by Maria Duenas
“I beg you, Asuncion, I beseech you, only for a little while and then he goes; I promise.”
In the middle of this give-and-take, Daniel made an effort to remain neutral. He longed to stay not only a while longer but an entire lifetime, but he was also aware that his boldness in sneaking into her house had already reached a feverish pitch and it was not in their best interest to strain matters further. Until he was no longer able to hold back.
“Will you allow me, please? We promise you, Asuncion, five minutes, no more. We give you our word of honor,” he said, bringing his hand ostentatiously to his heart.
“No,” the nanny reiterated.
“Wherever you please and, needless to say, with you present,” he then offered in a profusion of goodwill.
“No.”
“And if you agree, I promise we won’t bother you anymore.”
Youth’s courage and the appeal of courtesy finally defeated the gray hair. But Asuncion, still unwilling to be seduced by the ways and words of this fellow—who, she had to admit, was far from being the devil incarnate that she had imagined—imposed conditions and marked the territory with the zeal of a faithful watchdog: with a clock ticking, in her presence, and hands off or that was the end of it. Amen was all there was left for them to say.
She settled them in the kitchen, spacious, white, and square, with a great marble table in the middle. Where the girl had had her breakfast and had enjoyed bread and chocolate on returning from school. Where she’d done homework, read comics, and heard tales. Where there had been fights and secrets between siblings, hot milk on winter afternoons, and clandestine nips at the loaf of bread just before dinner. This was the territory that Asuncion had chosen for an urgent meeting about sentimental matters for someone who up until then had been the girl of the house. Daniel and Aurora sat facing each other, just like a visit to an inmate in prison. Asuncion, meanwhile, standing two steps away with the sullen face of a Civil Guardsman, kept a constant eye on the proceedings.
“There is someone who might be able to help us,” Daniel finally said.
He informed Aurora of his incursion at the naval base and of the firm pledge he’d received from his compatriots.
“But what can they do?” she asked, covering her face in despair. “My parents know no Americans; they have no relations with those people.”
“Well, perhaps they may start having one now.”
That, of course, was nothing but pie in the sky, mere wishful thinking to inject a dose of optimism by offering a potential solution of which he was not too convinced himself. They shared a cigarette, passing it back and forth from one mouth to the other, from one hand to the other, brushing it against their lips on the same place, touching each other’s fingers, and transmitting through their fleeting sense of touch a thousandth of that which their bodies would do if some mysterious force were to magically disintegrate Asuncion.
They’d just finished lighting their second Chesterfield when, with a watchmaker’s precision, Asuncion announced that the meeting had come to its end.
“Come on, young man, or you’ll ruin my life,” she said, pointing to the door. Then she sighed deeply. No matter how much Aurora and Daniel insisted, both knew they couldn’t squeeze a minute more.
“When do you return to Madrid?” Aurora asked as they both rose from their chairs with the willingness of convicts on the way to their execution.
“I’m not going to go without you.”
“Don’t say that, Daniel . . .” she whispered, bringing a hand to his face.
Asuncion checked the impulse.
“I said it was over.”
He had no other choice than to cross the threshold. Once outside, he turned around and looked at her one last time. There she was, in one of her brothers’ blue-striped pajamas, with her straw-colored curls askew, her eyes shiny from the welling tears that gave way to inconsolable weeping the moment he started down the stairs. Then, in spite of his good intentions, in spite of having resisted till the last second, he was no longer able to hold back. Knowing full well that he was contravening Asuncion’s orders and risking losing her trust forever, he rushed back in and said good-bye to Aurora with the most grandiose kiss imaginable.
Chapter 28
* * *
News that the wife of the naval base commander was willing to meet him at her house added another whiff of optimism to his day. He read the note over and over, memorizing the details. The desk clerk, meanwhile, didn’t take his eye off him, curious to know what those two bombshells had written.
“Modesto, could you order another taxi for a quarter to five, please?”
“Consider it done, Mr. Daniel. Are you off to see your American friends?” he asked, unable to hold back any longer.
“Not for the time being. I’ve got other matters to take care of today.”
A taxi was waiting at the agreed-upon time at the front door of the pension. And a familiar figure was waiting next to it.
“I’ve found out we had a little visit this morning at home.”
“What are you doing here, Nana?”
This time she was dressed in gray, with a black veil covering her head.
“I came to see you, dear. So that you can invite me for a coffee before the Holy Week services, since my body is not yet ready for genuflections. Where do you want to take me?”
“Nowhere. I’m sorry. They’re waiting for me.”
“Well, then, what a terrible shame you won’t have time to read what I was bringing you in my bag.”
He looked at her without quite believing her.
“As a matter of fact, it’s a very short letter, not like those we wrote in the past to our beloveds, with all those trifles we’d tell them. But I’m sure Aurora would be delighted if you’d read it.”
“I have an idea,” he said as soon as he realized the old lady might withhold the letter unless he complied. “You give me the letter now before I leave and afterwards, when I come back, we’ll meet and have a coffee or whatever you prefer.”
“No, my dear, because by then Marichu will have grabbed hold of me and we’ll both be busy getting ready for the procession.”
“Shall we get going, sir?” the taxi driver asked impatiently. “It’s ten to five and I have to be at the station at a quarter after five because I’ve got some travelers arriving with a bunch of luggage.”
Holding up one hand, Daniel gestured to the driver to wait a moment, summoned all his patience, and again addressed Aurora’s grandmother.
“You see, Nana . . .” he began with great care, “the truth is that I’d love to spend the evening with you, but I’m unable to stay because I have a very, very important meeting—important for Aurora and important for me.”
“Let me accompany you. After all, I’m of the same blood as one of the parties involved. I may even be able to help you.”
“I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart, but this is something I must resolve on my own.”
“Sir, it’s already five to . . .” the taxi driver insisted.
“Then, sweetie, I’m afraid I won’t be able to give you the letter.”
“Nana, please.”
“Sir, the travelers are weighed down. I’ll lose them if I’m not there in time.”
“And I don’t even want to tell you how disappointed our Aurora is going to be.”
“Sir, four minutes to—”
“Get in the car, quick. But first give me the letter. And you, sir, drive as fast as you can, please.”
He unfolded the missive with such fury that he almost tore the paper. It contained only a few tender words that recalled the happiness of his unexpected visit. Even so, he read it four or five times without paying attention to the old lady’s incessant conversation as she got rid of the veil, put it away unceremoniously in her bag, and smoothed her hair while glancing into the rearview
mirror.
• • •
Loretta Harris came out to the front garden of her residence to receive her guest. If she was surprised to see him with a respectable old Spanish lady on his arm, she hid it wonderfully.
“Je suis the grandmother of Aurora,” she said by way of introduction, so that there would be no doubt of the legitimacy of her presence. Before Daniel was able to open his mouth, she burst forth with a cascade of outdated greetings in otherwise more-than-passable French.
The American lady looked at her with a mixture of astonishment and amusement, while out of the corner of her eye she sized up Daniel, the newcomer on whose behalf she was to act. He, meanwhile, did the same.
“Thank you very much for receiving us, Mrs. Harris,” he was able to insert in a break in Nana’s monologue. He pronounced these words in Spanish in deference to the latter, although he quickly clarified in English that the grandmother had tagged along against his will.
Loretta downplayed the matter with a toothy smile.
“Come in, come in, please,” she said as she stepped aside to let the old lady pass. “It’s a pleasure to have you here.”
The large house, recently built and furnished according to American trends of the 1950s, bore no resemblance to the homes of respectable people that Nana was used to frequenting. The interior design conveyed the growing optimism and consumerism in the United States following the Second World War, reflecting a country that felt increasingly modern and powerful. Whereas Spaniards treasured lace and velvet curtains, small charcoal brazier tables, and parchment-like portraits of their great-grandparents, the Americans favored three-legged stools and brilliantly colored ashtrays. Where the Spaniards valued tradition, moderation, and opacity, the Americans offered luminosity and a lightness of spirit unknown in those parts.
The moment Nana caught sight of that fascinating display, she stopped dead in her tracks and brought a hand to her mouth with a theatrical gesture in an effort to contain her admiration. Her eyes then traveled along the walls filled with abstract paintings to the somewhat outlandish bright blue cone-like lamps.
“I love all this—I love it! Such modern houses, and with this furniture so . . . so . . . I don’t have words: I’m simply fascinated!” was her impassioned initial comment.
“Thank you very much, dear,” Mrs. Harris replied.
“Let’s see if you can become friends with my daughter Marichu, darling,” Nana went on, patting her on the arm, “and convince her to have the scrap dealer take away all the horrible relics that we have at home and buy things like these: so modern, so fabulous.”
Loretta and Daniel looked at each other with a sideways glance. He made a gesture of apology and she reassured him, indicating without words not to worry, that there was no problem whatsoever with the presence of that most peculiar woman. When Nana was done reviewing the room, Loretta was finally able to settle her visitors into large armchairs whose style and comfort the old lady lauded excessively.
“Coffee? Tea?” the hostess was finally able to ask.
Aurora’s grandmother’s imperious gesture of displeasure immediately impelled her to add:
“Or perhaps a martini?”
The conversation took off in a mixture of Spanish and English peppered with a few sentences in rusty French that Nana contributed at odd moments as a testament to her trips to Paris and her happy summers as a single woman in Biarritz before the family debacle in which her dissolute father gambled away everything but the shirts off their backs. They remained there talking for a couple of hours, until Mrs. Harris figured she had a pretty good idea of the situation, including the genealogy of both families in Spain and in the United States, the Carranzas’ social position, and the weak points of Enrique and Marichu. Sufficient material to get down to work, she thought.
The visit should have come to an end; the reasonable moment for Loretta to say “Well, then, my dear friends . . .” had arrived. But it was almost eight p.m. and everything was turning out to be much more amusing than anyone had anticipated. Besides, Loretta’s husband had a commitment, and she began to feel the first pangs of hunger as well as somewhat light-headed from the alcohol. With hardly a second thought she invited Daniel and Nana to stay for dinner.
Before Daniel could even weigh the appropriateness of accepting the invitation, Nana was already requesting a telephone to call her daughter to tell her a monumental whopper to account for her prolonged visit. They heard her string together a pack of outrageous lies about her friend Maria Angustias falling in the middle of the street, a possible wrist fracture, and the necessity of remaining by the injured woman’s side until someone came to relieve her in her Good Samaritan role.
“Don’t worry about me at all,” she insisted before hanging up. “One has to do anything one can for a bosom friend. I’ll be back as soon as I can, don’t worry, please . . .”
The dinner dragged on in relaxed conversation. When they had finished the Sara Lee cheesecake and coffee, Nana put her elbows on the table and gave a loud clap.
“And how about a game of cards, dears.”
That was enough for Daniel to realize that the time had come to get her out even if it meant dragging her. His relationship with the Carranzas was already damaged enough, but there was still room for it to worsen.
The first thing Loretta Harris did the following morning was call Vivian. She confirmed that the operation was under way but asked her to find Daniel and look after him. She justified herself by saying that a little entertainment would be a good thing for the kid, not letting them guess that her real reason was to keep him away from the events that were to unfold in the following hours on his behalf. While the previous evening had been fun and fruitful for gathering relevant information, she perceived that leaving Daniel to roam freely around the city could be somewhat risky and maybe even counterproductive: he might show up in the least opportune place, behave inappropriately, or say something inconvenient. Nor did she think it a good idea for him to continue seeing Nana: she was lively and had style, but the old lady might be a real time bomb and cause any number of unpredictable consequences if she were ever to explode.
That was why the base commander’s wife suggested that, since it was a holiday and the weather was lovely, the girls take him camping with their families by the sea until Saturday afternoon: her innocuous proposal was a means of getting them all out of the way. They complied, of course. A couple of hours later, the two families were off in search of Daniel, traveling in jeeps from which emanated the laughter of kids, high spirits, and Elvis Presley’s “Jailhouse Rock” at full blast, unaware that by crossing the city from one end to the other in the middle of Good Friday they were destroying the solemnity of the most mournful day of the year in the most fervently Catholic country in the world.
Loretta Harris watched them leave while discreetly standing behind a curtain, smoking her fourth cigarette of the morning. When she figured they were no longer in the range of activity, she grabbed the telephone and dialed a number she knew by heart.
“Master Chief Petty Officer Nieves, here,” a voice answered at the other end of the line.
And then the ball started to roll.
Nieves had arrived in Cartagena two years earlier with the assignment of making the lives of American military personnel and their families as comfortable as possible. From his features and body shape he could have easily passed for a descendant of Pancho Villa, but it was his prodigious bilingualism and not his warrior-like appearance that opened the doors to his placement. It was no wonder that the worthy rancher’s son was able to move comfortably between English and Spanish, as he’d spent his life straddling Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, two cities joined by a bridge and divided by a river whose name changed depending on which shore one stood. Twenty-four months after settling on the shore of the Mediterranean, the Hispanic master chief petty officer moved about the city where he’d been posted
as if he’d been born there. He had no knowledge of naval strategy, precision instruments, or deep-sea weapons, but he was a wonder at procuring whatever might be needed, from a couple of bicycles, to an appendicitis operation, to a box of Alka-Seltzer, to three whores for a quartermaster’s bachelor party.
Side by side, Loretta and he now distributed their work equally. True, the American kid determined to marry a young Spaniard seemed charming. But the commander’s wife had met a lot of kids without apparent blemishes and exquisite manners who, at the end of the day, turned out to be unscrupulous, compulsive liars, or simple crazies on the verge of a mental disorder. Therefore, they’d have to start by doing a background check on the man whom they were planning to help, to make sure he met the personal requirements. There were no problems in doing so: the wife of the base commander had plenty of means. Nieves, in turn, would be in charge of things on the local level. In a black oilcloth-covered notebook, he wrote down all the details that Mrs. Harris gave him: the exact name of the Spanish family, where they lived, whom they associated with, what they lived off, how much they possessed—everything necessary to get started.
In the following hours, each one extended his or her reach. Loretta Harris did so from a distance. Because of her husband’s position, she was able to tap into a number of resources, but only those which her instinct sensed were dependable at any given moment. Two out of the five calls she made yielded promising threads to pull. The rest came on its own.
Nieves, meanwhile, worked on his terrain, striking up multiple conversations with contractors, shipping agents, sailors from the Spanish navy, and hustlers and opportunists of the unlikeliest type. He did not use the telephone but the street, the café tables, and the bar counters, all half-deserted on the most sorrowful day of Holy Week.
They got together that very same night. By then, through her complex web of contacts, Loretta Harris was absolutely certain that Daniel Carter was who he said he was. Nieves, for his part, had accumulated a considerable number of reports that suggested that their mission would be successful. The next step was to execute their plan.