The Neruda Case

by Roberto Ampuero

  “Can you tell me where we’re going?” Cayetano asked.

  The car veered off onto gloomy, deserted streets. It was quiet except for the dull murmur of the tires over damp cobbles and the deep voice dictating codes into the radio. They would interrogate him at a Stasi station and he’d be unable to lie. How would he explain his reasons for looking for Beatriz, widow of Bracamonte, without betraying the poet? How would he explain his visit to the school on the lake? Perhaps the famous Merluza could extract him from this mess, he thought as the car drove the length of the Wall. He regretted having gotten Margaretchen involved in this affair. He now saw how irresponsible it had been to request her help. The speedometer read one hundred kilometers per hour. He wondered what nerve of the German Democratic Republic he’d hit by approaching the Berliner Ensemble actress, to make the police come after him.

  The car drove down a birch-lined street and reached a dark, empty parking lot surrounded by trees. The headlights swept over a sign that read “Treptower Park.” The Volga pulled up. In the distance, Cayetano saw a concrete mass of indeterminate shape pushing up through the treetops.

  “Get out.”

  They walked between the tree trunks, avoiding puddles and fallen branches, until they reached a terrace made of immense rectangles of concrete. The tall mass stood in the back. It was a statue, he realized, made of granite blocks, of a cloaked soldier carrying a child and a gun. His head was tilted downward to convey grief. It was the most monumental statue he’d ever seen in his life.

  “Follow me,” the man ordered. They climbed stone steps until they reached the boots of the colossus.

  A silhouette emerged slowly from the darkness. Its unbuttoned raincoat waved in the breeze. It didn’t take him long to recognize the man: that same night he’d been in the backseat of the Volvo that had driven Tina Feuerbach away from the Berliner Ensemble.

  40

  The man in the raincoat had a wide jaw, an aquiline nose, a penetrating gaze, and high, angular cheekbones. The face, Cayetano thought, of a Slavic aristocrat, sculpted from the same granite as the monument. Under the light rain, Treptower Park began to smell of damp earth.

  “Why were you looking for Beatriz, widow of Bracamonte?” the man asked in English, with a strong German accent.

  “Who are you?” Cayetano answered, sensing that, under these circumstances, his words were purely rhetorical.

  The man calmly put his hands in his raincoat pockets and tilted his head with a tense yet curious expression. The roar of a lion rang out through the East Berlin sky. Cayetano wondered if he was going insane. In Bernau, he’d seen a kangaroo. Now he was hearing a lion. At least the roar was not a bad metaphor for his situation.

  “I know quite a bit about you, and your travels through the German Democratic Republic, Mr. Brulé. But don’t be afraid: you’ll be able to leave the country just as you came. First, explain to me, in a convincing manner, why you are looking for that woman.”

  “Are you part of the Stasi?”

  The man cleared his throat, ran his index finger under his shirt collar in irritation, and repeated, “Why are you looking for that woman?”

  “First I need to know whom I’m speaking with. I’m a tourist. I don’t deserve this kind of treatment.”

  “I just asked you a question.”

  “And you had to kidnap me to ask it.”

  “You can leave this very moment if you wish. My weapon is not an impediment, but persuasion,” the man said in a more conciliatory tone. He had small teeth and thick, large lips, which made him look a bit like a startled child.

  “You’re sure that I can leave?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I’m not a fool, Mr. …what may I call you?”

  The man took a step back and a ray of light sharpened the pallor of his face.

  “You can call me Markus.”

  “I’m no fool, Markus. You could let me leave now and then detain me at the border when it’s time for me to go. I’d rather clear things up here and now. I have nothing to hide, I’m not a spy. I come from the country of Salvador Allende and Pablo Neruda.”

  “That much I know. But you still haven’t told me why you’re looking for that woman.”

  He began to walk slowly, and Cayetano followed. The bodyguards did the same, keeping a distance. The granite colossus stood tall against black clouds, as though ready for battle. If he knew so much already, Cayetano thought, it could be only from Merluza, or Valentina, or Käthe, or maybe Margaretchen. The truth was, things were starting to get complicated.

  “I’m traveling with the support of the Chilean embassy,” he explained. “A Chilean leader charged me with the search for Beatriz. For personal reasons, no state secrets. There’s no reason for the Stasi to interfere.”

  Markus kept walking in silence. Then he asked, turning to Cayetano, “Do you know about this?” He drew an envelope from his raincoat and took out a set of black-and-white photographs. He handed them to Cayetano, who studied them under the flashlight Markus lit for him. “Do you recognize anyone?”

  In some of the photographs, he appeared with Margaretchen in Berlin, Leipzig, and Bernau, and in others, taken at the same locations, there were two men who looked like tourists. One of them was carrying a camera with a zoom lens, and the other had a sports bag slung over his shoulder. But something about their faces, a certain tension, suggested that they weren’t on vacation, or, if they were, they certainly weren’t managing to enjoy it.

  “Do you know them?”

  “First time I’ve seen them.”

  The roar sounded again. A nearby zoo, or perhaps a circus, thought Cayetano.

  “They’re Chileans. Army officers,” Markus explained in a serious voice. “They’re following you around Europe, and you should at least have some idea why.”

  “I don’t know them,” he reiterated, surprised. “And I have nothing to do with politics.” He recalled the military jeeps patrolling Valparaíso, the rumors of a coup, the attempted bomb attacks, his wife’s warnings. The hard truth was that no one living in Chile these days could be free from politics. “Are they still following me?”

  “They’re staying one floor below you, with military passports from the United States, but they’re Chilean. Why are they following you? Just because you’re looking for a woman? Are they following you, or providing you with logistical support? Who sent you here to search for that woman? You can’t leave this country before clearing these matters up for me, Mr. Brulé.”

  “I’ve already told you. I don’t know those men.”

  “But do you at least know what their presence means?”

  “I’ve never seen them before.”

  “In that case, I’m going to propose an arrangement, but you’ll have to honor it to the letter,” Markus said serenely, more at ease. He turned up the collar of his raincoat, turned off his flashlight, and passed the photographs to one of his bodyguards. “You tell me what you’re looking for in the German Democratic Republic, and I’ll guarantee your exit through Friedrichstrasse.”

  41

  So you’re searching for a cure for the Nobel laureate,” Markus said gravely, hands in his pockets. They still walked through Treptower Park, enfolded in drizzle and shadows. A breeze drew murmurs from the foliage, and the divided city was a hoarse and distant pulse in the night, a mere opalescent gleam in the roof of clouds.

  “That’s what I’m here to do.”

  Now Cayetano felt miserable. As soon as Markus had shown him the instruments of torture, he’d betrayed the poet. He was just like Galileo and Margaretchen. Although he’d altered the story somewhat and hidden the real reason why the poet wanted to find Beatriz, Markus already sensed the presence of another secret. He wouldn’t swallow the lie he’d been given for very long.

  “But I still don’t understand why you need the actress from the Berliner Ensemble,” Markus said impassively.

  “Simply because I loved her performance in Life of Galileo. Anyone who visits Berlin h
as to see the Berliner Ensemble.”

  “But you bought the bouquet two hours before you saw Feuerbach perform. Did you know beforehand that you would love it so much?”

  He couldn’t trick the man. Markus knew too much about him. Now he was pushing for a confession, a strange confession, a superfluous one, since it seemed Markus already knew the truth.

  “Might I know what your relationship is to the actress?” he said as they began to scale the steps back to the monument.

  “I’m the one asking questions here,” Markus said firmly.

  When they reached the platform, they paused to look at the terrace, which housed tombs for Soviet soldiers who had fallen in the battle for Berlin.

  “The postwar era cannot be understood without remembering these heroes,” Markus asserted. “I grew up in the Soviet Union. My parents took refuge there in 1934 because they were Jewish and communists, enemies of Hitler. Those who rest here morally justify who I am today and what I do, Mr. Brulé.” He studied Cayetano’s face, then added, “You still owe me an answer.”

  “In that case, I’ll be frank, Markus. Tina Feuerbach is the daughter of Beatriz, widow of Bracamonte.”

  “That’s what you suppose.”

  “You know it’s true. You know very well who they are.”

  “I still don’t understand you, Mr. Brulé. First you tell me that you’re looking for a doctor who lived in Mexico, then that you’re looking for his widow, and in the end you associate that woman, whom I don’t know, with an actress in our Berliner Ensemble. At this rate, you won’t get very far in your investigation, and the poet will die without the help he needs.”

  “Don’t try to confuse me. You can help me find the widow, because you know her daughter. She knows where her mother is.”

  The man in the raincoat shook his head and looked at his shoes, which were speckled with dirt.

  “The fact that you’re being followed by spies from the Chilean military, which is plotting a coup against Salvador Allende, at the very least means you’re in a predicament.”

  “Do you think they can?”

  “Neutralize you?”

  “No. Succeed in a coup.”

  “You want to know too much. But no one can force the hand of history. Events occur when they have to, not decades before, and not after. Chile will return to its path, the same one as always, and pay a high price for it. But let’s leave speculation to historical philosophers. Right now, you’re in trouble with the military.”

  “I’m not losing sleep over them. They have no power. But if you’d lend me a hand with them, I’d be grateful. Perhaps you could stop them from following my trail.”

  “We’ll see,” Markus said pensively.

  “I’d be very grateful, though my task is still to find the actress’s mother.”

  “You are exasperating me, Mr. Brulé. How do you need me to say it? Tina’s mother died years ago. She was German, a decorated member of the resistance against the Nazis. She never lived in Mexico. She was a citizen of East Germany. I doubt she ever left the republic.”

  If Tina’s mother was dead, then his investigation was a sinking ship, Cayetano thought bitterly. He stroked his mustache, which was damp from the cold drizzle. At some point in the journey, he’d lost his way, like one of those mountaineers who vanished in the Andean winter, only to reappear with the spring thaws as a rigorously preserved cadaver. Perhaps the poet’s old lover still lived in Mexico. He decided to make another concession, and said, “If circumstances are as you say, and those officers are following me, I’ll promise you one thing in exchange for a single guarantee from you.”

  “What does Mr. Brulé wish to promise me in Treptower Park?”

  “That I’ll go, and leave your actress from the Berliner Ensemble in peace forever.”

  “In exchange for what?”

  “For a guarantee that I’ll be able to leave the German Democratic Republic, but that you’ll give me a few more days’ stay …”

  “To spend them with the young woman from Bernau?” he asked sardonically. “Don’t tell me you’re the kind of man who falls in love so fast.”

  “I want to say good-bye to her,” Cayetano replied seriously.

  Markus turned on his heels and stood gazing out over the first timid glow of dawn, which tinged the horizon between the birches. His cheeks dimpled when he turned back to Cayetano with a smile.

  42

  He had thirty-six hours left in East Germany, he thought the next day at noon as he waited for Margaretchen at the Mokkabar in Alexanderplatz, perusing a Neues Deutschland that bore disheartening news from Chile regarding shortages and the truck drivers’ strike against Allende. At midnight, when it was early evening in South America, he’d called the poet to tell him the investigation was progressing, though he didn’t say he may have found his daughter in East Berlin. He was extremely cautious about what he said, as he now suspected, or, more accurately, knew without a doubt, that his conversations were being spied on. He didn’t even dare mention the spies in the photographs Markus had shown him, or his guess that they foreshadowed an imminent counterrevolution as bloody as Jakarta’s.

  Margaretchen arrived at the café, tense and exhausted. She hadn’t been able to sleep for fear the Stasi would break down her door and arrest her. As he finished his tea, Cayetano gave her a summary of what had happened the night before. It clearly scared her. They took a taxi to Leipziger Strasse, near the building where Tina Feuerbach lived. He’d gotten the address by phone that morning from a secretary at the Berliner Ensemble. He’d pretended to be a Mexican diplomat who needed to deliver flowers to the actress, and this was enough to get the address. Leipziger Strasse was the most exclusive commercial avenue in Eastern Europe. Mere meters from the Wall, it boasted tall buildings full of shops, cafés, and luxurious restaurants named after the capital cities of socialist states.

  “Are you sure this is the right address?” Margaretchen asked.

  “Absolutely sure,” Cayetano replied as they passed a store window displaying Thuringian vases and Bohemian glassware.

  They entered the building. The doorman wasn’t at his counter. Instead, he was in a small adjacent room, dozing in front of a chattering television. The room smelled of coffee, and the desk was cluttered with magazines and a bottle of Doppelkorn. He was an old man, with white hair and a beard. The PSUA symbol was attached to his lapel.

  “We’re looking for Miss Feuerbach,” said Margaretchen.

  The old man sat up, unsure whether he should be annoyed by the strangers’ interruption or glad that his boss hadn’t caught him watching television from the West. He cleared his throat and said, “She lives in 1507, gnädige Frau. But she’s never here at this hour. How can I help you?”

  “We have an official gift for her in the car,” Cayetano said.

  “What institution sent you?”

  “The Cuban embassy. The gift must be kept extremely safe for her. When will she be back?”

  “You never know. But my office, the office of Kurt Plenzdorf, your humble servant”—he gave a slight nod—“is as secure as the vault of a bank. So no need to worry. Nothing’s ever gotten lost here. The Cuban embassy, you say?”

  “That’s right. The island of rum and music, my friend.”

  “There are so many Cuban bands playing rumbas on TV, and many Cuban workers in state factories, but it’s been years since I’ve even smelled the label of a Cuban rum here in this country,” the doorman complained, gesturing with his hand. Cayetano noticed he was missing his right pinky finger.

  “Well, if you’re patient, Kurt, I’ll bring you a bottle right now. No, not one, but two. One white rum and one amber. Havana Club, the best of the best. And listen to this: the bottles will be signed by none other than Mauro Triana, ambassador extraordinaire, plenipotentiary for Cuba in the German Democratic Republic, direct descendant of the first European to see the land of the Americas.”

  “With two bottles of rum, a box of chocolates, and a crystal vase, our
problems will be solved,” Cayetano said to Margaretchen as they stood in line at the Intershop of the Stadt Berlin Hotel.

  The shop, which sold goods only in Western currency, smelled of perfumes and detergents, and was filled with people who admired the wares, timidly asked about prices, and then bought nothing more than a paltry chocolate bar, a pair of stockings, or a packet of vacuum-packed Melitta coffee.

  “I don’t really understand, but whatever you say,” murmured Margaretchen.

  “The bottles are for Kurt, the chocolates are for his wife, and the vase is for Tina Feuerbach. And ask them to wrap each item as a separate gift, except for the rum, which I want in a bag.”

  “How can you think of approaching Tina again? Wasn’t it enough to get picked up by the Stasi?”

  “I just need to go inside her apartment …”

  “Have you gone crazy? The Genosse doorman would never allow it.”

  “Just help me with this and follow my lead. You’ll see how I get in.”

  43

  When they returned, the doorman was dozing again in front of an episode of the American sitcom Mister Ed. The horse was plaintively telling his owner how he longed for a girlfriend. Cayetano sympathized with Mister Ed. He seemed like a noble and decent horse, more sensible than a lot of people he knew, a wise and privileged witness to a United States that was steadily disappearing. On the doorman’s desk, the Neues Deutschland was lying open to the sports section. He woke up and smiled when he saw Cayetano remove the bottles from the bag.

  “These are from Cuba, Grandpa. This bottle is yours, carte blanche,” Cayetano said. “And I also have this gift for your wife.”

  Kurt rushed to close the door of his office, invited them to sit, opened the bottle, and poured the rum generously and diligently into glasses marked with the insignia of the Dynamo Football Club. His cheeks reddened as he savored the distilled liquor and launched into a description of his responsibilities in the building.