The Black Minutes

by Martin Solares

  “One last thing, Father. Did you know that Bernardo had given up journalism?”

  The Church Fathers, who prohibit lying, never did counsel telling the whole truth, especially if the inquisitors haven’t asked the right question. “Yes, I did know.”

  “And can’t you tell me why?”

  “Interesting question. No.” I was silent for a second. “It’s a shame!” I said. “If you knew how to read between the lines, we could talk for hours in great detail. Bernardo was an expert at that. It’s an extremely complicated situation, Cabrera. But first tell me something: What did I give you in Logic?”

  “A C.”

  “A C? That seems too high. I’ve given only one A-plus in all my career as a professor, and that was to Bernardo Blanco. Are you sure it was a C? No, it couldn’t have been that high; I’ll look through my files.”

  “Father,” he insisted. “Tell me what happened to Bernardo.”

  “Not even I know that,” I said.

  And I was telling the truth, only he was talking about Bernardo’s earthly fate and I was talking about the salvation of his soul. Then he turned and looked at the bookshelf. Your mother! I said to myself again, and from the way he looked at me, I knew he had seen the bottle. Surely he must think I still drink the way I did during his time in school. Fritz, I said to myself, you need to calm down; if you go that route you’ll ruin everything. Stop worrying about the fucking bottle. What does anyone care about a fucking bottle? It could be a gift from a student or what it is: an object confiscated at the Institute. I thought he would get tired and leave, but he kept examining the bookcase and then he came alive again.

  “People told me three things about you, Father.”

  I began to sweat. “What things?”

  “Should I tell you in order or—?”

  “However you damn well please. What did they tell you?” “That you counseled Bernardo.”

  “It could be,” I commented.

  My hands were shaking, and Ramón noticed. “Forgive me,” I said, “but some people are about to come by, and I don’t want them to see you here.”

  That set him on the defensive. “Don’t you want to hear the second rumor?”

  “Go on, tell me.”

  “That you don’t get along with the bishop.”

  “That’s a lie. And the third?”

  “It’s that you have a bad relationship with the bishop but a great one with the port cartel.”

  I remained silent for a second, then burst out laughing. Ramón must have thought I was crazy. When I was done laughing, I had to dry my tears with a handkerchief.

  “Anything else?” I asked.

  He looked furious, and rightly so. “No,” he said. “Now it’s your turn. I need you to give me some actual information, or did you make me come here for nothing?”

  I leaned forward, and the copy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was once again in my line of sight.

  “Three things,” I said to him, “and that’s it, because my visitors are about to arrive. One: Bernardo was writing a book. Two: it was about the history of this city in the seventies. Three: yes, he did receive death threats. And a fourth thing: stay out of this, Macetón. You’re a good officer, but you should just walk away. As the Buddhist monks would say, When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss is gazing into you.”

  He tried to get me to talk further, but there was no way I was going to give him the name of a suspect. I explained that at another time I would have given him the information without hesitation, but that morning I had had a problem.

  When I went to Bernardo’s burial, I unexpectedly ran into the Lord Bishop. He was surprised to see me there, too.

  “What are you doing here?” Once he was near, he smelled the alcohol on my breath. “You’re drinking again, aren’t you? As soon as the service is over, go straight back to the residence.”

  “Am I allowed to decline?”

  The bishop knelt before the cadaver, making a show of murmuring the Ora Pro Nobis, but as he rose from the floor he was really saying, “Enough. Your fourth vow is to express obedience to the pope, and as his representative around here, I forbid you to talk about this with anyone, under penalty of suspension from your duties. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Your Excellency.”

  Fritz! I said to myself, for thirty years you’ve known this fellow, and you still forget his fondness for simple solutions! He doesn’t listen to reason in public and you, of course, instead of talking to him in private, challenge him in public: impatience is a poor counselor. At such times, the two years we spent together at the pontifical seminary in Rome, my having invited him to spend Christmas at my parents’ house outside Berlin—all this avails us nothing. There are things that friendship can’t weather. Fritz, you’re an animal; instead of resolving matters in a civilized way, you confronted your superior and got what you deserved. Now your hands are tied and meanwhile Macetón is all over the place, digging into Bernardo’s death.

  Well. Then I saw it was four thirty and I got to my feet.

  “Please forgive me, Ramón, but I have another appointment. Be very careful.”

  And I opened the door, not giving him time to respond. He looked dissatisfied. Watch out, I said to myself. This guy is going to be back.

  At that moment, and unfortunately for everyone, Cabrera ran into Chávez, who was just arriving. Chávez said nothing until we were alone.

  “What were you telling Cabrera, Father? Are you going to be counseling him now, too?”

  “Calm down. The bishop got on his high horse and forebade my getting mixed up in the matter. It will work itself out without my getting involved . . . for a second time.”

  Chávez burst out with that hateful laugh I’d heard before. “The chief will look to find a way to thank you.”

  “And if he hadn’t done it?”

  “It’s late,” he said. “I have to go buy some knives.”

  I didn’t want to imagine what for. Coming from Chávez, that could be a threat, but I didn’t flinch. When one works with this kind of people, one gets used to their rudeness. “Don’t worry about me,” I told him, “worry about yourself and the salvation of your soul.”

  Chávez looked at the bottle with an expression of disdain. What a disaster! I said to myself. Cabrera couldn’t have been more troublesome, and now they were surely tailing him. I wondered if there was any way to warn him. Later, Cabrera did things one would never have expected of a person like himself, and there wasn’t a way on earth to prevent it.

  Fritz, I said to myself, everything has been in vain. You ought to retire. Look at the agents: you’ve spent years working with them, and they’re just the same; it wasn’t so easy to raise their consciousness. And since I was feeling worse by the second, I took up the bottle of vodka and went off to the bishop’s residence.

  That night Sister Gertrudis came and knocked on the door of my room. I didn’t answer and went on staring at the ceiling, lying on my bed. Since I didn’t answer, she opened the door a crack and said, “We made chucrut.”

  Sauerkraut, I thought, sauerkraut! The sisters cook German food every time they see me overwhelmed. I enjoy this twofold because His Excellency doesn’t like chucrut. He says, “Cabbage again?” And during supper he spreads the food all over his plate in an attempt to conceal his aversion to German food. At such times, as I serve myself a second or third helping, I tend to ask him, “Are you done with your plate? Shall we serve you a bit more, Your Excellency?” He invariably says, “No, a morsel more would be gluttony.” I reply, “It’s a shame, the sisters deserve some recognition.” And the Lord Bishop, with a queasy expression on his face, picks up his utensils and goes back to playing with his food. But there are days when not even the culinary guerrilla war can succeed in lifting my spirits. And still less on a day like this, with a dead man on my conscience and another ex-student risking his life. All of it my fault, and my guilt materializes darkly, in Sister Gertrudis’s habit, still waiting at the door.


  “I’m not having dinner.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  And the sister leaves. I wish my worries were so obedient.

  What are you doing, Fritz? I reprimand myself. Don’t you find your attitude childish? At your age you can’t abuse yourself like this! Put something in your stomach, mein Gott! You’ll pass out! I say to myself, I’m on a hunger strike. Resist irrational bishops, und ihre unterdrückenden Maβnahmen! I told myself this, but I wasn’t convincing anyone. In my head was a mob of people allied against me. One of them stood up and rebuked me. Fritz, you sinner, you’ve got blood on your hands and you must do something. Can’t you hear Bernardo’s soul crying out for justice? Yes, I’ve heard it, I tell them, I’ve heard nothing else these last few hours. Well, then? Well, then, just wait. And there the colloquy ends, since talking to yourself is bad for your mental health.

  I asked myself, What are you going to do if Macetón comes back with a search warrant for your desk? He could do that . . . or worse. What makes you so sure that Macetón isn’t closing in on the Williamses or old Romero right now, putting his life in danger? That would be two dead people on your conscience. El Chaneque’s words still tormented me—“I have to go buy some knives”—and I thought about Macetón, risking his neck in vain.

  Around eight I heard the Lord Bishop’s car pull in. I heard him walking into the kitchen to check the dinner menu and yelling, “What? Chucrut?” and then muttering something incomprehensible.

  A minute later he knocked twice on my door and I yelled back, “Silence, damn it! I’m praying!”

  But he opened the door anyway. As always when he oversteps in reprimanding me, he wanted to tender a veiled apology, but I was too angry.

  “What do you want, Your Excellency?”

  “You’re not coming to dinner?”

  “No.”

  “They made that thing you like . . . the cabbage.”

  “No. What you said has set me thinking. I have to meditate on my mistakes, and for that one must be alone.”

  My answer succeeded in making him uncomfortable.

  “Fritz, you’re not a little boy anymore. Come along and eat that stuff. One of the women from the Church Council brought us a case of that German beer you like so well. If you don’t come, I’ll drink every bottle all by myself.” And he wasn’t joking.

  “The Lord punishes excess,” I said to him.

  “Whatever you please.” And he closed the door.

  For twenty minutes I listened to the noise of the dishes. I thought I heard him opening one, maybe even two of my beloved beers. It would have been the ideal time to make the call, but I hadn’t yet come to my decision. When I was at my most anxious, I went to my desk. I took out my copy of The Exercises and opened it at random. Christ Jesus never preached divination by the book, but it never fails me. Loyola seemed to advise: “Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” Speed and agility, my holy patron was telling me that if I wanted to overcome this problem I’d have to act without the bishop finding out, and to conceal my role in the case.

  I looked over the names in my address book and in less than a minute had selected one. I mentally sketched out a plan and achieved a moment of inner peace, in which part of my mind went in one direction and another part in another. When at last these parts met up again, in some surprise, one asked the other, Fritz, you scoundrel, I’d like to know what’s on your mind. Right this very moment, I said, I’m thinking of chucrut for dinner.

  So I waited until the bishop had got up from the table and gone into his studio. I have to put an end to this, I said to myself. I went out to the hall and picked up the phone. I was startled by a horrible noise, a resonant shriek, and understood he’d used his modem and dialed on to the Internet, as he did every night. I’d have to wait half an hour at least, while His Excellency communicated with his colleagues all over the world, so I returned to my cell to listen to the sounds my stomach was making. As I sat at my desk, I heard the voice of my moral conscience: “It smells like food. Aren’t we going to take a break?” Not now, I told it, we have work to do. “That’s a shame,” it said to me, “the sisters spent all that time preparing cabbage . . . and the German beer, brewed strictly in accordance with the Treaty of Bavaria—” I was about to come up with a smart retort when I heard the bishop hanging up and darted to the phone at the end of the hallway. There, I dialed El Chícharo’s work number.

  “La Tuerca here.” La Tuerca is the hardware store where he works.

  “Carnál?” Speaking in Caló street slang doesn’t come easy to me, but Chícharo won’t understand you otherwise. “I got a fourteen for you.”

  He took a while to respond and I deduced that he was dragging the phone to a secure corner.

  “What’s up, vato? Another fourteen?”

  “Yes,” I said. “This one’s more complicated.”

  “That’s what you said about the last one, and look what happened. Did you see his picture in El Mercurio?”

  I felt insulted. “Can you do it or not?”

  “Right now I don’t know. It’s gonna be tougher, ’cause they’re gonna be tailing him.” He went quiet, before adding, “I think we’re out of those size-nine washers.”

  “Ah, you can’t talk, I see. Will you do it? Answer yes or no.”

  “I couldn’t tell you. I gotta check the invoices.”

  I should’ve known. “Is it a matter of twenties? Du willst das Doppelte, oder?”

  “Wha’?”

  “You want double, right?”

  It seemed that El Chícharo had covered the receiver with cellophane; it was clear they were keeping an eye on him. And I was sweating. The bishop could pick up the phone any time.

  “Carnál?” I pushed him.

  El Chícharo removed the cellophane or whatever it was from the receiver and finally answered. “It’s just we’ve got an order coming in. Leave me your number and I’ll call you.”

  “Negative,” I burst out. “I’m being watched.”

  “I’m gonna see if I can find your washers. Talk to me in fifteen minutes.”

  And he hung up. Obviously, I wasn’t going to wait fifteen minutes in that hallway, so I counted to a hundred and dialed again. El Chícharo picked up.

  “The news is that I found your fuckin’ washers. Where do you want ’em delivered?”

  “I want you to settle in at the front door of his house.”

  “And that is?”

  I didn’t need to look in my address book, I knew it by heart. “It’s 32-A Emiliano Contreras Street, next to the Hotel Torreblanca. On second thought, why don’t you watch him from the hotel; wouldn’t it be more comfortable for you?”

  “OK, I’m on my way. You really think I’m gonna go in the hotel? The guy at the door is my brother-in-law.”

  “And what’s the problem with that?”

  “He’ll be telling my old lady he saw me go into some transient hotel. Don’t you know anything about women?”

  These local fellows, I thought. Everything would be much easier with a professional from Germany.

  “But don’t worry, I’ve got the experience you need. I’ll find a way to follow through on the order.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something? How will I recognize him?”

  “Easy as can be. It’s Macetón Cabrera.”

  “Ah!”

  “And we’ll see if you do a better job this time.”

  “Balls. I’m a pro at this stuff.”

  “You’d better be.”

  I hung up discreetly and walked to the kitchen. With a little luck, I told myself, they may have left me some chucrut.

  9

  Cabrera spent the rest of the afternoon doing paperwork. He wrote a report on his investigations and left it on the chief’s desk. At eight sharp, he said to himself: Another day, another dollar, and went home to relax. He had a date with his wife, and he didn’t want to stand her up.

  Their relati
onship had deteriorated in the last few months. Since December, she had been living in one apartment and he in another, but they still slept together most nights. Their last fight was over the remote control. His wife complained they never talked anymore, that he was always quiet, that he only wanted to make love and then watch TV. Cabrera denied this and then made love to her. Afterward, he turned the TV on—he couldn’t help it; it was a reflex—but she started screaming, and he ended up sleeping in the living room. He can’t remember when that happened, but without a doubt she does; she has a record of all their arguments. Unlike her, Ramón was a pacifist and forgave her whatever she did.

  That night he went to his wife’s apartment, thinking he was going to keep himself in check. He found her in a suspiciously good mood: I’m glad you’re here; I was waiting for you. She sat him down on the sofa in the living room, and his hand almost cramped up when he couldn’t find the remote.

  Where’s the remote? Hidden, she said, it’s killing our relationship. Gimme a break—he lifted up the cushions—give me the remote; if you don’t give it to me, friggin’ Mariana, there’s going to be trouble; you know I’m a pacifist, but if you’re looking for trouble, you’re gonna get some.

  I’ll give it to you, she promised, but before that I want to give you a massage.

  A massage? Why?

  A massage, come to bed.

  Ah . . . bed; he liked that word. It’s a double feature: bed and TV?

  You’re a macho pig, shut up and come to bed, take off your boots and lie on your back. Whatever you want, just don’t tie me up, I can’t stand being tied up.

  Don’t you worry.

  She showed him a small bottle of oil that smelled really, really good.

  What’s this?

  Aromatherapy, you’ll love it. With just a sniff, El Macetón felt relaxed, and a silly grin lit up his face. He went to the bed and lay down on his back.

  Naked, his wife demanded. El Macetón protested. And you? Why don’t you take off your clothes? It took a while to convince her, but finally she removed her blouse, her skirt, and then her bra. They were listening to some down-tempo soul music, and the massage began. First chance he got, El Macetón tried to grab her breasts and she slapped his hand: You just want to make love! Treat me like a lady, you miserable pig! She massaged his neck, his arms, and his shoulders and he let her do whatever she wanted; obedience was the shortest way to the remote. But the massage turned out to be really, really nice, and El Macetón ended up getting used to her hands pushing into his flesh and he smiled more and more.