The Port of Montevideo Ch. 01

"The ink you sold me was the wrong color. I was hoping I could exchange the shipment. My order was for Royal Blue, but I was sent black. Please advise how to resolve this matter."

The tone of the voice on the other end didn't match with the content of what was being said. The woman was frantic, her voice shaky. She sounded robotic, like she was reciting from memory a painstakingly memorized line only half there.

My mind went blank with fear for a moment, before I realized she was waiting my turn.

"Please accept my sincerest apologies, Señora Duarte. There must have been a mix up with our Uruguayan supplier. I will refund your money and send you a shipment of black ink free of charge," I fumbled out, my hand holding the receiver shaking.

"Thank you for your offer, sir. I need the shipment sent to two separate apartments in Montevideo, the addresses I will provide to you in a later correspondence. Have a good day." The line went silent abruptly.

Soledad, sitting at her desk beside mine in our apartment-cum-makeshift office looked at me, her eyes wide with terror.

"We need to go," I told her calmly, trying to keep my voice from shaking. She stood up and retrieved two packed suitcases from the closet and I crouched beneath my writing desk. I pried up the loose floorboard, underneath which was hidden a leather document pouch. Inside the pouch were four bundles of currency -- Argentinian pesos, Spanish pesetas, francs and US dollars. Tucked beside the cash were four passports: two Uruguayan, each with our photos, but instead of our names, the names Juan Pablo Pellegrini Schultz and Estela Goldberg Nuñez. Our birthdates were altered and in the parallel universe created by these documents sent to us by a sympathizer at the consulate we had been born in Montevideo instead of our native Buenos Aires. The other two passports were French and Italian. I was Dario Picco from Siracusa and she was Mercè Puig, a Catalan refugee from Tarragona naturalized in France. She could never manage to hide her accent, so we deemed it best to create this story of a childhood in Catalonia to disguise the inconsistency.

Soledad retrieved a wooden box from a shelf. She took out the Argentinian passports and ID documents with our real names, along with a small stack of code booklets, and tossed all of the papers into the furnace. She then took out the small radio inside the box's false bottom, took it to the kitchen, and smashed it with a hammer, dumping the pieces into the waste bin.

We put on our coats, slipping the Uruguayan passports into our coat pockets. After peeling back the lining of our suitcases and stashing the European passports and the extra currency inside, we resealed them and headed for the port.

We still had a few hours, possibly, but the caller's tone of voice had really rattled me and I didn't want to waste any time. The ink colors she named were an indication of how much time she estimated we had until the secret police identified us. Although the apartment on Avenida Corrientes we had converted into our printing office was not in either of our names, it would take only moments to track us down once they knew who they were looking for.

We waited at immigration control at the port, waiting to board a ferry to Montevideo, having made sure to let 5 or 6 people join the line between us. It was the moment of truth, but these documents were ace. The benefit to sourcing fake documents direct from the consulate is that they were real passports, with all the proper features, and somewhere in an office in Montevideo, were real birth certificates with these names and dates on them. The accompanying death certificates -- presumably with childhood illnesses on them - had already been dutifully destroyed. We had practiced late at night being Estela, Juan Pablo, Dario and Mercè, quizzing each other on our four identities. More than just knowing the details printed in the booklets in our pockets, we had given depth to the characters so as to really inhabit them.

Psychologically, the effect was fascinating. I most enjoyed being Juan Pablo. Dario was a bit uptight, but Juan Pablo was casual and easy going. Soledad had taken a real liking to Mercè. I think she enjoyed the tragic drama of her imagined youth. She had even started talking about Catalan nationalism more and more as Soledad, at parties and dinners.

I made it through the control without a second look. I walked over to the waiting area for our ship, and glanced over to see if Soledad had made it through. They seemed to be asking a lot of questions, but there was nothing I could do. We couldn't know each other again until we were safely on Uruguayan territory.

She eventually made it through and we got on the same ferry, but kept our distance. It's not a long trip to Montevideo -- an hour and a half maybe -- but this was to be but the beginning.

After docking, we passed by one another going through Uruguayan immigration, and stood a few feet apart at arrivals.

The second part of the caller's message indicated that we'd be shuttled to two separate safe houses in the city, and we could make our next move from there.

An old woman approached Soledad, and I tensed, trying to overhear what she said.

"Estela! How was your trip? My oh my, you're all skin and bones! We need to get you home and get some food in you before you waste away."

Soledad let out the tiniest of sighs in relief, "You didn't need to come all this way just to get me, auntie! I could have taken a taxi."

"Nonsense! Come now. We want to beat the rush." The fake auntie surveyed their surroundings briefly and took Soledad's elbow. Soledad glanced at me as they left, as if wishing me luck.

A few more minutes passed and a young man approached me, "Excuse me, do you have the time?"

I told him what my watch said. "Oh, it appears my watch is 15 minutes behind. Maybe I should have it looked at. Thank you!" and he strode off, not looking back.

Fifteen minutes passed as predicted and an impressively tall man, around my age, so 26 or 27, approached me. A beaming grin on his bearded face, he took me into his arms, kissing each of my cheeks.

"Juanpa! I'm so sorry to make you wait! Traffic was terrible. You look like you could use a rest and a shower."

He took my suitcase and led me to a car parked down the road. The trip to his flat was certainly walkable, but I appreciated the time to let my guard down a moment in the privacy of his little coupe.

"Ignacio, by the way," he said, taking a meandering path through the Palermo district. "First time in Montevideo?"

"Yes, actually. It's a beautiful city."

"It truly is. I guess you're from here now. You're my cousin, just so you know. Coming to stay with me after your divorce. Obviously, no one is going to ask about the divorce -- Uruguayans are too polite. But try to look morose if you run into any of my neighbors. That shouldn't be too hard, though, you know, considering the circumstances..." he trailed off, realizing it was maybe too soon to joke about the situation at hand.

"I'm sorry, man. I didn't think." He removed his hand from the gear shaft and squeezed my knee. I really looked at him for the first time. With all the adrenaline, my vision had felt tunneled but now that I was calming down, I was more aware of things around me.

He had a gentle, sweet face, framed in a trimmed black beard that matched the thick black hair on his scalp. His eyes were nearly black, but twinkled in the same mischievous gleam as his almost childish grin. He was long and lean, almost lanky but filled out. Not burly, but toned, ropey muscles meandered up his arms under tan skin and a dusting of dark hair. His hands were large, his nails broad and clean, and his fingers seemed delicate, like a pianist's or a violinist's.

"Don't worry about it. It is pretty fucked, honestly. Do you know what exactly happened? The phone call I got just warned us to leave."

"Yeah, there was a raid at a bookstore in Humberto Primero. The police found the books."

It was, to be perfectly honest, the only possible thing that could have happened. At our printshop we had been reprinting leftist and banned works inside the covers of more innocuous titles. We worked with a network of bookstores and what were called librerias clandestinas, secret bookshops. Essentially people's living rooms and cellars, you could arrange a meeting if you knew the right person, and browse a selection of forbidden books. The network was fragile, though, and tugging on any loose strings could bring the whole operation tumbling down, as is what seems to have taken place.

"We managed to get a dozen or so of you guys out today, but it sounds like some of the printers were arrested. I can't blame them for giving up names so quickly, but it really put a strain on today."

"Do you know where I'll go next?"

"Ideally we hope to get you to Spain. Now that Franco is gone, we've been moving a lot of people there. With help from Amnesty, we got a flight of Chileans there just last month. But things are changing here, too, and I don't know how much longer we'll be able to keep going. There are rumors that the Uruguayan police have started collaborating with the Argentinians to ferret out runaways, and vice versa. It could be Sweden or Canada, though. At least in Spain, you won't need to learn a new language."

"When do you think we'll go?"

"It's not clear right now. Things are really tense right now with today's evacuation. We'll need to keep you out of sight for a while. When it's safe, we'll try to smuggle you across the border into Brazil and someone from Amnesty can get you out from there. For now, we just need you to disappear for a bit."

"Do you know where my sister is going?"

He looked at me, "I thought that was your wife. She's staying with my family just outside the city. You probably met my grandmother at the port." He pulled up in front of a sort of shabby, but clearly once impressive, art nouveau apartment building. Trees lined the sidewalk, creating a homely shaded tunnel.

I cringed inwardly at the thought of Soledad being my wife. "We're twins actually. We've really never been apart, now that I think about it."

"Don't worry. We'll see her soon enough. You're meant to be our cousins, so we can easily arrange something without arousing much suspicion, but for the first few weeks at least, you're an indoor cat, I'm sorry to say." He squeezed my shoulder this time. His long fingers were firm but gentle.

He carried my suitcase up the stairs. His legs were magnificently long and filled out his jeans nicely. There was a gentle sway in his hips that exuded his overall carefree demeanor.

Despite how overcast and chilly the day had been just across the Rio Plata, here in Montevideo it was quite sunny and warm. He had sweat a bit through his linen shirt, making the white cloth translucent, revealing his firm, thickly haired chest and tight, equally hairy stomach.

"Make yourself at home. During the days, I often have class, but I'll be home every evening. Don't hesitate to ask for anything. You can't really go out, so just make me a list of anything you need me to pick up. Shower is through there -- use anything in there," he pointed to the bedroom door.

The one bedroom flat had a living room and kitchenette. The walls were lined with stacks of books, and a typewriter sat on a desk in front of the window, an overflowing ashtray next to it. French doors opened onto a small balcony with a table and two chairs. Next to the diminutive couch against the wall, was a door, leading into the bedroom, where I could see an unmade bed with a smattering of open books and papers tangled up in the bedcovers.

I settled onto the couch and opened my shirt up a bit.

"Mate?" Ignacio asked from the stove, as the kettle whistled. He packed the bomba with the green flakes of yerba and inserted the metal straw. He brought the kettle and the bomba over to the table in front of the couch and took a seat beside me.

In this position, I saw his strong thighs through the denim of his jeans, and that it wasn't just the back he filled out nicely.

"So what did you do before all this?" he asked, sucking the first gulp of mate before passing me the little gourd.

"I always worked in publishing. We had gone underground two years ago, but my sister and I used to run a small press that mostly published works in Spanish translation."

"Where did you find the translators?"

"It was just us actually. We both do English and German. She does Russian and Portuguese as well. And I do French and Italian."

"You were translators then? How did you two learn so many languages?"

"It was just like a sibling rivalry thing. Our mother is from Germany and we kind of just started competing with each other to see who could learn the most. She definitely won with Russian. I always stayed close to the Romance languages."

"That's really impressive. You must be a smart guy. I guess you two could settle pretty much anywhere with that wide a spread."

"And what do you do?"

"I do this. I get kickbacks offering my services as concierge to the hopeless and destitute. Otherwise I'm finishing a doctorate in philosophy," he said, absently scratching his -- very present -- balls and taking the little gourd back from me. "Did you manage to say goodbye to anyone before you left?"

"Honestly, we really just have each other at this point. Our parents died a few years ago and having 'friends' became a bit too tricky in this climate. It's hard to trust anyone, so we trust each other."

"Well, you have me as a friend now," he beamed at me and passed the mate gourd back to me. He gave my shoulder another squeeze and I smiled back.

"I really do appreciate this. I should have thanked you earlier. My mind has been a blur since the call, but I am truly grateful for your people getting me out. I hope I'll be able to repay the favor one day."

"As the French say, on ne compte pas des sous entre amis." He stood from the couch, "I have to drain the kracken, I'll be right back. But if you really want to pay me back, I can't cook, so I'm hoping you can." He was already unzipping his jeans as he sauntered to the washroom.

One doesn't count pennies among friends. It was nice to have a friend, honestly. I didn't really remember my last friend other than my sister. At university, possibly, when things were easier. I had had lovers: the lithe French consular officer, who got us Soledad's passport, and taught me French; the burly Uruguayan consular officer, who got us the Uruguayan passports. It had definitely been a long time since I had a relationship that wasn't baldly transactional, cultivated with the express purpose of ensuring my and my sister's safety. I guess Ignacio was my only friend now, and his sort of brutish mannishness, coupled with the boyish playfulness made him very charming, rather earnest and unabashed.

I could hear the loud stream of piss hitting the water. He must have left the door open. It was followed by a flush and the washing of hands.

He came back in and plopped back down on the couch next to me. "What are thinking for dinner tonight?" he asked, his arm draped behind me on the back of the couch.

"Why don't I look at what you've got and make you a list, and I'll whip something up?"

"Can you do steak? I'm really craving a steak."

"What are meat prices like here?"

"Don't worry about it. The Swedish embassy is covering your stay chez moi. Feel free to splurge."

"Steak it is then. Could I take a shower?"

"Of course! I'll take one after you."

I went and undressed in the bathroom. It was under the hot water beating down on my face that the reality of the situation really started to sink in. I would probably never go back to the flat on Avenida Corrientes. I would probably never go back to Argentina. I'd never see the lady at the shop on the corner, or the flower guy down the block. I don't know them at all, but they are gone from my life forever. I'm just another disappearance in their lives, already full of disappearances. People whose existence is simply deleted from their view.

My spiraling thoughts were interrupted by the door bursting open.

"Sorry," Ignacio said, unzipping his fly. "As you were." The toilet stood parallel to the shower and I got a full view of the behemoth he unfurled. Between his forefinger and middle finger, he clasped the bulbous head and drew back his foreskin, unleashing a thick stream of urine into the toilet. "Man, I drank way too much mate earlier. It has me going every ten minutes."

He shook it a few times when he was done. It was incredible how much of it there was to shake. And then he flopped it back inside his boxers and zipped his jeans. He flushed and washed his hands.

When I came out of the shower, I found him on the couch reading. "Sorry about that man. I couldn't hold it any longer, and it was either flash you or piss in the sink. Since you're the new resident chef, I thought you'd prefer the former."

"No, you're fine. Don't worry." I set to making a list for dinner.

"I'm going to take a shower now. I hope there's still hot water," he teased. He pulled off his shirt right there in the living room, tossing it into a hamper in the corner. I thought he'd start making a move to the bedroom to finish undressing, but he just carried on right there. He sat down on the couch to shuck his jeans off, standing there for a moment in his impressively tented boxers, before yanking them down as well. Completely nude he sauntered over to the kitchen, where I was standing, pretending to focus on the kinds of pepper he had.

"Excuse me," he pressed past me getting a glass from a cabinet, filling it with water and downing it. As he moved past me again, his cock, flopping between his thighs, hit the back of my hand, sending a jolt through me. He patted my shoulder and made his way to the bathroom. I heard the shower turn on. The door was left open, and he began a somewhat off-key rendition of "Dos Gardenias".

What an interesting roommate I had found myself with for the foreseeable future.

The water turned off and a few moments later, he emerged from the bedroom fully dressed. He came up behind me, taking the list from the counter. He massaged my shoulders roughly and then tousled my hair. "Everything's gonna be ok. I've got you." He patted my back, took his keys and headed out the door. From the open window, I heard him whistling the refrain from "Dos Gardenias" as he made his way down the sidewalk.

Maybe everything would be alright.

After dinner he set up the couch with pillows and a blanket.

"Now, I'm going to say this again. You can always bunk with me, I don't mind. You'll be sick of this couch in no time. If you can put up with my tossing and turning."

"Thanks for offering, but I really don't want to put you out. I'll let you know if I change my mind."

"Alright, well, I'm pretty beat, so I'm going to call it a night. Thanks for dinner, man." He patted his stomach appreciatively. "Let me know if you need anything."

He padded into the bedroom, leaving the door open. I curled up on the couch and began to doze. Before I was completely out, I saw his long, toned hairy legs dash by on the way to the kitchen. He drank some water standing at the sink, completely nude again. I gazed at his tight, hairy ass. It was round, with deep dimples on each side.

He turned around, flashing that massive cock again. "Night!" he went to turn off the light on his way to his room, his long toes dancing across the parquet.

"Night," I murmured from beneath the covers.

The cell was dark and damp. I could hear yelling, someone being struck, screaming.

"We have all night, you worthless commie bitch," the voice down the hall sneered.

An electric buzzing followed by a scream. A voice I knew. My heart leapt. Soledad.