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

things that she says, convinced that it solves all my problems. Yesterday I watched some men play a game called frontón , throwing a ball violently against a wall, and then I bought a black beret, like the one Che Guevara wore. They told me that it was a Basque beret, exactly like the one all the locals wear around here. I had thought that it was only Che Guevara who used it, being who he was. But Grandfather Pierre also used to have one. Lorenza said that he always wore it, so she never saw the top of his head. I asked her if Forcás wore one when he was in the resistance, and she replied that it would have been an idiotic thing to do, that no one in the resistance was stupid enough to go around in a Che Guevara costume.
    Before night fell, we went to the cemetery to look for my grandparents’ names on the tombstones. But we didn’t have any luck, although we looked carefully, tomb by tomb, just because it occurred to Lorenza that they may have wanted to die in their homeland. If they are even dead, which we don’t know for sure. We have asked in town about them, but no one knows of them.
    I met an old man wearing a Basque beret at a bar who toldme that many people had left for America and never returned. I told him that my grandfather had been a logger. He replied, if your grandfather was a logger, then it probably went very well for him in America. There are trees to spare there because there are no cities and no roads, land is a never-ending forest. I was going to argue with him that there were cities and roads, but it wasn’t worth it because Basques are very stubborn, like Forcás, and like me. And Lorenza is more stubborn than any of us, even if she isn’t Basque. She brought me to look for my grandparents in France, where it would be a miracle if we find them, but she has never wanted to look for them in Argentina, where they are surely still living. I asked her why, and she said that it was precisely because of that. She says that in Argentina we might run into them, and my father might be with them. It was best if I didn’t get mixed up in that mess.
    My grandparents immigrated to Polvaredas, a region of Argentina that I don’t know. And it’s true, my grandfather was a logger. He used a chain saw and they paid him by the felled tree. Lorenza says that she saw very few trees during the times that she visited my grandparents. Maybe my grandfather had cut them all down. He must have been very strong, like Ramón, if he had to work with something as heavy as the chain saw all day.
    There was also a story about bunny rabbits. They kept rabbits. Maybe they still do, if they are still alive. My grandparents, not the rabbits. Who knows? Maybe Pierre and Noëlle are still in Polvaredas, maybe they miss me and are looking for me. But that’s unlikely. If they had looked for meat all, they would have already found me. When I was a baby, they visited me and brought dead rabbits to make stew. Ramón put them in the freezer and they never came out because my parents didn’t know how to make rabbit stew, and besides they thought it was disgusting to handle the reddish, skinned rabbits. My grandparents would call later from Polvaredas and Ramón would tell them that I had eaten the whole rabbit and that I was growing into a giant.
    When it grew dark and La Rhune was no longer visible, we walked back to the store with the Basque berets and I bought another one, for Ramón, to give it to him when I see him again.

W HEN L ORENZA ANNOUNCED in Madrid that she was willing to be transferred to Buenos Aires to aid the resistance from within, she was quickly assigned her first mission, to smuggle microfilm, passports of various nationalities, and cash, she didn’t remember how much, but a lot, what had seemed to her an enormous sum then. She was to hand it over to him, to Forcás. How do I find him? she had asked, and they told her that he would find her.
    “Daaaaamn!!” Mateo said. “My papa, the Indiana Jones of the