The Neruda Case (38 page)

T
he LAN airplane stirred up dust as it hit the landing strip at Santiago de Chile Airport on September 10, 1973. After retrieving his baggage, Cayetano called the poet’s house in Valparaíso from a booth at the terminal, but received no answer. He then tried to reach him at La Chascona, in the capital’s Bellavista neighborhood, but the staff there said he was at his Isla Negra home, on the Pacific Coast.

He tried calling there. No luck. A man’s voice informed him that the poet was sleeping, and to try again later. Out of sheer curiosity, Cayetano asked for Alicia, but the man responded that he knew no one of that name. He took a taxi into Santiago to investigate the address the Bolivian accountant had given him in La Paz. Excavations for a future subway system on the Alameda had become trenches and quarries for the Allende government’s sympathizers and adversaries, who fought in the Santiago streets with sticks and fists.

“This can’t go on much longer,” the taxi driver said as they passed the Palacio de la Moneda, which was protected by squads of riot police, with their cars and buses. The flag raised high over La Moneda conveyed that Allende was still in his office. “As a tourist, you have no idea what it’s like, sir. This country is going to shit.”

Outside the window of the Ford Zodiac, Santiago was an anarchic city, empty of supplies, besieged by an invisible enemy. Interminable lines stretched at grocery stores, at supermarkets, and at the stops of bus lines that no longer ran. Cloth banners hung from buildings, supporting Allende or demanding he step down. In the streets, piles of burning tires emitted whirls of pestilent black smoke, leftist and right-wing groups battled heatedly as ululating police sirens mixed with the sound of shouting, and tear gas poisoned the city’s air. On the corners, riot-police cars and mobile-unit buses stood ready to enter the fray, despite the fact that some of them already had broken windows and punctured tires. Farther on, rows of young people with helmets, sticks, and flags demanded the expropriation of
El Mercurio
and of all the nation’s land. The taxi driver veered away from the chaos downtown and took Vitacura to its intersection with elegant Luis Carrera Street.

Cayetano asked the driver to wait a few minutes for him. He was in front of the very house that Tamara Sunkel had given the La Paz accountant as her temporary Chilean address five years before. In 1968, it supposedly belonged to Maia Herzen, a person whom Tamara trusted, according to Soto Ebensberger. It was a one-story house, white and sturdy, with a tile roof; its long shape extended back into trees and bushes, while Manquehue Hill rose up behind it.

He rang the bell at the gate and waited, gazing at a large palm tree in the backyard. He saw two parked cars: a white Fiat 125S, and a sober beige Opel. Someone must be home, he thought. Hopefully this was still the residence of Maia Herzen. Through a window, he spied wicker furniture, a ceramic floor, rubber plants with large polished leaves, oil paintings, and pottery near the fireplace. Then he saw the letters poking out of the mail slot. He took them out surreptitiously.

The first letter, from the gas company, was addressed to Maia Herzen. So was the second, from the phone company. And the third
as well. He smiled with satisfaction and ran his fingertips down his lilac tie with the small green guanacos. He was definitely in luck. Maia Herzen still lived here and surely she would know how to find Tamara Sunkel. Later he’d call the poet to give him the fantastic news. He felt that he was truly turning into a Caribbean Maigret. He didn’t care whether or not anyone opened the door, because the matter was resolved, he thought, taking a pack of Bolivian cigarettes from his pocket. Or, at least, resolved to a point: he’d found the woman the poet was looking for. The rest of the matter lay in Don Pablo’s hands. He lit a cigarette and inhaled the smoke, satisfied, proud of himself. This would make Neruda happy. Perhaps it would give him the energy to write more poems. What should he do next? Go to Isla Negra to relay the news?

The sound of a car engine returned him to Santiago. Someone was coming home. He felt excited. Waters always flow back to their riverbed, he thought as he returned the letters to the mail slot. He walked toward the street with the cigarette hanging from a corner of his lips, feeling, for the first time, like a true detective. That was when he realized the sound had come from the taxi that had brought him here. It was speeding down Luis Carrera, leaving nothing but a trail of smoke. He cursed the taxi driver a thousand times and said a silent good-bye to his luggage and the indigenous doll he’d bought for Laura Aréstegui in the La Paz airport.

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H
e wasted the whole morning in a Barrio Alto police station, filing a police report on his luggage. The officers didn’t have time for cases like his, busy as they were combating the black market, managing the lines outside grocery stores, and preventing people from throwing stones at the few trucks and buses that still ran. The national transportation and commerce strike was well under way, and would extend, as its organizers put it, “until the final consequences,” a euphemism for the toppling of Allende. The country was fatally paralyzed and divided.

He wasn’t able to reach the poet, nor could he find a bus to take him to Isla Negra, nor could he book tickets to Valparaíso on the Andesmar Bus, Tur Bus, or Condor Bus. The last train to the port city had already left Mapocho Station. He had no choice but to check into a hotel.

With the money he had left, he got a room at the Gala Hotel, near the Palacio de la Moneda. It was after nine p.m. on September 10 when he went out to eat. Plaza de Armas was deserted. He found an empty soda fountain, where the waiter prepared him a hot dog without mayonnaise or sauerkraut, and a weak coffee. He ate quickly, feeling like one of those miserable characters who wandered station
platforms in the film
Doctor Zhivago
. He returned to his hotel. In the distance, he heard gunshots and explosions. The radio brought alarming news. Opposition leaders were demanding that the president resign, all power be turned over to the leader of the Senate, and new elections be called. Meanwhile, government transmissions warned that civil war could be at hand. There was no way he could sleep, so he went back out for a walk.

A thick, cold mist filled the streets, redolent with gunpowder. He wandered despondently through downtown Santiago until, all of a sudden, as he turned a corner, La Moneda appeared in front of him, illumined like a ghostly sailboat surging out of dense fog. He crossed Plaza de la Constitución, passing the presidential palace, which glided majestically in a sea of surreal calm, and entered the Carrera Hotel. He wanted a strong drink. The bar was full of foreign correspondents, diplomats, spies, and gentlemen in suits and ties who insisted that only a military government could save the nation. In the midst of the conversations swirling around the tables—some whispered, some shouted—he downed two double rums in a row and paid for them with the last of the poet’s dollars. Then he watched the news on the opposition’s television channel, which was playing above the bar.

Things had clearly worsened since he had been away. General Augusto Pinochet now headed up the army, a man who in the past would have stood out for his apolitical stance and loyalty to government and constitution, but who wasn’t half the man that General Carlos Prats had been, and didn’t have a drop of his charisma. The air force was facing internal unrest. A similar situation seemed to plague the navy, which planned to initiate an operation along the Chilean coast the following day, in conjunction with a fleet from the United States. The news cameras covered the widespread food shortage, the long queues, chaos on the streets, terrorist attacks from the right, factories taken over by workers and land taken over by peasants, and die-hard protests on the left and right. Almost all the buses and trucks
in the entire country were parked in a coastal area north of Valparaíso. There they slumbered, deprived of essential parts by the strikers so that no one would be able to drive them. The opposition’s strike, backed by opposition parties and businessmen, and financed by Washington, had vowed to cease only if Allende resigned. While the Unidad Popular Party urged the president to respond to the coup attempt with a firm hand, the opposition was refusing further dialogue with the head of state. The country, Cayetano thought with another rum in his hands, was advancing irrevocably toward a precipice, and would never be the same again.

He left the bar, filled with a deep bitterness, and headed to the lobby, hoping to get some fresh air and clear his mind. He looked through the windows and glimpsed La Moneda again. It was essentially a large silver ship, its candles swollen in the night breeze. There was even a light in the president’s office, on the second floor, to the left of the main entrance. So Allende was still working.

“Allende clearly doesn’t want to leave La Moneda,” a bar patron had said, a bald, bearded man in suit and tie.

“Let’s put an end to them before they put an end to us,” another had said, garnering applause.

“The only good communist is a dead communist,” a third man had added, emboldened, drawing an ovation.

Cayetano decided to return to the bar’s heated atmosphere, and sat down on a leather armchair, some distance from the throng. Strange, he thought as he recalled the current chaos in the nation: in this hotel, a refuge for the foreign press, businessmen, diplomats, and right-wing politicians, there was no shortage. Not of rum, nor of whiskey, nor of chicken or beef sandwiches, nor of sausage or cheese. It was as through the place belonged to another era, and another country.

A waiter suddenly placed a glass in his hand, brimming with
what seemed to be a respectable amber rum; a first-class amber rum, to be exact.

“What’s this?” he asked, startled.

“A Bacardi, seven years old,” the waiter said, putting on airs.

“Compliments of the house?”

“Compliments of someone waiting for you outside.”

Cayetano took a long gulp with his eyes closed, an elated, voluptuous gulp during which he briefly thought of Kurt Plenzdorf in his little office in Berlin, and then he stood and followed the waiter, glass in hand, curiosity pricking the soles of his feet to move faster. Outside the windows, beyond the trees of Plaza de la Constitución, the flag still glowed over La Moneda, against the September night.

“If you would be so kind,” the waiter said, and gestured toward the woman seated in front of the window.

“Cayetano Brulé?” The woman rose. She was tall, white, with light-colored hair. “A pleasure to meet you,” she added with a measured smile. “I’m Beatriz. Beatriz, widow of Bracamonte.”

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