was filled with laughter and games in front of the flickering flames of the large open fire. They had posted the letter across the border with much ritual, pleased that no one would suspect a postmark from France. While Sofia missed Santi, she imagined him receiving her letter and scribbling back immediately. They calculated the time it would take for him to write to her and the time it would take for the letter to reach her. She waited excitedly for it to arrive. When the two weeks they had anticipated turned into a month, then two, her mood declined until she simply wasn’t able to eat or sleep and she began to appear tired and pale.

  Sofia had filled her days with the various courses that Dominque had set up for her. Courses in French, courses in art, courses in music, courses in painting. ‘We must keep you busy so you don’t miss your home or think too much about Santi,’ she had said.

  Sofia had allowed them to absorb her because they provided her with some sort of spiritual relief. The music she chose to play on Dominique’s piano was heart-wrenching, the paintings she painted were dark and melancholic, and she vented her tears in the face of such ethereal beauty when she studied the paintings of the Italian Renaissance. As she waited for Santi’s letter or for his presence that she felt sure would appear as a surprise on their doorstep, she used art to find expression for her misery and her hopelessness. She had written again, and again, in case he hadn’t received the first letter, but still no word came from him. No word at all.

  She looked out over the lake and wondered whether Santi had been appalled by her pregnancy. Perhaps he didn’t want to know. Maybe he thought it was just better for everyone if he forgot about her and got on with his life. And what about Maria? Had she forgotten her too? Sofia had wanted to write to her; in fact, she had started a couple of letters but each time she had scrunched up

  the paper and thrown it into the fire. She felt too ashamed. She didn’t know what to say. Sofia looked about her, at the small fragile flowers poking out through the melting snow. Spring was on its way and she had a child growing inside her. She should be happy. But she missed Santa Catalina, the hot summer days and their humid siestas in the attic where no one had been able to reach them.

  When she returned to the house Dominique was frantically waving at her from the balcony, a blue envelope in her hand. Sofia ran up the road. Her depression lifted. Suddenly the clean air filled her lungs and she savoured the taste of spring. Dominique was smiling broadly, her white teeth glimmering against her scarlet lips.

  ‘I was so tempted to open it. Hurry! What does it say?’ she said, impatient with excitement. Finally the young man had written. Sofia would smile again.

  Sofia grabbed the letter and looked at the writing on the front. ‘Oh!’ she groaned in disappointment. ‘It’s from Maria. But perhaps she’s written for him since they probably forbade him to write to me.’ She tore open the envelope. Her eyes scanned the lines of neat, flowery writing. ‘Oh no!’ she wailed and burst into tears.

  ‘What is it, cherie, what does it say?’ asked Dominique, alarmed. Sofia flopped onto the sofa while Dominique read the letter.

  ‘Who is Maxima Marguiles?’ she asked angr
ily.

  ‘I don’t know,’ sobbed Sofia, heartbroken. ‘Maria says he is going out with Maxima Marguiles. How can he - so soon?’

  ‘Do you believe your cousin?’

  ‘Of course I do. She was my best friend - after Santi.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s going out with someone else to show his family that he doesn’t care any more about you. Perhaps he is acting?’

  Sofia took her head out of her hands. ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘He’s clever, isn't he?’

  ‘Yes, and I went out with Roberto Lobito for the same reason,’ she said, brightening up.

  ‘Roberto Lobito?’

  ‘Another story,’ she replied, waving her hand in the air, not wanting to be distracted from talking about Santi.

  ‘Did you tell Maria about your affair with Santi?’ Dominique asked. Sofia felt her stomach sink with guilt. She should have told Maria.

  ‘No. It was our secret, I didn’t tell anyone. I couldn’t tell anyone. I always told Maria everything - but this time ... well, I just couldn’t.’

  ‘So, you don’t think Maria knows,’ Dominique said steadily.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sofia replied biting her nail in agitation. ‘No, she can’t know, because if she did she wouldn’t want to hurt me by telling me about Maxima. She would also have mentioned our affair in her letter. We were best, best friends. I imagine then she doesn’t know.’