The Casanova Embrace (8 page)

"You will like the Chileans," he said.
"Lovely people. Very gay. And they are particularly anxious to please.
This is all part of their diplomatic offensive."

"They are butchers," she hissed. Instantly, she
regretted the outburst.

He looked up at her, fork in mid-air, his frown wrinkling.

"Well, what have we here? A budding expert on
political science." Then the fork moved, the wrinkles disappeared.
"It is not so simple."

"They have killed many people. And many are in
exile." She was trying to remember what Eduardo had told her, but felt her
inadequacy. She had merely accepted it and had taken his side for no other
reason.

"I would suggest," Claude said, his good spirits
fading, his lips tightening, "that you keep that well-informed opinion to
yourself when we visit the Chileans. I do not want a diplomatic incident."
He paused. "Why not confine your conversation to clothes, hair and
children?"

He remained silent throughout the meal. But she was fuming.
His attack on her self-esteem seemed to organize her reserves. Now that she had
Eduardo, there was no need to be submissive, fearful. She laughed, to herself,
of course. I have betrayed you, you pompous ass, she hissed at him silently as
he self-indulgently patted his lips with a napkin. I have felt this other man
throb inside me. I have kissed and sucked and loved another man's body like I
never, could never, will never, love yours. As she said this, wondering if,
indeed, an audible whisper had emerged, she was actually helping to clear the
dishes.

There was, nevertheless, a message in his criticism. She
was ill-informed, particularly on a subject of obsessive interest to Eduardo.
Previously, she had had no desire to inform herself on those matters that
interested Claude. Perhaps she was resisting subconsciously. But Claude had
pointed out her inadequacy in terms of Eduardo. It was odd how her life had
changed. There was no subtlety about it. A line had been drawn, quickly,
abruptly. She belonged in her mind to Eduardo. For Eduardo she would do
anything. Anything!

Spending most of the next day in Cleveland Park Library,
she gathered up all the books she could find about Chile. Some she thumbed
through in the library. The rest she brought home with her, displaying the
books deliberately and pugnaciously on a living-room shelf and on the night
table near her bed. Reading about Chile, she felt closer to Eduardo.

Claude lay beside her as she read, the pages of the book
illuminated by the small night light. She felt his arm steal around her middle.

"It is late," she said. "Please." She
shrugged him away. "I am informing myself."

"That is quite obvious. But you needn't do it with
such passion."

What does he know about passion, she thought. Again, his
arm stole around her. "Sorry," she snapped. "I never mix
business with pleasure." He would not, of course, know which was which.

"I'm sorry, Marie," he whispered, pecking at her
ear. "I had no idea you were becoming so sensitive."

"Go to sleep."

"Really, Marie. I am sorry."

"So am I," she said, checking herself. It would
be foolish to precipitate an argument. She wondered if she should submit as she
might have done in the past. For some reason, she had never refused him
directly, only obliquely. She pondered an escape route, finally patted his
head.

"You must sleep. Tomorrow is a busy day." She
bent over and kissed his forehead. "Only a little while longer. I want to
make you proud of me tomorrow."

"But I am proud of you," he said. Somehow he
seemed placated and rolled further away from her. She felt relief at her wise
strategy. But it frightened her to feel her commitment to Eduardo. She
shivered, her eyes going back to the book.

"Do you know why the national character of Chile is one of nervousness and dislocation?" She looked over to Claude. He grunted.

"Earthquakes. Too much fish in the diet. The
mountains." She turned to see if there was any reaction. But Claude had
already drifted away.

The Chilean Chancellery was a stately old residence located
on Massachusetts Avenue in the midst of Embassy Row. The ambassador's wife was
lovely, tall and willowy. The ambassador, too, was charming, urbane and
distinguished. He was a tall barrel-chested man with well-cut clothes. They
were hardly what one might expect Eduardo's enemies to be like. It annoyed
Marie to be in this setting. It destroyed her subjectivity, her alliance with
Eduardo in all things.

"We are badly maligned," the ambassador was
saying and although she did not sit next to him, she listened intently,
ignoring her dinner partner, a portly gentleman, the president of some
important company that did business in Chile. "It is true we are ruled by
a junta. But this is the fate of most South American countries. Otherwise we
would be in chaos. We need order first so that we can broaden our economic base
and provide our people with a better alternative for communism, which will
destroy everything we have built since Bernardo O'Higgins and San Martin freed
our country from the Spanish in 1818."

She knew that, she told herself happily. She had even
remembered the exact date, April 5, 1818.

"Your April fifth," she blurted out, startling
the ambassador as he looked toward her and smiled broadly.

"Yes," he said. "That is exactly
right."

"But what about the DINA?" the man on her right
whispered. She knew that, too. That was their intelligence agency, their terror
troops, as Eduardo had characterized them. They were vicious brutes, he had
told her, who reached out to kill enemies of the Junta in every country of the
world. The mention of the name made her shiver briefly, for she knew that it
was the DINA that Eduardo hated most.

The ambassador heard the reference and did not ignore it.
He was obviously defensive, but tolerant. He was a seasoned diplomat.

"You have your CIA. We have our DINA. One must
recognize that every country has enemies. In our case, the enemies are so
numerous that we must take extra precautions. As for assassinations, they are
exaggerated. It is propaganda spread by our enemies." A slight flush on
his neck betrayed both his passion and his discipline.

"And what of those who are banished from your country?
Or are in your prisons?" She knew it was her voice saying these things,
but could not believe it was her mind creating them. How impolitic, she
admonished herself, looking at Claude at the other table, pursuing a
conversation with his usual intensity. She knew she had made most of the others
at her table uncomfortable. But it was too late. The idea of it was in the open
and she could see the flush on the ambassador's skin expand upward under his
chin.

"Banishment is an old South American tradition,"
the ambassador began, with an effort at good humor. "That is punishment
enough. There is nothing worse for a Chilean, for example, than to lose his
country. Nothing worse." He paused, seemed to lapse into introspection. He
seemed genuinely sad, helpless in the face of events. It was a familiar
diplomatic affliction. In that role, one did not have the luxury to follow
one's instincts. "It is all so strange," he continued, clearing his
throat. "We are such a small country." How is it possible to hate
these people, she thought? Did he know Eduardo? The idea titillated her.
Perhaps she would subtly bring out his name after dinner, privately. She
lowered her head and played with the food on her plate, noting that he had
ignored the question about prisons.

Later, during the after-dinner drinks and coffee in the
terrace room off the swimming pool, she insinuated herself near the ambassador,
waiting politely for him to finish talking with a plump man who had been at the
other table with her husband.

"I hope you didn't think I was being rude," she
began when she had caught his eye. The plump man's presence distressed her and
she tried to be deliberately vague, hoping that the ambassador would
understand.

"Not at all," he said, but she sensed a coolness
beneath the surface.

"You see, I am extremely interested in Chile."

"Oh?"

She observed his sudden interest.

"I would like someday to visit Punta Arenas."

"Punta Arenas!" The ambassador laughed. "It
is the equivalent of your 'Wild West.'"

"The city on the bottom of the world." She
marveled again at her cunning, knowing that she was deliberately ingratiating
herself with the ambassador, establishing her credibility. How many people knew
that Punta Arenas was the most southern city in the Western Hemisphere?

"It is the political situation that confuses me
most," she said, with an air of confession. "Allende was, admittedly,
a Marxist. But he was duly elected by the people. All right, he was overthrown
by other forces. Why then must there be so much brutality...?" She found
herself groping for words.

"You see," the ambassador began, "what
Allende tried to do was make a bloodless communist revolution. There is no such
thing. Those who have achieved success or are descendants of those who achieved
success before them are not ready to give up the fruits of their achievements.
Democracy then becomes unworkable. It is our hope that the Junta can keep peace
long enough to find new alternatives to give people greater opportunity without
wiping out the achievers."

"You make it sound so simple." She paused, aimed
her dart, then threw it. "I recently met a gentleman at the Roumanian
Embassy. He held a different view."

She could feel his alertness. The plump man had drifted
away.

"I can't quite recall his name. It began with a
'p'."

"Ah, yes. Palmero. Eduardo."

"You know him?"

"Of course. We are a small country. He is, of course,
a political enemy of the regime." A note of sadness crept into his voice.
"We were at the University together. Once we were friends. Now he barely
talks to me."

"You see him?"

"I know all about him." She could see he was
becoming uncomfortable. Perhaps they really are watching him. Eduardo will be
proud of me, she thought, anticipating their future meeting, at which she could
tell him what she had learned. Perhaps I qualify as a spy, she told herself
with some amusement.

By the time Eduardo called on Monday, she was in a terrible
state of irritability. At breakfast she snapped at her children, bringing both
of them near tears. Claude, thankfully, was distant as he read the morning
papers with his coffee. She had been particularly cruel to him. Bitchy would be
a better characterization, since she literally had shrunk from his advances as
if he were carrying some disease. She might have been less cruel by creating
some physical complaint, something feminine. But somehow honor compelled her to
make him feel unwanted. I am another man's woman, she wanted to tell him,
hoping he would understand even through her silence, by her actions.

"What have I done?" he had pleaded. "Really,
Marie, you are acting strangely. I am your husband."

"I just don't feel like it," she protested.

"Are you ill?" He had actually felt her forehead.

"No, I am not ill. I just don't feel like it."

Since it had never happened before in quite that way, it
probably loomed larger in his mind than it might have. But in the rejection, she
derived satisfaction, like a battle won. I will not submit, she told herself,
convinced that "submission" was the correct word. Claude might have
used "obedience."

And yet, she was convinced that her relationship with
Eduardo bordered on a form of submission. The difference was that she wanted to
submit. He would summon her in his own good time and she would come. That was a
very romantic idea, she thought, but it was also nerve-racking. The uncertainty
sapped her strength and her ability to cope with the details of her other life.
There must be some other, more certain way to pursue this, she decided.

When, finally, he did call, her elation was so dominating
that she hardly remembered the hurt until after they had made love. She no
longer approached him with the fear that somehow it would not be the same. He
moved her, beyond what she had thought possible. The moment she would arrive in
his arms, her body would react like a crashing wave.

"This is heaven on earth," she whispered, feeling
him still inside her, their passion momentarily subsiding, the feel of it like
the beached surf sliding back into the turmoil of the sea.

"You are my life now, Eduardo," she told him.
"I live only for you. Only to be near you." He was silent,
disengaging, lying on his back now, his arm around her, staring upward.

"Is it wrong for me to feel these things?" she
asked. "Or to say them?"

"You must not make it a moral question," he said.

"All right then. Why has it happened? Answer me
that."

"It is unanswerable."

"No, it must have an answer."

"It is a mystery. Like the concept of God."

"What has God got to do with it?"

He sighed. He seemed on the edge of irritation. She was
suddenly anxious.

"And you, Eduardo? Can it be the same for you?"
It was a question that had begun to absorb her. What was he feeling? Does he
love me? She had tried to resist asking such a question. Suddenly she put a
finger on his lips. "Do you love me?" she whispered.
"Don't," she said quickly, frightened. "It is not necessary to answer."
They were silent for a long time, lying in his bed, staring at the ceiling.

Finally, she told him about her dinner at the Chilean
Embassy. His lips grew tight.

"Pallett, that toady!" he hissed.

"But he said he was once your friend."

"He would have me shot as much as look at me!"
His anger became palpable. "And he as much as admitted they were watching
me. The butchers are watching me. But they will never silence me. Never. I will
die first."