Read Online The Invisible Mountain by Carolina de Robertis - Free Book Online

streaked her apron. She stepped closer.
    “I’m Coco Descalzo,” she said, “from the butcher shop.” She pointed down the path at a house with a hand-painted sign. “What’s your name?”
    “Pajarita.”
    “Where are you from?”
    “Tacuarembó.”
    “Really! So far north!” Coco squinted up at Ignazio, at work again. “Your husband too?”
    “No. He’s Italian.”
    “Ah.” Coco moved her basket from one ample hip to the other. “When your house is finished, come get a nice
churrasco
from my shop. A welcome gift.”
    Pajarita and Ignazio painted their house the color of sand and filled it with a bed, three chairs, a table, and mint-and-lemon wallpaper. They cleaned out their apartment in La Ciudad Vieja and left it for good. They ate
milanesas
and rice in their new kitchen under the lighthouse’s pulse. In bed, their rhythm slowed to match the beam gliding over them: a beat of light, then pulling back, a beat of light.
    The next morning, Pajarita made her husband breakfast, saw him off, and walked the path to Carnicería Descalzo. The butcher shop had low ceilings and sharp, pungent air. Two women talked at the counter. Coco presided behind it. Pajarita lingered near the door and examined the beef. It was good meat, red and lean and freshly slaughtered. The women were talking about war. The English, apparently, were winning: the woman who was shaped like a soccer ball had heard this. The lady in the huge hat had a son who liked the war because soldiers need uniforms, and Uruguay had wool.
“¡Por favor!”
Coco said. “That makes it good? Do you know how many boys have died already?”
    “I suppose,” said Huge Hat Lady. “In Europe. But here we’re doing well.”
    “Hmmph,” Coco said. “That’s thanks to
batllismo
, good schools, good pay, not the war.” She pursed her lips. “Pajarita. Come in!”
    Pajarita approached the main counter.
    “This is our new neighbor. I promised her a
churrasquito.”
She bent to look for one among the thin, lean sheets of meat.
    “I’m Sarita,” the big woman said, staring at Pajarita with frank curiosity.
    Huge Hat Woman squinted at Pajarita. “Well? What do you think?”
    She looked uncertainly at the woman. Her eyes were small and mouselike. “About what?”
    “About the Great War! Is it good or what?”
    She hesitated. These women spoke of things that happened so very far away, as though they saw across great distances and were accustomed to appraising the turning of the world. She thought of Europe, a nebulous place her mind could not bring into focus. She thought of soldiers, like the ones who’d joined the rebels in her grandfather’s time, returning to Tacuarembó with missing limbs, howling dreams, twitching mouths.
    “It must be ‘what.’”
    Sarita laughed. The woman in the hat scowled, took her package, and left.
    “Don’t worry about her.” Sarita looked vaguely victorious. She smelled of vanilla perfume. “She loves to complain.”
    Coco handed Pajarita a neat paper package. “Welcome to Punta Carretas.”
    Pajarita returned the next day and the next, and within a week she began drinking
mate
upstairs from the
carnicería
, in Coco’s home, during siesta time while the butcher shop was closed. Coco’s husband, Gregorio, stayed down in the shop, cutting and carving and hanging up meat. Their baby, Begonia, crawled underfoot. In days where work began before dawn and went into the night, the siesta hour at Coco’s was a refuge, a raft of time, a stolen sacrament for those who came. The Descalzo living room teemed with knickknacks, bright décor, and an authentic English tea set enshrined at the center of the mantel. Coco was extremely proud of her Anglo cups and saucers, which gathered dust while her
mate
gourd made daily rounds. Above the tea set hung a photograph of José Batlle y Ordóñez, the recent president, who, Pajarita gathered from conversation, had transformed Uruguay into a modern, democratic nation with his thoughts