The Neruda Case Read Free Page B

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. Hetook 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