The Neruda Case Read Online Free PDF

extended and its legs tucked in, moving its head from side to side, cawing an alarm. It glided over nearby roofs and returned to the water, as though indicating the way.
    Cayetano felt the first sip descend into his core like wildfire. He wasn’t accustomed to drinking in the morning.
    “How is it?” asked the poet.
    “Superb, Don Pablo,” was all he could say.
    “I’ve got the touch. A poet who doesn’t know his drinks or food is no poet.”
    Cayetano left the glass on the bar, under a bell that hung on a bronze arm.
    “So? What’s the name?”
    “Chivas. Chivas Regal. Eighteen years.”
    “No, Don Pablo. What’s the name of the Cuban I’m supposed to find?”
    “Ángel. Dr. Ángel Bracamonte.” He stroked the bronze bell.
    “It doesn’t sound familiar at all,” Cayetano said, looking at the poet. He thought he saw a flinch of disappointment on his face.
    But the poet kept on. “I met him in 1940, in Mexico City, when I was consul there. He was an oncologist. He studied the medicinal properties of some plants that the natives of Chiapas used to treat cancer. Bracamonte should be about my age, or maybe older. I lost track of him in 1943, after returning to Chile with Delia del Carril, my wife at the time. He might still live in Mexico.”
    So the rumors were true: The poet had cancer. At last he could see how the puzzle pieces fit together. Don Pablo, suffering from cancer, was sending him to find the Cuban oncologist for a cure, Cayetano thought as he polished off the whiskey to embolden himself. The disease explained the poet’s exhaustion, his ragged breath, his protuberant ears, and ashen face. Perhaps, Cayetano imagined, he’d never return to his post as ambassador in Paris, and would die in his homeland, in Allende’s revolutionary nation. He looked out the window in the direction of his own neighborhood, Marina Mercante; his house rose in full view on a hill riddled with yellow walls beneath a washed-out winter sky.
    “Pardon me, Don Pablo, but don’t you think an ad in the
Excelsior
would be enough to get Bracamonte on the phone the next day? You shouldn’t gamble with your health.”
    “Who said this was a health issue?” Don Pablo asked, failing to mask the tension on his face.
    “Well, since the man’s a doctor …” It occurred to him that the poet might want to save face by hiding the motive of the search. He was young but not naive. There was no such thing as a naive person in Cuba. Idiots and opportunists, certainly, by the thousands, but notnaive people. It was clear that the poet needed the oncologist and his plants to win the battle against cancer.
    “I’m not looking for him because of my health. He’s probably in Mexico. I need you to find him and inform me, but listen closely now,” he said gravely, pointing at Cayetano with his index finger, “you can’t mention a single word of this to anyone. Not to anyone! Not even to the man himself! When you find out where he is, you should tell only me. Then I’ll tell you how to proceed. Understand?”
    “Absolutely.”
    “You should know that it’s not easy to trick a poet. Much less an ill poet.”
    “So should I begin my investigation at the Mexican embassy, Don Pablo?”
    “Why go snooping around embassies like some librarian, Cayetano! What you should do is board a plane for Mexico City and start your investigation there. I need you to find Dr. Ángel Bracamonte as soon as possible!”

5
    H e couldn’t fly to Mexico immediately, because there were no available seats. He decided to kill time by leafing through Simenon’s novels, which gripped him immediately, with characters who wandered the alleys, bistros, and markets of Paris. He also looked around for people who could tell him a little about the poet, something that went beyond what everybody knew about him, his travels and his loves. If he knew the man better, he’d feel more comfortable, as Neruda had begun to seem like a pretty mysterious guy, concealing