The Neruda Case

by Roberto Ampuero

  After barhopping in downtown Liepzig and stopping by a students’ party in a building on Strasse des 18 Oktober, Cayetano and Margaretchen said good-bye to Von Westphalen and returned to their hotel room, staggering, arms around each other.

  “What are you thinking about?” Margaretchen asked through the open door of the bathroom, where she was removing her makeup in front of the mirror.

  Cayetano placed his glasses on the nightstand and said melancholically, “I’d love to show you Valparaíso. It’s just like life: sometimes you’re high up, sometimes down low, but there are always stairs and passages through which you can rise or descend or break your neck. And there, though you may not believe it, the dead come to life. Would you come?”

  “You still don’t understand this world, Cayetano. I can’t leave here until I turn sixty. You’d have to wait a long time.”

  He said nothing, irritated by his own clumsiness. Light from the green Hesperia sign pulsed on the ceiling. He suddenly thought of Ángela under the hibiscus trees of Miramar Park, her hurried steps back to the Lada waiting for her in the distance, the loneliness that had overcome him. He also recalled the morning they first met, on Ocean Drive in Miami Beach, where retirees killed time in doorways, waiting for death. He saw her again in her olive-green uniform, dissolving into the soft shadows of Havana. He couldn’t deny that he desperately longed for a companion he could fall asleep with every night and share breakfast with the following day, looking out over the sea in Valparaíso. At that moment, the phone rang.

  “Cayetano, is that you?” Karl von Westphalen asked through the phone line. “My friend says the person you’re looking for works in the Berliner Ensemble.”

  38

  Her name was Tina Feuerbach. Or at least that was the name she used at the Berliner Ensemble, a theater founded in 1949 by Bertolt Brecht. This time the name change didn’t surprise him, since many artists go by pseudonyms. Wasn’t Pablo Neruda called Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto? And wasn’t Gabriela Mistral really Lucíla Godoy Alcayaga? Von Westphalen’s voice filled him with hope: Tina Feuerbach was Tina Lederer, the daughter of Beatriz Schall, born in Mexico in the forties! He wondered whether she was the poet’s daughter. How could he find out for sure? And would she have any idea that her father might not be a Cuban-Mexican doctor, but a Chilean poet? Where was her mother now, the woman whom Neruda had loved when she was young, and the only person in the world who knew the secret truth the poet was so desperate to learn?

  The next morning, they went to a tourist office and obtained a copy of the Berliner Ensemble’s current schedule. It informed them that Tina Feuerbach was currently playing Virginia, the astronomer’s daughter, in Life of Galileo, a piece written by Brecht during the Nazi era. Cayetano invited Margaretchen to have a drink at a café called Kaffeebaum, where they sat at an outdoor table under the white morning sun. He felt hopeful. If Margaretchen could recognize Tina as Virginia, he would devise a way to approach the actress and then reach her mother.

  They returned to Berlin on the afternoon’s first express train and made their way toward the Berliner Ensemble, where they bought the last two seats available for the weekend show. They were relegated to the last row, but could still count themselves lucky, as Life of Galileo was always a box-office hit in the German Democratic Republic, the vendor assured them. Even more so now that Wolfgang Heinz was playing Galileo, and no less than under the direction of Fritz Bennewitz. The poet was right, Cayetano thought. As they’d strolled through Valparaíso, he’d said that only under socialism would art and literature acquire real importance; it was the only context in which people paid devoted attention to writers and artists, which was why governments kept a close watch on intellectuals. Under capitalism, on the other hand, artists could say anything they wanted, because very few people listened.

  In the few days before the show, Cayetano and Margaretchen made mad passionate love in his small room at the Stadt Berlin Hotel, while a cold, persistent rain fell heavily over the city, soaking its roofs and trams and cobbled streets with sadness. When the rain gave way to streaks of clear blue cracking open the dirty sky, they went for walks, hand in hand or with their arms around each other, trying to forget that their romance was condemned to die as soon as he passed through the Wall into the West. During those days, they ate at the Ganymedes, an exclusive restaurant near Friedrichstrasse Station, and at Café Flair, on Schönhauser Allee. They went up to the revolving platform at the top of the Television Tower, from which they glimpsed the edges of the divided city, and they visited the Brecht Museum in the writer’s former home.

  “Anyone could be a communist, living like this,” Margaretchen protested in Brecht’s spacious apartment, as they gazed out a window at a cemetery housing the remains of famous figures from German history. “He supported the PSUA regime, but lived like the bourgeoisie, published in the West, and could travel freely wherever he wanted.”

  “My dear, let’s say he was a believer, but not completely,” Cayetano said, remembering the poet’s three houses in Chile and the fourth one he’d just acquired in Normandy, as well as the flush bank account financing this very international investigation.

  “He was just like Galileo. He knew how to live alongside the powers that be, how to shut up when it was in his own interests, and how to reap the advantages offered to him by the regime. That’s why he wrote that play. Galileo was his hero. Brecht lost his courage, just like Galileo, as soon as they showed him the instruments of torture.”

  “Well, wouldn’t you do the same?” Cayetano pressed.

  “Who’s got the makings of a martyr? Cursed is the nation in need of heroes. That’s what Brecht said. And he was right. The powers that be reserve the title of hero for their cannon fodder,” she said sadly.

  The gravel crunched beneath their feet as they walked between the cemetery’s trees. They had already passed the tombs of Hegel and Fichte, and now paused in front of the obelisk and self-portrait that Karl Friedrich Schinkel had sculpted for his own tomb. A cluster of sparrows flew away in fear. Down the path, large stones bore the names of Brecht and his wife, Helene Weigel. Drops still fell from the foliage, drawing the scent of fresh roots from the earth. They returned to the Stadt Berlin and made love in front of the window, looking out at the Wall and beyond it, past the border of death, at the streets of West Berlin, unreachable for Margaretchen.

  The night of the event, they bought roses at a kiosk on Friedrichstrasse and took them along to the Berliner Ensemble, depositing them at coat check. Cayetano hoped to approach the actress when she emerged from backstage. They watched the play with utmost attention. On the stage, Virginia treated her father, an old and half-blind Galileo, with veneration, while he scribbled on papers, flattered the bourgeoisie, and vacillated before the priests of the Inquisition. Cayetano studied the actress’s light brown hair, brown eyes, prominent cheekbones, and thick body, wondering whether he was looking at the poet’s daughter. In her makeup, Tina Feuerbach could pass as Latin American, which increased the possibility that she might be his child. But Cayetano had to admit that her appearance meant nothing, because both the poet and Dr. Bracamonte were Latin American. The actress could be descended from either of them.

  To his surprise, as he strove to find some resemblance between Tina and the poet, any remote trace in her face or body that could link them irrefutably, he discovered, to his discomfort, that as the narrative progressed, another character in the play seemed to reflect his own self: Andrea, Galileo’s bold young disciple. The play seemed to force a mirror before his eyes. He couldn’t deny it. That Italian orphan had devoted himself to science, and to emulating his teacher, with the same passion that he, Cayetano, the detective created by Neruda, now poured into his work, and he had to admit that this filled him with pride and unexpected fresh energy. Galileo, Brecht, and Neruda had more in common than their flights from threatened pain: all three of them were capable of transforming people around them, of making them see the world in a new way, of transmit
ting their teachings so naturally that they almost failed to realize they were doing so. He himself was not the same after meeting the poet. The final scene of the play—in which Andrea, after breaking with Galileo when the latter recanted his own theories, reconciled with his teacher and received his scientific legacy—moved him profoundly. Would he, Cayetano, be capable of fulfilling the mission the poet had bestowed on him? Could that young woman, pretending onstage to pray to the heavens for her father’s faith, become the loyal daughter Don Pablo longed for?

  When the curtain fell and the audience erupted in applause, Cayetano and Margaretchen immediately retrieved the bouquet and went outside, to the actors’ exit. It was raining, so they sought refuge under an awning, near a knot of fans hoping for autographs, mostly long-haired, rebellious-looking youths who talked amid cigarette smoke as they waited for the actors to come out. Margaretchen was upset. She couldn’t confirm that Virginia was Beatriz’s daughter, whom she’d seen only from far away, ten years ago, at school celebrations by the lake. The makeup, the lights, and their distance from the stage, together with the intervening years, all conspired to muddy any chances of certain recognition. An hour later, when they wondered whether Tina had snuck out through some other door, they saw her emerge under the awning. They ran toward her, along with her other admirers.

  “Tina, these flowers are for you!” Cayetano shouted at the actress, in Spanish, as he extended the bouquet amid curious gazes.

  Tina was wearing a jacket, black pants, and sunglasses. A bag was slung over her shoulder. Without the stage makeup, she looked older than Virginia, and more Latin, though with undeniably German features as well, Cayetano thought.

  “Für mich?” she asked, surprised.

  Her fans extended theater programs for her to sign.

  “For your formidable performance, Frau Schall. Fantastic!” Cayetano went on, again in Spanish.

  “Feuerbach. Not Schall,” she corrected him as she took the flowers, gave autographs, and resumed her departure. On the street, a black vehicle with curtained windows idled in wait.

  “We’d like to interview you for a Chilean magazine,” Margaretchen added, trying to get closer to Tina. “Whenever and wherever is convenient to you.”

  “All the world’s success to the Chilean people in building socialism!” the actress replied, this time in Spanish, without slowing her gait through the mob of fans toward the car.

  “Here’s my information.” Cayetano gave her a piece of paper right as someone shouted that the director of the play was emerging from backstage. The fans ran en masse toward the door, leaving Cayetano and Margaretchen alone with Tina Feuerbach.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll call you,” she promised, putting the paper in her bag without slowing down.

  “You don’t happen to know a Beatriz Bracamonte?” Cayetano asked.

  “Beatriz Bracamonte?”

  “Yes, from Mexico City.”

  “No, I don’t know anyone by that name. Is she a Mexican actress?”

  “She lived in Mexico and Cuba.”

  “I’m sorry, but someone is waiting for me.” She gestured toward the car. The driver had pulled up to the back door. “Good night.”

  “Before you go,” shouted Cayetano, “where did you learn Spanish?”

  “In school, when I was a girl.”

  “They teach such good Spanish at Bernau?”

  “Good night,” she said again, putting an end to the conversation.

  The driver opened the back door, and Tina slid into the spacious interior. At that moment Cayetano glimpsed a dark-haired man in suit and tie, sitting in the back. The car drove rapidly down Friedrichstrasse, which was dark and deserted at that hour, and disappeared in the direction of the S-Bahn, followed by two Volga cars.

  “Do you know what kind of cars those were?” Margaretchen asked him a while later as they walked along Unter den Linden in the light Berlin rain.

  “Government cars, evidently,” said Cayetano. He paused under a lime tree to light a cigarette. Light from an emaciated streetlamp reflected weakly on the wet pavement.

  “Those are Stasi cars, Cayetano. The curtained one was a Volvo, reserved only for the highest leaders. Tina Feuerbach has some sort of tie with a very powerful person. This whole situation is giving me chills.”

  Cayetano calmly exhaled a tuft of smoke, put his arm around Margaretchen, and told her not to worry, that they should stroll in peace and then go dine and drink at the Stadt Berlin because they’d taken an important step that night. He leaned his head against hers, and they walked that way for a time, in silence, gazing at the Television Tower that stood svelte and luminous at the end of Unter den Linden, just as the Eiffel Tower reigned over Parisian rooftops in Simenon’s novels. Feeling amorous, he pulled Margaretchen toward him and kissed her on the mouth, thinking that Maigret could never understand the desires and agonies of a Latin American lost in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. At that moment, he saw a car and realized they were being followed.

  39

  He demanded that Margaretchen return to her apartment. Her fears had come true. The secret police was spying on them, and she couldn’t afford to be seen involved with a foreigner. Margaretchen gripped his arm and refused to leave him there, on Unter den Linden, which stretched out long and solitary between the sparkling façades of historical buildings. In the distance, beyond the Staatsoper and Humboldt University, they made out the red sign of a bar, flickering ceaselessly like a winking eye.

  “I won’t leave you. Especially not now,” Margaretchen said.

  “Listen to me,” Cayetano insisted. “Go.” The drizzle covered the Volga’s roof like gleaming velvet. “It wouldn’t do any good for them to arrest us both. Go, and I’ll come see you tomorrow. They can’t do anything to me. I’m a foreigner. If you stay, you’ll make trouble for yourself.”

  “I don’t care. I’ve already been fired.”

  “Go, Margaretchen. Leave now and they won’t be able to follow you. I can leave East Germany, but you can’t. Go away right now. Please listen.”

  “I won’t leave you alone now.” She pressed his arm tightly.

  “I’m begging you, don’t be stubborn. If you care about us, you have to leave. Right now.”

  She kissed him furtively on the mouth and retraced her steps down Unter den Linden in a manner that made it difficult for the Volga to follow. The car idled. Its occupants clearly didn’t know whom to keep pursuing. A few moments later, the car kept on slowly, following Cayetano, and he breathed a sigh of relief. If Margaretchen could reach the metro or the S-Bahn, they’d lose her tracks. He kept walking, the Volga at his side. Across from Marx-Engels Platz, the interior of the Palast der Republik shone like a lamp shop with all its wares turned on, and the sphere at the top of the tall concrete Television Tower revolved like a flying saucer over Berlin. An airplane preparing to land at Tempelhof stabbed the clouds with its lights.

  Suddenly two men got out of the Volga. The slam of car doors echoed through the silent night. They approached him without making a sound. A chill ran through Cayetano’s body. He felt utterly alone.

  “Good evening,” said the burlier of the two. They both wore raincoats and black, wide-brimmed hats, and looked like ravens. Cayetano thought of Humphrey Bogart films he’d seen. But he knew that this was not a film, nor was it a Mafia novel, but something real that was happening to him in the misty rain of Unter den Linden. This was real life in the harsh world of East Berlin during the Cold War, not a scene shot in front of some cardboard Hollywood façade. He returned their greeting with gritted teeth, still walking, imitating a cornered Bogart to retain some dignity. He couldn’t remember a single chapter in which Maigret was cornered by the police.

  One of the men flanked him on the left, the other on the right. They walked for a while, keeping pace with him, without saying a word. The Volga followed them without making a sound.

  “How can I help you?” he asked when it became clear that he couldn’t shake them. Fiction
al detectives easily became heroes, but those of flesh and blood never transcended their status as investigative proletarians. Perhaps he was something like Galileo Galilei, he thought, a Galileo of the detective world, unwilling to be burned at the stake. Yet again he tried to recall a remotely similar situation in Simenon’s novels, to help him figure out what to do, but his efforts were in vain. Which proved that things happened differently in fiction, according to a different set of rules, at the hands of that god who was never indifferent to his characters’ fates: the writer. At last he knew why authors went to such lengths to protect their protagonists, especially if they were protagonists of a series. Because they wanted advance royalties for their future novels, writers became magnanimous gods and, twisting the hand of reality, threw lifesavers to their characters at the last minute, lifesavers that, strictly speaking, did not exist in real life, but that the reader was willing to accept as authentic. However, he was not a fictional character—though at that moment he wished he were—but a humble investigator working for a dying poet who was far away and unable to help. At least he, Cayetano Brulé, was made of flesh and blood and did not live in a novel, but in reality, an implacable reality that had no gods or, if they did exist, gods that were indifferent and impervious to human fates.

  “Get in the car,” he heard them order, pulling him out of his own thoughts.

  “Police?” he asked with a serenity he did not feel. Freezing rain trickled into the collar of his shirt.

  “Get in, I said!”

  The pressure against his shoulders as they pushed him left no room for discussion and no possibility of escape.

  He sat in the backseat of the Volga, between the monstrously large men. Two more men sat in the front, short-haired, in suits and ties. The one in the passenger seat spoke a coded message into a microphone as the Volga sped past the Palast der Republik.