We sat facing each other in the bleak room.
You were both wrong but it’s all the same in the end.
We all remember what we need to remember.
Marin remembered Charlotte in a tennis dress and Charlotte remembered Marin in a straw hat for Easter. I remembered Edgar, I did not remember Edgar as the man who financed the Tupamaros. Charlotte remembered she bled. I remembered the light in Boca Grande. I sat in this room in Buffalo where I had no business being and I talked to this child who was not mine and I remembered the light in Boca Grande.
Another place I have no business being.
It seems to me now.
“Why did you bother agreeing to see me?” I said finally.
“My stepfather said he was putting you in touch with me because you had something important to tell me. I can see you don’t.”
I remember feeling ill and trying to control my dislike of Charlotte’s child.
“I didn’t understand your mother,” I said finally.
“Try a class analysis.”
I had not come ill to Buffalo to scream at Charlotte’s child. “Your mother disturbed me,” I said.
“She could certainly do that.”
I tried again. “She had you in her mind. She always kept you in her mind.”
“Not me,” Marin Bogart said. “Some pretty baby. Not me.”
“Could I have a glass of water,” I said after a while.
“We don’t have liquor.”
“I didn’t ask for liquor. Did I.” I could hear the fury in my voice and could not stop. “I didn’t ask for ‘liquor’ and I didn’t ask for ‘diet pills’ and I didn’t ask for Saran-Wrap and I didn’t ask for white bread and I didn’t ask for any of the other things I’m sure you make it a point not to have. I asked for a glass of water.”
Marin Bogart watched me without expression for a moment and then stood up and turned to the sink full of dirty dishes.
“Did you like the Tivoli Gardens,” I said suddenly.
“This water runs lukewarm. I better get you some ice, this is lukewarm water and I can at least get you some ice, can’t I.”
As she spoke she opened the refrigerator and took out an ice tray. Her movements were jerky and the tray was not frozen and the water splashed on the floor.
“I said did you like the Tivoli Gardens.”
“Goddamn people around here, somebody took it out last night and never put it back, I mean I had to put it back this morning, I don’t think—”
She was speaking very rapidly and for the first time something other than her eyes reminded me of Charlotte.
“—Anyone but me ever raises a finger around here, I honestly—”
“Tivoli,” I said.
Marin Bogart turned suddenly, and she put the tray on the table, and her face was tight, and then she broke exactly as her mother must have broken the morning the FBI first came to the house on California Street.
SIX
1
IN THE END THERE WAS NOT MUCH TO TELL MARIN BOGART that she could understand and there was even less to tell Leonard Douglas that he could not have guessed.
It did not go smoothly at all.
Since I was in New Orleans I know only a few facts.
Since I do not entirely trust Gerardo’s version of it I am certain of even fewer facts.
On the first day of what has come to be remembered as the October Violence the guerrilleros finally closed the airport altogether.
The final closing of the airport is what we usually call Day One.
I had flown out the night before, the evening of the day we usually call Day Minus One. I lost the gardenia in the crush at the airport.
The seat next to mine on the plane out was empty.
Charlotte was eating spiny lobster at the Jockey Club.
Day Minus One. Day One.
Day Two.
On Day Two the guerrilleros took over the radio stations.
On Day Three the guerrilleros neared the palace.
Those first three days went more or less as expected.
I have seen the troops on the palace roof waiting to pick off the guerrilleros before.
It was Day Four which did not go as planned. Day Four is supposed to end just after the heavy shooting at dawn, but this time it did not. The guerrilleros appeared not to know that they were on the board only to be gunned down at dawn of Day Four by the insurgent army under Antonio’s “new leadership.” The guerrilleros appeared to have more of everything than anyone except Leonard Douglas had supposed they had. Some say Kasindorf and Riley supplied the excess, some say other agencies. Some say Victor.
I think not Victor but have no empirical proof.
I also think (still) that Leonard Douglas was not involved but again this conclusion is not empirical.
In any case.
2
GERARDO HAD COUNTED ON A SMOOTH TRANSITION.
Gerardo had counted on dinner at the Jockey Club the evening of Day Four.
By Day Seven Gerardo wanted to get out himself.
“I couldn’t possibly leave right now,” Charlotte said when Gerardo told her about the helicopter in Millonario.
“You don’t realize,” Gerardo said.
“I realize,” Charlotte said. “I do realize.”
“Charlotte. You don’t leave now, you’re not going to leave at all, because Antonio wants Carmen Arrellano on that chopper and not you.”
“Then take Carmen Arrellano. Carmen should get out, Carmen has connections here.”
“So do you.”
“No.” Charlotte had seemed vague and distant. “I don’t actually.”
“Charlotte. Remember Victor. Remember me.”
And Charlotte had looked at Gerardo for a while and smiled as she sometimes smiled at strangers.
“I wasn’t connected to you actually,” Charlotte had said.
Gerardo had only stared at her.
“I mean I’ve got two or three people in my mind but I don’t quite have you.”
I trust Gerardo’s version on this point.
I wasn’t connected to you actually has the ring of Charlotte Douglas to me.
3
DAY EIGHT.
There had never been a Day Eight in Boca Grande before.
On Day Eight Charlotte appeared to have gone as usual to the clinic. She was reported to have stayed in her office all day but of course there would have been no callers for birth control devices on Day Eight. At five o’clock she closed the clinic and walked to the Caribe and apparently changed for dinner. At any rate she was wearing a clean linen dress when she left the Caribe at seven-thirty and began to walk in the direction of the Capilla del Mar.
Walking very deliberately.
Tying and retying a scarf which whipped in the hot night wind.
Seeming to concentrate on the scarf as if oblivious to the potholes in the sidewalk and the places where waste ran into the gutters.
At seven-forty-three exactly she reached the barricade on the sidewalk outside the Capilla del Mar and she stopped and she showed her passport.
Soy norteamericana, she said.
Soy una turista, she said.
The passport was knocked from her hand by the butt of a carbine.
“Don’t you lay your fucking hands on me,” she said in English.