His Own Man (32 page)

“Vaz told me you would be particularly interested in Max,” he said.

“That’s right. He was my best friend at one time. I was very young, I’d just joined the ministry, where he was already shining like few others.”

“I know.”

“You know? How? I never told Vaz. In fact —”

“Vaz is no fool, you know. All those dinners in Vienna …”

The comment saddened me. I’d appreciated the colonel’s ingenuous, almost innocent manner with me, and hadn’t imagined there had been anything calculating about the old bear then.
But
 … it was also possible that it had been Eric, not the colonel, who had come to that conclusion.

“Another of your trompe l’oeils, Eric?” I prodded, laughing.

He liked it. He was vain. Instead of reacting, however, he opted to throw a few pieces of chicken on the barbecue, which he surrounded with an assortment of sausages. He’d put on an apron for the job. For a while, he moved back and forth between the grill and the table where I was still sitting. With each stop at the table, he’d take a sip of his vodka, toss the salad of lettuce, cucumbers, radishes, and tomatoes, and check my drink — which, depending on its level, he’d refill with more ice or vodka, leaving it up to me to add tonic water.

At the grill, he leaned over the meats, turning them as needed, then faced me to make a comment or two, almost always having to do with his progress on the grill (“We’re getting there,” “Do you like your meat well done?”). Or he’d come up with some generic remark about the neighborhood.

He explained to me that
La Jolla
was a corruption of the Spanish
La Joya
. He told me the local university was strong in oceanography, a field his son-in-law had majored in, but computer science had become just as important. He spoke of the countless golf courses in the area, complaining that there was now a nudist beach beside his.

“You wouldn’t believe the ghastly sights we’re exposed to,” he said miserably. “Cellulite, lard, huge potbellies … Few young people can afford to live around here. And when they do show up, they come from far away. To surf.”

I also learned that Gregory Peck, Cliff Robertson, and Raquel Welch had once lived nearby.

“How old is she these days?” I asked, simply to say something.

“Raquel Welch? She must be past her prime,” he answered, bending over a chicken thigh. “During the Vietnam War, the photos of her in
Playboy
were already circulating in the trenches. They were traded as the gold standard.”

Vietnam
 … Eric was trying to lure me in. That conflict had stifled
our war
, silencing the social demands that cried out for solutions, and sinking our region into a downward spiral for two decades — at the expense of countless lives. For now, however, I decided to wait. If Eric strolled through La Jolla in Bermuda shorts and Docksiders, I wouldn’t be the one to venture back to the alleys and torture chambers of South America with weapons in hand.

“We have a few politicians too. One of John McCain’s twelve houses is here. They say he stands a chance of being elected president. I ask you, how is it that a guy
with twelve houses
has the balls to run for anything in today’s world? Even in
this country? He’ll only win if the Democrats choose that black guy as their candidate. The one with the Muslim name.”

While I pondered the implications of this last tirade, Eric continued to mine this ethnic vein. From the Muslims, he moved on to Arabs in general. For a few minutes, he went back to talking about discrimination against Jews, a topic that seemed to amuse him. Given my silence, however, he gradually lowered his voice to the level of a whisper, which now reached me only intermittently.

Between the pool and the fence that divided his property from the neighbor’s was a single tree, whose branches were swaying with the breeze. At that point, I’d already downed two strong vodka tonics without having been offered so much as a peanut. Struggling to stay awake, I closed my eyes for a few seconds. To my delight, the foliage grew thicker and denser, spreading into a canopy over the yard. I suddenly found myself in a Bolivian jungle. Che Guevara was handing me a grenade. And showing me how to pull out the pin.

“I read your letter,” I heard a voice say from far off.
What an honor
, I thought.
Che has read my letter
.

“You did,” I answered happily, lost as I was between La Jolla and La Paz.

My eyelids were heavy as lead, but I cracked my eyes open for a second. There was Eric standing at the grill. I straightened up as best I could in the chair.

“Inspired pages,” he went on in the same distant tone. “A bit naïve, like every outpouring made under the influence of alcohol, but beautiful nonetheless. It’s a shame they went unnoticed for so long.”

He turned toward me, as if wishing to emphasize what he had yet to say. Now he had my full attention. “So very long …”

Just like Max, he knew how to make the most of his pauses.

“… thirty-three years. The age of Christ.”

He turned back to the fire, leaving me lost in doubts.
Inspired pages … Outpouring under the influence of alcohol
 … 
Christ
 … What was he talking about? And why was he so keyed up?

It was going to be a long afternoon. Which wasn’t in itself a bad thing — since I’d regained at least some energy — because there was nothing modest about my agenda: it ran from the nuclear power Brazil had tried to obtain in the 1970s to the number of deaths Eric was responsible for during his time in South America. Between the two extremes, we’d meet up with Max. But there was no hurry. Particularly as other topics cropped up around us.

In my case, I would have liked to know how Eric compared the quagmire of Vietnam, in which he’d served dreaming about Raquel Welch, to the quicksand his country found itself buried in currently in Iraq and Afghanistan. Once again, however, my lunch companion veered off in an unexpected direction.

“You know,” he said, picking up my plate from the table, “men like us are a dime a dozen. But men like Max are hard to come by.”

Back at the grill, and without turning around, he announced, “Our lunch is ready. Chicken or sausage?”

“Sausage,” I answered promptly.

He brought me a plate with two plump sausages, moved the salad bowl within my reach, and pointed to the tray with oil, vinegar, and salt. That done, he excused himself. “I’ll be right back. Forgot the ketchup.”

Fortified by the sausage I wolfed down with a few cucumbers and tomatoes in Eric’s absence, I decided to mull over his words.
Men like us …
But I didn’t get past the first line because Eric, who passed by me again on his way to the grill, took it upon himself to repeat the second.

“Men like Max are hard to come by.” His back to the table, he shook his head from side to side as he put food on his plate.
His body language reminded me of Max at our dinner in Alto da Boa Vista, when my old friend had moved in that same vaguely paternal way, as if to say,
This kid will never change
 …

I found myself thinking that, in the space of a generation, thousands of people south of the equator had been imprisoned, tortured, and killed in the name of priorities long since forgotten. Who would answer for the fatal gale that had precipitously taken them all? Who, in Brazil, to cite one such scenario, would face a camera to publicly lament what had happened, as Robert McNamara had with respect to the horrors caused by the Vietnam War?

What had occurred four decades earlier in our region had remained suspended in time. What place could there be for dramas now relegated to the academic world — on a planet deprived of memory?

Eric finally came over to the table with his plate, on which, after much deliberation, he’d placed a single piece of chicken and two sausages. I looked at him as though seeing the man for the first time. On the surface, he had nothing whatsoever to do with Max, as I well knew. But on some other level, more difficult to define, the two seemed like brothers. Born of different times and backgrounds — but blood brothers nonetheless.

The vodkas on an empty stomach — now replaced by beers — propelled the journey I was making within the parameters drawn by Eric. It was a journey that was in some ways strangely mollifying. What was odd, I noticed, weighing the pauses and silences, was that Eric seemed to be undergoing a similar experience. Maybe he saw me as the knight errant who had knocked on his castle door in search of something buried in his conscience. I’d given him the choice of arms, and my host had left his spear and sword aside — in favor of booze.

He kept a full glass of bourbon on the lower shelf of the bar, as I’d noticed earlier on my way to the washroom. That explained why he’d forgotten the ketchup. And returned to the
kitchen in search of mustard. And, later, had gone to get napkins from a cupboard. Eric drank vodka with me and bourbon with his ghosts.

Instead of the attempts on his life or his family that Eric had awaited in vain, fate had sent him a simple clue hunter. It hardly mattered that these clues related to Max, for the two men had dwelled amid the same horrors. Our duel had been limited until this point to a few lines fired at random, interspersed with platitudes and traded barbs.

Now, however, Eric was eating. Slowly and in absolute silence. Once in a while, he threw me a glance, but with the placid air of someone contemplating a soothing stretch of landscape. I might as well have been the second tree he’d always wanted to plant in his yard.

“Was it really
that difficult
, Eric?” I asked at last.

“What?” he replied.

“To survive.”

“I beg your pardon?” he said stiffly. Then he sighed, as if stalling for time. So I went ahead.

“Today, as I was parking my car, you tied me to the Mafia on account of my blazer. Then you bad-mouthed the Jews a couple of times, which is awkward when it comes up gratuitously in conversation. After that, you criticized Arabs and Muslims alike, and derided your country’s possible future president as ‘a black guy,’ striving the whole time to create an unsettling atmosphere for my visit. Not satisfied, you puffed out your chest mentioning ‘men like us,’ suggesting a shared past that exists only in your mind.”

He held up his hand. “Actually, I thought I was
praising you
. Making you part of a group I’m proud to belong to.”

I set aside my almost untouched plate. No one, whether versed in etiquette or not, could fail to see the gesture as a rupture.

“Eric, out of respect for your age, the willingness with which I came to visit you, and my overindulging in your excellent vodka …”

“… which you diluted with tonic water, ice, and lime, when it’s supposed to be drunk straight …”

“… which I diluted with tonic water, ice, and lime, when it’s supposed to be drunk straight,” I repeated in the
same tone, quite ready to set aside my four decades of diplomatic life and for once give it straight to someone I despised. “You wouldn’t by any chance
be fucking with me
,
would you
?”

To my surprise, he laughed at this, and then replied evenly, “By seeing us as equals? Far from it. We’re equals, yes, if Max is our point of reference. As he seems to be. Just as he seems to have been the reason for your visit here today. Not to mention the dinners in Vienna.”

He’d gradually raised his voice. I pulled my plate back toward me and continued to eat, listening — but keeping sight of my immediate priorities.

“If we take Max as our reference,” he persisted, and here his voice took on an almost aggressive tone, “we’re equals. Because we believe in something. Whether that something is different, or even diametrically opposed, is irrelevant. What matters is that we believe in
something. Max didn’t believe in anything
. Except himself. You of all people should know that.”

After a pause, he added, as though talking to himself, “I never kid around. That’s why I’m still alive today.”

I thought of Marina. It was as if she’d been with me all along, seated at the table with us.

“That may be, Eric. But even so, you did a complete about-face and avoided answering my question.”

“On the contrary,” he said coldly. “I spoke up even before you started fishing for information. Shortly after you got here. And you pretended not to understand.”

“When?”

“When I came right out and said that
I had read your letter
. That’s the difference between me and the guy you met three weeks ago. I read your letter. And saw who you were.”

I waited a beat, to see how far he’d go. He didn’t hold back.

“And more than that: who you’ve been all these years. And still are.”

“Well, that’s great, Eric!” I exclaimed. “I’ve always wanted to know who I was. Who doesn’t? At one stage of my life, I even underwent therapy to look into this big mystery. Maybe you can enlighten me on the subject.”

He leaned over and looked me in the eye. Not hostilely but steadily. He knew I was flying blindly, that I knew nothing about this letter he kept pulling out of his sleeve, the way a poker player would an ace of spades. But then he stood and went over to the grill again. No longer as chef but as a man intent on doing some serious eating.

While he helped himself, he told me that, on receiving Colonel João Vaz’s e-mail about me, he’d realized my name sounded familiar. Between forkfuls, he said that he’d always had an excellent memory. And added: “Like your friend Max.” Except that his own gift, according to him, was beginning to fail. That’s why he hadn’t been able to make the connection, no matter how much he racked his brain. But my name rang a bell; of that he was fairly certain.

Given that I was Brazilian, he continued, gnawing on the drumstick gripped in his hand, he supposed he might have met me during his stint in Rio. He told me he’d become friends with Carlos Câmara during that time. Having recently arrived from Bonn, Max’s future superior was teaching at the War College, where Eric sometimes also gave classes. When they’d met up again some years later in Uruguay, Eric had warned Carlos about Max, whom he knew quite well by then. “Keep your eyes open,” he’d said, not mincing his words, “the guy will suck the blood right out of your veins.”