‘Give me five minutes.’ She jumps up laughing, and walks to the tiny bathroom adjoining the bedroom.
‘You know, every time I tell someone in simple honest words why you are looking for this woman, that it is about a lost letter from a fallen soldier to his daughter, well … every time, I am amazed by how eager everyone is to help you.’
Theresa stops dead in the bathroom door because his voice sounds suddenly serious.
‘I think I only realise now how terribly that war from long ago affected my countrymen.’ He looks away and pushes his fingers in under his hat to scratch the back of his head. ‘So do not think I am only helping you because I am such a nice guy, see? By now I am almost as eager as you are to deliver this letter.’ He turns around and walks off. ‘See you in five minutes.’
‘Whatever your reason,’ Theresa says when he is probably already too far away to hear her, ‘you’re still a nice guy.’
‘I was also in Angola,’ Oscar Casanova Quintero says when they are seated at a table on the cafe terrace, directly after they have ordered two beers and a fruit juice, as if it were a confession he couldn’t wait to get off his chest. ‘In the eighties, as a young doctor. Not the same time as Mercedes’s dad. But that was the reason we became friends. I am quite a bit older than her, maybe closer to the age of her dad, but there was immediately a kind of … alliance between us. Because of Angola.’ He hesitates before he pronounces the word ‘alliance’, glances at Ruben as if looking for confirmation that it’s the right word.
Theresa nods, relieved that his English is so good, although she has to concentrate because he speaks with a heavy Spanish accent. She guesses he must be in his early fifties, but suspects he may be older than he looks. A man who sets store by his appearance, perhaps even a little vain, with the sinewy body of a long-distance runner, neatly trimmed grey hair and a well-groomed goatee.
‘Did she ask you about Angola?’ she asks.
‘All the time, in the beginning, but she soon realised … I told her what I could … but there are things you cannot tell someone who was not there.’
He gives a dry cough and looks away, reaches for the cold beer the waitress has placed in front of him, hurriedly pours it into a glass and takes a long, thirsty gulp.
‘So you were good friends?’ she nudges him.
‘There was a time when I hoped it could be more than just friendship.’ He wipes the foam moustache from his upper lip and produces a wry smile. ‘I was recently divorced when she came to work here … I was feeling quite lonely … the way it goes, I suppose, right after you get divorced …’ Theresa and Ruben catch each other’s eyes and both nod sympathetically. ‘But it stayed a friendship.’
‘I get the impression she didn’t make friends easily?’ Theresa says, once she has also taken a sip of her beer. ‘It’s so hard to find someone who knows more about her …’
‘She was friendly to everyone … amable, generosa, considerate – is that the right word? A popular doctor.’ He looks deep into his beer glass while he talks. ‘But she allowed few people close to her. Here in Viñales it was possibly only me and Doctor Morales that she thought of as friends.’
‘That’s the other doctor,’ Ruben says to Theresa, ‘the one who doesn’t want to talk to us.’
‘Comprensible,’ Oscar mumbles.
He suddenly looks so uncomfortable that Theresa leans forward and asks urgently: ‘Why?’
‘What I am about to tell you is completely … confidential?’ He looks up from his beer glass, frowning. ‘I only do it because I hope you can get that letter to her. I think it will help her make peace … with many things.’
‘Did this Doctor Morales have anything to do with the circunstancias misteriosas surrounding the departure of Mercedes?’ Ruben asks.
‘What do you know about that?’ Startled, Oscar’s voice rises half an octave.
‘No, we know nothing,’ says Ruben. ‘It’s just something one of the nurses said. Because she disappeared so suddenly and no one knows what became of her.’
Oscar takes another big gulp of his beer, his frown now a deep groove between his eyebrows, before he carries on talking. ‘A relationship developed between her and Doctor Morales. More than just friendship. Doctor Morales was married, with children, so one of them had to go away to avoid a scandal …’
‘And of course it’s the poor woman who carries the blame as always,’ Theresa mutters, annoyed.
The Cuban doctor looks at her, surprised. ‘Doctor Morales is also a woman,’ he says. ‘Miguela Morales Lopez.’
‘Oh.’ Theresa feels her jaw literally drop as she tries to digest this bit of news. It casts a different light on everything she has so far believed she knew about Mercedes Perez Amat.
‘Sorry,’ Ruben mumbles. ‘I have not said to you that Doctor Morales is a woman.’
‘No, it’s my own stupidity.’ She can’t believe how bitter her voice sounds. ‘I think of myself as a liberated woman, but when someone talks about a doctor, I assume it’s a man. Just like I simply assumed that Mercedes was heterosexual. No wonder there is such a veil of secrecy around her. No wonder we couldn’t trace a single former lover … no husband or children … if all this time she was lesbian …’
‘No.’ Oscar shakes his head, an assertive gesture. ‘I don’t think she was really lesbian.’
‘That’s what men always say,’ she counters impatiently, ‘because they refuse to believe that any attractive woman could prefer another woman to them. And she was an attractive woman, wasn’t she? You were interested in her yourself?’ Her voice is sounding far too sharp. ‘I think I need another beer.’ She quickly empties her glass.
Ruben signals to the waitress and orders more drinks for all of them.
‘I really believe this thing between Mercedes and Miguela – Doctor Morales – was something that … surprised them too.’ Oscar speaks carefully, as if he is trying to placate her. She probably strikes him as completely unhinged. ‘They did not think of themselves as lesbian. And Doctor Morales was not prepared to … sacrifice her marriage and go live far away from her children. So Mercedes was the one who had to flee.’
‘Do you know where she fled to?’ Ruben asks, his deep voice as calm as usual, not nearly as disconcerted as she is by the news they have just been told. Or perhaps he just has better control of his emotions.
‘Well, to Africa, of course, as close as she could get to Angola. But the fact that you are now here, I guess it means that she is no longer there?’
‘What do you mean … that … that she is no longer … where?’ Theresa stammers.
‘In South Africa?’
‘She was there?’
Now it’s Oscar’s turn to stare slack-jawed at her astonished face. ‘I thought you knew.’
‘Wait a minute,’ says Ruben, as calmly as he can, because Theresa is too overwhelmed to get a word out. ‘So she went from here to South Africa? About five years ago?’
‘I really thought you knew,’ Oscar mutters. ‘That you lost track of her there and that is why you came to look for her here. I even hoped it meant she had returned to Cuba …’
‘What did she go and do in South Africa?’ Ruben wants to know.
‘Work, of course. There is some or other … understanding between our governments. We send doctors to go work over there and they send medical students to come and study over here.’
Theresa raises her beer glass to her mouth with a shaky hand, takes a sip before she trusts her voice to speak. ‘I know about that, yes, but I didn’t know … Well, I didn’t even know that Mercedes was a doctor until I came here. I would never in my wildest dreams have thought of looking for her in South Africa.’ She turns to face the Cuban doctor opposite her. ‘Is there any chance she might still be there? When last did you have contact with her? Do you have an address or a phone number she used there?’ Theresa hears the pleading tone in her voice and realises she is on the brink of tears when Ruben rests a comforting hand on her shoulder.
By now her ears have become accustomed to his heavy Spanish accent. She is no longer struggling to understand his words, but each phrase is more unexpected, surprising, shocking than the one before.
‘Shortly before her departure she let me know she was fine. That I should not be … concerned about her. But she also asked me to tell no one in Viñales that she was going to work in South Africa. I think she only wanted to make sure Doctor Morales did not know where she was. She wanted to cut all contact between them. And she could not trust her own heart.’ He places his hand on his chest somewhat dramatically, on the left, where his heart must be.
His surname is after all Casanova, Theresa remembers. Plus, he is Latin American. Doctor Oscar Casanova Quintero would probably take such matters of the heart very seriously.
‘That was the last time I heard from her.’ His sigh is heavy with unfulfilled wishes, unspoken longings. ‘But I am almost convinced she contacted Doctor Morales again.’
‘Why do you say that?’ Theresa whispers, her voice trapped in her throat. So many shocks in one day – within a single hour – after so many weeks of wondering about the Cuban soldier and his daughter. And everything she is hearing right here and now only makes it seem even more important for the soldier’s letter to reach his daughter.
‘Because I know her,’ Doctor Oscar Casanova Quintero says. ‘Or I used to know her. It was the first great love of her life. It was not the sort of … passion that would blow over just like that.’
‘In other words,’ Ruben says slowly, as if he is deliberating with himself, ‘this Doctor Morales is the only person in Viñales – maybe even the only person in Cuba – who might have Mercedes’s contact details in South Africa.’
‘If she is still in South Africa,’ Theresa adds anxiously.
‘If she is no longer there, you still need her last-known address to keep searching,’ Ruben says. ‘Surely you cannot give up now?’
‘No,’ she mutters. ‘I guess not.’
‘Perhaps Doctor Morales throwed . . . threw away the address,’ Oscar cautions. ‘I am almost certain she would not respond to Mercedes.’
‘But you’re not completely certain?’ Ruben asks, leaning across the table towards Oscar. His large body suddenly looks almost menacing, like a policeman interrogating a suspect.
Oscar seems to shrink away. ‘No, I do not know her well enough to be completely certain.’
‘Then there is only one solution.’ Ruben looks at Theresa with a dangerous glint in his dark eyes. ‘You are going to have to get some mysterious disease tonight so that tomorrow morning we will have to go and see Doctor Morales in all urgency. Before we drive back to Havana.’
‘Ah,’ Theresa says.
Oscar’s eyebrows shoot up and for a moment he looks as if he wants to laugh, but then he shakes his head. ‘This will not work. There are many doctors on duty so there is no guarantee you will see her with your mysterious disease.’
Ruben leans in even closer, conspiratorial now, rather than threatening, his voice soft but urgent. ‘It will work if you help us. When you walk into the waiting room and find us there, you can take us before the other patients because you know us – and because Theresa is a tourist and we really want tourists to be impressed with our medical services, not so? And then you call Doctor Morales for a second opinion. We only need ten minutes with her.’
‘She will probably chase you away when she realises you faked an illness just to see her,’ the doctor says, still shaking his head. ‘And she will be furious with me when she finds out that I helped you.’
‘We are willing to take the risk,’ Theresa says promptly. ‘It’s our last chance. I fly home the day after tomorrow. If I could only establish that Mercedes is still somewhere in South Africa, then I can carry on looking for her there …’
‘You said you wanted to help us get this letter to Mercedes,’ Ruben reminds him. ‘If you do not help us tomorrow morning, we cannot do it. Por favor, camarada.’ He adds a few more sentences in Spanish, his voice urgent, even deeper than usual.
Oscar answers in Spanish, but still looks uncertain when he gets up and takes his wallet from his pocket.
‘No, we invited you,’ Theresa says. ‘We will pay.’
He grins and places a few notes on the table. ‘I must insist on paying for my own beer. Then no one can accuse me that I was bribed when I fetch you in the waiting room tomorrow morning and introduce you to Doctor Morales.’
Theresa watches him walk away, overwrought and overwhelmed.
‘What did you say to him in Spanish?’ she asks Ruben.
‘I said it does not look as if you are going to agree to marry him.’ For an instant she almost believes him. She has heard so many incredible things in the past half-hour that right now she would believe anything. ‘Then he said that’s okay, because he doesn’t want to make the mistake of marrying again.’
‘Well, that makes two of us.’ Theresa raises her almost empty glass in a toast.
‘Three,’ Ruben says and clinks his glass of fruit juice against her beer glass, before asking, perplexed: ‘And now? Why are you crying?’
‘I’m not crying.’ She furiously wipes her cheeks and looks away from him at a group of young backpackers engaged in banter at the next table, their American voices full of the false bravado of youth. ‘I don’t know. It’s all becoming too much for me. I can’t believe that Mercedes was in South Africa. That she could still be there. That I could have passed her on the street. And here I am looking for her in Cuba. Blew all my savings, wasted my time, wasted everyone’s time, while all this time I’ve been going down the wrong bloody track.’
Ruben watches her silently for a while, waits patiently while she blows her nose and takes another sip of beer before he asks: ‘Do you really think you wasted your time here?’
‘Suppose not.’ She tries to smile, but feels her mouth contort. ‘But if I can’t deliver the letter while I am here … if I can at least fly home with an address … and a bit of hope that I may find her someday?’
‘That will depend on Doctor Morales tomorrow morning,’ Ruben says. ‘Do you have any ideas for a mysterious illness? Symptoms you can fake?’
‘I think a panic attack might work.’ She wipes her wet eyes and realises too late that she is once again smudging her mascara. She doesn’t as a rule wear waterproof mascara, because, as a rule, she doesn’t cry easily, but here in Cuba all the rules have changed. ‘To tell the truth, I’m feeling so anxious right now it may not even be necessary to fake anything.’
22. MUNCH’S SCREAM
Their divorce was finalised in less than a year. True, it did feel like ten years while she was in the midst of it, but whenever Theresa listened to her friends lamenting their own drawn-out divorce cases, she realised that Einstein had been right and that time was indeed relative. At least the couple Marais-Van Velden agreed that they could no longer live together, there had been no adulterous affair to cause unnecessary rancour or vengefulness, and there were no children or pets or even many possessions to fight about. A meticulously planned prenuptial contract ensured that their assets would be divided equally in the event of divorce. Their most important joint asset was the house where neither of them wanted to stay behind on their own. Both eager to get away from the unpleasant memories that hung like ghosts around every corner and behind every piece of furniture, they put the house on the market right away, sold it for a good price, and split the profits.
Because Theresa had been thirty when they got married – and Theo four years older – they had embaked on the enterprise without too many romantic illusions, like a business transaction between two rational adults. Thank heavens for that, Theresa thought in the divorce court six yea
rs later, because by then Theo was certainly not behaving like a rational adult, at least not in his personal life, and his bizarre conduct was making her increasingly doubt her own reason. But during the divorce, in the eyes of the law and in the presence of their respective attorneys, they were a beautifully behaved divorcing couple. If beautifully behaved divorcing couple wasn’t in fact an oxymoron, Theresa the language editor mused.
But their model behaviour, and the relative speed with which the partnership was dissolved, didn’t make it any less painful. ‘It’s like ripping the plaster off an open wound,’ she tried to explain to her sister. ‘You can do it as slowly as you like and moan as loudly as you like while you do it, or you can grit your teeth and rip it off in a single motion. It still hurts.’
Sandra had nodded sympathetically – and listened more attentively than Theresa realised, because when she and Anton were divorced a few years later, she also ripped off the plaster quickly, gritting her teeth and without complaint. Although she probably would have done it that way even without her big sister’s advice. Sandra had never been one to complain about anything.
Theresa tried on a few occasions to talk to her future former husband while they were getting divorced. Not because she still cherished any hope that the marriage could be saved, just because she wanted to understand what was going on inside his head.
Although by then she probably should have known that she would never know.
‘Why do women always want to know what you’re thinking,’ he would complain when they were still living together. ‘“Penny for your thoughts.” Jeez, I despise that expression. As if thoughts can be bought like vegetables.’
And yet.
A few weeks after he moved out of the house she was informed, formally, via his lawyer, that he wanted to fetch a box of books. He suggested the last Thursday evening of the month because he knew it was her book club night, the one evening of any month when she could be counted on not to be home. The realisation that he wanted to avoid her, that he was too much of a coward to look her in the eye – let alone talk to her – annoyed her so unreasonably that she immediately cancelled her book club and waited for him in the living room. She had made up her mind that tonight was the night she was going to force him to talk, even if it meant that she had to chain him to the couch and slowly torture him.
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