‘‘I’m not entirely sure I’m glad to see you,’’ she said, and then changed her mind. ‘‘Yes, I am. Oh, Cletus!’’
She wrapped her arms around him and rested her face on his chest.
His hand on her back could feel her stifling a sob, then she got control of herself.
‘‘What are we going to do without him, Cletus?’’ she asked.
He shrugged and made a helpless gesture with his hands.
Claudia then acknowledged the presence of Capitán Lauffer.
‘‘Good evening,’’ she said. ‘‘Despite the circumstances, it is good to see you.’’
‘‘It is always a pleasure to see you, Señora,’’ Lauffer said.
When Claudia stepped away from Clete, she was replaced by Alicia, who was dressed and made up almost identically to her mother. The only difference Clete could see was that instead of pearls she wore a golden cross on a chain around her neck.
‘‘Oh, Clete, I’m so sorry,’’ she said.
She kissed Clete somewhat wetly on the cheek and then, while hugging him, whispered, ‘‘Peter wants you to call him.’’
‘‘OK,’’ he said very softly, so that her sister, Isabela, who was approaching, could not hear him.
Isabela, two years older than Alicia, wore her black hair piled on top of her head. A diamond-and-emerald brooch was pinned to her black dress. She was tall, lithe, and finely featured. Isabela was even better looking than Alicia, Clete often thought, but unfortunately knew it.
She did not embrace Clete, and her kiss, he thought, was the sort of kiss a bitch like Isabela would give to an alligator when good manners required her to go through the motion.
‘‘Cletus,’’ she said.
‘‘Isabela,’’ he replied.
‘‘Would you like something to eat? Drink?’’ Claudia asked.
‘‘Yes, I would,’’ he said. ‘‘To drink.’’
‘‘I’ll ring,’’ Alicia said.
‘‘There’s whiskey here,’’ Claudia said. ‘‘In that cabinet. Whiskey, Clete? Capitán?’’
‘‘Please,’’ Clete said.
Claudia went to a huge cabinet, which opened to reveal a complete bar.
‘‘You’ll have to ring,’’ Claudia said. ‘‘There’s no ice.’’
‘‘Straight’s fine,’’ Clete said.
‘‘Maybe for you,’’ Claudia said. ‘‘Send for ice, Alicia.’’ She looked at Clete. ‘‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you looking so elegant.’’
‘‘I bought this to be my diplomat’s uniform,’’ he said.
‘‘You will stay now? At your embassy, I mean?’’
‘‘I declined the appointment. But I will stay.’’
‘‘Meaning what, Cletus?’’
‘‘I entered Argentina on my Argentine passport,’’ he said. ‘‘I have, in a sense, come home.’’
‘‘Oh, my!’’ Claudia said.
‘‘Your Argentine passport?’’ Isabela said. ‘‘But you’re a norteamericano.’’
‘‘Isabela, I was born here,’’ Clete said. ‘‘I’m as entitled to an Argentine passport as you are.’’
‘‘I never heard of such a thing!’’ Isabela snorted.
‘‘I’m sure there’s a lot of things you haven’t heard about,’’ Clete said.
‘‘Don’t you two start!’’ Claudia said. ‘‘I couldn’t stand that.’’
‘‘Sorry,’’ Clete said.
‘‘Your father is in the Edificio Libertador,’’ Claudia said.
‘‘We just came from there.’’
‘‘I’m sure he would like it, but I found it rather macabre. ’’
‘‘It was impressive,’’ Clete said. ‘‘But, yeah, I think el Coronel would like it.’’
A maid appeared with a bucket of ice.
Too soon to be in response to Alicia’s sending for someone, Clete decided. Somebody decided we would need a drink.
‘‘Your aunt Beatrice was over there all day. She came back not an hour ago. We are to have a small—family, I suppose—dinner.’’
‘‘How is she?’’ Clete asked.
‘‘She’s not here,’’ Claudia said. ‘‘She’s in the arms of Jesus and/or morphia.’’
‘‘Mother!’’ Alicia said, shocked.
‘‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. Forgive me.’’
There was a barely audible tap on the corridor door, and when Humberto Valdez Duarte turned his head to it, he saw the door open just wide enough to show his butler’s face, his eyebrows asking permission to enter.
Duarte, a tall, slender man of forty-seven, who wore his thick black hair long at the sides and brushed slickly back, held out his hand, palm outward, and shook his head ‘‘no.’’
He quickly swung his feet off his wife’s delicate, pink and pale-blue silk-upholstered chaise longue, on which he had been resting with a cup of coffee, and walked out of the bedroom and through the sitting, to the door.
‘‘Señor Frade is here, Señor,’’ the butler said.
‘‘Thank God!’’ Duarte said softly.
‘‘I put him, and Capitán Lauffer of the Húsares, in the reception, with the Carzino-Cormanos.’’
‘‘Fine. Please offer them whatever they wish, and tell them the Señora and I will join them shortly.’’
The butler nodded, then withdrew his head from the door and closed it softly.
Duarte went back into the bedroom. Beatrice Frade de Duarte was sitting before her vanity in her slip, brushing her long black hair. She smiled at him in the mirror. His wife was six months older than he was, a tall, slim woman with large dark eyes and a dazzling smile.
‘‘What was that, cariño?’’ she asked.
‘‘Cletus is here.’’
‘‘Oh, good! In time for dinner.’’
‘‘He has Capitán Lauffer of the Húsares with him. What would you like me to do about him?’’
‘‘Invite the Capitán to join us, of course. I’ve always liked him, and you know how fond Jorge was of him.’’
‘‘Would you like me to go to them now, or wait until you’re ready?’’
‘‘You go down now, of course, offer my apologies, and tell them I’ll be there shortly.’’
He walked to the vanity, smiled at his wife in the mirror, touched her head, and finally bent over and kissed it. She smiled and put up her hand and caught his.
Then he turned and left the room.
The fact that his wife had developed serious emotional problems did not cause Humberto Valdez Duarte to love her less, he often thought, but rather the opposite. Sometimes —like now—he felt a tenderness for her that was surprising in its intensity . . . a desire to wrap her, figuratively and literally, in his arms and to continue to protect her from all unpleasantness.
They had known each other all of their lives, and had married at twenty-one, on Humberto’s graduation from the University of Buenos Aires. While everyone agreed that the marriage was a good one, uniting two of Argentina’s most prominent families, there were some raised eyebrows at the time—even some whispers—about their tender ages. People of their social position usually married no younger than twenty-five, and often later. Unless, of course, there was a reason.
The whispers died thirteen months after their marriage when Beatrice gave birth to their first—and as it turned out, only—child, Jorge Alejandro.
The first indication of emotional problems came when Beatrice’s postpartum depression required the attention of a psychiatrist.
Now that he thought about it, there had been indications of emotional difficulty all along, most often manifested in Beatrice’s detachment from reality—her unwillingness to accept the existence of anything unpleasant—coupled with a growing religious fervor. She began to go to mass daily about the time Jorge started school, and developed an unusually close relationship with her confessor, Padre (later Monsignor) Patrick Kelly.
Humberto often wondered what she had to confess. When he went, inf
requently, to confession, there was generally some act or thought for which he really needed absolution. Try as he could, however, he could think of nothing Beatrice might want to confess more sinful than possible unkind thoughts about one of her friends, Jorge’s teachers, or her brother, Jorge Guillermo Frade. The latter seemed most likely. Having un-Christian thoughts about her brother was very understandable.
During the six months since Jorge Alejandro had been killed, he had confessed the same thing many times.
Jorge Alejandro idolized his uncle from the time he could walk. Children are prone to adore indulgent uncles, especially when the uncles are dashing cavalry officers and superb horsemen, and who delight in making available to nephews the toys—fast cars, highly spirited horses, firearms, airplanes—their parents would just as soon they not have so early in life, or ever.
But neither he nor Beatrice could bring themselves to deny Beatrice’s brother the company of his nephew. After Jorge Guillermo Frade lost his wife—and for all practical purposes, their son—he never remarried. And it was clear that he really loved Jorge Alejandro . . . saw him as a substitute for the son he had lost.
In his third year at St. George’s School, Jorge Alejandro firmly announced that he had no intention of becoming a banker—with the clear implication that in his view banking was a profession about as masculine as hairdressing and interior decorating. He announced that instead he intended to follow his uncle to the Military Academy and become an officer—after all, he carried the blood of Pueyrredón in his veins. There was nothing Humberto, who was Managing Director14of the Anglo-Argentine Bank, could do about it except hope that Jorge Alejandro would find the discipline at Campo de Mayo too much to take.
That hope did not materialize. Like his uncle, Jorge Alejandro was appointed Cadet Coronel during his last year at Campo de Mayo. And like his uncle—by then el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade, commanding the Húsares de Pueyrredón Cavalry Regiment—he was commissioned into the cavalry. Almost certainly because of his uncle’s influence, he was ‘‘routinely’’ assigned to the Húsares.
All that was well and good, but what el Coronel also did was arrange for Capitán Duarte to be posted to the German Army as an observer. For this Humberto vowed he would never forgive him—now, of course, he was sorry about that. Logic told Humberto that el Coronel would rather die himself than see any harm come to Jorge Alejandro, but the facts were that el Coronel arranged for Jorge Alejandro to go to Germany as an observer, and that he was killed at Stalingrad. The godless Communists shot down an observation aircraft that he was flying, against regulations for a neutral observer.
Beatrice’s nervous problems grew worse, naturally, when Jorge went to Europe. And when word of his death reached them, it pushed her over the edge. And so, one of the apartments in their house was turned into what was really a psychiatric facility. It was complete to a hospital bed with restraints, and nurses on duty and doctors on call around the clock. After a time, she came out of it—with Monsignor Kelly reminding her that suicide is a mortal sin, and the doctors keeping her in a chemically induced state of tranquillity.
Meanwhile, in what Humberto regarded as a cold and calculated public relations gesture, and Beatrice as an act of great Christian charity and compassion, the Germans returned Jorge’s remains from Stalingrad, escorted by a highly decorated Luftwaffe pilot from a very good German family.
Jorge’s remains and Major Hans-Peter von Wachtstein of the Luftwaffe arrived in Buenos Aires at almost the same time as another highly decorated aviator. The second dashing young hero was an American Marine. In what Humberto regarded as a cold and calculated diplomatic move, the Americans sent him to Argentina primarily because he was Jorge Guillermo Frade’s long-estranged—from infancy —son. It was common gossip—at least before Cletus arrived—that el Coronel was probably going to be the next President of the Argentine Republic, and the norteamericanos were certainly aware of this.
Though Cletus Howell Frade was, of course, his and Beatrice ’s nephew, Humberto confessed to Padre Welner, a Jesuit—not to Monsignor Kelly, who had already heard too much of his private affairs through Beatrice—that he had selfish and un-Christian thoughts about him, and was afraid he hated him, for no reason except that Cletus was alive and Jorge Alejandro was dead.
Jorge Alejandro was buried in the family tomb in Recoleta Cemetery with much ceremony—including an escort by the Húsares de Pueyrredón and the pinning of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross to the flag covering his casket. In her chemically induced tranquillity, Beatrice seemed more interested in the postinterment reception at the house than in the burial of their only child.
The same night, the Germans tried to murder Cletus Frade. The official story was that Cletus came across burglars, but there was no question in Humberto’s mind that the same Germans who solemnly honored Jorge Alejandro at the Basílica of Our Lady of Pilar in Recoleta Cemetery cold-bloodedly ordered the assassination of his cousin on the same day.
Beatrice accepted the burglar story without question. And later, when her brother died at the hands of ‘‘bandits,’’ she was even further removed from reality. She was absolutely incapable of believing that the charming German Ambassador, Graf von Lutzenberger, or the even more charming Baron Gradny-Sawz, his first secretary, were capable of displaying bad manners, much less ordering the assassination of her brother.
In fact, she made a point of personally inviting both of them to the postinterment reception they were holding.
Under the circumstances, Beatrice’s dissociation from reality was probably a good thing. Humberto did not want to see her again as she was when word of Jorge Alejandro’s death had reached them. It broke his heart.
And there were practical considerations, too. Gradny-Sawz was delighted that Beatrice made von Wachtstein a welcome guest in their home. (The young German airman had remained in Buenos Aires as the Assistant Military Attach é for Air at the German Embassy.) Gradny-Sawz considered himself an aristocrat. Thus he saw this relationship between the aristocratic young officer and the prominent Duarte family—and consequently the Anglo-Argentine Bank—as both natural and of potential use to Germany. At the same time, he didn’t have the faintest idea that the real relationship between von Wachtstein and the Anglo-Argentine Bank had absolutely nothing to do with furthering the interests of the Nazis, but the reverse.
When Humberto pushed open the door to the reception, Cletus Frade was sitting on a couch beside Claudia Carzino -Cormano, who was holding his hand. When Cletus saw his uncle, he stood up.
Humberto went to him. Although Cletus had made it quite clear that norteamericanos regarded any gesture between men more intimate than a handshake as damned odd—even between uncle and nephew—he embraced him, kissed both of his cheeks, and then embraced him again.
‘‘Cletus, I am so very sorry.’’
‘‘Thank you.’’
‘‘God has seen fit to take my son, and your father,’’ Humberto said. ‘‘May they rest in peace. And God, I like to think, has given us each other. I will now regard you as my son, and ask that you think of me as your father.’’
Oh, shit. He means that. That’s bullshit, pure and simple. So why do I feel like crying?
Clete found himself embracing his uncle.
‘‘And how is Aunt Beatrice?’’ he heard himself asking when they broke apart.
‘‘I have come to believe that God, in his infinite mercy, has chosen to spare Beatrice the pain she would feel under normal circumstances. I think you take my meaning.’’
Clete nodded.
In other words, what Claudia said was right on the money. She’s in the arms of Jesus and drugs, and you know it. You poor bastard.
‘‘Beatrice will join us shortly,’’ Humberto said, then turned to Claudia and her daughters, kissing them each in turn.
‘‘Do you have everything you need?’’ he asked.
Everybody nodded.
‘‘I think I will have a little taste, myself,’’ Humber
to said, and made his way to the cabinet bar. ‘‘Beatrice will be along in a minute, and then we can have our dinner.’’
VII
[ONE] 1420 Avenida Alvear Buenos Aires, Argentina 2145 9 April 1943
Beatrice Frade de Duarte appeared in the library a few minutes after her husband. She was immaculately turned out, and the soul of refined hospitality. And quite obviously mad.
She kissed Clete on the cheek as if she had seen him only a few hours before, gaily kissed the Carzino-Cormano females, complimented them on their dresses and hair, and then called for champagne.
‘‘Champagne increases one’s appreciation of food,’’ she complained, ‘‘but whiskey simply makes one gluttonous.’’
Claudia Carzino-Cormano, smiling brightly with a visible effort, squeezed Clete’s upper arm painfully.
When the champagne was served, Beatrice toasted, ‘‘Good friends. They are always such support at a time like this.’’
Clete thought Alicia was going to cry.
After Beatrice carefully paired them off—Humberto with Claudia, Capitán Lauffer with Isabela, and Clete with Alicia —they went into the dining. She began the dinner conversation with the announcement: ‘‘This is probably the wrong time to say this—Cletus would have to get a special dispensation from the Cardinal Archbishop to waive the year’s mourning period—but I always suspected that my late brother hoped that Cletus and Isabela would be struck by Cupid’s arrow. I think of you, dear Claudia, as family already. Their marriage would make it official.’’
‘‘Well, you never know what time will bring,’’ Claudia said quickly, to forestall any reply from either Isabela, who rolled her eyes, or Clete.
Throughout dinner, Beatrice chattered on happily about her idyllic childhood with her brother on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo. The highlight of all this was the story of el Coronel’s burial casket.
‘‘Poppa somehow came into a stock of cedar,’’ she said, turning her brilliant smile on Capitán Lauffer. ‘‘Which, unless I am mistaken, is not grown here. Or if it is, this was of an exceptionally high quality. I have no idea where it came from, to tell you the truth. But, anyway, there it was, in one of the buildings some distance from the big house, and one day Poppa saw it and decided he wanted to be buried in a cedar casket.’’
Blood and Honor Page 17
