"And how is Aunt Beatrice?" he heard himself asking when they broke apart.
"I have come to believe that God, in his infinite mercy, has chosen to spare Beatrice the pain she would feel under normal circumstances. I think you take my meaning."
Clete nodded.
In other words, what Claudia said was right on the money. She's in the arms of Jesus and drugs, and you know it. You poor bastard.
"Beatrice will join us shortly," Humberto said, then turned to Claudia and her daughters, kissing them each in turn.
"Do you have everything you need?" he asked.
Everybody nodded.
"I think I will have a little taste, myself," Humberto said, and made his way to the cabinet bar. "Beatrice will be along in a minute, and then we can have our dinner."
Chapter Seven
[ONE]
1420 Avenida Alvear
Buenos Aires, Argentina
2145 9 April 1943
Beatrice Frade de Duarte appeared in the library a few minutes after her hus-band. She was immaculately turned out, and the soul of refined hospitality. And quite obviously mad.
She kissed Clete on the cheek as if she had seen him only a few hours be-fore, gaily kissed the Carzino-Cormano females, complimented them on their dresses and hair, and then called for champagne.
"Champagne increases one's appreciation of food," she complained, "but whiskey simply makes one gluttonous."
Claudia Carzino-Cormano, smiling brightly with a visible effort, squeezed Clete's upper arm painfully.
When the champagne was served, Beatrice toasted, "Good friends. They are always such support at a time like this."
Clete thought Alicia was going to cry.
After Beatrice carefully paired them off-Humberto with Claudia, Capitan Lauffer with Isabela, and Clete with Alicia-they went into the dining. She be-gan the dinner conversation with the announcement: "This is probably the wrong time to say this-Cletus would have to get a special dispensation from the Cardinal Archbishop to waive the year's mourning period-but I always suspected that my late brother hoped that Cletus and Isabela would be struck by Cupid's arrow. I think of you, dear Claudia, as family already. Their marriage would make it official."
"Well, you never know what time will bring," Claudia said quickly, to fore-stall any reply from either Isabela, who rolled her eyes, or Clete.
Throughout dinner, Beatrice chattered on happily about her idyllic child-hood with her brother on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo. The highlight of all this was the story of el Coronel's burial casket.
"Poppa somehow came into a stock of cedar," she said, turning her brilliant smile on Capitan Lauffer. "Which, unless I am mistaken, is not grown here. Or if it is, this was of an exceptionally high quality. I have no idea where it came from, to tell you the truth. But, anyway, there it was, in one of the buildings some distance from the big house, and one day Poppa saw it and decided he wanted to be buried in a cedar casket."
"Is that so?" Capitan Lauffer replied politely.
"So he asked one of the foremen to find someone who knew how to make a casket. The foreman came up with a man from one of Poppa's estancias in Corrientes.... Do you know where Corrientes is, Cletus, dear?"
"No, Ma'am," Cletus confessed.
"It's in the north. It's bounded by Brazil, and Paraguay, and, in a tiny little corner in the south by Uruguay."
"Is it really?"
"You must go there, Cletus, and soon."
"I'd like to."