by Tom Epperson
The Langenberg house is surrounded by high stone walls. Roberto drives up to the gate and identifies himself to a security guard with a pistol on his hip. The gate swings open and Roberto passes through.
He’s been here twice before, during his first two years at The Hour, at an annual Christmas party for the employees of the paper that has since been discontinued. The house was built by Simon and Emilia a few years after their marriage. It was inspired by houses they saw on a trip to France. It’s a three-story stone mansion with a massive arched entryway. Its walls rise up as sheer and forbidding as cliffs. It seems much older than it actually is. Roberto can’t imagine why Simon and Emilia would have spent so much time and money in constructing such a gloomy monument to their love.
As he gets out of his car a smiling young black man comes out of the house to greet him. He’s sharply dressed in black pants and a shimmering purple silk shirt. It is Hermés, Diana Langenberg’s assistant. He takes Roberto inside, brightly chitchatting all the way. “Did you see The Singer this week?” he wants to know. That’s a televised singing contest based on a British show that has taken the country by storm. His favorite is Sarita, a petite teenage pop singer, what a big voice for such a little girl but he doesn’t think she’s going to win because she’s black and the judges are prejudiced against her. Hermés seems surprised when Roberto tells him he’s never seen the show. He leads Roberto under slanting timbered ceilings, over old oak flooring, and past ponderous antique furniture into a book-lined study.
“She’ll be with you very soon,” says Hermés. “Can I get you anything before I go? Coffee? Tea?”
“No thank you.”
“Anyway, please watch The Singer. You’ll love it. And then vote for Sarita!”
“I will.”
Hermés smiles, inclines his head, and leaves.
Roberto looks around. Floor-to-ceiling windows give out on a lush shady garden. The only furniture is a big cherry-wood desk with a high-backed leather chair behind it and across from it another chair that, somewhat incongruously, has a ukulele sitting in it. On the wall behind the desk is a large oil painting of a middle-aged man in a blue business suit. Fleshy lips and thinning brown hair. Smiling slightly, an amused look in his eyes. Roberto recognizes him as Axel Langenberg, Diana’s grandfather, and the most famous Langenberg except for Simon. He left the emerald business and entered politics and almost became president. It was in the middle of the last century, during a period of civil war known as the Killing Time (the fact it is called that indicating the enormity of the violence, since all times in this country’s history have been killing times). Although he was favored to win, his family and friends tried to persuade him to drop out of the race because they were concerned that the malignant mad energy loose in the land would destroy him before he could ever take office. He assured them that he was being tightly guarded and was taking every precaution and he would be fine. He was wrong and they were right. Axel was assassinated at a campaign event in a little town on the Santa Catalina River by a young gunman who quickly followed his victim into death when he was shot down by Axel’s incompetent guards.
Roberto hears the door opening, and Diana Langenberg comes in. She seems even paler and less substantial than the last time he saw her. She’s wearing a long white dress that hangs limply off her bony shoulders and a single strand of pearls around her neck. She looks older than she is, like the house. She advances slowly into the room as Roberto quickly walks to meet her.
“Roberto,” she says with a smile. “So glad you could come on such short notice.”
“Good to see you, Mrs. Langenberg.”
She extends her hand. Its fingers and knuckles are as gnarly as old roots. Roberto doesn’t actually shake it but gives it the gentlest squeeze possible.
She goes behind her desk.
“Please sit down,” she says.
“Whose is this?” Roberto asks, as he picks the ukulele up out of the chair.
She laughs. “Oh, that’s Hermés’s. His latest enthusiasm.” She carefully lowers herself into the leather chair. “He saw some old movie where someone was playing the ukulele and immediately fell in love with it. He practices every day and has become quite good at it. He posts videos of himself on YouTube playing it and singing songs he’s made up. He’s actually developed a bit of a following. I expect him to put it down soon and then never pick it up again. That’s Hermés.”
“What’s his story?” says Roberto. Habitually inquisitive.
“Two years ago I was in my car. We were stopped at a traffic light, and a ragged young man came up to the car selling oranges. My driver tried to shoo him away but he was very persistent. He had such a nice warm smile I told the driver to buy some oranges. He lowered his window, and the boy peered into the back seat at me and smiled and said, ‘Hello, beautiful lady!’ And then he insisted on giving me the oranges for free. There are millions of ragged boys like him in this country but for some reason something about him in particular touched me. I couldn’t bear to drive away and leave him on the street, where so many lives are snuffed out so casually, for no reason at all. So I’ve tried to help him. Do you think I’m a fool?”
“No, of course not,” and then he smiles. “He wants me to vote for Sarita.”
She rolls her eyes. “Oh, he’s so crazy about Sarita. Not in a romantic way. He’s gay, if you haven’t guessed. But I think he sees himself in her. It gives him hope.” She pulls open a drawer in her desk. “I think perhaps that’s what I like in your stories. Despite the terrible things you write about, there’s always a little bit of hope in them. An odd optimism. Like some bright bubble arising out of the dark water.”
Diana takes something from the drawer, then holds it out to him across the desk in her crippled hand: a gold medal on a silver chain.
“A going-away gift.”
He takes it from her. On it is the image of a robed, bearded man with what seem to be flames around his head.
“St. Jude Thaddeus,” Diana says. “The patron saint of desperate cases. Of the last resort.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Langenberg.”
“It’s supposed to have protective properties.”
“Great, I could use that.” He fastens the chain around his neck. “I can’t tell you how much it’s meant for me to work for The Hour for the last six years. It’s been a privilege.”
She smiles sadly at him. “My life, Roberto, as you know, has been somewhat . . . restricted . . . so I’ve tended to live vicariously through my reporters. And now you’re all going away.” She puts her hands on the desk top and pushes herself up. “Let’s go for a walk.”
He goes out into the garden with Mrs. Langenberg. A handsome black Alsatian is waiting by the door. He looks Roberto over suspiciously, and Roberto hears a barely audible growling.
“It’s all right, Fredy,” Diana says, rubbing his neck. “It’s Roberto. He’s a friend.”
Roberto and Diana and Fredy move slowly through the spacious grounds. There are waterfalls and fishponds and tall trees. Roberto can’t hear the sounds of the city, just the songs of birds. It is a world unto itself. Diana seldom leaves it. Her appearances at the offices of The Hour have become increasingly infrequent as her health has gotten worse. Last year a blood infection nearly killed her, and she spent weeks in a hospital recovering.
She was struck by a savage form of arthritis in her early twenties. When she was twenty-seven she met a tall attractive young man from an old and prominent family. She was taken aback but happy when he began paying a great deal of attention to her. They became a couple and went everywhere together. People told her to look out for him because he had the reputation of being a charming ne’er-do-well who had gambled away his legacy, but Diana ignored them, and when he proposed marriage she said yes. The story goes that after being married less than a year she found out that her father had paid the young man a small fortune to marry his invalid daughter. She had become pregnant, and she divorced her husband as soon as their son was
born. His name was Carlo. She loved him more than everything else in life put together. Four years ago, when Carlo was eighteen, he hopped on his motorcycle with his girlfriend and rode up into the mountains where on a tight curve they met a lumber truck and were obliterated.
“What does your family think of your leaving?” Diana asks.
“I haven’t told them yet. I’m seeing my father tonight. I think he’ll have mixed feelings. He’ll be sorry to see me go, but glad that I’ll be safe.”
Fredy looks up at him with seeming interest as he talks. He has the most human-looking eyes Roberto’s ever seen in a dog. As if he were some prince who had run afoul of a witch and was the victim of enchantment.
“I just hope you don’t leave journalism,” Diana says. “The fact that someone wants to kill you for doing your job should make you realize how important that job is.”
“I know I’ll always write, but my fiancée, Caroline . . . she wants me to write about different things. Not wars and crimes and massacres. She wants to have children and a settled kind of a life, and she doesn’t want me to have a job where I’m always going away.”
“How do you feel about that?”
He laughs a little. “I guess it seems kind of boring. But . . . I don’t know . . . maybe you only have a certain amount of luck, and then it runs out. I know I’ve had a lot of close calls.”
Diana smiles. “But that’s why I gave you the St. Jude’s medal.”
The sunlight finds the silver in her blonde hair, and then they pass into the shaggy shade of a cypress tree.
“Do you really believe a piece of metal can protect you?” says Roberto.
“I’m not sure what I believe. I would say the evidence for some sort of spiritual or supernatural dimension to life is . . . ambiguous. When I was a little girl I had a brown and white dwarf rabbit named Poco. One night I woke up screaming and crying because I had dreamed Poco was eaten by a wolf. The very next day one of our dogs killed Poco. Certainly not proof of anything, but I would call it interesting. But the night before my son Carlo died, did I have any warning in my dreams? No, not a thing. So was I warned about my rabbit and not my son?”
“To me the answer is easy. No, you weren’t warned about the rabbit. It was just a coincidence.”
“Yes,” she sighs, “I suppose you’re right. But one so wants to believe in something . . . something beyond this . . . this brutal, heartless world.”
“I think the world is brutal but it’s not heartless. There are plenty of people with huge hearts. You’re an example of that.”
“Thank you, Roberto.”
She looks tired. Though it’s not hot, there’s a film of sweat across her forehead.
“Would you like to sit down?” says Roberto.
“Perhaps I’d better.”
He sits down with her on a stone bench by a fishpond. Fredy sits down on his haunches beside her. The three of them eye the fat goldfish in the crystalline water.
“Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a fish?” Diana says. “It seems like such a simple, serene existence.”
Roberto feels sorry for Mrs. Langenberg. Born into a life of wealth and privilege, and yet she wants to be a fish. Her two closest companions apparently her paid assistant and her dog.
Roberto hears off in the distance a ukulele being strummed, and he and Diana glance at each other and smile.
“Ukuleles are very cheerful, don’t you think?” she says.
“Maybe Hermés will be on The Singer someday.”
“Oh, he would love that.”
As suddenly as the ukulele began, it falls silent. A wind stirs the trees. Roberto notices the Alsatian is pondering him with his dark, deep eyes, as if struggling to remember what it was like to walk on two legs, to be a man.
* * *
Reluctantly Roberto puts on a coat and tie because Clara likes for people to dress up, and then he drives over to his father’s apartment. The sidewalks are thronged with people, there is such drunkenness and revelry that a visitor to the city might think he had arrived on the date of some wild holiday but Saturday nights are always like this. Despite the country’s problems, it’s the opposite of a dark and depressed place. Its people seem determined to be happy to the extent that that is possible, although sometimes their laughter sounds awfully close to screaming.
He took a long nap after he got back from Diana Langenberg’s and is recovered from his hangover, but he does not feel a part of the festive night. He keeps seeing that red face staring at him out of the green sedan, keeps hearing that calm voice on the phone threatening him with death. He has in a sense up to now won every battle, just by virtue of still being here, still reporting. So it feels bad to leave. As much as he’s looking forward to being with Caroline, the dry and dusty taste of defeat is in his mouth.
* * *
Pombo is holding forth.
“People come up to me and say, ‘Pombo, what’s up with you? When are you going to start painting pictures of the world the way it really is? You paint fat people flying kites and playing badminton, but there are hardly any fat people in this country, if you want to paint fat people go to the United States. Here the people are skinny and most of them are poor, and yet you paint pictures of fat people riding on little ponies, what is the matter with you, Pombo?’ And you know what I say to those people in reply?”
Pombo looks around at the little group he’s standing in, which includes Roberto. None of them know the answer.
“I say nothing!” Pombo says. “I stand mute. Dumbstruck! For they’re right. The world is falling down around our ears, and the skinny people are dying in droves and running over cliffs like the lemmings while I paint pictures of fat people dancing the ballet and so forth. It’s a compulsion for me to do so, that’s all I can say. I either paint fat people doing frivolous things or I die, it’s one or the other.”
“I love the one of the family flying kites,” says a tall thin woman with fat lips filled with collagen. “I think it’s a masterpiece.”
Pombo nods in agreement. “Yes, I like that one too. You know, they say we have no seasons but next month is the windy month, it’s kite-flying season. Kites will be all over the city, there’s something inspiring about seeing them floating over the slums. I’d say it seemed like a symbol of something if I believed in symbols.”
“Why don’t you believe in symbols, Pombo?” the fat-lipped woman says.
Pombo shrugs. “I’m a very literal man. Unfortunately, my imagination doesn’t seem to work, except where fat people are concerned.”
He’s a small man with the round innocent face you see in all the people in his paintings. Standing next to him is his third or fourth wife, a young woman with a horsey face but a hot body. She’s quite a bit taller than he is. “Oh Pombo, poor thing, no imagination,” she says, pulling his head against her shoulder and kissing his bald spot. He sighs blissfully and bats his eyes as everyone laughs.
He is a clown. Roberto knows the whole self-important artist thing isn’t real and is just a way for him to have fun. He grew up in the south part of the city in a cramped apartment in the back of the grocery store owned by his family. His first drawings were done on the coarse paper used to wrap cheap cuts of meat. Even when he was a kid, he’s told Roberto, he liked to draw fat people. Maybe because of all the skinny people he saw coming into the store with barely enough money to buy food. He thinks it a kind of supreme joke that his whimsical paintings have made him famous and wealthy.
A waiter comes over bearing a silver platter of fried plantains stuffed with cheese. Roberto takes one and chews on it and looks across the living room of his father’s penthouse apartment. His father and Clara are standing in front of the window that looks out on the roof garden and are talking to an American named Willie Rivera, who works at the American embassy.
“Your stepmother looks stunning tonight, Roberto,” Pombo says.
“Yes,” says Roberto, “she does.”
“Oh Pombo,” says his
wife. “You’re always ogling the girls.”
Pombo is eating a stuffed plantain too; now he licks his fingers. “If I weren’t always ogling the girls, I never would have noticed you to begin with, would I, my love?”
“That’s true. But now that you have, I think the ogling should stop.”
Pombo shakes his head. “Women, Roberto. Our blessing and our curse.”
Roberto laughs.
“What are you working on now, Roberto?” says a voice at his side. “Anything interesting?”
He looks into the sad, drunken eyes of Ricardo Cárdenas. He’s a prominent academic and activist, heartily hated by Landazábal and his crowd. Roberto hasn’t had a chance yet to tell his father about his plans, so he gives Ricardo a vague reply, and then he says, “So I hear you resigned from the Human Rights Commission.”
Ricardo nods. “There are four of us in the office. Last week when we arrived for work we found four dead cats with their throats cut lying in front of the door. I’ve seen a lot worse, but for some reason that was it for me. I’ve simply had enough. I’m weary, Roberto. I use the same old words that everyone uses and I don’t get any better results than anyone else does. I believe that such a thing as a Human Rights Commission is ridiculous in this country. It is like the cows and the pigs in a slaughterhouse getting together to form the Animal Rights Commission. From now on I’m going to be on the We Are Fucked Forever Commission and not worry about anything.”
