The Neruda Case (22 page)

At that point Cayetano took a chance. “What about love?”

“What?” The voice sounded disconcerted.

Through the window, Cayetano studied the Hotel Habana Libre as it hovered, clear and light, over the city, under soft clouds that glided toward Miramar. The whir of the air-conditioning muted the echoes of El Vedado. He knew that he had hit the nail on the
head. “Love, Don Pablo, I’m asking you whether you still believe in love.”

“Don’t be naive, young man. That’s a lifelong thing.” He felt that the poet was putting him in his place. “Which is good news for you, incidentally, since you’re just starting out. Look at me, I’m almost seventy and I’m still strong. The Greeks were wrong to think that old people were more fit to govern because they had lost their physical appetites. At my age, I have more heat and urges than ever, since I know the reapers are following me everywhere, eager and impatient.”

Two packed buses drove by at a feverish pace, passing a knot of people waiting at the stop. Beyond them, others baked in the sun while standing in line at Vita Nova Pizzeria. Steam rose from the tar on the street, making the neighborhood oscillate like a mirage.

“Once the spurs of desire leave me, I won’t be able to write,” the poet continued. “Desire feeds my poetry, young man. Don’t forget, it’s that simple.” He took a surprising turn. “Any news from Ángela?” They barely brought her up since that night, by that window facing Valparaíso and the sea beyond, when they had shared what he now knew was their mutual anguish.

“It’s over, Don Pablo. ‘We, the ones we were, are no longer the same.’ Your own words.”

“I remember them, and I also remember why I wrote them. But once I was older and wiser, I also wrote, ‘together we face the tears!’ Don’t forget that. Life is long, even though there’s little left for me.”

He didn’t know whether he should feel comforted or saddened. He asked, “So what do we do now?”

“Do about what?”

“Don’t forget that I’m in Havana, Don Pablo. What should I do now that the trail has gone cold?”

“Keep following it. Wait there until I get you a visa for the German Democratic Republic.”

“I go to Germany from here?”

“To East Germany. Call me as soon as you land. I’ll give you the name of someone who can help us. I trust you’ll find the person we’re looking for there. But, Cayetano, don’t forget the most important thing of all: discretion.”

DELIA

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B
efore touching down on Schönefeld’s landing strip, the Aeroflot Ilyushin II-62 circled over the divided city, turbines whirring. From a sky streaked with clouds, Cayetano glimpsed the line—sometimes straight, sometimes sinuous, but always wide and clear—of the Wall, with its mined areas, observation towers, and wire fencing. As the plane turned, it glided through the air from east to west and back to east, ignoring the border between the two sides of greater Berlin, gliding from one world to another with the still indolence of a pelican.

At first, Schönefeld seemed like any other airport in the West: cold, modern, functional. It did, however, lack the colors, scents, and sheen of capitalism. People were wearing clothes that had gone out of fashion, in muted colors, as though life had frozen in the 1950s. Perhaps that was why Cayetano sensed a tranquillity he associated with places far removed from the frenetic pace of major Western cities, an atmosphere that reminded him of Sunday siestas in Havana and the Valparaíso hills.

“Cayetano Brulé?” asked a voice from behind.

He turned and saw a man with unkempt hair, a thick mustache,
and small dark eyes. He looked a bit like Charlie Chaplin, with the same pale, melancholy, mischievous face; the same high eyebrows; the same sad, ingenuous expression; and gleaming eyes.

“I’m Eladio Chacón.” They shook hands. “I’m the director of labor affairs at our embassy. I handle relations with the main office for the Free German Trade Union Federation, the FDGB. A few days ago, the state department notified me of your visit so that I could be of assistance. Welcome to the land of Karl Marx and Rosa Luxemburg!”

“I’m most thankful, Chacón.”

“You can call me Merluza, if you like. That’s how I’m known to comrades in the Party. You can also call me Carlitos Chaplin; personally, I think I resemble the comedian more than the
merluza
fish. But you know how Chileans are, handing out nicknames right and left. So. I know that you’re Cuban and you’re looking for a Mexican woman of German origin who emigrated to East Berlin some time ago.”

“Ten or twelve years ago, to be more exact.”

In the parking lot, Merluza placed the luggage in the trunk of his Wartburg. The car clattered like a scooter as they drove down cobblestone streets, and Cayetano wondered whether everyone had a double hidden somewhere in the world. Proof abounded: the blacklisted poet in Havana looked just like Roy Orbison, and the Chilean diplomat was identical to Charlie Chaplin. Somewhere, there must be someone who strongly resembled Neruda, Ángela, and Cayetano himself. At some point he should articulate it to the poet. He was sure of at least one thing: he was Cayetano Brulé, and not a double of himself.

In the distance, beneath the incandescent sun, he glimpsed the Television Tower, as well as the skyscraper that housed the Stadt Berlin Hotel. The Wartburg dived into downtown, weaving between cars of unfamiliar makes, such as Volga, Škoda, and Trabant, as well
as Ikarus buses and Czech trams. They turned onto a crowded commercial street. Pankower Allee, Merluza explained. As soon as he laid eyes on it, Cayetano realized that East Germany was not at all like Cuba. Here, the store windows were packed with wares, there were no lines outside grocery stores or restaurants, and the people enjoyed a well-being unimaginable on the island. Merluza told him he’d be staying at the Stadt Berlin, near Alexanderplatz, but that first they’d go to lunch at Ratskeller, a restaurant with seven hundred years of history.

“They make the most incredible ham,” Merluza went on. “Though there are also some
Klösse
, from Thuringia, that are good enough to raise the dead. And what can I say about the baked carp and boiled potatoes? Do you prefer Bulgarian wine or Czech beer? We diplomats don’t need to wait for a table there. We rise over the mortals, and that’s how it is.”

Fifteen minutes later, seated at the restaurant in the basement of Red City Hall, they ordered oxtail consommé, ham with boiled potatoes, and Czech pilsner. The poet’s East Berlin contact was clearly offering Cayetano a very special reception. Merluza was a member of MAPU, a tiny petit bourgeois group, as the communists put it, that history would record as a cell capable of dividing and dividing until it disappeared altogether. Merluza had been sent to East Berlin because, in Chile, he’d dared to call for the expropriation of not only North American investments, but also the English, even at risk of stripping Queen Isabel herself, which had sparked an uproar in the government, loath as it was to make enemies in Europe. There, in the German Democratic Republic—in East Germany—the first nation by and for workers and peasants to grace German soil, as the banners proclaimed—Merluza was tasked with absorbing true socialism and the day-to-day operations of the FDGB, as presided over by the hard-drinking Harry Tisch, instead of stirring up the henhouse with his utopias in Chile.

“Well, nobody here knows this Beatriz,” Merluza said after draining his first pilsner and letting out a discreet burp.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” Cayetano asked, stroking his cold glass.

“What?”

“That no one knows anything about the woman.”

“Calm down. The situation isn’t hopeless, either.”

“How can it not be? If I’d known that nobody here knows her, I could have saved myself the trip. I was doing just fine in Havana.”

“I’ll bet you were. Lovely ladies over there, right?”

“They’re unsurpassable. But if Beatriz is a complete stranger here, unknown to anyone, I may as well go back to Schönefeld as soon as I’ve digested the ham you promised.”

“Listen to me. I don’t know a thing about your Beatriz, but I found a Spanish translator who can help you.”

“I don’t need a translator. I understand a little German. I lived in West Germany for years.”

“Calm down.” He grasped Cayetano’s wrist. “According to a Chilean woman, in the JHSWP—”

“The what?”

“JHSWP, the Jugendhochschule Wilhelm Pieck, a school of the FDJ, on the outskirts of Berlin, on the shore of Lake Bogensee.”

“The FD what?”

“FDJ, the Freie Deutsche Jugend, East Germany’s youth association,” Merluza explained impatiently. “Under socialism, we speak in acronyms, Mr. Brulé.”

“Fine. So what happens there?” The oxtails had an acidic taste, forcing him to wash down the first spoonful with a gulp of beer.

“Well, in the sixties, there was a woman worked there who had arrived from Mexico. It could be a coincidence, or she just may be the person you’re looking for. Her age is the same, as are the period of
time and her nation of origin. We learned about her through a retired Chilean translator.”

“Can I speak with this translator?”

“Forget about meeting her. She lives in Bucharest now. She married one of Ceaușescu’s government officials. And all she knew was that a woman from Mexico had translated there. What’s important now is that you check out the Wilhelm Pieck School.”

“So what are we waiting for?”

“We need a permit to enter there. It’s a place where they indoctrinate revolutionaries from all over the world.”

The hams landed on the table. They were the most extraordinary Cayetano had ever seen. The pigs in East Germany’s cooperative farms must be as big as cows, and live like princes, or like princes sentenced to death, he thought with an appetite so enormous it nearly verged on the demonic. It was strange that Chilean food had so little in common with food in Cuba, and so much more in common with that of Germany.

“They’re expecting us the day after tomorrow, at ten o’clock sharp,” Merluza added, examining the dish. “But please, Cayetano, explain this to me, because these days I just don’t understand what goes though our Chilean leaders’ heads. Why is that woman so important right now, when Chile is in such a mess?”

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