Buenos Aires
2115 29 December 1942
A butler in a tailcoat opened the door to his knock.
“Buenas noches, Señor Frade,” he said, straight-faced. “El Coronel and his guests are in the first-floor reception room.”
The first floor, the way the Argentines count, is really the second floor, Clete was pleased to remember.
He went up the curving, wide staircase two steps at a time, in happy anticipation of seeing the No-Longer-Virgin Princess, only halfway up remembering that if the opportunity presented itself to kiss her, he would reek of beer and raw onions.
He entered the reception room. The first person he saw was Major Freiherr Hans-Peter von Wachtstein, resplendent in a white Luftwaffe summer uniform, with his Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross dangling over his chest. He was chatting with Señorita Alicia Carzino-Cormano, who was in a floor-length white dress cut so that not only a strand of pearls but a wide expanse of bosom—both magnificent—were on prominent display.
Also present in the room were Señorita Carzino-Cormano’s mother and sister, also wearing shades of white; Uncle Humberto and Aunt Beatrice, she in a floor-length black gown, he in a white dinner jacket; half a dozen other people, including an Argentine admiral and the fat colonel of the Husares de Pueyrredón in mess dress; and their ladies; Señor A. F. Graham, in a white dinner jacket; and of course the Mallín family, Mamá, Papá, the No-Longer-Virgin Princess, and even Little Enrico, all done up in a dinner jacket.
Plus, of course, the host, el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade, in a white dinner jacket.
The No-Longer-Virgin Princess, when she saw him in the red polo shirt and blue blazer, smiled warmly and then giggled. Though they didn’t giggle, Señor Graham’s and Major Freiherr von Wachtstein’s faces reflected a certain amusement at Clete’s discomfort, and then at the sight of his father stalking across the room to greet him.
“At least you managed to arrive,” Clete’s father said as he took his arm and led him out of the room, “at the dinner I gave at your request. I suppose that’s something.”
“What I had in mind was just the Mallíns,” Clete said. “Sorry.”
“You should be glad that didn’t happen.”
“Excuse me?”
“Mallín came early,” his father said as he led him down a wide corridor and then through a double door. “I have some clothing in here that should fit you.”
“I don’t think so,” Clete said. His father was forty pounds heavier than he was. “Mallín came early and…?”
“I bought much of this when I was your age,” his father said, throwing open a closet that looked like a rack in a formal clothing store. “There’s a dinner jacket in here from Close and Marsh in London that should do.”
He found what he was looking for and thrust it at Clete.
“I don’t know about a shirt,” he said. “But there’s a drawer of them over there, and you’ll find studs and so on on my dresser. And now, the entertainment of the evening finished, I will return to your guests.”
Clete put his hand on his father’s arm and stopped him.
“Answer the question. Mallín was here, and…?”
“He wished to talk to me privately, man-to-man, as one father to another,” Frade said. “About your relationship with his daughter. While he assured me that he felt you were a fine young man of sterling character, who would never take advantage of an innocent young girl, as men of the world, we both knew that when two young people fancy themselves in love…et cetera, et cetera…and that he hoped I would be good enough to have a word with you. I told him that you are a man, and that I have no control over your romantic life.”
“That’s it?”
“I also told him that I rather understood your interest in his innocent young daughter. I suggested that you perhaps acquired your interest in young girls in the bar at the Plaza Hotel, watching middle-aged men fawning over Minas young enough to be their daughters.”
“You didn’t!”
Frade nodded. “And I also told him that he should be glad that you are both my son and an officer and a gentleman, who therefore can be expected to do the right thing by his innocent daughter, rather than one of the middle-aged men in the Plaza bar who behave despicably toward their young women.”
“He took this?”
“He seemed rather discomfited,” Frade said, obviously pleased with himself. Then his tone changed. “Cletus, I looked at Dorotea tonight for the first time as a young woman, not as a girl.”
“I’m in love with her, Dad.”
“To l