by Max Cossack
Soren went for modesty. “I am sorry to admit I do not speak the language. Fluently, I mean.”
“Even more impressive.”
Soren felt a stab of discomfort from admitting any particle of ignorance. “But I do know some people who know some people. People who do know the language, with inside knowledge, you might say. From them I felt I was able to glean the kind of detail you’re talking about.”
“And what a grasp of detail you have shown,” Abarca said. “By the way, what I said to you in Spanish a moment ago was that I give you my warmest embrace of friendship. An embrace I hope you will return.”
“I am very glad to,” Soren said.
And in his own thoughts, Soren was glad to congratulate himself. It had all been so easy for someone with his quick mind and deep grasp of political theory. A few glances at third-hand sources, a few quick reads of left wing blogs and magazines, and he had compiled a perceptive analysis that impressed even this man of action and obvious power, this man who apparently knew brilliance when he read it.
“Excellent.” Abarca dropped himself down on his sofa. “Sit. Please sit. We have much to share.” Abarca signaled with open left hand that Soren should take the small gold-upholstered chair to his left.
Soren planted himself as directed and folded his hands on his lap and beamed and twinkled at Abarca in expectation.
“Well,” Abarca said.
“Well,” Soren said.
Abarca said, “I admit when I first heard your name from Roper, I didn’t recognize it. Then when you mentioned your wonderful articles, of course I recall them and their author. All very impressive. And very sympathetic to our revolution and its challenges.”
“I have always been critical of the banks and other enemies of the dispossessed,” Soren said.
“And we have always appreciated that.”
“My commitment will never waver.”
“I know this.”
Soren went for humility. “Truth to tell, I was unaware anyone from Venezuela even knew of my work.”
Abarca shook his head. “You underestimate your contribution, my friend. Believe me, we all know the name Soren Pafko.”
“That’s very gratifying to hear.”
“But I glean from your response you are not so widely recognized in your own country?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“A prophet without honor,” Abarca said. “Well, that can be fixed. Now that I am in this country for the time being, I will make your recognition and reputation part of my mission.”
“Thank you, but I am satisfied with the appreciation of my comrades in struggle.”
“Well spoken, my friend. May I offer you a beverage?”
“No, that’s all right. I really came about the painting, you know.”
Abarca seemed disappointed. “Of course, I mean nothing from alcohol, my friend. Just a soft drink. To wet our throats while we talk, as our conversation may be a long one.”
“In that case, please.”
Abarca stood again and walked over to a small fridge. He reached in pulled out two bright orange cans glistening with condensation, the word Frescolita emblazoned on each in large white cursive. “A little taste of home I carry with me,” Abarca said. “They have an American version, but to my taste it lacks authenticity.” He popped the tab off one can to open it and handed it to Soren.
Abarca continued. “My beverage of choice signifies a deep metaphor. You see, our Venezuelan beverage contains more carbonation than your weak American soft drinks, just as, compared to the American people, the Venezuelan people themselves contain more—what is the word?—‘fizz’?—a revolutionary convulsion in potential. As they have demonstrated.”
Abarca winked. “Careful care not to shake the can. It might explode.”
Soren took the offered can with uncertainty. Years had passed since his last soda pop. Normally, he drank only glacial meltwater or herbal tea, or occasionally, a fine wine like Flo’s. But with Abarca smiling at him in expectation, he felt obliged.
He took a sip. The sweetness was toxic. The fizz popped against his palate and up into his sinuses.
To please Abarca, who still sported his broad expectant smile, Soren downed the smallest gulp he could manage and smiled back. He looked around for a place to rest the can. But there was no coaster on the little wooden end table next to his chair, and after a happy belt of his own beverage, Abarca had placed his can on the only available coaster on the coffee table. Soren decided to nestle his can on his lap, where it felt awkward and cold resting against his belly and on his upper thigh.
“You know,” Soren said, “About the painting.”
“Oh, that?” Abarca frowned. “Yes, I will be wanting to purchase that, of course.”
“And the price? As I said, I have questions about the price Roper and I originally discussed.”
Abarca said, “We can discuss price later. Naturally, someone at Roper’s level cannot be trusted with major transactions. I promise you that after our conversation you will agree that the amounts you discussed with Roper are trivial in the larger scheme of things.”
Abarca fixed Soren with an appraising stare. “Or else I have mistaken you and I will be very disappointed in myself.”
“That won’t happen,” Soren said.
Abarca took a gold case out of his pocket. He opened it and removed a single short fat cigar. “Do you mind?” It’s a ‘Cohiba Behike’. Cuban and prohibitively expensive for people lacking the correct friends. Unavailable in the U.S., of course. A gift from a very special comrade we both very much admire.” He winked to signal that of course both knew the identity of the special comrade both admired. “Would you like one of your own?”
“Thank you, no,” Soren said. The smell of a single cigarette nauseated him, even from another car waiting at a traffic light.
Abarca looked at him, a question in his eyes. Soren said, “I couldn’t dream of taking one of your precious Cubans.”
Abarca nodded. “I appreciate your delicacy. I must admit that since the imperialists have imposed our recent challenges these Cubans have become more difficult for us to obtain.”
Abarca fondled the cigar in his left hand. “As you know, there is a kind of ritual to lighting a cigar. Of course, since we have abandoned the archaic religious rituals of the Christian churches and of our primitive indigenous ancestors, it is important to develop new rituals to take their place. The people need ritual. But we want ritual that bespeaks taste and sophistication and regard for the people rather than the elitism and backwardness and ignorance of our regrettable colonialist past.”
Abarca took a stainless-steel device from his pocket. He inserted the rounded end of his cigar into it and clipped off the cigar tip. He looked up. “I feel a straight cut is the best. Allows me to draw smoke from both the core and the edge. You agree?”
“Never make any other kind,” Soren said. He eyed the stubby dark monster Abarca caressed on the tips of his fingers.
From the coffee table, Abarca picked up a brown box about seven inches long. He slid its top open and removed a narrow six-inch strip of thin brown wood with a sword-like hilt and handle. He said “Cedar spill strip. The only way I ever light a cigar. Is that how you do it?”
“Of course.”
Abarca nodded in appreciation of their shared cigar expertise. He used a lighter to set the cedar strip aflame, then held the strip’s flame under the clipped-off cigar end. “When I toast the cigar’s foot, I never let the flame touch it, of course.”
“Of course.”
With the burning cedar strip, Abarca lit the cigar. He took three long draws to get the cigar end glowing a furious red. He blew on the cigar foot three times, then held up the cigar for Soren to see.
Soren nodded. “Perfection.”
Abarca drew and expelled big bellowing puffs. The cloud of smoke rose and then descended around Soren’s head in a toxic haze. Entrails of smoke slithered into Soren’s nose and eyes and down his mouth. T
heir clawed lizard toes scraped the inside of his gullet.
A powerful need to cough gripped Soren’s throat; to suppress the cough he took another gulp of his Frescolita, whose sweetness gagged him. His entire being shuddered.
Oblivious to Soren, Abarca leaned back, and with cigar belching smoke from the fingers of his left hand and can of sacchariferous Frescolita clutched in his right, he told his tale.
“I was born in 1964, in Sabaneta, Venezuela, the birthplace of Hugo Chávez himself. My father was a sugar worker and we were very poor. My father died when I was eight years old, but before he passed away, he encouraged me to pursue my studies without stint. It was his vision for my life.”
For a moment, Abarca gazed into the empty distance, remembering his beloved father. Then, “With much effort and despite many obstacles with which I will not bore you, I advanced in my studies and I became a student of Hugo Chavez himself when he taught at the Venezuelan Academy of Military Science. I am of course very proud of that.”
Abarca winked again. “Of course, you must have guessed Abarca is not my original name. There are people who would pay much to know where I am.”
Soren hadn’t given any thought to Abarca’s name, but he nodded.
Abarca continued. “From the time I met Hugo and I began to study with him, I was determined to follow him in his path of Chavismo, of revolutionary struggle, to free our country and our people from the grip of the banks and the International Monetary Fund and the Zionists. They are our enemies and we must never forget that.” Abarca waved his cigar like a conductor’s baton, inviting Soren to chime in.
“Of course. Never.”
Abarca took a deep puff on his cigar and fouled the air with another colossal exhalation, He lifted his Frescolita and took a belt and put it back down on its coaster. His action reminded Soren of the can he held on his lap.
Abarca said, “So, when you think of the powerful enemies we faced both outside and within our country”—he shook his head in sadness mingled with disgust—“you must understand if we sometimes fall short of our original ideals, the high ideals we clasped to our hearts so long ago when we were young and naïve.”
Soren quoted Chairman Mao: “A revolution is not a dinner party.”
Abarca surprised Soren with a powerful laugh which rang through the room. He laughed himself into his own coughing fit. “No, no, it is not. No! No! Ah…”
Abarca must have seen the puzzled expression on Soren’s face. He said, “Forgive me. I was just thinking our beloved Chairman Mao who did so much for the Chinese people and for the world’s dispossessed, of course never had the chance to participate in any of the dinner parties Hugo and I and our friends were enjoying a few years ago. If he had, maybe he wouldn’t have said that—at least not in quite that way.”
He nodded. “Though many of us know our esteemed Comrade Mao threw his own dinner parties very much like ours.”
Abarca stared off into space again. He leaned forward and slapped his wiry brown hand on Soren’s thigh. “Ah, you must excuse me. Memories. You understand? You must have a few yourself, I suppose, surrounded as you are by so many young women who no doubt think so highly of their brilliant professor.”
Soren said nothing.
Abarca eyed him. “Discreet, I see. That is good. Discretion is very good. I like a man who knows when to keep his mouth shut. I have suffered too much from those who did not.” He scowled and made a sudden cutting movement in the air with his right hand.
Taking the hint, Soren still said nothing. The two men made eye contact. Soren felt he was seeing deep into this man. He doubted the man was seeing back into him. No one ever had.
Abarca returned to seriousness. “Now, as you must also recognize, we needed resources. The will of the people is important, but we also needed money and guns.”
Soren quoted Mao again. “All political power flows from the barrel of a gun.”
“Yes.” Abarca nodded in appreciation of the quotation and the man being quoted. “And for guns you need money.”
“I understand,” Soren said, although in point of fact he had never fired a gun or even held one. He felt a flash of inadequacy in the presence of Abarca, a military man who must know and use guns very well.
Soren suppressed this unwelcome feeling of shortcoming with a vision of Abarca against Soren’s Wall, Soren himself clutching a fearsome weapon bristling with deadly attachments. A hail of bullets.
Abarca said, “I’m glad you understand. Because money is the issue. Especially now, after we have suffered so much from our enemies. And that is why I am in this country, which after all— except for the Zionist entity—is the most important source of all our troubles.”
“What can I do?”
“You ask precisely the right question, my friend. I’m beginning to think I have been right. You may be just the person we need.”
Soren said, “I’d like to think so.”
Abarca stood. “I am glad.” He stuck the cigar in his mouth and folded his hands behind his back and began to pace. “But I need to be sure.”
“Sure how?”
Abarca stopped and pointed his cigar at Soren. “Are you up for a little test?”
“Test of what?”
“Your commitment, my friend.”
“Of course.” Soren looked up at Abarca.
“And we can help you with something also. As a mutual expression of confidence.”
“Help with what?”
“You have a troublesome member of your local DCA chapter? A revisionist named Rivelle?”
“You are well informed.”
“As a gesture of friendship, we will help you with that.”
“That would be nice.”
Abarca nodded and waved his cigar up towards the ceiling, which Soren took as his signal to leave, so Soren also stood. The two men hugged again. Abarca led Soren out of the room and down the hallway to where Enrique stood guard. Abarca signaled again with his cigar and Enrique opened the door.
Soren walked out the door and stood for a moment, taking deep breaths from the clean air. He knew he’d have to change clothes and shower once he got home. He walked down the front path to where Roper sat sulking in the driver’s seat of his clunker. Soren got in on the passenger side and said, “Let’s go.”
Roper said nothing. He started the car and drove them off.
As Soren settled back in his seat for the ninety-minute drive back to Ojibwa City, Soren thought over his situation. He was poised on the brink of something great. He felt it. If it hadn’t been for the film of foul soot covering his tongue, he could have tasted it.
But he had to think things through. What was Abarca’s exact game in the U.S.? Escaping from the aftermath of the failed Venezuelan state was obviously only part of it. The man had a house and staff; he clearly had money. And those women at the computers, they were obviously coordinating some action somewhere, but was the action back in Venezuela or here in the U.S.? And how much money was involved? Was Abarca really all he claimed to be?
Soren was curious what Abarca had in mind for Rivelle. Not that Rivelle worried Soren so much, but it would be interesting to see how Abarca handled the irritant.
The testing was mutual; Abarca would have to pass his own freaking test.
If Abarca passed and was the real deal, this was Soren’s chance to step up in the world.
Soren vowed to himself he would pass any test Abarca came up with.
It wasn’t until they were halfway back to Ojibwa City that Soren recalled that he and Abarca hadn’t settled on any final price for L’Amination.
21 Deirdre’s Place
Mason had discovered there really was an Eden and it wasn’t some grubby coffee house no matter how hip, even with Deirdre sitting across the table from him. Paradise was Deirdre’s bed, in Deirdre’s apartment, with Deirdre lying next to him, after they had just made love for the first time.
They had walked the two blocks along from Sven’s to her Main Street apartment o
ver Rose’s Sewing Shop. Deirdre hummed some nameless tune; Mason kept his eyes focused ahead. When they passed his building, he dashed up the stairs to his apartment and loaded a briefcase with books, notebooks and outlines, preparing to explicate Hegel, Marx and Mao.
But when Deirdre opened the door, she gently took the briefcase from him and laid it on the floor. “That’s okay for now,” she said in her low slightly throaty voice. “We can get to that later.” She took his hand and to his amazement guided him direct to her bed, where they spent the next three hours.
Now they were lying together, sheets and thighs entangled in a big mess.
“I have to get up,” he said.
She smiled. “Okay.”
“Okay.” He started to pull his right leg out, but with surprising strength she clenched her thighs around his.
“Please,” he said. “I have to visit the head.”
“I thought we both already did that.” She smiled a bawdy smile.
“Honest,” he said. “I’ll just be a minute or two.”
“Okay,” she said, and relaxed her thighs enough for him to disentangle his leg and put his foot on the floor.
On his way back, he saw a book on her desk. “Hey, you’ve got Coleman’s Lectures on Quantum Field Theory. Is that for a class?
“No, for fun,” she said.
“You’re a physics major?”
“Mostly math,” she said. “Some physics.”
“I wouldn’t have guessed that,” he said.
She half sat up. She pulled her sheet up to cover her breasts. “Why not?”
Tread carefully here. He said, “Well, I mean, you’re going on about how you need me to explain Hegel, and yet.”
“Yet?”
“Yet you understand the math of quantum mechanics?”
“I’m trying to. I had the idea someday I could be the one to come up with a cogent definition for the Feynman Path Integral.”
“Okay,” Mason said, impressed. The only word he recognized was the name of the famous physicist Richard Feynman. “So you understand that stuff, but not dialectical materialism?”