The Neruda Case (3 page)

“Have you decided what to eat?” the goth asked as she served his coffee. She had translucent arms, riddled with thick blue veins.

“A Barros Luco with extra avocado,” he said, and tried to imagine what it would be like to glide his fingertip along those blue lines until he reached her perfumed, hidden slopes.

And it was after he had sweetened his drink and tasted it that his gaze fell upon the back of the menu, with its photo of Pablo Neruda on a sofa in his Valparaíso home. He felt his heart freeze, sipping espresso slowly until the lenses of his glasses steamed up, and smiled faintly. It suddenly seemed that the palms, the crosses of the mausoleums on the summit, and even Neptune himself had begun to vibrate like mirages in the desert. His memory transported him to that
winter morning in 1973 when he began his first investigation, which he never disclosed to anyone, as it was the most closely guarded secret of his life, the secret he’d still carry as they took him up the hill, feet first, to that cemetery where the dead, on warm summer nights, swung their hips joyfully to the rhythm of tangos, cumbias, and boleros, longing for the next earthquake to hurl them back down to the picturesque and winding streets of Valparaíso.

He closed his eyes and felt his surroundings begin to fade away: the growling of engines, the songs of blind men accompanied by accordions and player pianos, even the shouts of grocers selling herbs, avocados, and lottery tickets with guaranteed prizes, and suddenly there appeared before him, as if by some magic trick and with prodigious clarity, the coarse, rustic texture of the wooden door on Collado Way.

2

T
he door was made of knotted wood. It didn’t open. He stroked the old bronze knocker, put his hands in the pockets of his fleece jacket, and told himself that all he could do now was wait. He exhaled wafts of white breath into the overcast winter morning and thought, amused, that it looked as if he were smoking, even though, in this city, there were no more matches or cigarettes.

He had just whiled away an hour at Alí Babá, a soda fountain around the corner, on Alemania Avenue, across from the Mauri Theater. There, he’d read Omar Saavedra Santis’s column in
El Popular
and Enrique Lira Massi’s in
Puro Chile
while Hadad the Turk made him coffee and a gyro and cursed the food shortages, the queues, and the disorder on the streets, terrified that political friction would tear the country apart and throw him in the garbage can. When Cayetano looked at his watch again, it was past ten o’clock. Perhaps he hasn’t yet returned from the capital, he thought, glancing at the bay, half covered in mist.

He had met the man he was about to see a few days earlier, during a party serving
curanto a la olla
, a seafood specialty from the southern island of Chiloé, in the home of the mayor of Valparaíso. His wife had dragged him to the party so that he could rub elbows with
politicians and progressive intellectuals from the region. According to Ángela, he should know Congressmen Guastavino and Andrade, the singers Payo Grondona and Gato Alquinta, the painter Carlos Hermosilla, and bohemian poets from the port, such as Sarita Vial or Ennio Moltedo, people who were innovative, creative, and committed to the process. Well connected as she was, Ángela refused to give up on her efforts to help him find work in those turbulent times, hard as it was for a Caribbean such as himself, who’d been in Chile for only two years. But beneath those almost maternal efforts, Cayetano sensed something else: the desire to attend to an unresolved issue so as to move on to other matters, which perhaps had been postponed only because of the problem at hand. Ángela’s projects were concerned less with domestic and more with political life, and without a commitment or at least a public standing in the country he’d followed her to, he was a puzzle piece that didn’t quite fit; and that’s exactly how he felt, out of place and out of the game, at that party where no one would have invited him if it hadn’t been for her and to which he, as he thought with growing crankiness, wouldn’t have tried to be invited. He didn’t feel like mingling with these VIPs, and was even more reticent to join the circle that had formed around the owner of the most illustrious name, the one most praised, the one surrounded by the most legends; Cayetano, vaguely disillusioned, preferred to withdraw to the library of that turn-of-the-century house, where the siding was renovated with sheets of yellow-painted iron, and which gleamed like a gold coin over the bay. The library—with its wooden floor, exposed-oak beams, and shelves full of elegant leather-bound books—offered the refuge of dimness and, as Cayetano had imagined, was deserted. He settled into a wing chair by the window that led out to the garden, where several guests smoked and talked with complete disregard for the cold, and as he inhaled the intense fragrance of the Pacific, he recalled another sea, and another Ángela.

He remained this way until he lost track of time. Apparently, no
one missed him. But then, when the Chilean gathering seemed to be occurring in a very distant time and place, or perhaps during a nebulous dream, he heard steps behind him that snapped him out of his modest trance. Someone had entered: fortunately, this person had not turned on another light. The interloper, like himself, preferred the shadows; perhaps he also longed for solitude. He stayed still and avoided making any sound. Perhaps the other person had lost his way or, not seeing anyone, would leave him be. But the steps kept approaching, slowly, as though the feet doubted the very floor they walked on, until they finally stopped close to him.

“How’s it going, sir?”

The new arrival’s tone was so ironic yet amiable, as if they already knew each other and shared an inside joke, and his greeting so unusual, so personal and affable, that at first Cayetano was too surprised to respond. Since the silence made the isolated phrase seem even more unreal, he searched for a response.

“It’s very nice here,” he said. “If you’re tired of all the excitement.” Remembering the calm rhythm of the man’s steps, he thought that he must be older. “It’s perfect for gathering your strength.” Why had he said that, as though inviting him to stay, when he wanted the stranger to leave? At least he didn’t turn to look at him and kept his gaze on the horizon through the window. But the other man, whose presence he felt at his back, picked up the thread of conversation.

“It reminds me of Burma, during my youth,” he said. Cayetano asked himself what this cold, southern country could have in common with that remote part of Asia that he imagined brimming with heat and rain forests. “The night of the soldier. A guy far out on the ocean and a wave—” He spoke as though lost in his own thoughts, but seemed to be describing himself. Where had he come from? The breeze flapped the curtains, and now Cayetano looked out at the waves. He guessed the other man was doing the same. “A man alone in front of the sea may as well be out at sea.”

Cayetano needed to set a limit here. “Who are you talking about?”

“Aren’t you a foreigner?” The man’s use of the casual
tú
surprised him but didn’t bother him; he wanted to be alone, and yet that voice managed to make him comfortable with its presence. “When you’re far from your country, you have no home and lose your sense of direction. Back then, I also liked corners like this one.”

“And you still like them.” He sensed that now he was the one to surprise his interlocutor; the man laughed and moved even closer.

“You’re right, I still like them.” The atmosphere relaxed; nevertheless, as though to preserve some distance between them, they avoided looking at each other and kept gazing at the Pacific. “Now I have various refuges, friends everywhere, and nevertheless I still sometimes need corners like this one. You’re Cuban, right?”

He thought the accent must have given him away. He offered a more precise description.

“I’m from Havana.”

“Then you’re Ángela Undurraga’s husband.” Cayetano suddenly felt naked; the stranger rushed to reassure him, as a friend might. “Don’t be surprised, she’s very well known here. Everybody knows she married a Cuban from Florida.”

Who exactly was “everybody”? For the first time, he felt tempted to turn and look at the man. But he restrained himself: after the enthusiastic voyage in which he’d followed his wife’s hips to the southern ends of the earth, and after two years of false steps, he had learned not to rush.

“The outskirts of Havana,” he said cautiously.

The other man laughed.

“You have a beautiful wife. Intelligent, innovative. You should feel proud.”

That wasn’t the way he felt. And this was surely apparent. He
took shelter in the distance, in the faraway waves that distracted their gazes, and faked it.

“Yes, people envy me. Very much. They must ask themselves what she couldn’t find here that made her go for a man in the north.”

This time the Chilean didn’t laugh.

“Love troubles are the same in every climate,” he declared brusquely, suddenly somber. An old sadness, dragged through more years than Cayetano could count, seemed quickly to enter the cultivated, amiable voice that had laughed and joked calmly just a moment before. Though he barely paused, when the man spoke again his voice sounded as if it carried a great weight. “Forgive my frankness, young man, but I know how much it hurts to wear these masks. From the moment I first saw you sitting there in front of the window, far from the garden, where you should be mingling on your wife’s arm, I knew what was going on. I’ve seen too many people grow apart not to recognize the emptiness that results.”

Cayetano himself was now that empty space. His silence was eloquent. His strange interlocutor seemed to have a great deal to say.

“At my age, one would think that I’ve already seen it all, that deceit wouldn’t hurt anymore, that betrayal would come as no surprise …but no, on the contrary, all it takes is one push, some unexpected stumble on the path you take each day, and the equilibrium you thought you could count on falls apart. In addition, you lose your reflexes, and have less time.” The voice grew low and impassioned at the mention of this threat; then it rose again. “What burns keeps on burning you, and you don’t have anything that can quell it, or even help you to ignore it”—he hesitated—“nor strength with which to explore it.” He searched for a different ending. “When you’re young, despair comes easily, and you immediately think that if someone stands you up, that person will never come again. But this world keeps turning and turning …”

Despite the vagueness of this last allusion, Cayetano understood that the man was talking about himself. Nevertheless, he felt that the words he spoke somehow related to him, to Cayetano, as well. His intuition told him something.

“Are you a writer?” he asked.

“You’ve got the makings of a detective, young man,” the stranger said, half joking. “When you get tired of your profession, you could always hang a sign on the door of some small, cluttered office and wait for someone to hire you for an investigation.”

Cayetano couldn’t have said whether the man behind him was making fun of him or revealing his destiny. Regardless, he went along with it.

“I’ll remember that, Mr. …”

“Reyes. Ricardo Reyes.” The man seemed to be smiling. “Cayetano, right? What sort of work do you do?”

“These days, whatever comes my way. I’m waiting for work, but after two years I’m starting to think that Ángela doesn’t have such great contacts.”

Now Reyes said nothing. He started to cough. Cayetano froze for a moment, embarrassed that he’d complained about his wife. Something in him reawakened a modicum of manners.

“Would you like me to close the windows?”

“Don’t worry. The windows have nothing to do with this,” Reyes replied. He cleared his throat, suppressing his cough. “So you’re looking for work,” he went on. At that moment a woman’s high-heeled steps burst into the room.

“People are out there asking for you, and here you’re hiding like an oyster.” She was an energetic woman with light brown hair. “Let’s go, because your eel soup is ready, and the mayor wants to say some words in your honor. Come on, come on.”

The interruption made Cayetano finally turn around. In doing so, he realized that the man was not at his back but standing almost
next to him. And, to his astonishment, he recognized him. During the party he hadn’t dared to approach him, inhibited not only by the tight circle of admirers surrounding him but also by the authority he attributed to that thick-figured man, with his slow movements, and whose languid, saurian gaze had roved from the sea to him and then back to the sea during that conversation in which he, Cayetano, had not even deigned to look his way. And now the great poet and distinguished ambassador to France for Salvador Allende was moving away from him, tugged by that woman. He had never been alone with a Nobel laureate before. Emotion suddenly shook his body, and blood rushed to his head.