The Neruda Case (28 page)

“Get in the car,” he heard them order, pulling him out of his own thoughts.

“Police?” he asked with a serenity he did not feel. Freezing rain trickled into the collar of his shirt.

“Get in, I said!”

The pressure against his shoulders as they pushed him left no room for discussion and no possibility of escape.

He sat in the backseat of the Volga, between the monstrously large men. Two more men sat in the front, short-haired, in suits and ties. The one in the passenger seat spoke a coded message into a microphone as the Volga sped past the Palast der Republik.

“Can you tell me where we’re going?” Cayetano asked.

The car veered off onto gloomy, deserted streets. It was quiet except for the dull murmur of the tires over damp cobbles and the deep voice dictating codes into the radio. They would interrogate him at a Stasi station and he’d be unable to lie. How would he explain his reasons for looking for Beatriz, widow of Bracamonte, without betraying the poet? How would he explain his visit to the school on the lake? Perhaps the famous Merluza could extract him from this mess, he thought as the car drove the length of the Wall. He regretted having gotten Margaretchen involved in this affair. He now saw how irresponsible it had been to request her help. The speedometer read one hundred kilometers per hour. He wondered what nerve of the German Democratic Republic he’d hit by approaching the Berliner Ensemble actress, to make the police come after him.

The car drove down a birch-lined street and reached a dark, empty parking lot surrounded by trees. The headlights swept over a sign that read “Treptower Park.” The Volga pulled up. In the distance, Cayetano saw a concrete mass of indeterminate shape pushing up through the treetops.

“Get out.”

They walked between the tree trunks, avoiding puddles and fallen branches, until they reached a terrace made of immense rectangles of concrete. The tall mass stood in the back. It was a statue, he realized, made of granite blocks, of a cloaked soldier carrying a child and a gun. His head was tilted downward to convey grief. It was the most monumental statue he’d ever seen in his life.

“Follow me,” the man ordered. They climbed stone steps until they reached the boots of the colossus.

A silhouette emerged slowly from the darkness. Its unbuttoned raincoat waved in the breeze. It didn’t take him long to recognize the man: that same night he’d been in the backseat of the Volvo that had driven Tina Feuerbach away from the Berliner Ensemble.

40

T
he man in the raincoat had a wide jaw, an aquiline nose, a penetrating gaze, and high, angular cheekbones. The face, Cayetano thought, of a Slavic aristocrat, sculpted from the same granite as the monument. Under the light rain, Treptower Park began to smell of damp earth.

“Why were you looking for Beatriz, widow of Bracamonte?” the man asked in English, with a strong German accent.

“Who are you?” Cayetano answered, sensing that, under these circumstances, his words were purely rhetorical.

The man calmly put his hands in his raincoat pockets and tilted his head with a tense yet curious expression. The roar of a lion rang out through the East Berlin sky. Cayetano wondered if he was going insane. In Bernau, he’d seen a kangaroo. Now he was hearing a lion. At least the roar was not a bad metaphor for his situation.

“I know quite a bit about you, and your travels through the German Democratic Republic, Mr. Brulé. But don’t be afraid: you’ll be able to leave the country just as you came. First, explain to me, in a convincing manner, why you are looking for that woman.”

“Are you part of the Stasi?”

The man cleared his throat, ran his index finger under his shirt
collar in irritation, and repeated, “Why are you looking for that woman?”

“First I need to know whom I’m speaking with. I’m a tourist. I don’t deserve this kind of treatment.”

“I just asked you a question.”

“And you had to kidnap me to ask it.”

“You can leave this very moment if you wish. My weapon is not an impediment, but persuasion,” the man said in a more conciliatory tone. He had small teeth and thick, large lips, which made him look a bit like a startled child.

“You’re sure that I can leave?”

“Absolutely.”

“I’m not a fool, Mr. …what may I call you?”

The man took a step back and a ray of light sharpened the pallor of his face.

“You can call me Markus.”

“I’m no fool, Markus. You could let me leave now and then detain me at the border when it’s time for me to go. I’d rather clear things up here and now. I have nothing to hide, I’m not a spy. I come from the country of Salvador Allende and Pablo Neruda.”

“That much I know. But you still haven’t told me why you’re looking for that woman.”

He began to walk slowly, and Cayetano followed. The bodyguards did the same, keeping a distance. The granite colossus stood tall against black clouds, as though ready for battle. If he knew so much already, Cayetano thought, it could be only from Merluza, or Valentina, or Käthe, or maybe Margaretchen. The truth was, things were starting to get complicated.

“I’m traveling with the support of the Chilean embassy,” he explained. “A Chilean leader charged me with the search for Beatriz. For personal reasons, no state secrets. There’s no reason for the Stasi to interfere.”

Markus kept walking in silence. Then he asked, turning to Cayetano, “Do you know about this?” He drew an envelope from his raincoat and took out a set of black-and-white photographs. He handed them to Cayetano, who studied them under the flashlight Markus lit for him. “Do you recognize anyone?”

In some of the photographs, he appeared with Margaretchen in Berlin, Leipzig, and Bernau, and in others, taken at the same locations, there were two men who looked like tourists. One of them was carrying a camera with a zoom lens, and the other had a sports bag slung over his shoulder. But something about their faces, a certain tension, suggested that they weren’t on vacation, or, if they were, they certainly weren’t managing to enjoy it.

“Do you know them?”

“First time I’ve seen them.”

The roar sounded again. A nearby zoo, or perhaps a circus, thought Cayetano.

“They’re Chileans. Army officers,” Markus explained in a serious voice. “They’re following you around Europe, and you should at least have some idea why.”

“I don’t know them,” he reiterated, surprised. “And I have nothing to do with politics.” He recalled the military jeeps patrolling Valparaíso, the rumors of a coup, the attempted bomb attacks, his wife’s warnings. The hard truth was that no one living in Chile these days could be free from politics. “Are they still following me?”

“They’re staying one floor below you, with military passports from the United States, but they’re Chilean. Why are they following you? Just because you’re looking for a woman? Are they following you, or providing you with logistical support? Who sent you here to search for that woman? You can’t leave this country before clearing these matters up for me, Mr. Brulé.”

“I’ve already told you. I don’t know those men.”

“But do you at least know what their presence means?”

“I’ve never seen them before.”

“In that case, I’m going to propose an arrangement, but you’ll have to honor it to the letter,” Markus said serenely, more at ease. He turned up the collar of his raincoat, turned off his flashlight, and passed the photographs to one of his bodyguards. “You tell me what you’re looking for in the German Democratic Republic, and I’ll guarantee your exit through Friedrichstrasse.”

41

S
o you’re searching for a cure for the Nobel laureate,” Markus said gravely, hands in his pockets. They still walked through Treptower Park, enfolded in drizzle and shadows. A breeze drew murmurs from the foliage, and the divided city was a hoarse and distant pulse in the night, a mere opalescent gleam in the roof of clouds.

“That’s what I’m here to do.”

Now Cayetano felt miserable. As soon as Markus had shown him the instruments of torture, he’d betrayed the poet. He was just like Galileo and Margaretchen. Although he’d altered the story somewhat and hidden the real reason why the poet wanted to find Beatriz, Markus already sensed the presence of another secret. He wouldn’t swallow the lie he’d been given for very long.

“But I still don’t understand why you need the actress from the Berliner Ensemble,” Markus said impassively.

“Simply because I loved her performance in
Life of Galileo
. Anyone who visits Berlin has to see the Berliner Ensemble.”

“But you bought the bouquet two hours before you saw Feuerbach perform. Did you know beforehand that you would love it so much?”

He couldn’t trick the man. Markus knew too much about him.
Now he was pushing for a confession, a strange confession, a superfluous one, since it seemed Markus already knew the truth.

“Might I know what your relationship is to the actress?” he said as they began to scale the steps back to the monument.

“I’m the one asking questions here,” Markus said firmly.

When they reached the platform, they paused to look at the terrace, which housed tombs for Soviet soldiers who had fallen in the battle for Berlin.

“The postwar era cannot be understood without remembering these heroes,” Markus asserted. “I grew up in the Soviet Union. My parents took refuge there in 1934 because they were Jewish and communists, enemies of Hitler. Those who rest here morally justify who I am today and what I do, Mr. Brulé.” He studied Cayetano’s face, then added, “You still owe me an answer.”

“In that case, I’ll be frank, Markus. Tina Feuerbach is the daughter of Beatriz, widow of Bracamonte.”

“That’s what you suppose.”

“You know it’s true. You know very well who they are.”

“I still don’t understand you, Mr. Brulé. First you tell me that you’re looking for a doctor who lived in Mexico, then that you’re looking for his widow, and in the end you associate that woman, whom I don’t know, with an actress in our Berliner Ensemble. At this rate, you won’t get very far in your investigation, and the poet will die without the help he needs.”

“Don’t try to confuse me. You can help me find the widow, because you know her daughter. She knows where her mother is.”