The Black Minutes (6 page)

“And so, then, Cabrera? What can I do for you?”

“I’ve come to pick up the deceased’s things.”

Your mother! (as my students say). I’d forgotten our conversation at the funeral. You see, Fritz?—I do sometimes talk to myself—this is all drinking is good for! You went astray again,
Saüfer!
But I tried to conceal the dilemma. I went over to the second bookshelf, the one that is forever near collapsing under the weight of my books and magazines, and sought to pick up something at random, but my unconscious betrayed me. The book I took out was the
Treatise on Criminology
, by Dr. Quiroz Cuarón. When I saw what it was, I almost fell over. I gulped, worried sick, but Ramón was admiring the large portrait of Freud that took up the entire left wall and didn’t notice my hesitation. Then I took up the next book over:
Black Past
, by Rubem Fonseca. The devil you say—I thought, do all books lead to the dead man? In a state of nerves, I pulled out the three books beside them:
In Cold Blood
, by Truman Capote;
The Judge and His Hangman
, by Friedrich Dürrenmatt; and
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
. . . . When I experience coincidences like these, in which the harmony of all things is revealed, I fall to trembling before the divine plan, and Ramón noticed.

“Father? Are you feeling all right?”

Nothing irritates me more than pity, especially when it’s directed at me. So I responded thoughtlessly. “It’s nothing, nothing. Here you go.”

Macetón lowered his gaze, and I began wondering how this man could possibly be in charge of investigating Bernardo Blanco’s death. Young Bernardo had had a brilliant mind, astute and inquisitive; his reporting work was a wonder, particularly his crime pieces, and Macetón. . . . You could expect nothing from Macetón, I thought; he was a vulgar imitation. But I was wrong.

“Is this all?”

“What do you mean?”

We’d gone back to square one. He was once again the hound and I the fox.

“My impression a while ago was that you were going to give me something else.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “Something very important.”

“These books are important; they were very important to Bernardo,” I insisted. How I needed a shot of vodka!

“But you gave me to understand it was urgent.”

“Well, of course.” I gestured at the bookshelves. “I never have enough room in this place! Every student who comes in forgets a book in this office! I am not a public library!”

He frowned and I understood that since I’d seen him last he had sharpened his intuitive capacity (quite dilute, but there it was). Cabrera looked at me the way Bernardo used to look when he knew people were lying to him. For a moment, I thought he was about to come straight out and interrogate me probingly, just as the dead boy once had, but his reaction was crueler. He prolonged the torture, speaking of trivia, until he was set to attack.

“It was a pleasure to come to the school. I see they built more classrooms.”

“Yes,” I answered. “Every day more illiterate people are being born. How long has it been since you were here last?”

“Oof . . . like twenty years.”

“Ah, I see.” And before Ramón could barrage me with further questions, I tried cornering him. “When did they give you the case?”

“This morning.”

“They bumped El Chaneque?”

“Yep,” he said. “By the way, Father, last week I saw you talking with the very man. What did you want with him?”

“It’s part of my job, as you know.”

“You don’t work with the prisoners anymore?”

“I do both. The Lord Bishop ordered me to close the loop and mediate between the two camps. It’s the only way to stop the violence.”

His questions put me on guard. At this moment, my main concern was finding out how much he knew. The way he frowned, it seemed he had some idea of what Bernardo Blanco had been working on. We both passed an awkward moment and fell silent. What must have been going on in Ramón’s mind? If he was expecting me to confess, he was very mistaken. But he stayed on, and meanwhile the bottle of vodka, like a seductive woman, enticed me from the bookshelf. You deserve it,
Saüfer
, I told myself, nobody’s more to blame than yourself. I put on an angry face, but Ramón made it clear he was just getting comfortable. I wanted him out of my office this minute! Since he had arrived too early, I’d had no time to clean up. My office was full of telling evidence, right there for him to find. To begin with, he noticed the chess-board to one side of my desk, an unfinished game on it.

“Was Bernardo a worthy opponent?” he asked.

“He was incredible,” I said, “but he always lost on account of the queen.” I immediately regretted having opened my mouth. Fritz, you did it again! You got yourself into a corner now! Ramón shot me a look of amusement, perhaps suspecting what happened. But instead of asking me further malicious questions, as Bernardo would have done, he looked down at the Robert Louis Stevenson book.

“Did you see him often, Father?”

“Not that often,” I said and, to change the subject, added, “How’s everything down at headquarters?”

“Same as always.”

“It’s a shame,” I replied. Before Ramón could react, I put the chessmen away in their case. Later, I’d get rid of Bernardo’s remaining fingerprints. One of the pieces went tumbling and, instead of impounding it, my visitor handed it back to me.

“Here you are, Father.”

I favored him with a growl. Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do! They have eyes and do not see, ears and do not hear. While Bernardo had admirable intelligence and a deep curiosity, Ramón Cabrera was the diametrical opposite. What if suddenly . . . ? I said to myself. What if, instead of keeping silent . . . ? But no, it wasn’t possible. I told myself it wouldn’t work, but I kept getting my hopes up; one is always getting one’s hopes up, since that is what we are taught to do.

“Father, I need your help.”

I pretended to clean my glasses. “I’m listening.”

He gave a summary of his wanderings and I merely shook my head.

“Awful, simply awful. Terrible.”

“Did you hear the rumor about the port cartel?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think?”

“With all due respect, it’s bullshit. Bernardo had nothing to do with it.”

Cabrera didn’t flinch. This could go on to infinity, I said to myself, and so looked at the clock and gave him to understand that he ought to be leaving. I had to get him out of there at the first opportunity.

“One last thing, Father. Did you know that Bernardo had given up journalism?”

The Church Fathers, who prohibit lying, never did counsel telling the whole truth, especially if the inquisitors haven’t asked the right question. “Yes, I did know.”

“And can’t you tell me why?”

“Interesting question. No.” I was silent for a second. “It’s a shame!” I said. “If you knew how to read between the lines, we could talk for hours in great detail. Bernardo was an expert at that. It’s an extremely complicated situation, Cabrera. But first tell me something: What did I give you in Logic?”

“A
C
.”

“A
C?
That seems too high. I’ve given only one
A
-plus in all my career as a professor, and that was to Bernardo Blanco. Are you sure it was a
C?
No, it couldn’t have been that high; I’ll look through my files.”

“Father,” he insisted. “Tell me what happened to Bernardo.”

“Not even I know that,” I said.

And I was telling the truth, only he was talking about Bernardo’s earthly fate and I was talking about the salvation of his soul. Then he turned and looked at the bookshelf.
Your mother!
I said to myself again, and from the way he looked at me, I knew he had seen the bottle. Surely he must think I still drink the way I did during his
time in school. Fritz, I said to myself, you need to calm down; if you go that route you’ll ruin everything. Stop worrying about the fucking bottle. What does anyone care about a fucking bottle? It could be a gift from a student or what it is: an object confiscated at the Institute. I thought he would get tired and leave, but he kept examining the bookcase and then he came alive again.

“People told me three things about you, Father.”

I began to sweat. “What things?”

“Should I tell you in order or—?”

“However you damn well please. What did they tell you?” “That you counseled Bernardo.”

“It could be,” I commented.

My hands were shaking, and Ramón noticed. “Forgive me,” I said, “but some people are about to come by, and I don’t want them to see you here.”

That set him on the defensive. “Don’t you want to hear the second rumor?”

“Go on, tell me.”

“That you don’t get along with the bishop.”

“That’s a lie. And the third?”

“It’s that you have a bad relationship with the bishop but a great one with the port cartel.”

I remained silent for a second, then burst out laughing. Ramón must have thought I was crazy. When I was done laughing, I had to dry my tears with a handkerchief.

“Anything else?” I asked.

He looked furious, and rightly so. “No,” he said. “Now it’s your turn. I need you to give me some actual information, or did you make me come here for nothing?”

I leaned forward, and the copy of
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
was once again in my line of sight.

“Three things,” I said to him, “and that’s it, because my visitors are about to arrive. One: Bernardo was writing a book. Two: it was about the history of this city in the seventies. Three: yes, he did receive death threats. And a fourth thing: stay out of this, Macetón. You’re a good officer, but you should just walk away. As the Buddhist monks would say,
When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss is gazing into you
.”

He tried to get me to talk further, but there was no way I was going to give him the name of a suspect. I explained that at another time I would have given him the information without hesitation, but that morning I had had a problem.

When I went to Bernardo’s burial, I unexpectedly ran into the Lord Bishop. He was surprised to see me there, too.

“What are you doing here?” Once he was near, he smelled the alcohol on my breath. “You’re drinking again, aren’t you? As soon as the service is over, go straight back to the residence.”

“Am I allowed to decline?”

The bishop knelt before the cadaver, making a show of murmuring the
Ora Pro Nobis
, but as he rose from the floor he was really saying, “Enough. Your fourth vow is to express obedience to the pope, and as his representative around here, I forbid you to talk about this with anyone, under penalty of suspension from your duties. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

Fritz! I said to myself, for thirty years you’ve known this fellow, and you still forget his fondness for simple solutions! He doesn’t listen to reason in public and you, of course, instead of talking to him in private, challenge him in public: impatience is a poor counselor. At such times, the two years we spent together at the pontifical seminary in Rome, my having invited him to spend
Christmas at my parents’ house outside Berlin—all this avails us nothing. There are things that friendship can’t weather. Fritz, you’re an animal; instead of resolving matters in a civilized way, you confronted your superior and got what you deserved. Now your hands are tied and meanwhile Macetón is all over the place, digging into Bernardo’s death.

Well. Then I saw it was four thirty and I got to my feet.

“Please forgive me, Ramón, but I have another appointment. Be very careful.”

And I opened the door, not giving him time to respond. He looked dissatisfied. Watch out, I said to myself. This guy is going to be back.

At that moment, and unfortunately for everyone, Cabrera ran into Chávez, who was just arriving. Chávez said nothing until we were alone.

“What were you telling Cabrera, Father? Are you going to be counseling him now, too?”

“Calm down. The bishop got on his high horse and forebade my getting mixed up in the matter. It will work itself out without my getting involved . . . for a second time.”

Chávez burst out with that hateful laugh I’d heard before. “The chief will look to find a way to thank you.”

“And if he hadn’t done it?”

“It’s late,” he said. “I have to go buy some knives.”

I didn’t want to imagine what for. Coming from Chávez, that could be a threat, but I didn’t flinch. When one works with this kind of people, one gets used to their rudeness. “Don’t worry about me,” I told him, “worry about yourself and the salvation of your soul.”

Chávez looked at the bottle with an expression of disdain. What a disaster! I said to myself. Cabrera couldn’t have been more
troublesome, and now they were surely tailing him. I wondered if there was any way to warn him. Later, Cabrera did things one would never have expected of a person like himself, and there wasn’t a way on earth to prevent it.

Fritz, I said to myself, everything has been in vain. You ought to retire. Look at the agents: you’ve spent years working with them, and they’re just the same; it wasn’t so easy to raise their consciousness. And since I was feeling worse by the second, I took up the bottle of vodka and went off to the bishop’s residence.