Free The Neruda Case by Roberto Ampuero Page B

was in Hialeah and Cayo Hueso. Here I can’t even get a damn job.”
    “I’ve already told you, something could show up any moment—”
    “That’s ancient history. It’s June of 1973 and I’m still waiting, driving the car your daddy gave you, in the house he pays for, with both of us putting food on the table from his wallet. That dependence is what killed our love.”
    “Killed, you said?”
    “Yes, killed.”
    “So you’re throwing away what we had.”
    “You threw it away already.”
    “I’m not going to argue with you over nonsense,” she retorted as she tried yet again, and without success, to stuff the Hermès scarf into a corner of the suitcase. “I’m leaving for Cuba tonight, and that’s it. Better that we talk about all this when I return. This is no time for petit bourgeois arguments, Cayetano. It’s the moment of truth!”

11
    H e heard the breaking news flash at Alí Babá, on Radio Magallanes, and heard the musical gunshots in the background. The reporter spoke from the center of the capital, where the Tacna Regiment had risen up against Salvador Allende’s government and was advancing toward the presidential palace, La Moneda. The attempted coup came live and direct over the radio, like in the American movies, turning the country into a passive spectator. Seated next to the window, as though refusing to admit the danger that was taking place outside, Cayetano drank his steaming cup of coffee and waited for the poet to walk down Collado Way toward his house, so that he could say good-bye.
    “The rebel is a certain Colonel Souper,” Hadad commented, drying his hands on his apron. “Now everything is really going to shit.”
    The reporters shouted over the fray to make themselves heard, describing the tank movement of that primary Chilean regiment as it moved into Santiago toward La Moneda. Another journalist called on the people to remain calm in their factories, rural towns, ports, offices, and universities. President Allende, another reporter said from a mobile post in Barrio Alto, had left his residence on Tomás Moro Street, and was advancing toward La Moneda as quickly as he could,with his bodyguards in a caravan of blue Fiat 125S. He planned to stop the coup.
    “What about the military men on Allende’s side?” Cayetano asked Hadad, who was gazing pensively through the window at the Mauri Theater, where stray dogs were resting. Collado lay before them, dirty and deserted. “Because if the president himself has to go out to face traitors in this country, then we really are screwed, my friend.”
    “It seems that not all the military squadrons are backing Souper,” Hadad said.
    Cayetano lit a cigarette. “Is that right? How do you know?”
    Outside, life continued as though nothing had changed, he thought, worried, exhaling a voluminous column of smoke. That is to say, life continued mutely, without echoes or shrillness, without impassioned people coming out to protest what was happening in Santiago. A thick mist began to obscure the city, and to Cayetano it seemed a terrible omen. He felt a screw come loose in his soul. Where was his wife now? In some safe house in Santiago, prepared to take up arms for her government, or in the sticky heat of Havana already, in an olive-green uniform, crawling through mud with a Kalashnikov slung over her shoulder?
    A communiqué from the party committee of Unidad Popular announced that the government would shortly give instructions for facing down the coup’s perpetrators, and that for the moment Chileans should stay alert and ready for war in their schools and workplaces. According to the journalists, Allende was still heading downtown through morning traffic, on an interminable, winding journey, after which he would address the nation. What use was this call for calm to an unemployed foreigner like him? Cayetano wondered. Should he run off to the Hucke factory, where he’d stood guard a few nights earlier, and place himself at the