The Casanova Embrace (14 page)

"They burrow in. They all work hand in glove on an
international scale."

"Who?"

"Their intelligence. In Chile the butchers have the
DINA. They were trained by the CIA and have full access to CIA files,
computers, devices. They are now in the process of liquidating their old
enemies all over the world. Our people. They are effective."

She felt again the excitement of the old danger.

"We were never afraid of them."

"If they wanted to they could have snuffed you out
like a candle."

"We laughed at them."

"You weren't a threat."

He said it quietly, but he must have sensed that he was
being cruel. "I don't mean that as an insult. There were restraints. In
our case it is an international war. Soldiers fall every day."

She felt now that he was reaching the outer limits of his
warning and that he was about to break new ground. Her heart beat wildly and
she reached out to caress him.

"What can I do, Eddie?" she whispered.

"I have no right to involve you."

"You don't need a right. It's my commitment." To
you, she wanted to say, but held off again. She wondered if the the old passion
for justice had returned. She did not love one man then. She loved them all,
the idea of their courage had moved her. She had loved to be part of them. Now
she wanted to be part of this one man, only him.

"There are others. It is not so simple."

"I know."

Again they made love and slept finally until bright
sunlight was coming through the slats. She drew the blinds and the clear winter
light blazed through the room. He showered, dressed swiftly, and without
waiting for coffee, kissed her on the lips and let himself out. When he had
gone, she lay down again on the crumpled sheets and slept until late afternoon.

It was a week later when he reappeared. She had thought of
him, without anxiety this time. She knew he would reach her again and, perhaps
it was her own rationalization, she felt reasonably secure. It was a question
of trust, she told herself. He was being deliberately secretive for reasons
that he hinted at. She missed him, of course, and it was all she could do to
keep herself alert, especially during work. Marcia noticed her lack of
attention.

"My God, Frederika. That customer has been sitting at
your table for ten minutes without a menu."

"Damn. Where is my head?"

"Probably on that man."

"What man?" she said defensively. Too quickly.

"That one," Marcia said, putting a finger to
Frederika's temple.

"I don't think I feel well," she said suddenly,
but it seemed a pallid, halfhearted excuse.

"They'll get you every time."

It began to rain when she got off from work. She had
brought an umbrella and was walking up Wisconsin Avenue to her apartment house,
shielded from the rain. Suddenly he grabbed the umbrella's handle.

"Eddie." She put her hand on his upper arm, the
muscle hard and taut as he moved silently up the nearly deserted street, past
the darkened storefronts.

"Did I frighten you?" he asked.

"I don't frighten easily," she said with mock
bravado. Actually, she had been momentarily panicked, but it had happened so
fast she did not have time to react. "You'll have to do better than that
to scare the hell out of me." He laughed. They embraced in the elevator of
her apartment house.

"I missed you," he whispered when they closed the
door to her apartment.

"Really?"

"Really."

He seemed less tight, almost playful, as if he had just
gotten some good news. Standing together in the center of the room, he watched
her, his face in transition, the humor in it fading as he reached for her and
began kneading her breasts. Feeling the beginning pressure of his fingers
triggered her own response and she felt again the sensual joy of his nearness.
How can I tell him, she sobbed inside of herself, wanting to voice her
gratitude for what he had given her, even the pain of it.

Later, when they had reached that first plateau of
satiation, she lay thinking about him, and her reactions to him. The door of
her subconscious seemed to have suddenly opened and she sensed she was
observing for the first time the odd contents. He had closed his eyes, was
dozing, and she lay propped against the side of his chest, her head rising and
falling to the rhythm of his breathing.

I will do anything for this man, she told herself, feeling
a special joy in this new rebellion. But it was not enough to merely think it.
She decided she must tell him, tell him now.

Her hands began to move gently over his skin, where they
paused to play with the curly hair of his chest, downward over his belly. She
felt the change in his heartbeat, a swiftness as she reached down for his
penis, felt him stir and knew that he had opened his eyes and was watching her.
Under her touch, his penis stiffened, the response giving her great
satisfaction, almost as a child might view the final phase of constructing a
sandcastle.

"You must let me be part of your life, Eddie,"
she said.

"You are part of my life."

"It's not enough. Not enough for me. I want
more." In the context of her present activity, the idea of it seemed
silly. He may have caught the humor. His erection was large and powerful,
throbbing now, a marvelous, miraculous physical wonder, she decided. It was, in
fact, larger than most in her experience.

"I couldn't ask for anything more than that," she
said, caressing the tip of it with her tongue. But the emerging thought had not
faded, and she moved upward, keeping her fingers on the hardness.

"I want participation," she said. "If you
don't let me into your life, then what is it?" She wondered if he would
feel that she was pretending an ultimatum. She let it lie for a moment,
watching his reaction. "I love you, Eddie. You've changed my life. I want
to give, to be giving. I will do anything for you." Then she looked down
at his erection again. "And I want that. You." She lifted herself,
moved her body over him and directed his hard penis into her, feeling its
fullness, moving her body as if she were seeking the core of herself. She felt
it occurring, a wrenching, soul-engulfing, overwhelming immediate explosion of
pleasure, fulfillment. Why, she wondered, seeing bursts of color in her mind,
even as she watched his face. He was observing her as well and, although she
felt the beginning of his release, his silvery gray eyes seemed calm with
intelligence, as if he were deciding something, probing some imponderable. She
continued to watch him as the tension in his body subsided. Then she slackened
her upper torso over him and held him tightly until she felt his body soften
and relax.

"If only the completeness of it was lasting
enough," she said. "But when you're gone the longing begins
again." Her arms tightened about him. "I am a part of you. It is my
need to prove it to you."

"I don't need further proof," he said. "It
is not necessary."

"It is to me."

He became silent now, tapping her buttocks to signal his
wish for disengagement, and she rolled over to his side again. Had she gone too
far, she wondered. He had not professed any special love to her. Had not said
the words. But what I spoke, I had to say, she told herself.

"I don't know where you live. I don't know how you
spend your day. I feel deprived."

He stood up, lit a cigarette, and opening a slat in the
blinds, looked out into the early morning grayness. She watched him, his long
slender body graceful in his nakedness, as he puffed heavily and let the smoke
billow out of his nose and mouth. Then he moved away and began to dress. She
felt suddenly panicked by his actions, forcing her own restraint. Surely, I
went too far, she told herself. It is over now. He doesn't need some hysterical
lovesick ninny hanging on to him, burdening him. Closing her eyes, she felt the
gathering moisture behind the lids, and then the tears rolling coolly down the
sides of her face. Her nose filled, but she deliberately held back her
sniffles. He must not see my crying. She could tell by the change of sounds
that he was dressed now. Then his movement stopped and she could feel his eyes
penetrating the grayness, watching her, deciding. Her heart and breathing
stopped, and her mind seemed caught in limbo on the burrs of his indecision.
Please, she begged, but the sound of his footsteps moving toward the door spoke
his answer. The door opened and closed and the sound of his movement quickly
faded, leaving the room in its own special silence.

She could cry now, she thought, the sound of her sobbing
and sniffling drowning the silence. Soon she was gasping for breath, knowing
that she was giving in to self-pity and loneliness, helpless in the shame of
it.

Lying in bed, she seemed to will herself into a state of
paralysis, hating herself for yielding to the pain of it, but not wishing it to
end. She watched the light change in the room, wondering if she could ever
summon up, or want to, the urge to move again. There seemed no point to it
anymore. Maybe I have died, she told herself, or I am wishing it to happen.

Then, when the room was brighter, and the sounds in the
streets below indicated that the city was fully awakened, the sound of the
telephone burst into the air. Him, she knew, as her body moved suddenly, the
energy recoiling. She picked up the receiver.

"Eddie?"

"Yes." There was an echo. He was obviously in a
booth, the sound muffled.

"All right," he said. She could not summon a
response. The tears rolled in a stream again.

"It's all right" he said again. "I will call
you in a few days."

Then the phone clicked. She continued to hold the phone
until the buzz began.

Who is being investigated here, Dobbs wondered, angrily.
His mind had wandered. He was thinking about himself, his lost insight. Perhaps
I have been at this game too long, he decided. I have grown as dry as a
leftover leaf in winter. Was he really looking for a motive behind the Palmero
hit or something in himself. Or both.

Furtively, like a self-conscious bird, he looked up from
the files on his desk, glancing in either direction and behind him, a visual
sweep to be sure no one was there to observe him. He had given strict orders
that he was not to be disturbed. And he had double-locked the door. Then why
had he suddenly searched the room with his eyes, he asked himself, knowing that
the answer was his own fear. He shivered at his faulty logic, fingering the
files again, forcing his concentration.

But again he looked up, turned from side to side and behind
him. The table was jammed tight against the wall, stark, pictureless, a secured
space. Someone was here, he was certain, in the room with him, watching him,
sensing things inside of him, sensors crawling under his skin like maggots in a
dead carcass. Eduardo, he whispered. The audibility shocked him, because the
word had slid out of his mouth. He had not willed it to be said.

Opening another file, he noted his fingers shook. Eduardo,
he said, this time in full control, deliberately louder as if to ridicule what
had happened previously. Stop bugging me, he said in a conversational tone, as
if Eduardo were within earshot.

It took a long time for the meaning of the words in the
report to penetrate his mind. Finally his interest was magnetized again and he
felt the pull of Eduardo's as yet unfathomable world.

The wife! Miranda Ferrara Palmero. An excellent Polaroid
color shot showed her clearly; graceful, slender, with high cheekbones, creamy
skin and longish dark hair almost to her shoulders, parted in the middle,
giving her face a Madonna-like air. Another Polaroid showed her again with a
young child, a boy, clinging to her shyly. By any standard, the woman was a
beauty. She seemed strong, proud, aristocratic in bearing, oddly symbolic of
Chile's emancipated female.

The writer of the report was quick in confirmation. Miranda
Palmero was, indeed, something special even in Chilean eyes, much accustomed to
beautiful women. The Ferraras could trace their huge land holdings to Bernardo
O'Higgins himself, the Irish-Indian bastard who liberated Chile from the
Spaniards and then gave away much of the land to those who had helped him.

Ferraras were both oligarchs and intellectuals, poets,
doctors, politicians, businessmen, and the activities of their offspring were
grist for the newspaper mill. In a Manila envelope was a pile of clippings.
Miranda with her father at the opening of the races. Miranda riding. Miranda at
tennis. Miranda sailing. Miranda in a night club. Miranda at her wedding. There
was Eduardo, handsome, even glowing in his winged collar and tails, standing
beside the radiant beauty. The couple on top of the wedding cake! One clipping
described the event as the ultimate merger, the inevitable melding of the old
with the new, good genes coming together, the ceremonial crossing of the great
bloodlines of Chile. Who could have foretold how it would turn out?

The report was long. Miranda was voluble, excessive, and
the interrogation was obviously a catharsis, a long tirade of
self-justification. There was deep guilt here. The woman had harangued, raged,
boiled with emotion as she spilled her life into the recorder. With uncommon detail,
the writer had even described the setting for the interrogation. A huge, ornate
room, in the Ferrara compound in the foothills above Santiago, pre-Columbian
art abounding, a dominant oil of O'Higgins, surrounded by family mementos,
shrines to the Ferraras. It had started on a bright sunny morning and gone on
until well beyond midnight.

"So it was fashionable to be compassionate," she
had raged. One could almost hear her well-bred voice modulate in emphasis as it
seethed with anger over this enormous intrusion. "We are all
compassionate. We have eyes. We see suffering. We see poverty. We see
injustice. We bleed. We pray for them. We are not stone hearted." Perhaps
she had paused, lit a cigarette, which dangled from ringed tapered fingers.

"With Eduardo Palmero it was not enough merely to be
compassionate. With Eduardo he had to bleed with them. He had to cut his wrists
with them. There was no middle ground. I had to conspire with his family to
preserve his inheritance for my child. As it was, he had given much of it away
to finance them." "Them" spat out of the page as an
expectoration.

"Who are 'they'?" the interrogator had asked.
Obviously, it was the root motivation of the interview. Dobbs checked the
dates. Eduardo was in prison at the time, and they were putting electrodes to
his testicles to get out of him what she would have given freely, if she knew.

"They would crawl over the house like lice, all these
so-called saviors. I detested their presence. They revolted me. They stunk. It
was the bone of contention from the beginning. He and his friends would have
handed us over to the Russians on a silver platter. And that pig Allende. He
was a bumbling idiot, a foil for their manipulations. In a few more years there
would be nothing left. We would be on refugee boats heading north, begging our
big brothers to throw us the crumbs of their hospitality."

"Did you fight about this?" the interrogator had
asked slyly.

"Fight?" There might have been a long hesitation,
a deep tug on the cigarette, two great streams of smoke flaring out of her
nostrils. "Fight implies a relationship. We had none."

"Not even in the beginning."

"Not even then. I loathed him."

"So why the marriage?"

There was a long pause. She might have shivered. They were
reaching the raw nerves.

"He was a Palmero. I was a Ferrara. Marriages are not
made in heaven. His father was clever. He pursued the marriage like a fox. My
father could not resist."

"And the child?"

"It was my duty to create one." The pronoun
seemed odd.

"It was my duty," she repeated calmly, showing
her contempt of the interrogator's ignorance, a flash of aristocratic
arrogance.

"And he was the father?" She would be containing
her rage now, at the point of exasperation.

"Ferraras are not given to whoredom," she had
said, speaking for the gallant line of her predecessors. "We are also
quite fertile. Our conceptions are quick." Dobbs could sense the
intimidation in the male interrogator, who seemed confused. Humanity is a
weakness in this business, Dobbs was thinking. It had been his refuge. But it
was gone now. A sense of humanity might have saved this case. What, after all,
did he know of the love of women?

"There was no love between you?" the interrogator
asked.

"Love?" She might have looked at him coldly. But
the interrogator needed more.

"If you say it was over from the beginning, then how
could you...?"

"I could," she must have said quickly. "It
is quite possible."

"But you said you loathed him?"

"With my soul."

"And you loathe him now?"

"More than ever."

"And did you loathe him at the time of your
conception?"

"Especially then."

"And how did he feel about you?"

"I would have hated me," she would have cried.
"He should have hated me. From his vantage point, I would have detested
me. Everything he wanted me to be, I was not, could not be. If I were him, I
would have put a knife in my heart."

"Then he loved you."

"If that is the word."

"And you could not love him?"

"No. I told you. I loathed him."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"Was it his politics?"

"Maybe."

"You are not sure."

"No. Why are you asking me this?"

"I am doing the questioning."

"It is enough that I loathe him. I denounce him. I
disassociate myself and my child from everything he stands for."

"And do you care what happens to him?"

"No."

"Even if he was executed?"

"Even then."

"You have no compassion for him?"

"No."

"Did he treat you abominably?"

"No."

"Then why?"

Hesitation again. The interrogator seemed to have gained
the upper hand.

"I cannot answer that question. I don't understand it
at all. I'm sorry. Don't talk to me of love. What does love have to do with
it?"

Dobbs could imagine the long pause, the tension in the air,
the terror of some old memory.

"If it is true that love is an illogical emotion, then
so is loathing." The woman had whispered, her throat barely able to support
the ejaculation of the word.

"Then why did you marry him?"

"I told you."

"You were forced by duty?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"That is why you loathed him?"

"Not at all. The marriage was logical. It was an
excellent match from our family's point of view. His father saw me as the force
to change the direction of Eduardo's life. He was a man who could get what he
wanted."

"It would have been better if you loved him."

"Of course."

"Did you try?"

"Try to love? Can one?"

We are getting nowhere, the interrogator must have said.

Dobbs understood, imagining Eduardo's father trying to
manipulate fate. Hadn't he tried as well, and failed?

* *
* *

Eduardo knew his father had been watching his face, but the
distraction of the tennis ball as it collided with the racket had interfered
with his concentration.

"Are you listening?" his father said sternly. The
veranda overlooking the tennis courts of the club glowed violet in the late
afternoon sun. The air was dry, light; the scent of eucalyptus, which came in
like the tide at night, was already settling sweetly over them. His father had
chosen the tennis club for this talk so he would not miss his late afternoon
game. He always kills two birds with one stone, Eduardo thought. At moments
like this the image of Isabella always intruded and he could not find the old
respect.

"The firm must continue to have a Palmero," his
father said. He had announced by letter to his father that he would not attend
law school.

"It has you," Eduardo said quietly, respectfully.

"Now," his father replied wistfully. "But in
ten years.... "His voice trailed off. He put a hand on his son's arm,
haired along the ridges under his knuckles.

"I would not be happy at it," Eduardo said,
sipping the golden sherry in the tapered glass.

"But, my God, Eduardo. You are the only son."
There was a brief air of pleading as he glimpsed the shattered dream in his
father's eyes. They displayed the beginnings of his impending old age.

"We are different, Father," Eduardo said. It was
then that his father had begun to talk quickly, his voice velvet, with the
lawyer's art of persuasion. But the sound of the tennis ball intruded. His mind
had been filled with the arguments for his own case, his lack of interest in
law, the absurdity of endlessly accumulating property, the lack of justice in
it. We cannot always be taking without giving something back, he had wanted to
argue, but what was the point? His father would think of it as youthful
stupidity. A ball cracked, sharper than the others, like a gunshot. He had seen
the racket swing swiftly in the girl's arm. It was only then that he noticed
the girl.

"It is your duty," his father droned on. "I
cannot leave this to your mother or your sisters and certainly not their
husbands." His views on his daughters' choice of mates were well-known.
But then he had always shown contempt for the females of his household. With
good reason, Eduardo agreed, seeing the disgust surface on his father's face as
if any thought of his wife and daughters could fill him with nausea.

Eduardo's mind was absorbing his father's information, but
his senses were alert to the girl on the court, long legged, the short whites
tightly wrapping a fullness in her breasts and buttocks, long hair tight in a
pony tail as she glided over the court, humiliating her male partner with her.
grace and skill. He felt a stirring in his crotch and crossed his legs, sipping
again from the glass. But he did not turn his eyes away from the girl and
finally his father noticed.

"Miranda Ferrara," he said, "lovely to
watch."

"Excellent player." Remembering Isabella, Eduardo
determined not to show interest. He had seen her before, of course, always with
detachment since she seemed beyond his aspirations, an intimidating figure with
her arrogance and confidence.

"And quite beautiful," his father said, still
watching him, the challenge implicit. Had his father known he was outside of
his study, watching? He tore his eyes away and looked into his father's face.

"I know I'm a disappointment to you, Father,"
Eduardo said, surprised at his wavering voice. Their discussion seemed remote
from his real interest now as he imagined the girl on the tennis court behind
him. He watched as his father shrugged and dipped his head into his drink.

"I wish I could be what you want me to be," he
whispered. But his father's face had quickly changed, the mask of ingratiation
forming as he looked beyond Eduardo, who turned as the girl came toward him,
his heartbeat accelerating. A deep flush seemed to wash over his entire body.
His father stood up and Eduardo obeyed the impulse of politeness. It was odd
how much he aped his father's sense of politeness.

"Miss Ferrara," his father said, adding quickly,
"this is my son, Eduardo."

She held out a limp hand and touched Eduardo's, the flesh
of his palm perspiring as he looked into her dark eyes, flickering briefly as
if he were a piece of stone in her line of sight. On the surface it was all so
formal, so ritualistic, while beneath he surged, sputtered. When she reached
for his father's hand, anger erupted, barely contained as he remembered
Isabella. I will not let this happen again, he thought, the rage boiling,
making his tongue thick. Then she passed on, a regal figure moving through an
aisle of admiring subjects.