“I would ask you to share my home,” Frade said, “but I was once your age, and I know how it is with young men. From my own experience.” El Coronel Frade winked, man-to-man, at his son. “Before I met your mother, of course.”
That’s the first mention of my mother.
“It is on the Avenida Libertador, across from the Hipódromo de Argentina, our major horse track,” Frade went on. “It was built by my uncle Guillermo. He would be your granduncle Guillermo. He was a horseman. Unfortunately—within the family—we concede that is about all he was, a horseman. Charming fellow. Played six-goal polo in his sixties. When he was younger, he raced thoroughbreds. If he just raced them, which is quite expensive enough, he would have been all right, but he insisted on gambling on them as well, and he was not at all good at that.”
A waiter delivered a bottle of wine, and he and Frade went through a ritual of cork-sniffing and sipping.
“That will do,” Frade announced. “Well, as they say in America,” he went on, picking up his Jack Daniel’s doble and draining it, “waste not, want not.”
He looked at Clete, who took a very small sip of his drink and set the glass down.
I wish I could think of some way to get rid of the rest of this. Except that if I poured it out someplace, there would be another instant refill. Better to just pretend to sip on it.
“When your granduncle Guillermo—who never married, by the way—built the Avenida Libertador house, he put the master suite on the fourth floor. This was so that he could watch the races without having to mingle with the crowds, he said. My father, your grandfather, said it was because he could entertain ladies in his bedroom between races. Guillermo was my father’s older brother. They were very close.”
Now he’s giving me this rundown on the family—my granduncle who played the ponies and chased women—to make me feel close and part of things. If you can’t trust your own family, who can you trust?
“Shortly after the house was built, your granduncle Guillermo bet more money than he could afford on a horse he owned. It lost, and he found himself in trouble and had to turn to his father for help. He would be, of course, my grandfather and your great-grandfather. Your great-grandfather married María Elena, the second daughter of Edwardo Pueyrredón, which is where you and I, Cletus, get our Pueyrredón blood.”
That’s nice. What the hell is Pueyrredón blood?
“As my father related the story to me, Grandfather helped Uncle Guillermo out of his financial difficulties. Of course, Uncle Guillermo knew he would, for the honor of the family. He had done so before, and he would do so again. But this time Grandfather extracted a price. He bought Uncle Guillermo’s house. Uncle Guillermo used the money to pay his debt of honor. And then Grandfather told him he intended to put it on the market, since he didn’t need it, and Guillermo could not afford to buy it back. Thus, it would be necessary for Uncle Guillermo to move out, and to live and work at San Pedro y San Pablo until such time…”
“Saints Peter and Paul?” Clete asked, confused.
“Our estancia,” Frade explained. “Since you are going to be here for some time, you will of course visit there. It will, of course, be yours one day. Someday, I hope, in the far distant future.”
Did I hear that correctly? I have suddenly become heir apparent? Good thought, Pop. The heir apparent will certainly tell you anything about himself you care to know.
“Uncle Guillermo, of course, thought this would be a temporary arrangement, that he would spend a couple of months at San Pedro y San Pablo until things calmed down with Grandpapa. But Grandpapa was annoyed with him (though Grandpapa was not serious about putting the house on the market). When Daddy—your grandfather—married, his father—your great-grandfather—gave the house on Libertador to him as a wedding present. I was born there. When your grandfather died, he passed his home to my father. I live there now—a money sewer on Avenida Coronel Díaz in Palermo. My father did not wish to sell the Libertador house, for even then they were talking of building apartment buildings along Libertador, and the land value was rising, so he turned it into a guest house. I have always felt that Daddy would give the house to me on my marriage, but God called him home before that could happen.”
El Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade stopped, quickly pulled the crisp white handkerchief from his breast pocket, grimaced, and loudly blew his nose. “Disculpeme”—excuse me—he said.
My God, he’s crying! Am I supposed to believe that’s for real?
“Disculpame,” he repeated, dabbing at his eyes with the handkerchief. “Something was stuck in my throat. As I was saying, when your mother came here as my bride, we lived in the Libertador house when we were in the city. To her, living in the house on Avenida Coronel Díaz was like living in a museum. You were not born there, Cletus, but it was from the Libertador house, when your mother’s time came, that I took her to the hospital where you were born.”
He blew his nose loudly again, and picked up his wineglass and drained it.
He’s really shameless. And good. If I hadn’t figured the sonofabitch out, I’d really start to think he was shedding tears at the memory of my mother.
“After we have our lunch, if they ever get around to serving it,” he said, “we will drive over there and you will decide if you would be comfortable there.”
[FOUR]
Clete was to remember the drive from the Officers’ Club to the house on Libertador for a long time. His father drove. He left the Officers’ Club with a squeal of tires on the cobblestones, then raced through town practically flat out, blowing the very loud horn at whoever had the effrontery to place a car in his path, weaving in and out of the traffic—which was six lanes in each direction along Avenida Libertador. Just as Clete noticed the entrance to the racetrack, he made a sudden U-turn, tires squealing again, the huge Horche leaning dangerously, and pulled up before a stone building with an elaborate facade, where he slammed on the brakes.
His father stared at him triumphantly.
“It will be necessary to place the fate of the Horche in the merciful hands of God,” he announced. “It takes them forever to open the damned gates, and I have urgent need of the baño”—a toilet.
He left the car and walked quickly to the door of the house, where he lifted a huge brass knocker and banged it half a dozen times. The door was opened by an attractive young woman in a maid’s uniform. Frade walked past her, called over his shoulder, “You will please excuse me a moment,” and disappeared through a door.
The power of suggestion, Clete thought. My back teeth are now floating.
He was alone for perhaps two minutes, looking around the sparsely furnished room—heavy, wooden, leather-upholstered chairs and couches, and a round table with a silver bowl of flowers in the center—and then a short, plump, gray-haired woman in a gray dress appeared. She smiled.
“May I offer you something, Señor? A cup of coffee perhaps?”