A Quiet Flame

“Actually, you’re the first friend I’ve made since I got here. Besides, I’d like to do something noble for once.”

“Oh? Why? I’m curious.”

“Don’t be. It doesn’t help either of us.”

“What you say makes me think that you think you have to do something noble to atone for something else you did. Something not so noble, perhaps.”

“That’s my business. I will tell you this, though. Don’t ever ask me about it. That’s part of my price, Anna. You don’t ever ask me about it. All right? Are we agreed?”

She nodded, finally.

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“All right, then. Now. Tell me. How did you find me?”

“I told you. I have a friend in the police. As a matter of fact, he’s the same bastard cop who robbed us of our savings. But he feels guilty about it now and wants to help in any way he can. Unfortunately, he has spent all the money. Gambled it away. It was he who told me where you were staying. It wasn’t so very difficult, I think. It’s on your cédula. All he had to do was to look it up. I went to your hotel and followed you here.”

“The less this cop knows about what I’m doing, the better, as far as I’m concerned.”

She nodded and sipped her coffee.

“Your uncle and aunt. What were their names?”

“Yagubsky, same as mine.” She picked up her bag, found her wallet, and handed me a business card. “Here,” she said. “That’s how you spell it. Their names were Esther and Roman Yagubsky. Roman is my father’s twin brother.”

I pocketed the card. “Three years, you say?”

She nodded.

I lit a cigarette and sighed a pessimistic cloud of smoke.

“Three years is a long time with a missing-persons case. Three months, maybe we could find a lead. But three years. And not a word. Not even a postcard?”

“Nothing. We went to the Israeli Embassy. We asked if maybe they had emigrated to Israel. But there was no trace of them there, either.”

“Shall I tell you what I think? Honestly?”

“If it’s that you think they’re probably dead, then I agree with you. I’m not an idiot, Señor Hausner. I can read the runes with something like this. But my father is an old man. And a twin. Let me tell you, twins are strange about things like this. My father says he feels Roman is still in Argentina. And he’d like to know for sure, that’s all. Is it so much to ask?”

“Maybe. And nothing is ever for sure in this business. You’d better take that on board now. Nothing is ever for sure.”

“Except death,” she said. “That’s about as sure as anything can get, isn’t it?”

I nodded. “You might certainly think that. What I meant is that truth is rarely the truth and the things you thought weren’t true often turn out not to be false. I realize that sounds confusing, and it was meant to be, because that’s the business I’m in. Although I don’t want to be in it, particularly. Not again. I thought I was finished with the whole dirty process of asking questions I don’t get straight answers to. That and putting myself in harm’s way just because someone asks me to look for his lost dog when really he’d lost his neighbor’s cat. I thought I was through with it, and I’m not, and when I say nothing’s for sure in this business, then I mean it, because generally I say exactly what I mean. And I’m right, too, because it’ll turn out that there was something you didn’t tell me that you should have told me, which would have made things clearer right from the start. So nothing’s for sure, Anna. Not when there are people involved. Not when they bring you their problems and ask for your help. Especially then. I’ve seen it a hundred times, angel. Nothing’s for sure. No, not even death when the dead turn out to be alive and well and living in Buenos Aires. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. If the dead people walking around this city all of a sudden really were dead, the undertakers wouldn’t be able to cope with the sudden rush of business.”

Her face had colored again. Her nostrils had flared. The isosceles of muscles between her chin and her collarbone had stiffened, like something metallic. If I’d had a little wand, I could have used it to tap out the part for triangle in the bridal chorus from Lohengrin.

“You think I’m lying?” She started gathering her gloves and handbag as if she was about to climb to the highest hills of Dudgeon. “You mean you think I’m a liar.”

“Are you?”

“And I thought we were going to be friends,” she said, her thighs pushing back at the chair underneath her bottom.

I grabbed her wrist.

“Easy on the floor polish,” I said. “I was just giving you my client speech. The one I use when there’s nothing in it for me. It takes a lot longer than a hard slap on the ear and a palm pressed on top of a Holy Bible but, in the end, it saves a lot of time. That way, if it does turn out that you’re lying, you won’t hold it against me when I have to warm your cheeks.”

“Are you always this cynical? Or is it just me?” Her bottom stayed on the chair, for now.

“I’m never cynical, Anna, except when I’m questioning the sincerity of human motives.”