The Neruda Case (4 page)

“What the boss says goes, and she’s the boss,” the poet said, and winked. There he went, with his poncho in the Chiloé Island style, the flat cap he always wore, and those cheeks speckled with large moles. “In any case, if you have any free time these days, come see me in my home, La Sebastiana. I have some old postcards from your city, young man. All you have to do is call me.”

Cayetano wouldn’t have dared make the call. But it was the poet who reached out first, who called his house and asked him to come for a visit. And that was why he found himself here, on Collado Way, and now someone was finally opening that door with its creaking, rusty hinges and its slats of knotted wood.

3

I
t was the poet.

“Forgive me, I was reading and fell asleep. In addition, Sergio, my chauffeur, is off at the grocery store trying to scrounge something up, and it takes a lot for me to get down the stairs. You’ll see that everything here is a bit complicated. Come, follow me, please.”

They crossed the minuscule garden of the edifice beside the Mauri Theater. Through the bushes, Cayetano glimpsed the city and the squad of soldiers berthed on the breakwater, and, beyond that, the Andes. The poet began to climb a staircase, heavily, and Cayetano followed. On the second floor, they went down a hall and continued to ascend, this time on a curved and narrow staircase. Through a porthole, Cayetano could see luminous roofs and shaded passages, as if the house glided over Valparaíso.

The poet arrived on the third floor, out of breath. He wore the same cap as before and, on his shoulders, a poncho made of fine brown wool. What could he want? What did he need to talk about that would make him invite Cayetano to his home—Cayetano, of all people, a sullen foreigner who had left him on his feet standing and behind him during the only conversation they had ever had, without
the slightest consideration for his age, without even a flicker of the admiration or at least the respect that everyone else professed for him? The poet guided him to a living room with intensely blue walls and an enormous window that looked out over the entire city. He gestured for Cayetano to sit on a floral-print armchair that faced one made of black leather. The room was bright and ample, with a green carousel horse at the center, and next to it stood the dining room, bordered by the same great window. At the other end was a bar with bottles and glasses, a bell, and a bronze sign that read: Don Pablo est ici. Cayetano couldn’t help comparing, once again, the hospitality he was receiving with his own social clumsiness, barely corrected during their brief contact over the phone the previous day.

“Thank you for coming,” the poet said as he sat down on the leather armchair. Now he seemed to levitate over the belfries of the city. “I’m not going to beat around the bush, Cayetano. You must be asking yourself why I invited you here, and the answer is very simple—because I think you can help me. More than that, I believe you are the only person in the world who can help me.”

Though he had decided to be friendlier during this visit, Cayetano kept his guard up.

“Please, Don Pablo, don’t scare me with so much responsibility,” he said. “How could someone like me help you?”

“Let me say that I know some things about you, but I know more about your wife. She’s sympathetic to the Unidad Popular government, as I imagine you are as well. In these times, one cannot trust just anyone …”

Cayetano examined the poet’s swollen hands, large nose, and haggard face. He had a robust complexion, but his shirt collar was too wide on him, as if he had suddenly grown thinner in the past few months. Then he remembered his sudden melancholy and his gloomy allusion to time running short. Only now, among his own things, in
the clear light of day that shone in his home, he seemed decisive, enthusiastic. Although Cayetano didn’t know where the conversation was headed.

“I’m Cuban, though by way of Florida,” he said, trying to temper the poet’s verve with a dose of humor. “I still don’t understand …”

“It’s precisely because you’re Cuban that you can help me,” Don Pablo cut in.

Cayetano adjusted his glasses and stroked his mustache nervously.

“Because I’m Cuban?”

“Let’s take this one step at a time,” the poet said, changing his tone. “I see that you haven’t stopped looking around this room. First things first. This house is called La Sebastiana in honor of Sebastián Collado, the Spaniard I bought it from in 1959. For the terrace roof, he designed a great aviary and a landing strip for spaceships.”

Now Cayetano feared his leg was being pulled.

“Are you being serious, Don Pablo?”

“Completely,” he said, closing his large eyelids circumspectly. “One day, a cosmic Odysseus will make his landing here. Among my four houses, none of them floats like this one. The one in Santiago is hidden in the San Cristóbal mountainside, the one on Isla Negra is a beautiful barcarole ready to set sail, and Manquel, which was a brick and stone stable, and which I bought with the money from the Nobel, lives lost among the woods of Normandy. But La Sebastiana threads the air, earth, and sea together like a bracelet, Cayetano. That’s why it’s my favorite house. But it’s not as a contractor but as a poet that I’ve called you.”

Cayetano was amazed. What did he have to do with poetry? How could he possibly help a famous poet? A seagull soared outside the picture window.

“But it’s nothing to get nervous about,” Don Pablo added. “One
is always less imposing in person than in the newspapers or on television. And also, the years—soon I’ll be seventy—have begun to take their toll, though they still don’t deprive me of the desire to write, and to love.”

Cayetano wanted to cut to the chase.

“How can I help you, Don Pablo?”

The poet was silent, hands folded over his belly, bathed in the metallic, late-morning light that hardened the façades of houses and the contours of hills.

“I need to find someone,” he said after contemplating for a few moments, gaze lowered. “And someone discreet needs to do the searching. It’s a personal matter. I’ll take care of all your expenses, and I’ll pay you, obviously, whatever you ask,” he specified, watching Cayetano with unease.

“You want me to find someone for you?”

“That’s right.”

“You want to hire me”—and here he remembered what the poet had said to him when they first met—“as a private detective?”

“Exactly.”

“But I’m not a detective, Don Pablo. At least, not yet,” he added with a faint smile. “Worse, I have no idea how a detective behaves.”

The poet’s hands picked up some books covered in red plastic from a nearby table.

“Have you ever read any Georges Simenon?” A foxlike look tautened his cheeks and creased his forehead. “He’s a terrific Belgian writer of crime novels.”

“No, never, Don Pablo.” He felt embarrassed of his paltry literary knowledge, and apologized, as though that ignorance could offend his host. “I’m sorry. I’ve only read a few novels by Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler, and, of course, some Sherlock Holmes …”

“In that case, it’s time for you to read the Belgian,” the poet continued forcefully. “Because if poetry transports us to the heavens, crime novels plunge you into life the way it really is; they dirty your hands and blacken your face the way coal stains engine stokers on trains in the south, where I was born. I’ll lend you these volumes so you can learn something from Inspector Maigret. I don’t recommend that you read Poe, who invented the crime story and was a great poet. Neither do I recommend Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes’s literary father. You know why? Because their detectives are too eccentric and cerebral. They couldn’t solve even the simplest case here, in our chaotic Latin America. In Valparaíso, the pickpockets would steal their wallets on the trolley, the kids from the hills would bombard them with stones, and the dogs would chase them down alleys with their fangs bared.”

This sounded ridiculous. Detective by force, and on top of that, learning the job from crime novels? Anyone he tried to tell about this would immediately call it crazy. And not just call the poet crazy, but him as well.

“So take these books and read them,” Don Pablo added with complete authority, and placed them, not without some difficulty, in a woven bag.

One doesn’t say no to a Nobel laureate, and much less to a seriously ill Nobel laureate, Cayetano thought, taking the bag. There were seven volumes, small, not heavy at all, wrapped in red and clear plastic, pleasing to the touch. If he learned something from them, this strange meeting would already be a different kettle of fish. The bag would at least come in handy for picking up his meat ration from the Committee for Supplies and Price, known as JAP, if the meat in fact arrived, since beef and chicken had been gone for several weeks, along with butter, oil, and sugar. And the prices on the black market bordered on abuse.

“Whom do I need to find?” he heard himself say, as though his voice already belonged to another man.

“I expected nothing less from you, Cayetano,” the poet said, and let out a grateful sigh. He shuffled to the living room door in his slippers, to make sure no one was spying on them. “For that, please listen closely, and I’ll try to explain the situation in a few words.”

4

I
need you to find one of your compatriots, an old friend I lost track of a long time ago,” the poet said in his calm, nasal voice. His eyes gleamed with sudden, childlike hope.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve set foot in Cuba,” Cayetano replied. “I left the island when I was quite young.”

“I’m not so naive as to suppose that you know all your fellow citizens, but the fact that you’re Cuban can help you in your task. You’ll see. I’ve thought about this for months, especially since my health began to suffer in Paris. I thought about turning to comrades at the Party, including a good friend at the embassy in Havana, but I decided against it because, in days like these, I wouldn’t want anything to leak. Politics, you know …”

Cayetano Brulé looked at the poet. He didn’t know what to say.

“You must be asking yourself why I’d trust a stranger,” the poet continued, “and the answer is, simply, intuition. When I heard about you recently at a meeting with comrades in this house, I said to myself: He’s the one I need. He doesn’t know anyone in Chile, so he has no alternative but to be discreet. He’s also Cuban, and can visit the island without awakening suspicions. And since he’s unemployed, a job like this could come in handy.”