Simone Escapes Fortín Tibur

Simone Escapes Fortín Tibur is the turning point in Simona’s escape from the confinement and abuse imposed by Renato Bley. A catastrophic flood carries Renato away as he tries to save the estate’s cattle; left alive and unrestrained, Simona chooses not merely to survive but to leave, report what happened, and reclaim a life in Buenos Aires.

Confinement and the thought of escape

By her twenty-eighth birthday, Simona has been cut off from her family: her sister-in-law Salomé has taken charge of the mail, and Renato has told her that she will never set foot in Buenos Aires again. Simona secretly vows that she will not turn thirty at Fortín Tiburcio, even if she has to kill herself to prevent it. Imagining Renato’s fury at her corpse briefly makes death seem like a refuge. Yet the thought also restores her resolve. She begins to recognize how her isolation works: she is far from others, cannot speak freely with anyone economically dependent on Renato, and is enclosed by the boundaries of the estate and a fence designed to keep both cattle and Simona from getting out.

That understanding changes her daily strategy. She complies with the household’s rules and tries to avoid beatings, not because she accepts her captivity, but because outward accommodation gives her room to think and plan. Renato notices that she has become unusually subdued and continues to hit her, while keeping her under watch as though he senses her intention. Escape remains difficult: he has killed her mare, she cannot drive, and she sleeps in a locked room. Simona turns twenty-nine still trapped, and comes close to believing that suicide may be the only way out. Her eventual escape begins not with a prepared route but with a storm powerful enough to destroy the enclosure around the estate.

The flood and Renato’s disappearance

In January, rain continues for days until the Arroyo Salado rises and the floodwaters merge with the immense lagoon known as Mar Chiquita. The water tears up the ground and brings down the fence. When a farmhand reports that the cattle are being carried off, Renato orders Simona to dress and come with him. They drive out alone through a landscape where the road has disappeared, with water pushing against the vehicle and loose cattle bellowing in distress. At the riverbank, the fallen fence has trapped some of the herd and kept it from being swept into the center of the torrent, but other animals have already been lost.

Renato gets out with a rope and pulls one cow free, then another. Simona sees the effort as futile: even the cattle he rescues remain surrounded by floodwater. Then Renato vanishes from view. He calls for her to bring a rope. She approaches the bank slowly and sees him clinging to a small root, which breaks before she can dislodge it with her foot. The current takes him. Simona neither rescues nor kills him; she watches as his head strikes a rock and the foam turns red. The moment reverses the power that has governed her life: the man who controlled her is suddenly helpless, and the river—not Simona—decides his fate.

Leaving the estate

The rain stops at the instant Renato disappears, after four days and three nights, but the river remains violent and the land takes nearly a week to dry. Simona walks back alone, taking more than two hours. She is not lost or afraid. On the way, she remembers her mother and cries; then she feels the world, the field, and her own chest grow larger, and realizes she can breathe as she has not been able to breathe during her confinement. The sound of her boots in the water pleases her, and she pauses to look at a small patch of blue sky.

Her most consequential choice is where to go next. Although she could return to the house, she instead walks to Fortín Tiburcio and reports what has happened to the gendarmerie. They take her back to the estate by car. This decision makes her freedom public and practical: she does not disappear into the countryside or leave the circumstances of Renato’s death unreported, but seeks the authorities and returns under their escort.

Death, inheritance, and a return to Buenos Aires

Renato’s remains are found in stages, beginning three days after his disappearance: first a trunk with nearly an entire leg and half an arm, then other fragments, and finally a skull that cannot be identified with certainty because it is only bone. The fish have eaten the rest. The broken-up recovery contrasts with the force that had once made Renato seem inescapable; after his death, his authority over Simona ends at once.

Simona turns thirty in Buenos Aires. Her first act as Renato’s widow is to cut her hair so that no one can drag her across the floor by it again. She takes possession of the house, half the land, and a considerable amount of capital. Renato’s sisters try to discredit her among the neighbors and hire a lawyer, but cannot prevent her from inheriting. Her brother-in-law Pedro is more accommodating, recognizing that he will have to continue dealing with her about the estate for years. Once the papers are settled, Simona puts both feet back in the neighborhood she loves and buys an apartment on Rivadavia Street, in the building beside her mother’s.

Freedom, privacy, and what follows

Simona does not immediately tell anyone what her life at the estate has been like. Her return is therefore more than a change of address: after years in a world narrowed by distance, dependency, a locked room, and a fence, she regains both control of her property and the right to keep her own history private. The first sign of regained agency is bodily and deliberate—cutting her hair so that it can no longer be used to hurt her. The next is legal and material: she claims her inheritance despite her sisters-in-law’s campaign against her.

Only the loving persistence of Manuel Arroyo Benítez eventually disarms Simona’s silence. When she asks why he would want a woman like her and says that she has already lived, the line reveals how little the escape has erased of the past. Survival and independence do not instantly make her trust another person or imagine herself beginning again. The flood frees her from Renato’s immediate control; her return to Buenos Aires gives that freedom a home, while the guardedness she carries forward marks the lasting cost of the years she spent confined.