“I understand you were once a journalist, before you devoted yourself to politics and diplomacy.”
The old man takes a sip of his whiskey, then places the glass on a shelf and pulls a silver cigarette case out of his pocket.
“Would you like one?” the old man asks; the other man says no.
The old man lights a cigarette just as a fat jolly man with a stentorian voice approaches them. He is the host.
“If I may, I would like to borrow the ambassador for a moment,” the fat man says to Nikolai, as he takes the old man by the arm and leads him away. He quickly whispers something to him than goes to join another group.
“Forgive me. You were telling me that you are a journalist,” the old man says when he returns, picking his glass of whiskey off the shelf.
A waiter offers them a tray of sandwiches.
“Precisely. And my specialty is Spanish-speaking countries. ”
“You are quite far away from your specialty,” the old man comments.
“Please allow me to explain,” Nikolai says. “I am stationed here in this city, at a bit of a remove from the whirlwind in Europe precisely so I can use my spare time to write a book about the current situation in Hispanic America.”
At the far end of the hallway, past a swarm of other guests, the old man catches a glimpse of his colleagues from Guatemala and Nicaragua. He longs to join those clowns in their banter.
“I have no doubt,” Nikolai continues, “that you are deeply knowledgeable about the reality in your country, as a participant and as a witness, and I feel quite fortunate to have met you at this precise time and place. I would like to request an interview, have the opportunity to ask you a few questions about Central American history. Nothing formal. We could meet for dinner any day that’s convenient for you.”
From the other end of the hallway, the eagle-eyed oaf from Guatemala gestures to the old man with a barely perceptible nod of his head — a question and an invitation.
“In particular, you might be able to help me understand the events that took place in your country three years ago at the time of that bloody insurrection,” Nikolai says and makes a grimace, fleeting, slightly malicious, or perhaps it is just a nervous tick, the old man isn’t sure.
Old Man Pericles blows out the smoke and stares into Nikolai’s blue eyes; he wonders how old this Russian is: forty? forty-five?
“Were you in your country during the October Revolution?” the old man asks, off the cuff, before finishing his whiskey.
Nikolai smiles, then nods and winks.
They agree to dine one day that week in a restaurant in that city I never saw and never will, but it wasn’t difficult for me to imagine the afternoon in question, while lying in my hammock with the story of Pericles in Brussels playing in my head like an old movie, which took place in a restaurant of Nikolai’s choosing, with private rooms suitable for intrigue, in one of which the old man would sit after giving his coat to the waiter, with that astonishing lighthearted sensation that accompanies a man who has decided to take on his own destiny.
It is not difficult for me to imagine the freedom Old Man Pericles felt when he made the decision to resign from his diplomatic post and become the opponent he would be from then on, the “Soviet agent,” as the authorities would call him each time they jailed him or sent him into exile; that sensation of freedom and adventure of knowing that he was returning to his country as somebody else, his own opposite, without anybody at first suspecting; the lightheartedness that comes from having finally divested himself of the contradiction of belonging to and representing a camp he found utterly repugnant. It was in the last few months of 1937, if I remember correctly. Old Man Pericles returned all grown up, saturated with the events taking place in Europe; he told stories, amazing at the time, about Nazis and fascists, and he could talk for hours about events in Spain, about the Republicans and the Franco uprising.
Haydée experienced the old man’s resignation differently, as she admitted to us when she returned: hers were the concerns of a mother (Clemente and Pati were teenagers and Alberto was still a boy), the concerns of a woman from a conservative family who doesn’t fully understand her husband’s decisions, but who is also enormously happy to be returning to her own land and her own people.
Before serving lunch, Carmela said she would bring a glass of watermelon drink to the poor Viking, who was waiting outside, sitting in the shadow cast by a silk cotton tree, he himself a shadow of Old Man Pericles for years already. Carmela always took pity on him, brought him a cold drink, and told him he mustn’t worry, he could have lunch in the dining room where the park employees ate, Old Man Pericles would be at the house until late in the afternoon, as if he were a friend and not the police spy assigned to tailing our friend. The Viking wasn’t as old as we were, but I had the feeling he was aging more quickly, as if he were suffering from a secret malady.
When I first met Haydée, as I’ve said, she was a tall, slender young woman with red hair; beautiful, brimming with life, and so expressive that next to her, Old Man Pericles — who at that time wasn’t old but was already scowling and reserved — seemed mute. For decades, and every time she wanted to irritate him, Haydée would tell the story of how her heart was pierced by that handsome, dashing young second lieutenant of the cavalry, who paraded around proudly on his sorrel, leading his sweaty troops through the central plaza in Santa Ana. The eldest and favorite daughter of Don Nico Baldoni, a fellow coffee-grower and friend of Carmela’s father, Haydée had the wisdom to take what life offered her with a good dose of wonderment. I never heard her once complain about the tribulations she was forced to undergo at her husband’s side: sometimes she spoke enthusiastically about one or another of their periods of exile and the juggling acts she had to perform to survive when her husband spent time in jail. But I am also certain her family never left her to fend for herself. Don Nico respected Old Man Pericles, and he must have supported him at least until 1944, when the dictator fell, because at that time we were all in the opposition; later, after the Second World War and once the old man had already been branded a communist, things may have changed. But Haydée was loyal to him for better and for worse. Until she was stricken with breast cancer, sudden and devastating, which finished her off before we could even get used to the idea of her being gone.
Carmela had made a casserole of ground beef, vegetables, and green plantains; she served the beans separately in soup bowls topped with cream and grated cheese, just as Old Man Pericles liked.
“Have you heard anything from Estela and Alberto?” Carmela asked, as if wanting to liven up the repast, perhaps seeing that the old man was even more withdrawn than usual, whereas I perceived him as he always was: laconic, and averse to small talk.
“They’re fine,” Old Man Pericles mumbled, “and Albertico is, too; he’s happy at the university.”
Carmela said they had done well to make lives for themselves there, in San José, Costa Rica, where they’d gone into exile a year earlier, after the failed coup that Alberto’s close friends had participated in, and maybe he had himself, though he denied it; his daughter Pati had also been living in that city for more than three decades.
“We got a letter from Maggi today,” Carmela said, as if she was determined to intrude on every silence; later I understood she wasn’t doing this out of compassion for Old Man Pericles but rather for herself, for both of us, for it was frightening to think that we were eating with death sitting in the chair next to us.
“Without the treatment, the pain is going to knock you out,” I told him, taking the bull by the horns.
“The pain will knock me out with or without the treatment,” Old Man Pericles said as he took another bite.