The Neruda Case by Roberto Ampuero

Author:Roberto Ampuero [Ampuero, Roberto]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101585672
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Published: 2012-06-14T04:00:00+00:00

34

The Zum Weissen Hirsch was on Eberswalder Strasse 37, in Bernau, near a highway lined with apple trees that led to the industrial city of Eberswalde. Its old walls were covered in vines, which occasionally thinned to reveal bricks poking out from the worn stucco like rotted teeth. When Cayetano walked in, he was met with smoke and the thick stench of beer. He walked through the dimness, through which the husky, unmistakable voice of Karat sidled, singing “Schwanenkönig.” It took him a moment to find Margaretchen, who was smoking at a table by the window, with a pilsner and a small glass of Doppelkorn in front of her.

“I warned you. They never reveal anything about their people,” she said. Cayetano was struck once again by her pale face, the dark circles around her eyes, and the metallic brilliance of her gaze.

“You were right.” Cayetano settled in across from Margaretchen. “Neither Valentina nor Käthe knew a thing about Beatriz.”

The radio now played a ballad crooned by Karel Gott, the golden voice of Prague, reminiscent of Elvis Presley and Lucho Gatica. In a corner, behind an umbrella stand, an older couple dined; just past them, some long-haired customers in flowered shirts sat at a table, and beyond that the tables were packed with boisterous customers. Cayetano and Margaretchen ordered onion and Klösse soup with potatoes, and a bottle of Stierblut, a Bulgarian wine that, according to the translator, wasn’t half bad.

“So you know Beatriz?” Cayetano pressed.

“I knew a woman at the school who was called Beatriz.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “She may be the woman you’re looking for. She came from Mexico, and her last name was Schall. Beatriz Schall.”

“Schall? Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“But people use false names at the JHSWP.”

“The foreign students do. But the staff and the German students use their real names. My name is real.”

Cayetano took the photograph of Beatriz out of the pocket of his guayabera, the one from the Mexican newspaper, and held it in the lamplight. Margaretchen examined it closely.

“She looks a lot like her,” she said, lowering her eyelids sensually, mysteriously.

“Is it her or not?”

“Beatriz Schall was more heavyset. And she was a resolute woman.”

“But she was only twenty in the photograph. People change over time. When did you say you knew her?”

“In her last year at the JHSWP. She was leaving, I was just arriving. I couldn’t say that in front of Valentina. She’s an apparatchik of fear. Don’t trust her.”

Cayetano stroked the tip of his mustache and gazed at the older couple, who were paying their check and preparing to leave. “Forgive my asking,” he said as the old man helped his wife into her raincoat. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven,” she said as she drained her glass of schnapps.

“If Valentina, who’s been there for seven years, never met Beatriz, then you would much less have had the chance—unless you started working at sixteen.”

“The thing is, I met Beatriz as a student at Wilhelm Pieck,” she said. She gestured to the waiter for another glass.

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